Abuse of rating system

Since Librarything threatens draconian actions against inappropriate flagging, I'm wondering if it's even indicated to report blatant abuse of the ratings, such as rating the same book 29 times, then opening another account and rating it a few times more. While I don't actually care, and I'm smart enough to figure out when a rating is phoney, still I wonder if anyone has a view on this.

There are clauses in the TOS that forbid subverting or misusing site features and sock puppet accounts, so your example would be a flaggable offence.

If someone has 29 copies of a book, yes, they can rate the book 29 times. Some people do have two accounts for various legitimate reasons, and, of course, if that second account had additional copies of the book, those could also be given ratings.

In any case, there's no way to flag a rating.

It would be helpful if you would provide links to the pages where you are seeing this, so that it can be determined whether this is abuse or not.

It occurs to me that this might also be an import error.

>4 lilithcat: I was just thinking that same thing. Since the GR and Shelfari imports created some wonky things, that might be possible.

Since the ratings don't do much and the multiple 5 star rating from one account are fairly easy to spot I don't think it's really a worry. Any author who does this is likely to be doing other things, too.

>4 lilithcat: >5 gilroy: Very likely.

I know I saw this a looooong time ago, and I forget where we discussed this.
I think I’m seeing sock puppet accounts for rating and reviewing a small set of authors.

I noticed today that two new accounts have an overlap in their catalogs.

https://www.librarything.com/profile/Cywizard

https://www.librarything.com/profile/Philpott

I looked a bit more at reviews of that author’s books
Michael G Kramer Omieaust.
and find a remarkable similarity in members joining, adding a handful of books, rating and reviewing and then no further activity. (Admittedly only going back two years or so.)
And also see not identical catalogs, but an awful lot of overlap with other members who have the same pattern.

Like this author as well: Gabriel F. W. Koch.
I’m thinking same publisher??

Would some of you like to explore this rabbit hole too?

Other authors in the pattern
Karen Hinton
Linda Phillips, author of Marry Christmas
Ajay Agrawal
Eli Wilde, Orchard of Skeletons
Karl Braungart - with a remarkable record of a review for every book added in LibraryThing.
John Payton Foden
Susan Rowland
Hendri Coetzee
Claudia Clarke, Dear Barack

I have to say that I am usually just amused that authors are so eager to have multiple ***** on their books. Since Tim is not convinced that ratings really mean anything, they don't do anything, and mostly just look very artificial.

>7 2wonderY: Sock puppet rings are a thing that happens sometimes, and staff should be alerted. They can check behind the scenes and see if the accounts are all using the same IP address, etc.

>8 MarthaJeanne: >9 norabelle414: That. (I do agree it's somewhat obnoxious, but on LT it doesn't really do much).

>7 2wonderY: I'm digging into this but it'll probably take awhile because I need to dig into it in increments. I'm finding some oddities but need to find hard evidence.

Here's a good one: double reviews being posted at https://www.librarything.com/work/29561037/reviews/234345167

>7 2wonderY: Found another set of dupe reviews at https://www.librarything.com/work/26944138/reviews/214031699 (handling accounts as I go). This set requires a little more investigation, because the 2nd reviewer could have just copied the 1st (they were posted some days apart, and the 1st reviewer has been on the site since 2016).

>11 kristilabrie: I’m glad you like tracking these. I find it fascinating, but it gives me a headache too.