New Talk 1: New "topic" pages | Touchstone/about bugs

See:

* Overview and general comments : http://www.librarything.com/topic/116769
* General bugs : http://www.librarything.com/topic/116770

Touchstone bug: new work that was not indexed with the old touchstones: A Bride's Story by Kaoru Mori.

A Bride's Story regular touchstone brings up Short Story Masterpieces by Robert Penn Warren. The "others" link offers [No Tears for the Bride (A story of saint Perpetua)] but if I try to touchstone that one, it tells me "no results".

To get A Bride's Story touchtoned, I have to use Bride Story or Bride's Story. A Bride Story gets the same as the first try. I'm not sure why "A Bride's Story" only has the two wrong options, but "Bride's Story" is right. Wouldn't the article "A" be ignored in both cases? And if there is an "A", shouldn't it prefer the closer match?

I hope it's a bug that all old touchstones are now showing the work number (e.g., 5179::Under the Banner of Heaven). Reposting from the other thread.

(Fixed that soon after.)

Thanks.

Just went to someone else's thread and saw the following. Those touchstones were not all the same earlier today.

Thread: http://www.librarything.com/topic/110442#2713793

#7 I've a similar problem. I just edited an old post in my thread to add missing touchstones. When I saved it, the two newly added touchstones are showing correctly, but the rest of the touchstones for that post have been replaced by duplicates of one of the entries in the list (not the last one I had entered). See here.

I tried over in the Touchstone Test group, and couldn't duplicate the bug; I suspect it only happens to threads that existed prior to the swap, but I don't dare edit my old posts to confirm.

I hope it's a bug that all old touchstones are now showing the work number (e.g., 5179::Under the Banner of Heaven). Reposting from the other thread.

Fixed.

Those touchstones were not all the same earlier today

Okay, don't mess with that post again now. I'm going to have to go in as you to look at it.

Okay, it's only display. The text is there if you edit, and therefore not changed anywhere on disk. So don't mess with it and i'll fix it in a moment.

Okay, it's fixed, TadAD.

I believe this person edited during the period when the numbers were still showing. This caused some wrong lookups, but I was able to grab the right data.

Is it fixed for everyone who had the problem, or just that one person?

Mine is fixed now also - though one remaining touchstone is still playing up which was ok before.

though one remaining touchstone is still playing up which was ok before

Shoot me the post.

#15 See post here. The Andromeda Veal book calls up the correct touchstone if I use the abbreviated title thus, but can't cope with the correct full title The Horizontal Epistles of Andromeda Veal.

So, I THINK this was only a problem because you edited when it still had the number at the start. That is, it had to recalculate it. Do you think this is possible?

It could be. Anyway it is less worrying than the previous trouble of all the touchstones displaying as the same book.

I tried to add a book that has never touchstoned Be Different: Adventures of a Free-Range Aspergian. When I put the brackets around it Be Different: Adventures of a Free-Range Aspergian it shows at the side "no results" yet the preview shows it in blue as if it were touchstoned. However when the final message is posted the title is left out completely and shows only touchstone error or something like that. I would want the title to show even if it doesn't touchstone.

>19 Citizenjoyce:

Ah. Okay. I'll look at that.

Some of the touchstones over on my 11 in 11 Challenge thread are connecting to works that are close, but not quite right. For example, Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day connected to the movie instead of the book and Alice's Adventure's in Wonderland connected to the pop-up children's version, which it did not do before. I fixed some of these, but haven't corrected the entire thread yet.

Actually, when I entered the above touchstones, Miss Pettigrew connected to the movie and Alice connected to an abridged version. These are, obviously, correct versions/editions of these works, but I'm not sure that the first edition a touchstone connects to should be the abridged or film version of a work rather than the work itself.

Touchstones in my 11 in 11 are all sorts of wonky!
I edited message #3 that had touchstones that worked and then when it posted weren't there and I can only touchstone the author but not the book.

http://www.librarything.com/topic/96724

About Touchstone wonkiness

I noticed this earlier when exploring the About feature, but forgot to bug report it. If you click to add an About touchstone, it doesn't pick up from the current touchstone list. For example: http://www.librarything.com/topic/111804

That thread is about Pride and Prejudice, but if I click to add an About Touchstone, the "Touchstones" section is blank. I have to go to "search" to get anything. That's how I added an About Touchstone for the Austenathon 2011: Mansfield Park thread earlier, though it was already touchstoned on the thread, too.

 

http://www.librarything.com/topic/115689 - Mansfield Park thread.

