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Goodreads asks users to help combat 'review bombing'

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Re: Goodreads asks users to help combat 'review bombing'

#121

Post by paulddraper »

rightbyte wrote: post #108
Pathogen-David wrote: post #61

Steam handles this problem fairly well, IMO. They show a graph of positive/negative reviews over time, making review bombing stand out. If Valve identifies the anomaly as being off-topic they can even mark it as such an exclude the reviews from affecting the overall review scores. Users who don't like this can even disable the exclusion and get the "raw" review score. More info from when this was introduced: https://…

"there's now a checkbox in your Steam Store options where you can choose to have off-topic review bombs still included in all the Review Scores you see." Things like this is so nice. If I don't trust Gaben's bullshit review filter, I can see what the result would be without, just to check.

*so nice

Re: Goodreads asks users to help combat 'review bombing'

#122

Post by rightbyte »

paulddraper wrote: post #121
rightbyte wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"there's now a checkbox in your Steam Store options where you can choose to have off-topic review bombs still included in all the Review Scores you see." Things like this is so nice. If I don't trust Gaben's bullshit review filter, I can see what the result would be without, just to check.

*so nice

Oh ye thanks. The autocomplete on my phone has got so much worse lately ...

Re: Goodreads asks users to help combat 'review bombing'

#123

Post by dahart »

CWuestefeld wrote: post #102
dahart wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe the Bureau of Consumer Protection, and for fraudulent and deceptive practices? There’s plenty of precedent, and Amazon’s failure to do anything about fake products and fake reviews, if not active encouragement of fraudulent behavior, is a real economic problem where we the consumers pay the costs. https://www.ftc.gov/about-ftc/bureaus-offices/bureau-consume...

Reviews are, by their nature, personal opinions. I don't see how you can put a framework of fraud protection around that. Maybe in extreme marginal cases, but for the central idea of reviews, it just doesn't work.

Where there’s a will, there’s a way. This isn’t about policing valid opinions, it’s about identifying what is currently a massive and obvious trend of actual fraud. Requiring authentication for reviews and products is the first step, and isn’t that hard, we know how to do it already. Amazon is choosing to allow reviews and products by people they know are bad actors. They look the other way and allow fruadsters to be anonymous because there are no consequences yet. They’re not imposing consequences on fraudulent sellers or reviewers, even though they could.

I don’t believe the main problem is that they don’t know how to identify fraud, I think the main problem is they don’t have any real incentive to.

Look: the FTC is already sending notice that enforcement is coming: https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2021/10/...

Re: Goodreads asks users to help combat 'review bombing'

#124

Post by swayvil »

s1artibartfast wrote: post #92
swayvil wrote: post #9

There will always be many many assholes. In the past, time and space have insulated us from them. But now we have the internet. The assholes can see you, touch you, talk to you, even decide what you are allowed to say. This is a mark against the internet.

>But now we have the internet. The assholes can see you, touch you, talk to you, even decide what you are allowed to say. I would say the direction is the opposite. Assholes dont seek people out, people seek out the assholes. In the real world, people dont walk up to strangers and ask them to disclose their most offensive opinion. However, on the internet people will scroll through pages of agreeable comments looking…

>on the internet people will scroll through pages of agreeable comments looking for something disagreeable.

I thought that I was the only person who does this.

Therefore, given a forum full of people, the chance that you will offend somebody is increased. It becomes less "say something offensive" and more "say something merely noteworthy".

We get a “The nail that sticks out gets hammered down” situation. On the scale of the whole internet.

The internet becomes a huge engine for imposing conformity.

Re: Goodreads asks users to help combat 'review bombing'

#125

Post by solardev »

ianburrell wrote: post #110
solardev wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This won't stop people from lending things. It just means borrowers can't leave reviews. I'd rather have a much smaller set of verified reviews than a bunch of fake ones. Decreasing the quantity in this case often means improving the quality and signal to noise ratio.

There are lots of people who will be receiving books on Christmas. With your scheme, they won’t be able to review them. Or people who buy from other bookstores. Or other countries. There is a difference between reviews on Amazon, where limiting to purchaser makes sense, and Goodreads that is open to everyone.

