Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

Preface: I'm not upset with librarians here, it's clearly the system that's broken.

Having browsed through the add new book folder trying to figure out what the probable time line for getting added I've come to the realization that that list is just horribly broken, and a mailing list/forum is almost certainly a terrible way to manage that task.

Why is it terrible? because fundamentally (unless there's a whole infrastructure hidden from us mere mortals) there's no way to even know how bad things are. In a few hours of browsing I found:

- Dozens of German and Portugese titles that are added in under 48h and sometimes under 24h.
- Yet English language titles seem to take between 6 and 30 weeks to get added. It maybe would have been faster for some authors to have their book translated to German ask for the translation to be added.
- Lots of mails that aren't about adding books, but rather about deletions and missing editions, or wrong additions, and even an entire long thread about an author vandalizing records (Bike shedding anyone? Off topic at the very least).
- Because there is no sorting, filtering, and no sense of a queue position there is literally nothing for the author to do but pester librarians with absolutely useless bump messages. Yet of course librarians are human and hate being pestered, so anyone who cares about their book or views Good Reads as important, is almost certain to piss off and probably draw the ire and get back burnered by the Librarians. The *system* is constructed to **encourage** the WORST behavior on both sides.

I don't want to just complain so here's a suggestion:

Short term fix:
1) Recognize categories that are relevant to reviewer preferences, create folders for these categories to separate things into manageable sized folders. I can't imagine any librarian can possibly make sense of 800+ pages of "please add book".
1.5) Mercilessly delete posts that are not about adding a book.
2) have an add book in-box which is where authors add their requests. Librarians then can sort these into category folders, this at least will communicate "it's been seen, and will be processed" to the author. Right now, there's zero feedback.
2.5) have a FIXME folder to which any incomplete requests are moved until the author edits them up to standards.
3) ask Librarians to work in order within a category. They can pick what category they like, but they should not be skipping older requests within a category. This is important so that the author can SEE the progress, and for fairness to all authors. They are volunteers, but they've already agreed to a bunch of rules on form/format/how to do things, because those things are important to make Good Reads work, and this would also fall into that category. Note that categories should be constructed to cater to existing librarian's current preferences, so obviously, a German Language folder is appropriate (for example).
4) Per category there should be two folders Pending, In-progress. Pending folders should *disallow* comments/responses to avoid bumping, but still allow editing of the original request if possible so long as that doesn't cause a bump of the request. In progress is when authors and librarians can comment. It might be process to have the librarian moving to a category add a "moving to category" comment to ensure edited date is updated and pending folder order is correct.

The above is somewhat tedious and limited but hopefully requires no code changes....

Medium term:
1) Get some development done and add the ability for librarians to "tag" posts and then replace the above folders with tags so that a request can participate in more than one category.

Long term:
Build/Buy/Implement a real ticket system. Amazon is a tech company they certainly know what an issue tracking system is, and that's what you really need here.

William wrote: "The above is somewhat tedious and limited but hopefully requires no code changes."

It would require quite a few changes, as the 'short term fix' idea contains several points that are difficult with the function of groups Purely technical speaking, this group is just the same as any other group on Goodreads and librarians are just ordinary users.

Only the moderators have the abilities to move other people's thread or remove message's from others. Comments in a thread can only be stopped with locking the thread.
And as there are a lot of functions that come together in the moderator function, like removing/blocking people from a group, it is very unlikely others than staff members will become moderators in this group.
(If the moderators would have that much time to manage all of this, the results would be better if that time was spend on helping with requests than doing all these extra steps.)


More folders in this group would only lead to more chaos. The current folder for adding books is quite at the top of the group and still requests get added everywhere. Let alone a set-up with way more options.


The suggestion to ask librarian not to skip requests within one of those new categories, I think it would only decrease the results. Some people wouldn't like it on principle and stop working on requests.

Someone's interests/knowledge might not match with those categories. They might be comfortable with easy requests in a certain language, but not with the more complicated ones.

And if there are issues with a request and if it can't be skipped, it might stop all work on that category if this would be the policy.

Yeah, well so it seems in a sense you agree, since the infrastructure is even weaker than I imagined. The ideal would be an issue tracker where librarians could define their own personalized sharable filters and then they could get the cases that interest them (possibly more easily) and work them in a fair order with good visibility to the author. I could probably write such a thing, but probably not for free. One could also have a report on requests that matched nobody to identify gaps.

