Jayson > Status Update

These people seem keen on shooting their dead horse in the foot

mwana wrote: "These people seem keen on shooting their dead horse in the foot"

Exactly! I don't know what's worse, that they continue to make terrible moves, or that their blunders are so ubiquitous that I've come to expect them. 🙄

Krithika wrote: "UGGGGGGGGGGH IF THEY'RE GONNA DO THAT CAN'T THEY HAVE THE DECENCY TO EVEN REMOVE THE LINK OPTION?????!!!!!!!!!!!! IT'S USELESS NOW THAT THEY'VE NOT ALLOWED IT ANYTHING"

Indeed. I don't even know what would be useful to link to on this site apart from book pages and people's individual reviews.

Good grief GR

Krithika wrote: "IKRRRRRRRRR"

At this point, with no competitor or real alternative, they just expect that people will put up with everything they do. The sad part is, they're right. Short of quitting the site, you reside here entirely at their whim and discretion.

TL wrote: "Good grief GR"

It's not just glitches anymore. At this point, it's self-mutilation.

Is it just the ability to add new links? I just checked and a link on an old review of mine is still working.

Darcy wrote: "Is it just the ability to add new links? I just checked and a link on an old review of mine is still working."

Yes, new links. Old links are grandfathered in and will still work. Also, all links to goodreads.com pages are fine. It's just links to outside sources.

Nice! So I guess I won't be able to inform my friends about my BookTube videos anymore and probably won't even be able to post my "The Raven Cycle" updates on Saturday? Wow... I'm actually speechless... and that like never happens.
Also I tried it now in the general updates and there it let me post a link. In updates of books it won't let me post a link. Very strange.

Virginia Ronan wrote: "Nice! So I guess I won't be able to inform my friends about my BookTube videos anymore and probably won't even be able to post my "The Raven Cycle" updates on Saturday? Wow... I'm actually speechle..."

Sorry to hear that, Virginia. Yeah, that's a huge blow to BookTubers now. I didn't even think of that aspect of it. At least the link's still in your profile and you can refer people that way, but it's nowhere near as effective as a direct link. 🙁

Virginia Ronan wrote: "Also I tried it now in the general updates and there it let me post a link. In updates of books it won't let me post a link. Very strange."

Well, at least there's that workaround. The only logic I can think of is that book updates appear on the book review in the activity section while general updates aren't attached to anything. Otherwise, yes, very strange indeed. I find that continued existence on this site is all about finding workarounds for obstacles they throw in your way.

Jayson wrote: "Virginia Ronan wrote: "Also I tried it now in the general updates and there it let me post a link. In updates of books it won't let me post a link. Very strange."

Well, at least there's that worka..."

With all those detrimental changes I'm not surprised more and more of my friends decided to go to other sites like Bookstagram, storygraph and BookTube. If they continue in that vein they'll lose even more reviewers and that's a shame. 😣

Virginia Ronan wrote: "With all those detrimental changes i'm not surprised more and more of my friends decided to go to other sites like bookstagram, storygraph and booktube. if they continue in that vein they'll lose even more reviewers and that's a shame. 😣"

Storygraph has potential, but nearly everyone's already here. Users quitting or moving elsewhere isn't so much, comparatively speaking. So unless the community migrates en masse, I doubt even a far superior platform can gain much traction. Most people barely have time to manage one let alone try another. Goodreads really needs a good competitor to force it to treat it's users right.

Jayson wrote: "TL wrote: "Good grief GR"

It's not just glitches anymore. At this point, it's self-mutilation."

I just want to pull a Bill Engvall and say "Here's your sign"

As frustrating as that is, I would rather have GoodReads fix the ridiculous amount of glitches in their app ... disappearing words, notifications that show up hours late, comments that get posted 5 or 6 times, comments that seemingly vanish ... on and on and on

TL wrote: "I just want to pull a Bill Engvall and say "Here's your sign""

Lol. Maybe one day if I don't mind being "mysteriously disappeared," I'll make a gif 😁👍

Alex wrote: "While inconvenient, phishing links has gotten out of control on goodreads so I am glad they are finally doing something."

Throwing out the baby with the bathwater is indeed "something."

Dan wrote: "As frustrating as that is, I would rather have GoodReads fix the ridiculous amount of glitches in their app ... disappearing words, notifications that show up hours late, comments that get posted 5..."

Well, of course. I think we all have long lists of things we'd rather do instead of the stupid things they end up doing :)

Goodreads: Thank you for flagging and reporting all those spam comments.

Me: You are welcome.

Goodreads: But going through them and removing them is a lot of work so NO LINKS FOR YOU!!

Me: But . . . but . . .

Rod wrote: "Goodreads: Thank you for flagging and reporting all those spam comments.

Me: You are welcome.