Yes, this will absolutely decrease the number of eligible reviewers. That's a given. But the argument is that it would also help combat spam and fake reviews, so while the number of reviews goes down, the signal to noise ratio goes up. People who read the book without buying it wouldn't be able to review it, yes, and that is an unfortunate side effect. However, it still leads to more useful reviews than if those borrowers are also lumped together with spammers and bots, which make the reviews useless for everyone. It's not a perfect solution, just an improvement over the existing mess (on Amazon).

And yes, agreed that Goodreads needs a different system. I was responding to a post about Amazon, and even there mentioned that goodreads would need something different, maybe reputation based or whatever.

Re: Goodreads asks users to help combat 'review bombing'

#126

Post by pembrook »

itsoktocry wrote: post #24
politelemon wrote: post #5

To me this is just one in a continue set of examples of GR's lack of care for their platform. The issues mentioned that lead to and encourage this behaviour have existed for well over a decade. Their solution is to make it a userland issue.

Name one social platform that doesn't have this issue. It's not a trivial thing to solve. I don't want to have to submit my passport to share a book review.

You can either have low friction reviews, or you can have high quality reviews. You can’t have both.

For example, Facebook/Instagram/OpenAI/etc. requires non-VOIP phone number verification on signup. This alone would cut spam to near-zero.

I’m sure if Goodreads required this on signup, the problem would solve itself.

Re: Goodreads asks users to help combat 'review bombing'

#127

Post by Dalewyn »

Pathogen-David wrote: post #61

Steam handles this problem fairly well, IMO. They show a graph of positive/negative reviews over time, making review bombing stand out. If Valve identifies the anomaly as being off-topic they can even mark it as such an exclude the reviews from affecting the overall review scores. Users who don't like this can even disable the exclusion and get the "raw" review score. More info from when this was introduced: https://…

I too like their transparency, but for the opposite reason: I find review bombings are the only time reviews are actually useful.

Reviews are a dime a dozen, positive or negative; they normally aren't useful for judging whether a product is worth buying.

Review bombings on the other hand only happen when something happened to trigger the internet's sweaty wrath, and that is very useful as a unit of measure. Any particular review in the bombing is worthless like any other review, but the collective act of review bombing is very valuable information.

Re: Goodreads asks users to help combat 'review bombing'

#128

Post by kart23 »

pembrook wrote: post #126
itsoktocry wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Name one social platform that doesn't have this issue. It's not a trivial thing to solve. I don't want to have to submit my passport to share a book review.

You can either have low friction reviews, or you can have high quality reviews. You can’t have both. For example, Facebook/Instagram/OpenAI/etc. requires non-VOIP phone number verification on signup. This alone would cut spam to near-zero. I’m sure if Goodreads required this on signup, the problem would solve itself.

facebook and instagram still have insane amounts of bots and spam.

Re: Goodreads asks users to help combat 'review bombing'

#129

Post by manojlds »

ajsnigrutin wrote: post #97
habosa wrote: post #64

If anyone at Goodreads or Amazon cares about the platform at all they have a funny way of showing it. It’s been stagnant and shoddy for years. Goodreads really has only one thing going for it: a pristine data set of books, authors, cover images, etc. There are so many other reading apps with a better UX but they are frustrating to use because the data is spotty or low quality.

> Goodreads really has only one thing going for it: a pristine data set of books, authors, cover images, etc. There are so many other reading apps with a better UX but they are frustrating to use because the data is spotty or low quality. And spoilers in book titles (the goodread ones, not the physical books) Just a quick search for "a shocking twist" on goodreads finds many many books: https://www.goodreads.com/book…

All the books have the twist mentioned on their cover image.

For The Sister I googled to see its cover images.

Re: Goodreads asks users to help combat 'review bombing'

#130

Post by B1FF_PSUVM »

beej71 wrote: post #47
bluish29 wrote: post #44

Some people are suggesting verification that the reviewer actually bought the book like what is done on amazon.com itself. It is different as Goodreads is not amazon.com, the goal at least what people are using it for) is social network that is built around people organizing their reading lists, sharing it with others and follow what their friends are reading. In addition to reviews to know more about books and peopl…

And brushing scams.

Is that "log-rolling"? In ancient times, Spy Magazine had a "Log-rolling in Our Time" section, where they would quote mutually complimentary reviews by two writers.
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