Cozy Mystery Corner discussion

For those of you who have had your head in a book for the past five days, there's been an official Goodreads announcement of policy changes on permissible shelf names and new review guidelines that has not been announced to all members. This is the link: http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1...

Emily, I'm glad you posted this - Goodreads is apparently choosing not to do any kind of sitewide notification, instead making the inexplicable decision to post a topic on a group which has about 13,250 members. Goodreads as a whole has somewhere between 10 and 20 million active users.

The Feedback thread is long and contentious (and now being ignored by the powers-that-be of Goodreads),
so - to reuse something I posted on another group:

As usual with the powers-that-be of Goodreads, it's about the way things were done. There are, I read somewhere in that ginormous thread, about 20 million members on Goodreads. There are about 13,100 members of the Goodreads Feedback group. Yet - as usual - when Goodreads decided to make a significant decision, they did not send out a sitewide email, nor put up a banner notification, not make any other attempt at letting the other 19.98 million people in on the news.

The other main Issues are that the deletions a) were made without prior notification, and b) follow no discernible pattern, whatever their one poor mostly-absentee representative tries to say. One poster said she was notified that they had deleted 90 reviews. I checked; she has something like 350 now, which means they deleted a wee bit less than a quarter of her reviews. Without telling her beforehand. They have also - though the GR rep denies it - deleted 3, 4, and 5-star reviews. They have also deleted such shelves as something like "may read later" and "favorite authors" - though again Kara (the face of GR in the thread) denies it.

My gut is that if they had emailed everyone and said "Hey, on October 1 we're changing things, we will delete any shelves like this (give examples) and any reviews like this (give examples), fix 'em or lose 'em" - and then emailed people with specifics (*this* and *this* are in violation of our new TOS and will be deleted 24 hours from now if they are not edited to comply) - I think in that case there wouldn't be a thread with 3,467 posts on it, and counting.

Or maybe there would.

The changes are listed on the first page of the link. There is no reason to read the entire thread unless you want to get frustrated!

No, I don't think there would have been an uproar. I think some of the reviews and shelves are vicious. However, deleting them without warning and not clarifying the new rules and disseminating them to all users of GR is unacceptable.

Thanks for posting this Emily!

Some of the reviews and shelves were, indeed, vicious (although NOT as bad as some reports - that have since been retracted - claimed).

The real problem is that shelves named things like "hormel" and "Due-to-Author" are being deleted. While "hormel" isn't the kindest thing one can say about a book, it isn't any worse than, say, "did-not-finish" or "disliked-protagonist". "Due-to-Author" could mean anything - the user in question was apparently using that shelf to collect books she wanted to read simply because certain authors (her favorites) wrote them. GR didn't bother to ask for clarification, they just deleted the shelf.

So if anyone uses shelves that could possibly be mis-construed, and you don't want to lose them, you might want to edit their names (or rail against the machine like so many of us are, lol).

I won't leave my groups - too many really great people here to walk away from, but I'll not be reviewing my books here anymore. I'll use BookLikes instead for reviewing.

I, too, will be reviewing on BookLikes (if it ever completes loading!)

☯Emily wrote: "I, too, will be reviewing on BookLikes (if it ever completes loading!)"

Amen! Mine seems to be stalled with 274 books to go. I'm itching to start tagging reviews, etc. but I want to wait until everything is finished.. *sigh*

I read through the guidelines announcement posted and I don't see anything to disagree with. I've seen a number of reviews here and elsewhere that were vicious as well as useless, and I'm glad to see them removed.

I don't understand why there's such a fuss...

Deb wrote: "I don't understand why there's such a fuss..."

1. Shelves and reviews are yours. If GR feels they are inappropriate, they should let you know BEFORE they delete, not after. One they do this for one thing, they can do it for others.

2. Main reason people are upset is that changes were made without notifying ALL the users of GR. They only notified the members of the Feedback group. Wouldn't you want to be notified if there are changes in your credit card, Facebook, LinkedIn accounts? Those groups will let you know of changes, why not GRs? GR still hasn't clarified questions about their new policy, so many are in the dark about what is acceptable and what is not.

3. Once censorship begins, it will not stop. Many examples from history to confirm this.

I still don't have a problem with the new, revised policies.

Goodreads is not an elected body answerable to the citizens. Neither is FB nor any of the other sites. When I join one of these, including credit cards, I know well that I don't set the rules. If they become arbitrary then I can leave. I ask only that they are reasonably fair.

But those other groups inform you of the changes. GR has not made a general announcement to all its members. I informed this group as well as others I am a member of.