The About Touchstone was added there, but the About box doesn't show it - it only shows Add/change (which is different from the regular "Add"). If you click Add/change, it shows the deleted touchstone but not the current one. (Deleted because I clicked "Mansfield Park" then realized it took you to an NCE work, which I combined with the other NCE Mansfield Park work.)

Should the thread's touchstones show up under "touchstones" in the "About" lightbox? When I add an "About," I get an empty box for "Current" and "Touchstones," though "Search" works just fine.

24> I think they're supposed to, since that was one of the things I recall from the long discussion of the About Touchstones and how they should work. Plus, why else would we have that option in the lightbox?

Why can't I italicize touchstones? I mean really. I was taught to put book titles in italics, and I still make an effort to do so in Talk, even when I'm putting the title as a link. Please, please, fix this and allow touchstones play nice with any HTML that's thoughtful enough to stay outside of the square brackets.

26> Okay, that's weird.

I just tested it. If I put <i> and </i> around a simple Pride and Prejudice touchstone, the side touchstone panel comes up blank, and the "others" comes up with lots of options of green pluses, but all blank. Previewing the post shows regular text (not a link) that's italicised.

>27 keristars:
The first part of that is exactly what I saw. I looked no further, because I didn't need to to confirm that something had gone very much awry.

Oh, of course it's very awry. :) I was just curious about why it was giving me an "others" option when there wasn't even a first option. And then I got more curious still and wanted the excuse to hit the Preview button - would it show a touchstone or not?

It's really very bizarre. Very very bizarre.

All that came up for me was (others) then when I clicked on it it was an empty box with little green plus signs.
I guess I don't understand the about touchstones your talking about.

30> About Touchstones are new. They're not the ones that you make when replying to a thread, the usual touchstones. You create an About Touchstone by using the About box on the right-hand column of the thread. It's above the normal Touchstone box and has "add" at the bottom if there is no About Touchstone, or "add/change" if one has been set. You can use it to specify the main touchstone for a thread, which can be useful if the thread has lots of other touchstones included as reference links.

Not sure if this has been mentioned - I was just making comments on a thread about Ozick's book The Puttermesser Papers but touchstone won't accept 'the' which is in the actual title. The Puttermesser Papers (the Puttermesser Papers) - gets no result.

Be Different: Adventures of a Free-Range Aspergian with Practical Advice for Aspergians, Misfits, Families & Teachers
Be Different: Adventures of a Free-Range Aspergian with Practical Advice for Aspergians, Misfits, Families & Teachers
Be Different: Adventures of a Free-Range Aspergian
Be Different wrong touchstone, correct title not offered

At least this time the preview doesn't show a blue title that indicates it touchstoned. Now to see if the title shows

I'm happy. The title doesn't touchstone, but at least it now still shows up

33> Well, that's annoying.

You have "Be Different" as the touchstone, but apparently it goes to "My Name is Mary Sutter" because of this title:

My Name Is Mary Sutter: A Novel Mary wants to become a surgeon. She studies anatomy books and any medical materials she can get her hands on. She is a twin and as different from her sister as she could possibly be. She is a headstron midwife. She leaves home and travels to D.C. to nurse the wounded troops from the Civil War. She returns home at the last minute when her twin is in labor. She tries to save the baby and mother, but fails to save her sister. Very well written and historically accurate.?

The Be Different title you have written out (Adventures of a Free-Range Aspergian) doesn't show up in the 4 options at all

Adventures of a Free-Range Aspergian works, however. Very odd and unexpected and needs to be fixed. Touchstones are useless right now.

Hm, it hadn't even occurred to me to try Adventures of a Free-Range Aspergian. So, touchstones are still being very creative.

The touchstones reference area on the top right of each thread used to give you a choice of going to that work or author page or highlighting the touchstone in the actual thread.

Have we lost that that highlight function?

"Touchstones are useless right now."

Ah, Tim's fourth law of LibraryThing Features in action again.

Is the fourth law the one about how if you fix one thing, another part breaks, or is it the one about when you get a new feature, someone will inevitably exaggerate how much a less-than-perfect aspect sucks? ;)

That was an exaggeration on my part, except that with the touchstones acting like they are, it's not much better than it used to be, with the partial indexing.

Tim's fourth law is the one where Be Different: Adventures of a Free-Range Aspergian works when Tim removes the brackets from the search term before sending it to the search engine!

Note. I think I just fixed most such problems. But we'll see.

