How about a thumbs down?

This may have been suggested before. I'm too lazy to do a search. If it has, it bears repeating - there should really also be a "thumbs down" option for book reviews, and those reviews receiving many such negative votes should be removed. It's really annoying that for many books, even quite popular ones, there is only one review available, and that one wholly unedifying, inadequate or just plain stupid. There doesn't seem to be anything one can do about it now; "reviewer is an idiot" is not an acceptable reason for flagging. Bah...

Well, if more people, such as yourself for example, would write reviews...

Re. #2:

Hey, the OP was "too lazy to do a search", what makes you think they'd make the effort to actually write a review?

 

There's no flag in Talk for "OP is an idiot". Bah...

Do you flag a review if you don't agree with the review??

Isn't that what is happening on one of the commercial sites?? the authors/friends are tagging/flagging negative reviews so that they are removed?? thereby "up"ing the percentage of positive over negative reviews??

When I read a review, I listen to the "voice" of the review? Then I decide if I want to consider their opinion of the book.

"Idiotic" opinions don't rate very high with me.... I also don't like reviews that are links to another site or blog. I come to LT for the info. If I wanted other site info, I would go to that site.

JMHO ... possibly falling into the "idiotic" opinions catagory for some people, but just as they are entitled to their opinion, I'm entitled to mine.

Just to be clear - the flags are specifically for things that are not a review (with fairly wide latitude) or for things that breach the TOS.

If you don't like a review or the reviewers opinions, tough. The review was written by the LT user for their own benefit, not yours, be gratefully that they've chosen to share there wisdom with you and if you don't like it, write a better one!

I find it the very definition of irony that the OP, who keeps his/her entire library private, has the nerve to complain about reviews that don't meet his/her high standards.

Put yourself out there, and we'll judge how well you do...

To add to msgs 2-7, I do not support any idea that involves deleting someone else work from their own catalogue.
I'm concerned that's what the OP post implied with 'should be removed'.

Do I find it kinda annoying to see tags etc in the review field? - Yes.
Do I think the answer is to educate/make entering more intuitive? Yes.
Does the benefit or enjoyment I get out of my review reading outweigh the oddities I see sometimes? Yes

Delete someone's work from their own catalogue? Never

edited to add 7, as I was too slow posting before ..

I just wanted to point out that the thumbs down was SPECIFICALLY not implemented by Tim. He feels that the negativity generated by the negative feedback would be counter productive to the reviews here (and I tend to agree). Also if the problem is too few reviews for a book, thumbing down a review will not magically bring more and better reviews in, it would likely intimidate many from even trying. If you find good reviews give them a thumbs up, you can read reviews sorted by thumbs as well.

> 2

And, of course, perhaps the poster did write reviews, but we wouldn't know it because her library's private! Not that I object to private libraries in principle, but it does ill behoove someone who keeps their own information private to complain about the reviews others make public.

5>

Oh, please.

I'm so tired of the "but people will give a thumbs-down to reviews they don't agree with, or to negative reviews!" bogeyman being brought up every time a thumbs-down function is suggested -- do you really mean to tell me that people are just as likely to give a thumbs-up to a review they disagree with as to one they agree with, all else being equal? I'm not asking if YOU do this, I'm asking if you really believe the people you're worried about abusing thumbs-down don't already abuse the thumbs-up.

Look, as it stands there's no way to distinguish a terribly written, content-free review from a mediocre review. For books with dozens of reviews, the great ones will get thumbs up and sort to the top, but for a more obscure book with five reviews it would be nice to be able to have the truly rotten ones (by which I mean quality-of-review, not disliked-the-book) sort to the bottom without having to say "at least this reviewer spelled most of the words correctly, I'll give it a thumbs-up."

I don't think reviews with lots of thumbs-down should be removed; that's ripe for abuse. Sorting them to the bottom is all I ask for. But I do think the gooey sweetness of "if you can't say something nice...." is an insult to LTers as a whole and detracts from overall review quality.

8> To be fair, I don't believe the OP realized that what he was proposing was to remove reviews from other people's catalogs. He would probably be satisfied if (theoretically) enough thumbs down just removed the review from public view (not that I think that would be a good thing).

I think the solution is to have different types of positive thumbs, not negative thumbs. Someone jokingly suggested in another thread that we should be able to mark a review as having good grammar, but why not?

13: Ugh, that's even more gooey sweet than what we have. Having five different kinds of positive thumbs won't help anyone differentiate the mediocre from the bad.

Ditto everything lorax said, of course.

I like that there is only a thumbs up option. If there are many reviews, don't the ones with the most thumbs up filter to the top? If so, isn't that accomplishing what lorax wanted without the thumbs down?

