Goodreads Librarians Group discussion
Book & Author Page Issues
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Not a Book Combinations
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Huge problems. One of the things it does is changes the books that are on users' bookshelves, because they get shifted around from one item to a totally different item because the system has been told they're merely "editions" of the same thing.
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Theoretically, that would be true. But this chunk of 17,157 items has 939 ratings, and tons of reviews. Some of these people were obviously reviewing real books. It's been shelved as education, nonfiction, children's, own, star-wars, etc.
I think it's an auto combine. And I agree with lobster girl, there are several reviews that need to be put back in touch with the actual book. It would be so nice if people would do this BEFORE they nabbed.
just a thought, perhaps the NABed rules should also be changed that only the Title is NABed, but not the author?that way the autocombine (is that a machine/program work?) will not combine them.
Bizarre...the first one on the list is a coloring book, "Dragons," with 14 ratings, and actual reviews. The reviews appear to be reviewing a magazine and refers to articles. This problem makes my head hurt.
Wait...I see, now...the reviews appear on every one of them, because they are combined editions...dang. That upgrades to migraine.
and some of them (I think) are actually legit entries, like:http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/97...
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10...
http://www.goodreads.com/book/edit/64...
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24...
tough job...be brave librarians!
*cheering dance with pompoms*
And you can't separate them - because the button to click is soooo farrrr away. This is not a good thing.Edit: Well you CAN separate them but it takes flat forever.
Nenangs wrote: "just a thought, perhaps the NABed rules should also be changed that only the Title is NABed, but not the author?that way the autocombine (is that a machine/program work?) will not combine them."
The author has to be NABed in order to combine with the NAB "author". And if the title is not changed it will come up in a search.
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Nope. Those show up in the log.
Edit: let me rephrase that. I think it is a specific librarian using the "auto-combine" link at the bottom of the NAB combine page. But it is not the purely automated GR auto-combining feature that operates without human intervention.
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Nenangs wrote: "and some of them (I think) are actually legit entries, like:http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/97...
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/10...
http://www.goodreads.com/..."
And some of those don't even have NAB listed as the author!
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I've started sending messages to librarians who have NABbed items without separating them, but I'm not sure it's had any effect, as some of the same librarians still seem to be doing it.There must be a way to stop librarians from doing this. It goes without saying it's a huge waste of time and effort for other librarians to come along behind them and clean up their mistakes. Goodreads depends upon the free labor of librarians to do this, but it doesn't make me happy to have to do it. Goodreads management should take a more active role in preventing mistakes like this from happening. Somehow.
I wondered if maybe an entire author with some large number of books (thousands) had been designated NOT A BOOK. This would accomplish the same thing as an auto-combine, I believe.
rivka wrote: "They have messaging turned off. :P"Is there any other way to get in touch with them?
Mod
Not unless all their books had been combined.
Melody wrote: "The author has to be NABed in order to combine with the NAB "author". And if the title is not changed it will come up in a search. "my idea is not combining the NABed books, to avoid/minimized such a mess in the future. by not changing the author, the autocombine (by intervention of librarians, as rivka explained) will not work/can be prevented.
the other way around is to shut-off the autocombine machine only for NABed books of NABed author. is this viable?
but those are just ideas for the future. won't help the current situation.
maybe a quick "autoseparate" button can be any help? i mean, first we edited the authors, then autoseparate? but i can already see a big problem looming in the horizon if such button exist. *sigh*
Lobstergirl wrote: "rivka wrote: "They have messaging turned off. :P"Is there any other way to get in touch with them?"
I think GR employee, or Otis, can send them personal messages or email. Can't they?
If the librarian has posted in a thread you could reply to that thread to get a message to them.
Melody, I'm finding a bunch of children's books that you've NAB'd - any particular reason why?Ones like this:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16...
Unfortunately, it's been combined with the monster 14K + entries, so it's hard to separate back out. (Not saying you did the combine, but trying to figure out why you are NABbing children's books.)
Carolyn, I'm sure I NABed many items in that huge list. But unless they are separated I can't tell which ones I am responsible for. I can tell you that I put a great deal of thought in any item I NAb. That particular book you show should not be NAB and I would hope that it had not been changed by me. I have actually spent a great deal of time UNNAB children's books (especially board and picture books).Just separated it and it was me. (back in 2009) Hopefully I'm older and wiser now. I'm assuming that I thought it was a coloring book - but I've added the proper authors regardless of what I thought.
I'm only asking because on the librarian change log for that book (and a couple of others I've found), the system is showing you as the librarian making the edits to NAB it. Here's the page: http://www.goodreads.com/book/edits/1...
It was back in 2009 (before a lot of the NAB guidelines were set up), but I figured since you were on this thread that I'd check to make sure that you weren't still NABbing them. It's a pain to work at cross-purposes with another Librarian. = )
ETA: Great- thanks!
like I said, just wanted to make sure we were all on the same page now. = )
Yes I saw that since I was the one that just separated it. See my comment above.
Carolyn, Please don't add the authors back without separating them from that huge list. Adding authors into the NAB data base is a big problem.Like this one http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54...
Melody wrote: "Carolyn, Please don't add the authors back without separating them from that huge list. Adding authors into the NAB data base is a big problem.Like this one http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5..."
Yes, I just did that one a few minutes ago, that one is still in process. I put the authors in the secondary (and tertiary) positions so as to not mess with the NAB system, and not to lose that data. When I separate the item, then I move the authors around and delete the NAB. It's a system that works for me.
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Michael is working on breaking it into smaller chunks, BTW.
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bless Michael and all the brave souls who work on the NAB list :)
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12...It does look like the reviews were not kept with the correct entry when the nab list was split. Look at the mixed reviews with this entry.
rather confusing, the books seems separated singularly, but the reviews says for another edition (gray faded clickable link at the right side of the reviews).rephrase: the "other edition" bar is empty, but the link at the right side of the reviewer stars are alive.
probably just a lag (10 minutes?)?
Melody wrote: "http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12...It does look like the reviews were not kept with the correct entry when the nab list was split. Look at the mixed reviews with this entry."
It was so messed up to begin with, most of the reviews hadn't been associated with the proper item before all the separating began.
Really, there is no point in combining any NAB, so I don't see why it should ever be done. It just creates problems.
actually, if we click the "review of another edition" link, it will bring us to the "correct" reviewd entry.unless except if the entry had been deleted as in some cases.
Mod
That kind of review caching on book pages always takes a couple days to resolve after separating editions.
It's happened again. This time 15,510 editions are combined.http://www.goodreads.com/work/edition...
If you can work out who's responsible from the change logs, is it feasible to revoke their librarian status? Just wondering...
in the logs i saw some librarians doing combines recently, but i don't think they do it for the whole 15K combines.I really suspect this is automation/program doing or bugs, or maybe the reporting in librarian logs can't record autocombines by librarians?
Perhaps there are some librarians who haven't read instructions that state not to combine NABs? Is it possible to send a mass message (using the GR message function) to all librarians to be sure they're all aware of this problem and what NOT to do? That might or might not make a difference (as this could just be some system glitch), but it would sure be worth the effort in this or similarly aggravating circumstances.
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/12...And here is one of those that really is a book that an author has Not a booked. I'm going to let rivka deal with it.
Mod
Melody, the librarian's note says, "Never published, no copies printed." And it was not done by the author, but by a GR staffer.
So books have isbns even if they have never been published?
http://www.goodreads.com/work/edition...