SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion

https://help.goodreads.com/s/article/...

"As part of our dedication to improving Goodreads, we are phasing out a number of features in order to focus on the ones our members use most, and continue to improve the overall Goodreads experience. As of July 5, 2022, Goodreads will no longer support the ability to create new content for the book reviews recommendations/recommenders section, favorite authors list, creative writing, the condition and details about owned books, friend stories, trivia, quizzes, and adding additional photos to books. These features will no longer be available on the site on Sept. 1, 2022."

https://help.goodreads.com/s/article/...

"Goodreads has millions of books in its database already, please search by title and then by ISBN to confirm the book has not already been added to Goodreads' database. Please post in the Goodreads Librarians Group and follow these instructions to contact a Librarian to add a book to our database for you, keeping in mind that requests may take at least 2-3 business days to complete. Goodreads Librarians are familiar with Goodreads catalog policies and maintain our database to follow the standards set in the Librarian Manual."

For those unable to follow links, find the Goodreads Librarians group, and the thread called "How to request a book to be added to Goodreads" in the folder called "Adding New Books".

--

Anyone who has questions about using Goodreads, you can ask here:
Help! How Do I [Do That Thing] on Goodreads? (in SFFBC folder "All About Goodreads")

…. How does taking things away “improve” anything?

When they eventually remove the last feature in the future, no one can complain that GR doesn't work! That would be an improvement?

My take on it is that they're eliminating features that don't make enough money for them. That's usually what a company means by "improve." :P

Anna wrote: "https://help.goodreads.com/s/article/...

"As part of our dedication to improving Goodreads, we are phasing out a number of features in order to focu..."

Is this a bad joke? 'Improving Goodreads' by removing features? GR is fast becoming next to useless. Another round of 'improvements' like this and I will quit GR for good.

I might have to learn how to export all my read books ….

Ridiculous.

Rachel wrote: "I might have to learn how to export all my read books …."

it's easy

I feel like these threads might come in handy :D


Help! How Do I [Do That Thing] on Goodreads? (including exporting your books)

Storygraph (alternative to Goodreads)

Anna wrote: "I feel like these threads might come in handy :D


Help! How Do I [Do That Thing] on Goodreads? (including exporting your books)

Storygraph (alternative to Goodreads)"

Why do I have the feeling that GR is basically doing about everything to discourage away its members? Does Amazon think that GR is too expensive to maintain and is not worth the cost for them? I sure feel that way.

"details about owned books" omg will they also delete the private notes?

and I have not entered anything in storygraph since July 2020. Too lazy to do it now LOL maybe I should just import my GR books again?

Never have I seen a website more dedicated to driving away its own users! I would dearly love to know what the long term strategy is supposed to be because, from my perspective, it’s not making sense!

I’d have left GR long ago if it weren’t for the discussion groups (like this one) which keep me coming back.

They're telling people to move stuff to private notes, so probably not taking those away just now.

From a usability perspective, it makes sense to remove features that aren't used regularly. I can imagine "creative writing" being such a feature. If those decisions are based on user interactions, they can be a good thing, make a website more streamlined and clear.

But still, some of their choices seem strange. I'd like to know the reason behind removing the favourite authors list. I don't know what "create new content for the book reviews recommendations/recommenders section" means, though.

It does seem like they are removing features that don't make enough money compared to the cost of upkeep. Those will probably be all upload or interaction features that can't be used for marketing purposes or to generate reach.

You're actually right, Ines, most of those features I never use them

Another feature that is being removed is the ability to add books to the database. Starting on June 20th, only Goodreads Librarians and Authors will be able to add books.

But do our reviews export? I don't think that they do.

Faith wrote: "Another feature that is being removed is the ability to add books to the database. Starting on June 20th, only Goodreads Librarians and Authors will be able to add books."

I actually think that's a good thing as there won't be so many books added incorrectly with variants of an author's name/title that are incorrect

CBRetriever wrote: "Faith wrote: "Another feature that is being removed is the ability to add books to the database. Starting on June 20th, only Goodreads Librarians and Authors will be able to add books."

I actually..."

I agree. I wish that they wouldn't permit authors to add the books either. They often do it wrong.

