Mystery/Thriller Reading Friends discussion

This hasn't been announced to the membership at large, but I thought the M/T group should know about it. GR has made a complete hash out of enforcing review and shelf guidelines that were announced months ago.

The background is that there has been ongoing conflict between a few sociopathic authors who act like piranhas toward people who negatively review their books, and readers who want to warn others about them. Some authors have used illegal methods to track down personal information about people who write negative reviews. They have threatened and harassed these readers by telephone, and told lies about them to their employers in order to get them fired. GR has made clear that such authors need to be reported, so they can be banned from GR. Unfortunately, this doesn't fix the problem because the most serious harassment takes place off GR. My opinion is that they need to be reported to the police and arrested. This is criminal behavior that is way beyond anything that GR can handle.

GR announced new guidelines for authors and reviewers. In addition to informing authors that they would be reported if they harassed users on GR, they told GR members that they couldn't post reviews that were solely about the author's behavior or create shelves such as "Badly Behaving Authors" or anything about the negative attitudes of authors. These posts and shelves had been creating a toxic atmosphere that had widened the conflict.

GR wants a civilized atmosphere and I agree with them. Unfortunately, this week which is ironically Banned Books Week, GR decided to delete all the offending reviews and shelves without notice. That's why I labeled this post Banned Bookshelf Week.

Some members are deeply offended and have decided to leave GR. They consider this an arbitrary act of censorship. They include a few of my GR friends. Most have taken up residence at http://booklikes.com/. Booklikes is a book site where you can blog about books. It isn't even remotely a subsitute for GR, and I confess that the fact that it's located in Eastern Europe has me worried about the site's stability. So I have no intention of leaving GR for Booklikes, but I have started an account there. Booklikes doesn't have groups yet, but they say they are working on it. There is a group about Booklikes on GR called Everything Booklikes which discusses Booklikes policy and procedures. There is also a thread in which people post links to their Booklikes profiles.

I'm telling you about this, so you can make your own decisions.

I had no idea that there were authors behaving so criminally - that is simply horrible. I had been following the situation via the Goodreads Feedback group and came into it in the middle rather than knowing what exactly had transpired.
I understand the frustration of the members who have had reviews or shelves deleted without notice. It appeared the last I checked that this impacted a small group of people, but the count of reviews deleted was reported to be as many as ninety for one person. Hindsight says that notice of that sort if action should have been given.
Censorship disturbs me as does harassment and bullying. "Why can't we all get along?" unfortunately doesn't always result in our getting along. I'll stay here and do my best to be a good community member and to leave a good example. I hope the GR leaders figure out better ways to resolve any future issues.

After first noticing the threads about members reactions I'll admit I did a quick export of my GR book data and plan to do it regularly now just like I back up my Excel spreadsheets for books.

It appears I have had at least 2 reviews removed, possibly 3. I went in and checked all the books I've rated 1 star since I've actually been doing some type of review. There was one I don't think I said anything about, so nothing removed there. However, what I had to say about Laurell K. Hamilton's SKIN TRADE and Alyson Noel's SHADOWLAND is no longer there. The other possible one I can't remember for sure if I said anything about it or not. I guess I'm not surprised about the Hamilton one. I've read before about what a crackpot she is and have read accounts of her attacking people who give her negative reviews. Yet another reason for me to stay away from the Anita Blake books, as if the fact that they read like so much bad porn these days wasn't enough!

I don't like that your reviews were removed, Melodie. Nothing about that seems right to me. Even if it was well intentioned. (Or knee jerk) or whatever the reasoning.

Speaking as an author, I've never reacted to reviewers who rate my books at three stars or less. I do read them and consider what they're telling me. They help me define what I'm trying to just as much as five star reviews (even more in some cases).

However, I've seen a few negative reviews that were odd. I classified negative reviews into three groups: 1) didn't like it; 2) couldn't read it; 3) bizarrely worded diatribes about the author or subject.

The first two I don't mind at all. The second is an odd thing to state (I have an opinion on something I didn't read? OK.); but the third is the one that GR has been trying to target, rightly or wrongly.

One review of my book was from a reviewer who had joined within the week, had no other reviews, and said, "this book sucks, you should read JET by Blake Russell instead." I thought the review spoke for itself. I did nothing about it. After reading this thread, I double checked and that review is gone.

All the other 1 star reviews (at least the ones I recall) are still there. Fine by me.

I looked at Melodie's 1 star reviews and wished my negative reviews were as well thought out and specific. Melodie doesn't trash the author but cites specific concepts that she finds annoying or distasteful. Those are admirable negative reviews.

