Report cover problems here #1

We're transitioning from one cover system to another. It's caused some problems. We are quite confident no data will be lost. Nothing's touching the original files, but we're having troubles with the engine that makes versions (your cover, but at the size necessary for this situation or that) on demand. For example, last night we had file write-permissions issues that prevented the versions from getting written to disk.

Anyway, changes have made previous bug-reports useless. If you're having problems, please put them here. If possible, be short, specific and just give an example or two.

For those I see a blank square on the home page and nothing on the works page but I see the right covers (scanned by me) among the "popular covers" :
http://www.librarything.fr/work/book/85783059
http://www.librarything.fr/work/book/85783285
http://www.librarything.fr/work/book/85783721
http://www.librarything.fr/work/book/85784280
Other covers (scanned by me too) are visible on the home and the work pages. I didn't try other books in my LT account.

Okay. I see the problem with yours. It's going to take some work to fix. But, again, your data is safe.

Others can post, but I'm not sure I'll look at it. Fixing Cathcartes is likely to fix some others.

Covers blank on home page. Clicked on one of the blank covers, eventually opened page. eg. http://www.librarything.com/work/book/85754386 cover I uploaded not showing, nor is the square for the cover.
The book I most recently added shows on the home page. Nothing else previously does (in the recently added view of covers). Haven't investigated further at this time.

>2 Louve_de_mer:

Cathcartes is fixed.

>4 bookel:

Can you check again, post-Cathcartes fix? I'm seeing home works and also that book.

on my recently added list the mercy of Allah no longer has an image showing a blank square. clicking on it takes me to my work page with a small white square which apparently is http://www.librarything.com/work/627495/covers/85621326

previously it showed, one of the nondescript green blank binding offered by LT, close enough to the nondescript green cloth binding my old edition possesses that i did not bother to scan mine.

Refreshed home page, all covers in recently added showing. Cover on book detail page of example also shows. :)

On a work which has some editions with ISBNs that don't have covers, the WorldCat lightbox shows editions you can't click on. An example: Go to http://www.librarything.com/work/7515861, click on the WorldCat link in the Quick Links box. The third edition, "ISBN 0787105015", has nothing you can click on. There used to be something there, a little cover image placeholder or something. Suggestion: either add a placeholder image, or make the text clickable in such cases.

Not a real problem for me, but I see covers I've recently uploaded for some of my singletons twice. Example: http://www.librarything.com/work/12568985/covers/85601553

Possibly it happens elsewhere too, but obviously that's harder to check.

No cover (only blank space) displays for the following three books:

85702214
85662054
85662042

These are all books that had been recently assigned one of LibraryThing's "blank" covers (the purple one). A fourth book had this problem as well, but was easily corrected by reselecting the blank cover. I'll leave these three for you to investigate...

I should add that, as far as I can tell, my uploaded covers (7000+) all seem to display properly...

Looking at the first page of http://www.librarything.com/catalog/SimonW11
my copy of the High king by Lloyd Alexander has the wrong cover but is at least a cover of an edition of that book.
Piers aAnthony has not fared so well with
Orn having Living under the Tudors and stuarts as its cover image,
Macroscope has Buttsleven Op Barnlsey House. "
On a Pale Horse having some long academic title in Finnish .
Triple Detante is illustrated with a copy of The Pray of the Frog.
and there are numerous other examples amongst them
" stealers sky" has "The anglican church in new zealand" as its cover
While brothers of the dragon has the bell jar as its cover., one entry is missing any cover at all. there are others subsequent pages are similar with inapropitate or missing cover being frequent.

Ah, for some of my books where I chose the default cover it doesn't show.

Example : http://www.librarything.com/work/3262428/book/29199963

I note too that site searches are still being illustrated with inappropriate covers willard and his bowling trophies still show "six impossible things before breakfast" for example. Far to many books have inappropriate cover images that are used as the default or most popular image for it to be dissmissed as inputing errors.

Most of the covers are back, but something weird is going on. While leafing through "Your books" I two times noticed the system suddenly assigning a random cover to a book while I was watching. Also found some books where the cover had apparantly been changed at random at some earlier time.

Here's one example http://www.librarything.com/work/18723/book/38331631

There's actually quite a lot of the randomly assigned covers. Some are quite amusing, but...

Examples;

http://no.librarything.com/work/90658/book/39197409
http://no.librarything.com/work/8000/book/39289839
http://no.librarything.com/work/19185/book/39257723

Since all books affected (so far) are in English, I first suspected that Amazon may somehow be to blame. But on closer inspection, the random cover can always be found in the member-uploaded section.

Most of my covers look fine, but I've just noticed that http://www.librarything.com/work/649661/details/73156452 has the wrong cover image. It's not an Amazon cover, so it's either one I've uploaded (though I don't have the original file, so it's probably not) or a member-uploaded cover I chose manually.

>5 timspalding: : Thanks.

Last night, on the first page of "Your Books" only one cover was displaying. This morning, they were all back.

Now, I have my main library display in a reverse sort base on the tags, which are limited to "Finished YYYY-MM-DD" and "Filed c##-s#-b##", reflecting the chronological arrangement of my physical collection. I've been scanning the covers of my books for the past few years, so all the "up front" material represents my scanned images, and these all seem to be back in place at this point. However, I took a look at the "back end" of the display and noticed that several books had either lost their images (defaulting the the plain book graphic), or were showing up with something completely different as the image ... here are a few of those:

http://www.librarything.com/work/8976494/book/1132407
http://www.librarything.com/work/28172/book/1133342
http://www.librarything.com/work/16710/book/1133392
http://www.librarything.com/work/131861/book/1134035
http://www.librarything.com/work/1373341/book/1134068
http://www.librarything.com/work/3359/book/1140787
http://www.librarything.com/work/23107/book/1140835
http://www.librarything.com/work/3423/book/1141110
http://www.librarything.com/work/5881536/book/1142134
http://www.librarything.com/work/58116/book/1507006
http://www.librarything.com/work/160/book/1530356
http://www.librarything.com/work/16971/book/1530551

And while it's amusing to contemplate "Vampirella" being a stand-in for "Aspects of Islamic Civilization" ... it does indicate that something is severely out of whack in what's being served up cover-wise!

Oh, and one thing I did notice ... in a number of these cases the cover for the book was being supplanted by a music or movie image ... while I don't want to seem like a "hater", that's another good reason for "that other stuff" being cataloged elsewhere!

 

Last night there were a few covers missing from my homepage Recently Added, and when I looked at the Book pages, they were gone there too. But I was able to reselect them from the covers for each work. In at least one case (but definitely not all), the cover was one I had uploaded myself.

This morning I see no problems so far.

mercy of Allah

Fixed.

On a work which has some editions with ISBNs that don't have covers, the WorldCat lightbox shows editions you can't click on.

Bugged separately, because it's actually quite another thing.
http://www.librarything.com/topic/137367

Not a real problem for me, but I see covers I've recently uploaded for some of my singletons twice

Yes. That's to-be-expected at this point. But I'll watch it.
http://www.librarything.com/work/12568985/covers/85601553

No cover (only blank space) displays for the following three books:

Fixed.

On #14 now.

Browsing through in cover view I see lots of odd gaps . . . but when I switch to list view (with a cover column) for the same group of books the tinier images seem to be there . . . assuming this is just part of the growing pains and will check again later. Assuming you just want just info on books were covers have disappeared entirely??

