Please help separate wrongfully combined Andersen's fairy tales collections

[Sammm]

Hi, so I don't know how long this became an issue; if it has been a while, I'm sorry that I may have created a topic that already existed, but in my defense, it has not been resolved, so please understand the hypothetical duplicate entry.

I will try to keep a civil tone, but I want it be known that the careless actions done by whoever did it, really angered me and caused unnecessary inconvenience, not to mention the action itself is inappropriate and inaccurate to begin with.

This batch: www.goodreads.com/work/editions/942531 has serious issues; if you go to the author's combine page ( www.goodreads.com/book/combine/6378 ) and Control/Command F to search for this batch (The Complete Fairy Tales,) you'd see that a lot of Librarians HAVE BEEN very diligently leaving Librarian Notes precisely to avoid editions being wrongfully combined, and it still happened. The most ridiculous range was for this batch to contain an edition including 156 stories and another including only 2! Like how the **** are they in any way okay to be considered representing the same book? They obviously don't contain equal amount of content! (Reminder: 156 vs 2, I don't believe there's any justification for this.)

Due to the large amount of editions in this batch, it is very likely that my personal device would not be able to handle trying to proceed the separation, so I'm posting in this group in the hopes of finding helpful people whose device are more capable. (My device failed to combine two batches of Harry Potter book 1, and the number of editions for them combined are lesser than this one.)

I'm sorry that this post is pretty much still in a very angry voice. I always convince myself that those edits are accidental, not out of malicious intent, but it's frustrating when there's nothing developed to prevent this from happening (again, reminder: 156 vs 2.)

(An additional checkbox (collective edition or not) and field (how may stories contained) and when combined, block unmatching number of stories to be processed, would have been nice. Obviously I know nothing about scripts and codes so this is my fantasy.)

Back on track, help separating editions would be very, very, appreciated. I'm seeing 8, 9, and 18 being some of the more common numbers of stories, though whether they are the same 8, 9 and 18 stories for all those editions, would require another round of checking.

I don't know if anyone would be wiling to help out, but should there be someone, I'm very grateful for it.

[Lu]

I'm starting to look into it. Trying to make sure I get all the stories right so I'm not actually separating/combining nothing yet, but I've started the research.

[Lu]

If there's no information about the fairy tales in a book, what do I do with it? Do I combine it with the original since the title is the same? Do I combine it with other books in the same situation? Or do I just separate every book in which that happens?
Also, I think this cover is wrong, every page I found about it (including Amazon, AbeBooks and the publisher's page) had a blue cover with the title Complete Fairy Tales.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8...

[Sammm]

Luisa wrote: "If there's no information about the fairy tales in a book, what do I do with it? Do I combine it with the original since the title is the same? Do I combine it with other books in the same situation? Or do I just separate every book in which that happens"

Thank you so much for volunteering! I think titles that are similar to "The Complete Fairy Tales" or "The Complete Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen" used to be its own batch, like, those are the obvious ones that claimed to be "complete" versions, with the rest that have different amount of stories being different batches separately. The easier approach seems to be separating out everything edition that does not at least have "complete" in their titles; there might be misses (especially for non English editions,) but short of that, idk what else could be done.

Thanks again for replying this!

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Luisa wrote: "Also, I think this cover is wrong, every page I found about it "

That might be a reason to create an ACE, but it would not be a reason to remove the current cover.

[Lu]

rivka wrote: "Luisa wrote: "Also, I think this cover is wrong, every page I found about it "

That might be a reason to create an ACE, but it would not be a reason to remove the current cover."

I meant I believe the cover is to a different book, actually. This one:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
What do you think?

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Just because it was also used on another edition (or a similar cover was) does not mean it was not used on this one.

[Lu]

But it's the exact same cover on both editions, the title doesn't match one of them and a deleted user changed the cover image of that edition. Both covers are really alike, the only difference is the first word.

[lethe]

Luisa wrote: "But it's the exact same cover on both editions, the title doesn't match one of them and a deleted user changed the cover image of that edition. Both covers are really alike, the only difference is ..."

Since the person changed the cover post-publication, which is against policy (and may be why they are now a deleted member :P ), I reverted the cover change.

@Sammm, I feel your pain! Argh. I think it may be due to librarians using the auto-combine function without paying heed.

Could you change the folder of this thread to Looking for a Project instead? Untangling this mess is quite a project.

[Lu]

lethe wrote: "Luisa wrote: "But it's the exact same cover on both editions, the title doesn't match one of them and a deleted user changed the cover image of that edition. Both covers are really alike, the only ..."

Thanks, the new-old cover it’s exactly the one I was talking about so I guess that confirms it was changed incorrectly.

Is there a way to leave a note on the author’s combine page about not using the auto-combine?

[Sammm]

lethe wrote: "@Sammm, I feel your pain! Argh. I think it may be due to librarians using the auto-combine function without paying heed.

Could you change the folder of this thread to Looking for a Project instead? Untangling this mess is quite a project."

I've changed the folder as suggested! I thought auto-combine would only process titles that are supremely similar, like "Fairy Tales of Hans Christian Andersen" and "The Complete Fairy Tales" doesn't feel like they are similar enough for it to be registered? If it is, I'd def. be even more cautious of this function in the future. Thanks for the input!

[Emily]

I never use auto combine. To me it's not worth things being wrongly combined by mistake. If there are two books with different content that both have the same title, like "Fairy Tales," it will combine them.

[Lu]

Apparently auto combine will link all titles that are the same, excluding any parts in parentheses. I never use it. To me it seems like it'll have a lot of flaws, especially with the excluding parentheses thing, some series have the same title and you only distinguish them by title because of the parentheses.

[Lu]

Not nearly finished but just wanted to say I'm still working on this, unfortunately I've been having less time so I'm going slower, but it's going somewhere.
If anyone wants to help just let me know and I'll fill you in on what I've done.