Talk:Goodreads

Books reviewed
Hi. This is the founder of LibraryThing, a competitor. I hope this article can be improved. It's a shame that LibraryThing has a full article, and Goodreads and Shelfari have such limited ones. (The smaller Anobii also has an aticle.) Clearly, however, *I* can't be writing their articles. So, some suggestions. Take them or leave them!


 * The notability warning is clearly false; a decent number of secondary sources could be cited, including Time magazine. Do a Google News search for the company name. The press page (http://www.goodreads.com/about/press) is also a good one.
 * I'd recommend it be contextualized somewhat, with links to entries on LibraryThing, Shelfari and Social cataloging. Some of the angels also have pages, I think.
 * I asked about the ten-million reviewed and Otis confirmed that it was ten-million books ADDED, not reviewed or rated. I don't want to be snippy, but that's an error that should be corrected. (See comments 30,31 on http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/12/17/goodreads-raises-angel-round-to-help-you-find-that-perfect-book/). Otis seems pretty clear on this in that post, although it contravenes their press page (http://www.goodreads.com/about/press).

Lectiodifficilior (talk)


 * Fixed the language & cites re: the review versus added. --Lquilter (talk) 07:02, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Broken link
The Newsweek link is broken. Lectiodifficilior (talk) —Preceding comment was added at 01:42, 3 January 2008 (UTC)

Link removed. Boylo (talk)

Christian Fascist Propaganda
Looks like goodreads has an agenda of promoting ignorant christian propaganda. Lists are filled with christian books even when they are completely irrelevant to the list. For instance, goodreads has a boating list that has several anti-abortion books on it. And the authors are listed as goodreads authors. What a sham. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.22.68.156 (talk) 08:43, 10 July 2012 (UTC)


 * The place to take this issue up is on the comments sections of the lists in question on Goodreads.


 * As far as I know, Goodreads' only agenda is keeping their hands off of things. They are not responsible for the contents of the lists.  In fact, they rely on members to keep track of things and clean them up.


 * There is an unfortunate tactic which has clearly been making the rounds of self-published authors, which is to have a cluster of friends sign up for Goodreads accounts for the sole purpose of voting their books onto as many lists as possible with as many votes as they can scrounge up. Thus many obscure self-published books appear in high positions on many lists, giving a false impression of their popularity.  In some cases, as you have noted, they are on completely inappropriate lists.


 * As for the authors being listed as "Goodreads Authors," all that means is that the author has signed up for a Goodreads account. This is common, and among the self-published authors who pull this stunt on the lists, almost universal.Artemis-Arethusa (talk) 19:43, 22 July 2012 (UTC)

Criticism section
I reverted the section for a few reasons. The first reason is that Carroll Bryant is not a notable enough person to merit being quoted on the subject. I've re-added Ray Garton's comment on the matter, but if anyone can find a remark from a notable author that has an opposing opinion, I'm all for having multiple viewpoints as long as they are notable and are properly sourced. This also brings up the subject of neutrality, as he is clearly someone that is involved in the controversy surrounding negative reviews on Goodreads. I removed the hotlink to the Stop the GR Bullies site, although I'm not sure that this specific site has been covered in enough reliable sources to merit being added. Most of the coverage for the criticism has been in predominantly non-notable blogs and Ray Garton is one of the few people that have commented on this that is obviously notable. Just like how we need to keep the articles for Victoria Foyt and Emily Giffin neutral, we need to keep this article neutral as well. I've summed up the controversy rather succinctly. Some reviewers post reviews or comments on/in reviews that are seen as bullying. A few sites popped up to report on these reviewers. Ray Garton defended the idea of negative reviews. That's really all that needs to be said. Phrases such as "a website was launched to report on the unethical reviewers" has tone issues, as it gives off the impression that the reviewers are absolutely unethical. Whether they are or aren't, that's a matter of opinion and we need to stay away from weasel words. We can call them "negative reviewers that were seen by the sites' users as bullies" because that clarifies that it is the websites that view the reviewers as bullies and doesn't state an absolute that the reviewers were unethical or bullies. On a side note, the more I look at the other two blog entries from the HuffPo, the more I'm slightly worried that they aren't considered to be reliable sources that could show notability. I'm thinking about moving them down to the EL section because there's slightly more leeway down there. The more I think about it, I think I'll do that. It'll include the blogs without running the risk of anyone questioning the reliability of the sources. Most blogs aren't usable as reliable sources.Tokyogirl79 (talk) 17:18, 4 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I'm adding the following comment from my talk page so anyone coming in to give a third opinion can see all of the debate.Tokyogirl79 (talk) 19:07, 5 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Carroll Bryant isn't a notable author? By whose authority. Carroll Bryant is just as notable as Ray Garton. In addition, Ray Garton's article on HuffPo has nothing to do with the criticism of Goodreads. The criticism of Goodreads involves bullying (i.e. attacks on authors), not negative reviews. Garton's article completely misses the point of the criticism. Athena Parker's article on HuffPo is a valid citation. The other HuffPo articles that were cited misrepresented the website, Stop the GR Bullies, by offering information about the site that isn't true. This is why I reverted your changes.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Apollonia1992 (talk • contribs) 18:45, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

