Jayson > Status Update

If you have any questions or would like to know more specific details, feel free to message me or leave a comment below.

How to Help:
If you're unhappy with all this and would like to lend a hand, please send a complaint to Goodreads Support: https://www.goodreads.com/about/conta...

They will tell you that this is how they're titling comic books now, and that it's not likely to change. That's fine. That's expected. If they don't say that they're forwarding your "titling preference" to the relevant department, insist that they do.

It's a numbers game. We need as many people as possible to flood their inbox to say we, the comic book community, will not tolerate their desecration of our pastime because people who don't read comics think they know what's best for comics. With your help, it's possible to turn the tide before it's too late.

Goodreads' Logic:
As you may be aware, it's Goodreads' policy to put the series name and sequence number in parentheses after the title. When done for comic books, this causes an information duplication, where the series name and volume number is present in both the title and the parenthesis after the title.

This duplication is regarded as intolerable by GR higher-ups. Rather than remove the parenthesis, which would be the logical solution, they decided to remove the series name and volume number from the title, leaving only the subtitle!

So, for example, Batman, Volume 9: Bloom is now just Bloom.

There is also an exception for the title being the name in the manual but no one is paying attention to it.

From the Librarian Manual regarding titles:

An exception to this is when the series name is the primary or only title. In this case, the title may be formatted with series name and number as the title (the number may be written out to match the title as shown on the edition) and any additional title text as the subtitle.“

Yes, in fact, one of the examples they give in the manual exactly follows the series title, volume number and subtitle format.

Tangentially related (nothing to do with comic books specifically, but with GR policies), it'd seem like my book pages are back how they used to be, how I liked them. Is this some specific quirk I've got going that doesn't reflect anything else and isn't going to last, or are they up to something behind the scenes that you'd know to give any insight on?

Juho wrote: "Tangentially related (nothing to do with comic books specifically, but with GR policies), it'd seem like my book pages are back how they used to be, how I liked them. Is this some specific quirk I'..."

Yes, I've heard people mention that too. It seems inconsistently applied at the moment. Honestly, book pages never shifted over for me, so I've noticed no difference. Unfortunately, I don't have any insider knowledge about it.

What a gd GR mess! Out of all of the issues that need improvement this is what they pick to break

BAM the enigma wrote: "What a gd GR mess! Out of all of the issues that need improvement this is what they pick to break"

Yeah, it's trying to reinvent the wheel for no good reason. This is what you get when you have people who don't read comics making decisions about comics. And, moreover, they admit that they don't have the experience and knowledge to make decisions about comics. Every time a question comes up, they take a punt and never really answer it. Which makes it all the more mystifying why they made such a bold decision on this issue 🙄

That's how it always goes in modern society - the bigger a company gets, the more it's influenced and eventually controlled by executives and shareholders that, though far from me to generalize or demonize, only seem to care about money and profit and growth and apparently don't have any hobbies of their own beyond that. What's happening here is just a small pimple on a face full of them.

We need a grand-scale societal upheaval. Bring together all the fans of all things everywhere to throw down our oppressors. Then see how long we can make it work before the cycle carries on and we're back where we started, I guess...

Juho wrote: "That's how it always goes in modern society - the bigger a company gets, the more it's influenced and eventually controlled by executives and shareholders that, though far from me to generalize or ..."

Funny enough, it doesn't seem like money is a concern at all in this instance. If they really wanted to maximize potential profits, they would have the book titles match or at least follow the convention used by Amazon. It's their demand for uncritical, no-exception uniformity that's at the heart of this.

What does that mean?

Blackberrystew wrote: "What does that mean?"

Which part? Broadly speaking, it means that collected reprints of comic book series won't have the series in the name anymore.

Heavy sigh...please do better GR!! Thanks for bringing this subject to the top of the stack today Jayson!!

Marge wrote: "Heavy sigh...please do better GR!! Thanks for bringing this subject to the top of the stack today Jayson!!"

Awareness is key, I'm just happy to do my part :)

Jayson wrote: "Blackberrystew wrote: "What does that mean?"

Which part? Broadly speaking, it means that collected reprints of comic book series won't have the series in the name anymore."

Do you mean the volumes won't have the series that they're part of printed on the cover? Also, what does that mean for the comic books? Sorry for being so clueless here. :/

Blackberrystew wrote: "Do you mean the volumes won't have the series that they're part of printed on the cover? Also, what does that mean for the comic books? Sorry for being so clueless here. :/"

No worries. It's nothing to do with the printing of the actual book. Quite the opposite in fact. It's that Goodreads is refusing to to list books by their actual name, if that name has the series and volume number in it. They are choosing to list those comics by their subtitle only.

