According to the Penguin Blog, the group of 836 submissions will be narrowed down to 100 semi-finalists on February 19th. That doesn’t give us quite as much time as we originally thought. Less than one month to until the next level.
If you turn your attention to the reviews people have posted, you will notice that there is a question under each review that asks if you found the review helpful. You may have noticed that it’s possible to display reviews based on helpfulness votes, but is there more to this voting? Why is it there?
It turns out that there is an entire system behind this helpfulness voting. Positive votes help the rankings of reviewers, while negative votes do the opposite. There is a point system and formula as to how this works, but I don’t know the details.
So please continue to assess the reviews and vote them helpful if you feel that they contribute something positive/constructive. After taking the time to download, read, and evaluate the reviews, it’s nice for reviewers to get feedback as well, and please feel free to comment on the reviews. (Note: I did read somewhere that if you vote for the same review several times in a 24-hour period, all of your votes may get pulled.)
Also note the customer discussion at the bottom of the page. This is another space for you to ask questions, compare notes, and discuss THE SILENCE OF TREES.