Goodreads and Bad Authors - Changes to policy

Gilroy Cullen · Sep 24, 2013

Personal opinion:

Goodreads needs to take a page from Librarything's guidelines and eliminate all the ads and blatant self promotion.

But that's just what I avoid Goodreads...

justbishop · Sep 24, 2013

shakeysix said:
I work in a high school. This is how we treat 15-18 year olds when there is a bullying issue. The administration cannot be sure exactly who is doing the bullying because the bullies are often the ones screaming loudest about their exclusive victim-hood --ever see that website about Stopping the GR Bullies?

In a high school the next most popular excuse is "well, THEY started it!" Instead of wasting educational time trying to unravel this Gordion Knot of tears, drama, finger pointing and bitter recrimination, teachers and administrators just slice through it, often arbitrarily. They do it because they are in charge and maintaining an atmosphere conducive to fellowship and learning is the purpose of the institution. Their job is not figuring out who started what and doling out appropriate punishment.

I imagine that when the juvenile GR members begin to understand adult behavior things will settle down. As for me, I am transferring to another high school--s6

THIS. SO MUCH THIS.

juniper · Sep 24, 2013

I just checked my Goodreads account, which has been inactive for a long time.

I have shelves labeled "did-not-finish" and "did-not-like" and "do-not-recommend" - they're all still there. I wonder if those would be considered offensive and deleted?

Maybe, if I actually used my account. They'll probably only go after active players.

veinglory · Sep 24, 2013

No, because they do not reference the author

JennTX · Sep 24, 2013

Well, according to the new policy, even if the shelf is not labeled as being about the author, if they look at the contents and believe it has to do with authors, it will be deleted. That's why shelves named "taa", "thinking about reading" and "Hormel" have been deleted.

Yup, GR can now read it's members thoughts.

juniper · Sep 24, 2013

JennTX said:
That's why shelves named "taa", "thinking about reading" and "Hormel" have been deleted.

What does the "taa" mean? And why would "thinking about reading" be a bad shelf? I've gathered that the "Hormel" would mean authors who are spamming.

Deleted member 42 · Sep 24, 2013

JennTX said:
Well, according to the new policy, even if the shelf is not labeled as being about the author, if they look at the contents and believe it has to do with authors, it will be deleted. That's why shelves named "taa", "thinking about reading" and "Hormel" have been deleted.

Yup, GR can now read it's members thoughts.

The reason I nuked my GoodReads account except for a very scant profile is that they deleted a shelf of mine.

The shelf was labeled "Tain." It should be Táin, but Shelf names don't support diacriticals.

The Tain [sic] refers to Táin Bó Cúailnge, the medieval national epic of Ireland.

It was a list of editions, translations, and secondary / critical commentary about the Táin, with reviews. I didn't list anything there that I wouldn't heartily recommend; there were no negative reviews.

And they deleted it.

I've exported my books/reviews. I've started importing them into BookLikes as a casual tracking my reading site, but I'm still loving Library Thing. I hope Tim Spaulding can fend off Amazon from further encroaching.

amergina · Sep 24, 2013

Medievalist said:
The reason I nuked my GoodReads account except for a very scant profile is that they deleted a shelf of mine.

The shelf was labeled "Tain." It should be Táin, but Shelf names don't support diacriticals.

The Tain [sic] refers to Táin Bó Cúailnge, the medieval national epic of Ireland.

It was a list of editions, translations, and secondary / critical commentary about the Táin, with reviews. I didn't list anything there that I wouldn't heartily recommend; there were no negative reviews.

And they deleted it.

I've exported my books/reviews. I've started importing them into BookLikes as a casual tracking my reading site, but I'm still loving Library Thing. I hope Tim Spaulding can fend off Amazon from further encroaching.

How is tain even a "bad" word? In English, it's just the tin back of mirror. IF you google "Tain meaning" the definition that comes up is, in fact, Táin Bó Cúailnge.

Frankly, I don't buy the "this only affected 21 people" thing. That stinks of BS.

I think an October goal will be to move to another site.

Deleted member 42 · Sep 24, 2013

amergina said:
I think an October goal will be to move to another site.

The thing is, I was an alpha tester, as well as a beta tester.

I'm a GoodReads Librarian. They could have done a thirty second check of the books and seen Táin in more than 75% of the titles.

This is not being done by a script; this is being done by a semi-literate human.

I'll write up instructions for exporting and importing, probably on one of my sites.

Amadan · Sep 24, 2013

Did you get an email or anything? Or did you just find the shelf gone?

I really don't care that much about review drama, but arbitrarily deleting reviews is enough to make me consider leaving Goodreads.

Deleted member 42 · Sep 24, 2013

Amadan said:
Did you get an email or anything? Or did you just find the shelf gone?

The shelf was gone.

They deleted no reviews, that I know of. I didn't check since I have backups.

I received an internal GoodReads message on log in.

Poor IT practices annoy me enough that deleting a carefully curated shelf alone is cause to bail.

Alessandra Kelley · Sep 24, 2013

But ... but why? The Táin is a classic epic, and a shelf of books about it sounds extraordinarily useful, especially if it includes detailed reviews.

And yet, thanks to the new Goodreads policy, pfft, all gone in an instant, presumably on the say-so of some Goodreads author, but who knows, with no warning or backup or chance to point out the inadvisability of removing it.

