Play Book Tag discussion

Does anyone know what’s going on with the gr database? A large portion of the books on lists are showing up with titles in other languages. Many different languages, with no translation button.

I’m also having trouble finding books using the add book/author function. I couldn’t even get Rebecca. It should be first but it wasn’t anywhere on the first five pages.

This seems like a much more basic problem than the posting problems we had a while back.

Was Goodreads hacked? Is there a crew of rogue librarians making a point that we don’t all speak English?

I posted about this problem in the GR Bug thread in PBT yesterday, and several shared their experiences and hack around.

I first saw it mentioned in another group and experienced it myself there. Seems limited to older titles - classics.

I contacted the GR help via email. They responded earlier asking for screen shots and suggesting I refine my search. This ticked me off so I responded with screen shots that since I was looking to link one of the most famous books written in English, published in 1955, Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, merely searching Lolita should have it appear as first option on 1st page as it had before yesterday, not pages of summaries, criticisms, and books by authors with first name Lolita. I also gave him a screen shot of search to link 'Lolita Nabokov' which gives you foreign language options. I also showed him other problem searches I did last night for classics.

Haven't heard from him since.

Theresa wrote: "I posted about this problem in the GR Bug thread in PBT yesterday, and several shared their experiences and hack around.

I first saw it mentioned in another group and experienced it myself there...."

It seems very odd that the classics should be worst.

I first noticed it on the tag list for moral dilemmas. I’m not sure about all the titles -since I can’t read the symbols - but I don’t think they’re all older books.

Just had trouble with Cold Mountain. Had to say by Charles Frazier and even then was not on the first page & I needed to click on show other editions.

Also had trouble with Love Medicine.

One other, don't remember which came up with a huge page & I thought "Oh now, somebody else had trouble with this and Theresa told how to fix, so I'm going to have to look it up."
I clicked on another book and it returned to normal.

I would consider Cold Mountain an older book and I have had trouble with them too since yesterday.

No trouble with books published in 21st Century.

I had problems today when I clicked on the link to books for the tag of the month for August. It is really annoying. Especially when books I have marked as want to read are in a foreign language

aaah, I thought it was just me... I was looking at a Japanese mystery series and they were showing up in Thai! so weird but as it wasn't a well known one, I just kinda thought it's a one off weird thing

NancyJ wrote: "Does anyone know what’s going on with the gr database? A large portion of the books on lists are showing up with titles in other languages. Many different languages, with no translation button.

..."

OMG, I was just coming to post this same thing. What the heck? One of my very favorite books is A Fine Balance, and I think Family Matters by the same author might fit moral dilemmas, but when I go to look at it, the description is in Lithuanian. But it looks like I marked that particular book as "interested" which I'm pretty sure I did NOT. Very, very frustrating. I hope they get this fixed sooner rather than later.

Theresa wrote: "I posted about this problem in the GR Bug thread in PBT yesterday, and several shared their experiences and hack around.

I first saw it mentioned in another group and experienced it myself there...."

Thank you for pushing this forward - - it's absolutely not limited to classics, and it's all over Goodreads.

Linda wrote: "I had problems today when I clicked on the link to books for the tag of the month for August. It is really annoying. Especially when books I have marked as want to read are in a foreign language"

This is where I also first noticed it . . .and it's books I marked earlier as "interested" or "to read.". It's all messed up, and it's not like you can find the English version either - - I tried that.

Just had a response by email to my scathing clarification yesterday to Zurain at GR. It's been 'escalated to the developers' and a 'team is working on it.' Hope to resolve soon.

Last night I pulled up the book page for Lolita which I had tagged weeks ago to the correct edition,and which I am currently reading, only to find all the descriptibve information in some unfamiliar language using vaguely cyrillic looking symbols but not ones I know. WTF?!

Theresa wrote: "Just had a response by email to my scathing clarification yesterday to Zurain at GR. It's been 'escalated to the developers' and a 'team is working on it.' Hope to resolve soon.

Last night I pulle..."

I tried to write “Cyrillic” yesterday but I wasn’t sure if that was what I was seeing, much less how to spell it.

I was trying to link to Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth for a thread about books we read that we maybe weren’t supposed to. Neither the book nor the author would come up, only guides to the book, and weird languages. I have seen this before but it didn’t last this long.

I wonder if it happens for books with a lot of editions? Anyway, I don’t think this is hacking, just GR incompetence.

