Would it be possible to modify the Book Reviews section so that members could add later updates to their reviews without losing any helpful votes they might have received for that review? The reason I ask is that I tend to take more interest in reviews that have a number of Helpful Votes, which tend to indicate that it's a good review, but at the same time, I've found that I some times have later ideas or impressions that I'd like to add to my review.

The way I conceived of this is that there could be an "Update" button that the author could click on. This would bring him or her to an area where they could include additional comments or revised opinions, and it would also offer them the ability to revise the number of stars they gave to the book. When the reviewer finishes typing, they click "Update" and the new material is added to the bottom of their review.

People who are reading the review will see the regular review on screen, and the new material will appear in a seperate section with the word "Update" in bold text or something similar. As well, the initial star rating given for the book would still appear in the regular review, and the revised star rating (if provided) would appear alongside the update section.

Is this a feasible idea?

Nathan will be the final word on this of course, but I don't know that we'll go to a system like the one you propose. The reason helpful reviews reset to zero when the review is changed or updated is because the original votes belonged to the exact review originally posted. Changing the review or adding to it might have caused those initial helpful voters to vote another way. If the votes don't reset, those initial votes might be attached to a review they no longer wish to vote that way on.

I've been bitten on it before, too. :) I had a review with some mis-spellings in it. I changed it so I would look less stupid and lost the helpful votes in the process. I completely understand the reasoning behind the system, though, as it prevents a number of less-than-ideal situations from cropping up.

The idea I've proposed would be done with the idea that people would realize that helpful votes might only refer to the original review, rather than the updates. Of course, it might also be possible to set it up so that people can give a helpful review designation to the original review, and/or the update.

Chad's explained this one well. It also stops people from getting helpful votes and then changing the review to read something silly later.

What you're proposing would require quite a huge amount of extra code and a complete change of the way the data is stored. I'd need to, really, store each version of the review text, attach the helpful votes to the appropriate text, and then find a way to convey all this to the visitor.

I understand Craig's point and, on a more robust system, it's a good suggestion. Amazon implements their own system the way I have done it here and so do most others on the 'net. I'm content with it the way it is now, but that's probably fueled by not having any time to spend coding anything additional :)

I can certainly understand not wanting to do it if it involves huge amounts of time dealing with code for something relatively minor. I just thought I'd run it by.