I did cover the case of requests with issues, they get moved to in progress, commented on and then moved to FIXME... but apparently that's not even possible.

As for people leaving when asked to work in order, that's just part and parcel of volunteer organizations. Almost any change in procedure is going to cause some level of turnover, and accepting new volunteers eventually replace those folks... the folks who would leave are probably waning in their passion or jaded due to the issues with the system anyway. If they don't enjoy helping people and fairness what is the point of volunteering anyway? Also if the petering/bumping can be removed, maybe that balances for the cost of working something in order?

William wrote: "Preface: I'm not upset with librarians here, it's clearly the system that's broken.

Having browsed through the add new book folder trying to figure out what the probable time line for getting adde..."

1) There are enough folders already. As Renske pointed out, people still use the wrong folders and/or do not read the "read this before posting in this folder" stickied posts, so more folders won't help.

1.5) Moderators have the ability to move posts to the right folder. That seems a more user-friendly solution than deleting the posts.

2) Why should authors get a special folder for their requests? Readers have just as much right to get their book added to the database.

3) No, no, no. Not all librarians like to do the same things. Some have specializations, and some prefer skipping the more complicated requests. Also, not everybody feels comfortable with all languages.

Renske wrote: "If the moderators would have that much time to manage all of this, the results would be better if that time was spend on helping with requests than doing all these extra steps."

+1!

William wrote: "Yeah, well so it seems in a sense you agree, since the infrastructure is even weaker than I imagined. The ideal would be an issue tracker where librarians could define their own personalized sharab..."

Hi William
Welcome to Goodreads!

I just want to address a couple of points.

As for people leaving when asked to work in order, that's just part and parcel of volunteer organizations.

Unfortunately some of the volunteer librarians who have left or reduced their contributions are very experienced - far more experienced than most of the front facing staff. AFAIK the last staff member who pre-dated the Amazon takeover left last December. Her knowledge of the site is very hard to replace.

If you click on librarian or Superlibrarian under a member's avatar you will get an idea of how many edits they have done.

If you are next going to say - "Well surely there is a Manual you can work from?" There is, but it isn't properly indexed, very hard to use, & doesn't contain everything. The present moderator has been making great efforts to improve the content, but this will take time. So the longtime, experienced librarians are invaluable.

ask Librarians to work in order within a category. They can pick what category they like, but they should not be skipping older requests within a category.
The categories would have to be very specific. For example a librarian may not want to work on 'sexy times books' or political books. As the Superlibrarian who responded said this would lead to more chaos. We already have members not able to figure out how to add a folder before writing a thread. Volunteer librarians cannot shift them to the correct place.

Dozens of German and Portugese titles that are added in under 48h and sometimes under 24h. I haven't seen a Portugese librarian in this group (although there are a couple of Spanish ones who may speak Portugese. If there is a Portugese one - welcome! :) & librarians who speak a certain language may only be in this group every few months, so do a lot of edits while they are here.
and even an entire long thread about an author vandalizing records
There is a short thread about an author vandalising records - which no doubt a moderator will deal with. If you are referring to the long thread in Questions - the title is misleading, but only the op or staff can change it.

Finally I see you are an author. After a week you can bump your thread by replying to it. If it still isn't dealt with please bump it no more frequently than every 48 hours. Please don't create separate threads as that puts us even further behind. :)

Once your book is on Goodreads you will be able to claim it, & get an author profile. & then you can do a lot of your edits yourself.

Interesting that someone who joined Goodreads *this month* feels qualified to suggest changes to the system.

Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Interesting that someone who joined Goodreads *this month* feels qualified to suggest changes to the system."

Don't have to be here long to spot structural issues. I've got 20+ years of development experience, so I am fairly acquainted with workflow and ticketing and it's benefits. You have people making requests, and another group of people servicing requests asynchronously. That's issue tracking & workflow through and through. I kinda knew this would be a disaster the moment I saw it was managed with a forum. I withheld judgement until taking a closer look, but all the expected problems exist... cause no forum can ever do a good job of workflow and task tracking. It's like using a screwdriver to drive a nail.

Note that one of the key complaints in the original response is that users post requests all over the place. With a proper issue tracking system they would all put a "Add Book Request" category, on their requst when they filled out the form and that would avoid 99% of that issue. Not to mention various information could be required fields, so *poof* lots of incomplete request churn evaporates....

