Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

Since there is no way of restoring a deleted series (that I know of), maybe wholesale deletions of series could be restricted to supers?

I'm very frustrated with some recent editing or outright deleting of series I am reading. At the same time, I do know there is too much editing, adding and creating of series needed that librarians do need to be able to work on the changes. Just not feasible to lock series down to just supers, staff, series authors or any such parameters. The thorough series info (including often chronological, publication and other order series info) was exactly what convinced me to become a goodreads member.

But maybe at least the deletions could be handled by supers on a thread similar to how we do for merging author profiles, deleting/merging books with more than five ratings, etc.?

Bad enough the disagreements on series order having the things re-ordered all the time (instead of just making a series for each ordering like goodreads used to have ) causing the books to change order all the time as librarians with different opinions undid each other's edits (at least correctable, often just by cracking open first few pages of one of the later works listing series orders) but restoring a series particularly if joint or multiple authors ... Series not in title or bookcover info/logo...

Good idea. I'm surprised it's not already a requirement.

I get that imprints are incorrectly made series as librarians see the imprint on bookcovers ... I don't think deleting a series for being an imprint is a more frequent edit than some of the author and book merging tasks supers do.

If it is, I stand corrected—but still think the difficulty in restoring a wrongly deleted series ( and the often very time consuming research and efforts that went into creating some of the series) really warrants restricting to super-librarians.

I'm having major deja vu on this, but I can't seem to find a prior conversation about it.

I think it's a great idea. It's clear that there are librarians who are too quick to delete series and librarians aren't always clear on what is and isn't a series on Goodreads.

It could even be something similar to book deletions where a librarian could delete a series of say 1-5 books (I figure a 5 book series wouldn't be too painstaking to recreate if necessary) but anything over 5 would have to be deleted by a super.

Vicky wrote: "I'm having major deja vu on this, but I can't seem to find a prior conversation about it."

If I remember correctly it was in the feedback group. And while I was hesitant about it before, I can now see why it would be useful. Accidents happen, but as long as they are minor...
Series are obviously more perilous than I first thought.

Edit: Yup, here is the previous discussion: http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1...

I guess I'm mostly ambivalent about this, but it's also a bit aggravating that librarians who are uninformed or can't be bothered to double check decisions they aren't certain about are so prevalent that these steps start to feel necessary. It would never occur to me to delete a series I didn't have first hand knowledge of (or be able to find a definitive answer on the web about) without checking here first. At least today's incident seems to have been done by someone who makes every effort to stay involved and was quick to own up to/fix her own error (thank goodness cuz it was a doozy).

I like Vicky's idea of making superlibrarian involvement necessary for over x number of books.

I agree with Jennifer on this 100%. I like Vicky's suggestion as well.

Ok, so this time I'm posting here. I do believe this is an imprint:
http://www.goodreads.com/series/10316...

It is Bulgarian classic literature and there is no connection between the books, some of them even contain folk songs.

I think ordinary librarians should still be allowed to delete series they created themselves, so they can correct their own mistakes. I can't be the only one who has accidentally created or duplicated series and then had to delete them a few minutes later.

Re. the original post and mention of deleting books with >5 ratings, I don't think it's right that any old librarian could delete another user's review just because it's of a rare or little-read book.(Supers may sometimes be involved in this too if an item was NAB'ed.) Users should always at the very least be emailed copies of any such reviews.

You could also have something like Discogs where you get notifications of changes affecting items in your collection.
If ignorant or new librarians were to delete my shelved stuff it would annoy me and I'd at least want to be able to know and fix it if I could be bothered.

I've deleted lots of series, most are one book because people don't know how to edit and add to a series or to combine editions, so they accidentally create a new series for every book.

Others are duplicates in another language that just needed the name added to the description of the original series.

It would of been helpful when someone deleted a series of 130 books earlier this year.

I haven't had the energy to track them down again yet, especially as I'm sure the same person will just delete it again.

Multi-author, same universe with same premise and at least the same one character in every book.

Sandra wrote: "It would of been helpful when someone deleted a series of 130 books earlier this year.

I haven't had the energy to track them down again yet, especially as I'm sure the same person will just dele..."

There are notes attached to the series.
What is the name of the series?

Ellie, it was the 1 Night Stand series, romance ebooks.

Sandra wrote: "Ellie, it was the 1 Night Stand series, romance ebooks."

Someone has actually added it again if that is the one:
http://www.goodreads.com/series/66260...

Ellie [The Empress] wrote: "Sandra wrote: "Ellie, it was the 1 Night Stand series, romance ebooks."

Someone has actually added it again if that is the one:
http://www.goodreads.com/series/66260..."

If it is the same series, I would add the details of same universe and character to the description to keep it from looking like an imprint.

Deborah wrote: "Ellie [The Empress] wrote: "Sandra wrote: "Ellie, it was the 1 Night Stand series, romance ebooks."

Someone has actually added it again if that is the one:
http://www.goodreads.com/series/66260-1..."

Thanks, I added a few more books and there are more to come out, but couldn't find much info. Series information in the description would be great.

