Goodreads and the subtle shift of incentive

[cjsmith]

Now that I am logging things on Goodreads, I find I am starting to challenge myself. Should I read the last chapter of that tech book so I can call it completed? Should I read Le jeu des forces instead of Power Play just because I can, just because I happen to have a copy in French (not to mention it'll be a bit of a stretch for my brain)? Dang, this kind of thing could get addicting.

I bet there’s something to be learned about human motivations here, at least about my own and likely about the general case. (People get paid big bucks to increase folks’ use of web sites, so it would be naive in the extreme to expect the problem hasn’t been examined.)