Is "Null Island" Growing Again?

ConceptDawg reported this bug as fixed on August 8: https://www.librarything.com/topic/349352#n8218438

I saw the notification on August 23 and expressed my thanks, while noting that I still had nine venues visited that were located at 0,0.
Four days later, I looked again and noted that there were now thirteen venues at 0,0. Since I hadn't looked that carefully, I thought it possible that I had just miscounted the first time (though the difference between 9 and 13 is pretty big!) and said I would monitor. Today, a fourteenth venue visited turned up on Null Island, the now closed branch of the Smith Family Bookstore in Eugene, OR: https://www.librarything.com/venue/4273/Smith-Family-Bookstore-Campus

Here's my original thirteen from the previous thread if you can figure out what they might have in common with Smith Family Bookstore:
https://www.librarything.com/topic/349352#8217954

Given the recent DDOS I realize that this is not a particularly high priority bug and that's fine. For now, since I am monitoring, I'm just going to use this talk as a place to note changes, to see if it really is a problem.

So I should note that the number of venues on Null Island shrank back to 13. The Book Lady Bookstore found its way back to Savannah https://www.librarything.com/venue/15133/The-Book-Lady-Bookstore

A new addition to Null Island: Crooked Timber Books, Digby, NS. https://www.librarything.com/venue/78515/Crooked-Timber-Books Back up to fourteen.

A new addition to Null Island: Brattleboro Books, Brattleboro, VT. https://www.librarything.com/venue/38442/Brattleboro-Books Up to fifteen.

It's been a while. There are six new additions to Null Island since I was last here:

Edinburgh Books (formerly West Port Books) https://www.librarything.com/venue/49217/Edinburgh-Books
David Shoots Bookseller, St. Johns NB https://www.librarything.com/venue/49448/Dave-Shoots-Bookseller
Heritage Books, Southampton, MA https://www.librarything.com/venue/49433/Heritage-Books
Phoenix Books, Lambertville, NJ https://www.librarything.com/venue/49001/Phoenix-Books
The Bookery, Ithaca, NY https://www.librarything.com/venue/213/The-Bookery
Book's End, Syracuse, https://www.librarything.com/venue/15649/Books-End

Once again, there is no obvious connecting point among these six. Two are defunct, four are still extant. One is in the UK, one in Canada, and four in the US.

There has been one curious change. When I first charted the Null Island 13, I thought I understood why they were listed in the order they were at the end of my list, since they were all supposedly the same distance from my home: the first one listed was the one most recently added LibraryThing (number 107620) and then in descending order to the earliest added (number 5746). But now everything is mixed together and the original 13 are no longer in the same order they were back then. The six new bookstores are numbers 2,5,6,10,20, and 21 in the sequence of Null Island venues.

Null Island shrinks again. The Bookery https://www.librarything.com/venue/213/The-Bookery has found its way back to Ithaca. (Too bad it's been closed for a few years now. It was an excellent used book store.) Back to 20 on Null Island.
(again, just keeping track for now)
(also worth noting that the order of the books on Null Island has changed once again. The order of the six bookstores I mentioned last time are now numbers 12, 9, 11, 14, gone, and 19 in the sequence of Null Island venues.

Not a bug, but if you search for Null Island in Library local you get Central Berlin thanks to a "Null Island" software company (close to the Potsdamer Platz).

>7 tallpaul: Haha!

A new addition to Null Island: Bookhampton in East Hampton https://www.librarything.com/venue/17787/BookHampton-East-Hampton

Back up to 21.

Another addition to Null Island: Gravelly Run Antiquarians https://www.librarything.com/venue/40889/Gravelly-Run-Antiquarians.
This one is long gone as a business. Up to 22.

Once again, the order of Null Island bookstores at the end of my list has switched around. But Gravelly Run was the last one listed.

Another addition to Null Island: Hermitage Bookstore in Denver https://www.librarything.com/venue/46878/The-Hermitage-Bookshop
Up to 23.
This is an active antiquarian bookstore. Their website says they are celebrating their 50th anniversary.

Hermitage was about 16th in the list of Null Island bookstores at the end of my visited list.

Null Island has been busy growing over the Christmas holiday. There are four new additions since the last time, bringing the total up to 27.

