On booklikes, at the top menu, right side there's an envelope icon between notifications and settings. I think you can only pm one friend at a time. It might help to open another tab/window with your followed and followers showing. You can always create a sock account on goodreads and check out your old groups for members that may have posted their booklikes or Leafmarks ID.
Damn goodreads for now favoring author over reader. Particularly if you got banned just for one-starring a book.
I am done with GR I know some people call it BadReads, frankly for me it is more like MarginalWrites, because that is all they will have left if they continue like this.
As for pm on BL, I did look at that spot for messages but I have not figured how to go from there. Ah, it will come.
Yeah, I'm using BL. I'm not even on LM all that often right now, mostly because I can't add books, and they're not doing it. My new releases aren't going to be on there, so the database becomes useless to me!
The messages? HIt the little envelope, and it'll bring you to a new page, with the messages. Underneath the bar on top it should say 'search contact'. Start searching for whomever you're looking for and PM them.
Thanks for re-blogging. I figured out how to send messages. I am tempted to send a reply to GR, you know just pointing out the one-starring books you do not wish to read is not against their TOS but unfortunately, they do have a come back as I have removed all of my books and review; I only left some of the one-stars after I found out that staring was a way around the shelving.
Otherwise, I only used the groups and those not very much as life has been pretty busy.
Thank you Anna. What is really weird, I still get notifications from GR. A few minutes ago, someone apparently started following my reviews, you knows those I have pulled along with my books a few months ago.
Heh. GR is so full of bugs it's almost silly. And instead of fixing them, they pull stunts like banning people like you. Shameful. And bug-ful. Ah, the fools.
Angela, sorry that happened, but goofreads is beyond redemption. The ones they don´t ban is authors who act like assholes and their sock puppet accounts. It has become an asskisser´s site. Whatever. goofreads is lost.
BookLikes is really cool, and ALOT calmer and nicer. Enjoy your ride here and I hope you have fun.
Actually it´s a canned response. I got exactly the same one. :D Just the one they sent me was a whole lotta lot longer b/c of the removal of my reviews/books back from September, I was one of The Original 21, where they even apologized *snort* for erraneously deleting reviews which were within goofreads ToS. Not that I care, it doesn´t make a difference anymore to me. *shrug*
Cowards. How two-faced to be removing members for one-starring books while publicly reassuring everyone (including author complaints on feedback threads) that one-starring books is allowed for any reason. In fact, I even read staff responses as encouraging one-starring versus shelving on the newly banned shelf names.
Thank you all. Yes, it is much calmer here. I am still getting used to the format and honestly the groups here are not as active as they were on GR. But that may have been partly that many of us are still finding their way around and then the Christmas break came.
Who knows how many others are going to be banned over at GR, it might get a lot more lively here.
Of course, the bba are less likely to attack here because booklikes average ratings suspiciously mirror that on the bookseller sites instead of our reviews. The attacks I've seen so far have happened when booklikes review of their book or a post about an author showed up in most search engine search results above the goodreads entries. Not the most reasonable bunch in the world, so it's just a matter of time (they're already quick to denounce booklikes and Leafmarks both on their blogs).
I think so far it's discouraging to them here on booklikes because the blog posts they comment on are seen mostly by your followers, don't get quoted in any reblogs, and we can delete their comments without them whining to a receptive site support. It's much easier to attack a reviewer on amazon where reviewers cannot delete the comments and you can game the review with downvoting or on goodreads where (no matter what support says) comments and review flagging by authors can get reviews, ratings and reviewer accounts deleted. Booklikes support, as far as I can tell is way more likely to block the attacking account than the victim.
Also agreed about the groups too. I think mostly b/c those of us who came over from goofreads were (are?) still hanging around alot over-at-the-other-site and using groups re keeping up w/ friends etc. If goofreads continue their path towards hell, and I have no doubts anymore they will, BookLikes will get more users and participation in general.
