Goodreads Librarians Group discussion
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Questions (not edit requests)
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Amazon destroyed the author's database.
I am beginning to think not all of his can be blamed on the bot. Yesterday I made a correction to an author and the system kindly created a duplicate 1-space author.
Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "I am beginning to think not all of his can be blamed on the bot. Yesterday I made a correction to an author and the system kindly created a duplicate 1-space author."Sheesh!
"I know there’s a proverb which says, ‘To err is human’ but a human error is nothing to what a computer can do if it tries.”
-- Agatha Christie, Hallowe’en Party
The programming is done by humans, though.
lethe wrote: "The programming is done by humans, though."Well, it used to be. I don't know whether some of this is also AI, which means the computer is training the computer.
Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "lethe wrote: "The programming is done by humans, though."Well, it used to be. I don't know whether some of this is also AI, which means the computer is training the computer."
That would definitely explain a lot!
Just chiming in with a new issue I've seen - it appears that the newest bit of misbehavior from the bot is both randomly deleting books' original publication dates and changing the language of the description to something else entirely. It's happened twice now - once where a book's description was changed to Chinese and now a new one where it was changed to Portuguese. Figured it's probably worth bringing up as yet another issue with the damn thing.
Drace wrote: "Just chiming in with a new issue I've seen - it appears that the newest bit of misbehavior from the bot is both randomly deleting books' original publication dates and changing the language of the ..."That happens when the edition description is empty and the default description gets changed, usually due to combining. It has been happening for years.
Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Drace wrote: "Just chiming in with a new issue I've seen - it appears that the newest bit of misbehavior from the bot is both randomly deleting books' original publication dates and changing the la..."Thanks for the clarification. I assumed that because twice now the language change has coincided with the original publication date being removed, it was too weirdly specific to be anything but the bot acting up.
Text of report to support:I reported this yesterday, but got no response. The bot has created over 400 duplicate 1-space authors for L. Frank Baum. He isn't the only author the bot is doing this duplicate 1-space author thing, either. It's all over the site.
https://www.goodreads.com/author/simi...
Further, in many of these (I didn't check them all), it has changed the correct author to the incorrect author. See this librarian changelog (the only entry) for one of the duplicates:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/edit...
And if you click through on the title for that one edit, it has changed the status of that edition from Public to Invalid. Why, oh why?!!?
Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Text of report to support:I reported this yesterday, but got no response. The bot has created over 400 duplicate 1-space authors for L. Frank Baum. He isn't the only author the bot is doing this ..."
*headdesk*
The bot created a new valid record and later set it to invalid :/https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
Saturn wrote: "The bot created a new valid record and later set it to invalid :/https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1..."
That's the way it's been doing it.
According to a post in the Projects folder, the bot has added hundreds of vinyl LPs. And the band plays on ...
Yep made an LP invalid yesterday, for a deceased author, when I was cleaning up his profile.
This author was working just fine until... (I've reached my limit for edits today so can't see who made the change but I'm pretty sure I can figure out what happened).
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
Lee (of Shalott) wrote: "This author was working just fine until... (I've reached my limit for edits today so can't see who made the change but I'm pretty sure I can figure out what happened).
https://www.goodreads.com/b..."
You were (shocker) right. Fixed.
Lee (of Shalott) wrote: "(I've reached my limit for edits today so can't see who made the change but I'm pretty sure I can figure out what happened).https://www.goodreads.com/b..."
Change "show" to "edits" in the URL and you'll go directly to the changelog.
Not surprised anymore, but one of the most extreme examples I've seen so far:https://www.goodreads.com/work/editio...
(50 Editions, all combined, different authors and different titles, all starting with "Rare Antique")
(And I can't help it, but I will be separating them, so the link might be gone quite soon.)
Arenda wrote: "Not surprised anymore, but one of the most extreme examples I've seen so far:https://www.goodreads.com/work/editio...
(50 Editions, all combined, different auth..."
Those are all Invalid editions, I believe.
Arenda wrote: Change "show" to "edits" in the URL and you'll go directly to the changelog.
Thanks for the helpful tip!
Arenda wrote: "Not surprised anymore, but one of the most extreme examples I've seen so far:https://www.goodreads.com/work/editio...
(50 Editions, all combined, different auth..."
And publisher Generic. Wonderful. :/
So the bot "fixed" all of those 400+ duplicate 1-space authors for L. Frank Baum. Unfortunately, it simply merged them. It didn't change the Invalid books to Public first.This whole bot thing is just so disheartening. The title of this thread including the word Destroyed is too, too correctly applied.
Some days I wonder why I even care. Those are the same days I wonder why Goodreads doesn't even care.
There just doesn't seem to be any point to doing anything any more.
Scott wrote: "There just doesn't seem to be any point to doing anything any more."+1
Scott wrote: "There just doesn't seem to be any point to doing anything any more."+1
Are the developers even looking at this issue?
Which issue? That the bot even exists?
It's possible BadBots are now simply annoying part of our reality, like mosquitoes and pot holes.
I guess I'll just drive around them then...
Lately, I do feel as if I've been swatting mosquitoes.
Below are what I think are canned remarks from GR support. I suspect management has been putting a bandaid on things. A portion of a couple of recent responses from support ...The Goodreads team is constantly working to improve the Goodreads experience across the board, we are sorry for the inconvenience and we appreciate your understanding and patience as we work toward a resolution.
