Goodreads Goes for Censorship

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

You've always been able to make your entire profile private if you want and you also can make private notes about any book.

I'm not sure that making my profile private doesn't show my shelves.

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by Terisa de morgan

For me, the problem is not the change of TOS. It doesn't affect me. The problem is that they change the TOS without warning and delete user content which was valid prior to the change without notice (goodreads staff has acknowledged they have done it). And they say they shouldn't have done it? Of course they haven't. That is the problem, not the change of TOS.

Oh, I see. I misunderstood your point, earlier.

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by Terisa de morgan

I'm not sure that making my profile private doesn't show my shelves.

They are hidden. If someone's profile is private and you click that person, all you see is their name and a "this person's profile is private" with instructions about friending them. That isn't new.

I think that when you review a book or give it stars, that shows up in feeds so even if I was not your friend I could see the review--but not the actual shelf. I am NOT certain if the name of your shelf appears under your review or not (whether you have your profile private or not).

When I leave a private note on a book, I unclick "post to feed" "post to twitter" and "post to fb". In fact, even when I am reviewing a book and it's public, I sometimes uncheck that. You can permanently uncheck those things in your settings.

[RHWright]

Other than how they chose to deploy the notice late on a Friday, I have little problem with this.

Reviews should be about the book and not rants about the author personally.

As long as this doesn't extend into the discussion areas, I'm fine with it. And it doesn't seem to, as this thread : http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1403751 is alive and well at the moment.

Hopefully, this will cut down on the lesser rants as well as the more extreme fan/author vs. anti-fan issues that have been going on there for over a year.

[Crusader]

The latest update from Goodreads:

In retrospect, we absolutely should have given users notice that our policies were changing before taking action on the items that were flagged. To the 21 members who were impacted: we'd like to sincerely apologize for jumping the gun on this. It was a mistake on our part, and it should not have happened.

Anyone else with reviews or shelves created prior to September 21, 2013 that will be deleted under the revised policy will be sent a notification first and given time to decide what to do.

What I find interesting is that this whole thing only affected 21 users, to start out with. Those must be very vocal users to have it blow up to the extent that it has, and seems to indicate that only a very small percentage of users will be affected by the changes. Unless it was only a small start to a more widespread removal, which I find doubtful (why not remove all offensive shelves/reviews in one go?).

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by BearMountainBooks

When I leave a private note on a book, I unclick "post to feed" "post to twitter" and "post to fb". In fact, even when I am reviewing a book and it's public, I sometimes uncheck that. You can permanently uncheck those things in your settings.

All my settings are: "No post" .

[OtterBooks]

If it only affected 21 members initially, I'd guess GR was cautious with the deletions and focused on extreme cases.

[Blossom]

I just saw this on DA and I have to say it's about time!!! Way to Go GoodReads!

We just had a thread here a couple weeks back where we we discussed some of GR's problems. This is a defiantly a step in the right direction!

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by Sil_liS

The Guidelines for Authors have two sections: Some things to do on Goodreads and Some things to avoid on Goodreads, and the things to avoid are:

Don’t engage with people who give you negative reviews.

It's about time! As someone who has had authors respond to her reviews. I am super excited to see this finally changed. A Author should never respond to a review unless the reviewer asked a question like will there be a sequel? Even then they should answer the question directly and not point out anything else.

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by faithbw

If there are authors who hold views I find abhorrent then I simply don't read their books or list them on GR. Why go through the effort of putting all their books on shelves like "I hate this author" or "don't buy from this author because they suck"? It seems stupid, immature and not productive. Plus it doesn't help other readers to find good books or know if a book is good or bad.

I've seen some shelves names that were just OMG plain disgusting. I am so glad they hit the big delete button. What author wants to see their name associated with such abusive words. I can't post the names here on MR because this is a family site but they were really bad almost to criminal...and this wasn't a one time finding. I have seen it way too many times. There are some really hateful mean people out there.

[Blossom]

Originally Posted by Grace Elliot

I'm puzzled by the expression 'author behaviour' - do they mean author's spamming groups? In which case, full power to GR.

No Authors would make comment under negative reviews which could start a flame war between the reviewer and their friends and the author which usually leads to pitchforks and running the author out of town.

It can also happen the other way around. The author and their fans going after a reviewer to the point it gets criminal like posting their real info online so that the reviewer gets death threats and other weird stalkish behavior.

for a long time Goodreads has kept its head in the sand only taking action sometimes. Now I hope this is all about to change. I've already seen several GR review bullies say they are leaving! . Now I know why!

I've have seen some really crazy nutso stuff at GR. I can only hope it now goes back to being what it use to be a site where users talk about or reviews books.

Does anyone know if Goodreads will be stopping rating a book before you read it too?

[library addict]

Originally Posted by Blossom

Does anyone know if Goodreads will be stopping rating a book before you read it too?

Don't know if they plan to change it now, but GR has said in the past that was a valid feature as not everyone used the stars as a rating systems put as indicators for their TBR pile (with either 1 star or 5 star being the top depending on the user).

[BearMountainBooks]

Originally Posted by Blossom

Does anyone know if Goodreads will be stopping rating a book before you read it too?

This was asked in one of the threads and the GR response was that you can flag/report anything you see and they will take a look at it. I'm not sure if the report button shows for just a star before something has been read/released.

For me, the bottom line is that they are TRYING to get rid of the worst of the abusive behavior regardless of who is starting/finishing/continuing it. I've seen those shelves too and honestly they were already out of compliance with GR guidelines.

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by Blossom

Does anyone know if Goodreads will be stopping rating a book before you read it too?

How are they going to know it? And no, date is not a criteria, ARC exists. I think that they could begin by avoiding books three years in future without name.

[Terisa de morgan]

And, according to shelves, can anybody explain how due-to-author is an offensive and nasty name? And they have been deleted.