Goodreads Librarians Group discussion
Serieses!
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Restoring a deleted collection
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Jack,Since the series no longer exists I can't see what was in it beyond knowing it was Lovecraftian. I'm uncertain why this series existed, not knowing too much about Lovecraft. Did he write in series? Can you link to the books that were in the series?
I can't see why something was deleted or why it was changed or possibly revert anything without seeing the log. Having read the linked discussion, I am not sure that these should, in fact, be series for Goodreads purposes, but again I am not that familiar with Lovecraft.
Based on that discussion post, they are not series by GR policies, they are at most imprints. They would make good Listopia lists though (with the benefit that you can add specific editions, and those editions won't be affected by combining/separating etc.) and you can ask for them to be made static by a superlibrarian so nobody can edit them.
There are, unfortunately, many librarians who aren't careful about combining short story collections without first checking for different content. The only thing you can do is leave a comprehensive librarian note. I often write something like "Contains N stories, ..." and then list them if it's not ridiculously long. ETA: I do the number first ,because in the combine screen, that's all that is visible, but it's often enough to slow someone down when the numbers don't match.
I also try to get something in the changelog similarly (force it if you have to, add some spaces to the description just to get it to save in the changelog), and in the description itself.
If it's documented in the librarian notes and in the changelog, and people still combine them incorrectly, do flag the edits.
I agree, looking at the ones so far, they do not appear to meet GR policy for a series - it looks more like imprint or just collating groups of short story books together. GR policy around series - books need to share the same universe and characters
OK. I can understand that it was not a series per GR definition.Anyway Lovecraft has (now) 21 series and many follow the same logic: collection per publishers. Lovecraft hasn't published series per GR definition.
https://www.goodreads.com/series/list...
Those collections are actually useful because there are thousands of editions of Lovecraft works and it may be difficult to find something without the help of those collections.
Anyway, now:
books like this one:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...
which have a very specific list of short stories
... are combined with things completly different like:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9...
a single short story,
and this: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9...
a collection with a different list of short stories
...and 100 other editions from various countries and various contents.
It's depressing to see that the work I've done to separate french editions (with specific contents) have been removed for obscure reasons. Now it's a mess as it was before I cleaned it.
If a rollback isn't possible, I won't do the changes again.
You're probably right that none of those Lovecraft series should be there. The problem is we're all volunteers, and nobody has taken it on to clean it up. There's no way to roll back the combines, but liberal use of the separate tool and separate from the combine page and it shouldn't take long. The best way to prevent things being screwed up again is to liberally document. Link to this discussion. Link to your sources. Librarian notes can be really long, if you need them to be (just try to be smart what you put on the first line, like I said).
This is not an issue specific to Lovecraft, though I know that doesn't make you feel better.
The clue is in the name. "Collection" denotes a publisher's series, i.e. not a series according to Goodreads.Also, the "series" you list in comment #5 are not series at all. It's best to turn them into Listopia lists, as Krazykiwi suggests.
I agree it's depressing if someone carelessly undoes all your hard work. I'm afraid a rollback isn't possible.
Thanks for your answers.For me, no need to undo someone else hard work by removing those rogue "collections". :o)
I've separated "Les Contrées du rêve" from the "The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath" because it's a collection and other titles seem to be a single short story.
Jack,I strongly suggest that you create Listopia lists as Krazykiwi and lethe have said. Those series could disappear at a moments notice and then there would be nothing.
Another tip to make this a little more manageable, use the edit and separate tool from the "All Editions" page of each work, it's much faster than reloading the entire Lovecraft combine page.That is, this is how I'd do it the most simply:
From here: https://www.goodreads.com/work/editio... sort by title, use the edit link (right click and open in a new tab) and write a librarian note and put an easy to search for tag in the title (like "JACK" or something :)
Save that page but leave the tab open.
Go back to the first tab, use the separate tool (top right of the page), and find the ones you tagged "JACK" (or whatever) and separate them.
Then go back to the other tab you have open, and remove that search word from the title.
It's several steps, but it's still faster than trying to work with the combine page for authors with as many editions and works as Lovecraft.
One last note, I suspect what actually happened is the person used autocombine. That will combine everything that has the same title other than what's in parentheses.
e.g.
Title X (Series Y)
Title X (Series Z)
Title X
Would all be combined, but
Title X Anthology
Title X (Series Y)
Title X Short Story
would not be.
Unfortunately, there is really very little can be done about it because the GR policy is to not add extra things into the title to disambiguate, but it does mean that if that happens, your librarian notes will still be there and if it happens again it'll be easier to separate.
It also means, if there is any kind of subtitle on the cover that you could legitimately use to make the titles differ, it may prevent it happening again.
Thanks for the tips. I've seen the "separate tool" inside the "All Editions" page. It's way faster indeed.I'll also create lists too as a backup (lists are linked to users, not to authors).
https://www.goodreads.com/series/179737
... and has recombined its elements (some specific french collections of short stories by Lovecraft) with different collections (with different contents). Now collections are again combined with separate short stories.
Could someone reverse this mess?
See this discussion for an explanation:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...