Quote:
Originally Posted by Worldwalker
There are some hideous abominations out there which have multiple 5-star reviews, sometimes from the author's family and friends, sometimes from his or her dedicated fans (in the latter case, tirades from the author, while not mandatory, add a certain cachet). If you have the author and five people who know them IRL posting glowing reviews for a book, and one person posting an honest warning about its similarity to a black hole, who are the "interested parties" in this case? Who gets a vote on whether that review is allowed to remain? Should the rest of the people who use that website but haven't actually read the book in question get a vote? How do you tell which ones have read the book, anyway? If Abe bought it for Betty, which of the two of them gets to post a review?
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Your abomination is my organic masterpiece.
We expect instantaneous access and results, but when it comes to books we might also have to expect delays. An upload to a user generated content system specifically tailored for books would probably require a month before being allowed onto the system's marketplace. Exceptions could be made of course but they would be rare.
This time would be spent sending the book to interested parties, those involved who wish to review books before they are released to the general public. Issues would arise (formatting,typographical,content) and be addressed, while at the same time reviews would be written. This is how books have been made in the past and how they will be made in the future.
Reviews written by those whom the system is unable to determine if they have read the book or not will be placed into a special review category. We could call the two review categories internal and external. It would seem to me that the internal reviews, those written while the book was under actual review would be much more influential.
At the moment I am debating whether or not external reviews will even be needed, except perhaps as a sort of sideshow, allowing those who wish to the ability to give stars to a book or perhaps link to their own reviews written on their own personal site. This would keep the book's page on the authentic site (the site of main download) as clutter free as possible with a few reviews.
The main idea is that since you are able to read the entire book before purchasing, the reviews won't hold as much weight as they once did, they will still be useful though, a well written review will most definitely sway you towards reading or not reading as the case may be.
This system might sound a little closed, but I assure you it is not. Openness means inclusion and anyone would certainly be able to submit themselves to become an interested party and be able to write reviews.
But to answer your question, the interested parties could also be the set of all users, any controversial review would be flagged by a user and then responded to. If a user flags reviews repeatedly which ultimately should not have been flagged, determined by the votes of the interested parties, the original review flagger would lose their review flagging privileges and possibly monies from affiliate sales, if referrer tracking on books was enabled and I think that it should be.
