Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ

A design decision was made by goodreads staff so the shelves/genre section no longer displays on all book pages--in case anyone missed the change, staff explanation is at http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1... .

Not sure if that impacts anyone's challenges or the rules for the challenge.

If you are like me and don't like expending more effort on a really bad book than just shelving it as "dnf" or something, then maybe also put the shelf name in a review so it displays on book page.

Oh...don't like. Don't like at all.

Regardless of challenges, I don't like having to search through reviews and make lots of guesses to try & find out what kind of book it is.

What.the.hell.

I use the top shelves a lot...so now they are removing that?

@D.G. - Removing from displaying on the book pages (or some of the book pages or some sort of threshold to qualify -- not completely sure I understood what staff member was explaining).

I'm pretty sure at this time you can still get to shelves and genres via other links even if not visible on book page.

And I really hope genre of book being hidden still means that recommendations by genre, exploring by genre, and searching by genre still uses the shelved/crowd-sourced genre definitions -- those features would be useless to me if instead of current system where other readers placed the book there was a mystery "algorithm" or paid positioning setup being implemented.

Unless gr is also changing:

Main genre link is http://www.goodreads.com/genres

Main top shelves link is http://www.goodreads.com/shelf

At least for now, if you replace "show" on a book's url with "shelves" you see top shelves for that book.

Oh thank you for the workaround on the shelves! I may need it in the future.

LOL, I'll need it in future but will very likely forget where I posted it. Or goodreads will change it so those links no longer work (puh-lease not to import or recreate all the nasty amazon tag drive nonsense that so gamed the amazon system).

Well, probably a moot point that shelves don't display because you can no longer shelve however you like: see http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1... - which announces goodreads now can delete shelves they deem negative to authors.

Uh, they're not removing all shelves, right? You can still access the shelves of a book when you click "Top shelves" underneath "Genres" on the right. You just can't call your shelf "author-should-be-pushed-off-a-high-cliff" any more (which I thought was very inappropriate anyway)

Celine wrote: "Uh, they're not removing all shelves, right? You can still access the shelves of a book when you click "Top shelves" underneath "Genres" on the right. You just can't call your shelf "author-should-..."

They are, on only certain book pages, removing "Top Shelves" and "Genres" on the righthand side of some book pages.

So no, you can no longer click at right to see what shelves remain after passing the new acceptable to "tone" of the community guideline.

Post about the section on book page "top shelves"/"genre" being removed on books with lower number of ratings/reviews at http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1... (goodreads says a design decision to avoid duplication of information*)

Post about goodreads now deleting instead of hiding objectionably negative about author reviews and deleting shelf names about negative author behavior came later at http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1...

You can read posts for yourself.

*okay, I calmly and politely just shared the links and said you could read for yourself.

But I can't seem to stop myself from expressing personal opinion -- I smell a rat. First hide shelves on the book pages most likely to be for complaining indie authors with few reviews. That way we won't notice individual shelf names being deleted � but I'm a suspicious person. Watch your shelf names. Particularly if contain the word "author" or match the list of shelves the bully site that shan't be named list as the top ones they want deleted -- that list includes bba and "due to author" ( which staff are removing even if the books on it are ★★★★� rated ones shelved because "due to author you began loving to read); on the other hand, a "bestest author ever" or "author is a genius" shelves can remain.

Seriously, I don't care if they remove a shelf called "authors I am going to kill" (that was always a policy, i.e., you can't threaten or bully). But this removing shelf feature from book pages and deleting shelves with names that someone flags as being negative about authors ... sssspppphhhlllltttttTTTT!!!!

Comes suspiciously close on the heels of amazon actively asking their customers to add books to the existing goodreads shelves.

Seriously goodreads could already delete the threatening or against goodreads TOS stuff (although they used to hide versus delete reviews objectionable for non-threat reasons). There was no reason to now delete hidden reviews or to change policy so that anything flagged as negatively about authors will be deleted. Oops, excuse me, their actual posts say "about authors" but they are only deleting "negatively about authors".