Oy! Wish they would fix it already!

The edition and translation of Les Miz I am glacially reading has completely disappeared, no longer present on GR and on my shelves! WTF? It was there a day or two ago. And BC's ISBN # hack did not pop it up. I had to wade through ridiculous # edition pages to find another format edition of same translation which has no total pages reported. I can easily track by % read as I am reading in ebook, and will simply swap out edition when finished so pages get added to yearly page stats, but this is ridiculous.

That edition has been in my currently reading for 2 months and years as a want to read.

Although I could find easily plenty of translations in languages I can't read and in some cases even identify.

So, Theresa ... the book wasn't even on YOUR book shelves?

I can't remember which book it was now, of course, but sometime in the last few days when I was looking for some book and couldn't get the regular search to work I wen to MY BOOKS and searched there ... found the book on MY shelf, and then clicked on the specific book I wanted. When I opened the book's page I then copied the ISBN into the "add book/author" pop up to get the link to work.

What a complete mess!

Book Concierge wrote: "So, Theresa ... the book wasn't even on YOUR book shelves?

I can't remember which book it was now, of course, but sometime in the last few days when I was looking for some book and couldn't get th..."


Book was not even on my bookshelves. It was wiped from the universe.

Several times I will open a book on MY shelves and a different edition in some other language than English actually opens. Not the one I tagged. It is all very random and frustrating. I was scanning tags for my Feminerdy read - book page was normal, the edition I had tagged, but when I clicked on show all tags and that page opened, title and that info were in a foreign language I did not recognize.

It is crazy.

GR has posted that it's aware of the problems with both search and ratings

https://help.goodreads.com/s/announce...

I just checked your shelves, Theresa ... and I did find it ...
When I opened it from your shelf I got the Penguin Classics (Kindle edition) - Introduction by Robert Tombs / Translator is Christine Donougher

Of course, when I try to find it in the "add book/author" screen I can't get to it. With over 4000 editions, and the search limited to just 500 that's not surprising. If you can get the ASIN # for the kindle edition you have, perhaps a librarian can add it to the edition record for you (though how they would find it in order to add it, I'm not sure).

BTW ... I just tried to find To Kill a Mockingbird and got all sorts of nonsense before I limited the search to HARDCOVER (I DO have a first edition), and then still had to go to page 3 or 4 to find the actual first edition.

I currently have the format and edition I am reading - but it is missing number of pages. Took ridiculous amount of effort to locate it and I was too frustrated after to contact GR to add the number of pages which I know they will do.

But what ticks me off is that it still isn't the exact edition and format I had used which had a different cover but everything else matched - translator, intro writer, publisher, format, number of pages. It is just gone.

Except .... i stumbled across a post where I had posted a book cover link for it, and it finds the book and shows that exact edition with number of pages as being on my shelves. Try to actually find it on my shelves.

Robin P wrote: "GR has posted that it's aware of the problems with both search and ratings

https://help.goodreads.com/s/announce......"

Thanks, Robin. My email exchange was detailed and explicit and the final reply was that developers were working on the problem. Glad to see from this that is true.

If you want to increase your frustration try searching for Still Alice by Lisa Genova. An incredibly popular book / author with a record that is completely hosed up.

Oh for the days when my only problem was trying to pull up the tag list for a book with no 'show all' options because too new or too few.

It’s really frustrating. Getting search functionality right on this kind of system is pretty fundamental.

KateNZ wrote: "It’s really frustrating. Getting search functionality right on this kind of system is pretty fundamental."

Fundamental is right. It makes me wonder if they have a hacker - someone who wants to teach us all that English isn't the only language in the world. Or a disgruntled employee (or former employee) who knew exactly where the system was vulnerable. Or they just can't afford to hire qualified people.

I'm on this site nearly every day, and I recognize that I get a lot of use from this site for free, So when the system redirects me to blogs or ads I can't get too upset. They need money to pay their staff. Unhappy employees can cause damage.

I was searching for Lilac Girls earlier today .... a ton of options had the title and the correct cover BUT with a variety of different authors. Clearly a hacked record.

It seems especially bad for famous books and books with a one-word title.

Oh ... and after further research on Lilac Girls I find that the entire record has been changed so that it only comes up if you type in THIS edition name in French: Le lilas ne refleurit qu'après un hiver rigoureux

This is just SO wrong.