Do you really know what the new, revised policies are and how it affects your reviews or comments in the group discussions? If so, let us know, because no one else does.

But what makes you think the other website won't start doing the same thing later on.... This website doesn't control my life to the point where I need to make multiple accts on various sites. I guess I understand how bloggers could feel with their long reviews but that doesn't concern me since I rate books instead of writing a long winded review I really don't think the changes are that big of a deal.

I read the policy statement, and I can see how you and others might think it's vague. But as a former professional reviewer (Drood Review, Publishers Weekly, Boston Review, Women's Review of Books, etc.), I recognize the advice to write about the book and be fair minded. The same holds true for comments.

Some reviewers can't distinguish between their general dislike of a certain kind of book and the book they're reading. If you don't like ghost stories, don't read and review them. If you don't like novels of manners, don't read and review them. If you like thrillers and read one that doesn't measure up to your expectations, be clear about what you wanted and what you got. But don't criticize the author for having a different story to tell from the one you wanted or expected.

Not every emotional reaction to a book is suitable or relevant for a published review or comment.

Goodreads may have erred in how they announced their policy changes, but they are wise to try to maintain a certain level of civil discourse. Internet sites can quickly degenerate into unpleasant places, and that benefits no one.

Susan wrote: "I still don't have a problem with the new, revised policies.

Goodreads is not an elected body answerable to the citizens. Neither is FB nor any of the other sites. When I join one of these, inclu..."

It's Otis's sandbox, and he can do whatever he wants. If he decides we all have to have profile pictures showing kittens in purple sweaters or face expulsion, then so mote it be.

As I said, the problem isn't so much with what was done as with how it was done. They did not announce the decision sitewide (and won't). They deleted people's reviews without warning - one person said ninety, which was about a quarter of her reviews. She didn't have backup. That's one example out of many.

And now they're simply ignoring the situation. It's not civil discourse - it's censorship, and it's also pandering to a group of authors who have shown themselves to be in some cases frighteningly unstable.

And GR has deleted shelves with what it deems "negative names," when that isn't necessarily the case. I've talked to two different people who had shelves named "Due to author". One member added books to that shelf to avoid, because she didn't like the author's style of writing. The other added books to that shelf that she really *wanted to read, because she liked the author. BOTH shelves were deleted by GR, without any notice or explanation. At the very least, the members should have been given the opportunity to rename the shelves.

Actually, some of the shelves you listed would violate their rules and similar ones have been deleted.

No reason to be snotty. One day you might be affected by their censorshop, which is why I posted the new rules (which is what GR should have done.)

"If they want to avoid certain books, they can label their shelves better. "Avoid" "Don't read" "Not my style" "Don't like""

Shelves with names like this HAVE already been deleted.

Nikki wrote: "They want to keep things cleaner, let them."

Oh, no, they've made it clear, you can still swear like a drunken sailor - no limit on what words you can and can't use to describe a book.

And really, Emily was notifying everyone about the new rules and some very lightweight discussion has evolved from it. Everyone is entitled to their opinion of course, but it's only good manners to respect everyone's opinions too. Being rude just makes you look small.

Nikki wrote: "Bah.
Free speech? Sure, but It's a free website. They can do what they want, we didn't pay for the space for them to keep our info up.

They want to keep things cleaner, let them.
They already ack..."

I'm glad you weren't trying to be snotty. This isn't - or shouldn't be - about whether it affects you or not. It doesn't affect me either, directly: I haven't written any reviews slamming authors and my shelves are pretty tame. The problem is ...

Oh you know what, never mind. You suggest people leave - people ARE leaving. A lot of them, and good people. Because Goodreads screwed up. But nothing I say is going to make any difference to your bias, so I'll spare my keyboard.

(edited because you can't close a "bold" tag with an "italics" tag)

Seems Nikki deleted her post, left the group, and changed her profile name.

So, moving on... :)

ETA: I'll just mention here that quite a few of the top reviewers (and others, like me, lol) are leaving GR, or are going to discontinue contributing to the site outside their groups. They are creating accounts at www.booklikes.com. It's, at the moment, more of a blog-type site than anything else. I am not suggesting anyone leave GR or go to Booklikes but I mention the site in case those in this group like reading reviews; it might be worth just visiting to read about more good books! :)

why did this topic have to bring drama? I see both sides to this.. but no point for people to be rude or cause drama.. so that's good Nikki left.