The problem I have with Garton's article is that it has nothing to do with the actual criticism of Goodreads, which is about attacks on authors (not negative reviews). Also, Garton's article is a HuffPo blog, just like Foz Meadow's and Athena Parker's articles. Is it not? According to your standards, none of these articles on HuffPo could be seen as a valid citation and two of them offer information about STGRB that is untrue. I have a suggestion. Instead of using any of the HuffPo blogs, we can cite the article in USA Today. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Apollonia1992 (talk • contribs) 19:37, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

Third opinion
Greetings! I am here responding to a request for a third opinion at WP:3O. First off, yikes! A quick look at the article history suggests a review of WP:Edit warring is in order. Note that the three revert rule is not an entitlement!

Now then, on to the content questions. The citation of Caroll Bryant by Caroll Bryant smacks of WP:COI since the author has been the target of this sort of review on Goodreads. It fails WP:V and WP:NPOV so should not be included. The Huffington Post blog pieces are fine as primary sources for direct quotes, but they are not great sources for determining if this particular criticism is widespread enough to merit inclusion. They also fail WP:EL and should (if used) be sources, not listed in the external links section. A source with better editorial oversight is needed. TokyoGirl79 has suggested USA Today, which is a great start. Apollonia1992, what do you think of a version that omits the Huffington Post sources and the Caroll Bryant contribution, and is based on Tokyogirl79's suggestion with reference 13 being the USA Today article? VQuakr (talk) 03:16, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Edit request
I'd like to request that the article be reverted to the last version by me per the reasons stated above. The current version of the article isn't properly sourced for the criticism section and doesn't read in a neutral fashion. I also recently discovered that most of the Huffington Post blogs aren't usable as reliable sources, so I had moved the two blogs by Athena and Foz Meadows down to the external links section to avoid any "are they or aren't they usable" discussions. I had thought my version to be rather neutral on the subject, but if it isn't, can you just remove the section entirely? This controversy did result in the site changing their reviewing rules to address concerns by certain groups and authors, so I believe that it should be mentioned in some fashion but I don't want to cause WWIII over a simple controversy section.Tokyogirl79 (talk) 18:39, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

See WP:PREFER. A consensus should be achieved here before the page is edited again, protection or no. VQuakr (talk) 03:16, 6 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I've been talking with the other user and I'd like to propose the following compromise sentence: "In 2012 Goodreads changed their review policies in response to concerns held by some authors and review groups over review standards." It's not as in-depth as I'd like but it does seem to sum up the issues without leaning in one direction or another. The basic gist of the whole controversy was that some reviews were seen as stepping over the bounds of the site's rules and in an attempt to address concerns by everyone, they changed the rules up. Does this sound like a good compromise to everyone? We can put this in the features section, I think, and just remove the controversy section entirely since there's some concern over the tone or verifiability of the claims in both versions. We'll source it via the Christian Science Monitor source as well as a brief mention in the USA Today. I'd like to put the blog entries down in the external links section but there's been concerns by Appollonia over the neutrality of some of the blogs, so I'm willing to forego adding those entirely. If they are added, I'd like to have all/both of them listed to give both sides. I thought I'd post this here and see what everyone else has to say.Tokyogirl79 (talk) 19:41, 5 September 2012 (UTC)


 * Here's the USA Today mention. It's brief and could be seen as trivial, but it does pertain to the sentence.Tokyogirl79 (talk) 19:42, 5 September 2012 (UTC)

