Goodreads Ratings Then and Now

Fbone · 06-22-2014, 07:05 PM

While cleaning the house I found a printout of my Goodreads TBR list from 2 years ago. I must have printed it to take with me to the library when I was in my "Library Tax Usage" period. Looking at the list of 87 titles, I was surprised how my tastes have changed in such a short time. Several books I had since removed and, of course, added many more. Quite a few still haven't been read or purchased.

Another thing I noticed was the ratings. Most of the ratings decreased in the 2 years. A few stayed about the same and only one increased (Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? by Carver). Several decreased significantly as the reviews poured in. I will probably rethink whether to read those or not.

From my small example it does seem that the longer the book is available the lower its rating. We can expect initially friends, family and eager fans will rate first giving high grades then, perhaps, the "law of averages" kicks in when others read and rate the book. I don't know when the ratings reach equilibration factoring time and quantity. For example, will a title rated 3.68 after 2000 ratings be rated the same after 20,000 ratings 10 years from now?

Anyway, I thought it was interesting and possibly beneficial to wait if I was on-the-fence about reading a certain title.

pwalker8 · 06-22-2014, 10:03 PM

I would guess that the initial ratings are family, friends and fans of an author, while the later ratings are people who read the book based on the initial ratings and it didn't match expectations. I have noticed that people tend to be much harsher in their ratings when a book (movie or whatever) gets great initial reviews.

Geralt · 06-23-2014, 11:29 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Fbone

For example, will a title rated 3.68 after 2000 ratings be rated the same after 20,000 ratings 10 years from now?
Anyway, I thought it was interesting and possibly beneficial to wait if I was on-the-fence about reading a certain title.

I dont care one way or another. In 10 years I'll be reading some other books.

If I'm on the fence, let's be honest here, I probably wont read it. Who has the time, when I have so many books I want to read on my list? Benefits of having a big PTR list I guess

elemenoP · 06-23-2014, 11:42 AM

1. I agree with the theory that friends and family are the first to give reviews.

2. Both Goodreads and Amazon give out early, free copies of books for their loyal users to review. There is no obligation to give a GOOD review, but I suspect that most people will give a higher rating to something that was free. So there's something else that skews the first reviews higher.

3. If a book gets a tons of buzz and great early reviews, then people start having high expectations, which can lead to a backlash and lower reviews later on.

All of these things would change the makeup of reviews within the first year or two. I have no idea what would happen to reviews after the buzz has died down, let's say from year 3 to year 5. Or from year 5 to year 10. What (standalone!) books are people reading today that are 10 years old, anyway? That's a different question: which books of today will have longevity. I do agree that if there are books from 10 years ago that people are still reading and rating favorably today, that's probably a REALLY good book. Moreso than whatever the "book of the summer" is right now.

eP

treadlightly · 06-23-2014, 11:42 AM

I've noticed two trends with ratings. The first is that as a series progresses, the ratings go up I'm assuming because a large portion of the readership is composed of loyal fans. The second is as mentioned, some people can't deal with a book being successful and feel it is their duty to point out everything that is wrong with it.

I personally don't like the trend for Goodreads reviews to contain animated gifs. I wish I could screen them out in my settings. Stopping them via browser doesn't work for me as I view the site from different computers.

JSWolf · 06-23-2014, 11:49 AM

The problem with Goodreads is that they allow people to rate books before they are actually released and people who have not read the book can rate. So we constantly see bogus ratings base don people's perception. So do we truly have real ratings or are these bogus rating screwing up the ratings and how long will it take to get real ratings and do all of those phony ratings get changed to real ones?

faithbw · 06-23-2014, 06:47 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The problem with Goodreads is that they allow people to rate books before they are actually released and people who have not read the book can rate. So we constantly see bogus ratings base don people's perception. So do we truly have real ratings or are these bogus rating screwing up the ratings and how long will it take to get real ratings and do all of those phony ratings get changed to real ones?

It would be nice if you could only rate a book after you marked the book status as read. Of course, people will mark the book as read to put in a rating. Honestly, I never understood why people who are really excited about a pre released book feel the need to rate it. Unless you have an ARC, it makes no sense and skews the ratings.

bfisher · 06-23-2014, 07:06 PM

A recent article here by Tony Horowitz with reference to
gaming the ratings (in his case on Amazon), but the same could apply to Goodreads

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/20/op...st-seller.html

NickyWithNook · 06-23-2014, 08:35 PM

I've been mislead by a few high ratings for lousy books lately. I think people generally overrate books. The Gooreads way seems to be that "I liked it" should always be 5 stars.

And then, it's so frustrating to see a bunch of 5-star ratings full of strong recommendations about how it was THE BEST book of the year or whatever, and then to decide based on that to give it a try and have it be mediocre, or just plain bad.

I'm going to have to find other places to get recommendations. Goodreads used to be my source.

JSWolf · 06-24-2014, 02:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by faithbw

It would be nice if you could only rate a book after you marked the book status as read. Of course, people will mark the book as read to put in a rating. Honestly, I never understood why people who are really excited about a pre released book feel the need to rate it. Unless you have an ARC, it makes no sense and skews the ratings.

