[rahooligan]

In the case of Moonwalking with Einstein over 70% of critics gave it a positive.

If 7 out of 10 critic reviews are positive, the rating is 70%. We recommend a book if it scores over 70%. More info here: http://idreambooks.com/toread_or_nottoread

Thumbs up/down doesn't personalize yet...

[socksy]

Sorry, I think you misunderstood me, I am specifically referring to the New York Times review of it, which is one of the 4 negative reviews of the book, but if you read it is in actual fact positive. My mistake though, because I accidentally linked the same page twice when I wanted to link this the second time: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/13/books/review/book-review-m...

[rahooligan]

We have a strict set of criteria when rating a review as positive or negative. In general, if the review is even slightly negative we rate it as such...in the case of Moonwalking, NYT expresses a few disappointments about the book. This is to help surface only the very best of books in each genre.

[redler]

Any review of sufficient length and thoroughness is likely to include at least some criticism, if for no other reason than the reviewer not wanting to look like a cheerleader. The NYT often selects reviewers with relevant domain knowledge, or who are themselves authors in a related genre. So opinions will be expressed, hobbyhorses ridden, and nits picked, even in glowing reviews.

You should be careful to avoid setting up a business rule that could overemphasize a few negative raisins in a positive pudding.

[endersshadow]

The idea of a binary positive vs negative is really troubling to me as far as an algorithm goes. It should very much be on that sliding scale that Metacritic or Rotten Tomatoes uses--sentiment analysis shouldn't return just a 1 or a 0.

[alphakappa]

I'm not sure how giving such a binary 'good' or 'bad' to a review is helpful for books. Reviews could be on a continuum (hence the star rating system that many folks use) and calling a review negative just because of a few negative opinions voiced in a review could potentially miss the point of the review.