I don't fault anyone for starting out this way. One uses the tools one has on hand. But it seems like you've quite outgrown your old system, unless you think "months" to get a book added is a good result?

Tell me do you think things are ideal? Do you thin nothing could improve? Do you have better ideas?

Consider this poor fella who made a request **in early december 2022** that just got serviced today: https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

That's good? I have to be participate on the site for years to call it bad? ok...

Oh, it’s not that librarians think this is a good system. Since you’re so knowledgeable, you’d probably like to know that authors used to be able to add their own books. In fact, anyone could add a book. But Goodreads, in its infinite wisdom, changed that policy nearly a year ago. It isn’t the system that’s broken, it’s the policy.

Further, you’ve posted in the group that is for librarians. You might realize, librarians are volunteers. We have no control over how things are run.

If you want the system/policy changed, you have to contact the people who run the joint. Contact staff. See how far that gets you.

A note about Authors adding vs readers adding... 100% readers should be able to add. But for an author it's something that has an effect on their (possilbe?) career, their livelyhood and can really effect their life. Good reads is very well known, and has an enormous user base. So a reader may be disappointed, if a book can't be added, an author who's book isn't added may simply never have enough success to make it a career. Sure there are lots of factors but they add up... and an author's ability to support themselves is a threshold. Authors near the margin will be effected. I'm actually not that person, I have a solid career in Software, but wow, I just feel realy bad for any folks who want to make a career out of writing that have to wait 7 months to get an author page.

William wrote: "But it seems like you've quite outgrown your old system"

As you have already noted, librarians are volunteers, i.e. regular users with editing privileges, not staff. Therefore "we" have not outgrown "our" old system.

Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "If you want the system/policy changed, you have to contact the people who run the joint. Contact staff. See how far that gets you."

Yep.

Do you have better ideas?

Some of us did. If you visit the thread that you thought was complaining about a single author you will see the extent of the problems.

Things started going wrong when regular members could no longer add books (which I agreed with - its amazing GR hadn't been sued with some of the stuff that was added!)
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
When librarians couldn't cope with the deluge, they let loose some new bots .Among other things, they overwrite librarian edits, have added things like PROOF editions, sweatshirts & tarot cards & delete valid books.

If you have a solution for the problems on GR I suggest you contact Support (Staff)
https://www.goodreads.com/about/conta... as mentioned in this thread

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Librarians are volunteers who have little to no influence on any decisions GR makes.

William wrote: "Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Interesting that someone who joined Goodreads *this month* feels qualified to suggest changes to the system."

Don't have to be here long to spot structural issues. I've ..."

Actually I found a lot of references to this on the web and wasted quite some time trying to find the feature before I realized it had been removed...

ok I tried to reply to one thing, it seems to have quoted another, then I tried to delete that mistake and something disappeared but I can't figure out what it was... sorry

Welcome to Goodreads. :/

So I seem to have inadvertently deleted a response which I'll have to re-summarize ... the misquote was supposed to be replying to the comment about users adding their own books.

I volunteer on open source projects a bunch, so I totally sympathize with the difficulty of maintaining documentation that Carol mentioned, been there, done some of that, it's never easy. The folders for categories thing was just a suggestion, I was hoping that I could find a way to shoehorn some workflow management into the system, but the fact that Librarians are not given any ability to move things and some of the other details presented do make it pretty unworkable.

I actually understand the desire to control what's added. I was kinda shocked when I read stuff about people being able to add things without moderation. Just witness the current vandalization of requests by a spammer...

Anyway, I see Carols advice (an thanks for the welcome), but bumping every 48h even seems too often, I feel like a pest doing it. I hate feeling like a pest and that unhappiness drove me to try to think of a way to improve things, and then to post this thread.

As for librarians not having power, I understand now that you clarify, but I'd expect you to be an important set of users for any change anyway, so it's quite good if this thread results in some aggregation of what librarians think. (I'll look at the link to support... but certainly if that seems useful, I'll reference this thread).

If you want to see what librarians think, this would be a good place to start.

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Lol, the start of that is classic software project management failure. All too familiar, so don't feel too bad. It's shockingly common. Seen it in many forms many places. Writing software is the easy part 99% of the time. Understanding requirements is often the hard part.

The most difficult thing about communication is the illusion it has occurred.

William wrote: "Lol, the start of that is classic software project management failure. All too familiar, so don't feel too bad. "

The whole thing is software project management failure. We shouldn't feel bad? Volunteers didn't do that.

