SAN FRANCISCO—In an effort to maintain the quality of the website, Goodreads.com announced Monday that it was now only permitting reviews from people who haven’t read the book.“We at Goodreads owe it to both authors and readers to stop people from spamming our review section with coherent analyses of books that they’ve clearly read, maybe even a couple of times,” said Goodreads CEO Libby Roin, explaining that any review showing evidence of in-depth knowledge of a book’s characters, plot, or thematic elements would be immediately deleted from the site. “Whether it’s novels, poetry, or nonfiction, we’re tired of users who have obviously read these books coming to the site and just giving them one to five stars after careful reflection on their reading experience, so we’re going to be very strict about only letting people who have no idea what a book is about beyond its title and maybe one fact about its writer comment on Goodreads from now on. Up-and-coming writers in particular rely on sites like Goodreads to provide an honest, crowd-sourced assessment of a book’s quality, so we’re going to do everything we can to ensure that only the most misguided, off-base, and vitriolic reviews will show up on our site.” At press time, Goodreads had again updated its policy, announcing that the only reviews now allowed on the site would be those making fun of an author’s photo.
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