All About Books discussion

Becca and everyone else, sorry for the confusion, I did unsubscribe her. I've written a little note about it too Becca (mods), but probably you haven't spotted it yet.

Becca - thank you for your efficient handling of this :)

I had already noticed that several of her "5*" reviews were written in similar language, so had my suspicions about their authenticity. The one poor review, which quoted risible sentences from the text which simply do not make sense, I shared some time ago.

What gets me though is that this WORKED! 3 and a half thousand members have marked this book as "to read". She has clearly duped many more readers than just the ones in this group :(

To my mind this is far worse than self-promoting. If you look back through, you will see that a few months ago this person actually told me on a thread that she was very young, and that her profile was set to private because of "parental control". At least self-promotion is honest! Deluded, possibly, when some authors feel they have some sort of "gift", but...

I'm not sure she has a following in Portugal, Bette. From memory, when I looked into it a few months ago, the fan movement was spearheaded by a... "Marianne" LOL! But maybe you found out something else.

I must admit that I really don't want to spend any more time on this though, and am grateful to Becca for finally sorting it out :)

@Jenny - That's good, that means she's blocked from rejoining ;)

@Jean - Haha, no probs. I had been trying to find some kind of concrete pattern in the reviews for the book for a while, but I couldn't find anything solid enough to report really. I feel sorry for the poor GR staff member that has to read my loooooong mail.

Anyway, I hope this is the end of it and that she doesn't come back under another pseudonym (I still pronounce that as poseidon in my head, which I've done since I was a kid btw LOL).

Happy self-promotion-free reading!

Hahaha, "The Pseudonym Adventure" Becca? Or maybe it doesn't work that way round?!

I have "bookmarked" her author page, as I notice she's brought another book out. So if anyone starts enthusing on a regularly basis about it, my antennae will be up, and I suspect many others' will too :)

Right, I will get off this thread now, and hope it reverts to being nice "Ask the mods" questions and suggestions again :)

i know this may not be the right place but not sure who to turn to.have any of you moderators or others having issues getting on here and staying on goodreads? i have been having trouble all day and wanted to know how many of us experienced this...thanks for your help...

Hi Jennifer, yes, GR seems to have crashed yesterday but it seems to work OK now.

I wondered about that myself! I couldn't get the app to work and when I logged out and tried to log back in it wouldn't let me. Thought it was something to do with my internet.

Becca wrote: "I wondered about that myself! I couldn't get the app to work and when I logged out and tried to log back in it wouldn't let me. Thought it was something to do with my internet."

I was the same until I saw Jean's post on facebook.

i thought so too but wanted to double check.thanks everyone for your help and have a great weekend...

After the outage of yesterday not everything is working fine, at least for me. I'm not receiving mail notifications so I'm completely lost, I don't see where other members comment in the groups, neither comments in reviews, in my reading progress or in the updates, personal messages and so on.
So, if you see that I don't answer to one of your comments, it's not my fault.
I already talked about this issue in the Feedback group but maybe another member has the same problem so I wanted to say it also here.

Has the birthday thread been removed? I can't find it for looking (as they say...)

Dely - I'm probably stating the obvious, but have you checked the settings on your profile? It could be that they've reset to a default. Or maybe the mods have another idea.

Jean wrote: "Has the birthday thread been removed? I can't find it for looking (as they say...)

Dely - I'm probably stating the obvious, but have you checked the settings on your profile? It could be that they..."

I just tried searching for it but couldn't find it.

Jean it has infact vanished, to tell you the truth we've been hoping it would magically re-appear, but I think it is fair to assume that it won't. I don't have the vaguest of ideas how a thread dissapears into thin air but I'll open a new one in a wee bit.

Yesterday I had a really busy day - and my aunt coming to my house also for the night, not one minute even for looking up mails - so I didn't know there have been all these problems eith goodreads. Now things seem to be working all right by me...

How strange, Jenny :D

i wanted to know now that the site is up and running, if anyone is getting the daily quote emailed to them cause this is the way i know when all the books i am trying to win to review is up for the day and since we had the failure yesterday i just wanted to know if anyone here was winning any books or getting those emails? again i just wanted to also thank you all for your help yesterday and for all the good advice...this is my favorite site... thanks!!!

