I posted my schedule back before I headed to the con, so it would seem only fitting to post notes from each of those panels. I often prepare far more than gets used when it comes to panel information. Sometimes this is a question of not having enough time to shove it all in, sometimes it’s a question of sharing panel time and other times the panel just doesn’t go the way I thought it was going to.

I’m going to load these up one at a time so I can give each panel its own space – and even try to tie together with the virtual space!

My first panel of the Balticon weekend was Rating Books in the Algorithm Age and it was in fact my only virtual panel for the weekend.

Here’s the description and what I had prepared as notes~

Rating Books in the Algorithm Age

Do numeric rating systems such as “X out of 10” lead to a loss of nuance? Can the ubiquitous five-star rating system (as used by Amazon and Goodreads) lead to grade inflation? Is a well-written entertaining work deserving of top ratings, or does it also need to be groundbreaking? When a rating is going to be amalgamated without context, what are a reviewer’s ethical responsibilities?

Yes, any scoring system with limits like x out of 10 has a loss of significance. It’s designed and designated specifically to be ‘shorthand’. Can it help? Sure… to a point.

Grade inflation can (and does happen). Of course I’m going to give my book 5 stars. So’s my mom cause I asked her to (no, she won’t read it). It’s unethical to ‘stuff the ballot box’… or is it? Is campaigning for you book and getting your friends to pump it up and get attention?

Well written and entertaining is completely subjective. I have a particular prize winning work that I LOATHE and I know more than one person that thinks it’s amazing. It’s terrible, but the story of how the story got published caught me more than any rating. It was all about how the friends and family of said book got it out there to my attention.

When I do reviews for the things I read, I state up front if I got the work for free (pretty sure there are rules about this, but I genuinely don’t know them). I will say things in the very first line of the review like, “OF course it gets 5 stars… it’s mine after all”.

I have taken a long time to recognize and understand what I like about stories, and have started to apply that knowledge to how I talk about the books I really like. If you like something I like, and that continues to happen, then maybe you can trust my opinion about a book. I have one friend (Molly) who knows that if I love a book, she’ll hate it. Our tastes tend to be diametrically opposed. She knows this and takes all of my reviews with that thought in mind.

How you feel about the author can (should it?) effect how you review a book. I know a number of authors. I recommend the work of my friends.

Will I recommend a book, no matter how good, after I met the guy and he was a total dick to me? NO.

Will I recommend a book, no matter my political feelings about an author, if that guy was SUPER nice to me? That’s way more complicated.

Those were my notes. What do you think?