Antonomasia wrote: "... the original post and mention of deleting books with >5 ratings, I don't think it's right that any old librarian could delete another user's review just because it's of a rare or little-read book.(Supers may sometimes be involved in this too if an item was NAB'ed.) Users should always at the very least be emailed copies of any such reviews. ..."

No, reviews are never to get deleted by a librarian (we cannot edit or delete reviews but we can delete book editions) The only time an actual book is deleted is if it's an invalid edition — at which point the review is supposed to be merged to the valid book editions. Any member can add a book, they do so oddly sometimes. A librarian will make corrections necessary to combine it with the actual published work/book, then when combined gets deleted, which merges ratings/reviews to real book.

Deleting one edition merges reviews over to the primary edition. What often happens is a member doesn"t find their edition of a book, manually enters (not always with very good details and often with title, author or isbn typos which caused search to fail to start with or maybe book an arc not quite out to general public ). So this stray edition runs around that no one else rates/reviews (maybe cannot even find if typos) but in the meatime, publisher/author/librarian/members have added correctly titled, covered, isbn, etc. editions everyone else are reviewing. Regular lbrarians can then merge the single review duplicate edition with the edition that reviewer had attempted to create, then when deleted the review/rating merges to the real edition.

I've merged a lot of coverless, typo in title, typo in author field (more often a member just does a nonstandard spelling/punctuation of author putting in or leaving out middle names or initials), typo or missing isbn, etc. single review books with the publshed editions that thousands were reviewing. Leaving stray editions running around actually means the main work/book won't show the review or include the rating. Author won't even have the stray on their page or be able to edit if the invalid edition did not use standard spelling of author name.

On the other hand, if 5 or more members review an edition of a book, it might be a legitimate edition versus a duplicate a member tried to create. (Sometimes it just was the first added so as other reviewers searched by title, that's what they found). So no deleting or merging except by a superlibrarian.

*sigh* someone has been at The Vorkosigan series again.

I was referring mostly to non-book items, such as the original radio plays I was looking at and could have deleted within the last few weeks.
Also, if a new or less knowledgeable librarian did not combine a surplus edition with one or two reviews before deleting it, would its reviews not also disappear?

I'm very okay with changing the suggestion to be a certain number of books in a series need a super to delete. I'd suggest more than 3. That should let regular librarians take care of the odd single book series duplicates and not bug the superlibrarians with the very common trilogies.

Antonomasia wrote: "I was referring mostly to non-book items, such as the original radio plays I was looking at and could have deleted within the last few weeks.
Also, if a new or less knowledgeable librarian did not ..."

Radio plays are a grey area, I believe, and may be deleted as invalid editions unless released and published (i.e. if only released over the airwaves and recorded by listeners themselves, probably NOT valid).

@Debbie - *hugs* Not up enough on the series to be confident offering help, sorry!

Oh and big in favour of restricting deletions. Sometimes even the "You can't do this" should make someone stop and think about what they are doing, like with deleting books.

Also, if a librarian is then repeatedly adding long series that are imprints, someone can have a quiet word as well because they will flag up as requests to delete.

Lastly, less than 5ish would mean that when you get the accidental adding of a new series instead of adding an edition to an existing one, you could still delete the erroneous extra one :)

Antonomasia wrote: "Also, if a new or less knowledgeable librarian did not combine a surplus edition with one or two reviews before deleting it, would its reviews not also disappear?"

I don't believe a regular librarian can outright delete a book with any number of ratings, they can only merge the book if there are < 5 ratings.

So, two examples:

1. Edition A has 10 reviews, Edition B is an erroneous record with 2 reviews. A regular librarian can merge Edition B into Edition A, transferring the reviews to A.

2. Edition C has 3 reviews and is the only edition in the work. If I'm recalling correctly, this requires a super-librarian to delete since this would result in the reviews/ratings/shelvings being deleted if the book is not a book per Goodreads policy.

In example 2, when would you be told?

The same pop-up warning appears if I click on "delete this book" on a standalone with 2 ratings as it does on a book with many other editions: "All reviews will be merged into the most popular edition. If there are no other editions, all reviews will be deleted. Only delete books that have no business on this site or are exact duplicates of existing books (same ISBN). You can only delete editions with less than 5 reviews. Are you sure?"

Not sure, here's a dummy test book though: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17...

I added it and rated it, let me know what happens if you try to delete it. :P

I can't!
"[x] Only super-librarians can delete books with so many reviews"

I've only ever deleted books I'd added myself so far.

Ellie [The Empress] wrote: "Sandra wrote: "Ellie, it was the 1 Night Stand series, romance ebooks."

Someone has actually added it again if that is the one:
http://www.goodreads.com/series/66260..."

Yep Ellie, that was the one.

So a big Thank You to whoever re-did it!!

Luckily I'd added quite a few of the numbers into the titles when I added them the first time. As the list is up in the 170's now.

lafon حمزة wrote: "If I remember correctly it was in the feedback group."

Which is where this sort of discussion really belongs, as it is a request for a feature addition.

Closing this thread.

Feedback thread