Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

Hello everyone, with the new status system, books are supposed to receive a 'delete' status rather than being permanently deleted. This means they are essentially 'hidden,' but can still be found and restored if necessary. However, I've noticed that books deleted by the 'Goodreads' bot seem to be permanently removed, as they cannot be found or restored using the usual procedure for bot- or librarian-deleted books. Does anyone know of a method to restore these valid records deleted by the 'Goodreads' bot without having to recreate them?

I have been using the "add a new edition". I don't waste time filling in anything other than the ASIN/ISBN. I hit "save". 99% of the time I get the message that it is either in "deleted" status or "invalid". I hit the record and then put it back to "public". In 1% that the book actually hadn't been in the site already I go back and fill in everything. At first I was doing all of that each time. I quickly realized the idiocy of filling out info that will be already be there-except for the cover and page count on the deleted ones. Those of course are easily "undone".

Tawnya wrote: "I have been using the "add a new edition". I don't waste time filling in anything other than the ASIN/ISBN. I hit "save". 99% of the time I get the message that it is either in "deleted" status or ..."

No, that's the usual procedure I'm talking about in my initial post. I know about that. That doesn't work. Here's an example: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3... check the edit log. The 'Goodreads' bot deleted 5 editions since November last year, search the editions by asin or isbn, and tell me if you can restore them. I can't because they are not in the database anymore:

ASINs deleted: B083BX5F2K, B084KZT296, B00D4B2XMK, B010MFJXXM, B01BO67UQU
ISBN deleted: 8466133496, 9788466133494

It allows you to create them again.
I did the first one, but it will have to be fixed since that is not a book I am familiar with. It is here:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...

I am guessing things like this are why librarians burn out.

I keep saying I am going to do "X" amount for the day and then stop.
Unfortunately, I will come across a name that is wrong and then I find that the next one and all of a sudden it is 3 am and I haven't eaten dinner.

I did decide not to undo all of the bots removal of kindles where it was obviously never an actual "book", but rather something akin to the phone scammers or the "Hey buddy, wanna buy a watch?" ilk.

I like to keep track of how many books are on an author's page. I thought I was losing it when books were disappearing almost immediately after I had looked at them. At first, I thought perhaps I had changed the author accidentally. Nope, using my history to find the book I found where the bots had changed it. So far it has only done it to books that have never been shelved.

Anyway, I am sorry to run on. Hopefully this will get fixed. Now I am going back to doing a project I gave myself, which I am REALLY regretting now.

Tawnya wrote: "I did the first one, but it will have to be fixed since that is not a book I am familiar with. It is here:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2......"

Oh no, Tawnya why did you create a bad record? I know you mean well and are trying to help but at least fix it with the correct information that's in the logs if you can't find the asin on Amazon. I wasn't requesting edits but asking if there's a way to restore them "without having to recreate them" as stated in my post.

Deleted edition id=74112396 title=Se vende Garbanzo (El Barco de Vapor Azul) (Spanish Edition) primary author=Care Santos asin=B083BX5F2K, merged 0 reviews

You created the record with this title in Persian یک عدد نخودی به‌فروش می‌رسد (فروشی‌ها‫ ‫#3)
while using the asin B083BX5F2K and the Spanish description. We don't know what format these were exactly except for the isbn record which was an ebook. Some had asin and isbn13 but the isbn13 isn't reflected in the deletion logs.

Please librarians don't recreate any more records in case Goodreads support can actually do something about this and revert what their bot has done.

*bumping*

Was directed to this topic in a response to my question here about a missing Kindle edition: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

ASIN: B00C5TYUV4
OOP Amazon book page: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00C5TYUV4/
Title: In The Heart Of Darkness
Author: C.M. Torrens
Ed. pub date: Apr 01, 2013
Format: Kindle

I'm told the GR bot (as opposed to the amazon bot) actually deleted the edition, like pre-book status feature, where a merge was a hard delete. It was bad enough in the old days when a librarian would do it, yes the good old days when you'd have librarians who didn't believe there was a reason to keep Kindle and ebook editions separate, it was just "clutter" they said. Now a GR bot is having a "hold my beer" moment and deleting out of print editions with valid ASIN's? Are you kidding me?

