The Dangers of Defunct Goodreads Groups

I have posted on here before about the dangers of exchanging book reviews on Goodreads, so I went into this with open eyes. Unfortunately, the Genre Specific Goodreads Group only has one active moderator left. I reached out to him to try to get it going again and offered to split the work and run the groups for him, but he declined. He told me to contact the moderators of the general Review Group to find out how I could get it started again by myself. I don't need to do this because I know I can't and the moderators of another group cannot do anything about it either. Unfortunately, Goodreads does not seem to "clean" its groups when moderators are AFK for months or years. 

I haven't been on Goodreads in a long time. First, I was focusing on freelancing and then on the court cases. Needless to say, I found myself in a lot of defunct Goodreads groups that haven't been closed. Goodreads really need to close groups if the moderator has not been on in a year. If the moderator has been on but has not been active and Goodreads gets complaints because the moderator cannot be contacted, again, Goodreads should reach out to the moderator with a warning that the group will be closed if the moderator isn't involved in it. 

This is important because people in groups or joining groups who do not pay attention to the moderator activity can get into trouble. One of the groups I was in no longer had a moderator. I believe it was a review group that connected people who wanted to read books for free and review them with people who wrote said books. This in itself will always be a problem. There are usually way more people writing books than those who have time to read them. Anyone posting in that group that they were interested in reviewing specific types of books would get flooded. Even people who had not been active in months or who said they were not longer accepting reviews would continue getting requests. A moderator could have set rules--like your post stays up for five books and then it gets taken down and you have to repost when you have finished those. Or, the moderator could have closed the post when the original poster said they were done. Only the moderator and not the original poster have this ability.

I also did not realize that these posts are searchable in Google. I briefly offered a free pdf to people who were interested in reviewing it on their blog. To make matters worse I did this in a group that did not have a moderator--so the post could not be taken down easily or quickly. And I was even more stupid in believing that only members of the group could see the post so I added my e-mail address to save time. Yeah, dozens of spam messages later with some of them threatening me if I didn't pay them to review their book, and I am a much wiser girl. I was able to edit the post and remove my e-mail. I also contacted Goodreads, sent them copies of the spam messages and e-mails, and told them to please remove the post altogether. It took a few weeks and I still get spam from one of them who keeps changing her email address, but eventually I hope they all get blocked. I also reported them to Amazon. You cannot post paid reviews on Amazon except in the author section. In other words, paid reviews are almost worthless and you probably won't see an increase in income. Plus, if you get caught your account will be suspended. 

So, I have tidied up my Google Group memberships and canceled several with no moderators. Some, I am still hanging around but I will cancel in June if they do not have some moderator activity. Once spammers and other unethical people take over and find out they can post whatever they want, it isn't the place you want to hang out and try to promote your book. It also can waste you a lot of time (cleaning out the spam) and it can cause you grief as well as cost you money if you aren't careful. 

Online games frequently delete accounts or kick you from being a leader if you don't log on enough. Goodreads needs to learn from this example for its groups--especially ones with a lot of activity and no moderator. It would be simple for them to send out a message saying due to lack of leadership this group will be closing on X date. Please download or save any posts you wish to keep.