Goodreads Interviews discussion

Hi, Liberty, thanks for agreeing to this interview! Since your true identity is hidden, feel free to say what you really think about people, no matter how cruel those things might be. Especially if the cruel things you have to say are about Caris.

As an opening question, how long would you say you've been involved in Goodreads as a community? Did it take you a while to start feeling like it was a community, or did that happen right away?

Perhaps we should start a little more basic than that. Based on your own, personal definition of "community," do you believe Goodreads qualifies?

I was part of a community as soon as I joined because I was invited by an in-real-life (IRL) friend and I had others who were also already IRL friends on the site.

There was a transition point, though, when I went from only IRL friends to joining the on-line community and I think that's when I started interacting more with people I had "friended" on line than the friends I knew IRL. It was probably about six months after I joined, so about 3 years ago.

I'm going to have to get back to you about what my personal definition of community is. I always think about it in terms of "community standards," a legal concept, which doesn't really apply here. I'll follow up.

Take your time about defining community! I've been trying to answer that question all semester.

When you think back to the transition from your IRL group of friends to the not-real-life ones, do you feel like the structure of the website helped in making these friendships develop? In what ways did it make it easy to meet people? And/or, in what ways does the way Goodreads is structured make it hard to become friends with new people?

Yes, it definitely did.

I'd always written reviews but I started making GR friends when I joined some groups and friended the people I was talking with in the groups. I was writing reviews, all along, but people were rarely reading them or commenting until I made those friends through the groups.

I don't think there is anything to prevent you from becoming friends with new people, if you're willing to either spend all your time on line tracking them or you're willing to ignore them. But I guess it depends on what you mean by friendship. Most of the people I get friend requests from are really just interested in reading my reviews, which is great (especially if they vote for me - I'm a whore at heart) but it isn't what I consider a friend. A friend is someone I interact with, someone with whom I actively read and comment on reviews, statuses, and possibly group activity. A friend is someone I want to know about, sometimes personally, but ALWAYS their reading and ideas about books. I can be very hard to keep up with friends here because of all the other clutter, sometimes, and bugs (like when the notifications go down) but I think the site is designed to facilitate it, not hinder it.

Most of the people I get friend requests from are really just interested in reading my reviews, which is great (especially if they vote for me - I'm a whore at heart) but it isn't what I consider a friend.

Haha, I knew it!

As far as the idea of "friends" go, how many of your friends you've met on goodreads have become IRL friends--if not people you've actually met, at least people you keep up with on a more personal level?

What about friends that span multiple online communities?

If you want to expound upon those ideas, feel free; but, since they're short-answer questions, here's one that's a little more in depth.

You've been on goodreads for a while, and you're well liked by people, and know a good number of them. Do you feel that you can recognize someone who is new to the community(s) of goodreads without actually looking at the date they joined? If so, what characteristics identify someone who is new to this space?

That's really sweet to say I'm well liked. Thank you. I've met lots of people from GR in person now. It helps that I travel a lot. I feel like I've become real friends with several people here, which is both amazing, and also, in a small way, not surprising, I mean, we all love books and hanging out in bookstores and talking about books. I've become friends with people I've had far less in common with in the past.

I've also become friends with a bunch of people over on facebook, which is fun, and even a couple of people on linked in. I don't use any other networking sites.

Yes! I can recognize new users. There is one type that jumps right in and writes and writes and writes their own opinion about everything all over your reviews. And there's another type that friends without knowing anything about you, just liking one of your reviews.

I know, there are people like that who have been around forever too, but somehow, they usually feel new to me. When I do check the profile, I'll be surprised if they've been around for a while.

How do people react to those that act like noobs? From your experience, do they get a different response from those who know how the community(s) work here?

Do you feel like you've ever helped someone new to the community become a part of it?

For the most part, people are nice, I think. There are always going to be those who mock the idiocy of others, intentional or not, and that can't be helped. I've seen some people go out of their way to be kind to new people, which is great. Lisa Vegan is one of those.

I try to balance it. I'm not on the site to make every new person stumbling around feel welcome and accepted but I do try to be polite and give people the benefit of the doubt.

I get a lot of weird friend requests from new people since my reviews are high profile. Requests to mentor them and show them around the site and such. I'm not willing to do that, so I'm very firm about why I'm not accepting a request like that, but I do encourage them to explore the site and get to know people and join in the groups.

Wow, that's awkward. That's a lot to ask of someone out of the blue when you don't even know the person.

