Update manual: Change comment

[Renske]

I think the part about change comments in the manual (https://www.goodreads.com/help/show/415) could use some improvement.

Recently I saw in a few change logs librarians had made change comments such as 'added description' or 'added publisher' but the same librarians didn't add comments about cover changes, which made me read again this part of the manual.

The current text say nothing about comments when adding or changing a cover or about page numbers, which are in my opinion some of the more important subjects for change comments.

Examples such as 'adding cover from Amazon' 'replacing low quality cover with better image of same cover from library' 'Adding page number from my own copy of this book' 'Page number from worldcat' would be more useful than 'adding a description'.
It should also explain you can't make a comment when removing a cover image.

Perhaps others have better examples of useful changes comments and better ways to explain it than I did.

[Krazykiwi]

+1 to everything Renske said. Those examples are much more useful than things like "added description" which are pretty obvious just from the log entry itself.

Also I would like to see mentioned that removing data should pretty much always be explained. Even (perhaps especially) if it's being moved to another edition.

[lethe]

+1 from me too. When I started out as a librarian I didn't even know what the change comment was for, I read "change" as a verb. (Changing the comment? Huh?)

And I too see a lot of "added cover" comments that leave out the source.

Krazykiwi wrote: "Also I would like to see mentioned that removing data should pretty much always be explained."

Except that the changelog doesn't always register comments when deleting or removing data, or editing original/default information. I've written many an elaborate comment only to discover it wasn't saved.

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

Renske wrote: "Examples such as 'adding cover from Amazon' 'replacing low quality cover with better image of same cover from library' 'Adding page number from my own copy of this book' 'Page number from worldcat' would be more useful than 'adding a description'.
It should also explain you can't make a comment when removing a cover image."


All in favor of clarifying the manual. For the first few years of being a librarian, I didn't fill in the comment box - at all! Lately I have done so, especially regarding my source when changing/adding page counts, which could be helpful to a contemplated change in the future.

[Emy]

Also, perhaps stating that when deleting and reuploading a cover the comment should be attached to the UPLOAD not the deletion. This is sort of what lethe is referring to because change comments are only associated with additions AFAIK.