Besides, I've had bad experiences on Amazon. Reviews marked as 'not helpful' because I didn't like a particular book or movie rather than the review being terribly written or content free.

Also, I don't understand in what way having a thumbs down option will solve the OP's there is only one review available, and that one wholly unedifying, inadequate or just plain stupid dilemma.

15>

Yes, it works if there are many reviews, and yes, it wouldn't help if there is only one review.

But the case I was specifically talking about was the case of few reviews, say between five and a a dozen. In that case maybe one is great, one is terrible, and the rest are mediocre. I'd like to be able to distinguish between "terrible" and "mediocre", not just between "great" and "not great".

I know people have had bad experiences on Amazon. But I really don't think that people giving a thumbs-up to a crappy review they agree with -- which can happen now -- is any different from people giving a thumbs-down to a good review they disagree with, so I really don't understand why people are so afraid of allowing more feedback.

If I am looking for a review and a book has only one (or two or three) I will give the one, or two or three, a thumbs up in appreciation that the review is there. Who cares about grammar? If someone cares enough to write something that's great.

>16 lorax: I think it is because it would discourage some people from reviewing. And while people can give thumbs-up to a badly written review, that will just be annoying. But if people are giving thumbs-down to a good review simply because they disagree, the reviewer might not bother to continue reviewing. And since many books have no reviews, I don't think LT should do anything to discourage reviewers.

Just have to say that I completely agree with 18.

If one wants thumbs-down, there's this cesspool of reviewing I like to call Amazon. You can even write nasty comments on why you hate the review!

Frankly, a review is done for free on this site. It's something you took time out of your day to do. Sorry if it's not New York Times-ready, but I'm happy with the two flags we already have - one for violating TOS and the other for entering things like "left at Grandma's house."

Throw thumbs down and we're a hop-skip-and a jump away from ranking reviewers.

/shudder

ETA - I love Amazon for buying things. I just find the community there rather scary and reviews to be rather political. I also find Amazon's ability to remove a review from the site because an author's feelings are hurt over a bad review (read: "I don't want people to know I wrote a horrible book") icky.

20>

Well, I detest Amazon for all things, and haven't looked at the site in years.
(I stopped buying anything from there eons ago when they retroactively changed their privacy policy from "we won't share your data" to "yes we will, and that includes data collected under the previous policy".) So all I know about the review situation there is what I've read other places.

I think we can all agree that removing a review because it is negative is flat-out Wrong. But it continues to escape me how, once you have opened the door to review feedback, allowing directionality of feedback will result in such dreadful consequences. Look, I'm not saying I'm going to thumbs-down everything that doesn't get a thumbs-up; as I keep saying (I feel like a broken record!) it's the ability to distinguish between an average review and something like "I luvved this book, it is teh best EVAR!!!!" that I want. If you feel that strongly about it, you could thumbs-up the semi-literate reviews that others thumbs-down, and everyone is happy.

Can you really not understand that people would be less inclined to write reviews if they received negative feedback?

I don't see why being welcoming and positive (i.e., "gooey sweet") is such a bad thing. If people want professional reviews, there are plenty of other places to look.

I also don't understand why being negative is such a great thing. There are three kinds of reviews, and you want a way to distinguish them from each other. We already have a way to mark really good reviews, so we're left with two groups to separate. Why is it so much better to mark the bad reviews as bad than to mark the decent reviews as decent, besides the fact that it avoids "gooey sweetness"?

22>

Of course I can understand that, but frankly I think the sort of reviews I described in #21 would be better off discouraged.

Would you be happier if, instead of saying "This review has had 2 thumbs up and 1 thumbs down", it just showed the net thumbs, so that people could cancel out misplaced thumbs-down as though they had never existed?

I don't understand your third paragraph, however. As it stands, we can't mark the decent reviews as "decent". All we can do is mark them as "great". We can't simultaneously distinguish great/decent/terrible from each other with a purely binary system. We can either mark (great/decent) / terrible with your proposed method (giving a thumbs-up to everything but the terrible reviews) or mark great / (decent / terrible) with the most common method now in place (giving a thumbs-up to outstanding reviews), but we can't get the three-way distinction. If there were enough reviews, enough thumbers, and a reasonably even mixture of the two techniques, eventually we'd converge on a three-level division, since everyone would thumbs-up the outstanding reviews and the people who prefer the "everything that's not terrible is great" method would thumbs-up the average reviews, but we don't have enough signal to get there.

A "medium thumb" to indicate "decent" (counting as half a thumb, say) would be fine by me, for what that's worth.

My third paragraph was mostly in response to message 14.

I'd like a medium thumb; it would be nice to see that reviews were getting read even if people didn't think they were great.