We've talked a bit about becoming a part of the community, so I want to talk a bit about leaving the community. Would it be difficult to no longer be a part of the goodreads community(s) after you've been involved in it for as long as you have?

What would make it difficult to just decide one day not to come back?

I've thought about deleting my account a couple of times. It usually has to do with security policies and/or bugs from goodreads.com or my own personal concerns about privacy. Anything on the internet is public and sometimes I wish I had not said certain things.

But I'd miss the community. While I'm involved in real-life book groups and have lots of outlets to geek out about books, pop culture, etc., it is not the same as the community here. I think this place is special and I would definitely miss the friends I've made here, even if most of them are also friends on facebook.

Another reason I stay is and is not related to community. I do like writing reviews. I used to (and still do) write in a journal about the books I'm reading, the related events, what they make me think about, why I'm reading etc. (very much like my reviews, in some cases) but it's different (sometimes better) being forced to organize those thoughts for an audience and also getting their feedback on what worked or didn't, what's interesting or not, etc. I love that and would have to start a blog if I didn't have goodreads.

The final thing is about discovering books, particularly now that I know and really trust some of the reviewers. My reading taste has expanded. I'm willing to try books I'd never have picked up before. I have a much better sense whether or not I'm going to like something because of my friends and fellow reviewers. When reading is such a part of my life, having that available is huge for me. If goodreads became like amazon: deleting reviews, pushing product, NOT being a community primarily for readers; I would instantly give it up. Community is important there, too.

It's interesting that you've thought about deleting your Goodreads account, yet you have a Facebook profile. I've been tempted to delete that thing quite a few times, but I still haven't...I've never been as concerned about privacy with my Goodreads account. Despite the foul mouth I often have on here.

How much time do you spend on goodreads? Is it a daily activity? Multiple times a day?

Since that's a short answer question, here's the next: What is the most entertaining, fun, amazing thing you can recall happening on Goodreads? I.e., when you think back, what's the most fun you've had on here?

I don't post personal opinions on facebook to the extent that I do here. I mean, you get the general idea of who I am there, but this is much more personal here.

Yes, I spend a lot of time on goodreads, multiple times a day. Mostly I check in through my phone during the day and then on the computer at night while I'm doing other stuff but I write a lot of reviews and they take a couple of hours (sometimes more) to write.

I'm going to have to think about that second question. I'll be back.

Okay, I'm back.

There are two or three answers to the "most fun" question.

The first is purely goodreads-on-line-only thing and that was when someone suggested creating a group for a group read of truly silly books. A bunch of us joined, had great discussions, lots of fun on the reviews, and enjoyed it so much that we've been doing it ever since. Even suffering through those terrible books has been worth it because of that close community doing it together and enjoying ourselves so much with it.

The second involved meeting some goodreaders in person, especially when it's a group getting together. That's a lot of fun.

The third has been removed to protect the innocent.

So, what about the most uber-lame thing that has ever happened on Goodreads to your knowledge?

This may or may not be connected with that last question: when conflict happens on Goodreads, how is it addressed? Is it usually worked through, or is it ignored/avoided?

The lamest thing ever to happen on goodreads was the bee - that mascot competition was one of the worst ideas ever. I do think they did it to create community (please try to figure that one out). But it was so poorly executed and served no purpose and caused a lot of resentment and division. So, no, not a big success.

I'll get back to you on that third question.

Actually, it's interesting you brought up the bee, because I plan on talking about that in my paper of an example of how Goodreads adapts to what its users want. I feel like (1), the powers that bee (har-har) had a bad idea, (2), they went about it in a disorganized, goofy way, but (3), they asked for community involvement from people on the site, and (4) when they realized a mascot was an unpopular decision, they dropped the idea. Thank god.

So, I agree the initial idea was bad. But, I think the way it ended up playing out shows a lot of community awareness on Goodreads's part.

And I just totally took over the interview. Uhh, so, yeah. What is your take on the bee thing? In what ways did it end up being a bad idea? Also, do you think it created divisions that remain? Is the community all better now, or is there still some resentment?

In other words, wax philosophic about the whole bee mess.

I'll have to think about answering questions about that bee. I don't think that situation made anyone look good. I'll come back to you on that one.

This may or may not be connected with that last question: when conflict happens on Goodreads, how is it addressed? Is it usually worked through, or is it ignored/avoided?

It depends on what kind of conflict you're talking about and whether or not goodreads staff need to get involved.

