Third cover flag needed!

Currently, a cover can be flagged as spam or as "not a cover". But sometimes it is simply a matter of a cover showing for Book A that really belongs to Book B. It's a cover, just the wrong one, and it doesn't seem right to use the "not a cover" flag.

So we need a third option: "not the cover for this book" (or similar language).

Agreed.

p.s.: I always find misplaced covers interesting though - often they simply point to something being miscombined.

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often they simply point to something being miscombined.

Exactly. As in this case, where it's books with the same ISBN that have absolutely no relation to each other! I did flag the Chakras cover on the Book Traveller page as "not a cover", and Tim dropped me a line asking why I did that, so I explained that I didn't see any other way to note the problem. It's been removed on one page, but not the other.

We also need to be clear that this is for covers that don't belong on the work not covers that are mismatched with other information for an individual book.

Good thinking. Yes!

I agree with the need to indicate when a cover is a cover but not a cover for the book in question. As I noted in Bug Collectors (now closed), I ran into this problem a couple of times recently when I was trying to change my Amazon covers to member-uploaded covers, and I'd like to be able to do something to flag that. Of course, I'll first check to see if something was miscombined.

As mentioned above, the problem is that the flag is work-specific, whereas the other flags are work-independent. What I'd propose is that underneath the hood LT tracked what work it's not a cover for.

How to actually do that, I'm not sure. Would work number help at all, would most-popular ISBN, etc? At best, we might wind up with something kludgy but better than nothing.

Just to add a wrinkle in - I have one book where the content does not match the cover. I also have a copy of a book where the titles ( the book contains multiple) are incorrect. I want MY covers to be associated with my books. How would I stop my cover from being removed as a cover for a work?

As Tim said - and I plan to hold him to it if it would ever come to that: "Note, however, that flagging will not change any user's books. It won't change THEIR cover. It will only change how that cover perfuses to other users".

Anything beyond that, I agree, would be bad.

P.s.: What exactly does "to perfuse" mean? I sort of get it, but can't find it.

8> I had a few books like that - they came from a big book fair where the publishers were showing off a series of cookbooks that wasn't all out yet. And they had early copies with the cover of one, but the contents of another.

I would hope that any feature like this would leave the cover in place on the book it was entered for, just disappear from the choices offered.

#9 by BarkingMatt> It basically means to suffuse, to ooze out, to transfer via osmosis, etc. Just a colorful way of saying that the cover for a work is derived from what people choose most often. In this case, even if it was chosen most often the flag would prevent that from making it's way out of your catalog and trashing up the common areas.

Ah, okay, thanks.

Thinking about this some more, I would like more than a third cover flag. I would like a way to delete that cover from the wrong book and add it to the right book.

I sort of get that. But I don't think it would be a good idea to give users the power to delete anything from other users' collections, for whatever reason.

Imagine the editing wars and flaming.

Yes, I see that point. I hadn't thought through the fact that if a user uploaded it, he or she thought the cover belonged with the book. (But really, how could someone think a cover saying Title A really means Title Z? Just venting!)

For the same reason some people attribute "Moby Dick" to Mark twain ;-)

#15, Because the publisher put the wrong cover on the book! It happens, just not very often. I have two books with exactly the same front and back cover, but the contents of two different books.

15> see 10. In a case like that I would want my cover on my book. I would even be willing to flag it myself as being the wrong cover for the work, but I would still want it on my book and my book in the work.

15, 18 That's wild! I've never seen it, but having worked in publishing decades ago I can't say I'm completely surprised!

Anyway, a flag would be a good thing.

It also happens if an ISBN is re-used. In the example I gave earlier (#3), the user(s) uploaded the correct cover for the correct book, but because of the ISBN situation, the books got combined. Uncombining them didn't get the wrong cover off one work's page, though.

>21
The cover in that case is also on the Chakras book in several members' catalogs. However, I suspect it is there through "best-guess for ISBN" rather than an intentional selection. Because of the incorrect ISBN on one edition of Chakras* LT is propagating bad cover data. This is a perfect example of why we need a wrong cover for this work flag.

*I suspect an Amazon error rather than publisher reuse. WorldCat lists the ISBN for that edition as 0835604225 not 0396069517. But for the covers problem it doesn't matter why the ISBN is shared.

Wait! Mark Twain didn't write "Moby Dick"?

We now have our third flag.

> 23: Of course not silly. It's by Jules Verne. (And best appreciated in it's original Klingon).

... and his evil twin, Mark Melville.