Help on...Goodreads functions, bookshelves, challenges etc

[Harmony]

Hi,
a couple of questions:

1/I have seen the invitation to participate in the Challenge on the front page, but I don't understand what the purpose of creating a book shelf for the challenge is? Can I just copy the name from one of the group bookshelves or should it be something I will use temporarily?

2/followers and friends:

So , I have a dozen of followers or something, I don't know why? It started a couple of months ago, 1 a week or so.. I don't write reviews and have not rated much of what I have listed as read, so I don't get why these people have picked me. Are they bots? Should I worry?

3/ My lack of reviews and ratings is mostly because I tried to compile my read list from memory all in one go a couple of years ago - I know I am missing a huge amount from my pre-teen and teen years, when I read EVERY single YA sci fi/fantasy in the well equipped local public library, and EVERY SF in the adult shelves, and as much as I could afford in the 2nd hand book store. A lot of Old Masters through the book shop, but I can't link the blurbs to my memories, so if I'm in doubt, I say nothing...

I suspect about 50% of my total reads is missing - I know when I left home (overseas) my dad moved my books and told me had counted "all 1043" of them, so that is a bit of a guide on my pre-2000 reading.

All that to ask - is it rude to not rate or not review?

cheers

[Allan]

I don't think it's rude at all, strictly your choice. I rate loosely, never review & only skim those written by others. As we've seen in the discussion here, it's so subjective and personal. People get different things out of different types of books. And no offense to any reviewers here, but too many reviews tell you half the story before passing judgment. That's too much spoiler for me, so I don't really read them. Once I've read it, I might go back to get read the opinion of someone whose judgment I value, like Z for example, but not so much before reading it. Not to mention that I read mainly from the H/N list, so it's a fixed universe and I intend to read them all, regardless of rating.

[Art, Stay home, stay safe.]

1) Creating shelves to keep track of your challenge progress is unfortunately necessary. Goodreads is using a dated system so the options are limited. The website has to recognize which books you read when (by checking the designated folder) in order for it to keep track of it all.

2) Some are bots, I get a bot friend invite every week or two, I set them on ignore and move on with my life. As for followers, usually people see what you like or the reviews and comments you leave and start following you.

3) I've had not intention of writing any reviews when I first started and these days I'm using the "review" feature only as a way to leave notes for myself and my friends. Mostly because when I recommend a book, I want to read my notes to refresh my mind on the key points that stood out to me. As Allan said, just do whatever works for you.

[Ed]

2) It appears that old accounts that haven't been used in years are sometimes taken over by scammers or something. They usually change the user's profile to link to some site like sexy-ladies.xyz and then "follow" a few profiles.

Goodreads does not have any mechanism to report suspicious accounts, so I just click "block" when those accounts try to follow me.

(If an account starts spamming groups or reviews, you can report those posts. But you can't simply report a user profile.)

Sometimes real people follow me, too. Usually it is people who have similar interests in books, but sometimes I have no idea why some people follow me.

[Oleksandr, a.k.a. Acorn]

2. add-on - there are fake accounts on Goodreads with their goal not to advertise stuff like Ed said but to boost ratings of some books. Just recently I checked reviewers from my country (Ukraine) and in top-30 there are few Ukrainian names and almost zero (most times zero) ratings/reviews of what one would assume an average Ukrainian would read.

[Harmony]

Thanks for all your replies!