But, if the book in the shelf is either taken off or no longer marked as read, then the rating/review should be removed. That way, someone would have to clutter up his/her library with not read books just to leave bogus ratings/reviews. It would not be a case of mark the book read, rate it, write the review and delete the book from the shelf and have the rating/review remain.

But to be fair, I don't know what would happen to the rating if the book was removed from the shelf.

HarryT · 06-24-2014, 03:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pwalker8

I would guess that the initial ratings are family, friends and fans of an author, while the later ratings are people who read the book based on the initial ratings and it didn't match expectations. I have noticed that people tend to be much harsher in their ratings when a book (movie or whatever) gets great initial reviews.

We see the same phenomenon here at MR. Whenever a new device is released, there are people who rave about how wonderful it is, and how it's the best thing ever. Then, after people use it for a while, there's a reaction from people who are upset by some minor problem and declare that it's the worst device ever. After a while, things tend to reach a more balanced judgement.

TCSimpson · 06-24-2014, 04:59 PM

People rate books on Goodreads for many different reasons, many of them not related to the quality of the book. We had this discussion in about four or five reading groups that I'm in. Some people rate books according proximity of release, some by anticipation level, some by how high they wish it to be on their TBR etc etc.

JSWolf · 06-24-2014, 10:32 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by TCSimpson

People rate books on Goodreads for many different reasons, many of them not related to the quality of the book. We had this discussion in about four or five reading groups that I'm in. Some people rate books according proximity of release, some by anticipation level, some by how high they wish it to be on their TBR etc etc.

And those are the people that botch the rating system. But I mostly blame GoodReads as they allow it to happen when they could easily fix it.

Yapyap · 06-25-2014, 02:47 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by JSWolf

And those are the people that botch the rating system. But I mostly blame GoodReads as they allow it to happen when they could easily fix it.

Goodreads staff has maintained from the beginning that ratings are for people to use as they see fit. It's a personal cataloguing site as much as a social interaction site as much as a book/review database, and everyone can use it for their personal purposes in ways they prefer - which includes rating books by whatever personal criteria one has for their own book catalogue.

This does mean that the accumulated/average ratings are pretty useless on GR (although they still give some broad idea about the general opinion about a book - you can be relatively sure that a book with an average 2.43 rating is considered "worse" by most readers than a book with an average 4.54 rating), and that people who prefer to choose their next read by "whatever is rated highest in the genre I am interested in" might do well to look somewhere else or at least read/skim the reviews for the high-rated books.

(Also, I don't think you can rate a book without "reading" it on GR as such - I'm pretty sure that if you go to rate a book, without having it on an exclusive shelf first, it will automatically mark it "read". Although I think you can then later change the "read" shelf to another exclusive shelf.)

I'm not at all bothered by it - whatever system a site tried to enforce, ratings will always be subjective, not just in that tastes differ but also in that one person will three-star a book they genuinely liked and enjoyed (but didn't find outstanding or groundbreaking) while for another, three stars means they barely managed to make their way through it and everything they enjoyed gets five stars by default.

As for the topic in general, I also think it's a pretty natural progression - the first ratings and reviews will always come from people who are the most excited to read a book, whether it's friends and family or fans of the author/series or people who have been swept up in the hype (and it's easy to "overrate" a book when you've been all hyped up to read it). Often people will even go back later and take off a star from their initial rating, when they've had some time for the initial excitement to wane and their thoughts have settled.

Geralt · 06-25-2014, 02:57 AM

I think you can trust Goodreads's ratings when there are 15000 ratings and the average is 4.5. You can be pretty sure that's a good book. Compared to 4.8 rating out of 50 ratings.

Same thing with amazon. If there's 1500 reviews and 4 stars, you can believe them. But if there's 5 reviews and 5 stars, there's a big chance that author has sockpuppet accounts or his mommy and her friends wrote nice things about his book

06-22-2014, 07:05 PM	#1
Fbone Is that a sandwich? Posts: 8,189 Karma: 100500000 Join Date: Jun 2010 Device: Nook Glowlight Plus	Goodreads Ratings Then and Now While cleaning the house I found a printout of my Goodreads TBR list from 2 years ago. I must have printed it to take with me to the library when I was in my "Library Tax Usage" period. Looking at the list of 87 titles, I was surprised how my tastes have changed in such a short time. Several books I had since removed and, of course, added many more. Quite a few still haven't been read or purchased. Another thing I noticed was the ratings. Most of the ratings decreased in the 2 years. A few stayed about the same and only one increased (Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? by Carver). Several decreased significantly as the reviews poured in. I will probably rethink whether to read those or not. From my small example it does seem that the longer the book is available the lower its rating. We can expect initially friends, family and eager fans will rate first giving high grades then, perhaps, the "law of averages" kicks in when others read and rate the book. I don't know when the ratings reach equilibration factoring time and quantity. For example, will a title rated 3.68 after 2000 ratings be rated the same after 20,000 ratings 10 years from now? Anyway, I thought it was interesting and possibly beneficial to wait if I was on-the-fence about reading a certain title.

