Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

I’ve noticed something odd when editing book titles. Sometimes, in the logs, it looks like I also edited the book description, even though I didn’t touch it. It doesn’t happen all the time, only occasionally. Do you know why this happens, and is there a way to avoid it?

Edit: Oh, it also happens when combining.

That one drives me insane. A while back a reader (who has been here long enough that they should have known about this bug) called me out for my description, something I hadn't even read, much less touched.

I learned a long time ago that the log shouldn't be treated as a factual run-down. There are just too many issues. A few months after I started keeping a spreadsheet of my edits I logged on and saw that I had edits that occurred AFTER I had gone to sleep. I was on Ambien years ago. That drug is famous for its weird side-effects. One time I called my daughter in Illinois and had a two-hour conversation! The first time I saw edits like that, I thought maybe it had happened again (even though I haven't been on that med for years). Then I realized, there are pages of edits for someone who stopped editing in 2023. All of them saying they had changed the librarian’s note. Each of those was when ANOTHER librarian remove/ changed something. Bloody confusing. It never says which book had the change happen.

This happens to me as well. It’s really frustrating because the system can change a book’s description even when you only edit something unrelated. There doesn’t seem to be a way to prevent it since it happens randomly.

I try to check the logs later, because, as Tawnya mentioned, changes don’t always appear immediately. Sometimes it takes hours before an edit to a work is recorded. If the default description suddenly appears in a different language, it’s usually a system issue, not someone’s intentional edit.

It has always happened, but lately it feels like it’s happening more often.