I like this feature very much, but I wish Goodreads didn't add quotation marks around the quote. Some quotes are multi-paragraph passages and include spoken dialogue within the passage. Putting quotations around the whole passage makes the quote grammatically incorrect.

Maybe add a "Quote is a passage?" checkbox when adding a new quote or editing an existing quote?

Ctrl-F helps a lot. But yes, a filter would be great.

I would like to see a keyword option to narrow down quotes you are looking to combine much like there is when combining books. I was trying to combine quotes by an author with 400 quotes, and found it impossible to find the duplicates I was looking to combine.

I think the guidelines on the add a quote page are fairly clear. They were written that way, as someone already said, because we wanted literary quotes and then noticed people really like quotes. We want to collect a large and useful database of inspiring and interesting and even humorous quotes.

The reason for only allowing quotes from notable people is to make sure the quotes are interesting. Your grandmother may be very wise, but we can't be sure people will like her quotes unless she is notable. I think its the only way to do it without opening the floodgates for a lot of useless content.

I believe the original idea was just for literary quotes. That got expanded to include quotes from notable people, because of the desire to include quotes from well known people who never wrote a book.

My best guess is this is the clearest line in the sand they could draw without completely restricting things to book quotes, or completely opening up the quote server to anything and everything.

There are proverbs and old sayings that are valuable, but some people seem to want to include every cliched email forward they've ever gotten. Or quote odd things like commercials.

Yes, there are anonymous quotes that are far superior to the endless "Twilight" quotes, but judging those quotes for validity would be extremely subjective.

Yes, I understand the meaning of "notable people". I'm asking why.

As said, many of the quotes are not perceptive or witty or whatever. But if they are from notable people they are OK, while interesting quotes from non-notable people are not. I also don't see how a paragraph from Twilight qualifies as a quote from a notable person.

I'm not trying to start an argument about this, just curious about the criteria. It doesn't really seem to be very clear cut to me.

"Notable People" is also linked to a definition on Wikipedia. Someone's grandmother wouldn't fit the criteria.

Also, many users don't even include quotes that would be considered perceptive or witty. They include inside jokes. Or they put utter nonsense in the quote box. I just deleted a quote that was literally the alphabet written out in lower case letters. What value is there in that?

Personally, I think it's a shame we can't flag users who abuse the quote tool. Because users who do so once, usually do so repeatedly.

Well, grandmas are not notable people. But maybe Otis can chime in. I don't think any librarian has an agenda. It's up to Goodreads what quotes are allowed and which are not legitimate.

The guidelines don't say anything about being book related. Actually it says the only criteria is that they be from "notable people".

I just went and looked at the top quotes page. Most were not from books, many not from authors, most not about books. I'm not sure how the Marilyn Monroe quote that appears on the first page is OK (although I don't believe for a second that she said that), but Homer Simpson is not. Miss Piggy is one of the names on the first page.

My question is; What is the point of the quotes, if not to express the personality of the GR member on their page? Since this is a "book-reading" site, not a quote database site, why shouldn't members be able to quote anyone they want? Maybe their friend Dave has something great to say. How does that hurt anyone?

Why would people not care what a member's grandma said if it were perceptive or witty? I like perceptive and witty quotes, I don't particularly think everything a famous person says is interesting. I've skipped around the list and some of them consist of whole pages from "Twilight" or something like that.

I'm not against cleaning up quotes and combining, trying to give the correct credit, etc. I'm all for it. But if librarians are deleting things they don't like it would be better if everyone knew the criteria.

Billy,

Here's the add a quote page:

http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/new

The instructions are clear about what kinds of quotes can be added.

I don't think it's silly at all to have the quotes book related. I don't see quotes as a way to expand our personality profiles. We can do that on our profile pages. Quotes go into the Goodreads database and there's close to 2 million members, and quotes should be of interest to many of those members. And this is a books-reading site, not just a social site. Hence the book related guidelines.

Edit: Needless to say, most members wouldn't care what a single member's grandma said, no matter how perceptive or funny.