The big drama is on the Goodreads Feedback thread where the new policy was announced. There were over 4000 posts last I checked though I stopped reading them some time ago. Folks feel strongly about GR as a site where readers can express their opinions freely and some reacted strongly to any censorship.

This is also another instance where Goodread's method of communicating the policy change is flawed. TPTB can certainly set the terms of service but notifying users in advance of the change would have caused less of an uproar. It sounds like they just deleted any shelves that included the word 'author'. And there has yet to be a site-wide notification of the policy change. Members of the Feedback group have let other users know - again not a good way for GR to communicate.

I tend to explain my views by telling a story, so I hope readers will tolerate the following. Some years ago my hometown newspaper wanted to better serve people in town. They opened up a phone line through which anyone could express an opinion, long or short, that was printed in the paper (you know what's coming, too). After a few months the opinions degenerated into such offensive, alarming views that the women responsible for putting together that page of the paper refused to do it any longer. The line was closed, and that was the end of it.

My point is that communication is vital to a democracy but not all communication is vital, or even necessary. We look to each other to use our good judgment, which means self-censoring. It's very easy for a group to come to be dominated by those with little consideration of others. We all lose.

Yes, GR erred in how it went about tightening up its policies, but there's nothing wrong with the policy changes themselves.

Or, as a friend used to say, Leave your drama for your mama.

A few months ago, I picked up a series of books that I generally liked but which contained a glaring factual error. I commented on that error in my review because I know that for some people, it would make a difference in whether they would want to read the book. After posting, I was poking around looking for other books by this author and to find out if she intended to correct the error in future editions (some author's do). What I found shocked me. The author had been involved in some serious reviewer retaliation. Actually quite serious stuff.

I found all of this quite unsettling. This is the second author whose books I own and have read that have done serious harm to their reputations retaliating against reviewers or readers who made comments they didn't like. I hadn't yet decided what I was going to do about it. But since it now seems to be a trend rather than an isolated incident, I do need to decide how I will handle authors who need keepers and obviously don't have them.

But apparently, if Goodreads even thinks I have shelved all these books together for a negative reason, poof! Gone. This reeks of sales concerns and not readers concerns.

So in closing I just want to say: When an employee at my firm my verbally abused a client in front of witnesses, they were gone the next day. No one worried about whether the employee lost income over it.

I don't have a problem with GR's intent, BUT, like a lot of you, I have big problems about how they're going about it. And with how subjective their decision making is on what's not acceptable. A site announcement is the least they could have done. I can't imagine how upset I'd be if I lost reviews I'd taken the time to think about and write.

So, what about the comments made in discussions in groups? I can't see anyone having the time to go through all of them to delete what is deemed unacceptable. I don't usually write reviews, but I will comment in a group whether or not I liked certain books, and depending on time constraints and laziness, I may go into my reasons.

I haven't been affected - my most negative shelf is "didn't finish", and like I said, I haven't written a review in a long time. But I wonder if there are people who's reviews I read are having problems with the new policy. I can't remember anything offensive in them, but if I come across that type in the general reviews, I skip them. I see the insulting, ugly reviews as reflecting more on what a rude and ignorant person the reviewer is, rather than anything relevant to the book.

My first thought when this all came out, was I wondered how much Amazon had to do with this. I know there was a lot of worrying about reviews on Amazon's site, and how that would affect GR.

I share your thought about the long arm of Amazon, jaxnsmom. That was my first thought. Amazon has been censoring reviews for years, so it seems to follow that they'd do the same here since they now own GR. I seldom do a really scathing review, but I can think of at least 2 that I've done in the last 2 years. I should check and see if they're still up. I only shelve books by when read or if they're YA, so my shelves shouldn't be a problem. Though I am thinking about exporting them to Excel so I don't lose them.

I'm sure that the "Amazon" effect is part of it. Amazon is in the business of selling books - they are unlikely to be happy with reviewers having derogatory shelves or reviews. That being said - Goodreads is a free site and is allowing people space on their servers to post reviews, host book clubs, etc. So, really they can do what they want. It is not supported by tax dollars (to my knowledge) so "the People" don't really have a say in it. The best thing you can do if it is important to you to have your say in a review is to have blog where you can post your reviews. That way as long as you don't violate the TOS of your blog server, you won't have an issue (also back your blog up).

Personally, I really hate to give up on Goodreads because I like the social side of it (the groups) like this one and have not found that elsewhere. I also belong to Fictfact for tracking my series. If they would have groups I would probably move over there much more. I love how they track my series books for me. As of now, I am doing both and a blog.

