Goodreads was the future of book reviews, then Amazon bought it
Eh, Goodreads has always suffered from the same problem that plagues every other review system which uses "score out of X" ranking.<p>Humans just aren't very good at ranking things on a normal distribution, so you invariably end up with every item (books in this case) being ranked somewhere in the 3.5-4.5 range (since Goodreads is out of 5). For IMDB the rankings all hover around 8ish. When in reality the average book should have a 2.5. If you <i>don't</i> rate like this then you just end up with garbage.<p>Just allowing a boolean rating (ala Rotten Tomatoes when aggregated) is much better, <i>assuming</i> you can get enough reviews for that system to actually work (probably > 30 is required for most applications).<p>I think "aggregated personal Elo" would be a fun way to rank things: I just give you two books that you've read and you tell me which is better. Do this loads of times and eventually you have a solid ranking of every book you've ever read. Aggregate everyone's rankings and you have a much more robust system then "please rate this book out of 5 stars".