Jean wrote: "Dely - I'm probably stating the obvious, but have you checked the settings on your profile? It could be that they..."

Yes, the settings are alright. I'm sure it has something to do with the outage of yesterday. In the Feedback Group are a lot of new discussions about this bug. I'm also asked to verify my email everytime I login but I never receive the mail from GR to verify it.
I hope they will work soon on this.

OK - I hope so too Dely :( I dread things going wrong on this site, but its good they're working on it. If it's a known bug then hopefully it will be sorted out for you soon :)

Jean wrote: "OK - I hope so too Dely :( I dread things going wrong on this site, but its good they're working on it. If it's a known bug then hopefully it will be sorted out for you soon :)"

Yes, GR's staff is really good and they try to solve problems quickly. Now I have changed the email in my settings (I have a second email I never use) and it's working but I hope to go back to my usual email as soon as possibile.

Jennifer wrote: "i wanted to know now that the site is up and running, if anyone is getting the daily quote emailed to them cause this is the way i know when all the books i am trying to win to review is up for the..."

I have not a mail notification for everythings - I had too many mails so I changed my settings. So I really can't help you here Jennifer.
Yesterday everythings seemed to work for me, but today I've seen a mail here which was not notified to my personal mail as usual ... we'll see as things develope

I'm getting email notifications.

But if someone sends me a Personal Message, now it asks me to verify my password. I don't know whether this is just an 'improvement for security reasons' or part of the 'bug'.

Speaking of bugs, maybe we should all send Otis a can of Mortein so he can spray Goodreads and kill all those pesky bugs once and for all.

ok thanks everyone...

Bette BookAddict wrote: "I'm getting email notifications.

But if someone sends me a Personal Message, now it asks me to verify my password. I don't know whether this is just an 'improvement for security reasons' or par..."

It always asked me to write the password with the private messages and also if I want to edit my profile. I think it's a security system.

Bette BookAddict wrote: "I'm getting email notifications.

But if someone sends me a Personal Message, now it asks me to verify my password. I don't know whether this is just an 'improvement for security reasons' or par..."

I have always had that myself.

I was just commenting on Bette's lovely poem for Mothering Sunday and it occurred to me that we don't have a poem for "commemorative" poetry, for special days during the year that we celebrate, whether national or international. What do you think?

Did you mean a specific thread for that Jean?
I personally quite like the way that Poetry Chat has turned into a place for people to not only talk about poetry books they are reading but also increasingly share poetry there. This way we're not building too many 'one-purpose-only'-threads since we all seem to get lost on occasion in our little forest of threads already ;) Also I remember us using The Monday Poem for special occasions like you've done for New Years which was nice. Was that what you meant though?

Speaking of which, it might be a nice idea to open a navigation thread sometime, a sort of what do you find where.

Yes I did, sorry Jenny! I meant a thread, possibly with an asterisk to make it stay with the general threads, near the top. Because as you say, we get lost in the "forest of threads" for the Monday poem otherwise, nice though they are to look through occasionally. (I love that image - how very Robert Frost!)

We are able to choose one specifically for the date, yes, separately from our Monday poem. As you spotted I did this at the end of the year (after consulting Laura) but again, it just merges in afterwards, so doesn't really fit the purpose I'm talking about.

Still this would be a lot better than the transitory nature of Bette's post 5222 in General Chat, don't you think? (Sorry for the reference, Bette, but I expect you'll spot this as I directed you to it! And the point is that your poem shouldn't be lost :))

If we had a thread designated for commemorative poems, then anyone remembering such a poem, and wanting to find it again, would know exactly where to go. This has happened a few times I think, as not everybody thinks of putting it in "Poetry Chat".

So you see I didn't mean a "one-purpose-only" thread, but an ongoing one.

I think your navigation thread is a brilliant idea, by the way, and hope you mods get chance to discuss that too :)

Jean wrote: "... then anyone remembering such a poem, and wanting to find it again, would know exactly where to go. ..."

Of course, people can always hunt using the search box (if they are on the website, not the app) - on the right just under the settings.

Jean wrote: "Yes I did, sorry Jenny! I meant a thread, possibly with an asterisk to make it stay with the general threads, near the top. Because as you say, we get lost in the "forest of threads" for the Monday..."

Oh yes, Jean, I think this is a great idea:) The commemorative thread is a great covering title and the asterisk brilliant!

