I wonder if the dirty secret behind this is that some authors love the premature reviews and would be loath to see them gone. Those with a loyal coterie who get out there and post five-star reviews as soon as a title's been added, well in advance of publication. It seems as if that's what happened with the (amusing, unfortunately) story of an author run amuck, who attacked a reviewer for a four-star review.
None of this affects me. I'm only interested in reviews from the broadsheet press and my GR friends. In fact, uniformly high ratings would be a red flag with bells to me.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JSWolf
the book would have to be marked as read.
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You've said this before, but I think a DNF book with a review that explains why it was a stinker is both valid and useful. Moreover, there's no reading oversight police to make sure a book marked read actually was read. Unless you're advocating a KU-type experience where read pages would have to be logged in order to post a review? Rather Big Brotherish, wouldn't you say?
Pre-Amazon, Goodreads MO was that users were free to use ratings and reviews to be useful to them and reflect their own reading experience. I've not been fond of the post-acquisition changes at GR and more stringent requirements would make it less friendly still in theory, although it wouldn't affect me. For now, I can only assume that the difference between Amazon's review policy and GR's review policy provides useful data for Amazon, that they can parse the difference to their advantage.