I think undeserved bad feedback is much worse than undeserved good feedback. I'd imagine that the people who write reviews like "I luvved this book, it is teh best EVAR!!!!" would be the same people who'd thumb down any negative review of that book, discouraging others from writing reviews. Ideally, of course, only the really bad reviews would be thumbed down, but the mere existence of those really bad reviews means we're not in an ideal situation to begin with.

If enough people are thumbing reviews then a great review will get more decent thumbs then a decent review will get, and the terrible reviews won't get any.

23 lorax

It's not just bad writers who would be discouraged by a thumbs down. You really think the thumbs down would just be used for bad spelling and grammar reviews? That's very idealistic of you, but it's also wrong. It would be used for reviews that people disagree with, regardless of the quality of the writing, and I'm glad that (assuming I remember correctly) Tim as already said he's not going to do it.

This argument is kind of silly. jjwilson said it right in #25: If enough people are thumbing reviews then a great review will get more thumbs then a decent review will get, and the terrible reviews won't get any.

In other words, the existing system already accomplishes what Lorax and other proponents of the thumbs-down want. It just takes some time for the LT user community to find reviews and rate them with a thumbs-up. That wouldn't change by adding a thumbs-down option.

For the record, I'm not one who cares about hurt feelings preventing reviewers from continuing with reviews. (I mean, really, do we suppose reviewers would be sitting in front of their computers, anxiously dreading their first thumbs-down? Do we really think any reviewer worth his/her salt would stop reviewing on LT because of a thumbs-down?) That said, thumbs-down is unnecessary.

On another, but related topic, I would like to see some option in LT to see the "most helpful" positive review, AND the "most helpful" negative review. "Most helpful" would be based on the # of thumbs-up votes a review received. To do this, reviewers would also need to be able to give a rating for the book that goes along with their review (so "negative" and "positive" can be parsed). (This would be different from the rating in each user's catalog.)

Edited to strike through senseless part of suggestion (thanks, fyrefly98)

To do this, reviewers would also need to be able to give a rating for the book that goes along with their review (so "negative" and "positive" can be parsed). (This would be different from the rating in each user's catalog.)

What about stuff I rate a 2.5 or a 3? Should there be a "most helpful" neutral review? Why is something other than the rating required?

This argument is kind of silly. jjwilson said it right in #25: If enough people are thumbing reviews then a great review will get more thumbs then a decent review will get, and the terrible reviews won't get any.

The problem with this is the big if. If everyone only wrote great reviews then we wouldn't be having this conversation either. Unfortunately, that's just not the case. We don't have nearly enough people thumbing.

Do we really think any reviewer worth his/her salt would stop reviewing on LT because of a thumbs-down?

I certainly do. Some people write reviews for themselves, but some people write reviews because they're trying to help others. If you were trying to help and the only response you got was that you suck, why would you continue?

>28 fyrefly98:

Good point about the neutral review. That would also be good to see.

And I take back my suggestion re: the need for another rating. I honestly can't tell you what I was thinking. :-/ Maybe I need more coffee? Obviously the rating from the user's catalog would work fine for this.

So as not to hijack this thread, I've reposted my suggestion to Talk under a new topic in Recommended Site Improvements.

Varying suggested review rating systems would have reviews rated by readers. If one does not understand what constitutes a review, what criteria would that person use to judge a review? In fact, given the diversity of LT readers, who is to say what LT readers want in a review.

I like the concept of anything goes as long as the review gives an opinion and is the reviewer’s own work. Reviewing style varies; correct spelling and grammar are to be expected. However, a reviewer’s passion, writing style, the work reviewed, and the targeted audience might result in varying degrees of “correctness.”

I don’t like thumbs-up or down. I seldom can determine the reason why one review is judged more acceptable than another. I do like flags.

Reviews I don’t like:

*Reviews that are notes and really belong on a personal comment field
*Reviews of books the review states has not been read
*Reviews that are really a publisher’s description
*Reviews with no opinion – only a web link
*Reviews listed multiple times by the same person – why someone would enter a work multiple times with the same review is a mystery
*Reviews copied from the flyleaf of a book

To me all of these ratings of ratings are just a bit cumbersome. If the non-reviews and multiple same reviews were removed the review process would be a bit more user friendly. Perhaps we could have some sort of a notification system (a yellow flag) for reviewers who wish input on the quality and helpfulness of their reviews.

Muzzie: for

*Reviews listed multiple times by the same person – why someone would enter a work multiple times with the same review is a mystery

If they have multiple copies of the book, they need to either enter the review multiple times (once for each copy), or leave the extra copies without a connection to a review.

