HELP! Deleted a collection, lost about 91 books!

Sorry for x-posting (also in Talk about LT) but on second thought maybe this is a bug.

Just about half an hour ago or so I created a collection (named 12-80) to which I started adding books from "Your Library". Apparently this completely removed these books from "Your Library"!!! This was NOT what I expected and NOT what happened in the past when I put books in multiple collections.

Anyway, I changed my mind about this collection and deleted all the books from it so I could remove it from the Collections list.

Now it seems all the books I put in it are gone! The total number of the "Your library" is down by the total in that deleted collection.

The books are indeed gone. Again, they were in "Your Library", I was just adding them to the new collection with the idea to have them ALSO there, not to take them out of "Your Library"!

This is a new behaviour, and a horrible one, if it's not a bug!

Can my books be restored?

Oh FFS!

They also disappeared from a THIRD collection some of them were in.

Just want to make note of the last time my library was complete (Your Library had 9435 books):

4:20 PM (EST) May 23. If it can be restored to how it was at that point...

Okay, going in to look at it.

Hmmm.

Can you elaborate on this: "Anyway, I changed my mind about this collection and deleted all the books from it so I could remove it from the Collections list."

When you say "deleted all the books from it," what do you mean? Did you use the "delete" function--usually a red X? Or did you merely de-select the collection on each of the books? If you did the latter, can you describe how you did it--there are about ten ways.

Ditto "which I started adding books from 'Your Library'." What does that meant to you? Which feature did you use to add them?

If you deleted, they were deleted. Delete is how you kill a book on LT, not move it between collections. That said, I may be able to bring the books back from the dead. Can you name a few of the books? Can you give me any other characteristics they had--such as that they were all entered in the last month? I can un-delete, but if I can't narrow things down I'll have to undelete every book you ever deleted. That's not going to make you happy.

Just want to make note of the last time my library was complete (Your Library had 9435 books):

I didn't "do" anything. But at present it has 9,344 books. Are they there now?

If you can, answer soon. I got about 15 minutes and then I have to drive back down to Massachusetts. Depending on how tired that makes me, I won't be able to tackle this until morning.

Depending on the answers to your questions, there are some simple things I can do--the "reset" members talk about. That's usually the solution, but I'm unsure here, since I have very extensive logging of problems going on right now, and you're clean on that score. So I want to pin down what you're talking about.

I used Power Edit to delete books from that new collection, then deleted the Collection.

Yes, Ypur Library is showing 9344 books, it should be 9435 (or 9344--I think I deleted one book from Ypur Library unconnected to the new collection stuff).

Ditto "which I started adding books from 'Your Library'." What does that meant to you? Which feature did you use to add them?

I was in "Your Library", surfing catalogue pages, choosing books--clicking on Set Collections folder icon, clicking on the new collection name. I did not click on any other collection.

If you deleted, they were deleted. Delete is how you kill a book on LT, not move it between collections. That said, I may be able to bring the books back from the dead. Can you name a few of the books? Can you give me any other characteristics they had--such as that they were all entered in the last month? I can un-delete, but if I can't narrow things down I'll have to undelete every book you ever deleted. That's not going to make you happy.

Some of the now missing books:

Piano stories

Japanese warriors, rogues and beauties

Is that enough? I've identified about twenty more. Thing is, most were entered in a somewhat meaningful order and if at all possible I'd like to keep it.

I used Power Edit to delete books from that new collection, then deleted the Collection.

The terminology is perhaps tripping us up. "Delete" is only used for deleting books. For collections, the site uses terms like "move" and "remove." So when you say you deleted things from collections, I'm not sure what you mean.

That said, I gather you used Power Edit.

Here's the tab for adding and removing things from collections: http://cl.ly/image/461Z2B2x280K

And here's the tab for deleting books: http://cl.ly/image/0f1t172B3O2I

Which did you use?