If that doesn't make sense to you, welcome to the club. It doesn't make sense to practically anyone.

I noticed that with a short story collection!

Ari wrote: "I noticed that with a short story collection!"

Doesn't surprise me. The demand for uniformity most often steamrolls common sense. It's pounding square pegs into round holes no matter the cost.

It's annoying because they're all merged so my reviews are all merged and it says I've read it 20 times

Ari wrote: "It's annoying because they're all merged so my reviews are all merged and it says I've read it 20 times"

Yeah, that'd be annoying to say the least. I find that most glitches and irritations are the side-effects of updates or initiatives never properly thought through. The problem is GR never likes to admit failure, and so they often double-down on bad policy for the sake of saving face.

I completely agree with the way you've said that

Ari wrote: "I completely agree with the way you've said that"

It's the product of extensive trial and error. I've had a lot of experience writing about glitches on this site LOL

Sent in my complaint, hope it works out, Jayson.

TMR wrote: "Sent in my complaint, hope it works out, Jayson."

Thanks! You never know what might tip the scales in these situations, so your support is much appreciated 😁👍

It’s an extremely amateur move for a supposedly professionally run company as far as I’m concerned. Esp since I doubt one single person turned in a complaint about this beforehand. When things like this happen it makes me worry what’s next. No one ever stops after one rehash

BAM the enigma wrote: "It’s an extremely amateur move for a supposedly professionally run company as far as I’m concerned. Esp since I doubt one single person turned in a complaint about this beforehand. When things like..."

Yeah, I find it inconceivable that anyone would have had a problem with the series and volume number being in the the titles of books, simply because it's ridiculous to think the name of the book shouldn't be the name of the book! Just makes you roll your eyes and shake your head. It'd be hilarious if it wasn't our reality.

Here's what they said to me: On Goodreads, we manage our data differently than many online booksellers, including Amazon and for consistency all titles need to be listed a certain way. In cases like this where the title of the book is also the name of the series we use the subtitle in the title field, and the series name will only appear once in the series field to avoid repetition. You can read all about how we list our data in the Librarian Manual here.

That said, I have passed your feedback about how comics are listed on the site to the relevant team.

Not sure if it is helpful or not.

TMR wrote: "Here's what they said to me: On Goodreads, we manage our data differently than many online booksellers, including Amazon and for consistency all titles need to be listed a certain way. In cases lik..."

Yeah, that's what everybody gets, word for word. I'm surprised they got back to you so quickly, but I think it's a good sign, because it means they have been getting so many complaints about it that the response is cued up and ready to be copy and pasted at a moment's notice.

As long as they're being truthful that the feedback is being passed on to the relevant team, what you did was very helpful, because it's means their stack of complaints is a little bit higher now, and everything adds up. Like I said before, you never know what straw will break the camel's back, or what seemingly innocuous phrase or argument might tip the scales.

I should mention that they're outright lying to you about being able to read all about how comics are listed in the Librarian Manual. I hounded them about pointing me to the exact place in the manual where it mentions this, and eventually they had to admit that it wasn't in the manual at all. That line is entirely a bluff since they don't expect anyone would actually care to look it up.

Oh they do have a much better response now! LOL
That just means they're getting enough complaints that they finally had to take the time to come up with something that didn't sound so hokey.
Carry on!

Anne wrote: "Oh they do have a much better response now! LOL
That just means they're getting enough complaints that they finally had to take the time to come up with something that didn't sound so hokey.
Carry on!"

It's always a tad bit frightening when machines start to learn things.

There are a couple of series that have been handled like this for a while with librarian notes saying not to change them and I just shrugged and moved on. I'm not being paid to make edits and I've done a good amount of housekeeping for single issues and trades over the years. If one person feels the need to follow a system the rest of us haven't used then I guess they can do it all themselves from now on. I'm not fighting against the site while I'm helping out for free.

I'm honestly just tired of things changing for the worst around here. Very tired.

I've been in talks with someone at complaints for the last couple days on this. Sent them screenshots and the like.
As a fellow Librarian and comic reader, Jayson, I totally agree that this is crazy. I can't believe they are removing the Vol. 1 as well on a bunch of books (making it so you can't see the difference between trades and individual issues). I collect trades and indv. issues. But generally only track my trades here; and have an app for my main comics (individual) themselves. But if they keep this up I'll have to log all my trades in the other app I guess and just be annoyed when I update what I've read here for Reading Challenge.
At any rate, there are a bunch of us engaged now. Hopefully that helps. Thanks for getting the word out and getting people to engage!!! You have one of the biggest followings on the site so that should help!

Shannon wrote: "There are a couple of series that have been handled like this for a while with librarian notes saying not to change them and I just shrugged and moved on. I'm not being paid to make edits and I've ..."

