abusive blue flags

I ran into this one via a link from a thread about the publisher on Absolute Write. Someone or someones had attempted to redflag and blueflag two reviews into oblivion because the review wasn't favourable. When I had a look, it became clear that there'd been a campaign of blue-flagging all the unfavourable reviews in an attempt to hide them. Over the last couple of years most of the flags have been green flagged away, but I've just noticed that there are still a few that need to be cleared.

This title had a fair number of reviews, many unfavourable, because it was an LTER title, but it might be worth checking other titles from this publisher for abusive review flagging.

http://www.librarything.com/work/9445869/

Could be the publisher, or could be the author. The publisher seems to use the membername "wildwolf." I believe I deleted a bunch of his or her book-promoting things from the published review field of several books (things that didn't qualify as published reviews).

Some of the people that give this publisher's books a 5-star rating look like potential sock accounts.
http://www.librarything.com/profile/JamboJambo
http://www.librarything.com/profile/dogma123
http://www.librarything.com/profile/TennisPro5
and more...

Will post more info on the spam-reporting thread.

Ta. I've had bad RSI and don't have the stamina at the moment to go chasing down all the tentacles, but expected that there would be some.

I don't see where the unfavorable reviews outnumber the favorable ones, and the few that are low rated appear at a glance to be well-written. The one blue flagged that is showing just now is not a review, but an explanation/apology from the publisher and as such is blue-flaggable, though I would not have. Personally, I think whomever did so is just being an a** because it's a reasonable attempt to put the information where it will most likely reach the widest audience, not buried in a thread that the vast majority would never see.

I think most of the flags on negative reviews are gone now because people counter-voted them. I suspect, though, that when other LT members noticed someone flagging negative reviews, that didn't make them particularly well-disposed to the presumed culprit. Hence, members might be more likely to go to the trouble of adding the blue flag on the publisher's non-review. (Did this case come up before? I seem to remember a previous discussion of Wild Wolf. At any rate, we have definitely seen cases before where authors have used the "review" field as a place to defend themselves against the critiques in other reviews, and once even to attack one of the reviewers personally. All that makes people especially wary of this kind of review.)

I would have thought it harsh to blue flag the "explanation" review, *if* there hadn't been a concerted campaign to blue flag unfavourable reviews -- IIRC, all of the legitimate negative reviews were blue-flagged a year or two ago when that book first came to my attention.

Also, it is widely considered tacky on LT groups to post a a review of your own book (as author or publisher) and five star the book with your review to skew the ratings. That wouldn't have endeared the publisher's review to people either.