Amazon destroyed the author's database.

[lethe]

Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Can I guess that Amazon told Goodreads to do this?"

Oh, definitely.

[Mesembryanthemum]

Last Saturday's Washington Post article (*) has some appropriate -- but not surprising -- quotes from "former employees who spoke on the condition of anonymity." They make it clear that Amazon is not providing Goodreads with the money needed to support the site.

But the article's focus is too narrow. Yes, review bombing is devastating for the affected authors, and yes, Goodreads should do their utmost to prevent it. But GR has so many more problems that users and authors and publishers need to know about.

It's too bad that they didn't talk to any volunteer librarians. We could have provided more human-level details about that "outdated technological infrastructure." We could have given them examples of bots erasing authors, destroying or deleting their book entries, releasing pre-publication proofs to the world, and spamming other authors with non-book items. Who can forget the delightful dildos and other adult-entertainment devices on Coolio's and Maurice Sendak's author profiles? (Not me, evidently.)

(*) The WaPo article is behind a paywall, but I found it on MSN. Search for "msn" and "goodreads-was-the-future-of-book-reviews" to find it for yourself.

[Freso :watermelon:]

Eressea wrote: "I have more than 4000 book records here in goodreads (most of them are non-english book). If this situation still goes on, where should I go. It is hard to export then import without trouble to new..."

I am now putting a more concerted effort into porting everything relevant to me to BookBrainz. It’s still a fairly new project and they have not done any mass-importing (for better and for worse) so their database is still fairly empty and they also lack proper reading-tracking functionality. Knowing their track record with MusicBrainz though, it’s the basket I have the most trust in. (I may be somewhat biased as well though. Ah well.)

Emily wrote: "none of this could have been predicted"

It absolutely could.

Mesembryanthemum wrote: "Last Saturday's Washington Post article (*) has some appropriate -- but not surprising -- quotes from "former employees who spoke on the condition of anonymity." […]"

Ooh. Thanks! I’ll be looking that up sure. Thanks for sharing!

[Scott]

(from the article)

Amazon spokesperson Ashely Vanicek said that “By joining Amazon, Goodreads has accelerated their mission to delight customers with the help of Amazon’s resources and technology.”

Yes we are so delighted! Hahaahaha good one Ashley!

But Goodreads has remained so clunky in its design and is so difficult to use

No, it has become clunky and difficult to use because of Amazon's awful changes.

[Emily]

Freso wrote: "Freso wrote: "Emily wrote: "none of this could have been predicted"

It absolutely could."

In my follow up message to Elizabeth's response to my post, I said I should have used a clearer phrase, that "none of it was expected." I've edited my post to clarify that.

[Lee (of Shalott)]

Freso wrote: "I am now putting a more concerted effort into porting everything relevant to me to BookBrainz"

Looks interesting! A site that doesn't rely on bot imports from garbage-riddled data at Amazon? Wonderful.

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

Personally, I won't be going to another site, but it's possible I'll stop participating at Goodreads. I certainly use it for the cataloging of my books, but the reason I have so many books and books I hope to have is because of Goodreads. Other sites don't do what Goodreads does in regard to helping readers find more/other authors and their books to read.

[Lee (of Shalott)]

Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Personally, I won't be going to another site, but it's possible I'll stop participating at Goodreads. I certainly use it for the cataloging of my books, but the reason I have so many books and book..."

I never wanted to leave either but after reading several posts where a lot of data on people's shelves has been vandalized, I am concerned. I have 12K books (7K I've read) on my lists & I already have seen damage to long-standing entries.

It's sad to see Otis' creation come to this. Editing on Goodreads became a major hobby for me - I wanted, as all of us did, to make a positive contribution to a book-loving community. For the last few months, I feel I'm just spinning my wheels & trying to get ahead is completely impossible now when up against bad code.

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

Lee (of Shalott) wrote: "It's sad to see Otis' creation come to this. Editing on Goodreads became a major hobby for me - I wanted, as all of us did, to make a positive contribution to a book-loving community. For the last few months, I feel I'm just spinning my wheels & trying to get ahead is completely impossible now when up against bad code."

I agree 100% with this. My post above had to do with going somewhere else. I guess my position is Goodreads or nothing. I'd like to say I'm getting old, but actually I'm already there. I'm a slow reader and I have enough books on hand to last 5+ years. (Which doesn't stop me from acquiring more, I might add.) There are enough titles for another 10+ years of reads on my wish list.