Yes, until now, it's only been a few series affected. Most people could live with that, because it was only limited to a few and hadn't become widespread. But now we're dealing with a true obsessive who routinely makes 600-1000 individual edits a day, and for seemingly no reason other than needing something to do with their fingers while listening to podcasts.

I would be resigned too to let this person bear the weight of overhauling the entire face of comics on this site, but the fact is that they're the one librarian with enough free time and obsession to make a real dent. Even with the combined effort of every other comic book librarian here, it would take many months if not years to undo the damage this one person has done in just a few short months. This is all the more mystifying, as you rightly bring up, because no one's getting paid for this!

I would also caution people when dealing with this guy because he's very touchy and has no compunctions about flagging you for edits and perceived harassment. The more you try to persuade him, the more he digs in his heels.

What if we flag his changes Jayson? Would that help?
I bet on the database side Goodreads could do a script to undo all his edits on any book in a ‘comic’ genre.
If they can’t then I want to see what the database looks like and start working for them to make that possible! 🤣

Jayson wrote: "I would also caution people when dealing with this guy because he's very touchy and has no compunctions about flagging you for edits and perceived harassment."

This sounds like he's spitefully abusing the flag system which you would think would be against TOS.

Shannon wrote: "I'm honestly just tired of things changing for the worst around here. Very tired."

I'm with you there. I've been dealing with Goodreads about this one issue since October 2021, which I just realized has been a year. It's all been mentally exhausting, and all the more so since the start of August when this went into overdrive.

Mel (Epic Reading) wrote: "I totally agree that this is crazy. I can't believe they are removing the Vol. 1 as well on a bunch of books (making it so you can't see the difference between trades and individual issues)."

Yeah, that's a big problem that no one seems to have thought through. The fact is that comic book singles have always used the number sign (#), and applying that to collected trades as well is just going to cause needles confusion about which books are singles and which are volumes.

Mel (Epic Reading) wrote: "Thanks for getting the word out and getting people to engage!!! You have one of the biggest followings on the site so that should help!"

I appreciate it, Mel! I'm just happy people are as engaged in this as I am and willing to lend a hand and spread the word.

Jayson wrote: "The fact is that comic book singles have always used the number sign (#), and applying that to collected trades as well is just going to cause needles confusion about which books are singles and which are volumes."

Even when things weren't being screwed up people were still combining single issues with trades just because the numbers matched. I swear only like 5 people should be able to touch comics because I've had to clean up so much over the years.

Mel (Epic Reading) wrote: "What if we flag his changes Jayson? Would that help?
I bet on the database side Goodreads could do a script to undo all his edits on any book in a ‘comic’ genre.
If they can’t then I want to see ..."

I want to be very careful to say that I'm not publicly advocating anyone flag edits that aren't in contravention with Goodreads standards. Having said that, I knew several people have been doing exactly that in this situation specifically, and I have never expressed any opinion that they should stop.

Jayson wrote: "I want to be very careful to say that I'm not publicly advocating anyone flag edits that aren't in contravention with Goodreads standards."

I mean, if you quote the librarian manual for your reason for the flag it feels like that is exactly holding up Goodreads' standards ...

Shannon wrote: "This sounds like he's spitefully abusing the flag system which you would think would be against TOS."

One would think so. Though, the law has been on his side so far as edits go. I'm less sure about flagging for harassment.

Shannon wrote: "Even when things weren't being screwed up people were still combining single issues with trades just because the numbers matched. I swear only like 5 people should be able to touch comics because I've had to clean up so much over the years."

Yes, it's a pandora's box of unintended side-effects that could have easily been avoided with just a little forethought about this policy and its ripple effects. 🙄

Shannon wrote: "I mean, if you quote the librarian manual for your reason for the flag it feels like that is exactly holding up Goodreads' standards ..."

And I would encourage anyone planning on flagging edits to do exactly that. Especially since this one rule isn't actually in the librarian's manual, and the exception that Anne mentioned in message 2 of this thread actually is 😉

If only they were as diligent in removing calendars and magazines.

Kenny wrote: "If only they were as diligent in removing calendars and magazines."

Yes, if only! But those things are much more difficult to hunt down, and too small potatoes to deserve his attention. This guy needs ready and apparent busywork to fill his days, and prominent enough to garner a sense of self-importance about making a visible difference in the world. 🙄

Jayson wrote: Yes, if only! But those things are much more difficult to hunt down, and too small potatoes to deserve his attention. This guy needs ready and apparent busywork to fill his days, and prominent enough to garner a sense of self-importance about making a visible difference in the world. 🙄"

🙄