Talk:Cait Corrain review bombing controversy

Does this pass WP:BLP1E?

Topic. Unpublished non-notable writer (and possibly never published at this rate) sockpuppets reviews of first-time authors' books. This probably warrants a paragraph at Goodreads and possibly Review bomb but I think a whole article might be making a mountain out of a molehill. It was like 6 socks apparently? Cf. WP:N(E) as well. Axem Titanium (talk) 08:58, 20 December 2023 (UTC)

I doubt that WP:BLP1E applies because the article is mainly about the event and less so the author(s) involved. (Under this criterion though notability seems relatively well established.)

Also, I would say that unless more developments happen, and that seems unlikely, I’d agree that there is little reason for this to be an article. Slamforeman (talk) 22:42, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

I added {{Notability|events}} in an earlier iteration of this article; the template was later removed by Skyring. WP:N(E) is more strict than WP:GNG because of its inclusion of WP:NOTNEWS considerations, and it's unlikely this article will meet those stricter guidelines. This seems like a case of #4 on WP:EVENTCRIT. I'm in favor of merging relevant stuff to Goodreads and Review bomb. Wracking ^talk! 22:52, 22 December 2023 (UTC)

Thanks. Good points. I removed the template because it was clearly notable enough to have some pretty high-level sourcing. I may have been too hasty, looking at the wikilaw behind this.

Oddly enough, I've spent a couple of days writing an article about the event myself, to be published commercially elsewhere and the Wikipedia article is one I cite. I'd best keep track of where this WP article goes lest I present my readers with a dead link.

On the face of it, it's done and dusted. The deed has been exposed, the doer sent off to purgatory, the punishment meted out. It's unlikely we'll hear any more of Cait Corrain. End of stories.

Now, I'd restore the template myself but I'm not too sure it's all over with no lasting effect. For one thing, although her publisher has indicated her books are no longer on their schedule, they may be waiting for the dust to settle and maybe in a year the same titles they found worthy of publishing might reappear under a(nother) nom de plume, especially if all the news reports and Wikipedia article as an index have vanished from easy visibility.

And what of the books she trashed in her fake reviews? They'll be coming out in January and there may well be some ripples attending their launch.

Maybe this will be a significant event in the world of Goodreads (and other review sites). For one thing, it would be good to have a cautionary tale that people can refer to if they contemplate a similar strategy for success. Corrain seems to have been pretty ham-fisted in her methods but with a little more care and organisation she could have covered her tracks a whole lot better.

Like it or not, review-bombing and sock-puppet self-promotion is a thing in the publishing trade, especially for these sort of low-level writers where gaining traffic and ratings can be the difference between a lucrative career and sinking into oblivion.

We could even expand this into a category of notable cases. There seems to be no shortage of incidents, including this NYT story about the impact of review-bombing on another fledgling PoC writer. Is there some nasty campaign being waged for some dubious cultural objective?

Significantly, in early November, before this Cait Corrain thing, Publishers Weekly noted that Goodreads was recognising the problem.

It's a big story and we don't cover it adequately. In our List of review-bombing incidents article we have just one incident under "Books": Corrain. The Elizabeth Gilbert incident is many times more significant.

I don't know. I feel that we shouldn't be part of some cover-up. --Pete (talk) 20:26, 23 December 2023 (UTC)

"Cover-up" is a very strange and provocative choice of words here. No one is suggesting a "cover-up". I just don't think this is a particularly notable review bombing incident, even among a list of mostly (IMO) non-notable incidents. Strikingly few review bombs have any real tangible impacts on sales or even public perception and this one appears to fall far below that bar---a non-notable author posts a half dozen fake reviews on other (currently) non-notable authors. The caliber and prominence of sourcing here suggests to me that this incident belongs on list and summarized at Goodreads. I do not think it rises to the level of independent article. Axem Titanium (talk) 18:26, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

I would be in favour of a merge to Goodreads and the list mentioned. I think though the concern about a cover-up is a legitimate one.

If this article was merged and the incident was mentioned in scant few other places, it would of course be very easy for Corrain or their team to publish elsewhere under a pseudonym, as Mr. Skyring says.

I don’t think the article doesn’t deserve to merged for this reason, but instead that it would be worth taking steps to make sure the information is not obscured from most people.

Thanks, Slamforeman (talk) 19:12, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

Popping in to say, I think this event has enough notable coverage to merit its own article (WP:BLP1E doesn't really apply if the article is about the event and not the person). But if it were to be merged anywhere, I'd say a section on Xiran Jay Zhao's article would make the most sense, as they're the most notable person involved here, they were the first one to speak openly about the scandal, and I think the people most interested in learning more about this are more likely to look up Zhao than they are Goodreads or Review bombing. I'm not 100% in favor of that as a solution either (Zhao seems to want the attention on the authors who were victimized rather than themself, and again, I think this is notable enough to stand on its own) but if we absolutely had to merge it somewhere, that I think would make most sense and do the least to obscure the information.Invisiboy42293 (talk) 03:24, 28 February 2024 (UTC)