The Seasonal Reading Challenge discussion
GENERAL HELP
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Private messages stopping... now what?
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There is a LOT of discussion about this in many groups, including the Moderators Support Group here on GR. SRC especially needs a way for Mods and members to communicate when setting up tasks. In addition to the messages issue, it was unclear at first, but one Mod got a clarification that all outside links, in threads as well as messages, will be blocked - so no linking to outside book lists, song titles, TV show episodes, countries in the Southern Hemisphere, etc. I guess all that could be typed into the Task Help thread but it's a pain. This happened a few years ago and we could sometimes get around it by using html code, but nobody knows how this will go.
Robin P wrote: "There is a LOT of discussion about this in many groups, including the Moderators Support Group here on GR. SRC especially needs a way for Mods and members to communicate when setting up tasks. In..."
Yikes.. so it's even worse than I thought...
It's like they want people to stop using this website.
Some groups are barely affected if all they do is discuss books. But for our group the entire function is impacted - getting tasks and corrections to Mods, writing tasks that link to lists of books, countries, lyrics, etc.
tineye verification posts etc - everytime i get an update it seems stupider and stupider
FYI - JennRenee sent me a message this morning that I had a 20pt task. I tried replying to her message and it wouldn't go through (bumped me back to the home page when I hit send) but I could still send a new message to her. (At least it says it was sent haha)
I encourage everyone to respond to The Goodreads Team email and inundate them with our opinions to this change. I responded to them as follows:Goodreads Team,
I think this is a grave mistake to discontinue direct messages between members and only allow broadcast messages from group moderators. Many groups rely on contact between individual members, and mod to an individual group member. For instance, The Seasonal Reading Challenge group I'm involved in would be severely affected if moderators could not message back and forth between individuals to create and develop reading tasks, nominate books for group reads to include in polls, etc.
Our group would also be adversely affected by not allowing external links, which are often used when we create reading tasks and we use external links as prompts.
Also, as a long-standing GR member, I have developed many relationships with other group members that I periodically correspond with through messages. I thought the point of GR was to connect readers to books, authors and other readers. It seems you are severing a vital connection, which may be a deathblow to your site. You have provided no explanation as to why these changes were made but my hope is you reconsider this change which will have a tremendous impact on your users.
I'm sure some of you could respond more eloquently or exacting in the affects our group and individuals will feel this change. Please make your voices heard.
Has anyone else noticed that GR also seems a lot more flakey this week? Like trying to do book reviews or star ratings and it coming back with broken links.
Trish wrote: "Has anyone else noticed that GR also seems a lot more flakey this week? Like trying to do book reviews or star ratings and it coming back with broken links."Yes I noticed that too! Especially when I try to send messages, but also with shelving things...
Lisa wrote: "I encourage everyone to respond to The Goodreads Team email and inundate them with our opinions to this change. I responded to them as follows:Goodreads Team,
I think this is a grave mistake to ..."
I think this is so well written Lisa! I have already sent them a message, several actually, because I just got a copy paste response and I wasn't satisfied with it at all...
I think and hope many more readers will message them this week...
Let's hope for once they will listen. I can't see any upsides to this update for anyone.
Mod
Yes, including trying to reply to a post. Makes me wonder what is in the works.
Mod
Goodreads Team,
I think this is a grave mistake to ..."
Thanks for posting this, Lisa. While I personalized the first paragraph, I confess to wholesale "borrowing" the rest of your message, which I couldn't have said any better.
Hi, just to weigh in, we are thinking posting broken links may still work so just replacing a . with a * For messaging, I think a lot of groups are going to collect email addresses from members then email people directly. Google docs is also a great tool.
I do know Goodreads are at least discussing this at the moment with the influx of complaints. If you haven't already signed the petition, please do!
https://c.org/mk4HtTP75K
Yes, GR has been flaky, could be due to changes being made. Terrible time of year as some groups post their games, challenges, and news at the end of the year.
Mod
I’m wondering if something like a google drive link - new file each season for tasks - ppl upload their draft task to folder - the problem would be the letting ppl know abt edits but I think you can set to notifications
I like the google drive ideas. IF that doesn't work:For task creation - you could start a private group. Invite task creators - when the mod writes the congratulations message in the completions folder, send out the invite. Post the instructions in a folder in the private group. Give each task creator a folder to post their tasks, mods comment and make edits in the folder. Task creators would be asked to stay out of the folders that aren't their own.
After the tasks are live, each task creator would need to quit the private group.
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For nominating group books, you could do that here in this group. Make a moderator announcement with the list of people who are asked to nominate, the due date and a link to a new folder created for this. Instead of sending the mods a message with our nominations, we nominate in this new folder using a spoiler and hope that people do not look, do not comment.
Where do people send their email to the Goodreads Team? The email telling us that messaging would end came from a "no-reply" address.