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06-22-2014, 10:03 PM	#2
pwalker8 Grand Sorcerer Posts: 7,195 Karma: 70314280 Join Date: Dec 2006 Location: Atlanta, GA Device: iPad Pro, iPad mini, Kobo Aura, Amazon paperwhite, Sony PRS-T2	I would guess that the initial ratings are family, friends and fans of an author, while the later ratings are people who read the book based on the initial ratings and it didn't match expectations. I have noticed that people tend to be much harsher in their ratings when a book (movie or whatever) gets great initial reviews.

06-23-2014, 11:42 AM	#4
elemenoP Wizard Posts: 1,717 Karma: 3790058 Join Date: Oct 2010 Location: NYC Device: Kindle Paperwhite, Sony 650	1. I agree with the theory that friends and family are the first to give reviews. 2. Both Goodreads and Amazon give out early, free copies of books for their loyal users to review. There is no obligation to give a GOOD review, but I suspect that most people will give a higher rating to something that was free. So there's something else that skews the first reviews higher. 3. If a book gets a tons of buzz and great early reviews, then people start having high expectations, which can lead to a backlash and lower reviews later on. All of these things would change the makeup of reviews within the first year or two. I have no idea what would happen to reviews after the buzz has died down, let's say from year 3 to year 5. Or from year 5 to year 10. What (standalone!) books are people reading today that are 10 years old, anyway? That's a different question: which books of today will have longevity. I do agree that if there are books from 10 years ago that people are still reading and rating favorably today, that's probably a REALLY good book. Moreso than whatever the "book of the summer" is right now. eP

06-23-2014, 11:42 AM	#5
treadlightly Wizard Posts: 1,370 Karma: 6957792 Join Date: Nov 2010 Location: Ottawa, ON Device: Kobo H2O	I've noticed two trends with ratings. The first is that as a series progresses, the ratings go up I'm assuming because a large portion of the readership is composed of loyal fans. The second is as mentioned, some people can't deal with a book being successful and feel it is their duty to point out everything that is wrong with it. I personally don't like the trend for Goodreads reviews to contain animated gifs. I wish I could screen them out in my settings. Stopping them via browser doesn't work for me as I view the site from different computers.

06-23-2014, 11:49 AM	#6
JSWolf Resident Curmudgeon Posts: 74,521 Karma: 129668758 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Roslindale, Massachusetts Device: Kobo Libra 2, Kobo Aura H2O, PRS-650, PRS-T1, nook STR, PW3	The problem with Goodreads is that they allow people to rate books before they are actually released and people who have not read the book can rate. So we constantly see bogus ratings base don people's perception. So do we truly have real ratings or are these bogus rating screwing up the ratings and how long will it take to get real ratings and do all of those phony ratings get changed to real ones?

06-23-2014, 07:06 PM	#8
bfisher Wizard Posts: 1,638 Karma: 28483498 Join Date: Sep 2011 Location: Ottawa Canada Device: Sony PRS-T3, Galaxy (Aldiko, Kobo app)	A recent article here by Tony Horowitz with reference to gaming the ratings (in his case on Amazon), but the same could apply to Goodreads http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/20/op...st-seller.html

06-23-2014, 08:35 PM	#9
NickyWithNook Guru Posts: 750 Karma: 3942770 Join Date: Sep 2011 Location: American living in Australia Device: Kobo Libra Colour, Kindle Fire, Kindle Pwhite (Don't use Nook anymore)	I've been mislead by a few high ratings for lousy books lately. I think people generally overrate books. The Gooreads way seems to be that "I liked it" should always be 5 stars. And then, it's so frustrating to see a bunch of 5-star ratings full of strong recommendations about how it was THE BEST book of the year or whatever, and then to decide based on that to give it a try and have it be mediocre, or just plain bad. I'm going to have to find other places to get recommendations. Goodreads used to be my source.

06-24-2014, 04:59 PM	#12
TCSimpson Fantasy Author Posts: 176 Karma: 1356782 Join Date: Oct 2011 Location: New York City Device: Nexus Tablet	People rate books on Goodreads for many different reasons, many of them not related to the quality of the book. We had this discussion in about four or five reading groups that I'm in. Some people rate books according proximity of release, some by anticipation level, some by how high they wish it to be on their TBR etc etc.

06-25-2014, 02:57 AM	#15
Geralt Witcher Posts: 933 Karma: 7321117 Join Date: Jun 2012 Location: Swamp. Slaying Drowners. Device: Kindle PW2	I think you can trust Goodreads's ratings when there are 15000 ratings and the average is 4.5. You can be pretty sure that's a good book. Compared to 4.8 rating out of 50 ratings. Same thing with amazon. If there's 1500 reviews and 4 stars, you can believe them. But if there's 5 reviews and 5 stars, there's a big chance that author has sockpuppet accounts or his mommy and her friends wrote nice things about his book

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