AND
As part of our commitment to making Goodreads better, this is part of several improvements we’re working on as we make Goodreads better across the board, so we appreciate your taking the time to write in with your feedback
With improvements like these, who needs enemies?
Has anyone heard whether Elon's bought anything lately?
Scott wrote: "With improvements like these, who needs enemies?"American English: SNAFU tending toward FUBAR
German: verschlimmbessern or verschlimmbesserung
French: désamélioration
Anyone have Latin or Spanish terms? Phrases I recall have to do with good becoming evil and we're not talking evil here - more like ill advised.
Dobby wrote: "Has anyone heard whether Elon's bought anything lately?"🤣🤣🤣
Are there actually 60+ Kindle editions of this book?https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8...
Is this part of the Amazon bot fiasco? The librarian change log shows that on May 25th amazon_bot added 6 editions and amazon_kcw uploaded 6 cover images.
That's not the only book for this author with a huge number of editions. https://www.goodreads.com/author/list...
I don't know where to start fixing this. Any ideas?
Brenda (b) wrote: "Are there actually 60+ Kindle editions of this book?...
Is this part of the Amazon bot fiasco? The librarian change log shows that on May 25th amazon_bot added 6 editions and amazon_kcw uploaded 6 cover images.."
That part of the changelog doesn't have a book (link/book_ID/cover) attached to the edits, so not sure what is going on there.
That's not the only book for this author with a huge number of editions. ...
I don't know where to start fixing this. Any ideas?
Authors republishing Kindle editions with the same title and a different ASIN many times has been happening before. They are valid editions. Apart from cleaning up the titles (removing allcaps and genre descriptions) nothing needs to be done.
Oh if only Elon would make Jeff an offer he couldn't refuse.
I don't think Elon has the 1.3 trillion it would cost.
Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "I don't think Elon has the 1.3 trillion it would cost."For just Goodreads??
Scott wrote: "Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "I don't think Elon has the 1.3 trillion it would cost."For just Goodreads??"
That's for Amazon. Goodreads by itself? Not sure, but much more than Amazon paid Otis for it.
So is anyone using the 'flag' on the librarian change log for bot-garbled changes made to editions which were formerly correct? Or are we not bothering & just changing books back to their correct titles or authors? I've found three on my own shelves this morning which were previously correct & have since become vandalized. So much garbage. If this is the future of online databases, smh.
I need to find another hobby.
Lee (of Shalott) wrote: "So is anyone using the 'flag' on the librarian change log for bot-garbled changes made to editions which were formerly correct?"I am. Even if it just annoys them, it is worth it.
Lee (of Shalott) wrote: "So is anyone using the 'flag' on the librarian change log for bot-garbled changes made to editions which were formerly correct? Or are we not bothering & just changing books back to their correct titles or authors?"Yes, I am using the flag, and no, I don't change books back, unless they are on my shelves or occasionally when someone mentions a valid edition has "disappeared" (made invalid by the bot).
In general, I don't touch records that the bad bots have had anything to do with.
Mostly, I just fix them. The support people to whom we report aren't responsible for the garbage.That doesn't mean I don't send scathing reports when the problem is huge, like the 400+ duplicate 1-space profiles. Or the fact that the bot is changing books from Public to Invalid. Support has acknowledged they know about that problem and there is a developer ticket for it.
Other problems, Jaclyn has acknowledged upthread.
I flagged some of the more egregious changes until I got a message back from whoever reads those messages telling me that that account wasn't responsible for that sort of issue. (I must have deleted the message, because I can't find the exact language.) It is sufficiently more work to message Support that mostly I don't bother.
lethe wrote: "Lee (of Shalott) wrote: "Yes, I am using the flag, and no, I don't change books back, unless they are on my shelves or occasionally when someone mentions a valid edition has "disappeared" (made invalid by the bot).In general, I don't touch records that the bad bots have had anything to do with."
Ditto. That is, I flag bad-bot changes when the bot has overwritten valid information with something bogus. (Such as when the amazon_catalog bot changed Lawrence Block to lawrence-block.) I also add "ATT: JACLYN" to my explanation, when I remember.
Like lethe, I don't bother to fix invalid records or other bad changes unless the book is on my shelves or belongs to family, friends, or beloved authors. I try to ignore the thousands of bot-created, ASIN-only, just-a-used-book-on-Amazon junk, because the GR database is like the Augean Stables before Hercules got there.
But I hate that it's impossible to see how many books an author has written, especially for a prolific author, because there are so many bad entries. Today I was interested in all the books written by Jerome K. Jerome. HA. So much junk.
I became a librarian to help make the catalog better for readers. It wasn't to help make Goodreads (and then Amazon) a more profitable company. Therefore, I fix the problems I see because ignoring them is not helpful to readers. I am dismayed and sometimes disgusted with what is happening, but not hateful.(The 400+ duplicate 1-space authors that they "kindly" merged without fixing the Invalid status? Yes, I fixed those from the author librarian log. They were never going to be fixed otherwise. But did I then combine? Nope, I wasn't up to that, but a future project probably.)
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LOL.
First Edition (1st printing),, First Edition (1st printing), First Edition (1st printing), First Edition (1st printing), First Edition (1st printing), First Edition (1st printing)
Very curious, indeed. I wonder if there's a character limit on that field? Because I suspect the bot wanted to add a few hundred more repetitions of "First Edition (1st printing),".
The bot does so many bad things; this one is relatively minor. But I think it would be helpful to report it by (at least) flagging that change in the change log. However, I don't know if the GR staff check the flagged changes for bot misbehavior.