Goodreads: But going through them and removing them is a lot of work so NO LINKS FOR YOU!!

Me: But ...."

No good deed goes unpunished.

Alex wrote: "That seems dramatic but since you are a security professional I'm curious how you think it could be accomplished better. These links are malicious and too many people are liable to click on them and cough up passwords."

Yes... "dramatic." As opposed to removing the ability to post external links period, which is apparently undramatic, and in no way an overreaction. All I'm saying is that no other site of comparable size or visibility has had to resort to these sort of draconian measures, so obviously there is another, better course.

Also, no need to be snarky here. I assure you, you're in the minority opinion in this regard. At least try to be polite, it'll get you farther with people you disagree with.

Yes, I saw this too! I wondered what it was about... Honestly, I thought it was to keep people from posting links to their blogs and booktubes and stuff. You know, to keep people on the site. I don't know, that was just my first thought.... Has anyone tried in a status update?

Maja wrote: "Has anyone tried in a status update?"

Virginia said earlier in comment 11 of this thread that you can post a link in general updates but not in book progress updates. I mentioned in this update that I was unable to post a link here, but I think I was basing that on being unable to post one in progress updates.

I didn't know this thing, these days have to be of great work for goodreads developer (with positive or negative results).
Maybe the disappearance of note field whe you ask friendship has the similar explanation?
There are no announcements for the changes in progress or ready to be released?

Andrew wrote: "I didn't know this thing, these days have to be of great work for goodreads developer (with positive or negative results).
Maybe the disappearance of note field whe you ask friendship has the simil..."

I've noticed the friendship question glitch too. It's yet another reason why I don't personally have a challenge question for friend requests; mobile users not being able access it being the main reason.

The difference is that the missing answer box for friend requests is obviously a glitch that they will have to fix, whereas this disabling of external links was announced a month ago and is 100% deliberate.

Tweet them about it. They respond close to immediately.

Richard wrote: "Tweet them about it. They respond close to immediately."

Unfortunately, I don't have a Twitter. They respond to queries on the contact page in a reasonable amount of time. I don't know that getting to them through Twitter would get any different of a response.

Jayson wrote: "Richard wrote: "Tweet them about it. They respond close to immediately."

Unfortunately, I don't have a Twitter. They respond to queries on the contact page in a reasonable amount of time. I don't ..."

No, not if they're already responding to you.

Richard wrote: "No, not if they're already responding to you."

I've got nearly 4,500 friends here, and I think it'd be more effective for me, personally, to spread awareness on this platform than any single tweet would have. Of course, that's an option for other people too. Not just to encourage change, but to inform people who might be confused about what's going on. If you're not one for contact forms, and prefer the direct approach, I do encourage people to send tweets. That just happens to not be a platform I'm active on.

Goodreads is owned by Amazon (since 2013?), so the primary motivation is selling books. Anything else is a bonus.
As for alternatives, LibraryThing is where I plan on heading as soon as I get off my lazy arse & transfer the data (Amz owns an interest but not controlling). Not as socially-oriented but great for cataloging.

Seizure Romero wrote: "Goodreads is owned by Amazon (since 2013?), so the primary motivation is selling books. Anything else is a bonus."

Well, I can't say I disagree. They definitely treat it that way.

I think there are two major things Goodreads is trying to do right now:
1) stop the phishing links
2) stop links to misinformation (every platform is getting a hard time about this right now).

Unfortunately it is the easiest to just outright ban links. I’m hoping this is a temporary measure. One of the issues (most know) is Goodreads platform is old code and really needs to be rebuilt. But so far Amazon has not seen enough profit (if any?) to make this measure of development worthwhile.

What we really need to do is show Amazon we have buying power. If you go to buy a book off Amazon make sure you click to it from a Goodreads link so Amazon gets the click hits they want that connect to sales. This might actually help them understand better the rate of users who buy from them direct.

Mel (Epic Reading) wrote: "What we really need to do is show Amazon we have buying power. If you go to buy a book off Amazon make sure you click to it from a Goodreads link so Amazon gets the click hits they want that connect to sales. This might actually help them understand better the rate of users who buy from them direct."

That might work, if you could make a direct correlation between increased purchasing and a good user experience. Alternatively, they might see a rise in referral sales as a sign things are going well, without the need to improve the website. Numbers alone wouldn't be able to make that argument. Also, I don't feel ethically right to financially reward a long history of poor performance.

Jayson wrote: "TL wrote: "I just want to pull a Bill Engvall and say "Here's your sign""

Lol. Maybe one day if I don't mind being "mysteriously disappeared," I'll make a gif 😁👍"

Have fun 👍

TL wrote: "Jayson wrote: "TL wrote: "I just want to pull a Bill Engvall and say "Here's your sign""

Lol. Maybe one day if I don't mind being "mysteriously disappeared," I'll make a gif 😁👍"

Have fun 👍"

😁👍

I got this today because I wanted to post a link to my 3 Tips to Get Approved for more books on NetGalley. :( It was very annoying. I wish that they would validate profiles and allow verified accounts to post.

