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Originally Posted by Prestidigitweeze
The problem is that people on the internet often reward one another for thinking alike. This can create the illusion that any sort of consensus is right.
Most of us understand that a physical lynch mob is a bad thing. What some of us do not understand is that banding together to hound a person we dislike until they become unemployed or unhinged is merely another kind of lynch mob.
I'm always amazed at the people who rejoice on Yelp whenever a small business owner whose attitude they dislike goes under. If you don't care for a waiter or restaurant manager, then why not go elsewhere? Why try to destroy the livelihood of everyone involved with that restaurant because one of its employees annoyed you once? The punishment is absurdly disproportionate to the crime.
It's the same with authors, isn't it? If they don't connect with you, why not find different authors and let that person who annoyed you connect with someone else? Why keep a public list of of the ones you hate, hoping to build a consensus? A well-written review which reads the work closely and finds it wanting is condemnation enough.
Of course, I can understand how anyone would be upset losing shelves they'd spent seven years building. The total erasure of anything seems sad. If only sites had the time to keep copies the work they deleted massively.
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I guess we see the situation differently. You see this measure as a result of readers banding together to hound an author, but from the comments on Goodreads it seems to me like it was the other way around.
When some authors got a bad review they started to stalk reviewers. The reviewers made lists and now Goodreads is saying that they can't even warn each other.
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Bieke {Istyria book blog} wrote: "Well, if it basically tells that the author should be raped or something, it's insulting. =/ I've seen those things here before. "
That never happened. And the author came back and said she was having a PMS fit.
But readers have been stalked and called at home. There's one author right now trying to find hackers to help him get reader personal information so he can put HITS on them. he's gone as far as to take out MULTIPLE ads in multiple places.
But that's not important. Some author who had "a PMS issue" and made a bunch of stuff up is much more important, right?
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