It a bit like navel gazing, but HN?

If a thread started for ‘best X of 2023’, I’d be pretty sure of the results.

Although I know you said this in jest, it got me thinking that it would be really fun to have a system where you have to submit answers to a short quiz about the book before you can submit your review. No reviews would be removed, but you would, if you wanted, be able to filter the global average by people who scored over a certain threshold on the quiz.

Probably you could even generate new questions every time with GPT, so that people couldn't cheat. This system would have a million problems, sure, but would it have more problems than the current system?

> I don't want to have to submit my passport to share a book review.

Why is it important that you, a person apparently unwilling (hyperbole aside) to prove that you have actually read a particular book, should be able to transmit (ostensibly) your opinions about said book into the heads of other potential readers via a software platform? A small number of verified reviews is almost certainly better than a large number of unverified reviews, for exactly the reason highlighted by OP's article: when there are few or no controls on who or what can post however many reviews, the system is inevitably exploited by bad actors, and said actors often operate at scales that dwarf the impact of a single legitimate reviewer.

You can either have low friction reviews, or you can have high quality reviews. You can’t have both.

For example, Facebook/Instagram/OpenAI/etc. requires non-VOIP phone number verification on signup. This alone would cut spam to near-zero.

I’m sure if Goodreads required this on signup, the problem would solve itself.