Series are getting uncombined/undeleted

I have recently noticed that series are being undeleted and uncombined. From the Edit History page, it looks like this is an automated process. A few examples:

https://www.librarything.com/nseries/history/19792
https://www.librarything.com/nseries/history/1812
https://www.librarything.com/nseries/history/82888
https://www.librarything.com/nseries/history/14087
https://www.librarything.com/nseries/history/17284

Is is of course easy to redo the deleting/combining, but I guess it is better if a setting is changed. Thanks in advance for looking into this!

Weird. Going down your list, here's what I'm seeing for the last edit:

19792

March 24, 2022

Undeleted the series.
Mar 24, 10:07am

The remaining 4 series

Anywhere from March 24-27

A yellow highlighted message: "Missing nseries_ledger_display_series_unalias"

I'll ask @timspalding, smells buggy.

If that first series is going to undeleted, it should at least be a publishers series.

>2 kristilabrie: Could any of this be related to a user who was removed or banned for some reason?

>4 gilroy: Possibly, but I really don't know. That's why I'm asking @timspalding.

I'm running through Series edits now. Seems undeleting a series isn't including the member who did the undeleting, at least from what I can tell on https://www.librarything.com/nseries/allhistory

There's also 6 "Missing nseries_ledger_display_series_unalias" messages on that page.

This is still happening. I suspect that it might be related to when the combinations/deletions where originally done. The two examples below were both edited in June 2020.
https://www.librarything.com/nseries/history/2639
https://www.librarything.com/nseries/history/50146

Thanks, I've reminded @timspalding about this one.

I think this is still happening, see for instance https://www.librarything.com/nseries/history/245 and https://www.librarything.com/nseries/history/4065. Hopefully, there's a fix, thanks in advance for checking!

I noticed that this is still happening, see https://www.librarything.com/nseries/history/14734. For a lot more examples, you can look at the Series Zeitgeist page, under the One-Work Series https://www.librarything.com/zeitgeist/series. Pretty much all of the foreign title series there were previously combined or deleted.

Bumping. I've by chance last month re-combined the one given in >10 SimoneA: so if needing another example of it, see: https://www.librarything.com/nseries/history/18366

Just a notice that this is still happening. A recent example is here https://www.librarything.com/nseries/history/5859. Hope there's a fix for this!

bump.

Silly to bump this without refering to new case. https://www.librarything.com/topic/352320#n8189461

Another bump, as this is still happening, see https://www.librarything.com/nseries/history/277

It seems like some mass uncombining/undeleting event took place, at least when I look at the Zeitgeist for one work series here https://www.librarything.com/zeitgeist/series. All the foreign language series used to be combined, I think. Maybe this is on purpose, as part of testing? Otherwise, it might be a big clue to the cause of the problem...

>16 SimoneA: We're digging into this, by the way. We'll post here with updates.

Okay, we stopped all of the mass uncombining/undeleting Series that were happening, which was being allowed by an undefined user (someone logged out of the site?!). We fixed it so that logged-out users cannot do this, and we'll need to look at seeing if we can reverse the edits made next.

It does feel more like something automatic going on, rather than human effort, that's causing this. See for example:
https://www.librarything.com/nseries/history/60
where uncombinations happened over several sequential days, including yesterday and today. So I am not sure this one has been pinned down quite yet.

Interesting, and there's a lot of the yellow "Missing nseries_ledger_display_series_unalias" lines on https://www.librarything.com/nseries/allhistory that I'm seeing from today, too. Hmmm. Will ask the developers about this.

>20 kristilabrie:

I believe only you can see those.

>21 timspalding: I can see a lot of the yellow "Missing nseries_ledger_display_series_unalias" lines on https://www.librarything.com/nseries/allhistory

>19 Nevov: We are working on this issue.

>22 DuncanHill: Those messages should be fixed now.

>19 Nevov: Re-aliased the series that had been unaliased in the last week or so by the non-logged in user.

This, or something related, is still happening. For instance,

Ardneh's World where related series were uncombined in March 2025. I've recombined one of them.

Star Wars Legends/ EU where a heap of series have been combined and/ or uncombined in January and February 2025.

Picking a random series from my catalogue, 'Mammoth Books' (publisher series) is also affected. https://www.librarything.com/nseries/259096/Mammoth-Books

I'm guessing it's endemic.

Taking notes:
1. https://www.librarything.com/nseries/history/57 - shows no member info for edits from January 13 — March 3.
2. https://www.librarything.com/nseries/history/31152 (Star Wars Legends/EU mentioned above) - no-member edits from January 16 — February 21.
3. https://www.librarything.com/nseries/history/9516 - no-member edits from January 16 — January 30 (the latest edits).
4. https://www.librarything.com/nseries/history/3465 (Ardneh's World mentioned above) - no-member edits from February 19 — March 10.
5. https://www.librarything.com/nseries/history/10 - no-member edits from February 28 — April 25.
6. https://www.librarything.com/nseries/history/11459 - no-member edit from March 5.
7. https://www.librarything.com/nseries/history/251 - no-member edits from January 30 — March 3.
8. https://www.librarything.com/nseries/history/316 - no-member edits from February 28 — March 3.

Looking at a simple example (Redwall: Chronological Order which has 2 such edits): https://www.librarything.com/nseries/history/316, series relationships are being removed/tinkered with. That seems to be the case for all of the examples I found.

I'm seeing for many/all of the "Added series relationship" edits, the relationship is being set to "has no relationship with". Otherwise, I'm seeing lots of "Removed series relationship" edits.

