Please help the Hobbit!

Someone has combined many other of Tolkien's books with The Hobbit. Any assistance in separating them will be much appreciated.

Oh my lord, that is such a mess

I left a note for the combiner asking them to reread the combining rules and be more careful in the future, and I'm going to work on separating these out whenever I get a chance tonight, but this is definitely going to take awhile, and a lot of help.

Cannot LT staff roll back the rough combiner's work?

> 3

I left a note for the combiner
Oh, good idea!

I've made a start. It's easiest, I find, to separate out one other work at a time, then re-combine those (properly, of course), before moving on to the next.

Thanks for the help.

Yes I find it easier and faster to search for some words from a title rather than scrolling down six or seven pages for each separation. I've been leaving any recombining though until later.

I'm going to sob over there in the corner, let me know when this is fixed.

Kidding.....I'm working my arthritic index finger fast as I can.

At first I was recombining as I went, but for now I'm just separating. It's just a little too overwhelming to tackle both just now.

I've done some separating too. I can guess at some of the foreign titles, but I don't have a clue about the japanese titles.

Click separate, click ok, click separate again....shouldn't separating be easier than combining?

It would be nice to be able to undo work and author combinations on the helpers log the way we can tag combinations...

10> I have to click separate, click ok, click separate work. I can do it with one click and two enters, but why do I have an extra step?

Well I have to stop for now, THAT is/was a mess. There needs to be a better/faster way to separate works out...

>12 jjwilson61: We both have 3 steps, it's combining that has one less step, if you don't count selecting the works you want to combine. Tim once said, somewhere at sometime, that separating was meant to be easier than combining, but that doesn't seem to be the case at all.

#14:

It's easier to separate tags than to combine them, if that counts for anything.

I just received this comment back from the original combiner:

"How do I undo this? I guess i did not understand the process afterall."

I'm tempted to just ask him to leave it to us to fix, but I'm worried that might come off as a bit rude. Any thoughts?

It's down to 23 pages. I have to go do something else now.

#16

I'd tell him/her to separate other books from The Hobbit, but not to touch the combine button!

This is ineffingcredible. Under "What Not to Combine" it says "The Fellowship of the Ring is not the same work as The Lord of the Rings." But who'd have thought that anyone would decide that both, and Tolkien's Letters, and Calendars, and The Silmarillion, and so on and on, are the same as the Hobbit?

We do need a way to burst apart these monster combos, or Abby needs to be able to do it on request.

I notice that some separated books are wandering off to other author pages due to errors in the author name. More work. :-(

More work. :-(

Yeah. All works involved, not just The Hobbit, are going to need a thorough cleaning. It is going to be quite some time before it's anywhere close to looking orderly in the Tolkien sector of LT.

Bored of the rings, so I'm off to bed. I reckon I've separated over 50 works (at a minimum). Good luck to the next shift.

omg. One could even say that mistakes were made.

We should definitely be able to pick several titles at one time when separating.

Also, it would be nice to be able to sort the titles inside a work. Now they appear every time in a different order, which makes it even more difficult.

I did some separating and combining, but need some rest now.

holy. crap.

(I am a "baby combiner" myself who often doesn't feel confident enough to help with most of the issues people raise in this forum, but this seems more like grunt work, so I'm game... heading over there to have a go.)

Yeah, just did fifty or so myself...have I mentioned before that we should get credit for separating as well as for combining?

Tim does have the ability to explode works, and has used it before upon request when people have combined all the works of a particular author (as I recall, this once happened with "various"), but there is some reason why despite requests regular users have never been given this ability.

Good work. It's down to less than 7 pages now.

Maybe a tutorial should be developed for new combiners or author photo-ers; they would take it & pass before they could get privileges.

I separated (and recombined properly) nearly all the incorrect combinations in Indo-European and Finno-Ugric languages of various volumes that belonged elsewhere in the Lord of the Rings series. Someone else will have to tackle the Asian language volumes, but for the most part this work is now clean of books that aren't actual translations of The Hobbit.

