Eh, Goodreads has always suffered from the same problem that plagues every other review system which uses "score out of X" ranking.
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 don't rate like this then you just end up with garbage.
Just allowing a boolean rating (ala Rotten Tomatoes when aggregated) is much better, assuming you can get enough reviews for that system to actually work (probably > 30 is required for most applications).
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".
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 don't rate like this then you just end up with garbage.
Just allowing a boolean rating (ala Rotten Tomatoes when aggregated) is much better, assuming you can get enough reviews for that system to actually work (probably > 30 is required for most applications).
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".