Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

I have been updating a Danish author and when I add the year, he was born, GR automatically puts in a date of birth as well, january 1st. I haven't been able to find a date of birth for him so I can't put anything but it seems wrong that he just gets that birthday instead of just leaving it blank.
Couldn't this be corrected so you can put the year but not the date?

Hi there, I have the same complaint! And I can see that nobody answered your query... :(

Nope - and it still bugs me. I have a couple of authors that I go check on every couple of months to see if I'm able to correct it so they are not born on January 1st, but so far no luck :-(

did you notice that the same thing happens when you add the date of reading a book? It also sets it to January 1 :S

If you just put the year, it says January 1st?
I always add the date as well so haven't noticed that ... it's an annoying bug!

If the birth date is before 1900, this is what happens. Goodreads can't do correct birth dates before 1900. They know about the problem and I assume it's somewhere on the to do list.

Also true, but this is a separate issue. GR cannot handle year-only dates. If you don't specify a day and month, it will default to January 1. The issue has been mentioned in the Feedback group, but anyone who is bugged by it should mention it there again.

Actually, I think pre-1900 is now available. You can actually choose a year all the way back to 8 (all those authors born in the year 7 are out of luck).

Thanks for the information Michael. ;-)

Last I checked, you could choose them; they just don't save properly.

Edit: Nope. H.G. Wells and Arthur Conan Doyle both look ship-shape and Bristol fashion. ;)