Today I tried to pull up a Oath of Loyalty by Kyle Mills/Vince Flynn. The correct book cover was there but the wrong author and the description was about a James Patterson book. I do not think this is a hack, I think their data base is totally messed up from whatever they tried to do earlier. I would hat to be a tech at Amazon right now-

The girls that don’t reflect on their rigorous winter? That’s a pretty telling translated title.

Actually, Amy, the French title's literal translation is:

The Lilacs only reflower (we would change that to bloom again) until after the severe winter....

Breaking it down to get to that: Refleurir is to reflower or flower again or bloom again preferred in English
ne combined with que is 'only" - it's a negative grammatical structure
apres is after
Lilas is just lilacs

I do enjoy using my french to parse out these french titles - it really helps me keep some of that hard learned french grammar fresh. Plus French grammatical structures and subtleties of vocabulary definitions are far less direct than American English. Perfect example is taking Lilac Girls and turning it into a full sentence as a title.

There’s another glitch - notifications are usually pretty instantaneous but I’m seeing a delay of several hours for me (and then they are only coming through when I’m on GR itself). For instance I have topic notifications on for the August rolls thread, and I literally just saw notifications flick up on my screen for JoAnne’s, Tien’s and Diana’s posts - which were ages ago. It was working fine two days ago but fell over yesterday

Lordy - could another crash be on its way? Could this also be some fallout from that crash that happened?

Oy.

Any way, I just saw an email from my GR Help friend Zuraan- which indicates how clueless he is.


Goodreads Support Reply
11:48 AM (4 hours ago)
to me

Hi Theresa,

Thanks for your response. I'm trying to understand what type of link are you trying to add. Please provide more details so that I can look into this further.

I apologize for the frustration and inconvenience this may cause you.

Best,
Zuraan
--
Zuraan I.
Goodreads Expert
Goodreads.com

I suspect he's located in India or wherever they have outsourced tech to and has zero familiarity with these books. It's pretty clear from the chain of emails I've had with him that something like that is at work here -- starting with Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov - that he saw nothing wrong with a search result list that did not have on it the actual book in English by Nabokov.

I responded saying I don't have time to keep explaining something he's obviously not grasping even though I spend much time as a lawyer explaining difficult matters to clients. I suggested he search an English book he's familiar with and see what results he gets and if they make sense. I also gaven him a link to this thread suggesting he contact the admins for access as it describes extensive problems many having on many different books, and gave him a link to what Robin found posted on the GR Help thread.

So f-ing frustrating - and Work was already frustrating me today.

Robin P wrote: "It seems especially bad for famous books and books with a one-word title."

Oh, yeah. The one-word titles - that explains me looking at "Blackout" by Connie Willis earlier to day. (It's the first one I've come across.)

LibraryCin wrote: "Robin P wrote: "It seems especially bad for famous books and books with a one-word title."

Oh, yeah. The one-word titles - that explains me looking at "Blackout" by Connie Willis earlier to day. (..."

The one word titles have been a bit of a problem for a couple of years. I had great trouble linking Rage a while back. Look I found it!

Today when I looked up an author it showed a full page of one books, but when I went to her page to combine them, they were already combined! I wonder if they are trying to fix it somehow and made it worse, or if there are more problems.

One thing that has come up is that I've fixed some badly shelved books because those are showing up more. Some of the mistakes were thanks to Amazon, but not all of them.

I am cautiously posting - fingers and toes crossed, breath held - that the worst of the book link and book page glitch is fixed. Every book I was having trouble pulling up to link in a post is popping up and linking as it should - Lolita, Les Miz for example. No problems since some time on Friday.

I also noticed last night something that I think is brand new on a book's book page: the 'share' symbol you click on that gives you quick option to copy URL or share on social media. I think that is brand new - and it was a blessing as I was providing a bunch of book links to a friend by email. It made it so much easier.

Or maybe I just was oblivious.

If it is a new - and very welcome - feature, I suspect launching that is what created the latest glitch! Something got screwed up somewhere.

Theresa wrote: "I am cautiously posting - fingers and toes crossed, breath held - that the worst of the book link and book page glitch is fixed. Every book I was having trouble pilling up to link in a post is popp..."

It was only part-way through when I was shelving last night that I remembered the glitch, and was very thankful it wasn't messing me up!