What I'm REALLY look for right now is an older post that doesn't work anymore--where some works don't maintain their touchstones on it. But the post has to have NOT been edited and saved today, when the code wiggled around on the topic of older touchstones enough that it's just not worthwhile to debug an unknown thing.

Oooh, that fourth law. Glad to see it was fairly easily fixed!

Any chance of getting exact matches on stop-words, like Be Different going to "Be Different" rather than "Different Seasons"? "Be Different" doesn't even show up on the "others" list.

>41 keristars:

The touchstone system is build on the search system. So it has its flaws. "Be Different: Adventures of a Free Range Aspergian" doesn't work (you need the - in Free-Range). And "Be Different" doesn't work. I suspect the problem is that "be" is a stop-word--a word that doesn't get indexed--and that Free-Range is treated as a single "word" not broken up.

Pinging Casey to confirm this? Casey, can we fix?

The Puttermesser Papers is working.

Why can't I italicize touchstones?

I am now testing Be Different: Adventures of a Free Range Aspergian. Interesting.

>40 timspalding:
The one I reported isn't fixed! Putting square brackets around "The First American" and then "<i>" and </i> around that should produce an ordinary touchstone, displayed in italics. It just brings up "(others)" without saying what it's other to; and clicking on "others" brings up a lightbox containing a column of green plus marks up the left side.

Further coherence must wait until morning, but I'm awake enough that I can still tell that something's horribly, horribly wrong.

ConceptDawg, I'm leaving 44 to you. I chatted you with the details.

No, I know. See 44, 46. The Italic thing is not fixed. @ConceptDawg is fixing.

This is weird. Possibly because Chris is working on it right now?

Sorry. Fixed. (And my mistake.)

Concering italics, is there any strong reason not to automagically italicize all work touchstones?

I guess there'd be a problem with short stories people'd want quotation marked instead?

>50 AndreasJ:

It looks ugly on some systems--Italics are beautiful in high-resolution typography, and often an eyesore on the screen. Overall, LibraryThing doesn't italicize works. Neither do other book-based sites.

In my list of books read so far this year (http://www.librarything.com/topic/104690#2368676), all of the author touchstones now show with the file name of the author and two colons before the author name as I have entered it. I clicked on one, and it worked. I have not edited this message in a couple of days.

Robert

What happened to "back to top"?

>52 Mr.Durick:

Okay, don't edit or save those. I'll look at them tomorrow, okay?

Okay!

Robert

I just went to some long lists of books I'd previously posted, some with lack of Touchstone, and they all touchstone now. Yahoo! Good fix.

In this post it says "touchstone error" for the author of one book and the title of another. This is extremely unhelpful. I would rather see the author/title even if not touchstoned, so I could try to find the book manually -- or at least know what book/author is being discussed.

I'm finding that touchstones don't take at all, unless I delete a character or type a backspace in the edit box, which seems to force a refresh. FF3.6.13, Win XP Pro.

> 23

Just confirming that I'm seeing the thing where 'About' doesn't pick up the touchstones that are already in the thread to choose from. Have to search to find one.

>50 AndreasJ:-51
I'm fine with it being optional, so long as the option actually works as advertised. Before the new talk system, the HTML and the square brackets worked together so long as the HTML was kept outside of said brackets. Which kinda makes sense when you think about it: the title gets put in italics, it doesn't just come that way.

I believe all the touchstone problems are pretty much fixed.

The problem was that the old system sometimes used formulations like number:: within the brackets to fix the work and letters:: to fix authors. This caused a series of problems, the working-out of which caused others. Most importantly it caused books that should have been fixed to suffer a recalculation when the post was edited. Unfortunately, posts that were edited and then saved were saved with whatever touchstones had been recalculated--displayed on the right, of course, but that's hard to notice if there are 20 touchstones in a post.

Anyway, new posts should be good. Old posts should be good. Those numbers are no longer needed, but they are handled correctly for old posts.

In this post it says "touchstone error" for the author of one book and the title of another. This is extremely unhelpful. I would rather see the author/title even if not touchstoned, so I could try to find the book manually -- or at least know what book/author is being discussed.

Fixed.

I'm finding that touchstones don't take at all, unless I delete a character or type a backspace in the edit box, which seems to force a refresh. FF3.6.13, Win XP Pro.

Do you mean new posts, old posts, what? Describe a little more what's going on?

Just confirming that I'm seeing the thing where 'About' doesn't pick up the touchstones that are already in the thread to choose from. Have to search to find one.

Not yet fixed. Working on it.