Faith wrote: "CBRetriever wrote: "Faith wrote: "Another feature that is being removed is the ability to add books to the database. Starting on June 20th, only Goodreads Librarians and Authors will be able to add..."

Although there should be a way to ask to have a specific book added - otherwise, how would more obscure books get added to the database?

Nadine in California wrote: "Faith wrote: "CBRetriever wrote: "Faith wrote: "Another feature that is being removed is the ability to add books to the database. Starting on June 20th, only Goodreads Librarians and Authors will ..."

Just post a request in the Goodreads Librarians Group and a Librarian will add the book.

Faith wrote: "Nadine in California wrote: "Faith wrote: "CBRetriever wrote: "Faith wrote: "Another feature that is being removed is the ability to add books to the database. Starting on June 20th, only Goodreads..."

Thanks!

The fact that anyone can add a book with barely any information has led to a lot of errors and non books being added. People adding single issue comic books and webcomics is just one example so a change for that has been asked for for a long time.

I don't use most of this, so it won't affect me. One of my big beefs is that if they make us all switch to Beta I can't access a books shelves from the book page.

BUT of course Amazon has a history of ruining things--they ruined and later closed Shelfari which many people preferred to GR since some things there were superior to here.

I am a bit confused about reviews--can we still write them.

I for one will be VERY happy if they stop letting anyone add books with bad information that lead to
a duplicates where the same author is listed more than once
and
b. the WRONG author having books added to their page! This is easier to do since they started using more than one space for some authors where there are more than one of the same name but they had to do something, I suppose.
and
c. other inept things done

I have librarian privileges but not the time to fix big errors like that. One thing that has been done is that they made it harder to become a librarian which may or may not have helped, but

I added the book adding help article to my starting post, with instructions on how to ask for books to be added.

Yeah, speaking from the perspective of an IT person, I can understand why they’d want to remove features that are used less often, especially in the cases where there’s a reasonable workaround already available.

It does take resources to support each feature, and sometimes the less-used features can be the hardest to support. When something goes wrong with them, the tech support doesn’t work with them often enough to know them well so they have to spend more effort on researching it. Depending on the situation, it can also make it difficult to add other new features if the proposed changes will impact the same code or the same design elements – at best it adds some extra development and testing time, and at worst it requires a redesign that could be too much effort to justify the proposed change.

Of course, this assumes these really are less-frequently used features and that they’ll impact a comparatively small percent of users. I can only speak for myself in saying that I’ve never used any of the features listed. Except maybe the quizzes, I think that’s what Hank created for us a couple of times based on our group shelf books? Those were fun, but I don’t think I ever participated in any others besides his.

What I'm less confident of is that their developers will actually use the time and effort they'll be saving by removing these features to fix existing issues that users do care about and/or add new features that users actually want. They might just do more odd page redesigns. :)

Karin wrote: "I am a bit confused about reviews--can we still write them."

Yes. The first link in Anna's post gives more clarity. They're removing some less-frequently used entry fields from the review creation process, but reviews themselves will still exist.

Corinne wrote: "I'm especially saying that as one who liked to add books and all the contributors, and first pub date, etc...."

I've goofed up a few of them and had to get help in correcting the problems I created

It's surprisingly easy to become a librarian, for folks that are really into using goodreads. I got annoyed a few years ago about not being able to add page counts and other basic info to the book info for obscure books, so I tracked down the route to apply to be a librarian and became one. I err on the side of caution, only fixing errors or missing stuff I know how to do, but every bit helps.
I certainly don't mind if the ability to change book info in the database is limited to librarians. I am willing and able to triple/quadruple check everything I change or add.

YouKneeK wrote: "What I'm less confident of is that their developers will actually use the time and effort they'll be saving by removing these features to fix existing issues that users do care about and/or add new features that users actually want."

💯

Corinne, my first thought when I saw the add book change was how on earth do they think librarians will keep up with this. I never do add requests, as I feel it’s much easier to fix stuff than add but maybe it’s just me. If anyone asked me I’d have suggested an add queue that librarians check and approve, and add a pre-mod function for group posts while you’re at it 🙂

YouKneeK wrote: "What I'm less confident of is that their developers will actually use the time and effort they'll be saving by removing these features to fix existing issues that users do care about and/or add new features that users actually want. They might just do more odd page redesigns. :)"

Yeah, I suspect they just want to reduce the dev time that goes into goodreads feature upkeep, not relocate time to other user-centric features.