So, I was IN this new collection, I clicked power edit, it selected all books... about or exactly 91... and then I hit that "Delete" in your second link.

But, Tim, the books ought to have been ALSO in Your Library (and a subset also in "vierzehn"), that's why I thought nothing of deleting them in this new collection.

Update: I can see deleted--truly deleted--books formerly in your library that have the work ids for Piano stories and Japanese warriors, rogues and beauties.

So I'm thinking you used the delete tab.

Now, I can get them back. But I need to know how I decide WHAT to get back. As I said, absent some sort of simple key, I have to un-delete everything you've ever deleted. Would it be fair to say I can resurrect any book that was formerly in a certain collection? I believe I can find the full list of books ever added to a collection. Is that the way? What's the name of the collection?

But, Tim, the books ought to have been ALSO in Your Library (and a subset also in "vierzehn"), that's why I thought nothing of deleting them in this new collection.

Right. I understand your confusion, but next time read the message that comes up :) http://cl.ly/image/1o1h1s0g110U

Now, let's see if we can't fix this. So, everything that was ever in the collection X? What is X?

Also, how much metadata did you have on them. Did any have reviews? I can resurrect them, but I'll have to resurrect ALL their deleted reviews.

Deleted.

Tim, no reviews, I don't think. Nothing else either, except tags. Not important if I can get the books back, If you can only restore by restoring everything ever, please do that, that's okay.

P.S. This new collection from today (cursed be its name!) was 12-80.

#14

hey, no such message appeared! Seriously!

>17 LolaWalser:

What's your browser and OS, so we can troubleshoot that message?

Books coming a second.

Yup. They're all restored, together with all reviews and tags ever associated with them. They should all be in "Your library." I'm driving. Cheers.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAH! THANK YOU! MY HERO!

He's liked a superhero! Rescuing lost books and then disappearing off into the night. Faster than a speed reader, more powerful than a mainframe server, able to leap tall stacks in a single bound, it's SUPERTIM!!!!!

Bouquets today, brickbats again tomorrow! :)

I still wish I understood what happened but I'm not clicking on anything ever again.

>22 LolaWalser: It seems clear that you used power edit to *delete* all your books from LT instead of *removing *your books from a particular collection.

>23 jjwilson61:

Right. These thing can be misunderstood. People get a mental image of the thing, and in some of those images you'd "delete" your books out of a collection. That's why at some point we added the confirm message "Delete these books from all collections?" My guess is that she clicked through it, as people do, but it's also possible the confirm message broke JavaScript in a way that didn't show it, and proceeded on to the action. That's why i want to know her browser and OS.

I'm open to changes. I think we could improve things by saying "Delete books from all collections. This action cannot be undone." here http://cl.ly/image/0f1t172B3O2I

>24 timspalding:

Chrome Version 35.0.1916.114 m, Windows 7

Tim, I deleted at least one collection some time ago that was created and filled in the same way as this one (books were already in Your Library, I opened Your Library and selected new collections from the folder icon etc.) I'm a creature of habit, I always do the same things.

I absolutely do not remember that message box popping up yesterday, that's all I can say, and as it actually forces you to click on it...

Why would deleting books from ONE collection mean deleting them from everywhere by default? How then does one now delete books only from one collection, or a whole collection itself?

Incidentally, some books are now behaving strangely, or my catalogue view is, could you please check it out--they appear on search but are not showing up in catalogue view, for instance:

https://www.librarything.com/work/15025675/book/109252528

https://www.librarything.com/work/8193986/book/109093310

https://www.librarything.com/work/15011474/book/109093333

These weren't in the yesterday's 12-80 collection at all, btw, only in Your Library. The date entered sort for them also seems off, they are on the bottom when they should be on top...

Okay, FWIW, deleting the COLLECTION is another thing. You deleted the books in the collection. Yeah, it's a mess of competing terms.