The asterix is tricky Bette and Jean because the poetry section already has so many headline titles that each one you add minimizes the amount of Monday Poems you see and they are what this section is mainly about.
But if you'd like you can set up a thread and I link to it in General Information and links so that it is easier to find?
I still actually think they would find the most readers in Poetry Chat and - but that's obviously because I love poetry - I loved stumbeling over one in General Chit Chat ;)

I think as Poetry Chat is already asterisked, it's quite easy to find, so we should use that for discussing poetry. I also liked the way a poem just popped up in General Chit Chat, it was rather nice!

Thanks, I'll leave this one to Bette, then.

Personally if I want to look for a particular poem I remember as being a Monday poem, I reveal all the topics, as most of them are now hidden, with them being single poems. Or search, as Leslie said, using a keyword if I can remember one, except that then it tends to come a long way down the list.

I had thought a longer thread containing quite a few poems might be worth giving more prominence. Poetry chat is... more general, and not specifically for recording poems anyway. But it was just an idea.

Done:) Added to General Discussion name of thread Commemorative Poems

More of a "thank the mods" this one - thanks for deleting the two threads started up by a self-promoter an hour or so ago. I thought it was a bit much when another member had already told him to not self-promote here, that he started up a second thread with slightly different wording. Thank you for being diligent about this! :)

Yeah I told the person that selfpromotion was frowned upon here so thanks for the mod to getting rid of that Delano feller. ^_^ much obliged. LOL!

Well he sure was thorough!! ;)

thanks guys!

Mods, have you seen there's a self promoting thread has been started.

Forgot to say it's in the 2014 reads section.

Gill wrote: "Forgot to say it's in the 2014 reads section."

It should be gone now, Gill.

Gill wrote: "Mods, have you seen there's a self promoting thread has been started."

Thanks, I didn't think to report it here. Getting me really annoyed now.

Alannah wrote: "Gill wrote: "Mods, have you seen there's a self promoting thread has been started."

Thanks, I didn't think to report it here. Getting me really annoyed now."

I'm glad I saw your comment, Alannah, or I'd never have noticed. Well spotted!

I also sent her a message underlying our rules and she apoligized.

I also commented to her on that post about no self-promotion.

So did I.

Yes, thanks Alannah and Bette, but your comments had to be deleted along with the thread.

Shirley wrote: "Yes, thanks Alannah and Bette, but your comments had to be deleted along with the thread."

Yes, I know. I actually felt a bit awkward about telling her!

Thank you for picking that one up Shirley (and Laura). I too saw it last night and thought that particular self-promoter was just being disingenuous on the thread, by saying to Bette that she would "check the rules." It's not as if there are many actual rules!

It's so revealing when new members only ever post one comment - about their book! Or introduce themselves twice - as authors. Or go very quiet when invited to join a discussion...as here (The discussion around the final post on Apr 30th is revealing. I spent quite a lot of time trying to be helpful in my post 1156. I doubt whether it was ever picked up.)

Jean wrote: "Thank you for picking that one up Shirley (and Laura). I too saw it last night and thought that particular self-promoter was just being disingenuous on the thread, by saying to Bette that she would..."


Jean, I was watching that member too! You know, we have self-promotion allowed in another group I'm in and honestly, I find it a pain.

Also in that group, we have a member/author based in US, who simply lurks around the threads asking questions about how Australians would say such and such. Obviously he is writing a new novel with Australian characters and wants to know what we're like. Sometimes, the naughty part of me wants to say "well, we are human, just like you..." lol.

LOL Bette - I have wondered whether to suggest a separate folder for self-promotions, (on the "suggestions for the mods" thread) in case some members want it. I know this is a way some groups deal with it. But frankly I think most of us would just avoid the threads, so it would be a bit self-defeating!

I think more groups allow self-promotion than don't. From what I see there aren't very many "readers only" groups. But I've also heard that it can be very wearing, interrupting the discussions readers want, and your inbox can get cluttered up with advertising posts you don't want too.

Hope you mods realised it was the member I meant not picking it up, by the way! Just realised that was ambiguous...

Probably Jean, it does annoy me to be honest as I am constantly getting emails from publicists begging me to read their clients's books. I don't mind doing read for reviews but not when I'm being hounded.