Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

I was looking at the NABs and saw some like this, where the original authors have been kept:
http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/52...

Just wanted to check that there isn't some obscure reason for it before changing them. :-)

Also, the librarian manual recommends putting NOT A BOOK before the title; I have also seen the title completely replaced with NOT A BOOK. The second way seems preferable for keeping the item out of searches. Any argument against replacing the entire title?

I leave the title in and change the author to NOT A BOOK. I also change the edition to NOT A BOOK: whatever it is.

The NAB you show should have the only author a NOT A BOOK if it's NAB.

The exceptions where authors are left are some items by Goodreads member authors.

Okay, I'll go ahead and make the change.

A question about the results of a "not a book" search.

Why are items still showing up in the results which have been un-nabbed weeks or months ago?

THANK YOU LOBSTERGIRL!!!!! I have asked this question in a different form; e.g., :

Why are books with authors who (were) Ph.D. or MD, etc., continuing to show up Weeks and Weeks after the author was corrected? The 10 minute-it will show up in the search results is a dream, and it's a great time waster to search through pages and pages of results to find uncorrected authors.

I am beginning to think there must be a better use of my time, granted no one makes me do it anyway.

Is there any hope at all of this ever being fixed?

MissJessie wrote: "Is there any hope at all of this ever being fixed?"

You might have to wait until Monday to get a reply. It's a Saturday morning, so most of the Goodreads staff is off on the weekend. And I believe the wonderful rivka does not come online on Saturdays either.

Yup, she's off on Sat for her Sabbath. And the absence is noted!

I hope they answer on Monday but am dubious; I have asked several times and no response to speak of. But I live in hope.

This thread is in the Librarian group. If you want to get the staff's attention, it would be better to create a bug thread in Feedback.

mlady_rebecca wrote: "This thread is in the Librarian group. If you want to get the staff's attention, it would be better to create a bug thread in Feedback."

I've never understood this. Staff are moderators of the Librarian Group. Are they moderating it but not reading it?

This is a Librarian issue! Only librarians NAB and un-NAB.

I agree Lobstergirl.

Hey GR Moderators/Staff -- ATTENTION: this is a problem!!!!

(Just to reinforce the message.)

The artificial delineation of problems/bugs and the proper forum is not always sensible.

Lobstergirl wrote: "A question about the results of a "not a book" search.

Why are items still showing up in the results which have been un-nabbed weeks or months ago?"

Example search, please? Louise just made some changes to how search deals with NABs on Friday.

Why are these 20 editions showing up on page one of "not a book" search results?
http://www.goodreads.com/work/edition...

ditto for this
http://www.goodreads.com/work/edition...

these
http://www.goodreads.com/work/edition...

these
http://www.goodreads.com/work/edition...

these
http://www.goodreads.com/work/edition...

this
http://www.goodreads.com/work/edition...

these
http://www.goodreads.com/work/edition...

these are on the last page
http://www.goodreads.com/work/edition...

as are these
http://www.goodreads.com/work/edition...

Try searching with the author filter on instead.

Lobstergirl wrote: "I've never understood this. Staff are moderators of the Librarian Group. Are they moderating it but not reading it?"

I'm just going by my own observations, but it seems like most of the programmers (MICHAEL, Ken-ichi, Louise, ...) only regularly monitor bug threads, or threads about something they're developing. Otis seems to read and comment the most on suggestions.

Except for Rivka, the staff only seems to poke their heads into the Librarian group if directed here, or they are here to solicit feedback specific to Librarian practices. So any change that needs programmer intervention is better off put in the Feedback group.

Rivka: Even with author filter on, searching PhD or MD as an example, there are dozens of pages of false positives. These were corrected in most cases days to weeks ago.

It is a tremendous waste of time not to mention irritating when supposedly changes are reflected in the search database after 10 minutes.

I don't much care which group this should be posted in. I have brought it up several times and there is never a change in the results.

As far as I can tell, nothing has changed. I have kept track of the number of results from these two searches and it has not changed for several days.

I know that Louise made some changes, but there was absolutely no effect on anything that I have noticed.

I have also checked RN and DVM, ditto on the no change.

GRRRRRR
BTW Rivka, hi.

The 10 minutes has to do with items being added to the search, not removed. That takes 24-48 hours, due to how the search cache works.

Also, with the search filtering by author, I see differences with both phd and md from last week. Books that were there are gone and v.v.

I'm sorry Rivka, but the 24-48 hours doesn't work consistently either.

I just checked (tediously) one "DO" I corrected on 11/9 (shorter list to check through then MD). Donald S. Litman's book still shows up on the search results when one searches for "DO".

The first 13 pages of results for PHD just now had exactly 3 actual PHDs in the results for author search.

I understand the way the search is supposed to work, God knows it's been pointed out enough. I also know how it Actually (doesn't) work as well as advertised.

It would be nice to hear from someone at GR that there is a problem, instead of constantly being told how a)it is supposed to work; and b) telling me it works when it clearly doesn't.