I do love how attentive they are. BL fixed a bug in my timeline within 45 minutes yesterday. Or how much they really listen to our needs and wants, and changed the site (groups, PMs) to adjust to us. That´s an awesome attitude I like alot. Only the book catalogue needs still tons of work, but I am sure it will improve too over time. Me likez BookLikes.
Goodreads can slide by on existing content for quite a while and I'm sure new from kindle users will generate some review content (shorter just by nature of how not fun typing is on kindle screens is).
But already the database has been compromised by amazon data feeds and efforts to ensure books currently for sale on amazon.com override all other database considerations or accuracy. I seriously have not found one recently read, shelved or researched book that did not have problems (mostly missing or uncombined editions and some odd marketplace condition descriptions overriding formerly straight from publisher data feed book synopses). Which is good because I was still using goodreads book data too much and now I've given up. So will others. If all you get is amazon.com data, why not use amazon.com?
Once it becomes a bunch of writers reviewing themselves and gains a reputation of just being a clone of the same reviews you can write and view on amazon.com -- kiss it goodbye as soon as amazon decides it's no longer generating book sales or any promotional content that is being read by bookbuyers other than on a kindle integration. Then amazon will find the currently used by us departing bookbuyers for reviews and series info and try to snatch up like they did to Shelfari and goodreads (and tried to do with LibraryThing).
I had no idea you could get banned! And for one star reviews?! Uh oh. I two starred Lauren Oliver's New book Panic. Considering the following she has I probably would have been banned if I'd one starred it. That's unreal. I had a site try to deny me citing a non existent bit of its TOS. Too bad for them I'm a law clerk / student. They weren't expecting the reply they got. Not only did I get my product but free expedited shipping and credit. I have to look into this one star issue...
Hah! On BookLikes I had on my page for a very, very, VERY short while "Banned from Goodreads for life", but deleted it. I simply don´t care anymore. The only thing that angers me is that those asshats get away with screaming bloody murder, and GR staff has full knowledge of their shit. The site itself can rot in hell, mind you.
@Amaranth, I had it displayed in my user name "Member of The Original 21". On goofreads it was fun, now it´s just... a joke gone stale.
I don't care that much anymore, but I do mourn the loss of a good book database. Even if deleting my own account, it would have been nice to have used the goodreads database without logging in. But amazon is even ruining that.
I say I don't care, but, it does feel like a betrayal after telling everyone we could use star ratings however we like ... I know, I know, I know, they used to reassure us about shelf names as well but I figured no one would be stupid enough to interpret a one star rating as being against TOS and severe enough of a violation to ban the account. That's just ridiculous. I wonder if the FTC would step in and require goodreads to put a disclaimer that while ratings and reviews are customer opinions that negative ratings will cause accounts to be deleted?
Angela, you have a stalker. Guess who? Athelissa Doutshit has posted a short blog post about you. Nothing serious, but I thought I let you know. Webpage SS via The Hate Site.
But I do love her advice for the asshats: to stay away from BookLikes and Leafmarks. Thanks. Very much appreciated.
The idiots & clowns members can review their own books on goofreads, set up dozen of sock puppets or claim that one-stars gave them PTSD or whatever. (I am looking at you Emma Oops Paul). Have fun with your silly games. When it makes you happy. *shrug*
One step closer to making goodreads a site without readers who buy books. Not that I seriously think any of those haters are concerned with book sales anymore. I wish goodreads had a raw-er statistics page like LibraryThing. I know they always tout 20+ members but I think that most reviews and other content actually comes from way fewer participants (many now here) and suspect that only the new influx of kindle users and newly unchecked author sockpuppets and circles will lead to new reviews.
I hope the bba enjoy marketing their books to each other. Cheaper than paying a copy editor I guess.
Looking at this rationally, this could actually come back to bite them if the right person gets banned.
First point worthy of note: The email says you have been banned for breaching ToS with 'multiple violations'.
Second: You only had 98 reviews on your profile so it's something to do with those.