Reading Lasses in Wigtown Scotland https://www.librarything.com/venue/23147/Reading-Lasses (the second venue in Wigtown to disappear)
Second Time Books in Mt. Laurel, NJ https://www.librarything.com/venue/42473/Second-Time-Books
Between the Covers in New Castle, DE https://www.librarything.com/venue/55035/Between-the-Covers
Yesterday's Muse Books in Webster, NY https://www.librarything.com/venue/50548/Yesterdays-Muse-Books

These are 9th, 15th, 18th, and 19th in the list.

It has been a long time, but there is a new addition to Null Island. The Oxfam Bookshop on Raeburn Place, Edinburgh. https://www.librarything.com/venue/10962/Oxfam-Bookshop-Edinburgh-Raeburn-Place

That brings the total up to 28. (It appears 3rd now in the list.)

I've been checking every week or so, so it has been about seven weeks since there was an addition.

I just noticed another addition to Null Island after not checking for several weeks. The Odd Book, from Wolfville, NS. https://www.librarything.com/venue/24617/The-Odd-Book

Another addition to Null Island: Pleasant Street Books, Woodstock, VT. https://www.librarything.com/venue/49440/Pleasant-Street-Books

Okay, I've seen enough. It has been six months since a venue I have marked as visited turned up on Null Island.

I decided I would do a small edit on all 29 of the venues I noted above and see if that sends them back to their proper locations. And it did. (except for the Campus branch of the Smith Family Bookstore in Eugene, OR, which did not have an edit button, presumably because the other branch claimed ownership of the site. So that one is still off on Null Island.) Who knows how many venues I haven't visited are still stuck on Null Island, though?

I'm "closing" this for now, unless one of my venues wanders back again.

Sorry to say, but a new visitor to Null Island. Balfour Books, Toronto.
https://www.librarything.com/venue/4023/Balfour-Books

I'll leave it there for a bit and try to move it back later.

>16 johnandlisa: I notice the Campus branch of Smith Family in local displays the map for the 5th Street branch, not the 13th Ave campus branch, even though the address on the listing is correct. The building and at least one other building in that block was torn down and replaced, so in this instance it could be a map function as the address itself no longer exists.

>18 CtrSacredSciences: Could be. As I noted above, the reason the Campus branch couldn't be "returned" by editing is because the main branch claims ownership of the site on LibraryThing, which means, I think, that only they can edit it. And, of course, they don't care if their long-closed store is stuck on Null Island or not.

Uh oh. I think this is a bad sign...
I thought all the Null Island problems were taken care of when my checking didn't turn up any new residents for six months. But now, in the time since I noted Balfour Books turning up there, another venue has also turned up, Barrister Books of Staunton, VA: https://www.librarything.com/venue/115831/Barrister-Books.

I realized no staff has commented on this, and want to note that it's been seen. I'll let @conceptDawg know it's still an issue, thanks.

Thanks! Good to hear from you.
I don't know how things look from the backend so I don't know if @conceptDawg can "see" what's happening, but there is some kind of mini-meltdown going on. Since my last notice, three more venues have turned up on Null Island. Also, a venue I just marked as visited today, Deja Vu Books, in Hobart, Tasmania, was sent directly to Null Island, without making it to Hobart: https://www.librarything.com/venue/18966/Deja-Vu-Books
The three new Null Island residents are:
Duncan and Reid Antiques and Books, Edinburgh: https://www.librarything.com/venue/111547/Duncan-Reid-Antiques-and-Books
Book Barn of the Finger Lakes, Dryden: https://www.librarything.com/venue/84566/Book-Barn-of-the-Finger-Lakes
Gus's Used Books, Fredericton, NB: https://www.librarything.com/venue/113323/Guss-Used-Books

And in the hour since I last posted... another venue on Null Island.
Elizabeth's Books in Lunenburg, NS: https://www.librarything.com/venue/78511/Elizabeths-Books

And four more since I last posted.

One Green Horse, Trumansburg, NY: https://www.librarything.com/venue/113212/One-Green-Horse
Firefly Bookstore, Kutztown, PA: https://www.librarything.com/venue/80475/Firefly-Bookstore
Nancy L. Dole Books, Shelburne Falls, MA: https://www.librarything.com/venue/39155/Nancy-L-Dole-Books-Ephemera
City Books, Pittsburgh: https://www.librarything.com/venue/34920/City-Books

I'll also just note, though it is a different problem, that two of the six bookstores in Wigtown, Scotland that I have marked as visited have now migrated about 150 miles from the other four as measured by the mileage from my home.

