New Review Features

I see there are new things to do at the bottom of a book review. Clicking on the thumbs up seems to do nothing, and I don't dare try out the flag.

By clicking the thumb you give the review a positive "vote," saying that it was a helpful review. It may take it a second to work its magic.

The flag has a dialog box that pops up, so there is little damage in clicking it. But don't click any further unless you mean it. There is a message there that explains it all and a chance to cancel.

Oh...this is Christopher. I'm back for a short stint until Tim and Co. can find a permanent programmer. I'm kind of the substitute teacher of the LibraryThing programming world.

I'll be gone this weekend so I might not answer questions on this until Monday night.

When I pushed the thumbs up (after finding an excellent review), it turned green and there was a 1 beside it.

I think these are + - like Amazon's (and other sites') "Was this review helpful?"

Hm. Firefox 2.0.0.5, Vista - clicking the thumb reloads the page, but after a forced refresh my vote doesn't appear to have been counted, even several minutes later.

eta: Same issue with the flag link, page reloads instead of loading the explanation.

Clicking the thumb reloads the entire page?! Oh that's not right.

Oh...and the thumb is a "helpful" identifier. But here on LT we are only letting you mark it as helpful. We aren't yet doing "unhelpful."

We're always the optimists.

Nothing happens when I click the thumb. (Firefox 2.0.0.5)

I'll take a look at the page reload thing.

I'm just curious what exactly is considered "copyrighted material posted without permission"--am I correct in assuming that just citing the source is not sufficient?

For reference, I'm looking at the reviews on The Thief Lord, in particular the second one.

***Cross posted now I know that this discussion exists!***

Either this is brand new or I have been blind. But thanks for putting it there!
With flagging - is it for purely copyright violations, or also for what the reader would consider a purely rubbish review, or something that should go in comments? Clarity would be good, so people don't go around flagging for the wrong reason.
Also - is there a mechanism to stop people giving thumbs-up to their own reviews?

Also - is there a mechanism to stop people giving thumbs-up to their own reviews?

The options don't even appear on your own reviews.

We're working on the Vista problem. Also, it was on the most popular places that reviews appear, but not all.

You just hate Windows, Tim. ;)

Just noticed reviewer names are missing on all the reviews I looked at, intentional?

Any one else not getting a response when clicking on the thumb?

Thanks fleela. Another question - can we only vote for a review once? That would be my preference BTW

All is working for me now.

> can we only vote for a review once

You can. If you click again, the vote goes away.

Oh, I'm loving the permanent link to our reviews, as well as the ability to edit from the "review" page rather than having to go to our "edit" page first. Lovely, lovely, loooovely!

Me again - when flagging, what do I click on to make my choice? Two flags come up -a red and blue - explaining what they are for, but no option to click on anything. What do I do?

And I have the same question as Post 9

It looks like you can click on the explanations themselves, but I'm afraid to try it.

Thanks. Tim, can you explain what the outcome of flagging is? Is the review taken down at all? How many people need to flag for something to happen? Just wondering.

I would flag both the first and the second.

A couple of sentences is an OK extract to my mind. Copying the review (even if credited) is still a no-no. The only time I wouldn't flag a copied review would be if the person had put (with permission) at the bottom.

We need some guidance on "not a review"
Does a one word "great" count as a short review and therefore not flagable?

How about blog links?

How about "X of a series"?

I'd currently blue flag all of these.

When you click on it, it says, only flag abuses of Terms of Service - e.g. copied reviews from elsewhere, spam, etc.

Not stuff that is short, you don't like, etc., so don't flag that stuff you mention (dunno about X of a series though, tricky, but I'd leave it, still actually informative). Blog link only I guess will get some? So, good question. :)

Here's what comes up when you click the little flag thingo:-

Important: Do not abuse this feature. "Not a review" is not intended for short reviews, poorly-written reviews or reviews you disagree with. "Abuse of terms of service" includes violations such as spam reviews and copyrighted material posted without permission. See the terms of service for more guidelines.

