Goodreads Librarians Group discussion
Questions (not edit requests)
>
Stage Fright
date
newest »
newest »
message 1:
by
Ryan
(new)
Jun 10, 2009 05:24PM
As a Goodreads Librarian, I've only marginally used my powers, mostly to edit typos in quotes and combine redundant ones. Today, however, I decided to take a big step forward and edit the description for A Clockwork Orange, which is mostly about the audio version. But just before I activated my edits, I chickened out. Does anyone else have this problem? (And, on a side note, is editing the general book description to eliminate audio-specific information a wise use of my status?)
reply
|
flag
I know the feeling! But it is nice to remember that everything like that is logged in the edition's change log these days, so someone could always revert if it turned out to have gone all wrong. It gives me more confidence, anyway!(And yes, absolutely tackle those book descriptions! I've seen that happen before -- Amazon has decided that the best description of this book is for that edition but it doesn't push the "this text refers to a different edition of this book" disclaimer, so any edition that doesn't have its own description gets the generic without any way of knowing it. I went through and fixed like two dozen editions of Black Beauty once because Amazon's top description was of the abridged version.)
That sounds like a welcomed correction to the database. Information specific to an audio edition shouldn't be included in the normal print description. As for being timid about making bigger changes, feel free to ask for a second opinion on the Librarian group. We're all here because we want to help.
I'm in the process of going through all the books on here that I own and adding the descriptions. A lot of them have nothing in that field and I love being able to see the description there and I know others do too! I used to have that scared feeling until I got more knowledgable. Now, like Cait said, with the change log helping, it makes me feel better. I also don't tackle anything unless I'm sure it's okay because it's so easy to come here and ask or get opinions. So when I do something I'm fairly sure it's correct!