I would like to request leaving these two sentences in the section: "Goodreads has come under criticism from users over the availability and tone of reviews posted on the site, with some users stating that certain reviewers were bullying and encouraging attacks on authors.[12] In response, a website was launched to report on the reviewers.[13]" Completely removing "negative" and "unethical" and having [12] be the citation from Christian Science Monitor and [13] be the citation from USA Today. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Apollonia1992 (talk • contribs) 19:59, 5 September 2012 (UTC)
 * How about this: "In 2012 Goodreads was criticized by some authors and review groups over the availability and tone of some reviews, which were seen as encouraging attacks on the authors.[12] In response, the site changed their review policies over these concerns and some reviewers formed websites to report on the reviews and comments they saw as violating review standards.[13]" The term 'violate' is a bit strong, but since the breaking of a rule or guideline is a violation it's an accurate term. We'd use the same links as sources.Tokyogirl79 (talk) 01:53, 6 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Third opinion: I'd support the text suggested by Tokyogirl above. The current version is poorly sourced and gives undue attention to a non-notable author. Robofish (talk) 10:40, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

I stand by my original request that it should read like this: "Goodreads has come under criticism from users over the availability and tone of reviews posted on the site, with some users stating that certain reviewers were bullying and encouraging attacks on authors.[12] In response, a website was launched to report on the reviewers.[13]" This is more accurate. The reason being that it was shown and documented that authors were attacked, not just in reviews, but also on the Goodreads fora by users either directly attacking these authors or making slanderous comments about them. Also, if you talk to Patrick Brown, he will tell you that Goodreads DID NOT change their reviewing policy. Their policy has been the same for years. All Goodreads did was publish it, thereby making it official for reviewers to see. However, they are still not enforcing their policies as authors continue to be stalked and harassed on the site. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Apollonia1992 (talk • contribs) 12:31, 6 September 2012 (UTC)


 * The text by Tokyogirl has the problem that it says ...were seen as.. without saying by whom.  However, Apollonia's text also seems flawed to me because it says a web site was set up to report on reviewers, but doesn't really tell us what that means.   As to the question of whether the ToS changed or were merely made public for the first time, if this is true and supported by sources, why not just say that the ToS was published for the first time?  If true, this is clearer than either what Tokyogirl or Apollonia said.   I have to agree that citing the statements of a particular author by name seens like WP:UNDUE if that author is not prominent in relationship to the topic. Abhayakara (talk) 14:18, 6 September 2012 (UTC)
 * From what I can gather, the ToS has always been public on Goodreads but they changed things a little. I think they further clarified some of it but they also put down that they would start checking on reviews that people flag and if it doesn't pass the ToS then the review would be hidden from the general public. If anything, it's something that they only recently started doing even if it was a policy that had been in place for a while. I'm not a big user of the site but all of this made enough noise to where the casual readers like myself heard about all of this.Tokyogirl79 (talk) 18:26, 6 September 2012 (UTC)
 * But since I just admitted that I'm more of a casual user, this could all have been unveiled for the first time recently and I probably wouldn't know any better. How about this: "Goodreads has come under criticism from users over the availability and tone of reviews posted on the site, with some users stating that certain reviewers were encouraging attacks on authors.[12] In response to criticisms posted by various members and sites,[13] Goodreads publicly posted their terms of service in August of 2012 to address these issues and reassure users of the site." I keep removing the word bullying because isn't that the same thing as attacking the authors? Bullying is just one of many forms of attacks on others and listing both is sort of splitting hairs. I don't have any true objection to it, just that it makes some of the sentences a little overly long and it seems a little redundant. What does anyone think about the term harass? I'm not sure how it'd be fit in there but it's another term that could be used. Since we've got Abahayakara as a captive witness, I want to ask his opinion of posting the blog links at the bottom of the article in the EL section.Tokyogirl79 (talk) 18:34, 6 September 2012 (UTC)

Tokyogirl, your suggestion is good. Let's put harassing in where bullying was so that it reads: "Goodreads has come under criticism from users over the availability and tone of reviews posted on the site, with some users stating that certain reviewers were harassing and encouraging attacks on authors.[12] In response to criticisms posted by various members and sites,[13] Goodreads publicly posted their terms of service in August of 2012 to address these issues and reassure users of the site." (Note that [12] can be the citation from Christian Science Monitor and [13] can be the citation from USA Today)