I got flags to work. Thanks.
I have flagged things like people putting in just the price, or size, or in one case the whole review was '.' (I kid you not). Can someone - as in Tim - please let us know about copied reviews. I am sure that even putting in where you got it from, if you didn't specifically seek permission from the original source, is not right (and not in the 'spirit' of the reviews IMHO). I am less likely to flag blog links, as most I have seen link to a review someone has written on their blog.

#24 yep I've read what's on the flags.
That's why I was asking for guidance.

To me "great" is a rating not a review hence flagable
A link is also not a review - though depending on what action the flag has may alter my desire to flag it.
X of a series is also not a review it's a comment - not on the contents of the book but about the book, similar to price or edition.

26: The problem is that to say that an URL is not a review is somewhat contradicted because the field is currently labeled "Review (or URL)".

So...will this effect those of us who instead of copying and pasting the entire review link back to our own websites? (A practice I've stopped doing, considering a number of people disapprove. I'm imagining someone flagging all the "link" reviews.)

I always assumed that "review or URL" means your review or a link to your review. I know there's a ton of debate over this and it's too early in the morning to hunt the actual thread(s).

Never mind. I didn't see the two posts before mine.

That depends on where you look, in catalog and work pages it just says review.

I'm a wary internet user, and don't like following links to random pages at the best of times, and can't be bothered to most of the rest of the time.

I haven't flagged any links yet, and the arguments above are persuasice not to do so - it depends on what happens to flagged reviews, if the flag "disappears" the link, this would be very harsh. If the flag shifts it to the bottom of the list I'd consider doing so.

While I'm not really fond of the links and seldom follow them they should be allowed. So what does happen if a link review is flagged?

Disclosure: We have a few to other peoples' reviews of my husband's books.

#23,24,26 As I see it "Not a review" basically means spam or something like it. As long as the "review" is in reference to the book (and follows terms of service) I don't think it should be flagged. So "great" should not be flagged, nor should "I haven't read this yet."

>33 dchaikin:

I always thought that reviews are meant to express personal opinions about a book. So while "great" shouldn't be flagged, "I haven't read this yet" really isn't a review as it doesn't say anything about the opinion of the "reviewer".

#33 - Spam is a TOS violation (red flag) not the blue one. What would you use a blue flag for?

I have a question. I've been looking around, and there are several "reviews" that are nothing at all but the star rating.
These should be flagged, right?

Even though I've only followed 2 links for reviews, I don't think they should be flagged, unless the link does not go to a review of the book.

"great", "crap", "boring" - are rather pathetic reviews, however they are still a reviews.

"I didn't read this"
"Book one of the Mallorean"
"Gift from mom"
"$4.95 at B&N"
These are not reviews...

#34-35: I guess, as I see it, the flags should only be used for egregious problems.

If someone's personal preference is to review all the books they haven't read yet with a generic "I haven't read this yet", to me that seems odd but reasonable. And it does no harm. Flagging that will upset someone for no benefit. Also, eventually that person may read the book and put in a new review... but, too late, they have already been flagged.

If people edit their reviews, do the flags go away?

I would guess that if you delete your review, save it, then write a new one it will be fresh.

a question i haven't seen asked in this thread: can the reviewer tell if his/her review has been marked helpful or flagged blue or red?

While I can't speak to the flagging, you can see if it has been marked helpful. It shows up as a little number next to the thumb.

See:

i can see that on reviews that i vote as helpful, but when i look at a page with my own reviews, i can't see any hands/flags/anything.

Try looking at your copy of Go Ask Alice. This brings up an interesting point. Will we be able to "sort by helpfulness" for our own reviews? It would be nice to see which of our reviews are seen as helpful.

I found a review that was copy/pasted from Publisher's Weekly/Amazon.

I flagged it as TOS. Would that be correct as copyrighted material?