Third: All 98 were one star.
So, since there were no reviews alongside them, and your shelves were within ToS we have to assume it's the one star's that did it.
Now, there's no rule or ToS that says you HAVE to review all books that you shelve and/or rate so it can't be that. Perhaps you only used GR as a place to shelve books you had no interest in or did not enjoy (everyone uses the site differently, GR says so themselves) so it can't be that.
What does that leave us with? Yes, we're back to the one stars.
Just because someone rates 100 books with one star doesn't seem to breach any ToS that I can find on the site.
Seems cut and dry. They make it up as they go along. Rate enough books with one star and you're gone. Someone with enough money could take that to court and wipe the floor with them. Either that, or GR are going to have to put that in the ToS, or at the very least a disclaimer where users can find it easily.
How many will this have to happen to before the wrong person gets that email and it ends in tears?
For GR.
*I can't close without mentioning this little gem from the email - 'potentially abusive'. Surely if something has already been done it was either abusive or not abusive. Since the reasons for banning are in the past, they either ARE or ARE NOT abusive? Something MAY have the potential to be abusive, but once acted upon the 'potential' is gone and the reality of the action takes over. Can't have it both ways.
Or the FTC could fine goodreads and amazon for not putting up a clearly visible disclaimer that on this site that contains customer product opinions any customers rating books negatively (below a certain number of stars) may have their account banned.
Angela, I'm so sorry. "Potentially abusive"? WTF is that, and just what exactly did you do to violate the TOS? Aren't we allowed to use the star rating to catalog as we choose?
The whole thing stinks. It's the 21 all over again and we all saw them backpedal over that eventually. Whoever writes those emails for them should be looking for a new job, if they're not already.
Of course, it never occurs to them to question why 400 (or multiple numbers of) reviewers are deadset against them.
I know they don't care about losing reviewers or making it difficult for other professionally behaved indies to get reviews; goodreads is welcoming their sockpuppet accounts and author review circles with open arms while happily banning negative reviewers and deleting noon.a promotional content.
That person has nearly 7,000 1-star reviews. The account is set to private, so who knows what books they are, but that account HAS to be more suspect than anything you ever did. (Just click on the link avg rating: 1.28 to see the breakdown)
I am going to set up at Leafmark soon, will find you there too!
Then I don't know what it could be. As I said I have not participate much lately and I pm'ed you last year on GR why, I pulled all my books and reviews and had only recently started 1-staring BBA's as a way of shelving them. I thought the worse was over and maybe sometime down the road, I would have used BL and GR in synchronization. I am glad now that when I exported my books and reviews, I never tried to synchronize BL and GR.
Although, I have a suspicion what or better who could be behind the recent "clean-up". As soon as I can proof it, I will post.
I'm incredibly curious. As someone pointed out in a screncap, apparently they're looking for a new customer care manager, so... Kara is being replaced. Yikes on them all around, really.
This is ludicrous. Did they give you other notification that you were "breaking the rules"? I mean, they don't even have to warn you before they ban you?!?! Insane!! I don't know you, but I'm sorry that this happened to you.
Nope, no warnings. When the whole shake up started with the Original 21, a few weeks after, I had an email asking me to remove a shelf within 48 hours or have it removed for me. I renamed it. And that was the end of it. Shortly thereafter, GR started using my exclusive shelves for recommendations and converted all exclusive shelves to "read". That when I removed my books and reviews and only used GR to mostly lurk in my groups and only lately to 1-star BBA's it did not want to read.
Angela ~ I'm so disgusted with GRs. They seem to be falling apart at the seams. One of these days everyone will be snickering at them because they have no clothes on, but they'll refuse to believe it.
Glad you were already established here so we didn't have to worry about losing touch. Also glad the nimrods at the hate site are so afraid of us that they'll stay away. Shivering in their boots is all they're good at, anyway.