I just mean that it's not any evil plot, and nobody's done this to you on purpose. It's garden variety screw up. That's not good and it is painful, but this doesn't look like anyone being evil... It should get fixed eventually, but now they need to take 4-8 months to study the problem (like they should have originally before unleashing bots, but clearly they skipped that part).

William wrote: "I just mean that it's not any evil plot, and nobody's done this to you on purpose. It's garden variety screw up. That's not good and it is painful, but this doesn't look like anyone being evil... I..."

I must admit I sometimes wonder. I mean, they may be trying to fix things, but they haven't stopped the bots from running in the meantime.

William wrote: "I just mean that it's not any evil plot, and nobody's done this to you on purpose. "

You can believe what you want. But you are complaining about a process that has been going on for a year. Does it look like they're taking time to fix it?

Ok well I only read the beginning of that thread covering a month or so, and the first message was dated late March this year, so if there's older issues I'm not commenting on that. Certainly if the bots continue to mess things up that's not good. It sounded like they stopped them at least for a little while... I'm not surprised if they haven't got a corrected system in place in 4 months, but if they didn't call a halt and fix what they broke before trying again, then that's further mismanagement... I can better see where the anti-good reads sentiments I keep hearing come from though.

William wrote: "I'm not surprised if they haven't got a corrected system in place in 4 months"

It's been a year, not 4 months. Actually more than a year - since June 20, 2022. See this post:

https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...

Well you've all convinced me that nothing can be solved without action from development side. I posted a good reads "idea" here https://help.goodreads.com/s/suggesti... though


They do seem to have workflow for ideas which is ironic, but possibly hopeful... less encouragingly they don't actually hide the data until it gets to the client, so you can see everything in the response via standard browser tools... which I hope they will improve upon in the future. FWIW, if they never make it public, this is what it looked like:

 {
 "id": "194;a",
 "state": "SUCCESS",
 "returnValue": {
 "Id": "a0G8V00001sQX37UAG",
 "Name": "Workflow and Issue tracking for Add book requests (current system is broken)",
 "I_want__c": "The current folder based system is (unsurprisingly) insufficient to handle the volume of requests. The requests to add a book should be submitted into an issue tracking system wherein librarians have roles that give them the ability to progress individual tickets. Such a system would naturally have search (and hopefully saved search) features for librarians to find books that they are interested in curating. There are plenty of existing issue trackers out there so this could easily be implementation of off the shelf software rather than development by goodreads (aside from providing links to it etc).",
 "Because__c": "Because the current situation has extreme disparity in how long it takes for books to be added, and even a well meaning librarian isn't going to have a good way to find requests that are lagging unless those reqeusts get bumped by authors, but bumping is just a form of spam, and encourages pestering by authors (or readers) who have no visibility into their place in the queue, or any for of assurance that anyone is ever going to do anything about their request. Forms for issue tracking is like using a screwdriver to hammer a nail. You might get some in eventually, but it's going to be a pain, way slower than it needs to be and thus the user experience will suffer. It's emblematic that there isn't even a matching label for this... but keep in mind that one can't be an author unless one has a page, so I'm tagging both book page and author page, since this problem gates and prevents the creation of both. \n\nSince some vlog/blog reviewers want a link to your good reads page, and authors promoting their book linking good reads is a source of free marketing for goodreads, this should be possible in advance of the actual publication of the book (on amazon or elsewhere) so authors can leverage good reads (and thus drive traffic to good reads) during their initial marketing efforts. Right now one has to wait up to 7 months to get a page for a new book. Which is pretty long time to delay an otherwise finished work, and may be longer than it takes to write some books in the first place.",
 "Status_Update__c": "No updates yet!",
 "Additional_comments__c": "Here's a thread where I tried to imagine a temporary solution within the current system, but it became clear that changes to good reads, or integration with an issue tracker are necessary for any sort of relief. https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...",
 "CreatedDate": "2023-07-17T16:01:24.000Z",
 "View_Count__c": 0,
 "RollVotes__c": 0,
 "Status__c": "New Idea",
 "CreatedById": "0058V00000DdfclQAB",
 "As_a_Goodreads_member__c": true,
 "As_a_Goodreads_Author_who_is_part_of_the__c": true,
 "As_a_Goodreads_Author_not_part_of_the__c": true,
 "Goodreads_Librarian__c": true,
 "Publisher__c": true,
 "Advertiser__c": false,
 "Labels__c": "Author page;Book page",
 "CreatedBy": {
 "Name": "w_i_zard",
 "Id": "0058V00000DdfclQAB",
 "CommunityNickname": "w_i_zard"
 }
 },

William wrote: "Well you've all convinced me that nothing can be solved without action from development side."