I'd still like an official ruling on the copy-and-paste reviews. Especially since the ones I mentioned before now have a combination of multiple thumbs up and flags. Clearly, it is not clear enough what constitutes abuse of the terms of service.

47 > maybe I'm missing something but I didn't see ANY with both a thumbs up and a flag, I saw only 2 with flags.

#46 the way I see things, yes. I'm not yet sure I'm in a majority though...

#45 Why blue flag and not red?

#48 look at the thumbs really carefully with high contrast on your monitor. There is a little tiny number in grey next to the thumbs up. I guess it is more noticeable if you have thumbed it yourself when the thumb will be green.

TIM - please can you increase the visibility of the number!

>44 ssd7: thanks, you're right, i can see it now.

>48 readafew:

This one currently has 3 thumbs up, and this one has two.

49> I see now, can't read the number but I can see it's there, It does make sense that professional reviews would be helpful but still...

>53 perodicticus:

I'm sorry, but cutting and posting from Wikipedia is a copyright violation unless you post a source link and the GFDL terms or a link to them.

1. I'd like to draw a sharp line on "not a review." So...

>Does a one word "great" count as a short review and therefore not flagable?

I think it counts. I wouldn't give it a thumbs-up, though.

>To me "great" is a rating not a review hence flagable

Logic-chopper! :)

>How about blog links?

Absolutely a review. LibraryThing is not Amazon. We let you LEAVE the site. We aren't a mall that hides the exits. We're part of the web, not apart from it.

I'll stop ranting, and state it explicitly in the text.

>How about "X of a series"?

There's no review content there, is there? Flag it.

2. "please let us know about copied reviews. I am sure that even putting in where you got it from, if you didn't specifically seek permission from the original source, is not right"

Right. Not right at all. Technically, LibraryThing does not need to anything about this stuff until the rights holder complains. We aim higher. Library Journal, Publisher's Weekly and so forth have every right to sell their reviews. Posting them to LibraryThing undermines that.

3. Bugs

>i can see that on reviews that i vote as helpful, but when i look at a page with my own reviews, i can't see any hands/flags/anything.

We'll fix that. Sorry.

>TIM - please can you increase the visibility of the number!

Yes. We'll get on it. It may wait for Christopher to return. He's going to a wedding in Montana. There, I'm blabbing about his personal life!

Thank you for clearing that all up Tim!

That's a clear line - Thanks Tim.

re 55> Flagged a link because it didn't link to a review but to a publisher's synopsis of the book, though there was a link at the bottom of that linked page that said "Book Reviews." Didn't look to see if that "Book Reviews" link lead anywhere.

To clarify, the GFDL is explicitly not the same as public domain. If wikipedia works were put into the public domain, any derivative works could then be released under non-free licenses. To my knowledge, this is not allowed by the GFDL. Further, even if the copyright notice was posted, someone with knowledge of the GFDL would have to look into the ramifications of the fact that many LT members have their accounts set up to share their reviews with commercial and non-commercial entities. I'm nowhere near an expert on the GFDL or the GPL, but since LT is non-free software, we should probably be wary.

>58 MikeBriggs:

I think that's wise. indeed, I think the review needs to be the REVIEWER, not a link to someone else's review elsewhere.

We'll open up work pages to outside links the way we did author pages. And that will solve that.

>55 timspalding:

>i can see that on reviews that i vote as helpful, but when i look at a page with my own reviews, i can't see any hands/flags/anything.

We'll fix that. Sorry.

actually looks like i was mistaken. it shows up if (and only if) someone actually thumbs/flags your reviews. otherwise, nothing is there (which i think is how it's supposed to work?)

this question doesn't seem to have been answered:

what affect do the thumbs/flags have on the reviews/work pages/reviewers? will those voted helpful be moved towards the top? flagged be moved down? flagged reviewers notified that they are violating terms of services?

i like the idea of implementing this, but i'm wondering what the overall effect is intended to be.