As for thumbs-down, I don't think it'd be a big help and I think we need to keep the number of thumbs and flags to a minimum. There's currently the thumbs up, "flag as not a review", "flag as abuse", and I think "Yes it is a review" and "No, it's not abuse" flags, but I can't confirm the latter as I can't find any flagged reviews to check.

Also:
*Reviews that are notes and really belong on a personal comment field
*Reviews of books the review states has not been read
*Reviews that are really a publisher’s description
*Reviews copied from the flyleaf of a book

Shouldn't these be flaggable as "Not a Review" ? Or should that flag be used very conservatively?

As for reviews that are just a URL, those are specifically approved, but should we encourage posting the body of the review in the review space as well?

Removing Deathly Hallows (613 reviews, 241 with thumbs) due to the contest distorting numbers, there are 7473 reviews written by people other than me for books in my library, 565 (7.6%) have one or more thumbs up. Counting only multiple thumbs up would probably drop the numbers dramatically.

(Edit:
Counting only multiple thumbs, Deathly Hallows has more multiple thumb reviews (146 of 613 reviews, 23.8%) than the rest of my library combined (126 of 7473 reviews, 1.68%).
End Edit)

Hmmm. I should probably start using thumbs. The contest apparently didn't push usage outside of the single book, so any ideas on making this feature more frequently used?

I like the idea of the review of the day that was being discussed earlier on a separate thread. (Perhaps someone else knows where it is?) I think that would get more votes on recent reviews.

Do we really think any reviewer worth his/her salt would stop reviewing on LT because of a thumbs-down?

Yes I do. Suppose you are just starting on reviews and your first one gets multiple thumbs down. That could be very discouraging. Especially since (using Amazon as my experience base here) those giving the thumbs down rarely bother to explain why they though your review was not worthy. Maybe they should toughen up, but I don't think that is what LT is striving for here.

I personally don't like the reviews that are only a hyperlink and never click on the links. But I suppose there are very good reasons for that user to not simply copy and paste their reviews. Perhaps some of those are sites with a 'Whatever you post on this site belongs to us' stipulation?

I think the 'one user reviewing a book multiple times' thing stems from cases where an author writes a short story and later a novel with the same name and those two separate things are combined. (Does that make sense? I don't have any good examples of the top of my head, but that is what I have seen in the past.)

Some of the reviews that are links are in fact written by a person other than the poster and it would be a TOS/copyright violation to cut and paste them.

Then a member review need not be written by a member. Is a review that is a link to another's review given the same value towards Early Reviewer priority?

Early Reviewer reviews have to be at least 25 words to count, I think (some amount of words, anyway - even if there is a link).

And a visible member review does have to be written by a member. I don't know if there are rules about what the links can link to, but nothing from a copyrighted source can be used in member review (some people copy publisher's weekly reviews and so no, and those get the red "TOS violation" flag).

As I have been sorely tempted to flag a legit review that was horrible as not a review, thumbs down would probably just stir shit up that doesn't need to be stirred. I'd be a thumbs down fool, I just know it. Some reviews just beg for it. Maybe we should have an 'eyeroll' button. ; )

I would like a delete (or "hide this" ) button for reviews ... similar to what we use in talk, to hide a thread we don't want to see.

Oh man. I really want the 'eyeroll' button that Bookmarque suggested. Can we have that? Please?

I review regularly for Amazon and take part in the Ammie discussion board and generally the reviewers there "hate" the Not-Helpful button as people use it more to express whether they agree with the review, versus whether the review was 'helpful' or legitimate.

On the other hand, I think the suggestion to have a marker for 'not a review' is a sound one.

I've never understood what it would mean for a review to be 'helpful'. If I read a review and then decide not to read the book... was it helpful? Only if I wouldn't have liked the book. Which I won't know because I didn't read it.

The converse is possible but unlikely. If I buy a book because of a positive review, and it turns out to be bad, shall I go back to find the review and flag it?

'Unhelpful' would be a better flag. Some reviews just don't say anything.

Sure, and undoubtedly some of the people that want the down feature want to do this. Mark things down because they don't like them, or disagree, that is.

If it ever happened, the people that asked for it would of course be some of the first targets of people going and doing just that to huge swathes of their reviews, presuming they have done enough for that.

I'm content with the status quo. I think that thumbs down does have the potential to be discouraging, and I'd rather that people persevered and - hopefully - got better.

I like the direction of Muzzie's (#31) final thought, where people can specifically request feedback on their reviews. If someone wants to improve their review style, then an invitation to rate or comment on a review would be helpful. However, I think this would be best if the ratings were only available to the person requesting the feedback.

Honestly, if you're just looking to give "feedback," why not drop a private message to the person explaining why you found their review unhelpful and offering up hints to show them how they could better improve their reviews to please you? After all, that's what the other users are here for, right?