And four more in about twelve hours. Including, AFAICT the first repeat offender -- a bookstore that was included on Null Island before I edited them all back to their proper locations, stayed there for a while, but has now returned. Port Richmond Books, Philadelphia: https://www.librarything.com/venue/73924/Port-Richmond-Books
They've been closed for years, so no one will notice, but I think a few folks might notice that this one is no longer in its proper spot...
The flagship store of the Strand, NYC: https://www.librarything.com/venue/924/Strand-Bookstore
Also moved
Baldwin's Book Barn, West Chester, PA: https://www.librarything.com/venue/7705/Baldwins-Book-Barn
Odyssey Bookshop, South Hadley, MA: https://www.librarything.com/venue/4141/Odyssey-Bookshop

Two more:
Ravenswood Used Books, Chicago: https://www.librarything.com/venue/4487/Ravenswood-Used-Books
Old Book Shop, Morristown, NJ: https://www.librarything.com/venue/11201/Old-Book-Shop

When I click on https://www.librarything.com/venue/4487/Ravenswood-Used-Books I go to a page with a map, which shows it in Chicago. Googling it seems to get it right. What am I missing?

>22 johnandlisa: Hmm, so your map for these venues don't look right? I can see Deja Vu Books right on Salamanca Pl*, and I checked a few others and they look okay to me. I even logged in as you and they look okay. We'll need to do some more digging.

What browser and OS (operating system) are you currently using (e.g. Google Chrome, version 90 and Windows 7, etc.)? Are you still seeing the issue in an incognito browser window?

*(A bit off-topic..) Do they still do the Salamanca Market on Saturdays? I studied abroad at UTAS and loved it there. :)

>28 timspalding:, >29 kristilabrie: Add Ravenswood Used Books as a favorite and then go to your list of favorites. It will show up at the very bottom, with a distance of however far your location is from 0,0. Every venue that is affected will be the same distance away, regardless of how far away they actually are from your location.

It seems to be limited to the Favourites list, somehow: I have three in my list of favourites that appear there as 3605.6 miles away, but they are all in the correct place on the map if you click on them. (The first two are defunct, I should take them off my list). Other entries in the favourites list are the correct distance away from where LT thinks I am.

- Boekhandel Vrolijk Gay Lesbian Bookshop (3,605.6 miles)
Paleisstraat 135, Amsterdam, 1012 ZL Netherlands
- The Barbican Bookshop, York (3,605.6 miles)
24 Fossgate, York, YO1 9TA United Kingdom
- Donner (3,605.6 miles)
Coolsingel 119, Rotterdam, ZH 3012 AG Netherlands

Yeah. This all stems from the fact that we can't continually query locations because we'd quickly use up our API quotas on the external systems that we use (google, openstreetmaps, etc.). So we have to cache results in our DB. That's great most of the time, but sometimes the original request sends us back erroneous data that then gets cached on our side longterm.
It's also complicated by a couple of other technical details dealing with shared data across our systems.
Anyway, I'll see if I can clear out some of the bad data again.

>31 thorold: The part where they show up at the bottom under "favorites" is annoying, but the real issue is that they don't show up when you search the area where they should be. Which makes Local useless for finding new bookstores/libraries in your area or when traveling.

>33 norabelle414: Thanks norabelle414! Your screenshot illustrated the problem exactly and you are right that it is most directly an issue when they don't show up when you search in the area where they should be. And thanks @conceptDawg for giving me at least a general sense of why this keeps happening. Is the expansion of Null Island happening right now because of something going on in the external systems or in LTs cache? Also, @thorold, it's not strictly limited to favorites, which I never use. I've been experiencing it in "your visited." But I'm pretty sure it also affects "your local." The Barnes & Noble nearest to me was missing from my local for the longest time. I recently searched for it by name, did a random edit, and now it appears in the correct location. I'm sure I have added some duplicate venues over the years because a local search did not show it as already existing. (I learned from another thread how to combine duplicate venues, so that's at least good.)

>29 kristilabrie: For the bug, see @norabelle414 below.

Yes, the Salamanca Market is still going. It stretches all the way from the base of Salamanca Place to Macquarie Street. Had some yummy Bruny Island oysters...

And I'm afraid several more have turned up since yesterday.

