Anne > Status Update

What can you do to help? <--you ask
Easy. Send a complaint to Goodreads Support!
They will 100% send you something back that says “this is Goodreads policy, blah, blah, blah”. Ask them to forward your concerns to the person in charge. This is a numbers game, and we absolutely have numbers on our side. It’s a winnable battle and that’s shown by the fact that everyone who sends in a complaint is getting the same response. They no longer have the time to answer each complaint individually, which is what we were getting when we first started.

Make your voice heard. It’s easy to fall for the idea that you can’t fight the system, but that is simply NOT true.

Volumes vs Titles Origin Story:
Goodreads is removing series names and volume numbers on comic books, leaving only the subtitle.
An example would be Batman: Volume 1 (I am Gotham) is now listed on Goodreads as I am Gotham.
If you search for Batman volume 1, Tom King’s run on Batman no longer appears in the search window. There are still volumes of Batman by other writers that show up, but for how much longer, no one can say.

Why would anyone do something so stupid?<--you ask
I’ll give you Jayson’s answer, which is much smarter than my own.

It's Goodreads' policy to put the series name and sequence number in parentheses after the title. When done for comic books, this causes an information duplication, where the series name and volume number are present in both the title and the parenthesis after the title.

This duplication is regarded as intolerable by GR higher-ups. Rather than remove the parenthesis, which would be the logical solution, they decided to remove the series name and volume number from the title, leaving only the subtitle.

This was obviously a decision made by people who have no real working knowledge of comic books.
How do I know this? <-- you ask
They have replaced the word volume with the # sign.
So in parenthesis under I Am Gotham they have added (Batman (2016) #1).
Anyone who reads comics knows that #1 means issue number 1.
#5 means issue number 5, not volume number 5! And since each volume has multiple issues included inside of it, they are adding a layer of confusion that simply does NOT need to be there and will eventually start causing more and more problems. We will have to learn a new language to deal with their new wonky naming style and to navigate a search engine that is no longer giving us normal results.

A lot of people on the site read, log, and review single issues of comics. Make no mistake, this will become more and more of a problem as time goes on, eventually making the site unfriendly and hard to use for the graphic novel community.

Damn, I was hoping the stubborn moron renaming everything wouldn’t make it to DC books :(

Hopefully we can get these reverted soon.

Wait for the X-titles. That way lies madness...

I sent a complaint. They responded by "fixing" the title I used as an example. It was definitely not an auto-response.

I don't read comics, but if I did, this would drive me MAD. Absolutely bastshit. Hope it works out for all my comic-loving friends!

Aarann wrote: "I sent a complaint. They responded by "fixing" the title I used as an example. It was definitely not an auto-response."

Did they really?! Do you know who you got to answer you? That used to happen for us in the very beginning about 50% of the time. But nobody has gotten a 'fix' in ages!

Val ⚓️ Shameless Handmaiden ⚓️ wrote: "I don't read comics, but if I did, this would drive me MAD. Absolutely bastshit. Hope it works out for all my comic-loving friends!"

Thanks so much, lady!

Anne wrote: "Did they really?! Do you know who you got to answer you? That used to happen for us in the very beginning about 50% of the time. But nobody has gotten a 'fix' in ages!"

He signed the email "Charles." I actually used the Batman Volume 9: Bloom example that you used in your comment, just as an example, because the issue isn't really affecting my desktop-using self (at least I assume that is the reason) like it is everyone else and I wanted to help, but the problem wasn't showing up for me.

ETA he also suggested that I use Goodreads Help https://help.goodreads.com/s/ for future problems, so I must have somehow clicked my way into the wrong place.

One more thing, I've copied/pasted his whole email. So apparently this has something to do with Amazon names too...

Hi Aarann,

Thanks for writing in. The tittle has to be the same in Goodreads and the Amazon website, I went ahead and change the title for: "Batman Vol. 9: Bloom (The New 52)" . Changes may take up to a few hours to be reflected in the website, please check the links below:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...

If there's anything else I can assist with, please let me know. In the future, I can also recommend searching for any issue you might be experiencing on Goodreads Help, where our community is often able to assist or offer insights.

Best,
Charles

I think I love Charles.

Well, I hate to tell you this, but it has been changed back to Bloom by the person who is wreaking havoc on everything. Probably saw it had been changed when they read this status update and just went back and "fixed" it.

Anne wrote: "Well, I hate to tell you this, but it has been changed back to Bloom by the person who is wreaking havoc on everything. Probably saw it had been changed when they read this status update and just w..."

That's a thing they can do? Is this a GR employee, or a shithead GR user that knows how to do things we don't? I am definitely behind on the comic problems.

It's the librarian that we've been talking about. No, they are not a GR employee. They are an unpaid librarian who feels it is their 'duty to make everything the way Goodreads wants it', even though there are no other librarians making these changes.
When we heard about Goodreads' head librarian making this decision, we were upset but not worried. Goodreads relies on unpaid volunteers to make these sorts of edits. And there are only a handful of the librarians who understand comics, and those who do are ALL comic readers. So. None of them would 'bother' to make the changes and all would continue as normal.
Or so we thought.
This person is making more edits per day than most people can manage in months and singlehandedly ruining the comic section of Goodreads. They have told us that they refuse to stop until the head librarian tells them to.
And THAT is what we are trying to do. We need to get the attention of the higher-ups and get them to understand their comic community won't be able to use this site if they don't stop this person.