Jed, a good point. Writing.com users have brought this up in various system forums before. The website is very review-driven, meaning they like and want to encourage reviews. They (Storymaster) know that reviewers will review more often if they get recognition, which they can only get if their reviews are public. Therefore, the reviewer gets to pick whether his review is public or private.

The ONLY thing you can do to prevent public reviews (besides making the item private/for your eyes only) is to turn off Ratings / Reviews in the Item Preferences section (Section 6) of your edit screen. You can set it to email only.

Regards,
Michelle