Ampersand Bookstore and Cafe, Paddington, NSW: https://www.librarything.com/venue/7234/Ampersand-Cafe-Bookstore-Paddington
Retsas Books, Athens: https://www.librarything.com/venue/110915/Retsas-Books
House of Our Own, Philadelphia: https://www.librarything.com/venue/23697/House-of-Our-Own
Peter Bell Books, Edinburgh: https://www.librarything.com/venue/50747/Peter-Bell-Books
The Book Cellar @ Webster Library, NYC: https://www.librarything.com/venue/110579/The-Book-Cellar-%40-Webster-Library

It could maybe be my browser, or it could be favorites/visited, but I think it is systemwide.

To illustrate @norabelle414's point, rather than going to the trouble of adding Ravenswood Books to favorites and scrolling to the bottom, just try "Find Venues" searching location Kutztown and see if you can find Firefly Bookstore. (Easier to do Kutztown than Chicago!) You would have been able to find it a week ago, but now (I'm betting - unless someone has edited it again to get it off Null Island) you can't, no matter how far you scroll down. You can find it with its proper address by a name search on Firefly Bookstore, but if you don't know the name, you can't find it.

And I hope it goes without saying that the only reason I am able to monitor all of this so thoroughly is because I have gotten used to scrolling through my list of venues visited to see which are at the bottom of the scroll (or technically now, close to the bottom, since I have added several antipodean bookstores that are further from my home than 0,0). I assume that 99% of LibraryThing users (being sensible people who wouldn't think to scroll their entire list of venues visited or favorited) are unaware that there are any issues with locations at all, but they might experience moments of puzzlement about why something they thought they favorited or visited isn't listed any more.

>32 conceptDawg: sometimes the original request sends us back erroneous data that then gets cached on our side longterm

If it's just incorrect data, it would be hard to avoid caching it (since you don't know it's wrong), but can you recognize Null Island (0,0) and never cache that? I don't think there's a real bookstore there*, so that probably wouldn't cause a problem.

* further research needed

And two more in the last four hours. This time, they're both from the same place. Coincidence or clue to solving the puzzle?

Grey Matter Books, Hadley, MA: https://www.librarything.com/venue/48036/Grey-Matter-Books
Troubadour Books, Hadley, MA: https://www.librarything.com/venue/16347/Troubadour-Books

(Reading the descriptions, Troubadour Books was incorporated into Grey Matter Books in 2021, so that may explain why both moved at the same time, even though they have different ID numbers.)

>38 johnandlisa: Challenge accepted! ;)

I just looked at my list of Favorites and found that the last 3 must be at Null Island:

Westminster Public Library - College Hill, Westminster, CO (7,012.3 miles)
https://www.librarything.com/venue/39436/Westminster-Public-Library-College-Hill

Barbed Wire Books, Longmont, CO (7,012.3 miles)
https://www.librarything.com/venue/96523/Barbed-Wire-Books

The Book Rack, Davenport, IA (7,012.3 miles)
https://www.librarything.com/venue/53789/The-Book-Rack

One other favorite in Longmont, and two other favorites in Davenport, are at distances that seem right.

I've only got 13 favorites, and I've only been here a month. That means these must have "moved" recently {see Edit3 below for a comment on that}, and 23% of my favorites are affected.

Edit1: I don't use "Visited" or "your local", so I have no data to share about them.

Edit2: I made that edit, then took a peek at "Your Local" and realized (1) it gets populated automatically and (2) it contains a surprising entry about half-way through the list:

Toyama City Public Library - Horikawa-minami branch 富山県富山市立図書館 堀川南分館 (14.4 miles)
本郷町243-45, 富山市, 富山県 939-8045 Japan
https://www.librarything.com/venue/75905/Toyama-City-Public-Library-Horikawa-min...

It looks to be mapped OK, so I assume that there's some sort of a problem with the distance calculation in this case.

Edit3: I've thought about it a little more, and I do recall being surprised when I first started my "Favorites" list that one or two didn't show up on the map in the area I expected them to. (I didn't look for all of them, just in a few areas.). So, it's possible that some of these 3 may have been on Null Island when I favorited them, but combing my memory it's also possible that another one was on Null Island and now isn't.
Also I've now got 14 favorites ...

>33 norabelle414: >35 johnandlisa: Aha, thanks!