Julia wrote: "Where do people send their email to the Goodreads Team? The email telling us that messaging would end came from a "no-reply" address."contact-us-form@goodreads.com
I started out in the "contact us" form, but it seems I can reply to this e-mail address too. Saves you the hassle of re-submitting your message several times because the site pops up error messages a lot.
JennRenee wrote: "The mods have already been discussing a work around for this. We appreciate any ideas you guys have. The hardest part will be in the task creation. We can work around not having access to outside s..."Of course you all are on tops of things :) I really appreciate it. Goodreads seems to throw hurdles every few months...
I thought maybe setting up a google sheets now, where we collect our user names, readerboard names and e-mail addresses would be a good idea. This way we have a way to communicate as a backup, while we think of better work arounds..
Susan A wrote: "I like the google drive ideas. IF that doesn't work:For task creation - you could start a private group. Invite task creators - when the mod writes the congratulations message in the completions ..."
You could also use like a google form - post link in group - if nominated you complete - and because you can set it to be anonymous or not you can see if non selectees entered data
Form could be:
RB name
Category 1
Category 2
Category 3
Category prioritization (drag drop)
Then you can easily collate responses because data comes in an excel format
Trish wrote: "Has anyone else noticed that GR also seems a lot more flakey this week? Like trying to do book reviews or star ratings and it coming back with broken links."Yes! I have had comments and reviews not post, instead I am getting the long pink error message
GR was glitchy the last few days, with the pink error message. If you refresh a few times or go out of the thread and back in, eventually it worked. It has been better since yesterday.
I agree with all of you; GR is now definitely wonky. The pink error messages are more frequent and I do what Robin mentioned.I'm also, as a GR librarian, having more and more trouble with cleaning up and merging records, or separating. Most of the time those features just don't seem to be working as usual. Sometimes, if I persevere, I will eventually get something to work. But if I'm needing to do a multiple step process I've had to quit most because it just won't function correctly.
I hate to say this, but is Amazon actually wanting to get rid of every function other than as a marketing tool for their books? Most of the problems we are citing should not be that hard to program; I've been the manager of databases that have much more functionality. And, don't get me started with the Search functions; we have all the fields that should be searchable (setting, etc.). But we can't easily search any of those with a simple search on the field.
Kathy KS wrote: "I agree with all of you; GR is now definitely wonky. The pink error messages are more frequent and I do what Robin mentioned.I'm also, as a GR librarian, having more and more trouble with cleanin..."
Other librarians are reporting that too. And I have had trouble just searching for a book, it will spin and do nothing.
I had said it was better a couple days ago, but it's still intermittent.
Mod
If it comes down to this, and what Kathy KS and I'm sure many others fear is true, is there an alternative site that offers the functionality to have groups and do challenges? I know that there are sites that will allow you to track your reading, but what we have here is so much more than that.
In one of my private groups, Kim, this has been talked about for ages. And the simple answer is no. As bad as GRs has gotten it is still the best option for groups like this. The agreement for now is to try to find some workarounds just to try to keep things going.In another group, where everyone is sure the changes are happening whether we complain or not, the mods are setting up Google Forms for use in contacting members and some other things I cannot remember right now. Something you here might look into.
Storygraph does have support for challenges now but no infrastructure for groups. I am a developer and it feels to me like GoodReads just desperately needs to upgrade its servers but is reluctant to do so (probably because of the cost, I'm guessing). And getting rid of messaging might be an attempt to reduce server load.
Gayla wrote: "Storygraph does have support for challenges now but no infrastructure for groups. I am a developer and it feels to me like GoodReads just desperately needs to upgrade its servers but is reluctan..."
its been like this forever - and my gut says that all the red box errors we are getting is because they dont have a solid dev sandbox - so they roll out changes and break the system - then have to fix it without doing a full dev cycle
It's gotten way worse -- I was away from GoodReads for about a year and came back a couple of weeks ago and I was shocked at how unstable it feels. I don't think I've saved a review on the first try yet.
I've had the same problem with both reviews and simple comments.
we could move the group to proboards or something - posts there could link back to goodreads or storygraph for task creation/completion. it's kinda a drastic step, but it looks like we may be losing all functionality here...
discord might be an option - but I'd need to explore it a bit more
I think something like Discord + Storygraph might work but it would be cumbersome.
I agree that google docs and google forms could be a way to communicate. Google docs could be used as messaging - just both people writing on one doc
I think that will make organising our group a bit more difficult, especially for task creation.
Maybe it would be good to think up a (temporary) solution before it comes into effect. Maybe a discord or google docs? That way we know how to get in touch with eachother?
Hello reader,
In the coming weeks, we will be making some updates to how messaging works on Goodreads.
What's Changing?
• Direct messages between individual members will no longer be available
• Images and external links will no longer be supported in messages
While direct messages between individual members are no longer available, you can still access your past messages from your inbox, Group moderators can still send broadcast messages to their group members, and you can still send group invitations to your Goodreads friends. All other public interactions, such as writing and responding to book reviews, remain unchanged.
-The Goodreads Team