Is it time to revise the rules for member's profiles?

[Ed]

An awful lot of members provide no information in their profiles - not even a name.

Is this beneficial to anyone?

I personally have been on the receiving end of scams, negative comments and ratings from members with no names. Why is this permitted?

If this is to be a really open forum then everyone should be required to provide their name. As authors we have to provide a name we are publishing under but readers can do anything they want and hide behind fake profiles.

As a case in point there are several members posting fake one star ratings
on books they didn't read as retaliation for political views.

I have already filed a complaint and if any other authors have had the same thing happen please message me so we can work together to stop this.

[Jim]

If a comment, recommendation, or book review posted within a discussion group attracts my attention and I feel the urge to reply or contribute my personal opinion, I first clck-on the member's Goodreads profile.

If the member posts no information or qualifications that provides sufficient detail or verifieable claims to support their backgoound or level of expertise regarding the subject matter being discussed, I ignore the comment completely.

Most serious readers understand that a rating and review are merely personal, and therefore subjective opinions. Unfortunately, many are also fraudulant or merely intended to harm the author's reputaiton. I find it best to never allow a rating or review, whether positive or negative, to determine my choice in purchasing a book.

[Lester]

I agree with Jim, but I also believe that any good author benefits from constructive criticism.

[[deleted user]]

I feel that one should at least provide a first name, a picture (real or avatar), general location (country, town) and some words about interests and hobbies. Such limited information cannot be enough to help a hacker actually target you but it would at the least prevent the pest that trolls and scammers who use fake identities represent on GR. Another point about GR that really peeves me is the fact that the same trolls/scammers keep appearing under false I.D.s but GR support services seem incapable/unwilling to use their IP addresses to ban for good those trolls/scammers. Just this morning, I flagged (again) the same troll based in Pakistan who keeps flooding the forums with his stupid adds about 'good-paying jobs' on the Internet. That troll keeps changing I.D. about every week, yet GR Support keeps letting him under a succession of false I.D.s (no pictures, changing fake names, zero reviews, but always from Pakistan). To be blunt, GR Support stinks!

[Gina]

OMG! I have been going thru the fake ratings and nasty comments from the loser trolls. All of them have no picture, no friends, no books reviewed, It started in early summer when I started a thread about scammers. In early July I started getting messages on the thread from people who claimed they had written me for a refund on my newest book and wrote that the book was garbage, etc. Then I started getting 1-Star ratings which brought my numbers down. When Goodreads did nothing after numerous complaints from me, I called the FBI. They got in touch with someone here and overnight the trolls were kicked off. Everything went on fine until early this month when they came back with more nasty messages once again demanding I delete my Scam thread. This time one of my books had 27 1-Star ratings and the other two each had 29! I called the FBI again and as of Friday night they were gone again! Good riddance!

I'm really sick of these freaks -- sick of the threats, extortion and slander. This crap has to stop! I want these parasites found and prosecuted! I would love to see them rot in solitary for the next 50-60 years with no access to phones or computers! That would be the perfect punishment!

[Bridget]

omg! I have been getting a lot of troll invites on here and Facebook as well. I'm just a reviewer but it is getting out of hand. the problem is they will create a new profile and keep on reaping havoc on our lives. idk what else to do but constantly report every time it occurs

[[deleted user]]

The same Pakistani troll pestering us is back as 'ElizabethHalley': no pictures, just 'joined' and has zero reviews, but still from Pakistan, and this is not meant in the racist way. Simply deleting his newest fake profile is useless. You need to have his IP address blocked for good but somehow GR Support seems incapable or unwilling to do that. This is coming to the point where I am wondering what worth it is for me to stay with GR.

[Gina]

Michael, "she" just posted on another thread with some spam about getting paid $22,000 from working at home! "Her" profile has a bunch of bools listed though.

[Ed]

Maybe we should all take these problems up with Amazon since they own Goodreads.

I'm going to look into that.

https://www.inputmag.com/reviews/amaz...

[Ed]

I'm also contacting the CEO of Goodreads:

veronica moss

[Gina]

How do we contact her?

[Ed]

I sent an email to
veronicamoss@goodreads.com and it hasn't bounced back so it must be a good address.

[Pamela]

Michel wrote: "I feel that one should at least provide a first name, a picture (real or avatar), general location (country, town) and some words about interests and hobbies. Such limited information cannot be eno..."

I agree with you, Michel. Does Goodreads even investigate these issues is the question?

[Ed]

I've filed three complaints about harassment and never heard a word from Goodreads.

I'm thinking authors may have a good case for legal action since fake negative reviews can impact our income.

Maybe a class action suit is in order if they don't clean up their act?

[Gina]

Ed, I was thinking the same thing! Like I said earlier, I want these useless pieces of human excrement found and prosecuted. There HAS to be a way of tracking them -- with today's technology there isn't anything that can't be done!

[Ed]

In the meantime I encourage everyone affected should send an email to the ceo, that way they can't say they didn't know about the problems.

veronicamoss@goodreads.com

[G.G.]

Many of these "members" also have porno websites attached to their profiles. Disgusting.

[Dale]

While I don't disagree with everyone's fedupness (I just coined that word, but you can use it free of charge!), I don't think most people realize how hard it is to stop electronic abuse. A site could require a certain minimum amount of information to create a profile, but that information could always be faked. How are you going to verify that a photo is genuine, or a biography, or even a street address? About the only thing that can be verified is an email address, and it's ridiculously easy to create email addresses and then dump them.

As for policing, Goodreads had over 90 million users as of 2 years ago. It has maybe 1500 employees (not sure how accurate that is), which would be one employee for every 60,000 users, and most of them aren't charged with policing the site. No web service of any size has the staff to look at every single user account and assess whether or not it represents a good actor or a bad actor. Nor are algorithms and AI as smart as we're sometimes led to believe.

Unfortunatley, there's a trade-off. The more "open" a site is and the easier it is to use, the more potential there is for abuse. The recent uptick in sites requiring two-factor authentication are a result of this. Making a site secure entails making it more cumbersome to log into and stay logged into. The same thing is true of "social" sites where people can interact relatively freely. Making it safer requires adding hoops for users to jump through, such as moderating each and every post (at least until users prove themselves).

That's why so many sites have mechanisms for users to report bad behavior. If you see bad behavior, definitely report it using the available mechanisms. On Goodreads, for example, there is a "flag" link on every single post. Based on my experience, it looks like they do pay attention when posts are flagged.

[Ed]

I have flagged numerous posts and accounts and never ever heard a word or saw any comments or negative reviews removed.

As for verification - that's simple:

Proof of purchase of a book or notice from an author that a review copy was provided before any ratings can be posted.

Amazon requires reviewers buy $50 of merchandise before anyone can review.