Flagging posts in Talk

Sorry, didn't have time to look through all the posts here to see if this has been addressed.

It is my understanding that a message in talk can be flagged if it is flagrant spam (ie only a link to a product site, or BUY MY BOOK kind of stuff), or abusive to another member.

There is a thread an author started in BookTalk about children's books. Yes, she mentioned a book she wrote as being amongst her favorite children's picture books, but she mentioned other books as well. The post started a nice conversation thread of people's favorites. The author's original post has been flagged to oblivion and I don't see this as right. Am I missing something?

We cannot tell her intentions, yes, she has a minimum profile, she mentioned her book, in an obscure way. She didn't even touchstone it. I don't see the abuse here. Possibly ignorance, possibly trying to work the system a bit, but entirely non-offensive IMO.

Am I missing something?

http://www.librarything.com/topic/243230 - link to post.

It's the grinchy side of LT. Several sufferers who just take things too far. And they are the same who scratch their heads that the board is dead or that LT isn't social enough or it hasn't grown. Bah. I'll counter flag, but it won't help much.

>1 MrsLee:

If you link to that thread, we can counter-flag.

It does seem a bit much.

Okay, I'm assuming it was this one? https://www.librarything.com/topic/243230#5831476

Sorry, I meant to, have done so now in first post.

Would it help any to bring it up in that thread? Or is it just hopeless to try to educate?

>4 MrsLee:

Well, if enough people counter-flag it . . .

You're quite right; her post started a nice conversation. I'm going to drop her a comment with the usual link to "How Authors Can Use LibraryThing".

It appears to have been a drive-by author, as I haven't seen her post again. I hadn't flagged the comment, but I do believe in full disclosure, which is why I pointed her authorship out. I agree that educating new members is the preferable route.

Her original post was deleted. I'd actually posted in the spam thread about this author (with the link to the now deleted post). I'd bet that her post in that thread was flagged by people who'd seen the other post (the deleted one). In just this one instance, I don't think it's a matter of education. I'm very sure that she didn't mention that she was the author of one of the books she mentioned, and that it was pointed out by someone else further downthread.

Yep. Found it. http://www.librarything.com/topic/243230#5831920

It doesn't much matter in any case, since she made those two posts, and hasn't been seen since. I just fixed the last flag (and that's only on my first cup of coffee :-} just wait till I've had the second one).

ETA: That's what I get for being so self-satisfied. I thought I'd posted in spam fighters about this author, but I don't see her mentioned.

We're not supposed to flag "overenthusiastic" authors no matter how flagrant. It's pretty obvious to me that she's doing it intentionally, since she omits to mention that one of the books she recommends is her own, but it's not flaggable. It's far from "entirely non-offensive", it's in fact really super-tacky, but it's also not flaggable. But there's nothing in the rules to prohibit me from adding her to my list of authors to never ever buy anything from.

>8 lorax:

We're not supposed to flag their profiles. The posts are flaggable if they are spam. This one was borderline, so I counter-flagged.