Bogus reviews?

For instance: http://www.librarything.com/work/13474186/reviews/94514863

It does seem a bit surprising that so many people joined during a few days and put up two or three reviews that really say nothing but give 5 stars to that book.

That particular one is maybe the least bogus looking of the lot.

This looks more like sock puppetry to me, than flaggable reviews. Report to Jeremy?

On a related topic, is something supposed to be done about authors self-rating 5 stars, sometime self-reviewing as well, their own books (sometime several copies of the same) but being quite transparent about it (their LT pseudonym is an identifiable version of their author name, and/or sometime both are linked to by an LT author notice) ?

As I understand it authors, just like any other users, are allowed to review any books in their lists - including their own. (The practice of rave reviewing your own books seems daft to me though - you're more likely to make a bad impression).

4>

Nope. A long, long time ago Tim said he'd do something to mark such reviews as being by the author, so that we could take them with the appropriate amount of sodium chloride, but it didn't end up happening. Agreed with BarkingMatt that it's likely to backfire in the end, but that doesn't seem to stop anyone.

> 1-3

85 "reviews" of works by a new "LT Author" that are all written in the same sparse form (a few words, no capital letters or punctuation), all written within a few days of each other, all by members who joined in the same short time frame... and all the members have written only 1-2 reviews and have only a couple of books cataloged. And, for the icing on the cake, the reviews have multiple "thumbs up". No, I see no mystery here, but definitely a job for Jeremy.

Yes, I agree there is very little room for doubt it's sock puppeteering.

Zapped. Thanks. The numbers, &c. will take a little while to work though the system but the reviews are gone.

Great!

Jeremy's a hero!

Not entirely sure it was a good idea to suppress the book though. Right, it was all pretty spammy. I fully agree. But on the other hand it just might possibly still refer to a real book.

I'm sure it was a real book. And it also at first seemed like overkill to me, as well. After consideration, I think I like it. (But am still surprised.)

On the other hand, this clears the board so that if serious members add it a new work without the spammy background will be created, and the author has absolutely no value for all the work done.

The book isn't suppressed, the link to it in the OP just isn't valid anymore due to zapping of sockpuppets & their garbage.

http://www.librarything.com/work/13474186

Right, the book itself is not suppressed: http://www.librarything.com/work/13474186

Once the indexes catch up it'll just have (far) fewer members and reviews.

Okay, sorry, suppressing the book was the only thing I was worried about. If not : forget I spoke.

love the author biography

> 17

While I appreciate the member's annoyance at Mr. Appel, that is just as inappropriate as posting the an image of cans of Spam® as an author image.

Infecting the site with garbage shouldn't be tolerated, whether from overenthusiastic authors or members who think they are "helping".