Some more from my favourites/visited These are all places I do or have lived in! (Strictly speaking I only lived in Portland, Oregon)

Manchester (I live here):
Portico Library (3,689.1 miles)
57 Moseley Street, Manchester, M2 3HY United Kingdom
https://www.librarything.com/venue/56582/Portico-Library
The Museum of Science & Industry in Manchester (3,689.1 miles)
Liverpool Road, Castlefield, Manchester, England M3 4FP United Kingdom
https://www.librarything.com/venue/33997/The-Museum-of-Science-Industry-in-Manch...

(Incidentally the distances for venues that are not in null island but are in Manchester all seem off, it seems they are measured from somewhere 9 miles or so outside the centre of Manchester)

London:
Crockatt & Powell Booksellers (3,689.1 miles)
119 Lower Marsh, London, Greater London SE1 7AE United Kingdom
https://www.librarything.com/venue/7094/Crockatt-Powell-Booksellers
Poetry Library (3,142.1 miles)
Level 5, Royal Festival Hall, London, SE1 8XX United Kingdom
https://www.librarything.com/venue/109403/Poetry-Library
This last one isn't on Null Island judging by the distance. In reality its about A5 minute walk from Lower Marsh

Oregon:
Lucy's Books (3,689.1 miles)
348 12th Street, Astoria, Oregon 97103
https://www.librarything.com/venue/5836/Lucys-Books
https://www.librarything.com/venue/5836/Lucys-Books
In Other Words feminist community center - Bookstore & Library (3,689.1 miles)
14 NE Killingsworth St, Portland, OR 97211

Now the monitoring gets complicated...

Several new venues have turned up on Null Island, but at the same time, several venues have left Null Island and returned to their proper coordinates, including Ravenswood Used Books.

The venues that are back in their proper locations: Ravenswood Used Books, One Green Horse, the Book Cellar @ Webster Library, Barristers Books, Gus's Used Books, Duncan & Reid Antiques and Books, Peter Bell Books, Retsas Books.

New to Null Island since my last monitoring:

Second Story Books, Washington: https://www.librarything.com/venue/26/Second-Story-Books
Kramerbooks and Afterwords, Washington: https://www.librarything.com/venue/77/Kramerbooks-Afterwords-Cafe
Alabaster Bookshop, NYC: https://www.librarything.com/venue/40559/Alabaster-Bookshop
Bookmark Secondhand Books, Auckland, NZ: https://www.librarything.com/venue/55121/Bookmark-Secondhand-Books
Cracked and Spineless, Hobart: https://www.librarything.com/venue/694/Cracked-and-Spineless-New-and-Used-Books-...
Friends of the Tompkins County Public Library Booksale, Ithaca: https://www.librarything.com/venue/2961/Friends-of-the-Tompkins-County-Public-Li...
Moe's Books, Berkeley: https://www.librarything.com/venue/3666/Moes-Books
Mystery Cove Book Shop, Bar Harbor, ME: https://www.librarything.com/venue/76043/Mystery-Cove-Book-Shop
Books Galore, Coldbrook, NS: https://www.librarything.com/venue/84971/Books-Galore

That makes 27 venues I have marked as visited that are currently on Null Island.

@conceptdawg informed me he was working on this today, so perhaps he's making progress.

I discovered the issue that was causing banishment to Null Island. I've corrected it and I'm going through the Null Island inhabitants and ferrying them over to the mainland.

This will take a little time. Our ferry boat has a very limited number of seats (API quotas). But the process is running.

In addition, I added some new, better ferry boats that have GPS that will get them to their proper destinations. (read: some better geocoding APIs). And I've done some custom upgrades to the ferries to help them figure out the exact destinations too.

Things are improving. Hopefully everything will bet settled today or tomorrow.

>46 conceptDawg: Many thanks!

>46 conceptDawg: Thanks so much for putting all that work into it!

>43 tallpaul:

I have the same issue as for your Manchester vemnues.

I live in South East London, and my SE24 0NL postcode is correctly entered in my location. address.
However, the 'Your Local' map displays west London, and a list of venues which are not at all local to me.

If I enter SE24 0NL as a search location, the correct map is displayed, together with a more plausible list of local venues.
These include Brixton Central Library (0.6 miles).

In my list of favourites, all the distances are incorrect. For example Brixton Central Library is shown as (10.2 miles), which is presumably the distance from the mysterious west London location.

Yes. The member locations are a different set of data from the venue locations. Stored separately.

On Friday I processed all of the "public" member locations. I haven't done the private locations yet, but will do that tomorrow (Monday).