Disabling all links is the wrong way to go about preventing phishing scams. GR needs to tackle the root cause of the problem itself, letting scammers create accounts in the first place. If scammers can't create an account, they can't post anything malicious at all, be it on links or on profiles (another sore spot where external links have been banned for well over a year.) Joining the last decade by enabling captcha and two-factor authentication would be a great place to start. Most of these phishing scams are created by bots, not real people.

Lisa of Troy wrote: "I got this today because I wanted to post a link to my 3 Tips to Get Approved for more books on NetGalley. :( It was very annoying. I wish that they would validate profiles and allow verified accou..."

So sorry to hear that, Lisa. What you suggest would be a very intelligent and practical alternative. Which is why it's likely never to happen 🤷‍♂️😉

Chad wrote: "Disabling all links is the wrong way to go about preventing phishing scams. GR needs to tackle the root cause of the problem itself, letting scammers create accounts in the first place. If scammers..."

Yes, I agree. Better account authentication should be their focus. Not to say they aren't doing that now, but their announcement about disabling links seemed to suggest it was a permanent solution.

What bullcrock is goodreads trying to do? This is a social site, I can't believe you're getting restricted for a simple link to nothing damaging. This is just stupidity at it's finest.

Jayson wrote: "Yes, I agree. Better account authentication should be their focus. Not to say they aren't doing that now, but their announcement about disabling links seemed to suggest it was a permanent solution."

I really hope this is no permanent solution because it will make it even harder to interact and share things on this site. And that's basically the only reason I am on GR. Because it's the only site that allows you to interact with others.

Also you can see a phishing account from miles away. They usually have 0 books 0 friends, no picture and no about me section. There are millions of those accounts and some of them have been around for years. I stopped reporting them when they sent out those links because quite honestly there are just too many of them. Thing is: If they can't post a link anymore they'll just be inactive and probably spam users per mail now. Is it prohibited to send links in messages too? Because I see another problem arising and if they come up with the same solution ... well then this site is really putting the final nail in its coffin. >_<

This just makes everything so difficult to use. I moderate groups and sometimes we use google spreadsheets and docs. I can't even link things like this anymore. GR isn't doing anything good by this It's not going to stop the spam, it's just causing inconvenience to members.
Fortunately they haven't blocked this in PM's yet, but I have a feeling even that is going to happen soon.

TMR wrote: "What bullcrock is goodreads trying to do? This is a social site, I can't believe you're getting restricted for a simple link to nothing damaging. This is just stupidity at it's finest."

It's getting to be less and less a social site every day. This was just a milestone. Combined with persistent glitches, existing users are discouraged from social activity and new users won't even bother.

Virginia Ronan wrote: "Jayson wrote: "Yes, I agree. Better account authentication should be their focus. Not to say they aren't doing that now, but their announcement about disabling links seemed to suggest it was a perm..."

We *can* send links through PM's fortunately. At least I was able to yesterday. I had made a book playlist so Spotify works though PM's. I'm assuming other sites work too.

Virginia Ronan wrote: "Jayson wrote: "Yes, I agree. Better account authentication should be their focus. Not to say they aren't doing that now, but their announcement about disabling links seemed to suggest it was a perm..."

It seems like everything they're doing is actively discouraging social interaction. Whether it's this or limiting likes or whatever crazy thing they have planned next.

I was just messaging with someone to and links in messages do still work... for now.

Bhavya wrote: "This just makes everything so difficult to use. I moderate groups and sometimes we use google spreadsheets and docs. I can't even link things like this anymore. GR isn't doing anything good by this..."

Frankly, I'd be shocked if the didn't be eventually ban external links in messages. If anything, because they can't let us have even that as an oasis from this ridiculousness.

By doing this they basically killed any integration with BookTube and Bookstagram. Groups are next to fall apart. It's increasingly an island of no contact with the outside world.

Jayson wrote: "Bhavya wrote: "This just makes everything so difficult to use. I moderate groups and sometimes we use google spreadsheets and docs. I can't even link things like this anymore. GR isn't doing anythi..."

I feel the same. Our only hope is the general status updates, which doesn't usually get as many views.

So, Goodreads can link to Amazon for purchasing books, but I couldn't if I wanted? 🙃

Bhavya wrote: "I feel the same. Our only hope is the general status updates, which doesn't usually get as many views.
"

For now. I doubt it will continue that way, considering how things are going.

GridGirl wrote: "So, Goodreads can link to Amazon for purchasing books, but I couldn't if I wanted? 🙃"

Yes, they don't trust you to do even that. You can't even link to help.goodreads.com