I also tried to separate out the "graphic novel" versions of the book when I noticed them, but I suspect some are still lurking there.

I neither like (nothing personal-he just puts me to sleep!) nor really know anything about Tolkien, so, after enjoying this little linguistic challenge, I'll bow out and leave this to people with greater knowledge and enthusiasm.

I've pulled out most of the Japanese and Chinese volumes that don't belong.

I've done all I can in the Hobbit, plus a fair bit of sorting out/recombining of the other Tolkein works. G'night, combiners!

Don't forget Christopher Tolkien, I separated quite a few of his works from The Hobbit as well.

Speaking of Chris T., I think I'll work a bit on the History of Middle-earth books today. I saw they were getting quite messy yesterday with all the shuffling and messing about.

Well done and congratulations to all who've helped on this. By the time I'd seen this message after the downtime, it was all (more or less) fixed!

What about sound recordings (not dramtisations) and audio books? to my mind they belong with the written text, but a few have been carefully seperated out. Recombine?

>31 reading_fox:

I wouldn't.

#32 your reasoning being??

Mine for combining, is that it is the same material, exactly to the very comma.

If I'm sure they're complete and unabridged, I combine. It's not always easy to be sure, of course, so proceed with caution would be my advice. I believe there are some audio re-enactments of various LoTR/Hobbit books that aren't simply a reading of the text but more like an recording of a play. Those should be separate? Maybe? Discuss?

I think the audio versions should be separate. I have the BBC full-cast version of the Hobbit and would much prefer it to be separate from the book. The only time I think audio versions should be combined is if they are a reading of the text (like the Stephen Fry versions of the Harry Potter books).

#34 yes there is certainly a BBC recorded version which is abridged and generally dramatacised - this is different from the text and correctly seperate The Lord of the Rings (BBC Dramatization)

But Two Towers Audio Book
is The Two Towers I would have thought?

#35 "if they are a reading of the text" That's exactly what an audio book is.

>36 reading_fox:
Amazon.com calls Two Towers Audio Book an adaptation http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1565116682/ref=nosim/librarythin08-20

I don't think I'd combine that particular work.

36: I didn't say "audiobook" - I said "audio version" but yes, "reading of the text" = audiobook and IMHO should be combined with the print version ...unless it is abridged. Oy, kettle of worms, this.

The main problem lies in how individual LTers choose to enter their items. Many people (probably including me, at least sometimes) are not very precise. In the case of The Two Towers Audio Book - is the LTer actually entering an audiobook, or is that really the dramatization? Is it abridged? Without digging around in their catalogue it may be hard to tell (actually maybe not even obvious then), and someone doing combinations may not be that diligent.

Hmm - I think I'll go and mess around with my records.

Trying to remember where I saw it & will have to do some digging, but I believe LT has already said that audio versions should NOT be combined with print versions because there is a material difference. The same goes for "pop-up" versions and other unique aspects of a work.

Audio versions are not brought up in the pop-up example: Edition or language differences with a significant social difference. This concept is up for debate,... from the green sidebar on any combine works page

No, but audio books have specifically been brought up somewhere on the site so I will keep looking. I have a definite sense that there was a policy statement about that somewhere.

leebot, I think you're thinking of http://www.librarything/concepts --

What works should be combined?
...
* Formats. The unabridged audio book of Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility is the same work as the paper copy.

What works shouldn't be combined?
...
* Derivative works. The CD of the musical Wicked is not the same as Gregory Maguire's novel. Nabokov's screenplay to Lolita is not the same as his novel.

Which leads me to think: Hobbit Audiobook - yes; BBC dramatization - no.

I think before combining audio books with the text versions, then, it is incumbent upon the combiner to determine if they are indeed Unabridged versions.

Buy, I'm gone a couple of days and this is what happens to Tolkien!

The audio versions of the Hobbit were separate before this whole mess, so I'm leaving them be.

I'm quickly going through all the foreign editions that people weren't sure where to put. (I've made myself a table for just the occasion.)