Litwit Lounge discussion

Over on the General Chat thread, we've had some discussion of the ongoing furor over Goodreads' new policy (announced in the Goodreads Feedback group, but not site-wide, on Sept. 20) of deleting reviews or member's shelves that refer to bad behavior by authors (plagiarism, use of sock puppets, cyber-stalking or otherwise harassing or threatening negative reviewers, etc.). Since that discussion seems to deserve a thread of its own, I thought I'd start this one, for any comments and questions, additional information, etc., that may come up. Here are some relevant links of interest:

The original thread where this was announced: www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1499741-... . (Warning: this thread has hundreds of posts, mostly hostile to the policy change, and is apparently not being monitored by the Goodreads staff at all; the tone of many of those posting is increasingly strident and ugly, and does not encourage any kind of dialogue or discussion.)

A good, balanced online article explaining the background of the dispute: www.salon.com/2013/10/09/goodreads_wh... .

This thread represents a serious, reasoned and respectful attempt to draw the Amazon/Goodreads management into open discussion of member concerns (so far, there has been no response): www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1533968-... .

www.goodreads

One of my groups is experiencing an exodus of members unhappy with the changes to Goodreads. Some of them are concerned that Goodreads will interfere with individual group practices and policies, effectively removing the autonomy that groups currently experience. Other folk are concerned that Goodreads will edit their reviews or use them for marketing on other sites such as Amazon. What's your opinion? Do you think there is any foundation to these concerns?

Janelle, so far I haven't seen any evidence that Amazon will prompt Goodreads to interfere with group autonomy, or to edit reviews. I think they realize that if they do that, the mass exodus of members (including me) who would leave would dwarf anything up to now. That would greatly reduce the value of the site (which they paid big bucks to buy!) as a place for book marketing. So unless and until they actually do something like that, I'm personally not inclined to borrow trouble.

I also haven't seen any evidence that they would try to cross-post Goodreads reviews on Amazon; but I personally wouldn't be horrified if they did that with mine. Even though I boycott Amazon and don't encourage anybody else to buy from them, I use their online database as a handy free source of information about books (I'm sure many other people do, too), and sometimes review books there, if I like them and they're by an unknown author who can use the publicity. My opinion on books is free to anyone who wants to read it, as far as I'm concerned.

However, some other people don't feel that way, and would absolutely NOT want their reviews used on Amazon. In those cases, I don't think Amazon should do it without permission (even though, under the current Terms of Use, Goodreads apparently can grant them a "sublicense" to do so :-( ).

Thanks Werner, that's good to know.

Apropos of the discussion about possible Amazon use of Goodreads reviews, one of my Goodreads friends has informed me that some other sites, such as Google Books and Sony Bookstore, already cross-post or link to Goodreads reviews. A new site called Rabble aims to collate online reviews for books the way that Rotten Tomatoes does movie reviews; presumably, that would include Goodreads reviews as well.