On a related note, did you also change something about how the cover stats are calculated?? I "fixed" a couple of Amazon covers (changed to default) and now have "Blank covers (2)" . . . even though previously I've changed many Amazon covers to my default cover . . . for some reason those others were tallied in a different category?? Nothing that needs fixing . . . just wondering.

Happy fixing . . . this has got to be a bit of a nightmare :)

I found two incorrectly assigned covers in my library:

http://www.librarything.com/work/4248/book/46196915 (Fahrenheit 451)

and

http://www.librarything.com/work/2280068/book/19393879 (American Gods)

The covers sections for both of these include several incorrect covers.

There are also a few books where the small version of the cover isn't showing up on my 'Your books' page, and a few that have covers for the right books, but not the ones I selected, but I assume those are just caching issues or automatic substitutions I hadn't previously noticed.

13. SimonW11

All confirmed fixed.

The High King cover is a right cover for that ISBN. It seems there are other covers for that ISBN, but that's the dirty little secret of ISBNs. They do not need to change when the cover changes, but only when the interior matter does.

Ah, for some of my books where I chose the default cover it doesn't show.

Fixed.

willard and his bowling trophies

Fixed on page, but not on search.

16

Example confirmed fixed.

17

Three confirmed fixes.

18

Fixed.

20

All fixed, except

http://www.librarything.com/work/1373341/book/1134068
http://www.librarything.com/work/16971/book/1530551

I'll be working on them.

24

You're right. These are not right:

http://www.librarything.com/work/4248/book/46196915
http://www.librarything.com/work/2280068/book/19393879

Tale of the Red Pipe
http://www.librarything.com/work/1373341/book/1134068

Blech. No. This isn't out fault. The ISBN (0525473629) was used (or misprinted) for both Dad, Aren't You Glad? and The Tale of the Reed Pipe: Teachings of the Sufis. Sorry.

Aristotle, (Poetics)
http://www.librarything.com/work/16971/book/1530551

Are you sure http://pics.librarything.com/picsizes/98/ba/98bacd40289f8d559767a744341434d414f4... isnt' the right image?

#25
Thanks for fixing the examples, but there are many more. Do you wish us to list all the URLs? No automated fix possible?

Re. #26: "Are you sure http://pics.librarything.com/picsizes/98/ba/98bacd40289f8d559767a744341434d414f4.... isnt' the right image?"

Well, it's NOT the cover on my book ... I suppose I should just pop it in the scanner and have MY image up there ... I've just "let well enough alone" with my earlier books ... I started scanning in my covers after I logged in the bulk of my library back in Nov/Dec'05 and Jan'06, and so those first 1400 books are pretty much at the mercy of what got associated with the ISBN when I added them. Since then (I think I've scanned in something like 650 covers) they've been my scans, and I don't think I've noticed any wrong/missing covers there.

Do you WANT us to go through EVERYTHING to check for clearly "WRONG" covers? I thought I was being over-enthusiastic posting a dozen ... I suppose I could page through and see what looked unfamiliar ...

 

I think the reason to "leave well enough alone" is because Tim needs to fix the problems in an automated way that will hopefully fix it for you as well as others. Otherwise, the tons of people who never find their way to this thread might just be left with messed up data.

A lot of the problems in my catalog have now disappeared but oddities remain. However, I have to go through so many pages to find them that I am waiting to see if additional fixes occur before making a list. (Every time I look it takes more time to find any remaining problems.)

Hm. Spotted yet another variant: Places where I've NOT uploaded any cover (used the "default" cover), where the system has now added covers from "nearly identical" books (different language, different edition, not necessariliy identical contents, could not possibly be same ISBN).

Just reporting the observation, don't think anything can be done with these except manual cleaning.

Here's some more:

http://www.librarything.com/work/7593222/book/1277180
http://www.librarything.com/work/9138151/book/1277178
http://www.librarything.com/work/160159/book/982883
http://www.librarything.com/work/28142/book/1542801

... actually it didn't take that long to go through the last 50 pages or so since page after page was just the default blank cover ... but aside from these, what was in there was at least for the same book, if not my specific copy.

 

#22 (timspalding): mercy of Allah

Fixed.

Now I just have to figure out how to quote this out of context for the maximal effect...

You monkeyed around with the mercy of Allah and came out on top?

Strange, recently added some DVD's (with my scanned cover images) In most cases I was the only owner (haven't checked for combinations.
Suddnly http://www.librarything.com/work/12590659/85809316

acquired another image of a totally unrelated work.
Was going to just fix it, but remembered Tim was doing a major re-work on covers, so I'm mentioning it here.

I think we need a way to never covers so another option will be displayed in a general search.

Starting to find some oddities:
http://www.librarything.com/work/4053/25920060 is Margaret Atwood's Alias Grace, but the image showing is "Asimov's Fiction" . . . and none of the possible member covers shows as "High Quality" . . . (or has that distinction been eliminated?) or I would fix it . . .

http://www.librarything.com/work/8282075/25921208 is "Jane Eyre, an authoritative text, backgrounds, criticism", but the image showing is for "The Best of Harry Harrison"

http://www.librarything.com/work/63847/35711505 is A Degree of Mastery: A Journey through Book Arts Apprenticeship but the cover showing is for "Moravagine"

http://www.librarything.com/work/book/35658220 is Walking on Water by Madeleine L'Engle but the image showing is a blurry "Dark Star"

http://www.librarything.com/work/book/36000529 is The Frugal Gourmet on our Immigrant ancestors but the image showing is for a movie called "Kill Bulio"

And now every time I go back and look something else is wrong . . .

Northanger Abbey just turned into The Protestant Revolution
Emma by Jane Austen is Full Metal Jacket (a movie)
Bodily Harm by Margaret Atwood is The Scarlet Pimpernel

This is just what a found in a few minutes . . . and I only glanced through 2% of my books looking for images of books I KNOW I don't have . . . there's got to be a better way to do this . . .

So far, I'm not "fixing" anything . . . will you let us know when/if we should start doing that ourselves??

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/SimonW11 cover view second page cover of http://www.librarything.com/work/8478955/book/62100735 the naming of the beasts not being displayed.

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/SimonW11 cover view page 9 cover of The Man in the Moss not displayed,

also went through a number of misloads where i found myself looking at windows like this

One more round:

http://www.librarything.com/work/296584/35883048 is The Handbook of Nonsexist Writing but the image is "The Sisters Grimm" and appears to be an audio recording.

http://www.librarything.com/work/book/36000562 is the Frugal Gourmet Cooks Italian but shows A Shepherd's Watch

http://www.librarything.com/work/book/36191460 is Hornet's Nest and is showing Creative Hairstyling

http://www.librarything.com/work/book/41141807 is Twelve Steps to Inner Freedom: Humility Revisited but is showing as Malcolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point

http://www.librarything.com/work/book/41336654 is In the time of butterflies but is showing Mintun Esikoulu

http://www.librarything.com/work/book/46781617 is Girl Interrupted but is showing Dolores Claiborne by Stephen King

http://www.librarything.com/work/book/46781925 is The Loony Bin Trip but is showing The Full Blessing of Pentecost

http://www.librarything.com/work/book/51332060 is Voluntary Simplicity but is showing a DVD cover of some warrior guy (300?)

Okay, that one is just too absurd to continue. Time to call it a night.