[edited for typos]

That's really weird - I read through the posts before but weekend brain is making it hard to fully understand what exactly they're doing (having English as a third language doesn't help either).

I wonder what they'll do after the weekend, once they see the full repercussions of what they've done. Will they change it, or stick to it?

I wonder if my "dnf" shelf is safe? (So far it's still there...) Currently reading through the comments in the Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ feedback group.

I know I would not find it funny if it was my books I lost, but one of the classical literature readers posted losing a "no good author like a dead author" shelf meaning they liked reading works by dead authors ... just a post so might just be snarky gossip but it gave me a chuckle.

As for as I know, DNF will be safe Rachel.

Ha Debbie, that is hilarious. I can see why Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ might interpret it as being offensive

Celine wrote: "As for as I know, DNF will be safe Rachel.

Ha Debbie, that is hilarious. I can see why Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ might interpret it as being offensive"

Yeah, I can see the interpretation. I just wish they'd take into consideration what books are on a shelf, how rated and reviewed, etc. before taking action. (No, I'm not saying that every book on a list has to be looked at but if a gray area author shelf shows books with mostly 4 and 5 stars, maybe it's not bullying the authors; a shelf about "dead authors" showing only books old enough to be in public domain, maybe it's also not threatening authors...)

Yeah, I see your point. I wish they could, but realistically speaking it's probably impossible for them to look that far. Å·±¦ÓéÀÖ has millions of users, and as far as I know they only employ about twenty people. Going through all those shelves is a gigantic task on its own.

But it would be nice if they could appreciate the funny shelf names as well. I think once the first major purging is done and everything quiets down the dead authors shelf might be appreciated (:

This is seriously going to stuff up our Bingo Challenges.

It was bad enough that the books listed on various genre names were sometimes thousands of books short. Now we will be severely limited to books that have top shelves listed as opposed to all books in a specific genre.

I was wondering why the book pages were looking funny, and that the ads were suddenly so prominent. Now I know.

GoodReads please don't shoot yourself in the foot anymore. What happened last Friday was surely enough of a headache. And so many people are leaving/have left and I feel very ambivalent about doing any librarian stuff that doesn't affect me personally now.

Sandra wrote: "This is seriously going to stuff up our Bingo Challenges."

That's if there are any members left to take part.

Sorry, that was rather bleak. I'm not feeling particularly optimistic. Too many members I care about are either deleting their accounts or significantly reducing their activity on here. And GR is doing nothing about it. :(

Yeah, Bingo was actually one of my first thoughts, seeing as shelves are pretty integral to the games.

Have they made ads bigger then? I can't see that because I have ad blocker.

Aww Ames :( DON'T LEAVE!!! Yeah SOS has been a bit quiet recently too. Where's Steph been? Is RL busy for her at the moment?

Steph is moving again this week, so she is busy packing. She isn't going far, just moving onto the local base, but moving is moving.

And Judithe just got back from her trip to the US to visit family.

Ah, busy times for Steph and Judithe. Good to know everything's okay with them both though :)

I will miss the Bingo games - they were a lot of fun.

Yes Bingo, my husband can tell you I was/am a fanatic.

Forgive me, but I'm a bit confused....

At the bottom of the "Genre" listing, the link to "see top shelves.." is still there and takes you to the other, user-created shelves, if any.

The link to the Top Shelves still works....

The thing that seems different to me is that only the Genres are allowed on the main page. In other word, no user-generated shelves allowed there.

It would seem we'd still be able to use the user-generated shelves for Bingo...as long the mass migration to Booklikes doesn't kill them all off.

Christina (AKA Babbling) wrote: "Forgive me, but I'm a bit confused....

At the bottom of the "Genre" listing, the link to "see top shelves.." is still there and takes you to the other, user-created shelves, if any.

The link to t..."

I see that too.

Christina (AKA Babbling) wrote: "... the bottom of the "Genre" listing, the link to "see top shelves.." is still there and takes you to the other, user-created shelves, if any...."

Respectfully, no ma'am, not for all books. Only on some book pages. Not on others where it was considered duplicative information that members can calculate for themselves.