>62 philosojerk:

I'm also wondering about the effects. I flagged a couple things that had already been flagged, because they were clear copyright violations, but there was still only one flag showing with the review. I assumed it would work like Talk where multiple flags start to pile up, but I guess not. So what does the flagging do, and what will happen to reviews that have gotten thumbs ups but have also been flagged as TOS abuses?

I'm assuming there will eventually be the option to sort reviews by number of thumbs-ups.

And I'm still hoping for sorting by affinity, too.

Ya, what happened to the affinity sorting?

60> Yes please.

(I'm just trying to move that d@mn real-estate-spam thread down the group's thread list. Please flag/ignore/whatever this post.)

>i like the idea of implementing this, but i'm wondering what the overall effect is intended to be.

Yes, we're going to float them up. Incidentally, if you disagree with a flagging, you can up-vote the review. They will reflect off each other when it comes to order.

Incidentally, if you disagree with a flagging, you can up-vote the review. They will reflect off each other when it comes to order.

I'm not sure about this. It's one thing to get a non-review flag and then get upvoted, but shouldn't it work differently for reviews that get flagged for real abuse? Above I mentioned reviews that were clear copyright violations, which got upvoted by some people because they were good reviews, but meanwhile they were ripped off Publisher's Weekly or Amazon or whatever. It doesn't matter if they're good - they should be, they're professional reviews - they are still violation of the terms and I don't know that a thumbs up should outweigh a serious flag like that.

It's one thing to get a non-review flag and then get upvoted, but shouldn't it work differently for reviews that get flagged for real abuse?

I agree. I think that the only people who should be able to reverse a TOS flag are Tim et al. They're the ones who can say, "it may look to you like a TOS violation, but we wrote the TOS, and we say it's not".

Just curious: wouldn't a thumbs up/thumbs down rather than a thumbs up/flag be more effective? Or a rating system like Amazon's?

What if you find a review with some pretty atrocious grammar or spelling? Would it be unfair to flag it?

Flag it as what? It's not against the Terms of Service (TOS) to misspell words, and atrocious grammar or not, it's still a review.

Tim doesn't want a thumbs down, as that is negative experience. The flags are for non-reviews (maybe they changed it since flagging) or copywrite infringement.

Thats my take on it any way.

Added
Oh ya, there will always be one or two who flag because they don't like the review...

#70 - Hmmm... how would that work. Certainly they don't have time to review every flag. I guess offended users could e-mail a request. Wouldn't that be a lot of work for something somewhat small? Should Tim be forced to play judge?

> 74

I don't know how it would work. I'm simply saying that the only people qualified to say that the posting of a copyrighted review doesn't violate the TOS are Tim and company, and that therefore that a review flagged for that reason should not be "upvoted" (horrid word!).

I hope you keep the option to sort by date too. Sometimes it's more interesting to see who's been thinking about a book recently. Also, no one will ever see new reviews if they're just automatically at the bottom all the time.

I definitely agree with the positive-only feedback, though.

I've seen posts mentioning a "quarantine" for author photos that may be violations of copyright. Perhaps that could work (however it does work) for reviews?

I agree on the sorting options. We'll work on them. Right now, I'm not going to sweat it. We don't have that many votes and flags. So hang tight until Christopher returns from Montana and we'll add those features.

As far as the TOS goes, LibraryThing needs to maintain a certain distance from this stuff. We'll respond to complaints, but we're not the "librarians" of LibraryThing. You are. If Abby and I got into every combination argument or flagging dispute, we would have no time at all to work on the site.

Coming in to this late (time difference) but thanks Tim for the clarification.
For example - there are people with LOTS of 'reviews' which are either a) just the price or b) things like 'given to me my Mom' or c) in the bookcase downstairs. Sorry, but if people are too daft to be able to use comments when they should, those reviews are flagged!
And if people just cut and paste from other sources, even with 'this came from Kirkus, all rights reserved' that is a copyright violation. So again, thanks for clarity!