If you want to see where Patrick Brown states that the review policy has not changed but has been in place for years, go here. This is the thread where he announces the publication of their review guidelines and states: "Thank you to everyone who gave us feedback in the other thread. As promised, we’ve posted our review guidelines. These are the guidelines we’ve always used when looking at flagged reviews and evaluating whether they require action from us or not. What we’ve never done is make those guidelines public in an explicit way." Question: can we cite the link I just gave where Patrick states this? It would show Wikipedia readers that this is true. But would it be a valid citation? Apollonia1992 (talk) 08:48, 7 September 2012 (UTC)
 * It's primary, but I think it'd be a good idea to add it since it is relevant to the subject at hand. It won't show notability but it would back up the information in the section. So it's agreed? The section will now read "Goodreads has come under criticism from users over the availability and tone of reviews posted on the site, with some users stating that certain reviewers were harassing and encouraging attacks on authors.[12] In response to criticisms posted by various members and sites,[13] Goodreads publicly posted their terms of service in August of 2012 to address these issues and reassure users of the site.[14]" 14 will be the Goodreads page and the other two will be the links mentioned above. I like the term harass more than bullying as it is more encompassing a term.Tokyogirl79 (talk) 08:54, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Agreed. Thank you, Tokyogirl. Apollonia1992 (talk) 14:12, 9 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I went ahead and made this edit per the discussion above. Please feel free to tweak, and way to go on reaching a consensus! VQuakr (talk) 18:55, 9 September 2012 (UTC)

Goodread Awards
I changed the section that said Goodread's hosts awards and listed two winners in 2012. If the page is going to include the section on the Readers Choice Awards then the Awards should be listed. All awards listed were taken directly from the Goodreads webpage. — Preceding unsigned comment added by HeatherMGerl (talk • contribs) 13:12, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Discussing the CM source
I've had someone twice revert a reversion that was previously agreed upon by a group of editors. The argument is that the IP is claiming that the source doesn't mention bullying. However, there are several lines in the article that state that at least one group, Stop the GR Bullies, has considered the act bullying. (In a recent column on the Huffington Post, the administrators of the website Stop the GR Bullies stated their concern over what they said are bullying reviews being posted on the GoodReads website.) There thing is, I need the IP to elaborate on why they don't see this as backing up the statement "Goodreads has come under criticism from users over the availability and tone of reviews posted on the site, with some users stating that certain reviewers were harassing and encouraging attacks on authors". I've removed the "encouraging attacks" portion since that's the only part of it I can forseeably see was causing any problem, but the issue here is that it's just being removed and we're given no true explanation as to why. The issue here is that we can't just outright remove something that was added to the article as a result of a compromise after a revert war. We need at least some explanation as to what isn't supportive rather than just removing it and saying "this isn't right, remove it and re-write it". I'm willing to re-write, but I need to know specifically what is wrong and what isn't entirely backed up. The other issue is that I'm fairly aware of how controversial the Stop the GR Bullies site is among users. I'm also aware that at least a few of the users that were trying to edit the page in the initial reversion war were people involved with the website, which is evidenced by some of the edits made during that time. The problem here is that whether or not you truly agree with the website, we can't let that influence how you edit the page. We didn't let the users that were likely editing with a COI for the Stop the GR Bullies website keep their reversion and we can't outright remove any mention of the website or the criticisms in general for the Goodreads website without at least discussing this in part. We have to be very careful about how we add this and how we remove things. We need to have a discussion, not outright removal. The last thing I want is for things to get as messy on this page as they were when the first reversion war occurred over this section. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡)   12:32, 5 September 2013 (UTC)
 * In any case, I've asked some other users to do the big mediating here. I'm not against editing of the section but I do want a discussion since the sentence we had on the page came after a lot of back and forth editing on this talk page. I'll be honest in that it wasn't the way I wanted it phrased initially, but we can't outright remove it without specifying what exactly in the sentence is incorrect, why it isn't backed up by the source, and what a good re-writing of it would be. The last thing I want is for someone from either side to come on and start another argument over this being outright removed. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡)   13:07, 5 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I also want to state that I'm not entirely against the sentence being removed, but I want a discussion of this first. In any case, I'm going to just bow out of this. I really don't want to get as involved with this as I was last time and I have good reasons as to why it'd be better if another user and/or admin took over from this point on. I'd like to caution anyone coming into this that if you have a conflict of interest that sways either way about the subject matter or persons discussed in the source, that you please take that into account when discussing edits on this section. I'm aware that this is a heated subject matter and that it's hard to stay neutral. You can edit with a conflict of interest and I won't ask in this situation that people elaborate on what their COI is in this situation, but I would ask that you take this into consideration when suggesting removal or editing of the sentence in question. I've asked User:DGG to step in as well as User:VQuakr and User:Stuartyeates from here on out. Tokyogirl79 (｡◕‿◕｡)   13:20, 5 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I do not see any justification for the IP edits based on their edit summaries; the information preceding the source does appear to be in the source itself. Perhaps the IP editor could explain here rather than re-reverting? VQuakr (talk) 23:54, 5 September 2013 (UTC)
 * I took a look also, and I too agree with the basic fairness of Tokyogirl's latest version, though I altered the wording a little. I don't really want to get involved further in detail, but this is a common problem:  in articles about organizations, how do we deal with customer complaint sites and their equivalents, neither pretending they don;t exist nor magnify the issues.  DGG ( talk ) 03:38, 6 September 2013 (UTC)