Here's some more of mine.
Sorted by Title, AR-F.

http://www.librarything.com/work/509426/book/35303362
http://www.librarything.com/work/730946/book/39790041
http://no.librarything.com/work/169693/book/35304723
http://no.librarything.com/work/3691/book/39016098
http://no.librarything.com/work/132542/book/37688537
http://no.librarything.com/work/55302/book/37637523
http://no.librarything.com/work/200952/book/36975220
http://no.librarything.com/work/43704/book/39256770
http://no.librarything.com/work/182453/book/35497043
http://no.librarything.com/work/12055/book/37638471
http://no.librarything.com/work/622189/book/37688369
http://no.librarything.com/work/86982/book/35954374
http://no.librarything.com/work/65672/book/36543576
http://no.librarything.com/work/474136/book/36473799
http://no.librarything.com/work/24193/book/38348550
http://no.librarything.com/work/178538/book/37364086
http://no.librarything.com/work/906201/book/35954319
http://no.librarything.com/work/2205047/book/75598820
http://no.librarything.com/work/198510/book/35509698
http://no.librarything.com/work/18691/book/35439072
http://no.librarything.com/work/187322/book/35555642
http://no.librarything.com/work/53869/book/40496342
http://no.librarything.com/work/7899/book/35866832
http://no.librarything.com/work/15009/book/36795187
http://no.librarything.com/work/48628/book/37687992
http://no.librarything.com/work/2108/book/35250860
http://no.librarything.com/work/19069/book/38054728
http://no.librarything.com/work/1328808/book/36975346
http://no.librarything.com/work/1592839/book/39600944
http://no.librarything.com/work/928682/book/35828871
http://no.librarything.com/work/18712/book/38331616

Yeah, I have quite a list too. Is it useful to post it in full?

#41 Don't know. All those that have been posted are apparantly being corrected one by one. Me and some others asked above if we really should post all errors. Got no answer, so I suppose - yes.

Okay. Here are mine.

Stray covers:

http://www.librarything.com/work/270772/book/35021053
http://www.librarything.com/work/246630/book/28029073
http://www.librarything.com/work/6822/book/25126217
http://www.librarything.com/work/58049/book/25132571
http://www.librarything.com/work/229955/book/24678393
http://www.librarything.com/work/1409389/book/27911059
http://www.librarything.com/work/8288/book/25632972
http://www.librarything.com/work/6431/book/25177349
http://www.librarything.com/work/544608/book/69264452
http://www.librarything.com/work/10880/book/69136672
http://www.librarything.com/work/273413/book/24864980
http://www.librarything.com/work/4767623/book/25999939
http://www.librarything.com/work/3053532/book/26868481
http://www.librarything.com/work/1517/book/26856599
http://www.librarything.com/work/81317/book/24960846
http://www.librarything.com/work/5120/book/28181961
http://www.librarything.com/work/446450/book/27826252
http://www.librarything.com/work/28285/book/25954858
http://www.librarything.com/work/4041453/book/26000775
http://www.librarything.com/work/2917364/book/26469761
http://www.librarything.com/work/85163/book/26601262
http://www.librarything.com/work/412562/book/25099165
http://www.librarything.com/work/25644/book/24855428
http://www.librarything.com/work/1020/book/25176580
http://www.librarything.com/work/27054/book/28287713
http://www.librarything.com/work/311053/book/51144183
http://www.librarything.com/work/5833/book/26000540
http://www.librarything.com/work/316767/book/24661615
http://www.librarything.com/work/235581/book/24778256
http://www.librarything.com/work/787041/book/35064216
http://www.librarything.com/work/1524/book/26000984
http://www.librarything.com/work/89832/book/25305873
http://www.librarything.com/work/992717/book/24737074
http://www.librarything.com/work/433835/book/25137770
http://www.librarything.com/work/85950/book/25819627
http://www.librarything.com/work/499512/book/40659285
http://www.librarything.com/work/452898/book/25272588
http://www.librarything.com/work/251691/book/26404795
http://www.librarything.com/work/251739/book/26404967
http://www.librarything.com/work/23514/book/24863191
http://www.librarything.com/work/121170/book/41800885
http://www.librarything.com/work/24369/book/24851574
http://www.librarything.com/work/2648357/book/24678829
http://www.librarything.com/work/669344/book/25085385
http://www.librarything.com/work/311106/book/24861611
http://www.librarything.com/work/65708/book/26815723
http://www.librarything.com/work/363197/book/25096372
http://www.librarything.com/work/8415549/book/69188902
http://www.librarything.com/work/2107194/book/25404607
http://www.librarything.com/work/7792054/book/24766264
http://www.librarything.com/work/250475/book/25303284
http://www.librarything.com/work/5036384/book/27833864

Semi-correct cover, just not the one I chose:

http://www.librarything.com/work/411628/book/24783085
http://www.librarything.com/work/9862/book/24967555

In a quick look at some of my Cover View pages most images seem right but there are oddities. Animal Farm - http://www.librarything.com/work/1477/summary/14635994 - had a cover from a book on Bible texts. Looking at the full range of options , most are of Animal Farm but there is a range of other apparently random works. I found the right image and changed it back.

Question - Is changing my own cover to what I want OK - and sufficient?

More stray covers:
(By title: G)

http://no.librarything.com/work/127173/book/37636408
http://no.librarything.com/work/37058/book/37104411
http://no.librarything.com/work/147553/book/36599369
http://no.librarything.com/work/18722/book/38130752
http://no.librarything.com/work/18723/book/38331631
http://no.librarything.com/work/178815/book/37112917
http://no.librarything.com/work/108637/book/38914931
http://no.librarything.com/work/18727/book/35399596
http://no.librarything.com/work/386928/book/35497096
http://no.librarything.com/work/18734/book/39257685

>25 timspalding:

Gah. Those of my books that were "confirmed fixed" yesterday, are now back to random covers again.

Presumably no use posting any more errors at this time?

I hadn't noticed any problems previously but I am seeing some this morning. Almost all of the covers I was using were personally-selected user uploads (not Amazon, not the default user cover) but I cannot verify whether the particular covers that were affected were.

My cover for 1984 is showing as "Understanding Menopause", both in catalog (title view with cover column) and on the book page:

http://www.librarything.com/work/1472/book/273915
http://pics.librarything.com/picsizes/db/ff/dbff98e6611ca07597673744241434d414f4...

And 2001 is showing as "Het loopt in de papieren":

http://www.librarything.com/work/2817510/book/137511
http://pics.librarything.com/picsizes/16/d1/16d1b40d585fbb4596b5a704467434d414f4...

Even if those are "valid" due to ISBN re-use it does not explain why they have overridden my previously-selected covers.

I'm not going to change these, so that you can poke at them.

Presumably there are more examples but these should be adequate.

Okay, people. Don't report anything more. We're going to be selectively reverting the data to where it was a few days ago.

So, basically, I've got a snapshot of where it is now. I'm rolling covers ids back to where they were a few days ago. Then we're going to analyze the ones that have changed. If there is any doubt, you'll get a tool to decide which cover to pick.

This seems like something that should get a large announcement on the main LT page. It's kind of a big deal.

(Like maybe in the type of area where you put system shutdown notifications.)

Thanks, Tim. I agree with brightcopy - once you've got the picking tool up, it deserves a system announcement. (Your revert has fixed my two examples cited above, BTW.)

Yeah. I'll make an announcement about it.

Questions are the stray covers still available for their original book?
do you have a record of who uploaded what cover? I am not keen on trying to remember what cover all my books had. anything that can ease this will help?

Yes. As I revert, I'm recording the pre-revert values. Then I'm going to analyze those, and identify cases where the change was a real change, and not changing from one ID system to another. So, we're leaping back so we can go forward carefully.