And I am sure I read like a total b*tch, but in the past I have nicely sent a comment (private of course) pointing out to people the difference between reviews and comments, and offered to help. The response? Ignored or nasty comments. So, now it has come to this.

> So, now it has come to this.

As John Hodgman would say, "Ragnarok."

I was looking at the reviews for a pop-up book of mine, and I swear at least half of them were cut-and-pastes of copyrighted reviews, some of them the same ones!

#81
I've seen that a lot. It doesn't say "Your review." Maybe some people think they are to put *any* review, or the URL for one.

Tim: any chance of changing the text on the Edit page to "Your Review"?

Wait, can what's the edit. I'm confused.

Where you enter the review on the edit book page, there's no guidance to suggest that editorial reviews aren't allowed, and it just says "review"; changing it to "your review" might clarify things.

Ah. Got it. Changed. Small changes like this I wait for the next update to "push."

I don't think it will make much of a difference, though. It does say "review" and people use it for comments...

PS: Zoe. You're 98%. We're twins.

:)

More thoughts:

Can we de-flag (or de-thumb) if we're mistaken / change our minds ?

You can multi thumb something, but adding a second flag doesn't increase the number? hence if they "They will reflect off each other " it will be possible to upvote a review more than it can be flagged back to the bottom of the list ?

87> Oddly enough, Zoe has "85%" next to her name on here, but TimSpalding has "53% next to his name. :)

--
Oh and "Shared Favorites" is neat :) - saying that here to "conserve" entries :)

I thought I read here that if you click the thumb again, that would de-thumb it, which would mean that you couldn't multi-thumb something.

>91 jjwilson61: Correct.

Megami #79
Coming in to this late (time difference) but thanks Tim for the clarification.
For example - there are people with LOTS of 'reviews' which are either a) just the price or b) things like 'given to me my Mom' or c) in the bookcase downstairs. Sorry, but if people are too daft to be able to use comments when they should, those reviews are flagged!

Just to say, I had no idea that LibraryThing had a "comments" feature until today, when out of curiosity I checked what "A", "B", "C", "D" and "E" did. I suppose I may have noticed it previously and forgotten about it.

I have noticed some users using tags as comments or reviews.

#93, Akiyama, If you click on Edit for any of your books, you will find a comment field near the bottom of the page.

93: Check the bottom of your edit books page then.

If Abby and I got into every combination argument or flagging dispute, we would have no time at all to work on the site.

While I personally put effort into my reviews, I'm not even going to bother writing them for LT anymore.

This is just ridiculous. There's already been mention of flagging one word reviews because, in some esteemed opinions, it's not a "proper" review, flagging for bad grammar, and I don't know how much more stupid shit.

It's nice to know that that the esthetics police can flag a review into oblivion, and there's nothing anyone can do about it. It's also comforting to know that the staff will put a system like this in place, and then turn their backs when inevitable problems arise. It's going to happen:

Review: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows...

"I didn't like this book, there were such and such problems, the ending sucked, etc."

Harry Potter fan: ZOMG! Flag flag flag!

LT staff: Oh well!

The LT staff could do what most other sensible places do- take care of TOS violations themselves, instead of being lazy and putting a system like this in the hands of everyone, screwing other reviewers in the process. TOS violations are the problem of the site/staff.

Eh. Rant over.

Yes, but...
There aren't enough hours for the LT staff to read every review. Also there appear to be two types of flags. I assume that only the flagging for TOS violations eventually removes the review.

#96 9days - I think your complaint is valid but the flag definition is clear and should prevent your worst fears.

"What kind of flag?

Flag this as not a review.
Flag this as abuse of the terms of service.

Important: Do not abuse this feature. "Not a review" is not intended for short reviews, poorly-written reviews or reviews you disagree with. Links to the reviewer's blog are also acceptable. "Abuse of terms of service" includes violations such as spam reviews and posting copyrighted material without permission. See the terms of service for more guidelines."

