Rachael's recent posts

Recent public posts (showing 41-60 of 117).

I understand all that about creating new ones with empty ISBNs. The will let me list my books, but it does nothing to fix the actual problem. When I first visited the current record for this ISBN, it was wrong for every single person who has added it to a shelf. It will continue to be wrong for everyone because users will continue to try to fix it to match the book they have, which is what I'm assuming happened to result in the original listing I found with title, author, and cover image for three different books.

Obviously Goodreads can't make it so that the books that everyone has in their hands suddenly have different ISBNs, but something needs to be done to the record that has that ISBN listed to try to prevent this kind of confusion. Making a note in the book description as you suggested in your most recent message might help some, but there should be something more that can be done. Is there some way, for example, to turn the one with the ISBN in the ISBN field into, for lack of a better word, a portal for the books without being a regular book listing? By which I mean give it a fake title and author (Not a book, Wal-Mart classics, whatever), make it so it isn't combined with any book, and make the description nothing more than a explanation of the multiple books/one ISBN problem and recommend that people just use a different edition for their book or find/create an edition of the book with a blank ISBN and a listing for the ISBN in the notes.

I didn't alter any ISBN. The single ISBN doesn't correspond to multiple covers, it corresponds to multiple BOOKS (different titles, authors, and contents in addition to covers). This is much more complicated than just a picture.

What do you do with multiple books that have the same ISBN? I have a bunch of books that were purchased at Wal-Mart years ago (early to mid 90s, I believe). They are all "classics" and all have the same ISBN (or at least the same number on the back of the book that is labeled as an ISBN - 1559029838). Before I realized that they all shared one ISBN, I searched for the ISBN off one (The Time Machine). The book was listed by that title but with the wrong author and picture. Since I didn't realize the ISBN problem, I corrected all the information for The Time Machine but now I can't enter any of the other books and anyone else searching for any of these books by ISBN is going to be very confused.

I rethought this and realized we still didn't get it right. Ravenclaw is an eagle, not a raven. I think they might use a raven for the costuming in the movies, but it is an eagle in the books.

There is no correct answer available. The symbols are raven, badger, lion, and snake.

Since GoodReads is now not only allowing but officially sponsoring political polls, do these have to stay as well?

http://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/2513....
http://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/2512....

The can of worms has been opened.

Add one more vote for moderator power only.

Mass editing of books

That one already exists. At the top of My Books, next to "views:" select "edit." That will give you tick boxes next to your books and a drop down list of actions to apply to all selected books, including adding and removing shelves.

EDIT: And Otis apparently types faster than me. Sorry for the double response.

I just noticed and figured others might like the update: GoodReads won!

http://bookroomreviews.wordpress.com/200...

Told you not to let my opinion of it worry you or scare you off. ;)

None of those are ringing any bells. Unless they are reprints, they definitely can't be what I remember. I'm looking for books I read, at the absolute latest, in the mid 1990s and all those suggestions have publication dates of 2003 or later.

Giving this one more try. Anyone?

I think the basic idea is site-wide polls should be about books or GoodReads in some way. Give as much leeway as possible, but if it isn't connected at all, it should go. I'm deleting some of them. The big offenders seem to be a group of middle schoolers.

Yay!

I'm not talking about polls in groups, though. I'm talking about site-wide polls. I think it is ridiculous to have polls about favorite sixth-grade teacher at some school in the site-wide polls. It clogs up the systems and makes it more difficult for people to find things related to the purpose of the site.

That said, this isn't my site. I've already posted at the librarian group to find out the consensus and possibly official word on this and certainly won't delete anything until I hear from others. Considering there is a policy to delete trivia questions that have nothing to do with books, I suspect these polls will be deleted as well.

Click on any poll --> to the right click "edit this poll" --> at the bottom is "delete this poll"

I see a lot of potential in the site-wide polls ()that is currently being hindered by an abundance of polls about politics, sports, tv, and other non-book matters. This has bugged me for a few days, but I just realized there is an option to delete a poll. Before I go wild, is there any reason I should not delete polls that have absolutely nothing to do with books?

Some examples of the polls I would love to delete are "Which CSI is the best?" "Who is the best actress?" "Who do you want to win the election?" and "What is your favorite sport to play?"

http://www.goodreads.com/poll

Usually when something new comes out it isn't linked at first so that only the percentage of users who actively visit the feedback and other official groups know about it and all the kinks can be worked out on that smaller scale before it is announced and linked to the entire GoodReads community. I'm sure it will be linked soon, hopefully after something is done about the polls having nothing to do with books issue or else that problem will escalate exponentially.

EDIT: I just realized there is an option to delete polls. I'm really tempted to go on a deleting spree and get rid of every poll about sports, politics, tv, etc. Maybe I should check in with the librarians' group first...

Polls don't have to be associated with a group. There are site-wide polls as well as group polls. I don't think polls has been added as a link anywhere yet (explore is the most likely place to eventually find it) but you can find the site-wide polls at http://www.goodreads.com/poll There are several problems with these polls, the biggest being that many of them have nothing to do with books!

Edited to fix typos that were driving me crazy.

I have to do the "Which fingers make an L trick." Hold up both hands in front of you, backs facing you, with the index fingers pointing up straight and the thumbs out to the side pointing towards each other. The one that makes the "L" is the left.