Any system that encourages passive-aggressive, "your review just sucks or isn't helpful or deserves a thumbs down because I hate that you constantly use the word 'wondrous' and it annoys me" is NOT for the reviewers - it is to stroke the egos of those that want an anonymous way of saying "I am superior to you."

Tell you what - if everyone that desperately wants a "thumbs down" to show people that their reveiws are inferior and should be either improved or stricken from view agrees to the following:

- Their names will be prominently displayed as one giving a thumbs-down on every review.
- Their profile (private or public) will automatically display links to all reviews that they've given thumbs-down to forever and ever under the heading "Reviews I've Marked as Sub-Standard."
- The thumbs down will automatically send a message to the reviewer saying, "hi, I've decided to mark your review as unhelpful. By doing so, I agree to receive messages from you regardless of my privacy settings so that you and I can chat at great length about what you can do to improve your reviews. These discussions will be up for public view for all to see so everyone can see why I'm qualified to pass judgment on less-than-stellar reviews."
- You will also only be able to give one thumbs-down per review that you've done - so if you've done 5 reviews, you can only give 5 thumbs down.
- Better yet, you can only thumbs-down a review on a book you've reviewed. If you're going to take away from the community, you are required to give back.

If those are unacceptable, you're just looking for ways to make people feel bad through the anonymity of the internet. Period.

There are flags for TOS and "not a review." You can write a better review if you find others so dissatisfying.

@ 46: lol - great answer.

#46 has convinced me.

Not that people would abuse thumbs-down more than they already do thumbs-up, but that some people are so deeply invested in the idea of nobody ever being able to express an opinion that the mere idea of someone saying "this thing is not as good at that other thing" offends them personally. I'd rather not read reviews at all (and they aren't totally useless yet, though I suspect they're getting there) than have people so profoundly upset.

Edited to add:

Shall we also forbid raters from giving fewer than three stars, at least to books by LT authors?

Re duplicate reviews: as stated by agis, reviews are done at the book level rather than the work level, so we currently have no way to establish a many-to-one connection between books and reviews. If you have multiple copies of a book, and want to post a review, you must either review one copy and leave the other copies unreviewed, or post the same review to each copy. If you review only one copy, and later remove that copy from your catalog, you will lose the review.

But you may ask, why would anyone have multiple copies of the same book?
- Accidental duplicates (which should occur less frequently with an organized catalog).
- Fragile or valuable early edition, with a newer reading copy.
- Sentimental copy (from a friend or family member) plus a reading copy.
- Wrote the review for an Early Reviewer selection, but then bought the hardcover to get it signed by the author.

This is a great thread and I find myself drawn to both sides of the argument.

Ultimately, however, I think that LibraryThing should err on the side of being welcoming and supportive. We provide a way to call out really good reviews. Given time and a number of reviews, the good stuff will rise and the bad stuff sink. And as for the bad stuff, I'd rather not crush some fledgling reviewer than give an experienced browser a list with slightly better ordering.

I worry that, whatever opinions are expressed here, this isn't a representative group. You guys are the talkative top 10%—the people most comfortable with the give and take of hard (but generally quite polite) argument. As we know from readership statistics, though, far more members lurk than post. Lack of self-confidence is surely an important reason people don't post. That's something we want to dispel. Tools that provide marginal advantage but tend to crush self-confidence worry me.

I'm still working on entering my library but I expect to have multiple copies of many works.

I enter the review as a review on one book. Then I copy and paste the review in the comment section of the other book(s). On the work detail page the review shows up as a review for the first book and as a comment for the others.

On the work (main page) the review shows up for all books even though it was only written for the first. (I don't know where the review would land in the sequence on the work page with many reviews) Since only one review was written, the review is counted as one.

In the case of the same work, but a later edition that is a re-write or has something significant added, the original review with comments on the changes would be appropriate.

If there were a way for the system to count only one review and not count or post reviews that are exact then pasting the same review in the review section would not matter. As it is, the data is corrupt.

I had just finised this and wanted to answer the previous post, so it was waiting on myclipboard.

Sorry, this has turned into a novella, I just needed to express and it’s not compulsory reading.

I’m afraid I was being a bit facetious about the yellow flag. It seems that the object of the review process is becoming more of judging the quality of a review as opposed to using a review to select a book. I write a review because I like to share my opinion of a work with others. If they don’t care for my review, then they can read another one. (Although, frequently, I am the only one reviewing.) I read reviews to help me select a book with the caveat that it is the opinion of an individual with unique tastes and opinions. With some reviews I “roll my eyes” and just go on. (I loved that one, maybe one of those moving graphics to click)

I prefer simplicity in a process. From experience, the more involved a process the less effective. LT encourages its members to write reviews. Lt also encourages members to communicate on a variety of issues and concerns through groups. Reviewers wishing assistance with reviews can request it through groups and I am sure there is a plethora of members willing to provide assistance. LT even provides venues for private discussion and member contact. If there were a yellow flag, I would hope it would be for private input.

