Am I the only goodreads user who actually doesn't feel that these new guidelines are that oppressive? Part of my living is in providing written 'content' for publication, and there is always a brief, there are always guidelines … except in the most personal (and, unfortunately, less lucrative…) creative writing arenas. I started writing reviews here as a hobby, and I enjoy the combination of getting feedback and ‘argument’ (in the intellectual, not the fisty-cuff sense…) from other users, and just the process of collating and refining my response to a book immediately after reading has helped cement many of the ideas and feelings inherent in the reading process. Another contributing factor to my lack of concern may be that I’ve never enjoyed focusing on authorship as a particularly interesting, or even particularly valid, critical tool. The ol’ hilarious one-star goodreads reviews that in particular want to heap up cultural-warfare-based pejoratives, or just plain abuse, on the author as the pillar of a position on the work itself are my least favourite things to read … and, ironically enough, tend to just simply favour other quasi-biographical texts that tend to be a thousand times less interesting — or, dare I say it, important — than the one being so ‘amusingly’ reviled. So, I suppose, I’m not in favour of things necessarily being ruled-against, but I’m also not in favour of the actual things being ruled out. Is it so bad not being able to abuse people in absentia? There’s loads of places to go on the Internet for that. Goodreads could just be about genuine engagement with … reading books?