Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

I've reported this to Support, but since it might have bearing on librarian activity...

I noted here that combining sometimes deletes default descriptions, even when the librarian does nothing to trigger that.

It looks like original publication dates are also affected: I've been adding various missing data on my shelves, and right now that means blank publication dates. It appears that some edits (possibly including description updates and name corrections, but I haven't worked out the exact things yet) trigger a deletion of the original publication date. The change log attributes it to the librarian who made the valid change, even if the librarian didn't touch any dates in the book-edit page.

Combining has always affected original publication dates and default descriptions. However, it usually meant that the work with the fewer adds/ratings/reviews lost the date/default description in favor of the work with more of those elements.

Is it possible that the bug where the sort/search/series were incorrect have affected the system choosing the priority?

It's possible, but based on some of the change logs I've looked at, I think this particular bug predates the sort/search bug.

I know combining has always affected default descriptions, but it used to be that a blank description would never override an existing description, which is no longer the case. The current (original pub date) bug is also appearing on completely unrelated edits, like fixing an author's name from 'Dr Bob Smith MD PhD' to 'Bob Smith'.