Now I understand better how Goodreads works. Call me naive, actually I really am, but I always thought the ratings were here to express what you think of a book that you've read (but not necessarily finished), whereas the shelves were here to serve as shelves (who could have guessed?
) or as a way to share some thoughts.
As Mivo said, those ratings are used by other websites. I would rather see people create a shelf "I can't wait to read the last book of this series" than put a five-star months ahead of the release. In short, in my opinion the shelves are fair game, the ratings are not.
But now I know that it's not the way Goodreads works. It's true it's not like that for every book nor every author, so maybe I didn't come across that kind of review before. Or maybe I did, I tend to be oblivious to that kind of things
All in all, I still find Goodreads to be a good place to discover authors, receive nice recommendations and interact with fellow readers (when I'm not here, that is
).