Goodreads Librarians Group discussion
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Amazon destroyed the author's database.
message 551:
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Elizabeth (Alaska)
(last edited Jun 24, 2023 05:51PM)
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Jun 24, 2023 05:48PM
What I *do* see and think is that Goodreads management is very cavalier about what they've done to their unpaid staff (volunteer librarians). It appears that some recent decisions even reflect a non-understanding of how the database itself functions. It appears that pretty much zero inquiry was done of how the Amazon database is constructed and what this bot business would mean over here. I have said this privately, but I think Rivka understood. It's hard for me to believe that she didn't express her opinion but that she was ignored. I do not for a minute believe the timing of her departure was coincidental.
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Discussion about these things early on among readers in real life group who use or have used GR and have programming, hardware, IT background. Most of us worked together at some time. Same thoughts as@Elizabeth (Alaska)
@Scott
Conclusion: Glad to be retired or at least not part of what we thought of as coming problems (Using less polite terms than problems.)
I was looking for answers and this seems to be the correct thread. Over in Looking for a Project? > Move to correct author there were some of the bot profiles open for edit but they seem to be changed back after librarians have done the edit, at least it was assumed. Judging from what I saw in this thread here I thought this is not possible?
Another things, these profiles all get more books accredited to it although they are no real author names and keep getting added as brand by the bots as the bots seem to recognize they are no authors. However what alarmed me was that there is now this profile Author which seem to have been added by the bots I guess. How do I report this and where?
Redangel333 wrote: "they seem to be changed back after librarians have done the edit, at least it was assumed.Judging from what I saw in this thread here I thought this is not possible?"
In theory the bots are no longer editing fields that librarians have edited, but they can still edit (and add incorrect information to) fields that librarians haven't touched.
You can report any of this to Support. Just...don't expect a fix anytime soon. https://www.goodreads.com/about/conta...
Redangel333 wrote: "Another things, these profiles all get more books accredited to it although they are no real author names and keep getting added as brand by the bots as the bots seem to recognize they are no authors. "Those books will need to be fixed one at a time as the books should all be credited to different authors.
The books are credited to Author on Amazon, so that's how they'll appear here.
Liralen wrote: "In theory the bots are no longer editing fields that librarians have edited, but they can still edit (and add incorrect information to) fields that librarians haven't touched."Thanks for the confirmation, I try to have a look on a couple of books I fixed to see what happens.
Scott wrote: "The books are credited to Author on Amazon, so that's how they'll appear here."No, I checked for Louis Vuitton: The Complete Fashion Collections could be that your amazon link works different due to different country but for me amazon shows Jo Ellison
Redangel333 wrote: "Scott wrote: "The books are credited to Author on Amazon, so that's how they'll appear here."No, I checked for Louis Vuitton: The Complete Fashion Collections could be that your a..."
And Jo Ellison is wrong too as having just provided an Introduction. See:
https://www.goodreads.com/work/editio...
I have fixed that title.
& Goodreads was down for at least nine hours.Collapsing under the bots' junk maybe?
Carol She's So Novel꧁꧂ wrote: "& Goodreads was down for at least nine hours.Collapsing under the bots' junk maybe?"
So I'm not the only one thinking that? *grin*
Shaz wrote: "Carol She's So Novel꧁꧂ wrote: "& Goodreads was down for at least nine hours.Collapsing under the bots' junk maybe?"
So I'm not the only one thinking that? *grin*"
Definitely not the only one.
And my bet is that the outage didn't stop the bot imports. :-(((
Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "And my bet is that the outage didn't stop the bot imports. :-((("And lo, the bot import shall not be halted, for it is written in the digital scrolls of Amazonian 4-23: 'Thou shalt not impede the passage of the bot import, for the bot is virtuous, and the Amazon database, hallowed.'
David wrote: "Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "And my bet is that the outage didn't stop the bot imports. :-((("And lo, the bot import shall not be halted, for it is written in the digital scrolls of Amazonian 4-23:..."
LOL
Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "David wrote: "Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "And my bet is that the outage didn't stop the bot imports. :-((("And lo, the bot import shall not be halted, for it is written in the digital scrolls of A..."
...and tho it caused Ol-Software-Engineeer and companion Ol-Hardware-Engineer to shed the tears of The Frustrated it was made so.