Crossposted my explanation to #53 with Tim's

I guess the reversion hasn't reached me yet, because my covers are pretty bad -- at least 10% are for the wrong book. For some reason, science fiction is especially hard-hit, with almost all Dick and Heinlein covers changed out for something entirely unrelated.

''I guess the reversion hasn't reached me yet, because my covers are pretty bad -- at least 10% are for the wrong book.''
same here, unfortunately
some are hilarious, though
http://www.librarything.com/work/822332/book/27932944
http://www.librarything.com/work/133418/book/28778951
lots and lots more :-((

So, is it safe to add NEW books/covers?? or should we wait?

The process is not done. It's at about book 20m out of 85.

If you add covers, they'll go away for a while, but come back later.

Thanks! I'll either wait, or add the books now and adjust the covers once you give the "all clear".

> 59: Patience isn't the main problem, but please respond: should we fix our covers ourselves, or should we wait until you fixed things.

>61 Nicole_VanK:

Don't try to fix anything. You can add new things if you like.

ha! For Bridget Jones's Diary there's a cover of some book about Osama bin Laden.

Sorry it's the sequel, but equally funny - http://www.librarything.com/work/book/4839085

ha the edge of reason.

I know...I just might leave it!

Update: We did this massive restore, but human error—for the first time in a while not my human error—had us restoring from the wrong date. Basically, we restored from the middle of the problem, not before it. Brian is now preparing the right data, and we will be restoring from that tomorrow.

My apologies for these problems. It's a stupid failure—my stupid failure. But we have the data, and you can be sure we're working night and day on this.

Ah don't worry, we're only human and we all make mistakes! I guessed from a quick look earlier that it hadn't been solved from the number of blank spots and amazon pictures showing in the "no cover" count where there were actually covers on the work page. Do you know what is causing all this? I also noticed that when adding books to the catalog it doesn't show the picture associated with the book you're adding, until you go to the work page itself (whereas before I am sure it was showing the cover image connected to the book edition, which was always helpful).

Ah Tim, "This too shall pass".

So, with this new restore, will the blank spots in cover view go away? It's so much worse now.

Perhaps we should just chnage this to a thread on "best mismatch of cover and book". The one I saw this morning in my library was the cover of Kurt Vonnegut's "God bless you Mr. Rosewater" on a book about the markings and colours of RAF biplane bombers in the inter-war period....

Just making sure--things will go back to normal of themselves, yes? No need to report each and every case? I already re-chose some missing covers before I noticed this thread.

Tim seems confident (and asked us not to try to fix things ourselves).

OK!

I'm glad I looked around a bit before posting- same problems as everyone else on the list - I do agree some of the substitutions are, shall we say, interesting... hopefully all will be well again soon.

Shadow of the Wind and Smoothies http://www.librarything.com/work/book/62894958
Cold Vengeance now with Visuals http://www.librarything.com/work/book/76592342
Long Time Coming. I'll say, from Medieval times. http://www.librarything.com/work/book/59294671
Bet you didn't know The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo drove a Volvo http://www.librarything.com/work/book/52972740
The Doomsday Book apparently means putting your thumb over the lens now - http://www.librarything.com/work/book/49209259
The Forgery of Venus apparently perpetrated by Edgar Allan Poe - http://www.librarything.com/work/book/27529797
The French Lieutenant's Woman did not yell shotgun fast enough - http://www.librarything.com/work/book/25444858
Don't go overboard with fitness or you might become The Skeleton in the Clock - http://www.librarything.com/work/book/8608023
Edward Gorey goes for realism http://www.librarything.com/work/book/4844760

Thanks to Tim and everyone at LT for their work on this. There are some LT issues I get worked up about; this is NOT one of them because I know it will be fixed in short order.

Yes, there's no need to report instances.

What's happening now is that Brian just finished un-compressing the database for the restore. When that's done, I'm going to replace the values, but keeping what was there before for analysis and reinsertion of changes since.

Ah, so that's why my most recent addition has suddenly lost its cover! Was grumbly about that when I noted its absence this morning.

 

Lots of covers lost, lots of covers wrong, lots of covers not my choice, empty spaces in my collection, mess ups on the screen , it is really to much to show examples.
I hope you will get it fixed. Wish you succes!!

Quite aside from it being too much to list, it appears it changes from day to day.

>80 Nicole_VanK: That's what I'm seeing too. One day it's one group of books, the next it's another. Some covers are missing, some have very strange replacements. I'm trying to be patient (not my strong point) to see what can be done.

>79 peternoot:. Hear, hear. I haven't dared look at my covers up until now... It seems that Battlestar Galactica has a new sequence called "A Pocket Full of Rye" (Christie's book, a slightly wrong cover, and poor quality picture at that!) and one of my daughter's funny adventure novels now has "Modern Tragedy" attached to it :D

Actually, this is rather funny :) (well, at least it is funny at the moment 'cause I believe Tim & al. will get this fixed soon)

(sigh) ... typically, this all would be no issue for me, however I'm right in the middle of a project that I was going to be pulling displays from my listing (with covers) ... and it's not going to look right with all those blanks!

Guess I'm going to have to re-triage my day, since that was going to be my next couple of hours. Bleh.

 

It's looking pretty good at the moment. A quick scan of a quarter of my 4000-odd books shows one blank and four misplaced on the Covers page, otherwise seems OK. The most recent addition has lost its cover on home page.

It's still processing, unfortunately.

No rush ;-)

I'm not sure if this is related, but if I look at some of my cook books in shelf view:

http://www.librarything.com/tag/Brugsen+kogebog

Some of the books seem to have missing covers, but when I click on them there's a cover image shown.
I.e. lower left book: "Hakket kød fra Brugsen" is shown as a green anonymous cover but actually I've uploaded a picture similar to the rest of the series.

I've tried "recalculate cover" on http://www.librarything.com/work/4371019 but that didn't seem to change anything.

Is this the same bug, another bug or not a bug?

My pages seem back to normal except that I am still missing 5 covers.

The 17 covers that did not match the books now seem fixed.

>88 bnielsen:

Still processing. Then we'll look at your issue.

Earlier today I did a quick check and marked 49 books without covers. Last time I looked about 16 of them have returned. I haven't checked if any covers in my library are the wrong ones. I noticed a day or two ago that I had CD covers on a couple of books. Checking that will take a bit more time than I have right now.

edited for clarity

#90: Thanks. As just for the record I'm seeing 14 correct covers and 11 blanks right now. 4 of the blanks are larger than the rest.

No need to check anything right now. I know things are wrong. A process is running that fixes them.

Oh, good. I had just decided to take a look through my collection and noticed a number of covers that were completely wonky. I'm glad there's a explanation for it. :)

Okay, I believe that we are now fully back where we were almost a week before. This is certainly true with regard to book custom covers, but it also appears to have percolated through the work-to-custom cover system, the cover-for-ISBN system and so forth. The point of going back was to then go forward again, but deliberately and without compounding problems.

What remains therefore is bringing back covers added or changed in recent days. By current count there are 21,000 of these. 3/4 of them are trivial to solve, because they're simply new. Most of the rest are going to be added and then replaced in the revert—so we'll add them again. Some others are going to be the same images with two different ID numbers.

bnielsen: You will notice that many of your images on http://www.librarything.com/tag/Brugsen+kogebog have disappeared. Don't worry. They're coming back. Once they're back they'll also appear as options on the work page, etc.

Tim - I see you still haven't made an announcement (at least not a yellow box one that people would actually notice).