As far as authors needing keepers, I think that is an issue of self-publishing. Authors in big publishing houses have marketing people and agents,etc who keep them in line (for the most part). Self publishing authors don't have the filter.

My final thoughts are that no other "book focused" site has the social aspects that goodreads offers. So, I am staying.

Fanficfan44 wrote: "I'm sure that the "Amazon" effect is part of it. Amazon is in the business of selling books - they are unlikely to be happy with reviewers having derogatory shelves or reviews. That being said - ..."

Actually, the two authors whose books I own and who retailated against people who gave them negative reviews were not independents. Both were published by major publishing houses. Kind of gives you pause, doesn't it?

Moonlight wrote: "Fanficfan44 wrote: "I'm sure that the "Amazon" effect is part of it. Amazon is in the business of selling books - they are unlikely to be happy with reviewers having derogatory shelves or reviews...."
I'm surprised that their people didn't reel them in. I guess with the internet now it is too easy for an author to respond instantly. Years ago when everything had to go through the mail, it would have passed through many hands and would have been cut off, if possible.

It appears I have had at least 2 reviews removed, possibly 3. I went in and checked all the books I've rated 1 star since I've actually been doing some type of review. There was one I don't think I said anything about, so nothing removed there. However, what I had to say about Laurell K. Hamilton's SKIN TRADE and Alyson Noel's SHADOWLAND is no longer there. The other possible one I can't remember for sure if I said anything about it or not. I guess I'm not surprised about the Hamilton one. I've read before about what a crackpot she is and have read accounts of her attacking people who given her negative reviews. Yet another reason for me to stay away from the Anita Blake books, as if the fact that they read like so much bad porn these days wasn't enough!

I like the social aspect of GR, too, which is why I'll stay, at least for now. It really is disheartening, though, to realize that you can't voice a negative opinion of a book here now.

Well, "they" claim you can still rant about a book, you just can't make ANY negative statements, or anything that could be construed as negative, against the author. Some in the Feedback group have said that it appears to be the reviews that have already been flagged (usually by the author?) that have been deleted first.

Melodie wrote: "I like the social aspect of GR, too, which is why I'll stay, at least for now. It really is disheartening, though, to realize that you can't voice a negative opinion of a book here now...."

No way am I leaving my groups here on GR. I've met too many great people with whom I have books in common with (for the first time EVER!!) But I'll not be contributing outside my groups like I used to - no more reviews and only the absolutely necessary librarian edits. BookLikes has said that they are actively working on a new discussion group area of their site, and I'm looking forward to seeing how that works too.

I've heard some awful horror stories about authors turning on reviewers who give negative reviews - whether the negativity is about the book or the author. (Someone just posted in another group of mine that an author found out her personal information and then threatened her cat). It's really too bad.

I've written over 500 reviews here and I imported a .csv file of books when I joined GR, so I really have no way of remembering which books I wrote reviews for and which I didn't. So I don't really know if any of my reviews are missing. ::shrug:: oh well...

This got me thinking so I went back and checked a book that I know I gave a 1 star review to - The Siren by Tiffany Reisz and my review is still up. But my review specifically talks about what the problem is with the book,not anything about the author. I do wonder what the criteria is for removal - people have discussed having shelves marked "due to author" removed - so is it anything that discusses an author rather than just book content?

Fanficfan44 wrote: "This got me thinking so I went back and checked a book that I know I gave a 1 star review to - The Siren by Tiffany Reisz and my review is still up. But my review specifically talks about what the..."

I remember for SHADOWLANDS I said that Ms. Noel owed me back for the time I wasted reading the book, so I suppose that's what got that one removed. I'm pretty sure I never referenced Ms. Hamilton in the other review. No reason to....the book was so awful there was too much to work with just talking about the awfulness that it was.

Fanficfan44 wrote: "I do wonder what the criteria is for removal - people have discussed having shelves marked "due to author" removed - so is it anything that discusses an author rather than just book content?"

That's the impression I got from reading nearly 2,000 posts in the GR Feedback thread where all of this blew up a week ago. Let's see how long it takes them to start deleting the unfavorable reviews that refer only to the book :\

Barb wrote: "Fanficfan44 wrote: "I do wonder what the criteria is for removal - people have discussed having shelves marked "due to author" removed - so is it anything that discusses an author rather than just ..."

Ironically some of the "due to author" shelves were because the member liked the author(s) and wanted to read everything s/he wrote. The shelves were deleted regardless.

