Community Guidelines

What this place is for

Bookcairn exists so engineers can say what a book was actually worth. Strong opinions are welcome. Calling a classic overrated is welcome. Three stars is a real rating, not an insult, and a book you abandoned is worth saying so about.

Review honestly

• Review books you have actually read (or are reading, or want to read, with the right status).
• Do not run multiple accounts or coordinate ratings to push a title's numbers up or down. Author and publisher self-promotion through fake reader accounts counts.
• If you have a stake in a book, say so. Writing it, editing it, working for the publisher, or being paid to mention it all count.
• Tag the categories the book is actually about. Tagging a book with everything to catch more traffic makes the filters useless for everyone.

Be decent

• Talk about books, characters, and writing as harshly as you like. Do not harass, threaten, or dogpile real people, including authors, other readers, or anyone else.
• No hate speech: attacks on people for race, ethnicity, religion, gender, sexuality, disability, or similar.
• No doxxing or sharing anyone's private information.
• No impersonation. Do not pretend to be an author, a publisher, or another reader.

Code, quotes and piracy

• Quoting a short passage or a snippet to make a point about the book is fine. That is the point.
• Do not reproduce substantial parts of a book, and do not link to pirated copies. Bookcairn points at books; it does not host them.
• Do not post working exploits, credentials, or anything whose main use is attacking systems you do not own, even in a security book's review.

Spoilers

Your notes can contain spoilers; people expect that on a reader's shelf. Your one-liner shows on cards and in Discover, so keep major spoilers out of it, or say “spoiler” up front.

Spam and commerce

• No spam, no affiliate-link dumping, no promotions in notes or bios beyond a single link on your profile.
• Authors and publishers are welcome as readers. Do not use notes or profiles primarily to advertise.

Usernames and profiles

Usernames and bios must follow the same rules. Names of real people you are not, slurs, and impersonation will be reclaimed.

Reporting

Email karankumar@gmail.com with the link to the profile or book page and a sentence about the problem. We look at every report.

What happens

Depending on severity: we remove the content, hide the profile, restrict public features, or close the account. For most first problems we will tell you what was removed and why. For illegal content and severe abuse we act first. You can appeal any decision by replying to our email.