I think the biggest conflict I know of is David's review of The Giving Tree (http://www.goodreads.com/review/show/...), which, sadly, has been edited by the author to tone it down a bit. (The original review and comments were lost because first goodreads deleted it and then he deleted his account).

That was fascinating to watch. People were enraged that he would attack a much loved children's book and that he said fuck all over the place while doing it. They wanted to delete the review. They wanted to ban him. They wanted to add parental controls. They wanted to ban curse words. They wanted warning signs. It was like watching a group stand up in Iowa or something and demand books be pulled from the school library. Goodreads, in one of its better decisions, eventually said that they weren't doing any of that because it's his opinion and the terms of use don't prohibit any kind of language on the site. Good on them. But it took a long time to get there. There was a raging war in the Feedback group on it.

Going back to your question about what makes a community, this has always been, for me, an example of "community standards," that legal concept that bothers me so much because I just don't believe it can be defined. There was a very vocal and angry group demanding that David play by the rules they felt Goodreads should uphold (even if Goodreads didn't say it played by those rules) and they demanded that Goodreads change their rules to abide by what they wanted, too.

But were they really speaking for the community? Or even the majority of the community? Or were they simply a very "loud" minority group. I mean, those who join the feedback group are self selected and the ones who are active are a tiny percentage of Goodreads' 4 million plus users. I appreciate how much GR takes feedback into account but what if they had listened to this very small minority group this time? I probably wouldn't still be here.

The most interesting thing about David's review, by the way, is that it was the first review a lot of people saw that suggested what else reviews could be. They didn't have to be boring I liked this book because the pictures were pretty and the plot was good. It was pretty freeing for a lot of people.

The other thing was the whole blow up over the Twilight reviews being "off topic" and therefore GR said they were within their purview to delete them. Patrick said this in the Feedback group. It upset me because the way GR seems to deal with problems is to make them disappear. Flagging something means it will be deleted (the comment or the review) if GR thinks it's appropriate to do so. But the history is lost. What caused the situation is lost so the warning (or whatever) is lost to the community. No on-line community is going to be all shiny happy people all the time (in little boxes on the hillside, all made of ticky tacky...), and not seeing someone being rude and offensive (because the comments were deleted) means that other people may inadvertently run into the same problem with the person later on. Sure people could always create sock puppets (!) but I think history important, losing it affects a community. At least now they don't delete comments when someone deletes his or her account.

When does the community deal with something on its own?

Well, that does happen. It happens mostly by opting out, blocking someone, leaving a thread, whatever. It's when people won't let something go that things get ugly and usually the GR staff are called in by one or another of the hurt parties. I'd rather people go the approach of just ignoring/not-playing-with the people that bother them. It's a pretty big sandbox after all.

And now I've lost track of what questions you wanted answering. I hope I'm giving you the right stuff.

You've given me a ton of stuff, and the situations you've talked about were both the exact kind of thing I wanted to bring up. I didn't realize that review of The Giving Tree was a sort of turning point as far as reviews go because its original version was before my time, but I am a bit surprised that there was such an uproar about its offensiveness, regardless of whether it's a children's book or not. I hope nobody notices my review of Everybody Poops. Of course, I have a content warning on that one...maybe that would satisfy the prudes?

Who cares. Fuck the prudes.

I like that you brought up both the way the Goodreads powers that be address problems and also the way members of the community address them amongst themselves. Have you seen many situations where people have serious disagreements but actually work them out in threads, or through some other form of communication?

The situation with the Twilight reviews...yes, that pissed me off as well. I reposted my review with two very, very small changes, and it wasn't deleted that time. If it had been deleted a second time, I'm not sure how I would've reacted. Actually, I probably would've kept reposting it until they had to delete me. I backed up all of my favorite reviews just in case that happened. But, regardless of what happened afterwards, it was inconsiderate to delete reviews without warning, and with snarky little emails reminding us we should be REVIEWING BOOKS in our BOOK REVIEWS. That's simply not true.

Okay, next question....although we can come back to that bee whenever you're ready for it....think back to the people who were your first non-real-life friends who you interacted with regularly on here. Out of that group of people, are most of them still active? Have many of them drifted away from Goodreads?

From your experience, how well does Goodreads do with retaining community members?

Goodreads has been better about retaining my non-real-life friends than my IRL friends. A whole bunch of my IRL friends joined when I did, or somewhat after, and they never really kept at it/got into it, even the ones who had a lot of activity at first. I've always thought that was very interesting, since it's not like my IRL friends aren't booknerds, too, but I don't think they were that interested in the form. Most of them don't use other social network sites like this one (except facebook) but a couple do, this just wasn't where their interest was.