I had no idea quotes were supposed to be book related. Besides being a silly rule, it would seem most of the quotes here would not fit in that category. Is there something that tells people the quotes should be book related?

I don't really understand, is GR trying to build a "great quotes" depository? There are lots of those on the web. I thought the quotes were just to expand on your personality profile. Why shouldn't someone have quotes from their grandma?

Isis_FG wrote: "Quotes are deleted by librarians mainly if they are not book related..."

Hmmm.... I do have some that are not strictly speaking book-related and a few that are unattributed. So it sounds like if I care about the integrity of my quote collection, I had better export often, since I don't "own" my quotes here on goodreads.

Thanks for the clarification. It's just what I need to make my decision.

Lenore wrote: "I love the new (to me -- I'm new too!) quote feature and look forward to storing my favorite quotes here on goodreads. But now I have noticed that quotes can be deleted by librarians. What happen..."

Quotes are deleted by librarians mainly if they are not book related...things like Homer Simpson quotes, quotes by your grandma, stuff like that. Sometimes quotes are also deleted if they are nonsensical (typos, etc) and no correct version can be found, or if the quote is misattributed. Basically, librarians are just trying to keep the quotes section book related and correctly listed.

I love the new (to me -- I'm new too!) quote feature and look forward to storing my favorite quotes here on goodreads. But now I have noticed that quotes can be deleted by librarians. What happens in that case? Not that I would enter a revolting quote or anything, but I would like to be sure that my collection of quotes would remain intact or that I would at least be provided with a copy before it disappeared.

oh cool thanks! :-)

Click on "x people liked this quote" and you will be taken to a page with an "edit" option.

How do you edit the quotes? There are no options next to any of my quotes that allow me to edit them.
Also, I'm not sure if you already have this, but it would be really cool if we could export our favorite quotes in order to save it on a computer. Currently I'm typing in my favorite quotes and copying it to a word file and it would be really cool to just type it in one place and be finished :-)

I'm always short on cache myself.

Laura, I've noticed than when people are editing quotes, that the results don't show right away. Think it's a caching issue.

Sorry, but I'm not seeing how to edit quotes and fix the author where the quote has more than 10 fans. When I tried to change the inaccurate Dahl quote (which has something like 84 fans), I got a message saying the change had been saved but nothing actually changed on the quote itself. Or did you mean that you're going to implement that capability for librarians? Thanks.

Do you think you could make a quotes widget that doesn't use javascript? I'd really like to be able to put it on my myspace. Thanks!!

I've been using that, but this would be easier. :)

Thanks!

Good call. I always use my browser's search function (in firefox its command-F), but we'll try to add that as well!

Thanks Rivka!

Otis, how about the ability to filter a list of quotes, like when combining books?

Thanks!

Click on a quote's author. One of the options on the right is "combine quotes"; clicking on it gets you checkboxes.

Have fun. :)

Otis? Rivka? Anybody?

Could you please post instructions? Thanks. I haven't tried that hard, I admit. But not seeing to how combine quotes.

Thanks for any help.

Quote combining is now live - I just played with it and it's working well!

You tempteth me! *eyes movie she was planning to watch next*

Quote combining is now live - I just played with it and it's working well!

As for quotes that are incorrect, that's a good question. You should be able to edit it and correct the author, which I think is the best way to do it.

While we're on the topic: is there any way to indicate that a quote is, um, wrong?

For example, I noticed today that on Roald Dahl's author page, he's listed as the originator of the quotation, "We are the music makers, and we are the dreamers of dreams." Not only did Dahl not originate that quote, but it doesn't even appear in one of his books -- it's recited (ironically, no less) in the movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. (The quote is actually origianlly from the British poet Arthur O'Shaughnessy. In fairness to whoever put it on Dahl's page, I've learned over the years that a lot of people think it comes originally from Roald Dahl, so poor O'Shaughnessy is probably rotating in his grave.) But there's no way to fix it on Dahl's author page, or, as far as I can tell, even to alert someone that it should be corrected. Is there something I'm missing, and if not, can that feature be added?