There aren't enough hours for the LT staff to read every review

The staff doesn't need to read every review. Most sites have a 'Report Violation' button (or something similar). The staff then looks at it and decides if something needs to be done. Most sites frown on lettnig just anyone screw with other members content.

Of course, a system like this is a wonderful alternative to spending money on staff to deal with the site's problems.

>most other sensible places

And how many more staff would they need to hire?

>99 9days: Of course, a system like this is a wonderful alternative to spending money on staff to deal with the site's problems.

My guess is that there's not a lot of extra money to spend. I don't know what other capital has been invested in LT, but with no advertising and low subscription rates, I have a feeling Tim is doing the best he can with the money he has. (I'm a business owner, I sympathize with this sort of thing.;))

#98

The problem there is that no one has to follow those guidelines. It's already been mentioned that the staff doesn't have time to make sure the system is working as intended.

And there's already been members saying they don't understand, or need more clarification.

Tim has also said that any needed tweaking will occur when Christopher gets back. So what necessary tweaking and clarification should we ask for?

#103

I think the thumbs up will work well enough to move the good stuff up, and push the "junk" out of sight.

But allowing anyone and everyone to mess with the content of other members is absurd. If there's a policy violation, a 'Report Violation' button should work.

I'm sure they're not allowing people to mess with other members' content. I'd imagine that flagged reviews will eventually get hidden from the work page, but not from people's personal catalogues.

This feature doesn't mess with anyone's content. Your review stays your review. It's just when the review is viewed in a shared context that extra information can be added. If you don't like people judging your reviews and only want to look at them yourself, maybe you should request a private reviews option.

The problem there is that no one has to follow those guidelines. It's already been mentioned that the staff doesn't have time to make sure the system is working as intended.

This argument could just as easily be used against the combining/separating on the site. it is in the hands of the users and in general it functions very well. Have a little faith in your fellow LTer's. There will probably be a few bumps in the road here in the beginning but I expect things will work just fine.

If you don't like people judging your reviews

You missed the mark completely. I've already said I was in favor of the helpful review feature. I have a problem with flagging (or abuse of flagging) and the staff leaving their TOS enforcement open to anyone.

And I absolutely consider it messing with a member's content when an abuse of flagging can remove it from the public view.

BTW, a private reviews feature has been requested before. I don't think anyone is holding their breath.

Just curious, has anyone had one of their reviews thumbed? How can you tell?

#107

Combining is completely irrelevant. Combining doesn't make a book disappear, and combing has nothing to do with personal content.

#109

Just click on your reviews and you'll see a little green thumbs up at the bottom right corner.

> #110

But flagging a review doesn't affect its content, nor does it remove the review from the reviewer's catalogue. One flag, at least, doesn't remove it from the Social info page, either.

#111 Thanks. No flags - o:-) - or thumbs - :-( - for me. So I didn't know.

110> I believe it has the same social aspect and group censure. Nothing Tim allows for group work affects an individuals data, just how everyone sees the strained mess.

Oh, lor'. I can live with one word reviews ("Great!" does tell me something), but one-letter reviews? And it was "r". If it were "A" or "D", I could see it, but "r"?

Whoa! flagging can remove a review from public view!?! that's messed up. Totally discourages me from even beginning to write reviews, seeing as how they'd be on controversial subjects and thus most likely to be flagged--wrongly, for sure, since they'd comply with TOS--but it happened on Amazon and no doubt it would happen here.

>116 EncompassedRunner:

As I understand it, all that flagging does at the moment is display the flag, and I don't think they are additive. There isn't any sorting on any of the marked content yet. There might be in the future (but from what I've seen, that may just affect display order).

What, if anything, is going to happen when people have a very large number of their reviews flagged for TOS violations?