Jamie wrote: "It's surprisingly easy to become a librarian, for folks that are really into using goodreads. I got annoyed a few years ago about not being able to add page counts and other basic info to the book ..."

I totally get the being annoyed and wanting to do something about it. But everybody should keep in mind that they are still providing unpaid labour to Amazon, for a platform you are already paying to use (with your data, which is worth much more to them than money).

I rarely do stuff in the Goodreads Librarian -group (too much of a hassle), but I sometimes (if I have time) do Librarian stuff in our country specific group, where people request books to be added in GR database on my own native language. People use it quite a lot as it's easier and requests don't take too much time to be filled and more importantly information about the book is correct in 99,9% of cases, because native speaker does the adding.

GR Librarians group is too overburdened with this stuff and not too many people (Librarians) are comfortable adding books in languages other than English or some other bigger languages like Spanish, French, German etc. Small languages with less amount of people using GR tend to be forgotten or buried under vast amount of requests. Not counting Hebrew, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Greek etc. languages in here because of alphabetical differences, they are their own matter entirely.

I noticed a while ago they've already deleted a heap of past reading updates - what ever one wrote in those is wiped out entirely, and does not appear in the reading progress / on the review page anymore. Which sucks big time, for most of my 'reviews' and musings where contained in those.

Jamie wrote: "It's surprisingly easy to become a librarian, for folks that are really into using goodreads. I got annoyed a few years ago about not being able to add page counts and other basic info to the book ..."

Did you become a librarian before you had to take a test or whatever it was they added? Because before that it was very easy :)

All I know is that I am worried about losing access to seeing what shelves books are on if we are forced to use Beta--two of my GR groups are based around using shelves and one is a fairly large and active group that moved here from Shelfari.

But also I use shelves for finding books I want to read as well and it really is not easy to find the genre or shelf search page. I have them bookmarked now.

I depend on user shelves as well. Which is ironic since I have relatively few in comparison to most people. Now my kindle on the other hand has a slew of custom shelving that I had organized everything into.

Ines wrote: "I totally get the being annoyed and wanting to do something about it. But everybody should keep in mind that they are still providing unpaid labour to Amazon, for a platform you are already paying to use (with your data, which is worth much more to them than money)."

I can't emphasize this enough. Each one of us is an unpaid marketer for authors, publishers, amazon, and for this site. Our building communities on here works toward that end as well. This isn't to say that the site doesn't do anything for us--none of us would stick around if that weren't the case--but its continued existence entirely depends on the dynamic being the other way around.

The features being removed are not ones that I used, so I'm not concerned. As a programmer, I know that removing unnecessary features can make it easier to maintain a program, and in some cases makes it run faster.

The fact that they are taking away the ability to store information about the quality of the books you own makes sense. Long ago, they had a feature where you could trade books with other users. They would help you print a shipping label. Information about book ownership and quality was useful then, but less so now. (You can still put that info in your review or private notes.)

A few months ago, GR sent me mail to take a survey about what features I use or do not use. I suppose results from that survey helped determine what changes they are making.

They mailed out surveys? Huh.

I just got email from GR about this prompting me to download my data because I have apparently used some of the features being struck. Has anyone else?

Yes. I've used a couple of the features they're removing once or twice, hardly enough to justify downloading the data.

I also got the email.

Michelle wrote: "They mailed out surveys? Huh."

Yes. Probably not to everyone. Maybe only heavy users? Or random?

Downloading your data occasionally is a good idea just to have a copy if this site every disappears.

I received one, but I don't remember using any of the features listed in the email

My email said I've used the owned books feature. I know for a fact that I've used it exactly once, to see what it does. So if you tried things out once when you joined GR, it'll still look to them as if you've used that feature.

I got an email today too, specifically about "Favorite Authors" which I have used, but not for a while, and "Friend stories, Quizzes, Trivia, and/or Adding a photo to a book".

my email specifically mentions: Friend stories, Quizzes, Trivia, and/or Adding a photo to a book. I tried to add a photo once and failed but I don't even know what Friend stories are.

I've definitely done some quizzes and maybe trivia too. I also don't know what Friend stories are.