I try not to write negative reviews. I may not like a work, (I try not to select a book I will not enjoy.) however, another person may find it extremely entertaining. I will include comments on and about things that I did not like and what I thought of the book compared to the writer’s other books. I use the star system where I am more comfortable about rating a work at the lower end of the scale. An author puts a lot of effort into writing a book and a reader spends good money and devotes time into reading. My reviews are not intended to insult writers or other readers.

We, myself included, should be more responsible about using the flagging system already in place, removing the extremely large number of non-reviews. Tim and the gang are working hard on a, “Recommendation” process that will help us in choosing something to read. As I understand the purpose of the review process it:

provides a venue for one to express one’s opinion about a work in one’s own way using one’s own words,

Assists a reader in selecting a book,

informs others about what LTer’s think about the books they read while providing reviews that illustrate the vast selection of works, and the diversity of membership, tastes, ideas, and opinions contained in the LT community.

It seems that the judging of reviews is becoming a process. If membership finds this to be such an important matter then a single button next to each review labeled REVIEW ANALYSIS bringing up a separate screen might be the answer.

******************************************
(Would go to Analysis screen or a yellow box would pop up stating member was not accepting comments on reviews)

Review Analysis Screen

Is this a review? Yes No

Please rate review 1 2 3 4 5

Explain why you liked or disliked this review. Was it helpful? Does the reviewer need to work on improving grammar and spelling. Include helpful information for improving future reviews. Comment will be forwarded as private to the reviewing member. (Box for information)

Members could designate a yes or no on receiving comments from the “Review Analysis Screen on their profile page. With this process members wanting to comment could do so, members wanting assistance with reviews would receive it. Non-reviews could be removed and the best reviews would be up front in a sort.

And best of all those wanting to read reviews to assist them in selecting a book and prefer to skim through and select a few at random would not have to look at a large grouping of flags, thumbs and numbers or stars.

> 52

Aaaarrrgh!! I'm sorry, but your REVIEW ANALYSIS sounds way too much like homework or, worse, a test from my high school English class.

Ah ha! you got my point.

English homework ... let me at it!

There are all sorts of Thingamabrarians, and the sort of option that muzzie describes and lilithcat sneers at is something that some of the more anal of us will go overboard at and others will ignore with extreme prejudice. I'd love to get feedback and learn to improve my reviews, because I do see them as a service. However, I think the population that would be interested or use this would be such a small drop in the water, that the benefit in improved reviews would not be worth the effort.

> 55

Noisy, I wasn't sneering. Just having a flashback.

;-)

48

Raters aren't Anonymous Cowards, though, in the Slashdot sense

I wasn't sneering either, just pointing out that in order to be fair to both the reviewer and the reader a new process would be necessary. All the suggested additions would clutter-up the review screen, thererfore, the best answer would be an additional screen.

I mentioned the processes already in place for those wishing to give and recieve feedback.

Noisy, I see you also agree that this would apeal to a small number of members. It would also be a lot of work and not particularly cost effective to Lt. I did mention a current venue for those wishing input on the quality if reviews and hints and assitance writing reviews.

"Reviewers wishing assistance with reviews can request it through groups and I am sure there is a plethora of members willing to provide assistance. LT even provides venues for private discussion and member contact."

Perhaps you could start a group for those interested until the LT staff has time to address the issue.

#55 - Noisy,

I assumed #52 was satire, not an actual suggestion, no?

I'd love to get feedback and learn to improve my reviews, because I do see them as a service. I would like that as well, but shouldn't that be handled via comments on the user profile?

> 55, 59

I'd love to get feedback and learn to improve my reviews, because I do see them as a service.

If you're really interested in receiving feedback, you could simply add a line or two at the bottom of each of your reviews, asking readers to post a comment to your profile. Something like, "Have an opinion about this review? I'd love to hear your feedback. Please post your comments on my profile page."

This would allow reviewers who would like feedback to request it, without requiring (or waiting for) any changes/additions to LT.

Of course, if you feel the need to offer feedback (or more detailed feedback than simply flagging a review as not within TOS or not a review), you can already leave a polite comment or explanation on the user's profile page (solicited or not).

Yes, jseger9000, I was trying to point out how unwieldy the process could become in execution, ease of use, and maintenance of the system. There are many processes in place, as mentioned in other posts, to address the issues under discussion.