Carol She's So Novel꧁꧂ wrote: "David & LJ 😂"+1 !!
Serdnito wrote: "The bot has been changing valid books to deleted all day... These are some examples:"This is an urgent problem. I hope you also sent it to support ATTN Jaclyn.
Serdnito wrote: "The bot has been changing valid books to deleted all day... These are some examples:https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
https://www.goodrea..."
Why, oh why, don't they STOP running the bot!!!!
I think it's pretty clear at this point that nothing is going to be done.
Scott wrote: "I think it's pretty clear at this point that nothing is going to be done."Sadly, I think you're right.
Scott wrote: "There just doesn't seem to be any point to doing anything any more."+1
Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "I don't think Elon has the 1.3 trillion it would cost."
I don’t think there are enough people here badmouthing Elon for him to want to “liberate” the site.
Liralen wrote: "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. […]"
You should write them back and tell them that it’s not your (our!) responsibility to fix bad bot data either, as unpaid volunteers!
Scott wrote: "I think it's pretty clear at this point that nothing is going to be done."
Maybe time to organise a strike or other action similar to the Reddit and StackOverflow ones? Doesn’t seem like we’re getting much information from MGMT despite tons of flagged edits and support requests and whatnots. If we collective decide to just do no editing for some days, maybe they’d be willing to talk to us? Or, if not, collectively decide to move to another book database site and help them out instead?
Freso wrote: "Maybe time to organise a strike or other action similar to the Reddit and StackOverflow ones? Doesn’t seem like we’re getting much information from MGMT despite tons of flagged edits and support requests and whatnots. If we collective decide to just do no editing for some days, maybe they’d be willing to talk to us? Or, if not, collectively decide to move to another book database site and help them out instead?"A strike would just mean all of the work would be waiting.
I have no desire to move to another site. And, as I've said above, I'm not here to "help" Goodreads. I'm here to help other readers.
What makes me miserable & sad is they (the developers) don't acknowledge how important it is to US, the librarians, to keep the site clean. I'm tired of all this GIGA dumped into Amazon by every user that wants to cash in on a textbook they never used & there's no controls on that. If GR is going to just continue to use Amazon as a primary source for information, there will be nothing but constant ASIN garbage to wade through from here on in. And, unfortunately, that means it will spread to other sites - I tried to export my GR database while feeling huffy to LibraryThing & only ended up importing numerous bot-modified titles - it was better to delete all 12K of my titles off LT & walk away from that entirely...
Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Scott wrote: "I think it's pretty clear at this point that nothing is going to be done."Sadly, I think you're right."
I agree. I know Jaclyn is busy and probably doesn't have much news to tell us. But the fact that her last comment in this thread was on May 18th is very telling to me.
Lee (of Shalott) wrote: "What makes me miserable & sad is they (the developers) don't acknowledge how important it is to US, the librarians, to keep the site clean. I'm tired of all this GIGA dumped into Amazon by every us..."+1
So, maybe this is part of the problem:https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
How did Perseus get to be a Goodreads author?
And why do all the books there have titles and covers by authors of a different name?
Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "So, maybe this is part of the problem:https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
How did Perseus get to be a Goodreads author?
And why do all the books there have titles and covers b..."
I wanted to say some authors like to choose a classic name like that, but yes, all the covers show different authors.
When these bot problems started I was suspicious of bad intent, and now that suspicion has returned a thousandfold.
How do these records get created in the first place at Amazon? Where does Perseus come from?
Scott wrote: "How do these records get created in the first place at Amazon? Where does Perseus come from?"Who knows? I found this because this was on the Kindle Daily Deals this morning.
Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "So, maybe this is part of the problem:https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
How did Perseus get to be a Goodreads author?..."
And yet some legitimate authors have to jump through hoops and even then be denied repeatedly.
