Goodreads Librarians Group discussion
Book & Author Page Issues
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errors on book pages
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That's a technical issue, actually. When you see a URL in the form /book/show/[number].[title], the [title] part of the URL is completely meaningless; the only thing that matters is the number. I could create a URL like so:https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/838856.this_is_a_neat_trick
and it would still link to book number 838856.
The question is: where are you seeing those URLs with something other than the title of the book in the [title] portion of the URL?
Cait wrote: "That's a technical issue, actually. When you see a URL in the form /book/show/[number].[title], the [title] part of the URL is completely meaningless; the only thing that matters is the number. I c..."I had copied them for myself(via cut and paste) at an earlier time based on a search for the named book -- as an easy way to find them again. That's what makes me think something has changed somehow. Because they DID point to the named book when I copied them.
I don't see anything in the change logs for these records indicating that they were edited to change from one book to another, although it's possible that the changes were from prior to the change log implementation. Do you remember when you bookmarked them?
Cait wrote: "I don't see anything in the change logs for these records indicating that they were edited to change from one book to another, although it's possible that the changes were from prior to the change ..."No. I often have several challenges going, and I keep a txt file with the URL's of books I'm considering using for each. Sorry not to be more helpful.
Should the URL with the misleading name just be deleted? Or should the name be changed to be consistent with the book it points to? At this point, I'm not thinking it's worth more of anyone's time to try to track down how/why it happened (though, as always, I'm curious).
The URL doesn't actually exist, except in your bookmark and in whereever you got the link from originally. The true URL for each book edition ends at the end of the number; everything after that is just meant to look nicer. If you can find someplace on the site which links to those editions with the wrong extra text after the number, you can report that in the Feedback group and one of the developers there could take a look and see why the link is putting the wrong extra text in the URL.
OK, thanks. I didn't understand that. I'll be careful if something like that ever turns up again to notice where the link came from.
The web address
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8...
has "Louisiana Bigshot" in its name. But the book it links to is a different one,
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8...
This web address gives the correct original book:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8...
[Notice the difference in a single digit, from 838856 to 835856]
The same thing happens with
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...
which names the book "Mortal Fear" but points to the book
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
This time, there seems to be no numerical similarity. The correct page for "Mortal Fear" is https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8...