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Tuesdays with Morrie
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Publication year keeps returning to wrong date
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Jennifer
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Feb 11, 2012 06:24AM
The original publication date for Tuesdays with Morrie keeps resetting to 1382. The log of changes shows repeated librarian corrections to 1997, but I cannot figure out how this wildly inaccurate date keeps sneaking in there. Does anyone know how to make the correction permanent?
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I've had this crop up in other books also. What I did was to set month and day to blanc and then change the year. This seemed to have worked. I changed Tuesdays with Morrie and it now shows 1997. Let's see if it lasts.
Thank Marina. I put a note in for other librarians and will check back in a few days.
I learned from Rivka that you need to find the book with the wrong Persian publication date. You need to clear that date and then you correct original publication date will stick.ETA: I fixed this one.
Interesting! I can't find in the manual the question that raises: what about other books in the future? Not knowing Farsi, etc., I suspect I would only encounter this problem with other books published originally, "mainly" in English, but what are the standards for calendar choice? Always Gregorian or sometimes Gregorian, depending?
Yes, GR uses the Gregorian calendar. Because books could actually have been published in the 1300s, the program would have no way of knowing that an entered date might be from a different calendar. What happens is that the system reverts to the oldest entered date when an original publication date field has been filled because the original publication date cannot be later than an edition date.
All the books on GR should always use the Gregorian calendar, regardless of original language, etc. Sometimes books get entered with Persian dates by users who don't know the policy. :)
Jennifer wrote: "Thank Marina. I put a note in for other librarians and will check back in a few days."Hi Jennifer - any update on this issue? I grow weary of repeatedly changing pub. dates from Persian calendar to Gregorian. Some titles have been changed back and forth repeatedly by GR volunteer editors (eg., http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/48...). Maybe this datapoint can be locked, or these editors can be messaged by GR staff requesting that they stop reverting the dates.
Thanks for any info you can give on this!
Hi Velma! Elizabeth/Rivka's solution worked, happily. In my case, the date kept resetting automatically because the database combines all editions for the earliest publication date. I have begun searching the long list of Metamorphosis editions for Persian publication dates; I have found and changed one so far and included a librarian comment. Hopefully, the problem you are encountering is the same as mine, not that someone is actively reverting edited entries.
To find the oldest publication date, sort the Editions page by Date Published. Then simply find those published earlier than the actual publication date.
Jennifer wrote: "Hi Velma! Elizabeth/Rivka's solution worked, happily. In my case, the date kept resetting automatically because the database combines all editions for the earliest publication date. I have beg..."
Metamorphosis is one that I noticed too. I won't worry about that title if you are working on it.
But what I'm concerned about is manual changes to the date, which are reflected in the librarian change logs. Maybe after the weekend is over a GR employee will weigh in on my question.
Thanks for your input!
Mod
You can also ask for help. :)
rivka wrote: "I don't understand what you are asking. All dates should be Gregorian. If you believe a librarian is making incorrect edits, we generally suggest that you try messaging them directly first.You ca..."
I'm asking if there is a way to keep the dates Gregorian. On some titles, including the one I linked to above, there are records of the orig. pub. date being switched back and forth and back again and then back..., between Gregorian and Persian dates. This is troublesome. I'm wondering if there might be a permanent solution, or if some of the volunteers will just have to keep editing the changes of other volunteers.
I'm not sure what you meant by "You can always ask for help." I thought that's what I was doing.
Mod
rivka wrote: "I meant, ask for help with messaging a librarian making problematic edits."Ah! Thanks, now I get it. Should I use the 'Contact Us' link to do that?
Mod
I don't think it is appropriate for me to contact another librarian re: their edits.I'm encountering a new (to me) problem with the original publication dates. I added the publication year (2008) to 2 different editions of The Picture of Dorian Gray:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/57...
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/24...
Both of these edits appear on the librarian change log, correctly attributed to me. http://www.goodreads.com/book/edits/2...
However, in the right column of global changes to ALL editions, there is a simultaneous mis-attribution to me of a change of the original title publication date, from '1891' to '1367'.
I didn't make this change, which is the first problem. When I looked down the list of other librarian changes to orig. pub. dates, I see I am not the first volunteer who shows up as making that same date change. There are two other librarians who show an edit of '1891' to '1367', with other librarians later correcting this.
This can't be a coincidence, but I don't know what kind of bug would cause this.
The second problem that I see, after further scanning the edits to the orig. pub. date, is that it appears that some volunteer librarians think that the ORIGINAL publication date is synonymous with the EDITION publication date. There are four more changes to this date in the log, which have subsequently been changed *back* to what it should be (1891) by other librarians.
There has GOT to be a better way to vet edits and lock them; maybe by super-librarians?
Please advise.
I fixed this. When the date keeps reverting, you need to find the edition that was published in that old year and zero out the Persian date (or other date that might be causing the error). At that time you can enter the correct original publication date. I have found that sorting all editions by date published will allow me to find that edition with the date that is causing the problem.
Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "I fixed this. When the date keeps reverting, you need to find the edition that was published in that old year and zero out the Persian date (or other date that might be causing the error). At that ..."So when I make an edit to another field, it shows me as making the orig. pub. field? That is FUBAR. And I'm still hoping that GR will respond with a fix for the back-and-forth nature of this problem.
Thanks for fixing it though.
No, I don't think that is what is happening, though someone from GR can correct me if I'm wrong. The original date published cannot be later than an edition date published. So when you change it, it self-corrects, but uses the librarian ID of the "incorrect" change.
Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "No, I don't think that is what is happening, though someone from GR can correct me if I'm wrong. The original date published cannot be later than an edition date published. So when you change it, i..."Six of one... Still a giant waste of effort, this continual need for repairing data entered correctly and 'fixed' in error.
Thanks for your assistance Elizabeth.
I actually don't think it's "fixing" them in error. I think the edition dates are wrong and we're not actually correcting the problem. I think the system is programmed correctly to not allow an original publication date that is later than an edition date. Anyway, I learned about this because I kind of fought the same issue a month ago, and Rivka kindly set me on the right path.
When I sort by publication date on my shelves, Dostoevsky's "Devils" (alternate title "The Possessed")shows Jan. 1, 1386. This novel was first published in 1916.
Judith wrote: "When I sort by publication date on my shelves, Dostoevsky's "Devils" (alternate title "The Possessed")shows Jan. 1, 1386. This novel was first published in 1916."
I've changed the Original Publication date to 1916. That should fix the issue.
Mod
With the 1386 date gone, will changing the original publication date to 1916 stick now? Because at the moment, it appears to have defaulted to
Mod
Mod
1916 is an incorrect date, I believe. "Devils" is also known as "Demons" and was originally published in 1872. I will get this fixed.
Thanks for all the work to correct this one, guys!Sorry about the wrong publication date I provided.
I must have been looking at a specific edition's publication date to get 1916....
No problem, Judith - had you posted something like 1890 I wouldn't have even looked! I was just pretty sure Dostoevsky died before 1916, so I was curious.
I notice that several of the Dick Francis titles do not have publication dates when I sort my shelves by that category. I recently researched them all on his web site, and would be glad to provide them here for you if that would be helpful. Just let me know!
It's probably best to start a new thread for those. But yes, any info that we can add to improve the database is welcome. :)
I have the same problem for various editions of this book:http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/97...
I have corrected several times the original publication year with "1986" (no month/day), it seems to stick for a while, but then it reverts to 1388.
There was a Persian edition with a wrong date, the same problem as explained above. I corrected the edition.