I thought that my lead in I’m afraid I was being a bit facetious about the yellow flag. would help illustrate my thoughts. I guess I was not a clear about presenting my view as I had hoped.

#61 - Muzzie,

No worries. I'm hip to what you were saying, man. I totally agree with you.

Sorry about mis-characterising your response, lilithcat.

muzzie: "It would also be a lot of work and not particularly cost effective to Lt."
Yes it would be a lot of work, and in my conception it would only be visible to the person requesting the feedback and the individual giving it. That wouldn't offer that much benefit to the social side of LT. However, I've selected the radio button on the Profile and Settings page that says: "Allow LibraryThing to give reviews to both non-commercial and commercial entities (booksellers, swap sites, publishers, authors, street gangs)". Now if by 'give' Tim means 'sell', then there may well be a cost benefit associated with improved reviews which garner more thumbs up, which potential purchasers see as a measure of the 'quality' of the input that they're getting from LT. I still don't see Tim picking up on this, but that's one of the reasons that I took your suggestion at face value, even though I recognised that there was a small amount of tongue in cheek (as jseger suggested).

manque: "f you're really interested in receiving feedback, you could simply add a line or two at the bottom of each of your reviews, ..."
I liked this, and almost went out and did it straight away, but then I thought that - again - if these reviews were being given to other sites by Tim, then that would be nonsensical when seen without the context of LT. I'd also considered muzzie's suggestion about starting a group on these lines, and did a bit of a search to see if one already existed. There was one, I seem to remember, which didn't quite address the area I was considering, but then I got a bit concerned about crowding the marketplace: I think there are way too many groups already that are moribund.

> Noisy There is the Go review that book! group, which doesn't currently does any review-reviewing, but which is active, and whose scope might be extended. I am a member, but I've never posted there, so I don't know how open the other members would be to such a use of the group.

And I agree with stephmo et al. no need for a negative feedback on quality of review.

#63 - Noisy,

Saw my name in bold. Thought I was in trouble!

if these reviews were being given to other sites by Tim, then that would be nonsensical when seen without the context of LT. Good catch! I never thought of that and was going to add a line requesting feedback on all of my reviews. Maybe I should just add a line to my (already longwinded) profile requesting this?

Simply stating my opinion and not re-hashing everything that's already been said, my two cents is that I like the way the reviews are now. I would hate to see a thumbs down, thumbs neutral or comments added.

I've seen the debacle that happened to City of Bones on Amazon with the reviews of her book which was totally petty and disheartening (and yes, mine was one of the reviews that received numerous thumbs down simply because it was a positive review of the book).

# 66 Total thread hijack, but I am curious. Is it the fanfic writing issue that has people up in arms?

It's a non judgemental freedom of write/opinion kinda thing.

#67 - Amberwitch,

I'd never heard of City of Bones before yesterday and was curious myself.

I checked Amazon and it looks like there were several issues. The most serious one was that the characters and plot points seemed to be lifted whole cloth from Harry Potter and Buffy the Vampire Slayer (both of which I believe she wrote fan fiction for). I guess in her fan fiction days Cassandra Clare was called out for plagiarism and some people feel like it is still evident.

Another complaint was that the level of sexuality was inappropriate for a YA book.

There was other stuff, but now I forget.

There was a LOT of fandom stuff that went on before she ever got published, and it stayed hanging around her when she got published. I'm not in those circles, but I know people who are, so I heard stuff...if you're really interested in a weird, convoluted story, there's information here.

The thing is before I wrote the review and got curious about all the thumbs down I was getting, I had no idea about the book controversy. I mean, it's possible it wasn't very well written but I didn't think it (meaning my review) was that bad.

I didn't know anything about the plagerism complaints, comparisons to Harry Potter (didn't notice any similarities between the two when I was reading) or Buffy (never watched it). I think I was aware she had written some fanfiction, but didn't think much of it at the time.

I also didn't find anything inappropriate about the sexuality aspect of it. I've read lots of YA novels, some of which were much more risque.

I just thought it was sad that anybody that wrote positive reviews for the book got lots of thumbs downs, not because of the way the reviews were written, but because some people had issues with the book/author itself.

Certainly a case in point where reviews get "booed" because people simply don't agree with them.

#71 - Jenson_AKA_DL,

I just thought it was sad that anybody that wrote positive reviews for the book got lots of thumbs downs, not because of the way the reviews were written, but because some people had issues with the book/author itself.

Thank you. That's a perfect example of why I don't support a 'thumbs down' option.

#71: I saw a wiki page with "examples" of her plagiarism, and those examples were reaaallly stretching it. For example, a bit of dialogue that matched on two key words but was otherwise different. You can probably find such examples for any pair of authors.