Something I've noticed: If you use a touchstone in a reply then post it, the touchstone box in the Add a Message section continues to show those touchstone details/links until you refresh the page.

I'm fine with it being optional, so long as the option actually works as advertised. Before the new talk system, the HTML and the square brackets worked together so long as the HTML was kept outside of said brackets. Which kinda makes sense when you think about it: the title gets put in italics, it doesn't just come that way.

@ConceptDawg fixed this. So, for example, here's a link to Lolita.

Something I've noticed: If you use a touchstone in a reply then post it, the touchstone box in the Add a Message section continues to show those touchstone details/links until you refresh the page.

I'm being dense. What?

Post a reply to a thread. Use a touchstone: Pride and Prejudice. Umberto Eco.

Then look at the "Touchstones" list in the "Add a message" section. If it's still doing it and hadn't mysteriously fixed itself, the "Touchstones" list will still show those touchstones you made until you refresh the page. It's a small thing, but weird.

(It's still doing it. I'm using FF4 on XP currently.)

Bump for #36. I use that highlight quite a bit.

>58 thorold:,61 I'm finding that touchstones don't take at all, unless I delete a character

Sorry - I was talking about new posts. As long as I only typed forwards, the square brackets were ignored, and nothing appeared in the touchstone list on the right. I don't get the problem on OSX with FF4 or Safari, so it was probably a Windows XP thing, or could even have been the network at work.

Bump for #36. I use that highlight quite a bit.

Will consider.

As long as I only typed forwards, the square brackets were ignored, and nothing appeared in the touchstone list on the right.

I'd like to see more reports before we try to duplicate, then fix.

>63 timspalding:
Testing. Persuasion.

Wow, the HTML-and-touchstone fix is confirmed, but something else weird happened. The wrong book came up instead Austen's, which wasn't even on the list of available books. But when I hit "cancel" everything was fine.

36, 66, 68

Yes, please consider. The touchstone highlight is very useful for finding where a book is mentioned in a long thread.

>69 AnnaClaire:

I think the problem was because of a massive wrong push we just reverted. Can you try again?

>42 timspalding: Yes, we can fix. It requires re-indexing the works (in place, so no downtime, but a few days of a script running.)

Okay, let's get on that?

Weirdness:

If I touchstone Stolthet och fördom, the Swedish title of Jane Austen's most famous book, I am not given the option of choosing any work except a DVD with one listed copy (a Swedish edition) and a Swedish book of fan fiction with no English-language edition listed. If I, on the other hand, touchstone Pride and Prejudice, I can choose from all works as long as they have at least one edition in English. The latter behaviour is expected, the former is not. Since LibraryThing knows that Stolthet och fördom is the Swedish title of Pride and Prejudice, I should be able to choose that work when I touchstone the Swedish title.

It's a bit silly with that being the example in the box to the right of the message box and all.

Found another old post with touchstone problems: about a third are missing from drneutron's thread here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/112002

Cannot comment on why as it's not my thread but thought I'd bring it up. If it has happened on his, it might still be on others?

Cannot comment on why as it's not my thread but thought I'd bring it up. If it has happened on his, it might still be on others?

No. They didn't work when he made it. It doesn't add touchstones to old posts unless you open them up. In this case opening it up reveals that all—I think—now work.

Since you said in 61 that you believe pretty much all the touchstone bugs are fixed, I'm going to hope I can get by without reading the rest of the thread. In any case, I wanted to report one showing up in this thread:

http://www.librarything.com/talktopic.php?topic=116922

I only touchstoned the author Mark Kurlansky and he came up with no problem. But then when I looked later, it said two authors were touchstoned: Kurlansky and also Maurice Gee. Gee somehow got sucked in because I originally touchstoned just the word "Salt", looking for the Kurlansky book. However, I clicked "others" and picked the right book before saving the message. Yet it still stuck Gee in there. I think something isn't getting cleared out.

in my 75 in 2001 Challenge thread (http://www.librarything.com/topic/106422):
some touchstones work
some touchstones do not work
and when I edited this post, all its touchstones disappeared

ETA: I'm using IE9 and Vista if that matters/is helpful...

Yes, I think we've identified an IE9 bug. We're looking into it.

I touchstoned Dorothy L. Sayers and Whose Body, which she wrote, came up. It looks good now, let me try to repeat what I'd written. Clouds of Witness by Dorothy L. Sayers. Looks like it's been fixed.

Really?! Are you on IE9?

