Title: The Wall

Dear Francis,

In the last C Vu that I read, someone raised a discussion point about the book reviews, that a lot of the reviewers are not able to review the technical quality of the book. Some suggestions were made which could improve things.

A while ago, I once suggested that reviewers could give an update after a year, whether the book would still be technically relevant. What would be possible to achieve, without putting too much of a burden on the web site maintainers?

I recently noticed again, in a book some technically incorrect APIs. I did not notice this when I was reading the book for review, but only when I started using the book.

Also, may be we could add a little table to the book reviews, e.g. stating about the reviewers back ground, number of typing mistakes, pleasing layout, good index, target audience. You do not always mention those in a review, but it would make the reviews slightly more elaborate. For example, I never state recommended or not recommended with my reviews. Probably my fault, but my reviews have not always been correctly interpreted, I did not always agree with the rating someone made up out of my review.

Silvia de Beer

If a reviewer disagrees with a classification they should let Peter Hamilton know, I guess that <webmaster@accu.org> should reach him. If reviewers want to add to, or change a review in the light of experience, I would be very happy to have these changes sent direct to me. They should include details of the issue in which the review originally appeared as well as the title of the book.

Similarly, if others want to add detail or caveats to a published review without writing a completely new review (which they should do if the substantially disagree with the original) they can send them to me together with the same details (issue number and book title).