73 Amtep

Some are a stretch, some aren't. I saw at least one example that fits my definition of plagiarism, though I also saw the one you're talking about and I agree with you about it.

While not a "thumbs down" request, I'd like a "this review was helpful" and "this review was not helpful." More for personal reasons than anything else.

When I have a book on my wish list and am deciding between more than one book sometimes I go to the reviews. If I choose not to buy a book at that time it would be nice for me to have a way to mark the reviews as helpful or not (for me personally) that way I know which to look at when I'm reconsidering and which I don't want to waste my time looking at.

(And what's helpful doesn't have anything to do with negative reviews vs. positive reviews. Many times I'll find the negative ones much more helpful than the positive.)

There is a thumbs up which is supposed to be the same as "this review was helpful".

I hadn't really paid attention to that. I suppose the "thumbs up" would help. But then I wouldn't know what I hadn't looked at yet.

So, the addition of a "not helpful" would be nice, for me at least.

77>

So, the addition of a "not helpful" would be nice, for me at least.

If you go back and read the thread you'll see more, and more vehement, arguments against this seemingly innocuous request than you would ever have thought possible.

Short answer: It will never happen, because the risk of deterring reviewers is considered to be more important than making reviews more useful, or making it easier to find the useful reviews.

The problem really is that different people find different things helpful so a public thumbs down is going to be difficult to use effectively.

I just posted a review of a book I ordered on the internet. The copy I received was different to the copy shown and there were no illustrations in the book although the text clearly refers to them, so therefore they are an essential part of the story to me.

This is something I would want to know in a review but someone else might not care what the edition was like or if there was cover art or not (there wasn't). So my mentioning it might be helpful to one person but unhelpful to another.

As another example, I find reviews that only contain a link to the review on another site unhelpful because I don't want to click the link and go off elsewhere. I like to read the list of reviews all together right here in LT, but I would feel uncomfortable about thumbs downing all reviews only containing those links because for people who don't mind clicking them those reviews might be really helpful.

>63 Noisy:
I liked this, and almost went out and did it straight away, but then I thought that - again - if these reviews were being given to other sites by Tim, then that would be nonsensical when seen without the context of LT.

I wouldn't worry about that. Reviews posted on LT are first and foremost for the LT community. Also, there are many other ways in which an LT review might not "translate" very well to outside sites. For example, if a review uses touchstones to refer to a work, and thus doesn't give all the details you might need to identify the work, absent the touchstone link.

These are just issues that whoever is buying/borrowing review data from LT will have to live with, IMHO.

Just a random question, but what does "OP" mean? I'm a little bit behind on my internet lingo.

I think people are making very strong and rational arguments against "thumbs down". I liked the fact that I could read everyone's reviews here and even if I thought it was ridiculous, I wouldn't thumb down it. If I had read the book, I would simply write a more concise review.

"OP" means "original post" or "original poster". It's often used to try to steer a discussion thread back to the original topic, after it's digressed.

Thank you, MonkeyRobo. I just had a "duh" moment.

I wasn't really asking for a public one. But a private one. Is there a way to get rid of reviews that I don't want to look at every time I look at a book's reviews?

Like, if I don't find it helpful, is there a way to ignore it?

For example, if a review uses touchstones to refer to a work, and thus doesn't give all the details you might need to identify the work, absent the touchstone link.


Do touchstones work in a review? I started a topic about this as a suggestion in fact, but never got a response.

No, they don't. Regular html links to a work page do, but they don't have the "link-back" feature that touchstones do (i.e. there's no "X reviews mention this book").

#86 - Fyrefly,

Thanks! I didn't think they worked, but if they did I was about to go and edit all my old reviews.

(Why did no one respond to my other post on this? Touchstones in reviews seem like a good idea to me.)

#76 There is a thumbs up which is supposed to be the same as "this review was helpful".

Not to add fuel to the fire, but I can't tell you the number of books I have seen recently when every single review was given a thumbs up.

The reviews ranged from links, to reviews that had details, to reviews that said this book rocks/suck, to comments about covers, where the book was stored and so on. Somehow I don't think this was the original intent of the thumbs up.

I am not advocating a thumbs down, because I think it will end up being used as commentary on the opinions expressed, not just the way they were expressed. The original intent will not survive once it is introduced. The ultimate result will be to squelch unpopular opinions ( because the next step will be to remove those that receive X number of thumbs down) and possibly to prevent those more timid from ever posting at all.

> 88

where the book was stored and so on . . .

Well, that one should be flagged as "not a review"!

> 88

Can you give an example? Remember the thumb symbol is there on every review but there is no 'thumbs up' unless there is a number next to the symbol.