Sorry to be such a dunce, I'm on IE something, don't know which.

haven't read the whole thread, so this may have been mentioned already, but i just noticed that Touchstone Authors aren't necessarily reflecting the actual touchstones, at least in this thread. Jill Barnett and Clea Simon shouldn't be listed. they popped up as the authors on the original touchstone choice for two books, but i choose the correct works from others. it's showing correctly in the post and in the actual touchstone, just not in Touchstone Authors.

#83 by @atlargeintheworld> Yup, I ran into that one, too. See #77.

>79 timspalding:: any thoughts on the IE9 situation? I miss my touchstones...

I'm mostly happy with the new touchstone setup, but as I'm reading Brothers by Bernice Rubens, I'd love for the touchstone to work. Currently it brings up an almighty list of closely related titles but the Rubens is missing from the list - it was there before the change. She won the Booker Prize and there are 60 copies on LT so why has it dropped from the touchstone list?
Are book touchstones weighted by the LT ownership over the literal title?

http://www.librarything.com/work/101844

Why can't I force touchstones anymore? That seems very wrong. The touchstones don't work for This Book is Overdue! and there isn't anything I can do about it.

And no, I don't use IE at all. I'm on Firefox.

ETA: Okay. This is really odd. I went back to my post to look at it again and it was highlighted as if it were a touchstone. However, what it is is a link to the thread I'm posting on?

http://www.librarything.com/topic/117108

I couldn't get two touchstones to work a couple of hours ago. Maybe it is raining in Portland.

Robert

More weirdness. Someone posted on a thread of mine about the same book and the "touchstone" points to my thread, not the work.

http://www.librarything.com/topic/116284#2730074

It's not just that one book. The touchstone in the following post is also pointing to the talk thread, not the book.

http://www.librarything.com/topic/110318#2729402

Brothers Rubens This one works if you put the author's surname in.
This Book Overdue Marilyn Johnson This one is weird - it works if you take the 'is' out! Tim, I bet this is another stop-word thing. Hmmm - This Book Overdue! - yep, that works too. It doesn't need the author name and it doesn't mind the !, it's just the 'is' it's choking on. Which is really really silly - how many titles have 'is' in them?!

Heh. I have three touchstones in the edit box and the touchstone preview on the side; two in the preview pane. Let's see how many I have when I actually post it.

Earlier today I tried to touchstone Gravitational Manipulation of Domed Craft: UFO Propulsion Dynamics to which the system responded, as it did when I tried it here, "no results." I thought it might be because I had the only copy or some such.

But when I tried to touchstone The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, instead of a touchstone as here, I got the same "no results" results, and search would not find the book. I had to go through the author to get the work page. Search worked just now however.

Robert

#91> But then the title reads as "Brothers Rubens" which doesn't really work for me - I do link to the author's name in these cases but this morning it seems like almost every book I want to write about has trouble with the touchstone.

A few days ago I had no trouble with the new touchstones for linking from the list for The Conductor by Sarah Quigley but just now I tried to touchstone the title and it doesn't appear as a choice on the list anymore.

Tim said (somewhere) that he was going to do something about the stopwords...it's possible that whatever he did had the opposite effect from what was wanted. It does seem to have suddenly gotten much worse.

87-90 I have noticed the same thing.

I took stopwords out over the weekend.

This book is overdue!

The Conductor

work as expected for me, now.

So, I decided to start marking the about fields for all the discussion we've had in the past almost 5 years, and nothing sticks. It looks like the author and title are loaded, even when I hit refresh, but when I go back three minutes later it says "This topic is not marked as primarily about any work, author or other topic." Is this because the threads are dormant?

>97 clamairy:, when I click on my book discussions view I am seeing dormant Green Dragon threads that haven't been posted to since 2006, and when I clicked on one the 'About' appeared to be filled out, so I think they must be sticking somehow. Or maybe it was fixed and no one has had a chance to post about it yet.

While I'm loving the idea of the About touchstones and the Your Books/Your Authors links on the sidebar, when I looked at Your Books, the list of threads did not include a single title that I have entered on this account, and IIRC, only one that is entered on my other account.

#98 - I did edit a touchstone into one of the dormant threads to see if that would help the about 'stick.' I spent half an hour working, and I'd say only 10% of my 'about' fields are still showing.

Okay, this is odd. I went to add About touchstones to a couple of old threads that are both group reads about the same book. Thread one and thread two.

I can add the Abouts to them both. But as soon as I add an About to the second thread, it vanishes from the first. And if I put it back on the first, it vanishes from the second. I can make them About different books, but not About the same book.