That was answered by staff at http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/1... .

An example from my shelves is one I tried on kindle prime - The Water's Edge (my shelf category 300 used to say "authors to watch"). It is from an indie-published author; she was never on any bba lists; there were no threatening or offensive shelvings of her books I ever saw (except that my "authors to watch" shelf may have been misinterpreted as blacklisting versus watching to see if they write more).

Another example is the omnibusMcMaster the Disaster Trilogy, by a self-publishing author often on the freebie lists; omnibus has no shelf/genre information; however, book #1 of omnibus (Bridesmaid Lotto) does.

Oh and when BINGO round 8 categories are selected -- someone remember to make sure "YA/NA Authors" "Male Authors" "Favorite Authors" type of shelves are not on it.

Those need to be removed from rotation unless there's some policy changes again allowing (yes, rumor says those shelves are being deleted, particularly the YA shelves because gr is interpreting as insulting the author to say they are not adult0=--I have no idea what and all new policy covers or if what random gr members are posting about individual shelf deletions are true or false; but, I have chosen to be careful until gr makes a site wide announcement, hopefully with some examples of what is allowed and what will be deleted).

Not just because of shrinking book choices on the shelves as deleted but because it could cause a player to create a "Male Author" shelf and lose part of their book catalog.

Debbie R. wrote: "Oh and when BINGO round 8 categories are selected -- someone remember to make sure "YA/NA Authors" "Male Authors" "Favorite Authors" type of shelves are not on it.

Those need to be removed from ro..."

Why would they remove a shelf named young adult? Isn't that an acceptable genre? I mean, you go to the bookstore and there is a young adult section. You go to Amazon (which I won't be going to anymore) and they have a Young adult section. Does not compute.

*off to back up my bookshelves*

Debbie R. wrote: "It is from an indie-published author..."

Would that make a difference? The majority of the books I would be looking at/have looked at are/were traditionally published books. I haven't (to the best of my knowledge) come across a book that didn't have the Genre list on the right-hand side.

It seems odd that a book, regardless of how it was published (or its primary format), would be genre-less. It would need something, so the system would know which "Recommended" list to put it on. Or so one would think.

So...your thoughts on this shelf. For some reason, I don't see it going away. It is a positive shelf, after all.

I guess it would get deleted if it said BBILF (view spoiler)[book boyfriends I'd like to F*&K (hide spoiler)]

Did you notice the first book on the list?

Christina (AKA Babbling) wrote: "Did you notice the first book on the list?"

Oh, good Lord!

AH wrote: "Christina (AKA Babbling) wrote: "Did you notice the first book on the list?"

Oh, good Lord!"

Yep.

I'm sure our glorious mods will come up with something if all the good shelves are scrapped.

Maybe we'll see more personal shelves. Half the fun was looking through the lists. Though I will say the last round wasn't as fun, what with the erroneous paging and all.

I guess we could play bingo for deleted shelves - or a bingo to flag shelves that should be deleted, lol.

AH wrote: "I guess we could play bingo for deleted shelves - or a bingo to flag shelves that should be deleted, lol."

"In honor of the deleted shelf 'Male Author', read a book written by a guy". ;-)

Though, I wouldn't cry over the loss of the book boyfriend shelf from the game. *grumbles* I rather pick my own bbf, thankyouverymuch.

Edited: added,"from the game". ;)

AH wrote: "Debbie R. wrote: "Oh and when BINGO round 8 categories are selected -- someone remember to make sure "YA/NA Authors" "Male Authors" "Favorite Authors" type of shelves are not on it.

Those need to ..."

I'm guessing particularly any shelf matching a genre name or matching commonly used tags at amazon.com should be fine so long as "author" is not in the title. Guessing; I don't know anything for fact.

So, "YA" or "Young Adult" shelves are probably fine; just not "YA Author" or "Young Adult Author" -- because it is about an author and new policy says they can delete content about an author versus strictly about a book.

(and because of complaints/flags from authors that claim they are harrassed / bullied / threatened by members reviewing them as having an immature writing style that these "YA Author" shelves as well have to go because clearly the thought police know the shelves were created with intent to mean the authors were placed on that shelf to mean they write sophomoric dreck).