Yep, I read that too *sigh* Just goes to show that you can't always figure out what's in people's heads -- unless you ASK them! If someone -- anyone! -- from GR had PMd the members to ask, the members could have changed the shelf name to remove all doubt. Sadly, GR didn't give them the opportunity :(

Nell wrote: "Barb wrote: "Fanficfan44 wrote: "I do wonder what the criteria is for removal - people have discussed having shelves marked "due to author" removed - so is it anything that discusses an author rath..."
So would shelves with just the author's name or name of the series be deleted also? I have a bunch like that to organize what I have read or need to read in each series.

It's hard to say, Deb. I would think the series name would be ok, but who knows what they'd think of just the author's name? I don't know where you could post to ask, either!

Deb wrote: "why did this topic have to bring drama?"

Deb, I think that we become very invested in message boards - particularly those that we go to the trouble to follow regularly and to join in discussions - so invested, I think, that we forget that the board does not belong to "us" but to whoever the site owner is. It can be an ugly realization. Unfortunate, really.

First of all, the fact that Goodreads didn't send this out in an e-mail to all the members is wrong.

However, I can see both sides of the issue. Authors should be held accountable for how they behave in public, and I have no problem with spreading the word about those who try to bully.

On the other hand, I've seen some on-line lynch mobs form as well, and that's never good.

But the idea this is because Amazon owns Goodreads is funny. The reviews at Amazon are often where this kind of behavior starts. And so many of the "review" over there are laughable at best. I mean, they let you review a movie based on the previews or a TV series set based on the first couple of episodes. They don't have much of a leg to stand on when it comes to determining what is and isn't a good review.

I agree Mark - I don't pretend to know why GR is suddenly doing this, or why they are doing it in such a thoughtless manner, but I don't think Amazon has much to do with it.

Although, in a bit of coincidental timing, Amazon has apparently just announced that they will be purging their book catalog of self-published kindles of the erotica variety - not all of them but ones that they deem offensive. Their official definition of offensive: What we deem offensive is probably about what you would expect.

I don't read this genre, but it seems a bit hypocritical and censorious to allow authors to publish their work, then yank it back down again in the name of offensiveness.

Back to the subject at hand though - GR could very easily have explicitly defined what wasn't acceptable in reviews (or shelves, though they'd always insisted you could name them anything you wanted). Instead they're being deliberately vague and deliberately underhanded by not informing people about the changes in the rules. The only emails anyone gets is when they've already deleted your content. And then, it's too late.

I really think that this wouldn't be so much of an issue if GR had informed ALL members, not just those who follow the Feedback thread, *before this change took effect. An email to all members would have been good, even an announcement on GR's main page would have worked. Instead, they made this major change to their policy without advance notice of any kind.

There are members who still wouldn't have liked the change, but I don't think so many would be so upset if GR had only communicated with its members a bit better.

Exactly Barb - I'll also add that they need to be clearer - *much* clearer about what exactly they are deleting and that they *are* still deleting before notifying. One user just received an email from GR yesterday outlining that that had deleted her shelf P2P which means (I didn't know this) Pulled to Publish. It was apparently for the Fan Fiction she read that had been pulled off the Internet in preparation for professional publication. Why delete a shelf like that?

There are no clear guidelines and no warning.

It does feel, Barb and Jennifer, as though the-powers-that-be at GoodReads were doing this on the sneak. If these changes had been openly communicated to everyone, it might have been easier to remember that the main point of any commercial website is to make money by selling advertising. As I pay more attention to the GR ads, they are all writers or publishers. No wonder GR wants only happy reviews.

wow, that is crazy about the P2P shelf.

Well, there's been an update (or sorts) on the Feedback Thread. Kara ('customer service' director) has posted an FAQ about the new changes and ever so quietly, done some back-pedalling.

In a nutshell: For anyone who has had a review deleted, GR is pulling that deleted data from backups and sending it to them for their own records.

They have agreed that deleting 'due-to-author' was in bad form and have notified the user(s) that the shelf and everything it contained is being restored. (Nothing about the P2P shelf though.)

They have also backtracked a *little* bit on discussing authors in reviews - you can discuss the author in the review as it is relevant to the writing of the book you're reviewing - how author experiences might have influenced the work, etc. etc. Just no outright attacks on the author in a personal vein. I think this is a very good balance - though I wish them luck in maintaining that balance; it's going to be tricky.

BUT they are still refusing to make any site wide announcements.

You can see the whole FAQ in the Feedback Group. It's closed to comments so there won't be any wading through a millions posts necessary.

The update Jennifer mentioned is http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1...