Of my first GR-only friends, most of them are still on the site and active. I'm not friends with all of them any more, just because our interests have shifted (for example, I dropped out of most of the groups I had initially joined). Some of them aren't as active as they used to be. A couple unfriended me. I've definitely noticed my reading interests shifting based on who I'm seeing on my feed and what they're reading. I mean that in the sense that I'm learning about and taking a chance on books I might not have read otherwise (which, OMG, I think might be the purpose of the site!) and that then influences who my friends are. I am also friends with a lot more people who write reviews for the "art form" (I'm using that term a little loosely) rather than the strict this-book-was-good form. The more interesting and complex and intelligent a review is, the more I want to be that reviewer's friend.

I'm a little off track here. What I've noticed about my GR friends is that most of them are still active. There are a few that were once very active and now have almost no activity and when you talk to that person usually I find out that something significant in his/her life has changed: had a baby, new job, moved, started school, etc. The person got out of the habit of being on-line all the time. There are a few that get what I think of as GR fatigue, either because they feel the community has changed or they've gotten bored with the whole thing or they are making a deliberate effort to cut back (like a caffiene addict).

I will say that now that my time on goodreads is so much more focused on hanging out with my friends than the books themselves (e.g. hanging out in book groups), I would be more likely to leave if my friends left/cut back significantly, than I would have when I was just a casual user of the site.

The emphasis for me has also gone from a way to keep track of what I've read to more of a fun playground to geek out about books, and other topics when they come up. Simultaneously, this has caused me to spend a whole lot more time on here, and also it has caused me to more consciously avoid it when I have things I need to get done!

Oh, god, I just realized I left out something I meant to ask you very early on. We talked about the ways noobness is revealed...what different ways can a person on Goodreads show their knowledge and/or status within the space? I'm interested in which of these status/knowledge markers seem relevant to you, but also which other markers you you're aware of but ignore.

Knowledge and status are two different things. I'm not sure what "status" is here. Do you mean like demonstrating that you're not a newbie? Or do you mean something like that stupid "golden age" thing? (The latter just demonstrated how wrapped up people get in really stupid things; it had nothing to do with status).

Do you mean status like being a "most popular reviewer" or something? I mean, I get some internal happiness from that because I am competitive and yet also very insecure by nature and need constant reassurance that people like me. Votes = Likes (it even says so on the button). :-) But it shouldn't mean anything to anyone else, except when people bitch at me about how my reviews are "supposed" to be, then I want to point out that I'm more popular than they are so they should shut up.

Knowledge is different. In the sci-fi discussions and some of the philosophical books discussions, there seems to be some weird thing going on where men try to prove their knowledge about whatever the topic is (just like they do in real life, if truth be told). That is SUPER BORING, to me. They want to do that, that's fine, but I'm not really interested in being a part of those conversations.

Demonstrating knowledge in a different way is important though. I LOVE getting into conversations with someone who really knows a book or an author or a time period or a genre. I've seen some amazing conversations like that. Some examples include Elizabeth's review of The Great Gatsby. Bram's review of MacBeth. Alot of the David Foster Wallace conversations. Some of the Virginia Woolf discussions (Jennifer EM, I think). Ceridwen's first Twilight review....

I think goodreads is not much different from a dinner party in this respect though. You bring together a bunch of intelligent or otherwise interesting people, you put them in the same space, and they must demonstrate their abilities: jokes, knowledge, intelligence, ability to tell a story, etc. People who are good at it will thrive, people who aren't won't be engaged in the conversation. Think of the knowledgable but horribly pompous guy you've had to suffer through a meal with; they're on goodreads the same as anywhere else. The only difference it that the ability isn't spoken here, it's written, so the primary skill that someone must demonstrate here is being able to convey their ideas in writing. In something like World of Warcraft you acquire a set of skills, right? The game teaches you or the other players, right? The only way to do that here is to emulate other people (what they do that gets good responses) and work, really work, on your own writing skills. Emulating without skill results in annoyance and failure (remember the ironic all caps review meme? remember how bad some people were at that but how many people tried?)

Anyway, what do you think the markers are? I'm really struggling with this question so I'd like your thoughts on it. I hadn't really thought about this one before.

Well, first off, I think the "Best" reviewers list would be one of these markers. Whether there's much connection with how well written reviews are and how successful they are is debatable, since science has proven that starting your review with a funny or cute picture automatically gets you 8 votes, and if that picture is a lolcat that number is multiplied by two.