The two threads were originally created a few minutes apart. Is it supposed to work like this as some kind of anti-spam thing that I've overlooked the explanation for, or is there some weird and unintended switch effect going on?

ETA These are both dormant threads too.

It's happening on non-dormant threads, too.

Going from http://www.librarything.com/wiki/index.php/Groups:75booksin2011 to the two Sense & Sensibility Group Reads, neither of them are taking. Also, the Mansfield Park one I set last week isn't showing - it just has an empty box with "Add/change..."

Well, I'll stop fussing with it now, then. At least it's not just me.

#98 - I did edit a touchstone into one of the dormant threads to see if that would help the about 'stick.' I spent half an hour working, and I'd say only 10% of my 'about' fields are still showing.

I'm wondering if the problem here isn't simply that people are confused between touchstones and abouts. To be clear, there are no "about touchstones." About is a separate category. You add it from the thread with the "about" box. It is not added like a touchstone. The only connection is that the about box offers the topic's touchstones as potential abouts.

"fatness" issue

Has been solved, reverted or whatever. The top bar—topics, etc.—remains fat. The rest are pixel-for-pixel the same. (I know because I took screenshots and set them as the background image until they lined up.)

So, I decided to start marking the about fields for all the discussion we've had in the past almost 5 years, and nothing sticks. It looks like the author and title are loaded, even when I hit refresh, but when I go back three minutes later it says "This topic is not marked as primarily about any work, author or other topic." Is this because the threads are dormant?

Jeremy and I can't duplicate this. Unless there was some freaky three-minute server delay when I was gone--very unlikely, and I would have been paged--we're doing something differently.

It's not dormancy, though.

While I'm loving the idea of the About touchstones and the Your Books/Your Authors links on the sidebar, when I looked at Your Books, the list of threads did not include a single title that I have entered on this account, and IIRC, only one that is entered on my other account.

Okay, but the question is whether there are any "about"-ed that apply. I'm guessing no. I need a counter example or my conclusion is that you aren't matching because there are no matches.

Nope. I just set the Abouts for the 2 Sense & Sensibility threads - only one is showing up on my Book Discussions.

(Also, I can no longer modify which I'm looking at, for some reason. Clicking "Book Discussions" doesn't let me specify Author Only or Book Only.)

A: http://www.librarything.com/topic/104774
B: http://www.librarything.com/topic/104775

It seems like only the more recent About takes, somehow? I don't know.

I just added S&S to the first one. I don't really understand how it's not adding it. Are you using the about feature or just touchstones?

I'm having the same problem, now that I look at it. For example, in the following thread:
http://www.librarything.com/topic/57886
there are links to all of the book discussion threads we've done in Hogwarts Express. I had marked both the spoiler and the non-spoiler threads about The Book Thief as being, well, "about" The Book Thief . . . but now, only the second one shows up as that. And if I go back in and mark the first one as "about" The Book Thief, the second thread no longer shows up as "about" it. Is there something in the code that allows only one discussion thread per book?

ETA: And likewise, now that you have changed keristars' thread A to "about" S&S, the second thread no longer shows as being "about" anything.

#104 - Yes, I know the difference. Here is a perfect example of what I experienced. These are the two threads for a discussion of the book, Good Omens. One 'about' stuck and the other did not.

http://www.librarything.com/topic/93811
http://www.librarything.com/topic/93812

Edited to add: I tried adding a touchstone the the first one after the fact. It does make it easier/faster when you're adding the 'about' if there is a touchstone, because you don't have to type it in the search field.

106> Trust me, I'm using the About feature. The one that has "Add..." or "Add/change..." at the bottom of the box, above the regular touchstone section.

Also, look at the Mansfield Park one. http://www.librarything.com/topic/115689 - the About box says "Add/change..." but doesn't show that it's actually about anything.

I'm not sure if this is an 'about' bug or a search issue, but when searching for series the results seem to be very buggy. I can look at a book and see clearly what series it belongs to without it showing up. Words like 'the' seem to throw it off. 'The Last Survivors' series (The Dead and the Gone belongs to it) is a recent example.

ETA: A better example, the series search in 'about' won't turn up anything for 'Wheel of Time', but a search for 'wheel' shows results, including... 'Wheel of Time'. Similarly, I tried about 5 variations before 'bastard' turned up 'The Gentleman Bastard Sequence'.

Okay, those saying it didn't stick, is it sticking at first. When you close the box it should show up in the about box. Is it doing that?

