Goodreads Review Policy Takes a Turn for the Worse

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It has been brought to my attention by this post on Guinevere and Libertad Tomas' blog that Goodreads has just changed its review policy. You can read the full announcement here. But the most controversial point is the one I'm going to quote below:

**Delete content focused on author behavior. We have had a policy of removing reviews that were created primarily to talk about author behavior from the community book page. Once removed, these reviews would remain on the member’s profile. Starting today, we will now delete these entirely from the site. We will also delete shelves and lists of books on Goodreads that are focused on author behavior. If you have questions about why a review was removed, send an email to support@goodreads.com. (And to answer the obvious question: of course, it’s appropriate to talk about an author within the context of a review as it relates to the book. If it’s an autobiography, then clearly you might end up talking about their lives. And often it’s relevant to understand an author’s background and how it influenced the story or the setting.)

And they go on like this:

Someone used the word censorship to describe this. This is not censorship - this is setting an appropriate tone for a community site. We encourage members to review and shelve books in a way that makes sense for them, but reviews and shelves that focus primarily on author behavior do not belong on Goodreads.  

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Now, this is some statement o_O.

How Bloglovin' Ate My Blog (and Yours too)

OK, sorry, but I'm mad like hell right now. I casually typed "offbeat ya" on Google, just to see what would pop out after nearly a year of blogging under that very name...and my jaw dropped when I saw this:

My first thought was "What, someone named their blog Offbeat YA too?" (not on Blogger, of course...), which was a scary thought, up to a point. But what I saw after clicking on the above link scared me even more:

 

IT WAS ME ON BLOGLOVIN'. Only, I never signed up on there. And never even meant to either.

It was me on Bloglovin'...complete with a trail of 18 followers I didn't have a clue about.

While you wrap your mind around this paradox, let's step back for a moment. Surely you all remember the turmoil caused a few weeks ago by the supposed death of GFC. While NO ONE had EVER mentioned that GFC was supposed to go (actually, that would be Google Reader), a worldwide panic spread over. Coincidentally - but not by chance, if you ask me, because I think they rode the wave and started a campaign taking advantage of that very situation - there was plenty of talking about Bloglovin' those days, and suddenly everyone was setting up an account just in case. Bloglovin' wasn't by any means the only blog aggregator available...but it was pretty much the one in the spotlight - the one every blogger was signing up for. Being my usual not-happy-to-go-with-the-flow self (and I don't mean offense to anyone), I decided to investigate every possible way in which a blog could be followed, not because I was afraid of GFC disappearing, but simply because I wanted to offer more options to my would-be readers. In doing so, I read about Bloglovin' causing blogs to open in a frame instead that directly linking to them - like this:

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE don't look at the banner where "reviewed" has been spelled out wrong for ages without me noticing *facepalms*

You have to click on the X in the upper right corner in order to be redirected to the actual blog address:

Now, this sounded so fishy, it was the actual reason why I decided to stay well away from Bloglovin'. It was not a number-of-hits matter to me...just instinctive distrust of the method. Also, I couldn't wrap my mind around the "claim" issue. Because - in case you don't know - even if you have registered an account, Bloglovin' requires you to "claim" your blog after doing so. Which is ridiculous, to say the least. It IS my blog already. I don't need to validate my blog property anywhere. NO SERVICE WHATSOEVER ASKS YOU TO "CLAIM" ANYTHING YOU CREATED ON THE WEB! (...On second thoughts, there's Technorati - but at least they wait for you to actually register before they ask you to do that!).

So I went on happily ever after, with GFC (that didn't die on July 1st of course), email subscriptions and a Linky account as following options (update, July 2017: I deleted the latter because it wasn't a thing anymore, if it ever had been...). Till I typed "offbeat ya" on Google, and the third search result was my blog on Bloglovin'. Which of course called for some action. [...]