Tal the ones I have seen are for Kindles that have been removed from the Amazon rolls and (most importantly) that hadn't been shelved on GoodReads. I was able to recreate this edition for you. Please shelve it immediately so perhaps the bots will leave it alone. That link to Amazon shows one of the doggies (I love that Amazon does that!).
You may find the edition here:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...

I added a note to the description.

Tawnya wrote: "Tal the ones I have seen are for Kindles that have been removed from the Amazon rolls and (most importantly) that hadn't been shelved on GoodReads. I was able to recreate this edition for you. Plea..."

Tawnya, where are you sourcing the information to recreate the Kindle edition? I'm particularly curious about the page numbers and cover details. While I understand that you can retrieve the cover from the Amazon archive, it's unclear how you're obtaining accurate page numbers and other specifics. If you're simply copying details from the eBook edition, that's problematic since the page numbers and covers often don't align. If you are recreating it and there isn't an eBook edition, it wouldn't be right to copy the details of the paperback or hardcover editions.

Regarding your assertion that the bot only targets Kindle editions removed from Amazon. I've personally witnessed it delete physical books with ISBN numbers, regardless of whether people have them on their shelves. The fact that Tal had the book on her shelf before the bot merged it is evidence of this. Therefore, claiming that adding it to one's shelf prevents deletion is inaccurate.

Tawnya wrote: "Tal the ones I have seen are for Kindles that have been removed from the Amazon rolls and (most importantly) that hadn't been shelved on GoodReads."

And that's the crux of the issue and the point of Tami's question that hasn't been answered. GR policy since I joined 10 years ago was that no book records were to be deleted if they were ever published. It didn't matter if they were out of print. Any book with a valid ISBN or ASIN is not to be removed. This is still the documented policy today ->

"Deleted Books

Books should only have their status set as "Deleted" if they are duplicate editions; or if they are items that have no ISBN/ASIN, no member shelvings, and they do not meet our criteria for being a valid book record (see below)."

Why is the GR bot not following policy and deleting books (apparently outside the Book Status system) with valid ASIN's? That is the question.

There is something fundamentally flawed with the bot logic as it pertains to out of print Kindle editions from my observations of its behavior:

1) Out of print (with valid ASIN) Kindle editions (no Amazon book page anymore) with detected shelvings/ratings/reviews are being set to 'Invalid' which luckily can be undone without user data loss. It should not be happening in the first place, but it's fixable.

2) Out of print (with valid ASIN) Kindle editions (no Amazon book page anymore) with supposedly* no shelvings/ratings/reviews are being deleted permanently with no ability to revert the action.

The bot(s) do not appear to be able to distinguish between valid and invalid books as defined by GR's own policy.

* I say "supposedly" because that data is fluid, constantly changing as users edit shelves, even delete books from their shelves (many unknowingly) and backend edits like ACE's or format changes made in error.

As recently as two years ago Rivka reiterated that multiple valid digital editions of the same book with distinct identifiers (ASIN, ISBN, Nook) could not be deleted regardless of #shelvings.

Thanks for bumping this thread. I'll reach out to the team and add any updates here.

Jaclyn wrote: "Thanks for bumping this thread. I'll reach out to the team and add any updates here."

Thank you for looking into it.

Just some more information to pass along, the bots are also replacing ebook/nook editions with Kindle editions. Someone who tracks/shelves ebooks purchased from B&N for a Nook reader noticed that their previously shelved editions went from ebook/nook format to Kindle in addition to being set Invalid.

This specific edition is an example of that ->
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...

I suspect the removal of an ISBN to a new ACE might be leaving these older cover editions vulnerable to being mistaken as invalid by a bot simply because the ISBN fields are empty. I have no idea why the format was changed from ebook to Kindle and then assigned an ASIN but the end result was the wrong edition and cover ending up on the user's shelves and then being marked Invalid to add insult to injury.

Thanks Tal, I'll pass that information along.