I'll check up on your stuff tonight or tomorrow. I can't do much in the way of programming from Massachusetts.

OK, and thanks.

Power edit can be used to remove a set of books from a collection. But this is done through the Collections tab in power edit, not the Delete tab. To delete a collection itself (that is the bucket, not the books in the bucket) you need to get into the collections manager. The collections manager can be accessed several ways. One is to go into you catalog and click on the collections drop-down (the left-most button in the tool bar). At the bottom of the list of your collections should be an option "edit collections." Click that to enter the collections manager. Now find the collection you want to delete in your list and click its divot. This will reveal a set of options for that collection including a button called "Delete collection." The tool tip you see if you mouse over this button describes what it does: "Delete the collection. This does not delete the books in the collection."

Okay--seems I am NOT mad. I just repeated the experiment (without clicking through the deletion) on the "Q" collection.

Here is what I saw after the following steps (1. Open "Q" collection 2. Click "Select all books" 3. Click Delete tab), same as yesterday (click to enlarge):



NOWHERE does it say this action is deleting books from ALL collections! Obviously I didn't think it would do so, nor do I understand why it would do so if I'm in a specific collection.

That's also why I speculated that somehow adding books to the new collections removed them from other collections they were in--something that shouldn't have happened and that I certainly didn't do myself.

There seems to be a common perception that adding a book into a collection actually creates a new book object to put in that collection and so deleting that book object makes sense. While the actual implementation is that there is one book object for each book in your catalog (not Your Library, which is just one of the collections, maybe that's where some of the confusion comes from?) which is marked that it belongs to whichever collections it has been added to. Of course despite how it's implemented beneath the surface the UI could reflect either model and I think Tim wants it to be the latter but a significant number of people think its the former.

I don't think adding layers of warnings is the best answer. Perhaps getting rid of all the verbiage of adding and removing books from collections and replacing it with something else, but I can't think of anything.

Maybe we should go with removing the distinction between delete and remove and just go with delete to remove a book from a collection and a delete all to delete the book entirely.

>30 LolaWalser:
Right. But after you click the delete button there should be a pop-up warning box as per the image in Tim's message 14.

Still, Tim's proposal to include the language in the delete tab itself (see message 24) is a good idea.

>30 LolaWalser: It may not say it's deleting it from all collections, but it definitely says something that would have given *me* pause. Right there, in the middle of your image, it says "Delete selected books" and "This action cannot be undone."

I'm pretty impressed that Tim was able to get things back; I wouldn't have even thought to ask (although now I can see he works miracles, and have carefully filed that information away just in case).

>32 eromsted:

I have no time now but I'll try it out on a mock collection. I do NOT remember any pop-up window (which, as I said, I would HAVE to have not only seen but clicked on). And why on earth would the warning about deleting books from ALL collections appear only at the very last step?

And again, why would deletion from ALL collections be the DEFAULT when one is in a specific collections, selecting all the books in THAT collection?

Finally, again--this is not the first time I did this.

I deleted the books because one cannot delete a collection that is full--right? It's been a while since I tried to do such a thing (delete a full collection from the drop down collection menu), so I don't remember exactly--but, anyway, that's why I first meant to empty the collection.

>33 Lyndatrue:

And again. I was in a SPECIFIC collection. I meant to delete the books from that SPECIFIC collection. Same way I did it two or three times before.

OK, did the experiment, there was a pop-up window. I stand corrected.

Still, please consider the connection between deleting books from a specific and ALL collections, or making it more prominent earlier.

>34 LolaWalser: And again, why would deletion from ALL collections be the DEFAULT when one is in a specific collections,

Because "delete" means delete this book from the database. The result of that is that the book no longer exists for you. Anywhere. If it did it would not be deleting.

So to sum up delete does not mean remove it from the current collection. The proper way to do that is "Remove from collections" which is part of the Collections tab.

I understand what it does, but not WHY it does it that way.

Because "delete" means delete this book from the database.

