Wikipedia has an ongoing problem where its more sexist editors constantly question whether a woman is “notable” enough to merit a page on the site. This is why, for example, the female 2018 Nobel Prize winner for physics did not have a Wikipedia page when her male colleagues did.

Goodreads has a similar problem with narrow-minded fools, only this one is more absurd than offensive.

It seems one or more Goodreads Librarians has decided that, contrary to Goodreads’ own rules, original audio productions do not count as books. Earlier this week they decided to follow through on their belief by purging all “Audible original” titles from Goodreads. So far they have nailed a Stephen Fry title, a storytelling series, an audiobook about Malcolm X, an interview series, and Cut and Run, a comedy with Meg Ryan in the cast.

Some of the purged titles have been outright deleted, only to be restored by other Librarians (example) while others have been put in limbo. They’ve had the author metadata changed so that it reads “NOT A BOOK”. (This is referred to by the acronym NAB, and is done so the titles aren’t automatically added again by Goodreads’ system.)

If you are interested, you can find a list of NABed books here. While most of the titles on that list should be in limbo, the original BBC audio productions should not. You’ll also find things like an author’s autobiography (this one is an edge case, I will grant you), and even the Orson Welles’ production of War of the Worlds on that list.

And audiobooks aren’t the only works being rounded up in this purge; apparently someone also decided to purge the audio productions of Great Courses lectures (this was stopped before too much damage was done).

What is particularly annoying about this situation is that Goodreads has a detailed list of what belongs in their system. All of the audio productions I referenced in this post qualify under Goodreads rules.

Alas, some Goodreads librarians do not appear to be familiar with their own rules. Or, given that a similar purge happened in December, perhaps they do not agree with the rules and are enforcing their own interpretation of what counts as a “book”?

In either case, clearly someone needs to get these rogue Librarians under control.

Thanks Faith, for tipping me to Alan Teder’s tweets about this problem.