Hello All,

I've been participating in the Books category a lot more lately for two simple reasons:

1. As a novelist myself, I thought it was kind of pathetic that I hadn't reviewed more books - especially in light of how large my library is,

2. I noticed that I was heading in the wrong direction in the Books category on the MPA lists.

That said, I'm finding Books to be one of the poorest maintained categories on the site and my observing and stating this is not at all a critique of the CLs in Books. Not at all. . . .


. . . it is, however, intended as an indictment of the business-minded folks who want to make Epinions more sales-driven and put less priority on the actual reviews here. After months of watching "Related Deals" muscle out products reviewed in the lists the search engines churn out, I've discovered that Books is possibly the best example of how bad our beloved site can become if this model is maintained.

Quite simply, no category better represents the potential for how powerful the internet can be as a tool than books. Why? NOTHING ever goes out of print anymore. Booksellers around the world always have copies of books that are no longer being printed new. Unlike "Food" where a company will stop producing a certain flavor of Skittles, nothing need ever disappear from "Books."

However, if something does not appear in Shopping.com's database - which seems to prioritize the current - it appears it gets pretty well axed here on Epinions. I spent the day reading Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s novel "Slaughter-House Five." I've just written a review of it . . . I went to post it. Not in the database.

So, I went to Google . . . yes, there are a few reviews of the book (I found two, actually), BUT . . . . they are no longer associated with a product, they are two randomly floating "Slaughter-House Five" reviews and none of us who want to read and review it now have a spot to do so.

This is ridiculous. In Books, I have more "greyed out" reviews than in any other category, when this ought to be the most enduring.

If there was ever an argument to be made that the value of Epinions will be gutted by the sales-oriented dominance of Shopping.com "Books" might well be it . . .

-W.L. Swarts

Here's a link to post in the book category for Slaughterhouse Five (no dash):

http://www.epinions.com/content/write.html/tnode_~657794175873

It has 44 reviews right now.

BTW, the problem you mention (and the many others in the category; you've barely touched on the tip of the iceberg) has been known for years and years and predates the Shopping.com database merger and the new search functionality and a variety of other updates and changes that supposedly "fixed what was broke" but didn't.

Hi!

Thanks for the link to review the book; the "Slaughterhouse Five" reference was but a single example, but I appreciate the comment/feedback.

As it stands, though, anyone looking for the book with the sensible method of trying to go by the author's name (not bad considering it doesn't come up with the proper title - it IS hyphenated in the book! ) will be at as much of a loss . . .

But again, my point here was that nothing should EVER fall out of the book category because nothing printed is ever truly lost anymore. With places like Amazon and Barnes and Noble actually offering links for used books now, even the sales-oriented model of Epinions ought to support the concept that no book is truly out of print here.

Thanks!

-W.L.

Quick sidebar - thank you VERY much for the link! (no sarcasm there at all, I'm posting my review as soon as I finish writing this!)

The problematic aspect is this: as you noted, this does appear to be a link to write properly for the book. However, the 44 reviews you spoke of are invisible (at least to me; I clicked the highlighted book title and found another "Page does not exist" note). Moreover, the search engine on site doesn't even find the book this way . . . grumble (not at you!).

All this means is that this is yet another product that when it disappears from the "Current Reviews" lists . . . it disappears into the ether . . .

Thank you, though!

-W.L.