I've been spammed by a response to one of my reviews. Which was odd as I almost never review and, when I do, it's just cryptic notes intended for my own use.

Yeah, they've clearly got a lot of 'bot activity. I periodically get emails saying so-and-so is following your reviews, which, since I almost never give reviews, just ratings, is just a weird thing for a person to do. So I conclude they are generally not persons.

I don't think I've ever actually reviewed anything although I feel like I should because I have Thoughts and Opinions and here's this place expressly for those, why not put them there? But I haven't. And I haven't even looked at many. When I do tip my toe in it is usually for some book that I have strong feelings about already and if the reviews I look at do not agree with me enough I abandon the whole concept for a while.

For the most part I don't review unless I want a note for myself, or friends, or feel strongly. Exception for books written by friends because they always warrant reviews.

I just don't enjoy writing that much, and trying to write a review makes me feel inarticulate. So I have to really love or REALLY REALLY hate something to take the trouble. I think I've written maybe 2 positive and one negative (it was SOOOO bad) review. Though I do appreciate that friends like Pix & hippocampus do take the trouble.

That's troubling that people are weaponizing reviews like that.

That is horrible. But from knowing GR and their policies fairly well, I can't see much they can or will do about it, besides perhaps trying to fight bots. They are firm believers in not being prescriptive about how people use stars (and apparently people have used them in all sorts of ways beyond rating books and have done so for a long time). And, of course, most books are actually overrated per what GR says the stars stand for (i.e., 2 stars = it was okay). I think I may be the only one who actually follows their star guidelines.

I tend to only read the reviews from my friends on Goodreads, unless there are none from my friends. Mostly I use it to keep track of what I have read.

For me too, GR is most important as a way to log what I have read & want to read. When I was more active as a librarian and for my themed book salon, I used listopia a lot.

The brief snippet I write after reading is more of a reminder to myself than anything, but I also try to write something since I personally tend to disregard any individual assessment that is only a star rating. I know far too many people who leave 4 or 5 stars for everything they read, which is then fairly useless to me in terms of figuring out whether I would like it. I'm always happy when a friend has read something I'm considering (more rare than I'd like) and left an actual review and I definitely read those. Otherwise, I pretty much only read 1 or 2 star reviews since I find them the most helpful in figuring out whether I want to read something. But I usually go there only when I have something in mind for some other reason, not to actually find random things I might want to read.

For that reason, I tend to go in waves in terms of logging my reading there (I log all my reading in a separate spreadsheet regardless) and this conversation is making me realizing I haven't been doing so for much of this year. I need to remedy that.

And, of course, most books are actually overrated per what GR says the stars stand for (i.e., 2 stars = it was okay). I think I may be the only one who actually follows their star guidelines.

Not the only one, but I do sometimes feel like a judgmental jerk because I give so many 3 star (i.e., I "liked it", not "really liked" or "loved" it). But I am a big fan of accuracy.

I don’t even leave stars. Rating stuff stresses me out

Not the only one, but I do sometimes feel like a judgmental jerk because I give so many 3 star (i.e., I "liked it", not "really liked" or "loved" it). But I am a big fan of accuracy.

It's a weird point of pride for me that my star average hovers just above 3. I mean, 5 stars = "it was amazing" and I just don't think very many books (or movies) warrant that. Sorry (not sorry). Goodreads mission is to help readers find books they will like so, if I am going to rate things, I prefer to be honest.

I don’t even leave stars. Rating stuff stresses me out

I can totally see that. At least you are not skewing it in either direction!

I mostly give 3 stars as well - I've got to really love something to go to 4 or 5. And I mostly don't give 1s or 2s unless something was really bad. I do have a category for "Did not finish" and I like to write notes about why. Mostly when the book was so stereotypical or just very boring.

I don't rate most books except ones I really love, which get five stars. For a while I was rating the four-star ones, but stopped for no particular reason. I do use Goodreads quite a lot to log my reading, with a lot of useful-to-me tags that I sometimes use for recommending or purchasing books for my library, as well as my extensive TBR list.