First, let me say I appreciate any staff responses on any threads on goodreads. And I have some background to follow on why this bothers me. Here's my (apparently going to be nightly until I move my "A" book title reviews here) rant on goodreads.
At https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1620164-large-book-data-import?page=3#comment_90347319 the new "Import Master" says this about the amazon data feed that is destroying goodreads database:
"Solution 2: We're looking into where the bad data is coming from. A lot of it seems to be coming from non-amazon merchants who tend to enter information about their particular product quality, shipping policies etc etc. We're going to see if there's some way to only whitelist descriptions form trusted merchants or for books sold directly from Amazon itself."
Duh. Just don't let amazon data override librarian edits. For the sake of any intentions of pretending to maintain the goodreads database beyond products for sale on amazon, do not let marketplace or third party sellers also override librarian and valid data feed edits. Whitelisted or not.
Seriously, amazon thinks it's a good idea to allow "trusted merchants" and marketplace used book sale information to override publisher and author provided data? And to override and lockout librarian edits that usually just standardize formats, punctuation, capitalization, etc. and fill in missing information. Any seller or merchant putting a used or new book up for sale on amazon gets to override goodreads data including librarian edits?
Oh joy! How wonderful to have a publisher book synopsis of "A wonderful new fantasy series from..." be replaced with "Like new condition, all our books come with a money back guarantee if not satisified. We have a five year record as an amazon seller" -- brilliant idea amazon. Of course, once seller sells that item no one is hurrying to tidy up the goodreads database to replace seller info with publisher's again. Librarians cannot, your data overrides their edits when it doesn't actually lock them out.
Looking back at my December book activity, 9 out of 10 books on goodreads needed librarian edits (mostly uncombined editions and misspelled or formatted author names but a surprising number of descriptions overwritten with foreign languages).
Once upon a time before I had them revoke my librarian status upon amazon purchase, I would have immediately fixed.
Once upon a time before September non-announcement, I would have asked in librarians group for someone to fix.
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