Peace, Seeley

I think negative reviews are important and hate to think they might not be allowed here.
We've always discussed books we "wanted to throw across the room" from the early days on AOL message boards and appreciate the sentiment - and have often found one person's "throw across the room" is another person's ok or good read.
I generally don't bother to even list books on GR I don't finish and don't take the time to review them if I did. I appreciate people like Melodie and Shomeret who do take the time to point out what they don't like about a particular book and find their reviews helpful if I consider a book I am unfamiliar with.

Seely, well said, and Ann I am the same way. I do not continue to read the books I do not like, and my one book that had a 1 star review was Gone Girl. Lots of people liked it. I did not. I think there should be freedom of opinion here, but if there is harassment involved, then that person needs to be banned.

I rarely rate a book with one star. One of the few exceptions is my review of Three Cups of Tea: One Man's Mission to Promote Peace ... One School at a Timewhich was originally a five star review. I changed it to one star after I read Three Cups of Deceit: How Greg Mortenson, Humanitarian Hero, Lost His Way and explained how disappointed I was with Mortenson's dishonesty in his books. My review is still there. I criticized the author as part of my discussion of the book.

Interesting discovery. I went looking for Shomeret's review and found this instead:

http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/...

I give this kid some slack because a) he's a teenager, and I'm guessing barely; b) he's a teenager who reads; c) he's not yet realized that some violent words upset people.

However, that one shelf is the kind of thing GR is trying to eliminate. In the early going, they will undoubtedly make mistakes. As long as they don't ban people like Shomeret and Melodie, then patience is called for ... IMHO :).

Peace, Seeley

Seeley wrote: "Interesting discovery. I went looking for Shomeret's review and found this instead:

http://www.goodreads.com/review/list/...

I give this kid som..."

Hoo boy!! Yes, he'll learn.

What a great thread and very thoughtful discussion from everyone. It spawned a couple of thoughts of my own.

The first is something a teacher told me a long time ago: "by mathematical definition, half the population is below average intelligence". This explains some of the stuff you see on the freeway and probably accounts for some of the review anomalies. As a firefighter I suppose that human stupidity is my best form of job security. I have a sticker on my canoe that reads, "Stupidity kills, just not fast enough".

Secondly, I have to agree with Seeley that negative reviews give me the greatest opportunity for growth as a fledgling writer. The most useless thing in the world, to me at least, is when someone reads something and simply says, "that's great, I loved it."

If you're going to be a writer, an artist, an architect or anyone who engages in a creative endeavour (and I would put scientists in there too) then you have to thicken your skin a little and learn to profit when people have the courage to tell you the truth.

As for the wacko's - there will always be a few of those around. They almost always betray themselves as such and then you can take it for what it's worth. When I see a bad review of a book I'm interested in, I'll look at the reviewer's history and see how their taste aligns with mine.

I'm pretty uncomfortable with any form of censorship, even that which is well intentioned. I'm giving GR the benefit of the doubt on that, but I think it's still wrong.

As for the psycho-stalker authors, I agree that's definitely a criminal matter, which I believe should be dealt with harshly. ("Terminate. Terminate with extreme prejudice...")

Melodie wrote: "Seeley wrote: "Interesting discovery. I went looking for Shomeret's review and found this instead: ..."

UPDATE: I sent a note to the young man about his shelf; he replied that he'd created the shelf at age 14 and had forgotten it was there. He took it down, saying he was "mad at myself for being so insensitive". Nice kid.

Peace, Seeley

Thanks for the update Seeley! I saw the shelf name from the link earlier today (now removed) and agree, it was inappropriate and I am glad he was gracious and took it down.
As I am currently reading Dark Places,Gillian Flynn's dark thriller about among other things, kids doing inappropriate things as minors and the repercussions then and years later, the potential for such situations is at the front of my mind.

lately I've been trying to do more reviews even if they are in the written book journal and not on the GRs shelf I hope at some point I'll be able to do some catching up. I try and watch what I write in both places just in case someone reads them. if I don't like something I'll usually just put not my type of book or I won't write any comments. I heard about this a week or so ago from someone else so knew about it already. it's still surprising. thanks for posting about it. it's still interesting to see what everyone thinks on the matter.

What an interesting thread. I wasn't aware of any of this. It's shocking to think of authors tracking people down outside of GR and harrassing them at home and work. I can't imagine the reasoning that leads someone to that place. I imagine some must be reaction to equal measures against themselves, but even so, that's just wrong. Those folks need to be prosecuted but I agree that's outside of GR's purview.

On the other hand, removing people's reviews and comments in any kind of wholesale way without some communication to the community at large is disappointing, and it sounds like it's created a lot of bad will. These kind of arbitrary actions were the beginning of the end for AOL's discussion boards. I hope GR doesn't continue down that road.

Carol: It is rather shocking isn't it?
I also hope GR learns from this public relations fiasco and any future wholesale removals are considered very carefully and if deemed necessary, instead of a more prefered one on one approach, that they are clearly communicated.