[meeera]

This isn't just affecting people who complain about a certain group of badly behaving authors. It's also affecting, for example, queer users & book groups who discuss viciously homophobic authors and maintain their shelves accordingly. Shelves are often used a reminder for individuals in the future about who they might want or not want to pay/deal with/review. It is simply a reminder to themselves to "go elsewhere", as you say.

Goodreads has for a very, very long time maintained that shelves were for the individual to use however they see fit. So this is a sudden 180 in policy, dumped on a Friday night, with no notice at all, concurrent with mass deletions. What will happen, in practice, is that now users will find another way to remind themselves and to communicate; there will be a neverending chase of changing coded shelves, and users will very likely also use one-star ratings as reminders to themselves, instead of shelves. How exactly is that an improvement?