I seriously urge you to do this. Messages are popping up left and right with people wondering what the heck is going on with LT making swiss cheese of their data. I'm not optimistic most will find their way here without help.

By not announcing anything for so long, you've given all these people a bit of a bad impression of LT, and probably caused some of them busywork fixing their covers that will probably be pointless given the work you are doing.

I think people will understand that mistakes happen and the people behind the site are human. But communication with your users is everything.

This is on the home page at right near the top in case you didn't notice it:
"We're in the middle of reverting recent changes to the book-cover logic. Basically, your covers may or may not work. But we're going to bring them back soon. Our apologies for the inconvenience."
Of course, most people probably skip that section (I know I do, I only thought to look earlier in the day to see if it said anything). Most attention on the home page usually goes to the left top where your books are, and the right is ignored. Not deliberately, but it's always there and not "obvious" enough I suppose, and the left is where the bright covers are and the scintillating statistics (okay that's a slight exaggeration). That's why the yellow rectangle at top is something noticed right away (usually when there's downtime). It's bright, at the top near where gaze usually starts, and it can't be ignored.

96> This is very true itsa widespread problem and for every one who finds this thread another walks away from LT. People understand if they know but they don't expect to have to search for explanations.

#97 by @bookel> All it's missing is a "Beware of the Leopard" sign...

(My LT bookmark doesn't go to the home page, btw. It goes to Talk. If not, it would probably go to my catalog.)

Well, I bookmarked the home page so when I sign in, there it is, and talk (most recent messages) is on the home page too. But then, I don't use talk that much... back to reading a pile of books!

I hear you, Brightcopy. We have had an explanation up on the home page for some time now, and the current situation is much better. But I probably should have put a "covers?" link on the nav bar originally.

Much improved. Browsing c. 10% of my "all collections" I still get some blanks, but no really weird stuff.

It is looking better. :)

Tim, bookel -
Many of us users living on the "national" sites hardly ever read "LibraryThing News" section due to the unfortunate nearly-permanent yellow marking (untranslated)*. It looks static, so it's overlooked.

"From the Blogs" however, will be read since new updates are clearly marked.

----
*) On "national" sites text boxes on a number of pages frequently light up in yellow for no discernable reason. Not just when the text is altered. I believe this has been mentioned in other discussions earlier.

Still some items in "no cover" statistics that actually do have covers. These appear to be amazon covers (when I fixed a couple).

My blanks seem all to be coming from "Member-uploaded cover, best-guess for ISBN"

Some of my recently uploaded covers are still in limbo...
Should I re-scan, or will they appear?

Edit: browsing some more through my catalogue I see still many wrong covers :-(
Or is the process not terminated yet?

In catalog view most of my books have blank covers. When I go to one book's page and then go back to catalog view all books on the page shown have their covers. I'll have to go through all pages of my catalog to get things right, I think.

Yesterday I was just missing the cover for my most-recently-added book, so I just uploaded that again, and the data (screen grabs) that I was needing (going back a couple of hundred books) was good-to-go. Fortunately, the stuff I needed to get was all in the period that I've been uploading my own scans, so I wasn't having to deal with the "mystery replacements" that were showing up in the older parts of my catalog!

 

Just noticed today that I have a lot of blank covers where I know I had covers before. These are books I've had for some time, and I just happened to be looking at books I read several years ago. I changed some of them before discovering this thread.

I am seeing blanks (NOT my default blank cover, but real blanks) in catalog view and on my individual book page, although there is generally a cover on the work page. When I went to change the blank back to my cover, sometimes the "user-added cover" section didn't display any covers (although it said how many there were) but they appeared when I reloaded the page.

I see from #95 that the system is partially fixed, but I'm not sure whether I should be going through my whole library to re-add covers where there are blanks or whether this will take care of itself eventually. I can do this, but I certainly have other things to do if it's going to fix itself!

> 108 & 110: Your choice, obviously. But I would wait a bit. First of all because Tim & co are working on it so maybe you won't have to. And secondly - if I'm right and things are a bit unstable - new errors may pop up.

If you want to add new stuff, go ahead. We won't replace your changes. If you want to re-add stuff, don't. We're still working on the last 20k books.

Fine, thanks, we'll await the result :-)

Covers I added last Monday don't show up. I'll wait a bit.

Yeah. Expected. Give me an example book, if you have it?

I'm still getting gaps in catalog view. Lots and lots of gaps.

I've been seeing gaps in Cover View, but when I force a refresh, they fill in fine.

still a lot of wrong covers too:
http://www.librarything.com/work/3926550/book/85818037
http://www.librarything.com/work/12591521/book/85817412
http://www.librarything.com/work/33943/book/85788964
and here some gaps:
http://www.librarything.com/work/8482/book/85848177
http://www.librarything.com/work/12593705/book/85839855
http://www.librarything.com/work/12594162/book/85848455

the uploaded covers for these books are not appearing anywhere, refreshing doesn't yield any result

>119 karamazow: I see the books with gaps were added last Monday. See my message # 114, and Tim's answer.

Happily, I have no time to look at or fret over covers right now, so I'm confident that if I ever find that time, all will be fixed! ;)

Lucky you!

I just added a book cover for
http://www.librarything.com/work/504255
and it's showing successfully, BUT it's also showing this spillover markup right above the cover:

"url: http://images.amazon.com/images/P/1105794776.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpgurl: http://images.amazon.com/images/P/1105794776.01._SCMZZZZZZZ_.jpg"

Debugging stuff gone. Thanks.

Thanks Tim, it must have been a nightmare week! Have a relaxing weekend.

Can you give an exact date that things went back to? At first I thought it was 3 days, now "a week" . . . but from when? A specific date things have reverted to would allow me to compare with the dates on my scanned image files. And yes, I know not to futz with anything just yet, I just want to figure out which entries need more careful inspection.
Thanks!

I'm doing a cover view of my library, Collection Top 500, sorted by popularity, and there's a book-sized hole. It's not showing up as a link as the others are, and it's between Blood Rites and Dragonsdawn, and the book that should be there, Dead Beat, http://www.librarything.com/work/45000/book/32771545 is showing me a cover on its book page.

I just re-checked everything and, as the man who jumped off of the top of a tall building said as he passed the 12th floor,..."so far so good." Thanks for the effort.

See http://www.librarything.com/topic/137521

Cover editing has been disabled for the next 24 hours, to finish the fix. I explain more there.

Funny weirdness. http://www.librarything.com/tag/Brugsen+kogebog still has holes in it, but it now displays on two webpages, sort of. The link takes you to a page displaying (1-21/25). When you press Next, you get
22-25/25 and when you then press Prev you get 1-25/25, i.e. all of the books on one page.
It looks like there is at least two different algorightms in use? Or maybe just two different views of the same data?

>130 bnielsen:

Yes, it still has holes. We've shut down edits; we haven't brought them back yet.

I don't think the tag thing is cover-related, so you may have discovered another bug.

All my covers seem to be back.
Thanks, Tim

Fuller update/explanation from Tim coming soon, but with the exception of the below examples, everything else on this page should now look back to normal.

>20 BTRIPP: - BTRIPP - http://www.librarything.com/work/16971/book/1530551 - this image was uploaded by a member for that particular ISBN, so that's why the image is showing up for the book. It's "winning" for that ISBN at the moment.

>40 geitebukkeskjegg: geitebukkeskjegg - http://www.librarything.com/work/730946/book/39790041 & http://no.librarything.com/work/1592839/book/39600944 - these images were uploaded by a member for those particular ISBNs, so that's why the image are showing up for those books. You can change your cover(s) to a better fit.

