Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

Today I noticed that, in my own library:

- Macbeth (by Shakespeare) and Quartet in Autumn (by Barbara Pym) have been combined into a single record: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...
- Blindsight (by Peter Watts) and Relic (by Douglas Preston) have been combined into a single record: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...

These are, obviously, completely different books with apparently nothing in common: different authors, titles, genres... There are likely more; I only happened to notice these, and would need to go through every single record in my library to see if there have been other merges.

[Edit: I've also found two Austen novels, Mansfield Park and Northanger Abbey, to be combined: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...)

(I've already posted in the "Book & Author Page Issues" folder requesting to have the records separated.)

I'm posting here to see if GR staff is aware of this, and if other people have noticed/reported the same problem with additional records?

Lauren wrote: "Today I noticed that, in my own library:

- Macbeth (by Shakespeare) and Quartet in Autumn (by Barbara Pym) have been combined into a single record: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2......"

Hi Lauren

Thanks for noticing this, but Jaclyn is on maternity leave until December, so there is next to no staff presence here atm.

Please contact Support about this

https://www.goodreads.com/about/conta...

Edit; I would link to this thread so that Support sees you have already tried to report here.

Carol She's So Novel ꧁꧂ wrote: "Lauren wrote: "Today I noticed that, in my own library:

- Macbeth (by Shakespeare) and Quartet in Autumn (by Barbara Pym) have been combined into a single record: https://www.goodreads.com/book/sh..."

Thanks, will do!

It was something similar to this that caused me to become a librarian. ALL! of the books from an author I read had been combined together. I didn't know to come here. I just contacted support directly. She uncombined that big mess and mentioned this group. I thought you had to BE a librarian. My daughter only a month prior had received her Master's in Library Sciences. I had told her she should apply. After support explained what this site means when they say "librarian" I took the test. I did look to see what had caused the books to be lumped together. From the logs it appeared the author himself caused it, but I thought that they didn't have the ability to combine. I figure it was the bots being their normal asinine selves.

Tawnya wrote: "It was something similar to this that caused me to become a librarian. ALL! of the books from an author I read had been combined together. I didn't know to come here. I just contacted support direc..."

Interesting..... Given that Pym and Shakespeare are both dead, it would be unusual for them to have made the changes (lol), so it must be a bot, which sounds potentially catastrophic for the entire catalogue.

I did email support so hopefully they'll fix it. In the meantime, weird things are happening with the Blindsight record I linked......maybe that's them working on it. And the Relic record now includes editions from at least a half dozen different books.

Tawnya wrote: "From the logs it appeared the author himself caused it, but I thought that they didn't have the ability to combine. I figure it was the bots being their normal asinine selves."

This latest problem has to be bots, but authors do often make the mistake of combining all their books to each other, somehow.

Scott wrote: "Tawnya wrote: "From the logs it appeared the author himself caused it, but I thought that they didn't have the ability to combine. I figure it was the bots being their normal asinine selves."

This..."

Yes, authors can combine their works but not separate them.

Is happening all over the place. I made a thread about it earlier: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Seems to be the automated Goodreads bot doing it.

This is likely creating new book entities, which in turn is causing books/reviews to "magically update themselves" in our reading lists. Likely the cause of the following bugs folks on Reddit have mentioned:

https://www.reddit.com/r/goodreads/co...

https://www.reddit.com/r/goodreads/co...

Have contacted support.

Yes, I've noticed my own and friends' old reviews constantly reappearing even though nothing has changed. It also re-sequences them on the app when I look at my Read books, which drives me nuts. Any time a book is edited it "updates" the review apparently.

Scott wrote: "Yes, I've noticed my own and friends' old reviews constantly reappearing even though nothing has changed. It also re-sequences them on the app when I look at my Read books, which drives me nuts. An..."

I don't use the app so it may display different, but you can set your Read shelf to always sort by "date read - descending" (rather than "date updated," which seems to be the default). As long as you've added a read date, that should fix your problem.

I think I did finally figure that out - thanks!

Lauren wrote:
- Blindsight (by Peter Watts) and Relic (by Douglas Preston) have been combined into a single record

I also have Blindsight in my shelves, so I took a look today. About 14 editions of Blindsight have been separated from Relic, but all the reviews and ratings have been lost. (Except for one lone 5-star rating.)
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/4...

Many editions of Blindsight still remain merged with Relic. And it's not just Peter Watts' book — The Mad Bot appears to love Relic. It has merged hundreds upon hundreds of unrelated works, like "Astral Worship" and "The Report on Unidentified Flying Objects" and "Vampire".

Relic's Editions view: https://www.goodreads.com/work/editio...

Combine view: https://www.goodreads.com/book/combin...
scroll down to "Relic" in this list of works that GR thinks start with the letter B ( LOL)

I reported the Relic mess to support, but I wonder if they'll be able to correctly fix the problem. Can they roll back the changes to put things right, or are all those years of reviews and ratings for Blindsight (and others) gone for good?

I noticed another Barbara Pym & William Shakespeare problem: The Sweet Dove Died seems to have been bot-merged into Henry VIII.
https://www.goodreads.com/work/editio...

But I'm out of time and energy. Plus, I suspect this is just the tip of the mad bot iceberg.

Mesembryanthemum wrote: "Plus, I suspect this is just the tip of the mad bot iceberg."

That's what I'm afraid of.... Hopefully they've at least already paused the bot before it does more damage, because this seems like it could be fatal for the site's usability and ratings/reviews reliability. I'm planning to reread Quartet soon, but right now I'm afraid to do anything that touches the GR record.....

And WOW Relic is a mess. I suppose seeing over 1,600 editions (!) for a novel that isn't in the public domain should have been a red flag in the first place.

Can't wait for Jaclyn to get back so there's more communication about these types of issues.

If anyone finds more combine errors, feel free to keep sharing them in this thread, even if there's not much librarians can do given the scope/complexity of the problem.

Thanks for your help everyone!

Hello all - this issue has been investigated and resolved, I appreciate your time and patience during this process.

Closing this thread.