And I'm asking why would I be thinking about the "database" WHEN I AM IN A SPECIFIC COLLECTION.

The proper way to do that is "Remove from collections" which is part of the Collections tab.

Fiddlesticks to the "proper" way when the "improper" one is ten times more intuitive.

>34 LolaWalser:
I deleted the books because one cannot delete a collection that is full--right?
Nope. I just created a new collection, added a few books and deleted the collection as I described above. It worked fine, although it seemed to take a bit for the menus to refresh and reflect the deletion.

I understand what it does, but not WHY it does it that way.
Can't help you on this score. I agree the process is not at all clear from first inspection.

>38 LolaWalser: I understand your way of thinking, but I have a question for you. If you see "delete" as "delete from collection" how would you delete a book you have from your "database"? (Just trying to understand usability and thinking here, I'm a software tester so I'm fascinated when someone thinks about something in a way I'd never expected).

>38 LolaWalser: Fiddlesticks to the "proper" way when the "improper" one is ten times more intuitive.

Well that's the funny thing about intuitive. To me "delete" meaning zap the record from the database is intuitive to me.

Seriously. Delete is used elsewhere, on the Add Books screen "delete this book" for example, and AFAIK in every instance it means remove the book from the database completely.

>38 LolaWalser: Fiddlesticks to the "proper" way when the "improper" one is ten times more intuitive.

I always found the warning when deleting a book that I was deleting it from all collections to be confusingly obvious. I guess I understand why it's there now. Deleting something in my idiolect is permanent, to be undone by unreliable dark magic only.

>38 LolaWalser: I understand what it does, but not WHY it does it that way

Because of the history of LT. LT was around for a long time before collections were added to it and for all that time deleting a book meant to eradicate it totally from LT. In particular the delete tab of the power edit feature was around before the collection feature and it wasn't changed when the collection feature was added. Maybe it should have but I imagine the feeling was that the delete function hadn't changed so why should the delete tab of the power edit feature be changed.

The books have returned in the catalogue view! Thanks again, elves and fairies! I'll never disobey grandma again!

And thanks for your comments, all.

>40 divinenanny:

The difference between deleting lots of books at once and just a few or one is important. A few books or one book I wished completely gone I'd delete individually. Or if it's a group with shared tag I might select them through the tag. I would expect that such a deletion would remove books from all the collections they were in.

But here I wanted something different, I wanted to get rid of a single collection but expected the books to remain in other places they were in.

My fault for not taking on board the message in the pop-up (I can't explain it--I previously deleted three collections, numbered with Roman numerals I, II, III, with what I'd swear was the same process I used this time), but really, I think it's not difficult to understand how, being in this one specific collection, I though "Delete" would apply only to that specific collection.

Looking at the snip I took, I'm still thinking the same--I'm in this ONE collection, I want it empty, select all the books... click that "Delete" tab. It does not look at all obvious that I should click on "Collections".

Tell the truth, the more I look at it the less I understand what's the purpose of that "Collections" tab--I mean there in that context--at all. I understand there's a purpose! Just saying it's not obvious to me what it is.

If someone can really misunderstand the current set up, perhaps the wording there could be strengthened. 'This action will totally delete the books from your account.'

I can think of several reasons why someone might want to get rid of all the books in a collection. This ought to remain possible.

>45 MarthaJeanne:

It's not so much the wording as where it DOESN'T appear. Did you take a look at the image I posted? >30 LolaWalser: Showing that a specific collection is opened, with all the books in IT selected, and that "Delete Books" bolded centrally?

Where does it make clear that clicking on that prominent bolded tab you are deleting books from EVERYWHERE?

When I experimented, the pop-up box, at least in my set up, was a pale grey little box on the top of my screen. Not the best spot to put the only warning about this.

>45 MarthaJeanne:

I can think of several reasons why someone might want to get rid of all the books in a collection. This ought to remain possible.