Merge capability is way overdue, so we'll add it over the weekend - thanks for the reminder!

I would. I edited bunches.

Just trying to clean up some of the nonsense that gets transcribed as a quote...

Any news yet on the combine/merge capability?

Geesh, you wouldn’t believe how many people leave empty spaces after they’re done typing; resulting in a “really long quote.



”
;)

Quotes are relatively new so we haven't built the combine feature yet - be I know we need it. We'll try to improve the author-link editing too!

Paul - I must have missed that episode! I, for one, would totally read that book.

Just wanted to say that I really like this feature! Also, agree with many here with the idea of being able to "organize" your quotations in some way! Love the site!

EDIT: Also, would love the quotations linked to the author, which others have requested as well!

Chelsea,

He already did, actually. One riddled with "plot holes and spelling errors" called "Fry Tricks The Brain".

(I'm a nerd, yup)

ref: http://futurama.wikia.com/wiki/The_Day_t...

Paul,

Maybe I'm just misunderstanding, but there's an author entry for Dorothy Parker - actually, there's two, now that I take a closer look - so I'm still unclear on why that happens.

But if Otis and Co. are aware, than that's all I need to know.

Clearly, the answer to your problem would be for Fry to write a book. Everybody wins!

Chelsea,

That's because there isn't an "author" entry for Ms. Parker, so it resorts to some random author in it's place. (One assumes it's because you've got a variant "dorthy parker" versus the one-book-having Dorthy Parker in the database.)

I ran into the same problem putting in a quote from a non-author, Philip J. Fry (of Futurama fame).

Otis et al. is aware of it and they're resolving the issue.

- P

Chelsea & All,

Yes, I've noticed that duplicate quotes are a problem. But I was wondering how to merge. I think the person who entered the quote first should "get the credit" but there's no way to tell who did, although there is a way to tell which version of the quote has gotten the most votes.

I guess some Goodreads users aren't using the wonderful search function before they enter a "new" quote, because the search function does work really well.

But being able to merge duplicates would be a good thing! Chelsea, thanks for posting about it.

Two questions (comments?):
First, is there a way to combine quotes, similar to how I can combine different editions of a book? Specifically, Dorothy Parker, where her delightful "book to be thrown aside" quote shows up three separate times. I've figured out how to edit and delete quotes, but I don't want to just delete the two with the smaller numbers, especially because people have added them. Am I missing something?

Also, when I look at a list of an author's quotes - say, Ms. Parker's, above - the ones I've already added have a link in place of the "add quote" box that says "in my quotes". When I click one of those links, I end up at a random author profile.

OK - Love the quotes widget, but the font on the title portion of it is a bit overwhelming (large and bold) on my blog. Can that be changed to the same font characteristics as the title in the My Books widget??

I'd like to put those two widgets next to each other, so the font matching would look much better.

Awesome awesome. I love the responsiveness of you guys!

Yay! That was exactly what I had in mind! I have myspace though so I can't use it :-( Do you think you can make a flash one sometime? thanks so much!! and again...this site rocks...I've been looking for a way to organize all the books I've read and want to read and all the thoughts and quotes I've gotten from them, and this has everything!!

A new quotes widget is a stellar idea. So stellar that I decided to whip it up this evening - so enjoy it!

http://www.goodreads.com/review/widgets

I love the quote feature! I'm new to this site and it is really useful. It would be cool if you could create a widget so that you can put one of your favorite quotes on your blog..or even one that will chose a random quote from your favorite quotes everytime someone views your blog. Would something like this be possible?

Hey Rk,

Good to see you are still around? What would you want? Just new quotes? Quote of the day? You can get an RSS feed of your friend updates, which includes quotes they might add, on your homepage (link at the bottom).

Could a rss feed be possible of the quotes feature ?

I also notice that if you don't assign a book to a quote at the time you first enter it, you cannot go back and do so later. Is that right or am I just missing how? Thanks.

Re the delete fix. Thanks! That will be really helpful.