>130 bnielsen: - bnielssen - http://www.librarything.com/work/4371028 - this work doesn't seem to have a cover. Were you expecting it to? (this stems from our working on the tag page linked to in several of your messages)

>32 BTRIPP: - BTRIPP & >40 geitebukkeskjegg: geitebukkeskjegg - the four below, noted by you, are all reused ISBNs. Blech.

http://www.librarything.com/work/7593222/book/1277180
http://www.librarything.com/work/9138151/book/1277178
http://www.librarything.com/work/160159/book/982883
http://www.librarything.com/work/509426/book/35303362

So, yeah, we think things are, basically, all set. Please report problems.

I'm going to compose something longer.

To expand on Jeremy's post, "reused ISBNs" are cases where the publisher, or another publisher, used a single ISBN on two books, either officially or through a misprint. (We did it once on a textbook when I was at Houghton Mifflin and I thank my stars it wasn't my fault.) As the cover system here is strongly influenced by ISBNs—that is, if we have an ISBN-based cover, we use it—reused ISBNs are a disaster. (They're a disaster overall; they make it nigh-impossible to buy a book!) They are, however, very rare.

Note: I'm going to keep cover-editing down until the evening, as bug reports continue to dribble in.

This looks rather wrong: http://www.librarything.com/series/Laser+Books

Yes, and http://www.librarything.com/er/giveaway/list is still screwy too.

This looks rather wrong: http://www.librarything.com/series/Laser+Books

Thanks. This is a separate problem—we are under the impression has the covers, but they don't. I'll fix that.

Yes, and http://www.librarything.com/er/giveaway/list is still screwy too.

Ah. We're going to have to think about er again. I'm not going to hold back this stuff for that, but we can look at it on Monday.

http://www.librarything.com/series/Laser+Books

I changed how series displays works. This looks great.

I'd like to move series to the new shelves (on tags, etc.). But this is a good stop-gap.

http://www.librarything.com/catalog/bookel/allcollections
In my collection, all collections, cover view, page 4, it looks strange with some blank spaces (is this due to cover positions being off?)

>140 bookel:

That's a separate bug, about the code that positions the covers on the page, unfortunately. (It's been bugged.) The images per se are not affected.

Post-mortem on http://www.librarything.com/topic/137521

"Cover uploads and edits are disabled for up to one day (May 24, 2012). See Talk for an explantion." I was just able to put a cover on a new addition. Does that mean this is doable now (at least for member uploaded covers already there) and the message can be removed?

Message turned off; upload away.

#133: http://www.librarything.com/work/4371028 You are right. That doesn't have a cover. The publisher's photo was of the back cover :-)

Good. Irritating anomaly. I'm glad it was one.

We didn't want to mention it, to avoid confusing the issue, but a number of those books have good combination potentials, including that one:

http://www.librarything.com/work/4371028/editions

And http://www.librarything.com/work/4371019/editions , which is the source of the bug about grabbing a cover for the ISBN, but the ISBN was split across works so it wasn't the work cover. (Poorly explained, sorry.)

Oh, I see http://www.opskriftsregister.dk/boger.asp?bog_nr=170 . Arg. Looking.

Okay, I give up. But I think http://www.rungstedkirke.dk/con63.php4 is your author. I left a note on her Facebook asking if it was and if we could use her photo. Oh, Googling her name in Google Images yields your photo about a page in—no doubt LibraryThing's responsible.

http://www.librarything.com/work/2147237/9918656 used to have a cover. Now none shows. However if I click 'Recalculate cover', the cover appears in the 'Popular covers' area. However (again) if I then click 'Change cover image' there are no covers.

Thanks Tim, Jeremy.

Things seem to be in order again. Most important, cover changes are sticking. Thank you for your hard work!

150>yes very strange surly looks like there is something still to do.

Not sure how this ties in but since the change/reversion I now have two books showing as Amazon uploaded covers (I had none before).

I made sure that ALL my books had uploaded covers (or blank defaults) some time ago after hearing about the Amazon covers changing the isbn/edition - I regularly check in case anything slips through and both books have been in my library a long time so I am confident that this is a system error?

This implies that the reversion was not entirely accurate...

It's only two books out of a thousand but if they slipped through are there other anomalies since the problems the new system kicked-off?

Should I be attempting verify the covers are accurate on all my books?

My apologies if this issue has already been covered...or if I am proved horribly wrong?

The two books in question are:

http://www.librarything.com/work/book/45212735

http://www.librarything.com/work/book/45142612

I have left them unchanged for now in case anyone wanted to take a quick look.

Many thanks and sorry the system roll out turned into such a 'mare'

A few of my covers went AWOL but no troubles fixing them. Thanks.

I am still getting blanks in cover view. What is this indicative of? I forget.

I'm missing some covers up-loaded during the initial change...must I assume they're lost?

http://www.librarything.com/work/1611987/book/85912471
http://www.librarything.com/work/12604780/book/85909972
http://www.librarything.com/work/12604740/book/85909314
http://www.librarything.com/work/1510457/book/85894797

#149. Thanks for the effort :-) It is a series of small cookbooks published by a large supermarket chain and the publisher is also owned by them and the authors were probably also employed by them etc. Each of the books has been published in several printings etc. So ISBN confusion is probably to be expected :-)

153> I made sure that ALL my books had uploaded covers (or blank defaults) some time ago after hearing about the Amazon covers changing the isbn/edition - I regularly check in case anything slips through and both books have been in my library a long time so I am confident that this is a system error?

The other possibility is that there was an error in the previous cover system and you've had those Amazon covers all along but LT was lying to you when it said that you didn't.

It would be nice if the tab-seperated export included information on the covers, so this was easier to check in an automated way.

http://www.librarything.com/work/2147237/9918656 used to have a cover. Now none shows. However if I click 'Recalculate cover', the cover appears in the 'Popular covers' area. However (again) if I then click 'Change cover image' there are no covers.

An interesting one. There was a cover, but it was added to a book which has subsequently been deleted. This cover was "bubbling up" to both the work and ISBN level at one point, but is no longer. The individual recalculate function, however, did not pay attention to deletion. It now does.

On balance, I think it's best to pay no attention to covers on what we call "problem" books (deleted books, spam works, spam users, etc.). But this is definitely a downside. When this is done I'll do an analysis of what would change if we allowed them back in--after all, covers you add are NOT just your business. My worry is that too many spam covers would enter the system, and that sometimes a book was deleted because it was wrong.

For now I've added the cover to YOUR book. It now shows up for you. It will bubble up to the work and ISBN level from your book soon. I hope you're on board with me adding it to your book. If it's good, but not for your book, I'll add it to a book in a test account or something. It's a good cover. It would be a shame to lose it.

Not sure how this ties in but since the change/reversion I now have two books showing as Amazon uploaded covers (I had none before).

When deciding a cover for a book, LibraryThing cascades through the following list:

1. Did the user upload or pick a custom cover for the title?
2. Does Amazon have a cover for the ISBN?
3. Does LibraryThing have a cover for the ISBN?

This means that, as Amazon adds covers, or LibraryThing's knowledge of Amazon's covers gets a refresh, your books may move from an ISBN-based LibraryThing cover to an ISBN-based Amazon cover.

The key here are these two lines:

Amazon-provided cover (2)
Member-uploaded cover, best-guess for ISBN (14)

It looks to me like two covers slipped from having an LT-ISBN cover to an Amazon one. That's expected and, on balance, desirable.