Yes, it is.

Hitting refresh also shows it sticking.

(And my Mansfield Park one is working now, I think. It may have been an earlier bug with the deleted About that has since been fixed.)

>112 keristars:

WOW. I've managed to get it to happen to. WTF?

Looking at it.

:tim bows down to keristars

I fixed it. It wasn't in code at all. It was a totally bogus constraint in the database--that forbid two occurrences of the same about. OUCH!

Well, it's fixed. Sorry guys. And thanks Keristars.

Oh, wow. You know, I was wondering if it wasn't something like that. I'm glad we could track it down to fix. :)

Now that they seem to be working properly, I'm really digging these Abouts. http://www.librarything.com/topic/107010 was kind of neat to do, because it's an Author + Series about, but not really a Work about. (Dune)

#104 by @timspalding> "fatness" issue

Has been solved, reverted or whatever.

Much appreciated, Tim.

I will buy yet another lifetime membership if you will solve my "fatness" issue.

Also my "greyness' issue.

I just want to lose the pimples before I lose all my hair...

I don't even want to discuss the fact that I sometimes get pimples under my entirely grey beard. TANJ!

I've noticed several cases where a book discussion has the About for that work set but also the About for the author. Shouldn't the author touchstone only be used when the author is being discussed and not just a work by that author?

ETA: Like this one, http://www.librarything.com/topic/12907

>122 jjwilson61:
Might be a good issue to discuss on this thread : http://www.librarything.com/topic/117330

PLEASE add back the Next and Previous. I can't get to another page of Talk.

Morphie, where are you missing "Next | Previous"? Is it on the "Talk" tab? I see it there, top and bottom.

Yes, I'll do a screen print and post it on the correct thread. Sorry about that.

No problem, m'dear! Tim has picked some very logical, but easily confused titles for this new explosion of newness!

#120 - "I just want to lose the pimples before I lose all my hair..."

Nice article in the WSJ yesterday about the relatively new (and very large) market for creams that treat acne & wrinkles simultaneously. Isn't aging fun?

#115 - "I fixed it. It wasn't in code at all. It was a totally bogus constraint in the database--that forbid two occurrences of the same about. OUCH!"

That explains the weird sticking pattern!!!

#129 by @Aerrin99> If I pull up the 'touchstones' tab while trying to add an about to a book that has no touchstones, I see:

Warning: uasort(): The argument should be an array in /var/www/html/inc_touchstones.php on line 264 Warning: Invalid argument supplied for foreach() in /var/www/html/inc_touchstones.php on line 32

No touchstones

FF4/Win7

For now anyway you can see it at work here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/117314#

>104 timspalding:
Okay, but the question is whether there are any "about"-ed that apply. I'm guessing no. I need a counter example or my conclusion is that you aren't matching because there are no matches.

In at least one case, the "abouted" book was not referenced anywhere in the thread, though a phrase in its title was (but not referring to the book, and not bracketed). Which leads me to inquire whether there is a log where one could see who set the "aboutness." I suspect someone is being snarky. This "about" marker has now disappeared from the retrieval, so someone probably cleaned it up. It was referencing "Don't Have a Cow," a book I have never heard of.

I have been reading this thread, and I don't _remember_ seeing this mentioned...but I may just have skimmed over it.

I was trying to touchstone some of the various Steve Martins (for a thread in Welcome to LibraryThing!). I entered Steve Martin and got Steve Martin (others) on the right; clicked the Others to see if I could find Steve Martin the comedian and distinguish him from Steve Martin the historian, etc. I clicked on the first Steve Martin in the list and came back to see, on the right, Roy Ellen (others). Huh? So I tried the third one on the Others list (the second one has a middle initial) - and got Michael Grzimek (others) ???? The rest of the Others list that I tried (4-5 more) mostly produced Michael, a few Roy. No Steve Martins. Michael goes to a blank page (no books cataloged); Roy Ellen has several books, and no connection to Steve Martin that I can see. The initial Steve Martin (without selecting from the Others list) takes me to the disambiguation page for Steve Martin.

And when you type that name this many times, it starts looking seriously weird...

ETA - Oh, one thing that was mentioned before - before, when you clicked on a touchstone link in the edit sidebar, it opened in a new tab and you could _check_ what you were getting. Now it opens in the same window, and hitting the back arrow frequently wipes out your post-in-process. I'd be much happier if it could open elsewhere, please.

Touchstones suddenly don't work for me: Tarka the Otter for example.

Did you change browsers?

