SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

Thanks, Corinne!

We don't tend to monitor who joins, but are pretty zealous in making sure that anyone who starts spamming the group or our members gets booted. So, if anyone notices they're getting lots of messages or comments from people who are saying things that are inappropriate or commercial in nature, please don't hesitate to let Anna or me know and we'll remove them from the group.

I am very wary of the potential for misinformation and truly thank you for bringing this to our attention. Anna and I will discuss what we think we should do. In the meantime, we really do highly encourage our group members to let us know if they see any concerning behavior from anyone in the group--in the past, someone has informed us of now-blocked members' white supremacist speech elsewhere, which shed new light on how they were commenting in our group and led to their removal.

We're very, very serious about people commenting in good faith and in a way that espouses respect for all walks of life (and hopefully, truth!)

(And for anyone concerned, no we don't allow accusations to stand on their own. We review the comments in question, the claims, and then make a determination based on our findings. We are also dedicated to having a place where people can disagree respectfully and wouldn't want to diminish anyone's urge to offer counterpoints. As long as you're not espousing hateful views, willfully breaking rules, or harassing members, you're likely not going to get any grief from us!)

No need to apologize! All good! I don't follow much in the feedback group so I'm always appreciative when pertinent things are shared here, too :D

Don’t accept friend requests from people like this. Due to a glitch in Goodreads’ (and Amazon’s) programming, they might be able to scrape info from your account, which can make life difficult for you.

Fortunately most of them are obvious Russian criminals who are either incredibly stupid or expect most people to be trusting and lazy. Just look at their profile. If their name is something like “Megan McDonald” yet they live in the Ukraine or have Cyrillic language in their profile, then they are a scammer.

I don't accept friends except for a few that I've known through boards over a long time period. The only time I was open to all was on Yuku where I was an admin on a few boards

Trike wrote: " Just look at their profile. If their name is something like “Megan McDonald” yet they live in the Ukraine or have Cyrillic language in their profile, then they are a scammer."

I've gotten a number of friend requests from these bots over the last year or so. As Trike says, they're very easy to spot. They have negligible libraries and no text reviews, not even lorem ipsum or plagiarized content, so even on the very improbable chance that they're an actual human, there's no reason to do anything with their requests but hit that ignore button.

As an update from us, we've (you know by we I mean Anna lol) done a glance through the recent additions, and removed/flagged the few we found for GR to review. We'll check periodically and hope that GR puts out a solution shortly.

However do please keep us apprised of any activity you see that's suspicious or seems to have the intent to harass/spam as the chances of us catching all profiles are slim.

Beth wrote: "As Trike says, they're very easy to spot. They have negligible libraries and no text reviews, not even lorem ipsum or plagiarized content, so even on the very improbable chance that they're an actual human, there's no reason to do anything with their requests but hit that ignore button."

Wouldn't that get people like me who have all their shelves set to private and have written no reviews (i hate to write reviews - too much like homework)?

CBRetriever wrote: "Beth wrote: "As Trike says, they're very easy to spot. They have negligible libraries and no text reviews, not even lorem ipsum or plagiarized content, so even on the very improbable chance that th..."

I wouldn't accept a friend request without being able to compare books unless I knew the person from a group.

Is your profile info in Cyrillic characters? ;)

More seriously, if a request from a profile like yours came out of nowhere (by my reckoning), I'd probably reject it, but somebody whose posts were familiar to me through a common group would get the okay.

CBRetriever wrote: "Beth wrote: "As Trike says, they're very easy to spot. They have negligible libraries and no text reviews, not even lorem ipsum or plagiarized content, so even on the very improbable chance that th..."

I think it shows you when someone has marked their profiles as private versus not having anything on their shelves. And I could very well be wrong about this, but if you initiate the friend request I think the information becomes view-able to the other party, even if they haven't accepted yet, but I could be wrong.

Yeah, most of the spam accounts are pretty obviously spammy. But whenever I get a friend request from someone I don't know from conversation or offline, I always appreciate a message--that tends to show me at least this person is definitely real and if they're doing this as part of a marketing scheme, it's a very elaborate one with a focus on relationships, which is still better than "buyonlinepharmacy.russia" links as profiles. (I am of course exaggerating, but not as much as you'd think.)

Sarah wrote: "And I could very well be wrong about this, but if you initiate the friend request I think the information becomes view-able to the other party, even if they haven't accepted yet, but I could be wrong."

Yes, I believe this is correct also based on what I’ve read. According to post #21 here and post #25 further down, a person receiving a Friend Request from a private profile will be able to view part of that profile and their shelved books while the request is outstanding so they can make an informed decision about whether or not to accept.

Yeah I get a lot of friend requests from randoms and when I look at their profile there’s usually a website in Russian on there. No books but heaps of friends. I’m sure people just click accept when they get a request and don’t even look at the profile of whoever is asking them.

I got one this week that I wasn’t sure about so I didn’t accept it. The info about them was really weird like they want people to feel for them and friend them and they had heaps of books but they were strange ones. Like they went through some groups bookshelf and said they’d read them all. And they were a member of heaps of different groups but none that I’m a member of. Lots of murder mystery ones but most of their books seemed to be bad erotic fantasy.

As mentioned here by others if I haven’t seen your name on one of my groups then I don’t want to be your friend.

I had one request that was full of religious stuff and I'm sick and looking for support. Normally I just ignore friend requests (not the Ignore option, I simply do nothing when they come in)

and thanks for clarifying the fact that they can't see my books

Sometime last year I was getting a fair number of spammer requests so I added a 'challenge' question to my friend request requirements and that seems to have eliminated the spam requests. And it's just a simple, "why are you sending me a friend request" so it's not like it takes a ton of thought to answer. But because they can't spam a friend request, they've stopped coming. I know that doesn't really work for a group, but if you're annoyed by spam requests that might help.

Melani wrote: "Sometime last year I was getting a fair number of spammer requests so I added a 'challenge' question to my friend request requirements and that seems to have eliminated the spam requests. And it's ..."

The spam requests have stopped, but it isn't because you added a question. Unless your question requires a specific, one word answer people or bots sending the request are not required to provide any answer to your question. See this thread, message 13:

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Ugh. I misunderstood the purpose of the question. Oh well. If they leave the answer blank it's a pretty easy way to say NOPE that is a spam request.