But, regardless of real meaning, I do think it's a marker of one kind of status. Similarly, I'd say having a huge score on the Never-Ending Book Quiz is a certain kind of status marker. Another, as warped as it seems to some of us in this particular community, is number of friends. Unlike a lot of sites, I think a lot of people on Goodreads see this as a negative, a sign that the friend collector is more interested in having a bunch of friends than in actually doing anything creative or productive on the site. But, I'd say this is a status marker for some people in this community.

But, I think status markers in both these communities can be gained without really having the skills these markers relate to. For instance, on World of Warcraft, you can buy a 'bot' program that will level your character up to the highest level without you even being there, by following some computer code of accepting quests and killing things. I'm pretending I know how it works, but I don't exactly. So, in WoW, you can have the highest level possible and still not really have the skills that implies...just like in Goodreads, you can write a review that gets ridiculously popular, or you can friend every person you see, or you can just Google answers to the NEBQ.

So, I don't mean just demonstrations you aren't a noob, but also demonstrations that you are better than other people in some way :) I think public debates in threads are kinda-sorta related to this, but not in the clear, tangible way of measuring success that these other things are.

Did that make sense?

In a sense, both WoW and GR encourage us to do the things that we see others doing, but adapt them to our personalities. What skills/knowledges do you think Goodreads encourages and/or develops?

BTW, I'm doing four of these things at once, so if I inadvertently ask you something you've already answered, just let me know. I do a cursory rescan before asking the next question, but..well, it's cursory.

What skills/knowledges do you think Goodreads encourages and/or develops?

In me or in other people? You're right, GR gives you what you want out of it. You can get a lot of votes by opening your review with images. Sometimes, it's perfect and justified (e.g. "release the kraken") and sometimes I want to punch the person (and I'm a pacifist) it is so ridiculous and unnecessary. But it gets the person what they want (in both cases), which is attention, good or bad.

What I want, as far as skills and development, is a place that (1) supports me in my reading and (2) lets me write without pressure, or very little pressure. The first is amazing, just on its own. I would never have finished many of the other difficult/boring/long/intense books I've taken on since joining the site. I would have given up at some point but having the support of people who have read the book or are interested in it or interested in me reading it really helps. Maybe it's the idea of being shamed in front of all these people if I don't finish it, I don't know, but I've made it through some monsters that I never thought I'd read.

The second thing, the writing. I like to write but I'm pretty lazy about it. I write a lot though, for work, or whatever, and having goodreads to make me think critically about a book and come up with something clever about it and express myself clearly really gives me a chance to practice my writing skills. I'm NOT going to write a book or anything but written communication is important as is having a creative outlet and goodreads gives me an opportunity to practice both.

Other people practice creating the appropriate LOLCat. That's okay. Nothing really wrong with it. It's not what I'm getting out of goodreads though.

Oh! And knowledge, other than books? criticism? schools of thought? recommendations of authors I've never heard of (and should have)? All that stuff?

Well, I also learned how to make a LOLCat and hear a lot more about pop culture than I expected. That's fun too.

It has had an effect on my reading as well, although that's a bit of a mixed bag. I've taken on some classics that I'd been intimidated by because of reviews people had written on here, but I also read some seriously crappy books because it's so much fun writing reviews for them. The review at the end of the process has an impact on what I decide to read.

Do you want to talk about the bee, or should we just leave that alone? It's totally up to you.

Let's see, I think we're through almost all of my questions. Aha! I have a couple more short answer ones for ya:

1. How many different groups do you actively participate in on Goodreads? Do you run or administrate any groups?

2. How many people you met on Goodreads have you now met and hung out with in real life?

I you want to ask me some specific questions about the bee, go ahead.

Different groups. I run way to many groups. I'm in a bunch that are no longer active, for one reason or another. Usually the groups I'm in were created because a few of us wanted to read something particular so I joined the group for that purpose. I'm in two purely social groups (no books). I probably administer 4 or 5. But I also run a real life book group, so I don't see it as much different. I'm in two of the really big GR groups but everything else has fewer than 30 members.

I feel like I've met a lot of people. Somewhere between 15 and 20, I'd say. I've met several people who I've come to know on goodreads later, not so much IRL friends that I've invited to join but talking to the person we both realize, "Oh, you're on goodreads too."

I mentioned some of my thoughts on the bee thing in message 16, as far as how the site's controllers handled the reactions to the poll. But, I'm also curious about whether the situation reveals different philosophies within the community...different ideas of how conflict should be resolved.