You think? LOL

William wrote: "Well you've all convinced me that nothing can be solved without action from development side. I posted a good reads "idea" here https://help.goodreads.com/s/suggesti...-..."

👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻 I wish you luck, though I'm mired in despair of this broken system being fixed any time soon.

Your link, btw, returns an Error page that succinctly states: "Invalid Page."

Yes, and it will probably continue to say invalid page until the status moves off of

"Status__c": "New Idea",

Since idea requests have workflow and new ideas have to be approved before they can be seen by the public (sounds a lot like something else... hmm)

I appreciate you speaking up about the mess the current system is William. I don't get why some of the librarians seem so negative towards specifically you. Probably they are just fed up with everything that has happened to Goodreads in the last year.
While we librarians can't change anything I think it is good people speak up about has bad the system and situation is right now and do so in a public setting so other users and Goodread staff can see we are quite a few who are fed up with the system and, if you ask me, the lack of communication and interest to include librarians and other users in discussions on how to change the site for the better. If you just send it to GR support it will at best be read by one support staff and then thrown away.
I won't read through and comment on your suggested changes as I think it would be a waste of my time as I don't believe GR has any interest in implementing changes suggested by users. Irregardless of how good or needed the suggested changes may be.

+1

Yes, thank you, William, for your thoughtful and well-expressed posts. This librarian supports what you say 100%. And if I ever need to run a software project again (been there, done that -- it's hard!), I'll come to you first. : - >

Thanks to David, too, for your post. I agree with you that librarians are burnt out and frustrated because GR seems to have no interest in fixing problems; they certainly have no intention of making any improvements. All we can do is watch as existing site functionality crumbles away.

I just want to be clear. William was/is not familiar enough with the way volunteer librarians work to have made the posted suggestions for changes. Well and good that German books get added in 48 hours. Are German librarians supposed to sit back and do nothing waiting for the English-language requests to be served?

Who is supposed to move all those requests around to other multiple folders that just make finding things even more of a problem? Staff? Really?

Yes, people post in the wrong folder. One might observe that the original post is in the wrong folder. Policies and Practices is about the way librarians are to proceed. It is not about how Goodreads does things. That might be appropriate in the Questions folder, but to be honest, this type of post is supposed to go to Staff.

And on and on.

I posted above because the things William say need to be fixed are not the problem.

For instance, why not all Add a Book request have to go to staff and librarians can't perform that function? That would keep the backlog out of sight and out of mind. Because it seems to me that the backlog is what is the complaint.

I absolutely never said that German books should be added slower. Don't put such words in my mouth.

My point was that the current system provides no visibility into these disparities and their relative magnitudes. Even paging through several hundred posts as I did is only going to yield an impression of the situation, and is subject to mistakes. A ticketing system where statistics for requests can be observed would allow those approving librarians to know what areas need more librarians, and how badly. That then could influence admission of prospective librarians, effort put into recruiting them and most importantly report up to staff a clear picture of the degree of the current problem in a way they can't pass off as "just the librarians complaining" (or whatever). One could even find ways to recognize or reward particularly productive librarians in such a system, and maybe see what fraction of the librarians are functionally inactive... You promoted 20 folks that claim to want to work on English language books, but 2 months later all but 2 have wandered away, (as is common with volunteers)... so when staff responds "you have 200 librarians" you can say yes but X% are inactive.

A system based on tickets that has reporting capability can provide a much clearer picture of what's going on from a vast number of perspectives. Forum posts may be what you are used to, but they offer none of that (baring a ridiculously expensive effort at sentiment/entity extraction that would be super fun but take eons to get right). Maybe there's no tension at all with staff? Maybe staff takes everything you say seriously without any push back? I don't have a window into that, but it would be an unusually positive situation based on my experience.

I tend to speak up when I see things that are broken, it ruffles some feathers, but often I learn more about the problem and discussion is beneficial. If I stayed quiet, I don't think there's any way I would have learned about the system... unless you imagine me quietly lurking and eagerly reading every librarian post for a year?

