Goodreads Librarians Group discussion
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Questions (not edit requests)
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Massive, devastating site-wide bug regarding book editions
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As an addition, I believe that the two bugs are tied together, and whatever book is arbitrarily and randomly sorted to the top of the page is the one that gets set as the default edition. That pattern persists across the Stephen Graham Jones and Dennis Cooper books I linked in my OP, and it even shows up with The Shining.
Search is completely busted at the moment—the sort is completely random. Search for any well-known author and their most popular books will be several pages deep, while a Source Wikia 'book' or 'Summary of [Title]' will be at the top.
Drace wrote: "For example, the book The Ones That Got Away by Stephen Graham Jones has had its Italian edition set as the default. As such, you cannot find the book anymore by searching "The Ones That Got Away" in the search bar. Try it yourself."I did, and it does show up: https://www.goodreads.com/search?q=On...
And The Marbled Swarm is the only title that shows up in the search bar: https://www.goodreads.com/search?utf8...
ETA I do not mean to say there isn't a bug, just that it is still possible to find non-default editions through title search.
Liralen wrote: "Search is completely busted at the moment—the sort is completely random. Search for any well-known author and their most popular books will be several pages deep, while a Source Wikia 'book' or 'Su..."I believe that the search issue is specifically because of the edition bug I discuss. It is impossible to find these books because editions where the title has been written in another language have been set as the default. As another example, The Croning by Laird Barron is one of the most popular cosmic horror novels of the 2010s, but it's impossible to find because a Spanish translation with the title "El Rito" has been set as the default.
lethe wrote: "Drace wrote: "For example, the book The Ones That Got Away by Stephen Graham Jones has had its Italian edition set as the default. As such, you cannot find the book anymore by searching "The Ones T..."Fair enough, but the search bar dropdown is much more heavily affected. If you type The Ones That Got Away into the search bar, you don't get any relevant results at all in the dropdown. You have to add the author's name, but even then it only takes you to an invalid duplicate edition that has both the title and the author in its title field. Also, note that on the search page, somehow a book with only 4 ratings is showing up near the top of the results, whereas this book with over 1,000 is showing up near the bottom. I will admit that I may have been hasty and exaggerated; this bug is not making Goodreads impossible to use, merely extremely difficult
Search results aside, the fact that books are en masse having their default editions changed based on nothing but an arbitrary bug (or possibly an arbitrary bot decision) is what I think is the most alarming thing here.
For another addition, take a look at Stephen King's author page:https://www.goodreads.com/author/show...
You can see that:
- A Spanish translation of The Shining has been set as the default.
- A Russian translation of Misery has been set as the default.
- A Spanish translation of Carrie has been set as the default.
- A German translation of 11/22/63 has been set as the default.
...despite the fact that none of these are the most popular editions of the book on Goodreads, and none of them are the original language that these books were published in.
I reported this to staff on Monday. I didn't create a bug report in this group, because I thought it was more widespread than those bugs that affect edits librarians need to do.Yesterday, after having submitted numerous screenshots, I received this:
Thanks for contacting us. Our developers are aware of this issue and I've added your report to the developer ticket and I'll let you know once it's been resolved.
I have no idea if they think this is a priority. A year ago, I reported that dates on the new book page are wrong. That issue still hasn't been fixed.
Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "I reported this to staff on Monday. I didn't create a bug report in this group, because I thought it was more widespread than those bugs that affect edits librarians need to do.Yesterday, after h..."
I reported the editions page bug to staff yesterday and followed up with them very late that night/very early this morning, but I didn't notice the "default edition being randomly swapped on every single book across Goodreads" bug until right around the time I made this thread.
I know sometimes the Questions folder can be used as a fast-track way to get information about major bugs to Jaclyn, and I figured this was a big enough problem that it was worth it to try to reach her here.
Drace wrote: "but I didn't notice the "default edition being randomly swapped on every single book across Goodreads" bug until right around the time I made this thread."It's even more interesting.
See: Edith Wharton
Her most popular work is
The Age of Innocence
Do you see it doesn't even appear on her author page? Not even as the Italian edition which is shown as the most popular edition on the Other Editions page. That Italian edition *is* shown first on the Books by Edition Wharton page.
So even when they get is wrong, GR's use of that stats aren't in agreement even on the author profile.
One of the most popular authors on the site is Jane Austen and her most popular edition of her most popular book is Pride and Prejudice with 3,637,638 ratings. It happens to be listed 2nd, so most people could find it. (That edition doesn't have an ISBN/ASIN so not searchable by that.) The title does happen to be listed first on Austen's page, but of course, not the edition that should be the default.
I see you describe this bug as being devastating. Do you not think that having the wrong date on the book page is devastating? That The Age of Innocence I reference above, for example, is listed as having been first published in October 1920. But on the book page - for librarians, not sure about non-librarians - the date is shown as September 30, 1920. Not a big deal?
Her 2nd most popular work is Ethan Frome. The original publication date is given simply as 1911. On the book page, however, it is displayed as December 31, 1910. Is an entire year off meaningful?
RE: Message 11: It looks like the bug (or bot mistake) is even weirder and more complex than I thought. This seems like it's going to be a nightmare to sort through.RE: Message 12: Yeah that seems like a pretty notable problem, but before now I was not aware of it and I never once said or implied that it wasn't a big deal. It definitely should be fixed, and I hope Goodreads staff does something about it soon.
Edit/addition: It looks like you posted Message 9 and I posted Message 10 more or less at the same time, but I had loaded the page before you posted it so #9 wasn't yet visible. I apologize if it came across like I was ignoring it, I just couldn't see it at all.
