Quote:
Originally Posted by Tarana
All that said, I encourage you to give Goodreads feedback asking them to limit reviews to those books people have marked as READ. That might eliminate some of the older garbage. Those determined to be jerks will just get around that, I should think, but then no system is going to be perfect.
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Rating or reviewing a book automatically marks it read. How would this change? It'd be nothing more than a token checkbox, and there's no way to prove anyone read a book anyway.
As mentioned, this gets raised perennially in the GR Feedback group, and it's always shot down by staff.
As also mentioned, if you want valuable ratings, figure out other readers whose reviews you like, or who rate things similarly to you (easily done by looking at a bunch of books you already read) and follow or friend them.
Note also, it doesn't have to be two way, you can follow people and have their reviews/ratings added to that top section, without having to know them, interact with them, or have them follow you.
Follow or friend, either way you'll see their ratings and reviews at the top, including an aggregate of just their ratings, which is much more likely to be useful to you.
For instance, I'm looking at a book I rated 4, which has an average rating of 4.4 (i.e., very high) but the "Friend Reviews" section says their average rating is also 4. Book 2 of the same series has a 4.2 rating (also very high) - I rated it 3 (I'd have given it 3.5 if they did half stars, but they don't), and my friends aggregate is 3.7. That "Friends Reviews" rating is always much closer to mine than the overall average is, because I've made an effort to follow people who like the same kinds of things I like (and more importantly, don't like the same things that annoy me.)