ETA: I added (fixed) the series relationship between Redwall: Chronological Order and Redwall: Publication Order, then I removed the relationship under my @kristi_test_07 account. That relationship removal doesn't show up in the edit history at https://www.librarything.com/nseries/history/316

Note for @knerd.knitter: it might be some weird loophole where adding a "has no relationship with" relationship (or removing relationships) skips showing certain information...

Test 1:
1. Go to https://www.librarything.com/nseries/related/84036
2. Add "has no relationship with" relationship for Rise of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and hit "Submit".
Result: Edit history shows the edit with my username: https://www.librarything.com/nseries/history/84036

Test 2:
1. Go to https://www.librarything.com/nseries/related/84036 and remove the relationship (done in incognito mode, under kristi_test_07).
Result: The removal doesn't show in the edit history.

I repeated Tests 1 and 2 under kristi_test_07 not in incognito mode. The added relationship was recorded appropriately, but the removal didn't show up again.

>29 kristilabrie: This is fixed.

>30 knerd.knitter: Mark it closed?

>30 knerd.knitter: But are all the dissociated relationships reinstated? Looking at Ardneh’s World there is still one associated series missing.

>32 humouress: I'm not sure what (if anything) can be restored there, since it seems that no actual user was tied to the edits*, but I need to wait for Lucy or Tim to answer on that. I'll post here when I have an update. (Reopening for now so I don't lose it.)

*Something I thought we had fixed back in August 2023. I'm not sure if there was a hole missed or what.

Well that stinks. I uncovered that, while the Series edit box doesn't show up on Series pages if you're logged out, you can still access the actual sub-pages (and make edits).

Lucy removed Series sub-page access to logged-out users (huzzah!), but the real question is if we can undo the bad relationship removals that were made. @timspalding might know best, but the answer might not be what we're hoping for.

>35 kristilabrie: The first step would be to discover how extensive they are.

But 🤬. Anyone could have made those changes.

ETA: thanks for looking into this and doing the work.

>36 humouress: I was finding them on most Series pages I was checking, so my assumption is that it's fairly extensive. 🤬, indeed.

Okay, first, I have the non-member ones marked. See https://www.librarything.com/nseries/history/390094

Second, I have a process for fixing this. I've applied it on several series so far, but it needs more testing. I want to wait for Kristi to work again, because she knows the issue and can work through it with me. It's tricky because you can't just "reverse" certain actions, you have to start from scratch and "replay" the history omitting certain actions.

So… progress. And Kristi and I will report back when we have done more testing!

I've been meaning to follow up on this issue. Unfortunately, we figured out that the restoration process on these edits are far too complicated to be useful. We'll have to make the corrections manually.

I'm happy to help chipping away at these.

>39 kristilabrie: Grrr ... I wish you could identify the culprit and slam them with some kind of internet blackout whammy.

If you set up a wiki or a thread with the affected series - or some kind of system we can all see - (I see the non-member changes are highlighted in red) I don't mind helping with working on reversing the changes.

On a related note (I think), I wanted to ask a question about Victoria Goddard's Nine World's series. It has a few sub-series as well as two different series orders (chronological and author's recommended reading order). I noticed that some of them say 'overlap' but some of them don't. When I went in to create the overlap, I couldn't find that category so I've made it 'is a re-ordering of'. Is this option no longer available?

>40 humouress: I'll see if there's an easy(ish) way to see all series that have non-member edits. Otherwise, the job will be even more tedious. :(

As for the "Overlaps with" showing on Series pages, I think that's automated by the system when works in Series overlap with one another. You'd still need to set a specific relationship to add an official relationship, otherwise it's just implied.

>41 kristilabrie: Got it, thanks.

I'm going through the Discworld series.

In the Discworld TV series I could see in the edit history that the relationship 'is an adaptation of Discworld' had been added a year ago but it wasn't showing. I have added it now and it does show.

https://www.librarything.com/nseries/history/94281

I suspect it has something to do with the issue above?

>43 humouress: Hmm, the removal would/should have been tracked, though. Maybe an issue with the initial save/add?

>44 kristilabrie: I don't know. Someone else did it and it shows in the Edit History but it wasn't in the RHS panel of the series before I added it.

>45 humouress: Sorry, which edit? What's the RHS panel? Sorry I'm misunderstanding.

>46 kristilabrie: (Sorry - was being a bit lazy about typing.) When I click on the 'Edit history' button in the 'Edit series' box I can see that someone else added the relationship on 21st October 2024. But it was not showing under 'Related series' in the right hand side panel of the series page until I added it.

If there was an issue with the initial save/ add then I wouldn't have thought I'd see it in the 'edit history'.

>47 humouress: Ah, yeah. I'm not sure if that wouldn't prevent some sort of bug, though, even if something is in the Edit History. Without digging into the code, there might be a separate process for logging edits versus displaying them, but I'm just speculating as a bug tester. :)

(And no worries on the typing! I appreciate the clarification.)

It looks like a recently-joined member, @Beauwobu, has been removing books from various series.

https://www.librarything.com/nseries/userhistory/3207651

Maybe they don't realise that what they're doing affects what everyone can see, not just them?

>49 humouress: What do we do about that?

>50 jasbro: Tag the member in this discussion?

Edited to add a tag for @ianreads ... the closest to time travel I ever plan to participate in! Does it or does it not trigger a notification?

>51 LeslieWx: Okay, I've edited my message to do that.

>52 humouress: I'm not sure an edit triggers a notification.

>49 humouress: You can also contact staff. They have a way to reverse a member's edits.

>49 humouress: I've at least sent the member a message asking them to stop removing valid works from valid Series pages. I'll see if I can revert their edits later this week (after they've had a chance to review my message).

>55 kristilabrie: Thank you.