The Dusty Bookshelf discussion

Hey everyone!

Since GoodReads has decided that they evidently don't need to make an announcement to members about their new, 180 policy change, I thought I'd post the thread here in case anyone hasn't heard about what's going on.

http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1...

GR is now banning/deleting-without-warning all shelves/reviews/lists that focus on author behavior. Also, if your shelf isn't related to author behavior, but GR looks at the books on our shelves that decides the shelf is about author behavior, then that shelf will get the ax, too. Because GR can read your mind.

I'm personally frustrated with this new policy, but I'll leave everyone to determine how they feel on their own. Best of luck!

From what I can take from the announcement including the updates (sometimes I'm not strong enough to go further down to the comments) it's a case of making sure people review for the sake of a book rather than 'oh the author did/said a bad thing on twitter/whatever so let's mark down' - which I recall happening last year. It talks about authors and reviewers being better educated on the guidelines, better visibility on how to flag concerns to the GR staff and hopefully working better to prevent the sort of harassment that ahs happened on here in the past (cos I'm sure most of us have read of at least one of those incidents :O )

Who reviews a book just to talk about the author's behaviour in a way that isn't book related? Especially if it's negatively impacting the book's rating? It's unnecessary and unwanted in my opinion.
As to the shelf thing - "We are deleting shelves like "author-is-a-jerk", as they don't fit our guiding principle that the book page be about the book." - that sounds a bit OTT as it's your own shelf but can make sense - I'm sure some people ahve terribly named shelves or more public ones that everyone can see.

As for the lack of warning - they have apologised to the few people that did happen to and have said that "Anyone else with reviews or shelves created prior to September 21, 2013 that will be deleted under the revised policy will be sent a notification first and given time to decide what to do."

Honestly, I don't see this as a bad thing overall.

I think Goodreads has a right to whatever policy they decide since it's their site. I read a garage analogy that I thought was really good. If Mike has a garage where he lets you store your stuff for free, he has every right to change his mind (even if he doesn't have a good reason) and not store your stuff anymore. However, with that same analogy, if you were storing your stuff there and Mike just threw it away without warning, you would be pretty pissed. Your justified reaction would be "Why didn't you just tell me! I could have moved it."

I see the need for more civility and less drama on this site. BUT I don't feel comfortable with the outright deleting of things without a) a way for me to defend or justify myself b) a chance to change my content to comply with the TOS and/or c) a way to back up my data before it's permanently deleted. I feel the process of removing content is unfair and makes me feel uncomfortable. What if my content was flagged unfairly and just flat out deleted without me being able to do anything about it? Or what if they have a script running all this deleting and something of mine gets deleted accidentally? Their statement makes it sound like that any inappropriate content after Sept 21 will just be outright deleted and cannot be restored at all.

I know there was a case of a blogger on facebook who was flagged as a plagarist because an author was suing a publisher for the use of a title name and his way of defending his title was flagging and sending cease and desist notices to any blogger who mentioned this title's name. The blogger was able to defend themselves to facebook (because facebook removed it from the public and did not just outright delete it) and they eventually reinstated her post. Goodreads could learn from facebook how to respect their users while keeping a civil site.

Just my two cents. :)

To add to that - they obviously can (and already have) deleted people's stuff since it's their site and they can do whatever they want. But unless they clarify their process of enforcing this TOS change it's makes me reluctant to invest my thoughts here. I feel like I have to back up my data frequently and cross post it on other book sites. I should probably do that anyway, but still... :) Reassurance would be nice that they aren't just going to be delete happy.

They have stated that they understand they amde a mistake and will start notifying people who's shelves could be deleted with enough time for those people to change the shelves or move them. So that's not a bad thing now :)

Well, actually it still is. GR claims they have no way to send deleted content to the affected users AND anyone in accidental violation after Sept 21 will have no notification until after deletion.

I'll very against this policy, but all my arguments are in that thread. I'm much too emotionally drained to rewrite them here, so sorry about that. :(

"Anyone else with reviews or shelves created prior to September 21, 2013 that will be deleted under the revised policy will be sent a notification first and given time to decide what to do."

Anyone who created shelves or reviews before 21st of September 2013 that go against the new/updated policies will, from now on, be notified before deletion so they can choose whether to delete, rename or what.

It won't bring back the already deleted reviews & shelves but they have stated that notifications will now be sent out.

After all the hassle of last year (or was it the year before) I don't blame them for this as long as it's done properly and in line with their rules (after all the updates and amendments they've made). This is not a site for online battles to be made with the recruitment of trolls, the finding and posting of personal information - including people's home addresses, in order to intimidate or just try to get the better of them. This is a site to talk about books and the world around books - any moves to take actions against trolls and bullies is not a bad thing if done properly to prevent innocent people paying for it.

Thanks for finding that quote Hayley. A lot of the updates to the policy are hidden in that massive thread (I saw someone say that if anyone read the whole thing it should count towards their 2013 reading challenge lol). That makes me feel a little better. I hope it means they notify everyone from now on that violates the TOS. The date is confusing me because they don't say what they will do after that date. But I imagine they will notify everyone from now on.

I agree that this is not a site for online battles. I love talking about books with all of you guys here! :)

That's okay Jessica - the quote was from an update that was near the bottom of the original post :)

I take it that the date was one they'd already planned on implementing the changes and updates on but there may have been a delay ;)

I wonder if that's what happened to one of the groups I moderate. I spent a couple of hours putting all the books from our "101 books" list into the shelf to be read, as well as 100 children's books, and both of those shelves have vanished. Sucks, because they are almost all classic books and clearly related to our group, nothing against certain authors! Gotta love what happens when Amazon takes over...