For example, since this feature has been introduced, I have flagged reviews from Publishers Weekly or whatever when I have come across them. I happened to come across three such reviews by the same user. Lo and behold, that user has over 100 reviews, all (or nearly all) of which seem to be violations. I would feel like a bit of a jerk going through and flagging every single one of these reviews, but I'm just wondering whether in cases like this the user shouldn't get some kind of automatic notification, like, "20 of your reviews have been flagged as violations of the terms of service, maybe you didn't know but you can't copy and paste professional reviews."

I don't know. I feel like for some reason people will jump all over me for suggesting that, but clearly a lot of users are just unaware of this.

Whoa! flagging can remove a review from public view!?! that's messed up.

I don't get this. Flagging can remove a Talk post from public view?!? Suck! I would never want to post again, because I might post on a controversial subject, like those darn kids/political conservatives/rude Americans, and then I would get unfairly flagged...

Sorry. Anyway, 117 is correct. But I tend to think these copyright violations should be removed from public view.

I think we need some firm(er) policies about what counts as "violation of TOS". Spam is easy, but there should be a yes/no on published reviews, and maybe an addendum on the Edit page (Do not include others' published reviews). Tim mentioned the possibility of work links too, so people could add links to the published reviews there instead.

Whoa! flagging can remove a review from public view!?! that's messed up.

I'm not sure that's actually the case at the moment, but if a review is posted in violation of copyright, or any of the TOS, why shouldn't it be removed from public view? That's done with author pictures at the moment. One flag puts an image into quarantine, and three? four? removes it from the site altogether.

It is also possible to remove a flag, so if someone erroneously flags an image, someone can fix that.

>119 infiniteletters:

As far as I can tell Tim has already answered this question.

2. "please let us know about copied reviews. I am sure that even putting in where you got it from, if you didn't specifically seek permission from the original source, is not right"

Right. Not right at all. Technically, LibraryThing does not need to anything about this stuff until the rights holder complains. We aim higher. Library Journal, Publisher's Weekly and so forth have every right to sell their reviews. Posting them to LibraryThing undermines that.

This seems like a definite "no" on published reviews. I don't see any reason not to allow links to published reviews though.

>The problem there is that no one has to follow those guidelines. It's already been mentioned that the staff doesn't have time to make sure the system is working as intended.

Also true with Wikipedia and a hundred other services. The world is not divided into the masters and the servants. You are supposed to look out for each other.

But, frankly, I'm not sure that flagging will REMOVE anything. I rather think the worst might be for flagged reviews to be available with a click, like a flagged talk post. And the main effect will be on sorting.

As we've said, we're not going to police everything day-to-day, but we'll reply to complaints. If you feel that your reviews have been inappropriately flagged, we'll look into it. The system must remember WHO flagged something—so they can't give it ten flags—so if a user develops a habbit of flagging inappropriately, we can look into it and take away their flagging rights and moot their flags.

122>

Absolutely and flagging perfectly acceptable reviews as a TOS violation or not a review is as just as much an abuse of the system as anything else. I guess that if there are people flagging inappropriately they will be communicated with if complaints come in. However I don't think that there has been much abuse of the flagging system going on in the message groups. I doubt reviews will be different.

There are LT reviews of academic books which consist of lists of links to reviews in academic journals and the like, which clearly have been systematically compiled for scholarly purposes - I imagine these are primarily cataloguing rather than social uses of the feature. This seems to be an entirely proper and useful way to use the review feature - but how does the discussion on this thread affect it? It would be helpful to have an explicit recognition of its legitimacy.

Tom has explicitely stated that links to reviews is a proper use of the review box.

Who's tom?

Tim? Tom's MySpace.

I don't think I've been clear on links to reviews you didn't write. My feeling is, they're perfectly okay, but that it would be better if we had a feature to let people add links to works. What splits me is the sense that links to good or unusual reviews are good, but links to, say, Amazon or some obvious place are just noise. We all know how to get to Amazon, and indeed LibraryThing makes it easier to do that.

Sorry, Tom is Battlemaster where I also hang out. It was only a matter of time before I got them mixed up.