*smh*
I’m not sure if this thread is purely about Amazon bot destroying specifically AUTHOR pages, as there are over 600+ comments when someone kindly shared this thread with me, but yeah, please, if someone with access and know-how sees this, PRETTY PLEASE fix the BOT to let it have a metamorphic brain to comprehend and acknowledge the obvious fact that Amazon.co.jp exists and Japanese Kindle editions are legit, BRING BACK THE possible tens of thousands of legit pages the bot so wrongfully merged and DELETED, and STOP DELETING THEM FFS. My manga-focused account had 85+ editions butchered in 2 days, and I’m pretty sure that’s not even really a big number since I’ve only gotten to shelf a small number of books that I’ve read, yet so many have already been effected. Please make your bot LESS RACIST, thanks. I’m serious, don’t make throwing the word racist so easy. Clearly there’s a glitch making the bot think it okay to be rid of Japanese Kindle. It really ISN’T okay.
The problem is that GR only pulls from the U.S. Amazon site. That's why we get books that have "unknown" author when the real author appears elsewhere. So, it's really more Americentric than rAcIsT.
Sammm wrote: "Please make your bot LESS RACIST, thanks. I’m serious, don’t make throwing the word racist so easy."I don't think it has anything to do with racism. The bot deletes a lot of valid English-language editions as well.
Scott wrote: "The problem is that GR only pulls from the U.S. Amazon site. "lethe wrote: "I don't think it has anything to do with racism. The bot deletes a lot of valid English-language editions as well."
It has zero, zilch, nada to do with racism and why anyone would think so is odd, to say the least.
One of the previous incarnations of the bot did merge a lot of valid non-English editions into their defaults, but the current bad bots seem to be more equal-opportunity.
lethe wrote: "One of the previous incarnations of the bot did merge a lot of valid non-English editions into their defaults, but the current bad bots seem to be more equal-opportunity."PROGRESS
lethe wrote: "One of the previous incarnations of the bot did merge a lot of valid non-English editions into their defaults, but the current bad bots seem to be more equal-opportunity."non-English isn't racism, though, is it?
I’m not sure where the “only pulls from U.S. Amazon” came from, if it’s a recent development then boy GR is sure going backwards. I assure you Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.co.jp, the de and fr ones (sorry I’m far less familiar with those so I shall not embarrass myself) and more, used to be imported just FINE, it’s only recently that errors made went so out of proportion.And yes, I know valid English editions have also been effected, but definitely not on the same scale it’s happening to non-English editions. I know it’s caused by the bot malfunctioning, but from the POV from a regular User, it really could be taken as “Japanese Kindle editions are unjustly targeted and deleted for no apparent reason”, which doesn’t make the site look good no matter how you try to spin it.
Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "non-English isn't racism, though, is it?"No, more like xenophobia ;)
Sammm wrote: "I’m not sure where the “only pulls from U.S. Amazon” came from, if it’s a recent development then boy GR is sure going backwards."Maybe I'm wrong, but I inferred it from the fact that thousands of "unknown" author records have been imported because that is how Amazon US has them. Every time I've pointed this out to a user, they respond that their Amazon has the correct author, and indeed it does. It's just the US site.
So it seems like US is getting some kind of priority, at least.
Patty wrote: "Book lists are not in order."What does this mean?
Scott wrote: "So it seems like US is getting some kind of priority, at least."This.
Same goes for Portuguese books with authors changed to "_", when listings with the correct name can be found on amazon.com.br ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
lethe wrote: "I don't think it has anything to do with racism. The bot deletes a lot of valid English-language editions as well."Also English-language editions. The bot is an equal opportunity offender.
OK. So you're complaining about the bot getting authors wrong. Here are a few English language authors that have been imported incorrectly (and this is a Very. Short. List I could post hundreds). Some have books imported and immediately marked Invalid or even Deleted:Charles Dickens: https://www.goodreads.com/author/simi...
Thomas Hardy:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/simi...
Henry James:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/simi...
Louis L'Amour (a shorter list):
https://www.goodreads.com/author/simi...
Wallace Stegner:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/simi...
Sammm, you can message Support: https://www.goodreads.com/about/conta...They're aware of the problems, but sending more reports (include links/specifics) can't hurt.
Liralen wrote: "Sammm, you can message Support: https://www.goodreads.com/about/conta...They're aware of the problems, but sending more reports (include links/specifics) can't hurt."
But they're probably not used to being called racists. Especially when you don't even know which races they represent.
Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "lethe wrote: "I don't think it has anything to do with racism. The bot deletes a lot of valid English-language editions as well."Also English-language editions. The bot is an equal opportunity offender."
Which is what I said.
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