External links modified
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Proposal for Goodreads Choice Awards
I formally propose to create a new article, Goodreads Choice Awards with the contents of this section (which is equivalent to ca. 40% of the current article). Regards, --Fadesga (talk) 20:29, 19 July 2020 (UTC)
 * Support - I just added a split section tag thinking perhaps it would garner more attention from the WikiProjects on this talk page—I cam across this proposal pretty much by happenstance...  The split makes sense, as there is too much weight given to the listing of the awards as the article stands now.  Here are some additional secondary sources to help establish notability after the split, since most of the sources are primary right now except an LA Times piece: Bookriot 2020, USA Today 2020, O 2019, Paste 2017... Give it another week or two after the split alerts go out.  -2pou (talk) 07:21, 30 December 2020 (UTC)
 * With no opposition after 3 more weeks, I think it's safe to say you can split this out. -2pou (talk) 17:34, 21 January 2021 (UTC)
 * great, I will do so then! Regards, --Fadesga (talk) 17:56, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

Bad design and poor user experience leading to reduced use
The lack of design and functionality of Goodreads is leading to a loss of users, I'm not sure where to include this information

https://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/social-media/2020/08/better-goodreads-possible-bad-for-books-storygraph-amazon

John Cummings (talk) 20:35, 18 September 2020 (UTC)


 * you may use the section "Criticism" for that purpose (almost at the end of the article). Regards, --Fadesga (talk) 19:29, 30 December 2020 (UTC)

How to disambiguate the co-founder Otis Chandler
Hello

A Goodreads's co-founder is calling Otis Chandler but there is a famous homonym Otis Chandler. I would like to disambiguate/distinguish those men in the Goodreads page. I try several edits, but all of them were reverted/refused.
 * page Otis_Chandler_(disambiguation) was deleted
 * a reference with link to LinkedIn was reverted
 * a reference with link to WikiData was reverted

Please, how can we do ? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Cyrille37 (talk • contribs) 07:56, 7 December 2020 (UTC)

"NOT A BOOK" section
This newly added section is sourced only to Goodreads and requires independent sources if it is to stay here. Theroadislong (talk) 11:29, 22 January 2022 (UTC)

Removing primary sourced content
Wikipedia summarizes what independent reliable sources with significant coverage have chosen on their own to say about a topic, we don't base articles on primary sourced content. Theroadislong (talk) 15:58, 25 January 2022 (UTC)

Problems in opening sentence
This page has a problem common on website articles that it is not clear whether it is talking about a product or a business. "Goodreads is an American social cataloging website and a subsidiary of Amazon that allows individuals to search its database of books, annotations, quotes, and reviews." A website is not a subsidiary; a business is a subsidiary. If we're talking about a business, then "Goodreads is an Amazon subsidiary whose website hosts a searchable database of..."; if a website, "Goodreads is an Amazon-owned website with a searchable database of...". (the "allows individuals" phrasing is extra and unneeded in any case.) -- Nat Gertler (talk) 15:17, 6 February 2024 (UTC)