Goodreads Librarians Group discussion
Book & Author Page Issues
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a different sort of sisyphus' list
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Mod
YIKES!!!
And a slew of the Greg Egan books are short stories.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greg_Ega...
Should I just merge them all into the appropriate anthology and then delete? Some of them haven't been published in an anthology ... should they just be straight-up deleted with a note sent to the user?
Edit: And Terry Dowling
http://www.locusmag.com/index/s230.htm
Yikes....I'm staying away from this with a ten foot pole. I'm still trying to grow my hair back from when I was working on Cws..
Mod
I will send the user an email.
rivka wrote: "Elizabeth, yes and yes.I will send the user an email."
Thanks, Rivka! I was digging through the discussion archives to see if I could find something like a boilerplate along the lines of "It's great that you're so excited, but here's how this is supposed to work, and here's a link to an overview." (I'm guessing such a boilerplate wouldn't necessarily go in the new Librarian Manual, but could it get posted in a sticky here somewhere or something? Or should we just defer to Supers like you to send those notes? And I am more than happy to leave sending those notes in your lap.)
I'll double Rivka's YIKES!I wonder if GR Admin could do something to help out with this because 2,000+ books makes me want to run away and hide for a few weeks.
Mod
Yeah, that's essentially what I sent him, with links to the help bits on adding books and not adding non-books.
Gosh, and all in less than a month. I have less time to spend on Goodreads these days so I might shy away from these too. Ugh.
I have made a start but not getting far fast- and now its bed time
Ironically I just stumbled upon another one of his books (the user's) on accident.
So are we deleting blank entries? Like this one, where another librarian combined them:http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/64....
I figured we would want to keep one, but do we need to keep the three extra?
Oh yes. I did notice this user entered blank editions and sometimes a few of one book. It's less time consuming to simply delete all by one of each book they've entered and then with the single blank book combine and delete that one after combining. Jessica, That would be my suggestion too.
We could help automate cleaning those up, if you tell me what exactly needs to be done.
I utilized the Auto-Combine (for the first time ever) with some of these, but I've never actually deleted books, so instead I then opted to manually add to the database anthologies that some of these stories are in, because that is way more fun and rewarding. (And some of the entries this user has created should be deleted outright, as they're short stories never published in an anthology.)
Otis, almost every book on this users shelf needs to be deleted from the database. They are all "bogus" editions that were manually added by the user.So either we librarians have to go through and combine each and every of the 2,000+ editions with the most likely book, then delete the bogus ones. leaving the user with actual books on their shelves...
...or Goodreads could just wipe out everything the user added to the database (if possible). Leaving them with empty bookshelves and having to start from scratch the right way.
Personally, I'm not feeling very generous at the moment so if Goodreads could just do a mass deletion, well, I'm all for it.
Otis wrote: "We could help automate cleaning those up, if you tell me what exactly needs to be done."I suppose a straightforward exact-author + exact-title match for combine and then a delete to merge if there's an edition which wasn't added by this user -- that would take care of the ones which are actually books that are already on GR. The ones that aren't books, aren't already in the database, or have titles or authors wrong are probably going to need a human touch.
Mod
I'm guessing it was a file import, and one with no ISBNs.
...or Goodreads could just wipe out everything the user added to the database (if possible). Leaving them with empty bookshelves and having to start from scratch the right way.This solution gets my vote!
...or Goodreads could just wipe out everything the user added to the database (if possible). Leaving them with empty bookshelves and having to start from scratch the right wayGets mine to
Isis FG wrote: "...or Goodreads could just wipe out everything the user added to the database (if possible). Leaving them with empty bookshelves and having to start from scratch the right way."Gets my vote as well, because this is just egregious - I'm looking at the combine screen of Greg Egan (author) right now and this user added FIVE copies of the same book - with no details at all - FIVE! Even if it is all a result of a messed up import of his, why would he have FIVE copies of the same book in there? (and three of another, and two of another, and four of another, and so on...)
EDITED to add: And scrolling down shows that a whole bunch of authors are added wrong as well, so we are talking about serious hours of work editing these all and deleting the 'false' authors out of the db, in addition to combining and deleting the book listings...
I'm for deleting too, just make sure if he comes back he doesn't do it again.
Well, I'm not necessarily for deleting the user, just every single book on their shelves, with GR sending them a note on why the books were deleted and how books are added at this site, including the ability to properly import.
I didn't mean delete him. Sorry, that was unclear. I meant delete his books, but make sure that if he does come back he doesn't just do the same thing again.I may be mean, but I'm not that mean :D
Jessica, I wasn't sure because in this case I can understand the impulse! ;-)
It couldn't have been an import - we don't add books in an import that aren't already on GR or on Amazon.I looked at a few of the books he added and agree that they shouldn't be in the database, and am going to trust you all that the rest are the same. So I removed all books that he created.
Thank you very much Otis. That's a huge time saver for GR librarians.
Mod
Thanks, Otis! We certainly appreciate the help. Just thinking about working on those 2,000+ books made my head hurt.p.s. did anybody message this user, and if so, did you get a response? I'd hate to see him/her start again.
Mod
The times were fishy too - all 2,000 books added in one day, one entry every 10-20 seconds. Maybe a human could have done that, but I doubt it.
I wonder how he did that, if it wasn't imported like you said.
Mod
No, that wouldn't do it . . .
Well he wasn't really putting any info in, just the Title and the author. Guess that wouldn't take long.
Kind of related, how do we report someone who has been adding books incorrectly despite repeated messages from librarians?I was going to report them a few weeks ago, forgot, and can't remember where to go.
Mod
1) Here
2) Send me a message
3) Email support AT goodreads DOT com
Probably #3 is best in cases of "repeat offenders".
Thanks Rivka :) I think I'll go with option #3, I think you're already aware of this one.
The user has 2366 books, and I suspect they're all like this. He joined this month, so probably someone should send him a note (yeah, I'm not feeling up for doing so at the moment -- though clicking on the last page of his booklist, the last 2 books have covers, so maybe he did get the hang of adding pre-existing books; the books were all added on May 5, so I almost wonder whether it was some glitch with importing from a personal database file ... I've never used the import function, so I have no idea how likely such a glitch would be).