Keith’s Comments (group member since Sep 19, 2008)

Keith’s comments from the Goodreads Librarians Group group.

Conveniently for me, that list already exists, which I note here for reference.
https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/8...

The series is now deleted. Thanks, rivka

rivka wrote: "This one is easy: It does not apply to all editions of each work."

That is what I thought the rule was. So, since I'm a Super, do I delete that, or is that a staff function? If me, any gotchas I should watch out for? I don't want to make things worse.

This looks to me like another that needs to go away, but I'm not perfectly clear.
https://www.goodreads.com/series/2471...

Subscribing to this thread.

Also, I may be able to assist here and there, once we have a clear path forward. Anonymous is so ridiculously unwieldy that almost anything we can do to move large, well-known texts such as this out of that profile when appropriate strikes me as A Good Thing, of also A Difficult Thing.

Oh, hey, good idea. Moved to https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

In the course of sorting through the badly-combined adaptations and abridgements of Les Miserables, I noted that https://www.goodreads.com/author/list... has a bunch of adaptations of various other classics that need to be uncombined. I've been applying the following librarian note to such, because a lot of other librarians seem not to know and keep recombining these:

DO NOT COMBINE with the original work: per Goodreads policy "Adaptations [...] should remain separated from its parent work, with the adaptor listed as primary author."

If no one else gets on it, I'll come back around to it eventually, but this miserable thing is going to take a while as it is without the distraction. Stack overflow!

So if I'm following this correctly, even greatly abridged audiobooks should stay with the original unless they've been modified somehow, such as simplifying the language for children or language students, or converting a book into a "radio drama" such that a scriptwriter or adaptor is credited, yes?

Meanwhile, parts of a book still get separated from the complete edition (which remains combined with its complete abridgements).

Thus, Les Miserables, with eBook remains combined with Les Misérables and Les Misérables, but Les Miserables Volumes I,II & III should be separated as a partial edition (probably to be combined with Les Misérables I, from which Sefiller: Fantine should be separated), while Les Misérables should be separated as an adaptation by Orson Welles, right? (BTW, Victor Hugo is a giant mess because of stuff like this, so if any other librarians are feeling ambitious….)

In the course of sorting through the badly merged adaptations and abridgements of Les Miserables, I noted that https://www.goodreads.com/author/list... has a bunch of adaptations of various other classics that need to be uncombined. I've been applying the following librarian note so such, because a lot of other librarians seem not to know and keep recombining these:

DO NOT COMBINE with the original work: per Goodreads policy "Adaptations [...] should remain separated from its parent work, with the adaptor listed as primary author."

If no one else gets on it, I'll come back around to it eventually, but this miserable thing is going to take a while as it is without the distraction. Stack overflow!

We could still add the relevant English to the OPD page, though, without violating this particular hobgoblin.

https://www.goodreads.com/help/show/2... already indicates that, "All publication dates must follow the Gregorian or Julian calendar."

It may help our Farsi Librarians if this were edited to add the note "لطفاً به جای تاریخ شمسی، از تاریخ میلادی برای سال چاپ کتا‌ب‌ها استفاده کنید. استفاده از تاریخ شمسی ترتیب اولین سال انتشار را در سیستم به هم می‌ریزد. " from https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Both notes might be profitably added to the Original Publication Date page as well.

Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "This sounds to me as if it should be done on the developer/programming side."

I agree that this would be vastly preferred by virtually all GR Librarians, and that it is the "right" way to do it. And given the list of such feature/enhancement requests of higher priority that have gone ignored for years, I feel confident that it will never, ever happen. There's simply no business justification for it (i.e., there is no way that such a change can have a positive impact on revenue, and it will cost money to implement).

Emy wrote: "…if it could be coded to attach the quote to the book rather than the author…."

That would produce a problem for books with multiple authors (e.g., a collection of essays or short stories). Proper attribution requires both a who and a where.

In the section on Editing author names, I suggest the following addition, since this function does not appear to be noted elsewhere:

Cleaning Quotes When Editing Authors

When editing the author of a book because the work is attached to the wrong author—as must often be done for books by authors who have been disambiguated from other authors of the same name—please first check the work to be edited for attached quotes. These quotes will not be moved automatically to the profile of the author to which the book will be transferred, and therefore need to be edited separately.

You can request assistance with editing such quotes in the appropriate folder of the Goodreads Librarians Group if needed.

Fine tuning of this suggested language is welcomed.

Hi Mark,

1) one of your Popular Music Fandom ebooks had the wrong title and got combined with Subversive: corrected and combined
2) not sure how you got attached to that, but I removed you

For the other two, you appear to be correctly listed and labeled as a "Contributor," not Editor, so I left these as is in accord with existing GR policy.
2)

Merry wrote: "Keith wrote: "But really, when the DB already is not keyed by ISBN, the continued choice to make ISBN record-unique is, frankly, stupid."

Agreed. Surely all that's needed is for the properties of the ISBN/ASIN fields to be changed to allow duplicates?"

FWIW, I restrict my comment to ISBN. ASIN is, and IMO should be, record-unique, because ASIN is owned and administered by Amazon and designed and intended by them to be record-unique as it does (AFAICT) key their database. It was, in fact, their solution to the problem of improperly reused ISBNs.

That said, they don't have to maintain an ASIN for anything that's no longer available if they don't want to, whereas Goodreads does. I do not know if ASIN reuse is a problem or not, though I could see it as a possible issue for ACEs, especially on Kindle.

Lizz wrote: "As a developer, I propose that Goodreads implement a search function that shows all editions with the same ISBN/ASIN, so that the readers can choose among them. The database can keep them separate by item or entry ID."

Since this would be The Real Fix, history suggests it is also Never Gonna Happen.

One thing that might help with finding the right edition from the (often stupefyingly long) Editions pages without having to alter the database schema would be to add a drop down to permit filtering by language just as we can already filter by format. Even if there are 500 editions of a book, narrowing it to the 200 English-language Paperback editions will cut search time in half without a giant development effort, and probably in half again via sorting by pub date which also already exists.

But really, when the DB already is not keyed by ISBN, the continued choice to make ISBN record-unique is, frankly, stupid. Fix it, dear Henry, dear Henry.

Might want to put a link to the feedback report here to make it easier to follow the bouncing post. ;-)

EDIT: I believe it's this one:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Corrected, merged, and tagged though it will probably be back because this is the most Sisyphean task available on this site. "Famous words need famous mouths."

Thanks, Tim; I've been tied up elsewhere.

Got it, thank you.