Regardless of how anyone feels or decides about goodreads -- please keep lots of exported csv files to backup book data, screenshot/bookmark/list groups in case you later want to read things there like posts on people's new Leafmarks and booklikes profiles, ditto for author posts/blogs following there. Consider mirroring your content somewhere, even if just offline spreadsheets, software or non-social/non-review book sites.
Even without any issues causing staff to vandalize your book catalog -- there are lots of bugs (or supposedly bugs) and the book data itself is being altered by amazon and other new data imports; lots of new less experienced librarians etc. Gotta love it when goodreads gets book info from a big five publisher data feed saying author is "Wil Aimé" and amazon marketplace seller's data shows "Aimé, Will" overrides, librarian corrects, next time amazon data runs through it overrides again ... but amazon is sure they are "the" authority on book data.
Pardon, ranting on a current pet peeve. So many librarian edits are just correcting typos and standardizing data like author names and series info to make sure books are combined, in series and on author pages correctly. It's bizarre that amazon wants to undo that. I don't even think it's completely because bba get so angry about not being able to treat goodreads book data pages and the contents of member bookshelves as if their own product pages.
Damn goodreads for now favoring author over reader. Particularly if you got banned just for one-starring a book.
As for pm on BL, I did look at that spot for messages but I have not figured how to go from there. Ah, it will come.
Yes, I would appreciate if you were to reblog.
The messages? HIt the little envelope, and it'll bring you to a new page, with the messages. Underneath the bar on top it should say 'search contact'. Start searching for whomever you're looking for and PM them.
Otherwise, I only used the groups and those not very much as life has been pretty busy.
That site is going to the dogs faster than you can shake a stick at.
BookLikes is really cool, and ALOT calmer and nicer. Enjoy your ride here and I hope you have fun.
Who knows how many others are going to be banned over at GR, it might get a lot more lively here.
I think so far it's discouraging to them here on booklikes because the blog posts they comment on are seen mostly by your followers, don't get quoted in any reblogs, and we can delete their comments without them whining to a receptive site support. It's much easier to attack a reviewer on amazon where reviewers cannot delete the comments and you can game the review with downvoting or on goodreads where (no matter what support says) comments and review flagging by authors can get reviews, ratings and reviewer accounts deleted. Booklikes support, as far as I can tell is way more likely to block the attacking account than the victim.
Also agreed about the groups too. I think mostly b/c those of us who came over from goofreads were (are?) still hanging around alot over-at-the-other-site and using groups re keeping up w/ friends etc. If goofreads continue their path towards hell, and I have no doubts anymore they will, BookLikes will get more users and participation in general.
I do love how attentive they are. BL fixed a bug in my timeline within 45 minutes yesterday. Or how much they really listen to our needs and wants, and changed the site (groups, PMs) to adjust to us. That´s an awesome attitude I like alot. Only the book catalogue needs still tons of work, but I am sure it will improve too over time. Me likez BookLikes.
But already the database has been compromised by amazon data feeds and efforts to ensure books currently for sale on amazon.com override all other database considerations or accuracy. I seriously have not found one recently read, shelved or researched book that did not have problems (mostly missing or uncombined editions and some odd marketplace condition descriptions overriding formerly straight from publisher data feed book synopses). Which is good because I was still using goodreads book data too much and now I've given up. So will others. If all you get is amazon.com data, why not use amazon.com?
Once it becomes a bunch of writers reviewing themselves and gains a reputation of just being a clone of the same reviews you can write and view on amazon.com -- kiss it goodbye as soon as amazon decides it's no longer generating book sales or any promotional content that is being read by bookbuyers other than on a kindle integration. Then amazon will find the currently used by us departing bookbuyers for reviews and series info and try to snatch up like they did to Shelfari and goodreads (and tried to do with LibraryThing).
BL is MUCH better :D
@Amaranth, I had it displayed in my user name "Member of The Original 21". On goofreads it was fun, now it´s just... a joke gone stale.