So, if you want NO Amazon covers you must pick custom covers for all books. LibraryThing steps in with ISBN-based custom covers only when Amazon fails.

I checked and both those books have ISBNs but no user-picked custom cover. Both ISBNs are marked as having a cover at Amazon, so it's using those.

In principle this issue is not related to the recent cover stuff. But, for a month or so we have been more aggressively expiring our information on Amazon covers, triggering LibraryThing to examine whether Amazon has the cover again. We can't check every time, of course, but we can check every few months. This may be why.

I am still getting blanks in cover view. What is this indicative of? I forget.

"Blank covers"—covers that are default ones—means one things. Blanks as in gaps in the display, like a missing tooth, mean another. The former could be the fault of recent work. The latter is a known bug that comes up in some circumstances(1) and is a known, if very annoying, bug.

1. I recently tracked the problem to when LibraryThing requests a cover from Amazon and they don't have a cover. That's causing our code to misbehave.

I'm missing some covers up-loaded during the initial change...must I assume they're lost?

Looking now. If you're online, when do you think you uploaded them?

My worry, basically, is that they were uploaded in the middle of a process that took four hours to record the state of everything. If you added it after it recorded the state but before it finished, it wasn't recorded. We realized this later, so to get around this problem we yanked the original database traffic (techies: the MySQL binlogs) and culled out database inserts of the right shape. But I'm going to make sure we got both cover SELECTIONS and inserts. This worries me that we did not.

160>
The cover is indeed the proper one for this book. Thank you.

PS: On the topic of Amazon covers replacing LT covers, it appears this is happening as we redo Amazon calculations more vigorously. In the last 24 hours we had the following changes to ISBN covers:

Added new custom cover 548
Changed existing custom cover from one to another 152
Deleted custom cover 246
Changed ISBN to prefer ISBN, because we have an Amazon cover 4,370

PS: Redid all the summary information—the bubbling-up process—and Japanese Battleship work now has cover, bubbled up from non-deleted book.

#161

Thank you Tim, I thought I had used member uploaded covers only but if I understand what you are saying correctly the

Member-uploaded cover, best-guess for ISBN (14)

are in fact automatically matched LT covers based on isbn where no Amazon cover was available - and now that they have covers at Amazon the cover selection has defaulted over to those instead as per the hierarchy?...which would always have been the case

... so basically I just have to deal with the 14 + 2 and now know how to avoid the problem

#158

The other possibility is that there was an error in the previous cover system and you've had those Amazon covers all along but LT was lying to you when it said that you didn't.

Thanks for that jjwilson61 - nothing like a reassuring little burst of paranoia about what's lurking unseen...waiting...I'll cherish the thought

The number with "no cover" in statistics seems to vary day to day currently. I had got it down to 74, and checked now -- it's jumped up to 91. As examples in the hopes it will help fix any bug causing it (?) I won't correct these for the moment. The first three books for example I know I have covers for, but they show the default blank cover in catalogue view. Going to the book detail page (linked below) the cover actually shows. The covers are all amazon's.

New York, New York! (Baby-Sitters Club Super Special #6)
http://www.librarything.com/work/535873/book/33764838
Cover: http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/P/0590435760.01._SX140_SY224_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

Journey to America (Book 1)
http://www.librarything.com/work/2577052/book/34125755
Cover: http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/P/0689711301.01._SX140_SY224_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

Invasion! Book Two: The Soldiers of Fear (Star Trek: The Next Generation #41)
http://www.librarything.com/work/182095/book/34220596
Cover: http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/P/0671541749.01._SX140_SY224_SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg

There are more examples but will leave it at three for now. Hope that's enough to determine why it is happening.

EDIT: Huh, now it's back to 74 again. Case solved?

I wish you could just let us say, 'Please, no Amazon covers.'

Do I understand correctly that if I have no books in 'best guess' and have data sources other than amazon, my collection is safe from change?

I haven't looked for any other errors at the moment. Found a cover for the book that was incorrectly displaying as a blank cover when it was meant to be the default.

162>
Looking now. If you're online, when do you think you uploaded them?

5/22 from 12:54pm to 2:25pm EDT. Don't worry about it... I still have the images.

Larxol, posting as DonaldandMaryHyde.

170> No, Amazon is used for book covers whether or not you used it as a source when you added the book. There are only two sources for book covers, Amazon and member-uploaded, so if you haven't chosen a member-uploaded cover your going to get an Amazon cover if they have one for your ISBN.

Ah, I didn't word my question properly.

In order not to get changes to my cover images they must be Member-Uploaded, not "Best Guess for ISBN" and

In order not to get isbn or other data changes to my books they should not be amazon.

Is that correct?

Now when I look at my cover stats, I have this:
http://www.librarything.com/profile/fdholt/stats/covers

Member-uploaded cover, best-guess for ISBN (0)
It's 0 but there is one book there:
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/fdholt&deepsearch=coverstats::guess&...
I did choose or upload a cover.

Blank cover chosen by you (0)
Ditto but shows 2 items
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/fdholt&deepsearch=coverstats::blank&...

Any ideas why?

I'm seeing the same thing:

Blank cover chosen by you (0) lists three books.

The only time you will get a change to your data (isbn) is when you change (not let the system default, you must actually perform an action to change it) to an Amazon cover and you will be warned before hand.

In order to not get changes to your cover image you must choose a member-uploaded cover (not let the system choose one for you).

#162: That's not the complete answer, though. Again, Collection: Top 500, sorted by member holdings, has holes between The ABC Murders and Dealing with Dragons, and between The Stainless Steel Rat for President and Parker Pyne, Detective. These correspond to Bunnicula* and The Laughing Policemen**, respectively and both of them have member covers.

* http://www.librarything.com/work/7441/summary/13670381
** http://www.librarything.com/work/100738/summary/25317529

Blank cover chosen by you (0)
Click. There's 5 books but all have images. This hasn't happened before! New bug? Or maybe it was part of the problem I have already mentioned of books incorrectly showing as blank when they were meant to be default covers, and once 0 was reached it starts showing other things? An attempt to 'fix' the covers did not work. They still show in the blank cover statistic.

Update on uploaded covers. Indeed, we screened for changed covers, but not uploaded ones. I found about 300 of them. Some were uploaded again, some not. I made changes where appropraite.

Don't worry about it... I still have the images

Check what's there now. Two were easy. One involved a judgment call, and since you have the images I figure you should make it.

The only time you will get a change to your data (isbn) is when you change (not let the system default, you must actually perform an action to change it) to an Amazon cover and you will be warned before hand.

In order to not get changes to your cover image you must choose a member-uploaded cover (not let the system choose one for you).

EXACTLY.

174 && "Blank cover chosen by you (0) lists three books." && "Blank cover chosen by you (0)"

Looking at.

That's not the complete answer, though

Looking at. Interesting.

That's not the complete answer, though

I've figured out what's causing this and fixed it for those two books. Full fix in works now. It's not related to anything recent, but it's a pain.

Another day passes and now 78 in "no cover", some with covers showing! The number definitely changes... A few minutes later it's back to 74!

Hey, Tim -- since you may happen to be peeking "under the hood" of the cover stats page...

Would now be a good time to mention how useful it would be if you were to add two more links to that page?

1) Lower-quality covers

(this could be based on the same criteria you currently use to label member-contributed covers as "high quality" on the Change cover page)

and

2) Member-uploaded cover, not uploaded by you

(this could also list older, anonymous covers from before uploads were tracked by contributing member)

These two links would really help those of us who are trying to replace all of our current images with high-quality uploads of our own.

