Question about why these editions can't be combined

[Irene]

Hello!

I hope I am posting this question in the right place, I wasn't sure if it should go under "Book Issues" instead.

Essentially, I don't understand why there are so many Heart of Darkness listings that cannot be combined. Specifically:

This is the link to the "main" listing with almost 8,000 editions, using the popular Penguin edition as an example: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4...
As you can see in the description of this edition, it contains the Congo Diary and other selections, as do many of the other editions of the Heart of Darkness listed together on that page.

Now, this is the exact same book down to the page numbers, but it considered a different book listing with only 21 editions:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...

And this is yet another listing with 10 different editions of the same book in ebook form: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6...
This specific edition of the book, linked here (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4...) is grouped together with the book above. Both of these editions should be titled "Heart of Darkness" alone without the Congo Diary being mentioned in the titles, as can be seen on the front covers. But regardless of variations in the title, their content is the same as the first 2 books I linked.

I guess I don't understand why these books are considered different books despite having the same content.

Some editions grouped together with that first link such as this Norton edition has hundreds of additional pages of other content: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3...
and yet it considered a different edition of the same book rather than its own individual book.

Perhaps there is a rule I have missed or misunderstood, so I would greatly appreciate an explanation as to why some editions can be combined/added to the same book listing but others cannot.

Thank you in advance and apologies for the long question - I thought I should provide specific examples to better explain my question and confusion.

[Renske]

Partially it might just be that no one has worked on it. Or someone tried but couldn't finish it, leading to some of the smaller groups of editions.

And in this case, if the title 'Heart of Darkness' is both used for editions with and without other content, with this number of books it is just impossible to keep the combing right, practically speaking. People might have tried, hence why those editions titled 'Heart of Darkness and The Congo Diary' are separate.

[Irene]

Hello! I've requested them to be combined at least twice before in the last few years and someone always does it, and then it gets undone by someone else weeks or months later. The person who reversed it last time said the editions containing the Congo Diary needed to be separate from the ones that don't have it, but that doesn't make sense to me because every edition on that first link is different with some, like that popular Penguin edition, containing it.

It's just the 3 main listings that need to be combined that I linked above. Would you recommend that I try asking again in "Book Issues"? Can someone add a note to not separate them again, unless it's violating a GR rule that I'm unfamiliar with?

These are the listings:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4... (with 7,854 editions)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2... (with 21 editions)
and https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6... (with 10 editions)

Thank you!

[Irene]

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