Weird behavior of review flags

A user named archivomorero has recently been posting a substantial number of reviews which consist of nothing but a number. E.g. this appears on the reviews page (https://www.librarything.com/home#reviews) as

Harry Potter y el caliz de fuego (Coleccion Harry… by J. K. Rowling -- review reads "8478886451"
Hamlet (coleccion las 100 joyas del milenio 3) by William Shakespeare -- review reads "8481301124"
ivanhoe (coleccion Las 100 joyas del milenio 65) by Walter Scott -- review reads "8481301841"

Also, for the book
Islam (Great Religions of Modern Man Series) by John Alden Williams
There is a "review" by "societystf" that reads "If you would like to share your joy in this book, please Click here." It's a mailto link that sends to... someone.

All these surely should be flagged as "Not a review." They aren't links to reviews; they are just numbers or solicitations.

Some have been flagged already, some have not. But with so many of them having come up all of a sudden, I don't remember if I have flagged them or not. When I go in to add MY flag, I flag it -- and the "flagged" icon disappears.

The flag is still there -- if I exit the page and come back, the flag reappears. But it is dismaying, at best, to go in and look at a flag and have it disappear. It looks as if I have un-flagged it -- and attempts to re-flag it don't work until the page is re-loaded. Very confusing. And I don't recall this happening before, although it's possible that it did and I didn't notice because I wasn't doing mass flagging.

Mac OS Monterey 12.4. Firefox 102.0.

archivomorero

Those look like ISBNs.

Probably an import error.

>2 lilithcat: Those look like ISBNs.

Now that you point it out, I believe you're right. (Although it's odd that they're coming in over time, not all at once.) But it's still not a review :-), and my issue remains.

And the one with the mailto is not an ISBN. I flagged it as "not a review," but it arguably should be flagged as spam. For me, as a person with autism, the guidelines are not clear enough for me to decide. Not the same bug, but certainly a difficulty. ;-)

societystf

It looks like all their 828 reviews have that "If you would like..." phrase. Almost like they are soliciting those books for their collection.

>1 waltzmn: Thanks for the report, I'm seeing this as well.

To reproduce:
1. go to https://www.librarything.com/work/28414782 and scroll down to the reviews section
2. see that the single review has been flagged as not a review (blue flag).
3. select "flag" to flag the review, then select "Flag this as not a review."
4. the "Flagged" (blue flag) box disappears

I don't remember exactly how the functionality was supposed to work, but it indicated that you flagged the review somehow and I believe (iirc) you could remove your flag, too...

NB: I'm not seeing any errors in the dev console

waltzmn (#3):

If you want clear guidelines, I'd say never ever flag anything as spam. The potential consequences of getting it wrong are too high (it's considered a violation of the TOS to wrongly flag something as spam).

>6 lorax: If you want clear guidelines, I'd say never ever flag anything as spam. The potential consequences of getting it wrong are too high (it's considered a violation of the TOS to wrongly flag something as spam).

Although a good caution, that is not a clear guideline; it is a contradiction. If it is possible for something to be spam, then there must be some conditions sufficient to declare something spam. Ultimately, what I need is an algorithm.

That said, I did not flag that item as spam, because (as you say) the cost is high -- although I observe that someone else did flag as spam.

It is sad that the LibraryThing help isn't, well, more helpful on things like this. A very large fraction of what I have learned about LT comes from talk posts that I have come across by accident. And may never find again. :-)

>7 waltzmn: Ditto, baby...

>7 waltzmn: and >8 Crypto-Willobie: I would loovvee to overhaul the Help Wiki once the site redesign is complete. Having an updated Help page with current screenshots behooves my job as member support.

I've also been flagging archivomorero's ISBN reviews through gritted teeth. I wonder if what the OP is seeing is the result of various changes in the platform, as the behaviour they are reporting is similar to the Like feature, both on LT and on other social media apps, in that if you click on something you've already flagged (liked), the action undoes your original flag.

The old LT functionality allowed for multiple flaggers; has this changed to a one time only flag? Certainly, when I've been working through lists of archivomorero's "reviews", I've not flagged those already flagged.

I think this has been corrected with the recent updates to the flagging UI. If not, please let me know where you are having problems.