Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

on the series page? the original language.
in the title field the series name that is used on that edition.

if it's a popular series it often helps a bit if you mention other languages in the description of the series to prevent people from creating not needed duplicates

there's a statement from the former moderator from november https://www.goodreads.com/comment/sho...

Actually that is used the way rivka mentioned since I'm working on series - people not knowing or caring is also not that new. flag them, and I would leave a note in the series (in that notes part) and quote that part.

By popularity - well that would be silly as that can change - and prioritizing english titles is also not true.

And why on earth should it not be enough if the head librarian for over a decade (which she still was at that point) and the one who wrote huge parts of the manual is explaining a rule that already existed for years?

This should be in the librarian manual if it is a standing policy. And also there should be a clarification on transliteration (whether it should be present, accepted, or not). Also while we're at it, what's the canonical way to indicate the type of work (light novel/manga/manhwa/etc).

But also consider this:
1. whether you like it or not, goodreads is very us-centric, or at the very least latin-language-centric; there are known issues with japanese langage collation when goodreads randomly decides to change kana on its own, also case in point: no guidance in librarian manual for conventions outside of western literature, see above

2. over the 500-some series I've managed over the years, literally select number had og title as the series (whenever the series had official western release), even if you look at the top selling manga/light novels of all time, it's either official english title, or at least the english part of official japanese title; I have not seen a single chinese or korean series at all

3. and it's not just the weeb stuff, lots of high-profile literature has official english release title as the series title:
https://www.goodreads.com/series/4091...
https://www.goodreads.com/series/1899...
https://www.goodreads.com/series/1130...

The ideal solution would be to have an option to list all the localized series names as a built-in feature, but we just got dedicated series management at all, so I don't see it being a thing in the near decade.

You cite head librarian, but then again most of the staff is us-based english-speaking folk, and they opine on the topic from theoretical standpoint, with little to no actual experience managing non-western works on a regular basis.

As for popularity thing, from what I've seen, it's always original series title until the western release, then it flips rather fast, in a matter of days, and people who actually care to manage the series can update the series title as a matter of course, so I don't see the issue with this.

Not to mention that goodreads own edition management prioritizes popularity over original publication date for setting the default work edition. Like, literally, if you missed the window to add western editions beforehand, the autogenerated english kindle eiditions will be the default after merge just a couple days later.