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Originally Posted by Sil_liS
But they were doing something about this:
What changed now was that they expanded their focus, and while they said that they remove shelves focused o author behavior it seems like they are not removing all shelves focused on author behavior:
^comment on the news from the link in the OP
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We can't (and shouldn't) pretend to know how to GoodReads staff are going about this; remember that GoodReads has a large volunteer base amongst its staff, and millions of users. It could be that they are merely targeting
needlessly negative shelving first.
I have read all of the comments in the news linked in the OP (I wouldn't have commented here, had I not read the link) - and I can understand why they would see 'due to author' as potentially negative. As I said, you can't draw lines in the sand as to what's okay and what's not: when you're being as vague as 'due to author', the staff can't know whether you're saying 'I don't like Stephenie Meyer's writing style' or 'Orson Scott Card is a twat'.
I doubt they would have time to message millions of users to ask them about the exact intentions of their shelves; however, GoodReads should have handled this better. They should have given users warning so that they could edit the phrasing for their shelves (changing 'due to author' to 'due to writing', for instance). Despite that, I feel that GoodReads have made the right decision.
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But according to the rules in place when people registered, the reviews and shelves wouldn't have been lost.
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I don't recall any part of the terms and conditions when I registered (prior to this change) indicating any such safety of the reviews and shelves; what you submit to GoodReads becomes GoodReads' property. If it breaks rules, retroactively or not, it can be removed. As you can see in the notice in the library on this very site, retroactive rulings can and do happen online all of the time. It is not a bad, abnormal thing, and there's no need for all this hullaballoo.
(But GoodReads should have handled this better; prior warning would have been nice - stupid reviews and shelves are stupid, though, and have got to go. If you're going to be cruel, you deserve no warnings; it's for the above shelf that we're discussing that I'm making the 'prior warning' comment - which then brings about the total impossibility of individually approaching and conversing with millions of users, and - oh, you could really go around in circles with this! I imagine this thread will!)