Some edge cases I'd like to get consensus on before flagging:

1. Duplicate reviews, by which I mean identical text posted by the same person at two different times. This is almost certainly an error, rather than an attempt to boost review count or some such. My instinct is to privately comment on the profile of the reviewer; does this seem sensible?

2. Broken links. A necessary consequence of having reviews that are just links is that sooner or later some of the links will go dead (I've seen this several times, though not since the flagging feature came online -- then again, I haven't gone looking.) Here my instinct is to flag as not-a-review.

>130 lorax:

My instinct is that your first point is not a mistake. I haven't checked in more than a few places, but I think most of the time when this happens it's because the user has more than one edition in his catalogue and puts the same review for both of them. I know it makes the review show up twice on the social info page, but I would feel wrong flagging this because it's reasonable to want the review column in your own library to be filled in this case.

> 130

1. Nperrin is right. I have duplicate reviews because I have multiple editions of some titles. It's not a mistake!

2. In the case of broken links, I would leave a private comment, so that the reviewer can fix or delete the link (and, perhaps, move the actual text to LT!).

I hadn't considered the duplicate-copy explanation for the multiple reviews by the same person issue; thanks to nperrin and lilithcat for the explanation. It's slightly irritating to see "two reviews" and have them turn out to be the same, but I can see the value in having that column filled in your own catalog, so I won't bother to comment in that case.

Two points
1) Kudos and cookies for adding the view by votes feature.

2) bad things for showing only 5 reviews at a time!

This is really bad. Admittedly waiting for 200+ reviews to load on teh 5 books that have that many insn't good, but 5 is tiny, and will take ages to view 200+ because you can't just skim till you find the ones that look interesting.

PLEASE bring back all reviews or at least a much larger number!

I second everything in #134. Five reviews is not enough. I would recommend either all or ~50.

Just found the discussion in RSI http://www.librarything.com/talktopic.php?topic=17264 here

A question occurred to me -

Tim, what's to stop me from logging in with my other accounts and "thumbing-up" my own reviews?

just your integrity

>138 readafew: Assuming I had any to begin with...

#137 - the same thing that stops other people logging in with their other accounts and multi-flagging it.

Hadn't bothered looking before at any of these, but now I see your reviews list has any option to sort by votes, and thought I would have a look.

No surprise that there are clueless people out there, and people flagging reviews they disagree with.

My 1984 review had that happen by the look of it.

Someone doubly didn't like the complete sherlock holmes, as completely obvious I wrote that, and given it is pretty long, hard to mistake it for '5th book in series'.

So with examples of people that are that silly, having to get all these fixed would certainly be a lot of work for the staff.

>140 reading_fox: And that is what? Are flagging and thumbing tracked by IP address?

142 > no user id

Pride, honour and a sense of decency.

Otherwise known as nothing tangible. I'm fairly sure they are tracked by something - you can't add a second flag of your own. Whether or not that correlates to an IP address for related accounts I wouldn't know.

Flags are tracked by user name.

Two review bugs:

1. I went to Social Info page for a work I'd reviewed. Then I clicked the edit link on my review, which sent me to the edit page for my entry of that work. I edited the review and hit submit. Then i was sent to an error page. The review was updated correctly. But, I had to hunt down the Social Info page again to make sure.

2. On my review page from my profile I can only see 30 reviews (I think this is new today). The links to see more of my reviews don't work. One links says "next" and "show all", but they only bring me the top of the current page, and only my first 30 reviews are displayed. So, I can't see my 31st review. (Note: I can sort by reverse date. Since I only have 37 reviews this solves my problem currently. But for those with more than 60 reviews can not view them this way).

yep can only look at the current 30 reviews depending how they are sorted.

Even worse, can't see more than the first six reviews on the works page.

#146: I'll look into these. This must have cropped up with one of the changes. Certainly not designed to work that way.

Ah yes. The paging issue (being able to go to the next page of entries) is fixed on the development version. I'll have to see about pushing this release soon than expected.