Get rid of anonymous member recommendations

It's been pointed out since 2008 that anonymous member recommendations would lead mostly to spam:
https://www.librarything.com/topic/36832#603367
https://www.librarything.com/topic/75676

And indeed, they are frequently used by spammers:
https://www.librarything.com/work/30417824
https://www.librarything.com/work/30417827
(these examples will only last as long as the accounts that did the recommendations, so if you see zero recommendations here instead of the current 28 and 38, then they were all spam)

Is there any significant advantage to anonymous member recommendations that I'm missing? There are probably some out there that are good non-spam recommendations but I think those could be retained while removing the ability to add new anonymous member recommendations.

This is certainly an edge case, but for years I had a recommendation stalker - any time I posted a recommendation it would soon get two thumbs-down. I just gave up on making member recommendations as a result - I wouldn't want a recommendation to become an anti-recommendation - but I can see someone else in the same situation choosing to make them anonymously instead.

Turns out the recommendations are not anonymous on the zeitgeist page, as long as they're recent: https://www.librarything.com/zeitgeist/recommendations (see all of the recommendations by spammer @benbaal88, which show up as anonymous on the work pages)

Seems like another reason to get rid of the "anonymous" option, if people could just use the zeitgeist page for stalking anyway.

Adding my vote to remove the anonymous recommendation option.

Oh, interesting! Yeah, that removes the edge case from consideration.

>2 lorax: What do you mean, I don't see an option to thumb down a review. I'd like it, but it's not there. Just thumbs up and flag

>6 SandraArdnas: A member recommendation, not a review - these can be thumbed down on the work pages (see https://www.librarything.com/work/25858335 for example).

>7 AnnieMod: Ah, Ok, thanks. The entire thread is about recommendations, duh

bump: https://www.librarything.com/topic/356948#8626899

Anonymous recommendations are 1) mostly used for spam and 2) not actually anonymous.

>10 timspalding:

Agreed. @knerd.knitter is going to get rid of all the spammy recs from recent events, and close down anonymous recs.

Amen. I just got about 100 copies of a recommendation for A Game of Thrones based on To Kill a Mockingbird.

>10 timspalding:

Yeah. We'r eon it.

Done. You can no longer add a member recommendation as anonymous.

>13 knerd.knitter: Lovely, thank you!

Applause!!!

I had to find this thread when into why the anonymous feature was missing.

I'll take it as a reminder to not make recommendations here the next time I look for a checkbox to remove my username.

But I'm curious. Were all anonymous recommendations deleted? (I thought of an example and checked. Genuine examples remain on the work pages and aren't showing in the member's recommendations list. It's all good.)

>16 aspirit: Genuine examples remain on the work pages and aren't showing in the member's recommendations list
I checked for this as well, and was glad to see the recommendations are still there and still anonymous.

For the at least the past couple years they hadn't been actually anonymous, since the username would show up in the helpers log, but that only goes back 7 days so anything older than that is safe.

We briefly allowed them again, by mistake. Lucy is removing the option now.

Anonymous ones are preserved and anonymous, but new ones are not allowed.