Maybe I'm misunderstanding--that's exactly what I wanted. To get rid of all books in A collection.

>46 LolaWalser:

"Delete Books" is bold because you clicked on it. The bold font weight indicates the active tab. The default tab view when you click Power Edit is the Tags tab.

I think you are misunderstanding. When MarthaJeanne says "get rid of" she means delete for good - not remove from a collection.

>47 andyl:

Good god, I KNOW the tab is bold because I clicked on it. I'm calling attention to how it all looks, how it points to what I thought was going to happen: deletion of books from this one, open, chosen, selected, SPECIFIC collection (in the example, Q in the top left corner).

Nowhere is it evident on there that those books, selected IN A SPECIFIC COLLECTION, are going to disappear from EVERYWHERE.

Sorry about CAPS--just emphasising, not shouting. ;)

It says
Delete selected books. This action cannot be undone.

Why would you think that the books are not going to be deleted? Obviously if it was only from one collection it would be easy to put them back into that collection.

It doesn't say 'Remove selected books from this collection.' If I hit the little red x, it doesn't just remove the book from what ever collection or tag I have used to select with. It deletes the book. If I had tried to delete books and found them still there in other collections I would be seriously upset.

>48 LolaWalser:

OK I thought you were using the fact that it was in bold to somehow back up your case.

The word delete tells you that the books are going to disappear - in just the same way that it does when you see "delete this book" on the Add Books page. You even get extra information "This action cannot be undone" and a popup (apparently) giving you one last chance to bail.

Now if the popup doesn't appear for you that is a bug which should be squashed.

But besides that this all seems like it is a what do words mean issue. Delete is used throughout the system to mean the book is going to zapped from existence.

What word would you prefer was used to mean delete the books?

>50 andyl:
To add to that information:
Delete = delete from your LT account (from all collections, forever)
Remove = remove from that/selected collections (but keep in your account, at least in All Collections)

Hm, the confusion's just deepening all around somehow...

>49 MarthaJeanne:, >50 andyl:

Why would you think that the books are not going to be deleted? Obviously if it was only from one collection it would be easy to put them back into that collection.

The word delete tells you that the books are going to disappear - in just the same way that it does when you see "delete this book" on the Add Books page.

I DID think the books were going to be deleted! But only from ONE collection, the one I was in (selected), not everywhere.

Is that clear? "Deleting" books meant removing books--from that ONE collection. Not everywhere.

The pop up with the warning that it deletes books from ALL collections came too late. There should be some indication of it already on the page in the image above.

That's what I think needs to be made clear earlier--that if you "delete" books you are deleting them from ALL BOOKS, not just a selected collection.

>51 divinenanny:

Is that how it works or a suggestion for how it would work? The problem is that you can't rely on everyone to understand the terms in the same way. To me saying "I deleted the books from Q collection" means just that, and I don't see why anyone would conclude I meant (or intended) the books are gone from all collections because I said "delete" and not "remove".

Delete selected books. This action cannot be undone.

So, is it just a matter of revising these two sentences slightly?

"Delete selected books. This will delete the books from ALL collections. This action cannot be undone."

>52 LolaWalser:

I DID think the books were going to be deleted! But only from ONE collection

Which is why I said it looks like "a what do words mean issue".

Delete means to me - delete from the system. You remove items from a collection.

It would be very bad to have delete sometimes mean "remove" and sometimes mean "really delete" depending on what part of the system you are in.

>52 LolaWalser:
That's how it works and how I'd also think it would work.

>53 _Zoe_:

Yes, I think that would be good.

>54 andyl:, >55 divinenanny:

Right, well, that's the question--can you assume everyone will understand the terms in that way.