>134 timspalding: no, Tim. And I just tried on Safari, doesn't work either.

Tarka the Otter doesn't work for me either, actually. FF 4.0.1 on Mac OS 10.6.7. But other touchstones do work, like Have Spacesuit, will travel.

Hey! When I entered the second touchstone, the first one was triggered as well. Is it the same for you, overthemoon? Try the same two and see what happens when you enter the second.

Tarka the Otter Have Spacesuit, will travel
nope ;-(

1st edit: hey, when I entered it, Tarka came up as touchstone but not the other one! Curiouser and curiouser.
2nd edit: And now they are both there!

Hmm. Ender's game . Nothing. Ahh, it took a full ten seconds, and then suddenly the touchstone appeared. Is it simply a matter of a time lag?

For me, the touchstone thingy only starts working when I hit backspace. Weird but, I'm by now quite convinced, true.

Now they are working again for me. ;-)

I( got a really weird message a few minutes ago when I added a touchstone to a list of them. It ended with 'OK we made that up.'

But when I posted, and then reopened the message it worked fine.

Using Safari for iOS, the touchstones lightbox appears all the way at the top of the page rather than right on top of the post you're looking at.

all the sudden all the threads i was ignoring are showing up and there is NOTHING listed under "Ignored Topics". confused me a ton when i signed on.

FF 4.0.1

I only have 2 ignored threads showing up, but they keep coming back no matter how often I X 'em.

#144 by @MerryMary>

same. i just tried to X a bunch and they popped back up instantly

SqueakyChu has made a bug report:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/119077

I closed my bug report because Tim said that the correction he made to the system is now bringing up older "unread" messages that never posted to the top before. You'll need to "red x" these threads now to get rid of them if you sort by "unread/messages". For a while, it seemed as if I was the only person who did that! :)

However, if they pop up *after* you red x them, then clearly something is wrong, and you'll need to reopen this bug report. Please be sure that the messages that pop up after you red x them are the same messages that you've just deleted, though.

What I don't understand still is that Brothers by Bernice Rubens does not come up as an option at all when I touchstone it, and yet all these other mildly related variations do, yet just now I touchstoned Huckleberry Finn, which brings up a book of that title by June Edwards with 7 copies on LT and doesn't go for the default of Twain's book.

Perhaps because the actual Twain book is The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn?

If you just say "Huckleberry Finn", you have to choose "others" to get the Twain book.

k4k

<pedant>
it's actually Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, no "the".
</pedant>

However, this example is for an exact-match. There are other similar ones where the winner isn't an exact-match title, which is annoying. I'd have to work to remember which ones they are, because I came across them in passing.

I just want to be able to force the touchstone again and not have to do the whole work-selection thing if I don't want to.

#149/150: Yes, I realise that HF isn't the correct title, but how many people type in the correct title when wanting to talk about HF and don't have the book in front of them. I just felt that if the 'exact match' touchstone for 'Brothers' completely ignores the Bernice Rubens book then why does it give the June Edwards one as first pick on HF, Tom Sawyer is the same too.

I just think that the exact match weighting is wrong if it picks out these books instead of the Mark Twain ones. Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll is another example - the original title only appears sixth in the list, coming in below Walt Disney even.

But Brothers does come up with an exact match - one by William Goldman, with twice as many copies as the Bernice Rubens book. Goldman is first, Rubens is third.

Oh, I just found another reason why we need to be able to force the touchstones: to be able to link to two with the same name in the same post without having to do weird title things.

150keristars
My 1918 version by Harper and Brothers has the title "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn"

#152: Yes, it did come up in the list for me yesterday and once before as well, so the touchstone software must notice it on occasion, but it didn't show up when I tried to touchstone Brothers in this particular post and all the other times that I have posted about the book (I'm reading all Rubens works this year so mention the book quite often in posts).

A bit late in the discussion, and I don’t know if I post in the right thread…
I love the new touchstone system, especially the fact that it recognises accents and punctuations.
However, two questions about features that I am missing…:
- Is there still a way to “force” the touchstones (as we were doing with the number::? I am trying to include a touchstone with the English title, Knife, while the work is known in the database under its US title, Spell Hunter.
- Is there a way to make sure that touchstones do not all reinitialise when you reopen the post, or when you work on another touchstone in the post?

Is there still a way to “force” the touchstones

No.

Is there a way to make sure that touchstones do not all reinitialise when you reopen the post, or when you work on another touchstone in the post?

Isn't that how it works? I thought that was one of the major changes in under the new system.