I've been stumbling on some pretty lousy reviews lately: "Great book!" Or, "loved it". Or the ones that just cut & paste the book desciption. The worst are the ones that give the condition of the book or the ones I kept finding yesterday that said something like "on my reminder list" or "SLR 27" (whatever that means).

When I find these I give them a thumbs down but what happens then? Does a reveiw have to get a certain number of thumbs down before it is yanked? Or do they even yank them? I saw one yesterday (book condition) that I had marked down nearly a year ago so I'm curious as to what happens to these reviews with negative responses.

Anyone know . . . .the rest of the story?

Check out some of these links:  http://www.paperbackswap.com/forum/topic.php?t=58431 http://www.paperbackswap.com/forum/topic.php?t=65781 http://www.paperbackswap.com/forum/topic.php?t=66537 http://www.paperbackswap.com/forum/topic.php?t=72497 http://www.paperbackswap.com/forum/topic.php?t=80635 http://www.paperbackswap.com/forum/topic.php?t=81247

Thanks Karen

I was wondering the exact same thing! Why do people have to post reviews at all, if all they're going to say is "great book" or something equally monosyllabic? I do make sure to always "thumbs up" the reviews that are helpful and show some active brain cells on the part of the writer, though. :-)

Personally, I would rather have a "great book" than nothing at all! Most people don't review the books and lots don't even give it a star rating. At least "great book" is better than nothing, although I would prefer a little more!

I look at those types of reviews they way I would junk emails.  I just glance and move on.  They don't hurt me so aren't worth a thought much less much effort to comment.

The same thought has crossed my mind. Why bother to just write two words like "great book"? 
"Great book" doesn't really tell me anything about the book.  Why is it great and not just "good"?  What did you like about it?  
I prefer reviews that are meaty without giving away spoilers.   There are some really good reviewers on PBS and I love reading their reviews.  I like people who take the time to write detailed reviews, especially a negative review.  I wish more people would write reviews of books they didn't like.  I don't post only positive reviews since I think it unfair to readers who end reading that horrible book because someone who read it earlier didn't share their thoughts about it. 

Thumbs down will move them down the list so that eventually they get to the end and, if there are enough reviews, the ones at the end won't show on the main screen. They don't remove any unless they are reported for being inappropriate. Though those "great book!"s might not mean anything to some people, it may show something about a book if 20 or 80 people felt the book was good enough to bother to go write "great book!" when many books only get a review or two.

I myself prefer the one-liners to the big in-depth ones that often tell me half the story that I would have rather read myself. 

So many times  I will see that 50 or 60 people have given the book a star rating, but no one has written a single review...I don't need a book report, I would like to see just a line or two with a positive (or negative) impression of the book. I don't expect professional reviews but I am interested in whether someone found the book involving or whether they were totally put off by the author's style, etc. but I would like other reader's impressions of the book.

I agree that some reviewers include spoilers without any warning, which I find really irritating and definitely can impact my enjoyment of a book. Like Melanie, a sentence or two of impressions of the book is better than a paragraph that is simply a synopsis of the story -- basically a book description -- without saying whether they enjoyed or did not enjoy the book.

There is an aspect of reviews that I don't think many people consider: writing an involving review can definitely help get your book requested. I've had it happen over and over again...I write a brief, thoughtful review (which is then featured on the home page), post that book and unless that book has hundreds posted already, I will see that book requested within a day or two. It happened twice just this week when I posted obscure books by an obscure British authors and within 24 hours I had requests for both of those books and I credit that solely to people seeing the review on the home page and thinking, "that sounds good"...and requesting the book.

I'm even happy if someone copies the back of the book.  Often I'm looking at more books on a member's shelf and I go to find out more info. and there's nothing.  Sometimes I take time to check Amazon then, sometimes I don't.  I agree I appreciate a thought out review but something is better than nothing.

I'm even happy if someone copies the back of the book.

That kind of thing might be better submitted as a "Data Edit" for the book to add the description to the page rather than as a review. 

I agree though, I always find it frustrating when there's no description listed for a book I want to know more about. 

That kind of thing might be better submitted as a "Data Edit" for the book to add the description to the page rather than as a review.

It used to be that the description couldn't be edited so the only way to get the description with the book was through a review. Since we can do data edits now, it helps when people come across those books with the description in a review and not in the description field to take the time to copy and paste that information from the review into  the description field for a data edit before giving it the thumbs down. While they are at it finding any other missing information to complete the data edit would be even better 

This is one of my pet peeves too!  But I am encouraging members to use tags and write reviews of books because I feel they are under-utilized functions that I find quite valuable.

Cut & Paste book descriptions for a review tell me the so-called "Reviewer" is lazy, probably can't come up with an original thought or create a sentence much less two or three that mean anything.   Hell if you're going to take the time to offer a review, at least be original and try and put a couple of sentences together.  Otherwise, its a waste of time.

-RD

I agree.  And I do hate the "slight damage to cover" type of reviews - wish they would weed those out.  I don't like really short thoughtless reviews, but I also agree that they are better than nothing.  I don’t write very thoughtful reviews, I wish I could, but I just try to get my point across.

I also hate the standard "couldn't put it down", while this sometimes can be true I believe people just say that here sometimes hoping to get their book ordered.