>56 LolaWalser:
Oh no, probably not, and this topic proves that. That's the hardest part of software design/development, all the assumptions the designers and developers knowingly and unknowingly make. That why this topic is so interesting to me, as a software tester. The least that needs to be done is to make sure that on deletion a warning always pops up, and that is unequivocally clear that deletion is deletion from all collections forever. The wording around removing probably should be clearer too, but that is less 'dangerous'.

I just started noticing that books that I entered 3-5 years ago are disappearing out of "Your Books". My total was approaching 1500 (like 1486) and is now down to 1435 and that's after adding 15+ books in the last six months. Assuming there is no way to go "back-in-time" to capture the highest book count and work forwards again... and BTW - I NEVER DELETE a book (unless it's a duplicate entry by mistake).

What a bummer!!! Is there any way to "back up" our inventory other then printing all or screen capturing our entries (sorry if I missed any "export-to-a-file option...:-)???

If you Look under the More tab you will see an Import/Export link. However, it is pretty unlikely that the site is losing books. It just doesn't work that way.

>58 pjasion:

I'll do some investigation.

Do you have any examples?

>58 pjasion:

As things stand, you have entered 1,684 books into LibraryThing, and deleted 249.

In the last six months you have added 18 books, one of which is now deleted (it looks like a duplicate to me).

My guess is that your number wasn't real. I believe there is a bug that adds books to your cached count when you add books, but doesn't remove it in all the situations that involve deletion. The cache periodically recalculates itself, however, correcting the problem.

So, I think you might want to see if you can confirm any lost book.

If you'd like, I can restore all your lost books—absolutely all, unfortunately, not some—although I can't promise absolutely every piece of data will be restored with it (e.g., EANs for deleted books may be gone). However, as it's 5:18 on Friday and I'm away this weekend, this can't happen until Monday or Tuesday.

Perhaps I can make a new process that restores them, but puts them into a special "recovered books" collection?

1) Thanks to jjwilson61 for the 'Import/Export' link. I actually found that many years ago but completely forgot about it.

2) Tim... OK, I'm sure you're probably right and I'm just (another) dumb user... :-) That being said - I pride myself on double checking any updates/additions/etc. before I leave the LibraryThing site. BTW, no one else has access to my computers or browsers.

Example: http://www.librarything.com/work/3242687/edit/119194543 - I know I added this back in 2008 on 12-15 when I added the rest of the Firefly/Serenity titles. Anyway for you to do a 'snapshot' after that time to see if it was there? I probably wouldn't of even noticed it if I didn't add the two new Whedon titles on 15 July 2015.

If it's really not too much of a hassle I really would like to take advantage of your offer to restore all my 'lost' books. I created a new "Collection" for you to place them as you suggested with the name 'Recovered books'. Can't wait to see what's there - just can't believe I even deleted that many over the years! And no need to apologize for any missing data. As I said before this whole thing is probably on me anyway...

Last but not least - I still think my life began when I found LibraryThing and I got my Q: Cat! Thank you (again) for the best web app in the known Universe!!!

>62 pjasion:

Great. I'll work on it when I back to the office on Monday. More then.

Tim... Found another book I know was 'lost' somehow... http://www.librarything.com/work/edit/120256541?referpage=addbooks.php. Thx.

Tim... Dis you forget about me??? :-)

Yes. Sorry. On it now.

Okay, should be good now. All books are added to the collection "Recovered books." Take a look.

Thank you, sir! I assume there's a way to merge the Recovered Books collection into My Library AND easily identity any duplicate entries. Will try on my own soonest and advise...

Well, they're still in whatever collections they were in before. They're just ALSO in that collection. Use Power Edit to remove them from it. As for duplication, you can use https://www.librarything.com/profile/timspalding/stats/workdups but you're also going to need to eyeball them.

>68 pjasion: You will want to use https://www.librarything.com/profile/pjasion/stats/workdups which is your work duplicates, not Tim's.

:)

Or even https://www.librarything.com/profile/MEMBERNAME/stats/workdups which is always your duplicates rather than Tim's or pjasion's.