If this is as good as it can get, so be it; just say so. Until then, I will continue to point out snarky search results whenever the spirit moves me.

I'm curious why someone seems to be combining NABbed items into random chunks of 100, as seen in these search results.

http://www.goodreads.com/search/searc...

Lobstergirl wrote: "I'm curious why someone seems to be combining NABbed items into random chunks of 100, as seen in these search results.

http://www.goodreads.com/search/searc......"

Am I missing something or are some of those actually books?

arcane_scholar wrote: "Lobstergirl wrote: "I'm curious why someone seems to be combining NABbed items into random chunks of 100, as seen in these search results.

Am I missing something or are some of those actually books?

I just had a random look and they were NABs. Were you only looking at the ones marked Not a Book or ones like Nora Roberts?

As to the random 100's - not a clue.

Sandra wrote: "I just had a random look and they were NABs. Were you only looking at the ones marked Not a Book or ones like Nora Roberts?

As to the random 100's - not a clue."

Yes, I don't understand why Nora Roberts and The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective Teens would show up under a "not a book" search. Though I'm still terribly new at this so I don't understand all the nuances of the system yet.

Lobstergirl wrote: "I'm curious why someone seems to be combining NABbed items into random chunks of 100, as seen in these search results.

http://www.goodreads.com/search/searc......"

Is it someone or is it goodreads? I think they run a batch job that automatically combines book editions with the exact title and exact author. Most of the time that is a good thing, but may be a problem in this instance.

Arcane--the Highly Effective Teens showed up under NAB because one of the editions which should have been separated out before "NABing" was actually not a book.

I separated it out. It's easy to forget to do the separating first sometimes so it was just a librarian error no doubt.

About the clumps of 100, sure looks like some kind of GR thing but who knows?

The clumps of 100 were GR separating out a clump of several thousand, at my request.

Oh, ok.

(And yes, some of the search results in a NAB search will be real books, because someone did not separate before NABbing.)

The whole NAB thing drives me a little crazy. Ever wonder why the author NOT A BOOK has 48 fans? It's not because people are trying to be funny. It's because they became a fan of a real author whose work was then improperly NABbed.

Sometimes. And sometimes they became fans of an "author" whose work was properly NAB'd.

Thank you Rivka for pointing that out. It's not ALWAYS operator error.

And out of 43,750 (more or less) current NABd books, 37 fans (when I looked) is not such a bad error rate (if they are all errors).

Cd

Are all of these just music cds?

Sure looks like it to me. (or radio shows, same difference).

Okay...I think I've got a NAB, here...but leery about these. I'll do it, if someone can confirm I'm interpreting this correctly. It appears to be a radio adaptation on an audio CD. Book, or NAB?

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/67...

Took care of 29 (lots of other "authors" attached to those items) and deleted #31. No need to NAB items that have no ISBN or ASIN.

I just noticed a bunch of Galaxy Sci Fi Publications have been "NOT A BOOK"ed.
http://www.goodreads.com/search/searc...

Now, I realise they're magazines technically. I think some of them have ISBNs. However, they are in mass-market paperback format and all bar two pages of each are filled with short stories by well-known authors. By the Goodreads guides on these things, these should be considered as books.
http://www.goodreads.com/help/show/11...
"These items are books:
...
* periodicals without ISBNs but substantially similar to books (eg, perfectbound literary magazines) "

Not only is this annoying, since they do fill the requirement of books, but some librarians go to a lot of work to add all of the authors to these books. When people go about NABing them, they strip all of these off.

If you're not certain, don't NAB it. Go work on something that's definitely not a book, like a CD. :)

http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39...

Is there something about this that I'm missing? Why is this "not a book"?

@Angela, see related thread Seems like SciFi does seem to be a frequent/big target in the NAB cross-hairs -maybe because it has such a rich legacy and continued use of serial publiation methods?


Angela wrote: "I just noticed a bunch of Galaxy Sci Fi Publications have been "NOT A BOOK"ed

Melody wrote: "http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/39...
Is there something about this that I'm missing? Why is this "not a book"?"

Maybe because this is not referring to a specific book, but to the series in general? (Just guessing, but it would be like putting up a single book page for all the Reader's Digest Condensed Books rather than one specific volume, which probably has an ISBN etc.)

If it really is NAB, it need a more complete NABbing.

Abcdarian, agreed. Like fake "series" books. I deleted it.

Oh - I thought it was like those Reader's digest collections with three condensed books in one. Like my mother-in-law reads (sigh).

I'd like to think of them as "not books" but there they sit on her book shelf. All sanitized and free from any offending words.

It was. But it was a single entry meant to stand in for the user's entire collection thereof.

Angela wrote: "If you're not certain, don't NAB it. Go work on something that's definitely not a book, like a CD. :)
"

I agree 110%.

I believe this was improperly nabbed.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...

Improperly nabbed:?

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...

42 and 43 fixed. but you probably shouldn't bump 4-year-old threads :P