Problems to Solve
In an article concerning the design of a Poetry.Store territory, I listed several problems to solve. That article described a potential solution for two of those problems; this article will describe a potential solution for two more of them :
- The "I Don't Trust this Review" Problem
- The "How Do I Get Reviews Chicken and Egg" Problem
as well as a potential solution for these problems :
- The "How Do I Become a Professional Reviewer" Problem
- The "How Can I Collect Free Books" Problem
In order for the Poetry.Store territory to handle the first two problems, it would "connect" its content with that of a putative Poetry.Reviews territory to create a new article containing a link back to the relevant Poetry.Store article, and then let the admins of the Poetry.Reviews territory handle those problems. Once those problems are handled, the Poetry.Reviews territory would then "connect" its content back to the relevant Poetry.Store territory article.
Who are These Admins ?
Let's assume that you define yourself as one or more of the following :
- a Reader of Poetry (ROP) with a goal of Writing Reviews (WR).
- a Seller of Poetry (SOP) with a goal of Receiving Reviews (RR)
A Reader of Poetry in this context (ROP with WR) is essentially a Poetry.Reviews administrator-wannabe. How does he become one? He could apply to be one using the same load-balancing method that a Poetry.Store administrator-wannabe uses, as described under the "One Solution" section of the Poetry.Store article. In this case, assuming the ROP is accepted as an administrator, he would then need to do the following to perform his job :
- "Purchase" the Book from one of the Stores (i.e. Amazon) specified in the relevant Poetry.Store territory article.
- "Convert" the entire Book into one long T2 article (or alternatively, a series of T2 articles) which is readable ONLY BY HIM.
- Read that article / those articles
- Enter his review in the new (empty) Poetry.Reviews article previously created during the connection of the two territories in draft mode
- Enter his review into the Store (i.e. Amazon) from which he "Purchased" the book
- Add a link to his review in the Store, into the review on T2, and publish it
Once he has performed the last step, he would indicate that he had completed his task, which would then handle the connection back to Poetry.Store by adding a link, in the relevant Poetry.Store article, to the new review in Poetry.Territory. The load balancer would then do its normal thing - determine how many admins are waiting for a task together with how many books are waiting to be reviewed, to prevent the "This Topic/Group/Channel Is Unmanageable" Problem described in the Poetry.Store article.
What's with the quotes around Purchase and Convert?
Stores like Amazon restrict only buyers of books to write reviews for them. In this case, in order to leave an actual review on Amazon the reviewer has to actually make a Purchase. However, in order to solve the "How Can I Collect Free Books" Problem, T2 could make the purchase on his behalf, and then handle the Conversion of the book into a T2 article. Another possibility is that the Admin himself purchases the book, tells T2 to convert it, and then T2 reimburses him when the task is complete. In either case, the actual book or NFT purchased from the Store would belong to the administrator - hence, the administrator is paid in the form of the books he reviews.
His reviews on Amazon, however, should be considered valuable to Amazon. Why? Because unlike a normal amazon reviewer, Amazon could verify that not only did the reviewer purchase the book, he ACTUALLY READ IT. This could help mitigate the "I Don't Trust this Review" problem.
Fake Reviews
Fake reviews resulting from the use of Artificial Intelligence is an emerging problem. If T2 could convince the likes of Amazon that the T2 platform helps in this regard, Amazon may be ok with the reviewer identifying himself as a T2-Reviewer and including some sort of blurb about T2 at the end of the review, thus allowing T2 to reach people browsing reviews on Amazon (maybe those people would also like to receive "free" books by reviewing them on T2 - Amazon of course would still make money, since the book is actually purchased before the review process). In addition, this business connection with the Store itself could perhaps help ease the "conversion" process from the previous section, as well as prevent the T2-Reviewer's review as being flagged as "fake" according to whatever algorithm the Store chooses to use on their side to combat shenanigans and tomfoolery.
What about the Chicken and Egg Problem?
This is where Sellers of Poetry thirsting for Amazon reviews of their books come in.
It can often be difficult to get those reviews on stores such as Amazon, and having no reviews is a major impediment on increasing sales. Resorting to paid reviewers is unethical as that reviewer would have a incentive to always make the review glowingly positive in order to establish repeat business with her client. So what is a Seller of Poetry (SOP) with a goal of Receiving Reviews (RR) to do?
How about posting one of the poems which is published in her book into the Poetry.Store territory, along with the amazon link to the book? This would ensure her with at least one honest review on Amazon, as well as a sale.
But what if the author didn't like the resulting review? Or they wanted more reviews?
Once they received one review, they could get another by posting a different poem from the book into T2. (there would need to be no overlap of what she posted in the reviews, and the T2 load-balancer would ensure that a different reviewer reviewed the book. The poem or extract of her work would need to be of a minimum length in order to discourage abuse of the system by authors - imagine a SOP posting one small paragraph). Because the reviewer would be a different admin, they would need to read the whole book while on T2 - i.e. resulting in a separate Amazon sale. However, the "conversion" of the book could be avoided by reusing the original conversion, while changing the exclusive access to the conversion to include the new reviewer.
How long could this go on? That would be something for T2 to figure out. Presumably they could charge a small fee to the SOP after they have used up X number of 'free' reviews, assuming Amazon was ok with that (see the possible business connection the Store in the previous "Fake Reviews" section).
Becoming a Professional Reviewer
Dear reader, you can probably guess by this point how one can go about solving the "How Do I Become a Professional Reviewer" problem with regards to poetry - simply join the Poetry.Reviews territory as an admin and get to work. Over time your progress will be noted both in T2 and in the number of reviews left on various Stores. Presumably, future hirers of reviewers - who pay in actual money - would trust T2's metrics to reflect actual experience doing the job.
Note that the name of the Territory, being separated by genre, helps in specializing reviewers for specific niches. Let's say you love reading about artificial intelligence books and you come across the review by T. Dylan Daniel of Robert Sapolsky's book Determined, while browsing in a putative AI.Reviews territory. Assume further that the review makes you want to buy the book in the AI.Store territory, especially after visiting the AI.Store link associated with the review and reading the extract which Robert Sapolsky himself posted as what he feels represents the essence of his book. In this case, T. Dylan Daniel is both a member of T2 and an admin of AI.Reviews (though he is disallowed from reviewing his own book, as he is also an author of AI books), while Robert Sapolsky is also a member of T2, but not an admin (yet). You could either purchase the book yourself, or apply to become an admin of AI.Reviews in the hopes of getting the book for free that way. However, because you just joined, you do not have enough reading points in that genre to justify that you have enough background knowledge to provide a meaningful review. In other words, you would not be a "professional" reviewer. However, if you read enough AI articles in perhaps an AI.Essays territory, and/or contributed some yourself, you could eventually gain the points to give professionalism a shot.