In the process of this I discovered (maybe everyone else already knew?) that the good reads infrastructure does have a ticketing system already integrated for "ideas". If a second instance or subsection of that section can be employed that's a pretty direct path to an improvement, if for no other reason than you can then force all add requests into a single location.

In any case it seems the idea I posted is visible now https://help.goodreads.com/s/suggesti...

The idea system is flawed. You can't down vote an idea.

Mesembryanthemum wrote: "And if I ever need to run a software project again (been there, done that -- it's hard), I'll come to you first. : - > "

Consulting is what I do. It would of course be in appropriate to link anything here, but armed with the knowledge that I usually go by "Gus" a little sleuthing involving reading my profile and google would get you there. ;)

Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "The idea system is flawed. You can't down vote an idea."

Very few ticketing systems allow this. Typically a down vote without an explanation is pretty useless and does nothing to find a path forward, so forcing a comment for disagreement provides a mechanism for progress rather than a stagnation.

Oh, but you can up vote an idea without a comment? Anyway, I can't comment in either case.

Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Oh, but you can up vote an idea without a comment? Anyway, I can't comment in either case."

Yes, upvote says "yes take this action" which does lead to a solution vs "no not this action" leaves no path forward. One wants to design these things to drive change forward, and avoid stagnation.

However I agree the lack of ability to comment is a flaw in the idea system as it stands.

As a former software release administrator I am familiar with merging, main lines (equivalent to book lists), ticketing systems etc. As an experienced editor (but not administrator) of a well-known online encyclopedia in several languages and a contributor to a well-known music database (not sure if I may mention names here) I am familiar with two other models of public database maintenaince. Some of my requests to the Librarian Group have been dealt with adequately, some have fallen through the cracks. Not the fault of the excellent, but overwhelmed volunteer librarians. I would not call the process broken, but the database is definitely not reliable as a source for all editions of a book (in all languages) or all works of an author (in all alternaive spellings of a name, including Greek, Cyrillic and other alphabets).

The well-known encyclopedia model, as we know, is open to everyone, even non-members, but has administrators. This model would probably work best for GoodReads. Members only would add books, merge editions and correct author names. Librarians as administrators would check for promotional and abusive entries, and would be able to temporarily lock editions and lists. I believe this model would also attract more volunteers as administrators.

The well-known music database model is open to all members and has no administrators. Staff checks for abusive entries. The new users are "policed" (i.e. their contributions may be reversed) by enthusiastic experienced ones. One is frustrated in the beginning, but gets used to it. And it works extremely well, meaning the lists for artists and releases (in all possible languages) are very reliable.

Even my relatively small shelf of about 700 books, has many defects: misspelled author names, two authors listed as one, misspelled titles, editions not belonging to the correct lists, lack of covers, promotional descriptions... The highly appreciated work of the librarians cannot deal with all that - a model to open the database to all members should be found.

Serge wrote: "a model to open the database to all members should be found."

The database used to be open to all members. Everyone was able to do anything, and it became a right mess.

So librarians were installed (people could apply) and they were the only ones who could edit existing records. Everyone was still able to add books, and since too many records were added against policy or with incorrect or scant information that was changed in June 2022.

From then on only librarians could add and edit records (apart from import bots), and while a good idea in theory, the number of add requests quickly became overwhelming.

So two new Amazon import bots were installed to help with the addition of books, but their programming left much to be desired and in fact created a far bigger mess than all the non-librarians put together ever could.

And that is where we are now.

For some reason, Goodreads, or perhaps the Amazon overlords, are unwilling to stop the bots, so all librarians can do is play whack-a-mole.

👏🏻👏🏻 Thank you for posting this Mr. Heck :)
I especially agree with "us mere mortals" part. This is what I feel like.

Meanwhile I don't care much about a book getting added to goodreads, the other part of me is saying why should I accept some other person's "authority" on deciding which books to add early and giving me no right to question their pace.

This looks a lot like any other kind of despotism which is looking ironic and silly here on goodreads. Writer come here to "beg and hope" that their books are added.

I guess even the tiniest fragments of power makes people feel important and unquestionable as they become supplier to us demanders. Definitely making people show their worsts. Even the older system was better I guess.

Every GR author is able to add their own books, some just don't like to do it.

Ella wrote: "📚 Goodreads Librarians – Book Addition Request
Hi there! I’m an indie author, and I’d love your help adding my novel to Goodreads. Here are the details"

Your book is already on Goodreads, and the correct folder for posting an adding new books request would be Adding New Books.