Do you feel that the bee situation created resentment that persists? What about the bee situation brought out such a strong division between goodreaders?

I think the resentment came about because of the poll. The poll was put up, there were actually spelling mistakes in the title, and then it came out through the simpliest of checking that many of the images submitted were stolen (e.g. someone else's copyrighted information off the web). Those were taken off but the votes went with them so the poll's results were skewed. And it kept happening, every time someone identifed a new image as problematic it was dropped, GR didn't do a thorough check all at once.

And did you read the comments on the poll? There were a lot of hurt, baffled, and unhappy people in there. They didn't understand how the poll could continue when it wasn't fair. Then a programmer got on there and said something really unfortunate, like "Goodreads is not a democracy."

From a marketing/public relations perspective, I can't think of how it could have been a bigger disaster unless GR had decided to actually go forward with doing something with that stupid bee afterward. The good sense of someone to just drop the whole thing prevailed.

There are still people you cannot mention that bee to without them getting really bitter about it.

I think the bee is a really good example of the sometimes unprofessionalism of the site. They've got great ideas (the GR staff) but it is not always implemented well. I personnally love the involvement and feedback that they get from the members (the whole thing about members being librians gives me a very wikipedia-like feel to this place which I love) but it doesn't always work out well. They've a big site now, they're actually competiting with the likes of wikipedia and facebook, they should act like it.

Um, so, how does that relate to community? Well, there's an intersection between this being a community of the members and a community interacting with GR management/staff who are trying to make money here, and that intersection is often awkward and difficult and can lead to bad feelings on both sides. Don't get me wrong, I do love how open the staff is to feedback. I think it's great that I can be friends with individual team members or I can send Otis a message. That's so cool! But sometimes people forget that, like facebook, and not like wikipedia, it is not a charity/public service. I don't anyone forgets that about WoW.

That's true... In WoW, there's no way to forget it's for profit. Here, even reading the "about us" section of the site doesn't give you a sense of how goodreads makes money. It's pretty clear they want to be seen as a bunch of book lovers, and they want that to look like the reason for the site.

Okay, I probably didn't follow the bee thing as closely as I thought I did, since I don't remember the "not a democracy" comment....which would be especially humorous in a voting thread. Hmm. That does shine a different light on the mascot competition. I may be giving them more credit than I ought to because the mascot as a whole was something I was ambivalent about, so my reading of it was that a bunch of the potential mascots were discovered as copyrighted, and people got angry in the thread because of insults leveled at the bee and because the poll was still up and running, and then eventually the poll went away and there wasn't a mascot.

So, do you feel that goodreads could improve their public relations by acting a little less like regular site participants? How can that relationship become clearer and less awkward?

I do like that they are regular participants. I think it's great that Otis pops in and out. I'm GR friends with several of the staff. I like that.

I'd like more process and controls on their release management, communication, and, sure, public relations. All sites have to make that transition from little start up with a couple of people with a dream to a professional organization. It's hard. I work in a former start up (post-acquisition) and I can see similar things, in some respects. It's interesting to me. But I would rather see them, with whatever faults they may have, keep on as they are than be acquired by amazon or some publishing house or something. Their independence is critical to their success, I think.

From the people I know, it seems like there's a wish to avoid the commercialism on goodreads, even though it's minor compared to a lot of sites. I think you're right. That could be one of the bigger reasons goodreads has been more successful than LibraryThing or Shelfari.

Thanks a bunch for letting me interview you, and I'll contact you--the real you, not your Liberty account--when I've posted the finished project. You've had some great insights, and this has been a lot of fun!

Do you have any last thoughts, or any questions you want to bring up before we officially conclude this sucker?

I know you said the group would stay on-line, which is fine, but it is going to also stay private, right? If not, I may want to edit a couple of answers. I would message you with the original of any changes though.

I had a good time doing this. I like to think about what I'm involved in so I appreciate the questions. I look forward to seeing the project! Best of luck with it.

Oh...my intention is to make it public when the presentation is put online, so the entire interviews can be linked to. So, if you want to modify any of your answers, I definitely won't be making this group public until May 7th or 8th, so you have time to make a few changes. Since the project and the interviews will be viewable online, I'll only quote things you feel comfortable keeping in this thread, so don't worry about keeping the original if you want to change anything....and, I'll be rereading this before I pull any quotes. In fact, I'll shoot you a message of the quotes I'm using so you can make sure you're comfortable with them.

great. I may make a couple of changes this weekend. I'll let you know what they are. thanks.