DanaJ wrote:Dayne I certainly understand your position. However, here is my personal view on the issue (it might not be shared by other members of the staff/moderators). Please do not believe that I am aggressively supporting my own position, these are just my thoughts. So you basically have two options regarding the system of book recommendations.
1. Allow members to post their experiences with the books, rate the books and discuss them amongst each other.
The strong point of this system is that it does allow for discussion among the forum members and the star ratings are not just one person's view of the book. I will certainly agree that this option is probably more interactive that the second option.
However, there is a major drawback to this, a drawback that you may be familiar with if you've ever had the chance to order something online from amazon.com or another similar site. The issue I'm talking about is false reports on books written by the marketing people from XYZ Company that provides GMAT materials. This is something that we ourselves have tried to prevent on our forum, false marketing by posing as a customer.
Another problem is that some really good people write uninformed reviews about products on the market. They have not had the chance to experience anything else except the books they've used (usually no more than 5 or 6 in a market of tens or hundreds of books) so they simply do not have the resources to make an adequate comparison.
2. Have someone (or a specific group of people) post unbiased reviews about the books and make recommendations
This is for the moment our option. I have written the reviews in the books section myself and Eric has always been kind enough to edit them. Keep in mind the following:
- comments are definitely allowed and by all means encouraged. It's certainly not devised as a thread, but you will get replies asap
- I have personally been exposed to 40+ of the most popular books in the industry, including several different editions of the same product. This basically allows me to provide an informed opinion based on what's available out there
- I am not affiliated with any company in the GMAT prep world, so I have no incentive to misrepresent the facts
- I am a self studier like most people who are shopping for books, so I understand your position and try to provide meaningful advice
- (and this is just a fact - I am not bragging) I scored a 770 on the GMAT with self study and I suppose that most people would be looking for advice from high scorers rather than someone who's scored low. And maybe that's not even as important as knowing that the person who makes the recommendation or selects the star rating is someone you can trust and whose opinion is valuable to you
Of course, I certainly get it why this is not an ideal system. The main issue here is that you're indeed getting an opinion from DanaJ only and not 20-30 other people. However, as I've said, I have never ever deleted any comments from our members. They are also encouraged to start threads or search for keywords on particular books.
OK so now for the conclusion: from your posts up until now I sense a certain tension. It may just be me... I do not want it to seem like I'm not open to feedback (of course, I and the team all are), it's just my personal perception of the matter. Eric and the rest of the community will decide what's best and I obviously encourage you to present your own feelings about the points listed above. But I, as a user of this forum, will not be convinced by arguments such as "because some other site does it", but by arguments that highlight the potential benefits to our members.
I understand what your saying, however i think we can have a happy medium on this issue by providing an unofficial book recommendation forum or thread.
Meaning keep the official book recommendations as it is.
Create an unofficial book recommendations forum or sticky threads throughout the forum for all successful members to give their input on which books should be used. Provide a disclaimer that this isn't from the forum itself and their could be people posing from guide companies with their own biased self interest.