No, sorry Drace, I didn’t think that. I didn’t phrase my post very well at all. It’s that, frankly, most of what Goodreads does these days - or doesn’t do - is devastating. (And having said that will probably get this thread closed. I’m sorry about that, too.)
Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "No, sorry Drace, I didn’t think that. I didn’t phrase my post very well at all. It’s that, frankly, most of what Goodreads does these days - or doesn’t do - is devastating."I hear ya. Really hope the team realizes how bad these issues are and gets on them soon, even if my expectations aren't high.
Worst-case scenario, I might just start making time on my weekends to queue up a podcast, scroll down my bookshelves, make lists of every single book that has the wrong default edition set on each author's page, and send them to staff to have them corrected. Tedious, maybe, but maybe they'll get annoyed by my very long e-mails, throw up their hands, yell "someone shut this nerd up!", and fix the bug! :P
Drace wrote: "make lists of every single book that has the wrong default edition set on each author's page, and send them to staff to have them corrected."Ah, what a delicious idea, but I fear you'd just be ignored. I sent I don't know how many screenshots of the editions sorting problem. I didn't get a response until I contacted them again, gave them the original ticket number saying I hadn't gotten a response to all of the screenshots I'd been sending.
It was only because I made that 2nd report that they bother to tell me they knew about the issue.
Edit: I admit, though, that sending numerous, persistent requests, essentially flooding the contact queue, is a very intriguing idea.
Bug ...When you sort by title on the Books by page, it doesn't include the most popular editions. Probably because they're in another language and I only know English. This is frustrating as @$%(*$.
Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Bug ...When you sort by title on the Books by page, it doesn't include the most popular editions. Probably because they're in another language and I only know English. This is frustrating as @$%(*$."
I tried to sort an old public domain book with a lot of different copies by title (The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket by Poe), and it seems like it's doing it in reverse alphabetical order. At the top of the list are editions with titles in languages that don't use the English alphabet (i.e. Japanese, Russian, Greek, Arabic). Then there's the German editions, which have the title Umständlicher Bericht des Arthur Gordon Pym von Nantucket - the letter U. Then there's the Italian editions, which begin with the word Storia. And so on and so forth. You have to go several pages deep past translations where the first word of the book starts with T, S, R, Q, P, and O before you start hitting the Ns for Narrative (with a few exceptions where someone has forgotten that the Sort By Title shouldn't include articles).
I don't often use this sort function so I'm not really sure if reverse alphabetical has been the norm or not, but there does seem to be a logic to it, rather than Number of Ratings sorting being completely arbitrary.
Also worth mentioning that all the other sort functions (average rating, date published, etc.) seem to be working as intended. Number of ratings is the only one thrown so out of whack that there doesn't seem to be any rhyme or reason to why it's sorted the way it is.
Drace wrote: "I don't often use this sort function so I'm not really sure if reverse alphabetical has been the norm or not"Yes, it has always been like this (I use this function quite often).
Drace wrote: "I tried to sort an old public domain book with a lot of different copies by title "I was on this page:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/list...
wanting to find The Moon and Sixpence. The one with the most editions. Impossible.
I can find that on the Combine page using keyword filter. It's interesting, because the most popular edition isn't the first edition there either. It is also an edition in another language. Guess what? It's the edition listed first with the Num Ratings on the Other Editions page. I wouldn't ever have recognized it. (Also, please note the title at the top of the page. I always thought that was taken from the Original Title, but apparently not.)
Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "I was on this page:"Got it, I misread your post and thought you meant the Editions page.
It seems like it's completely arbitrary which books stay on the page and which don't. Every time I think I have some grasp of this bug's logic, there's some weird new twist to it.
Drace wrote: "Every time I think I have some grasp of this bug's logic"Yeah, I think the problem is that there is no logic, that the sort is entirely random. I haven't looked back at titles I reported - mostly because I didn't save the screenshot, just sent a copy. I wonder if that "random" idea is valid and that what is displayed today will be different tomorrow or the next day.
Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Also, please note the title at the top of the page. I always thought that was taken from the Original Title, but apparently not."No, that title has always been the one of the default. So the system now considers the Chinese edition the default. It would be funny if it wasn't so sad.
I don't know if it's helpful to post more examples, but i found another one, where the default edition was changed to the Spanish edition:https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...
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Goodreads Librarians Group
Books mentioned in this topic
The Age of Innocence (other topics)The Age of Innocence (other topics)
Authors mentioned in this topic
Edith Wharton (other topics)Jane Austen (other topics)
First: the "sort by number of ratings" option on the Editions page has been rendered useless by a bizarre bug. Go to any book with a lot of editions and set it to sort this way; you'll see that it is being sorted completely arbitrarily. I've already reached out to Goodreads about this specific bug and used The Shining as an example. The first editions listed are translated editions with only a few hundred ratings each. An English translation with over a million ratings is listed 5th or 6th down on the page.
The second, and much more devastating bug: I don't know if it's occurring because of the previously mentioned editions page bug, but Goodreads is arbitrarily assigning foreign language editions to be the default editions of books originally written in English, thus making them literally completely impossible to find in Goodreads search. For example, the book The Ones That Got Away by Stephen Graham Jones has had its Italian edition set as the default. As such, you cannot find the book anymore by searching "The Ones That Got Away" in the search bar. Try it yourself. Another example I found is The Marbled Swarm by Dennis Cooper having its French Kindle edition set as the default edition despite the fact that that edition has literally zero ratings. Several other of Dennis Cooper's books have had translated editions set as the default too. Basically the only way an author's books are immune to this are if they've never published any translated editions.
As you can imagine, this bug is going to make Goodreads nigh-impossible to use if it isn't corrected soon. I'm trying not to exaggerate here, but the damage it's already done to the site is staggering, and it needs to be reverted ASAP.