Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

I've separated the book and correct the author on the book.

The fact that a lot of people have mistakenly rated it and reviewed it as if it was the actual book and not a guide to the book is something that has happened with lots of other books. For example, if you look at the books for Harold Bloom (of Bloom's guide) there are quite a few that have 50+ ratings and if you read the reviews it sounds as if people are actually reviewing the book that the guide is about.

People who don't have the book in front of them frequently have difficulty reviewing "the actual edition they read," no?

Otis and a few others can fix stuff like this.

I think it's time for a new folder . . .

Thanks for the new folder Rivka!

I think the real issue, then, is that when people don't care about an edition, what happens?

1. They search for a book.
2. Upon finding it, they click "Add to my books."
3. They put a review.

The critical part is which edition is chosen as the default when someone clicks Add? It's never been quite obvious to me. I have sort of assumed it might be the most popular edition, but have never bothered to try to confirm this. Anyway, one way of minimizing this type of problem in the future would be to find a way to try to make sure that the default is the legitimate book. I'm not sure if this is practical or not.

I've toyed with the idea of requesting a "Set as Default" option for books as part of the combine editions screen, but didn't think it was that important. What do others think?

Currently the most popular edition is indeed the default. Which tends to perpetuate it being the most popular. ;)

I like the idea of being able to select which edition should be the default.

I like the idea of being able to set a default edition also. Every once in a while I come across an audio edition of the book with by far the most ratings, and I'm sure not all those raters listened vs. read that book.

"I think the real issue, then, is that when people don't care about an edition, what happens?

1. They search for a book.
2. Upon finding it, they click "Add to my books."
3. They put a review."

Agreed.

There's also the scenario that I keep running into lately. The edition I'm reading is not posted. However, it's also too old to have an ISBN and there is no cover art floating around anywhere obvious (like Amazon). Meanwhile, there's a shiny cover-arted ISBN'd reprint editon already in GR.

I'm a cataloger in real life, so it kills me to 'attach my holdings' to the wrong ed. But I figure no one really wants to see my older 'incomplete' version. So I just attach to the new shiny one.

If you have a scanner (or access to one), you can put up cover art on your own.

Fixed the book in question by merging it with this one: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18...

???

It's the 75 reviews of the study guide that need moving that are the issue, no?

Sorry - by 'merge' I meant I merged the reviews. If you look the book in message 1 has no reviews anymore.

Ah! Caught by caching (and I didn't scroll down).

It says "avg rating (all editions): 4.05 (76 ratings)". My mistake was believing it. ;)

Indeed. :)

Well, there's one rating now, but the caching has caught up. :)