I realize that a bug thread is not the right place for enhancement requests -- I just figured that there's no better time to do a valve job then when you've already got the head off the engine...

Thanks in advance for your consideration...

I'm hoping this is an appropriate forum to ask this; as an LT author, I've created a "Member Giveaway", but the cover image for my book does not appear, despite repeated attempts to upload/update.

If I select "default" image, that WILL appear - but attempting to upload a cover that reflects the actual book doesn't work; it will appear to upload, but then the giveaway screen: http://www.librarything.com/er/giveaway/list#12620927 just shows a blank space.

Is there anything I can do to fix this?

Any feedback is much appreciated.

Many thanks,
Edward H. Carpenter,
LT Author

>184 ehcarpenter: - Yes, covers are currently not working on that page. We're hoping to deal with it today.

jbd1 - thanks for the update!

Appreciate all your hard work to fix this, and I'll check back in a day or so to see how it's going.

Best regards,
Edward

174> Not quite.

In order not to get changes to my cover images they must be Member-Uploaded, not "Best Guess for ISBN" and

Correct.

In order not to get isbn or other data changes to my books they should not be amazon.


Irrelevant.

Your data source - where you added the book from - has no relationship to your cover source (thank goodness, I have hundreds added from Amazon from when I started).

So to keep your covers intact (other than from major changes like what's just past), you should have all your books listed in Member-Uploaded, Chosen by You. That's the safest cover source. I'm working on getting all mine in there - still a bunch of No cover and Blank cover (a very few of the latter will stay - the book in fact has lost its cover), no Amazons and no Best Guess (if a book shows up in Best Guess, go there and pick the same cover (assuming it was a good guess) and it will slide over to Chosen by You).

Also getting a Best guess (0) really means best guess (3) at:
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/LucindaLibri&deepsearch=coverstats::gues...

I've reloaded the 2 images that were mine and rechosen the 1 that was a Member cover . . . none of the three showing should have ended up in this category. But they seem to be stuck there.

Is there some button I need to push to then update the stats?

(Otherwise everything is looking back to "normal" . . . though I am also confused about what ends up as "blank cover" and what ends up as "no cover" . . . but given that both categories show my default cover it probably doesn't matter . . . I've tagged them all as "needs cover image" so eventually I'll fix them and they'll all show something.)

Thanks for all your work on this . . . it forced me to do something else with my weekend other than catalog books . . . I read some instead!

188> Well, it's down to 1 - I would guess just give it some time.

No cover is LT saying "I don't have any cover for this - no Amazon, nothing uploaded, I guess I'll apply the default cover". As far as I can tell, this one only gets applied if you _don't_ do anything on the Change Cover page.

Blank cover chosen by you is - at some point, you went to the change cover page and deliberately chose one of the LT blank covers (not necessarily your default cover) to apply to that book. I do that in two cases: when the book actually doesn't have a cover, and I don't know what the cover should look like; or when there's an Amazon cover that's just _wrong_ and I want it gone, but I don't have a replacement (can't (easily) find the book to scan, can't find it in Google Images, whatever).

>189 jjmcgaffey: ?? I'm still seeing 3 when I go to my best guess . . . do I need to logout and clear cookies/cache or something?

Thanks for the other explanations . . .

One more bit of diagnostic info . . . all three of the books currently showing as "best guess for ISBN" ALSO appear in the list labeled as Custom Covers Chosen by You . . .

Okay, it was perceiving an empty list as being a non-answer, and giving you the last one.

So, go ahead and see what it says now. But note that you need to click the link on

http://www.librarything.com/profile/MEMBERNAME/stats/covers

Simply reloading the catalog link won't do it. It's a saved result set, so it stays there until it's regenerated.

Yeah!! Alll better now . . . I love it when the numbers all add up . . . Thanks! :)

Recalculate Cover isn't choosing one of the available covers for www.librarything.com/work/11001296 -- there are two Amazon covers available, but the work cover stubbornly remains blank/default/generic.

#181: I'm still seeing it. This time in Your Library, alphabetical by title, 99 Poems in Translation: An Anthology is not showing the default cover that's selected on its page. A Guilty Thing Surprised isn't showing either; it's got a member cover, whether autoselected or manually selected, I don't know.

re 194:
More cases where the work doesn't have a cover, but there is one on the covers page: http://www.librarything.com/work/6301279 http://www.librarything.com/work/6260973

Thanks. I'll be looking at that. Apologies for the pause. I am redoing some cover stuff—basically, I'm taking covers off the page and ajaxing them in. The result is significant speed savings on popular work pages, and some delay in this.

Ajax is a verb?

Would you prefer "scripting"? ;)

Assume this is related to the same issues but who knows?

When displaying all 95 covers for the publisher series "First Love from Silhouette", the handful of wrong covers are very obvious. :-)

http://www.librarything.com/publisherseries/First+Love+from+Silhouette

> 200
LOL . . . the strange mispairings have almost made this fun (sorry Tim, I know it's not fun for you, but rarely has a computer problem been this entertaining to me)

>200 amysisson:

Yeah, ISBN confusion—publishers reusing ISBNs, probably.

I've added to to a new page Jeremy and I have been working on:
http://www.google.com/search?client=safari&rls=en&q=New+Boy+in+Town++by+...

There are a bunch more on http://www.librarything.com/publisherseries/First+Love+from+Silhouette if someone wants to dig into it.

I've got a weird one - I've been uploading a bunch of covers, and the 12th or 13th one wouldn't upload - or at least, after uploading, I went to the Combined page (did you just sneak that in?) with the same old cover showing, and the cover I uploaded did not show on the Change Covers page either. However, it does show in my catalog. ???? Maybe it just needs time, but it's _weird_. Particularly since all the others worked normally.

http://www.librarything.com/work/40140/book/13265160

The cover I uploaded is mostly black, with a greeny spongy thing left middle; the one that's refusing to leave is mostly white with the same spongy thing in a frame.

>203 jjmcgaffey:

Working.

There have been some big changes in covers work today. I'll explain tomorrow. That was a bug in it.

That cover is now fixed - I see my black one. However, on book pages (all of them), the green sidebar on the right is more than half the page because instead of Popular Covers, I get

Popular covers

Some sort of error just happened. The error was logged and Tim has been alerted. If problems persist, email timspaldingAT SIGNlibrarything.com

In most cases, the problem can be fixed by using this link.

The reported error was:

Problem with the concurrent query manager in the LibraryThing Bureau of Garbage Collections.
We have an entire room of trained monkeys working to solve the problem..

It's...interesting... using the site while you make changes. I'm not objecting, the changes are always (well, nearly always) good, but it's funny... (I've been on your side of it before, making the changes; never been a user with the site changing under me before).

Yeah. Bug fixed.

If we were better organized we've have three levels of servers—development, staging and production. You'd work on development and when you were ready push things to staging. Only after you did extensive testing on the staging server would you go to production. We have only two—development and production. This is usually fine, but when we have a really complex "push" we can end up with problems. Also, we don't have testers per se, and the site is pretty complex. So, yeah, it's life here, alas.

Update: http://www.librarything.com/topic/137834

206>

Also, we don't have testers per se

Sure you do, you just call them members. :-)

Seriously though, is this the sort of thing that you could have pushed to the BETA group first, or are there technical reasons why that wouldn't have been possible in this case?

Yeah, it was too deep in the code—the whole way covers are calculated for works. Beta is better for new things and discrete things.

> 208: xactly

New feature update: http://www.librarything.com/topic/137977