Honestly, I have no clue what is and is not going to be deleted. Or how they are interpreting author shelves. Or if members posting about what is/isn't being deleted are telling the truth or repeating rumors or what.

The last official response I knew was somewhere in that thread that should now qualify as a book for your 2013 reading challenge where Kara's clarification said:

"We don’t comment publicly on individual cases, but in general, what we do is look at a shelf and see how it is used in context. In any case where we have decided to remove that shelf, we are confident that the shelf was being used in a way to review author behavior."

ETA 'cause I'm having trouble making sense today.

AH wrote: "I guess it would get deleted if it said BBILF [spoilers removed]"

Yup, that is clearly a threat of ...

I've been following the thread in the feedback forum since Friday. You weren't kidding -- it needs to count toward the Reading Challenge!

As long as we stick to shelves like supernatural, vampires, urban fantasy, paranormal, etc for Bingo -- I think we'll be okay.

Fingers crossed that is so Christina ;)

Christina (AKA Babbling) wrote: "I've been following the thread in the feedback forum since Friday. You weren't kidding -- it needs to count toward the Reading Challenge!

As long as we stick to shelves like supernatural, vampire..."

But then we couldn't have creative shelves like author-is-a-vampire, author-is-a-werewolf, zombie-authors

LOL

I must admit that all my shelf names are rather boring. I always liked reading the creative shelf names though, hope they don't all go :(

Oh no! I hope goodreads isn't reading this thread, too, and now removing those author is a supernatural shelves!

Reputedly, any clever shelf names to get around new rule mentioned on the feedback thread were also getting removed (including "fluffy bunny")

Phew! What a mess. At least for now, we can definitely still make shelving of use for BSB rounds. I did notice that the shelving info couldn't be found on some book pages, although it is there on some, just not all. Sucks it's gone. I'll just have to go by the blurb instead. Once I heard about the updated rules, I figured this was a result of that.

Sorry the 'book boyfriends' shelf bummed ya out, Christina. I was trying to grab ideas from member suggestions. I'll keep that in mind for future rounds though. ;)

Just checked my shelves that have the word 'author' in them. I have about 6, but they're harmless. Such as: author-� �(1889), author-� �(254), favorite author, etc. I'll be interested to see if they disappear strictly b/c of the word 'author'.

Yeah, regarding the shelf and genre info on the book page, it was interesting to see this thread, posted a couple of days before the shelf announcement, Books with no genres and shelves.

I made an "abuse" shelf a couple of weeks ago, probably longer, which could be misinterpreted.

Steph wrote: "Just checked my shelves that have the word 'author' in them. I have about 6, but they're harmless. Such as: author-� �(1889), author-� �(254), favorite author, etc. I'll be interested to see if they disappear strictly b/c of the word 'author'."

Innocuous shelves have and are being deleted. Like , maybe-will-read-someday, even 5-star Harry Potter reviews aren't safe.

Probably will, Josie, but I and others know you mean the books have an abuse theme within them (at least that's my guess).

Yuck. Well, I've backed them up, so whatever. Thankfully, I have my entire library saved in my computer program (BookPedia), so changes/deletions here will no doubt be frustrating, but not detrimental.

Steph wrote: "Sorry the 'book boyfriends' shelf bummed ya out, Christina. I was trying to grab ideas from member suggestions. I'll keep that in mind for future rounds though. ;)..."

I have nothing against the shelf, in general. :D

With some shelves, it can be a little disheartening to go several pages before you find a book you're marginally interested in, let alone have. My collection of YA/NA has expanded a little more since we last played, so now I have a few more choices to pick from.

In a pinch, I could always re-read Pride and Prejudice. ;)

Hmm, it will be interesting, I forgot I have a male author (59) shelf. I'll be watching.

So if the PTB delete a shelf, you won't lose the book, unless you have it on an exclusive shelf. It will still appear on your read/currently reading/to be read shelves, and any other shelves it was on.