I say I don't care, but, it does feel like a betrayal after telling everyone we could use star ratings however we like ... I know, I know, I know, they used to reassure us about shelf names as well but I figured no one would be stupid enough to interpret a one star rating as being against TOS and severe enough of a violation to ban the account. That's just ridiculous. I wonder if the FTC would step in and require goodreads to put a disclaimer that while ratings and reviews are customer opinions that negative ratings will cause accounts to be deleted?
http://ctrlq.org/files/screenshots/www.stopthegrbullies.com.f8992dc10f3bcfa6aa0c96ec12b8a3de.png
But I do love her advice for the asshats: to stay away from BookLikes and Leafmarks. Thanks. Very much appreciated.
The idiots & clowns members can review their own books on goofreads, set up dozen of sock puppets or claim that one-stars gave them PTSD or whatever. (I am looking at you Emma Oops Paul). Have fun with your silly games. When it makes you happy. *shrug*
I hope the bba enjoy marketing their books to each other. Cheaper than paying a copy editor I guess.
First point worthy of note: The email says you have been banned for breaching ToS with 'multiple violations'.
Second: You only had 98 reviews on your profile so it's something to do with those.
Third: All 98 were one star.
So, since there were no reviews alongside them, and your shelves were within ToS we have to assume it's the one star's that did it.
Now, there's no rule or ToS that says you HAVE to review all books that you shelve and/or rate so it can't be that. Perhaps you only used GR as a place to shelve books you had no interest in or did not enjoy (everyone uses the site differently, GR says so themselves) so it can't be that.
What does that leave us with? Yes, we're back to the one stars.
Just because someone rates 100 books with one star doesn't seem to breach any ToS that I can find on the site.
Seems cut and dry. They make it up as they go along. Rate enough books with one star and you're gone. Someone with enough money could take that to court and wipe the floor with them. Either that, or GR are going to have to put that in the ToS, or at the very least a disclaimer where users can find it easily.
How many will this have to happen to before the wrong person gets that email and it ends in tears?
For GR.
*I can't close without mentioning this little gem from the email - 'potentially abusive'. Surely if something has already been done it was either abusive or not abusive. Since the reasons for banning are in the past, they either ARE or ARE NOT abusive? Something MAY have the potential to be abusive, but once acted upon the 'potential' is gone and the reality of the action takes over. Can't have it both ways.
I know they don't care about losing reviewers or making it difficult for other professionally behaved indies to get reviews; goodreads is welcoming their sockpuppet accounts and author review circles with open arms while happily banning negative reviewers and deleting noon.a promotional content.
https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/9862652-troypst
That person has nearly 7,000 1-star reviews. The account is set to private, so who knows what books they are, but that account HAS to be more suspect than anything you ever did. (Just click on the link avg rating: 1.28 to see the breakdown)
I am going to set up at Leafmark soon, will find you there too!
Although, I have a suspicion what or better who could be behind the recent "clean-up". As soon as I can proof it, I will post.
Glad you were already established here so we didn't have to worry about losing touch. Also glad the nimrods at the hate site are so afraid of us that they'll stay away. Shivering in their boots is all they're good at, anyway.
Even without any issues causing staff to vandalize your book catalog -- there are lots of bugs (or supposedly bugs) and the book data itself is being altered by amazon and other new data imports; lots of new less experienced librarians etc. Gotta love it when goodreads gets book info from a big five publisher data feed saying author is "Wil Aimé" and amazon marketplace seller's data shows "Aimé, Will" overrides, librarian corrects, next time amazon data runs through it overrides again ... but amazon is sure they are "the" authority on book data.
Pardon, ranting on a current pet peeve. So many librarian edits are just correcting typos and standardizing data like author names and series info to make sure books are combined, in series and on author pages correctly. It's bizarre that amazon wants to undo that. I don't even think it's completely because bba get so angry about not being able to treat goodreads book data pages and the contents of member bookshelves as if their own product pages.