This does not bode well. It sounds like Goodreads is using no intelligent oversight or human judgement to decide which shelves to delete, which means that Goodreads authors can now cause infinite mischief for readers and reviewers, no matter how innocuous, beneficial, or useful their shelves and reviews are.

If an author should chance to despise a reviewer the way that author who posted all of Wendy Darling's personal information online despised her, they can crush that reviewer with Goodreads' unquestioning aid and assistance.

If this foolish deletion was done simply because some author on Goodreads complained about it, that suggests a chilling future where any author with any grudge against any reviewer can have Goodreads delete any shelf they are asked to, no questions asked, no evidence examined, and no appeal possible.

You would never even know who asked for your shelves to be deleted.

Yeah, I'm not going back.

slhuang · Sep 24, 2013

This is staggering.

I'm curious, Medievalist -- did you communicate with their customer reps at all? If so, and if you don't mind sharing whatever response they gave, I'd be interested in knowing what it was. (If not, or if you're not comfortable sharing, no worries of course.)

I don't use GR, but I have a fair number of online friends who do . . .

MacAllister · Sep 24, 2013

Blargh. I probably won't delete my GR account, but I'd all but abandoned it, already.

This just seals the deal, as far as I'm concerned.

Deleted member 42 · Sep 24, 2013

slhuang said:
This is staggering.

I'm curious, Medievalist -- did you communicate with their customer reps at all? If so, and if you don't mind sharing whatever response they gave, I'd be interested in knowing what it was. (If not, or if you're not comfortable sharing, no worries of course.)

No; life's too short. I don't have a lot of time for less than adequate IT support. Bluntly put; my time = money.

I've always liked Library Thing better, enough to have paid for a lifetime account within its first couple of months of life, and buying multiple cuecat scanners for use by libraries.

Because I write about this stuff, I've essentially tried all the book networking sites, including the newer entries in the field, Rifflebooks.com, booklikes.com (imports from GoodRead's export files, as does LibraryThing).

JennTX · Sep 24, 2013

Did you get an email or anything? Or did you just find the shelf gone?

I really don't care that much about review drama, but arbitrarily deleting reviews is enough to make me consider leaving Goodreads.

Within about 15 minutes of making the announcement, GR started deleting shelves and reviews with no notification. They have since admitted that it was poor judgment (ya think?) and now say they will send out a notification and give the member 48 hours to comply.

But, people are still complaining about deleted content with no notifications, and there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to the deletions. I've imported all of my content to booklikes, and I would recommend anyone who has a GR account back up their content asap.

Deleted member 42 · Sep 25, 2013

I've created a first run post on exporting your data from GoodReads and posting it elsewhere.

I went through the process a couple of times to get the steps right, but I expect I'll be adding to it.

MumblingSage · Sep 26, 2013

I still find GoodReads much easier to use than LibraryThing, especially when it comes to adding books--I once had to add a self-published book after the author took it off Amazon, which was a wholly wasted fifteen minutes of my life. The adding, not the book. The book at least provided...perspective. I cross-post reviews there from my blog, and also make a few 2-paragraph reviews on GR that are too short for my actual blogging.

But I've never dipped a toe in the community beyond "friending" a few people I know IRL so we can suggest books to each other from the comfort of our laptops. It always feels so close to drama...and now this. I know 99% or more of GoodReadsers are awesome people, but that 1% is capricious. Plus I've seen enough things go wrong when the people involved had good intentions, having outright malicious or vengeful people out there scares me.

This hasn't stopped me from giving the occasional 1-star review, though. I only hope if one results in Bad Author Behavior I could rise to the occasion as well as the people quoted here.

Filigree · Sep 26, 2013

I haven't logged on to my GR account in a while, so I'll have to go look. I don't use it for much, anyway.

Polenth · Sep 26, 2013

MumblingSage said:
I still find GoodReads much easier to use than LibraryThing, especially when it comes to adding books--I once had to add a self-published book after the author took it off Amazon, which was a wholly wasted fifteen minutes of my life. The adding, not the book. The book at least provided...perspective. I cross-post reviews there from my blog, and also make a few 2-paragraph reviews on GR that are too short for my actual blogging.

That's the big problem with LibraryThing. It's fine for basic cataloguing, but the user interface is tricky and it's hard to browse books. I didn't like what I saw of the Booklike's interface either. Goodreads has a better interface, and it's the one I look at when I want to see reader reviews. So for now, there's no one really for me to go.

I can only hope they sort this issue out, because it's turned out worse than had been predicted... authors can basically complain any shelf is anti-author, and is just named in disguise, and it'll be deleted.

Goodreads and Bad Authors - Changes to policy

Gilroy Cullen

Handsome servant of a redhead

justbishop

Proud Literary Sadist

juniper

Always curious.

veinglory

volitare nequeo

JennTX

juniper

Always curious.

Deleted member 42

amergina

Pittsburgh Strong

Deleted member 42

Amadan

Deleted member 42

Alessandra Kelley

Sophipygian

slhuang

Inappropriately math-oriented.

MacAllister

Tired and worried.

Deleted member 42

JennTX

Deleted member 42

MumblingSage

Inarticulate Herb

Filigree

Mildly Disturbing

Polenth

Mushroom