Is it realistic to think I have another 15 years of reading (or anything else) left to me? I'm going to do my darnedest to make it happen, but ...

[Sandra]

Lee (of Shalott) wrote: "Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Personally, I won't be going to another site, but it's possible I'll stop participating at Goodreads. I certainly use it for the cataloging of my books, but the reason I ..."

+1000

[Scott]

I'm done adding new books.
It seems like every book I try to add lately is already in the database. But it does not come up when searched by ISBN or ASIN.
I only find out after I have entered all the data fields and tried to save it, and it tells me that it already exists.
This is a huge waste of librarians' time.

[Shaz]

Scott wrote: "I'm done adding new books.
It seems like every book I try to add lately is already in the database. But it does not come up when searched by ISBN or ASIN.
I only find out after I have entered all t..."

I'm getting to the point where I only do the bare minimum, so title, author and ASIN. Then, if it doesn't exist (which is rare) I go back and fill in the rest of the details.

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

Shaz wrote: "I'm getting to the point where I only do the bare minimum, so title, author and ASIN. Then, if it doesn't exist (which is rare) I go back and fill in the rest of the details."

All you need to find out if it has been deleted is the ASIN/ISBN

[Tami]

If you only put the ISBN or ASIN and click save it will tell you if it's in the database or not. You just have to make sure not to enter anything else. No title, no author, etc. A book record won't be created if it's not in the database, and if it is it will show the message saying it's taken with whatever status.

[Scott]

I guess that's an idea. Thanks.

[Shaz]

Thanks, Elizabeth & Tami. I'll just add the ASIN from now on then In this case, the less I put into it to begin with the better, lol

[Julia]

Don't know if this is the relevant thread, but I just stumbled upon a book called "Unreferenced product on Amazon", 1 of 446... In 2 cases the bot amazon_catalog changed the original title, in another it seems to have created a new entry with that title.
see: https://www.goodreads.com/search?page...

[Javier]

Scott wrote: "I'm done adding new books."

Same, I'm only adding books I'm interested in and/or requests from users on my f/f list, so I can check on their status somehow.

I've reported some Kindle editions with ASIN+ISBN yesterday and all but 4 entries were deleted by the bot, 2-10 minutes after staff moved the ISBNs. Like this one here: https://www.goodreads.com/book/edits/... 🤔

So not only do I have to look after my entries, I also need to keep a list of ASINs now *sigh*

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

I simply don't understand why this thing keeps running.

[Mesembryanthemum]

Javier wrote: "So not only do I have to look after my entries, I also need to keep a list of ASINs now *sigh*"

Good luck with that. The GR export file doesn't include ASINs for Kindle editions. At least, my export files don't include any ASINs.

This omission totally baffles me. WHY would GR want to hide the information that could help someone find -- and possibly buy -- a Kindle book on Amazon? But when it comes to GR's programming, why ask why? There is no answer.

[Mesembryanthemum]

Mesembryanthemum wrote: "Good luck with that. The GR export file doesn't include ASINs for Kindle editions. "

And it's more than just missing ASINs. Please see this thread for more problems with GR export files.

[Lee (of Shalott)]

I'm noticing a lot of instability on the site this morning.
Brace yourselves! I suspect incoming bot updates.

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

Lee (of Shalott) wrote: "I'm noticing a lot of instability on the site this morning.
Brace yourselves! I suspect incoming bot updates."

You mean we should expect they are fixing things to make it better? Because the bot never stops and catalog updates are constant.

[Lee (of Shalott)]

Sweatshirts & hoodies also imported into the database. I might post this in the Librarians Looking for Something to Do folder...

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

Lee (of Shalott) wrote: "Sweatshirts & hoodies also imported into the database. I might post this in the Librarians Looking for Something to Do folder..."

I think there is a thread for those. Lots of garbage being imported as we know.

[Jaclyn, Librarian Program Manager]

Hi everyone. There are some recent posts in this thread that aren't aligned with the purpose of the Group, which is to address requests from members surrounding catalog improvements. While I want to give space for everyone to report issues and talk about their experiences, the Librarians Group is an official Goodreads group and I'm unfortunately going to have to close this discussion.

Going forward, I'd like to encourage everyone to create single discussion threads for each catalog import issue. These should contain examples of where you've seen each bug. I'll be making an effort to check in on those threads more regularly so I can liaise with the team and provide feedback to you.