Remove all BUT certain tags?

[kovidgoyal]

The reason is simply that you may want to use the bulk download to automatically correct incorrectly set metadata from a previous import (that is how i use it, for example)

[DoctorOhh]

Originally Posted by Starson17

I can't think of any reason for the bulk fetch to differ in the way it handles the series field from the way it's handle in the single metadata fetch.

Can you?

Having no actual programming experience I can't directly answer this question. From a strictly functional point of view I can see a reason when downloading metadata for a group of books to operate differently from downloading metadata for 1 book.

Say I add twenty books from a series and four of these books had some metadata that filled in the series field. If I chose to update all twenty books at once and the series info from librarything was different then the four books that already have metadata, I would want the 16 without series info to be filled in and the 4 with series data that doesn't match also changed to match. It is easy to rename an entire series but hunting and changing those 4 is more difficult. So if I do a mass metadata update I might prefer overwriting the series info.

But on a one on one single book at a time I would definitely not want the series info overwritten.

Update:

Originally Posted by kovidgoyal

The reason is simply that you may want to use the bulk download to automatically correct incorrectly set metadata from a previous import (that is how i use it, for example)

The technical writer in me spit out about a hundred and fifty words to say what you just did in about 20 words.

[kovidgoyal]

Originally Posted by dwanthny

The technical writer in me spit out about a hundred and fifty words to say what you just did in about 20 words.

More words a re usually a good thing, I often find people need to have point repeated/elaborated before it sinks in. Unfortunately, I write both poetry and mathematics in addition to code, so the chances of my ever learning to be verbose are slim-to-none