8 ms·

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.

• solardev 3y ago
  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.
  • sacado2 3y ago
    If you do that, malicious writers will have bots buy their books, get the precious "verified review" badge (and bumping the book's ranking at the same time), and give the book raving reviews. At that point, it just becomes an expense, probably more efficient than buying an ad. In the meantime, legitimate readers whos didn't buy the book by themselves won't be able to comment on it. Not sure it would really improve the signal to noise ratio.