The root of the problem is that most of our location data had become disassociated with their original geolocations. So I'm having to reprocess all of the various geolocation data throughout the system.

>50 conceptDawg: That sounds like a real bear to be fixing. Thank you! (and I love the ferry boat descriptions in an earlier post. Creativity can come as tricky coding, or as fun "while you're waiting" messages, or as pictoral descriptions of technical details, or ... :) )

>51 LeslieWx: Thanks for understanding. This was due to a really basic logic error on my part, but it was code that was years old, so I'm going to say that I'm smarter now. :)

>49 kleh: Ah...your address is one that the goecoder APIs actually mapped to the wrong place. It is mapped to the same street address, but wrong postcode.

Google gets it right. But a different geocoder answered before google and gave 100% accuracy score (which, of course, is wrong but we don't control that). So it is what was used.

Sorry. This particular issue is just an idiosyncrasy of using third-party APIs. But I'll see about getting yours corrected.

ETA: It's interesting that OpenStreetMap, which is usually the best datasource other than Google, gets your address woefully wrong. In fact, it returns dozens of other locations before the correct one. This is unfortunate. I wonder if there's a better way to format UK addresses for these data requests.

I'm currently using "Street, City, State, Postcode, Country"
Your address doesn't have a "state" so it gets ignored.

Maybe include the borough? Although I'd think that the geocoder should clue in on the postcode before anything else. But I guess not.

>53 conceptDawg: UK addresses can be tricky like this.

The nearest equivalent to state is County, and this is where things immediately fall off a cliff. Depending on who you ask and in what context, what is a county/what county are you in will get you very different answers. So England has 39 Historical counties, 48 Ceremonial counties and 84 metropolitan and non-metropolitan counties (local government districts which have often changed). Prior to 1996 there were also 116 Postal counties, which had similar not exactly the same, boundaries as their local government equivalents at the time. No taking in mind people's attachment to thier own idea of what (historical) is county they live in, which may be long out of date, and places like Bristol, parts of which were historically in Somerset, parts in Gloucestershire, was for a time wholly in the short lived county of Avon and is now tautologically, in the county of Bristol, and you can see why postal counties were abandoned.

On top of this there are rural address that go something like The Tumblings, Little Wittering, near Anytown, Blankshire, BK12 1AA.

(I have worked on geocoding in the UK and the US and the US is positively regular in comparison)

For geocoding purposes often Postcode on its own is sufficient (on average they contain 15 addresses)*. According to the Royal Mail the correct format is

First part (typically number + street)
Optional second part
Town/City
Post Code

(note no county) which is likely what you want.

*Postcode info is proprietary but there is a nice free, open source API at postcodes.io

>54 tallpaul: Thanks for the great information. I knew some of this from watching some Map Men videos by Jay Foreman (You are correct. I am a nerd. And I have no life.), but clearly you have outnerded me in this department. You know your stuff.

And a huge thank you for the postcode.io reference. I'll add that to our geocoding API workflow.

>54 tallpaul:
>55 conceptDawg:

All working perfectly now, without any "two week" wait.
Thank you both so much.

ETA: Just checked out Map Men videos by Jay Foreman. Love them!

>53 conceptDawg: I'm still seeing some odd things under Local Libraries:



Hamilton Library is 1050km away, and Gemeinde- und Schulbibliothek St.Anton im Montafon even further. Is it because of the 'and' or 'und' in the names or adresses?

Honestly, it could be ANYthing. But, in general, not having numbered addresses is a recipe for getting the wrong answer. I've seen things like "Across the street from the church on West Rd." and other crazy stuff in these addresses. Obviously it won't get those right. But even the intersection of two roads less likely to be correct too. These aren't AI systems so they really rely on, at least, semi-exact address searches.

And we rely on third-party geocoding systems for this. Currently I have each lookup cascading through 7 geocoders and using the best result based on the accuracy results that they return. No way we could even approach doing it otherwise. You could try changing the address of the venues in some small way. Any change will trigger an update of the location information. I'd do it but you certainly know more about these locations than I do.

And if you can't massage it to the right place then let me know more about the exact locations and I can try and figure out what systems are sending us the wrong data.

We have half a million addresses coded, so it's not like we can vet each of them by hand.

>58 conceptDawg:
Could you provide a way for users to pin the location on a map or even just provide a couple text fields to enter lat+lon, and have that override the geocoding? (FindAGrave does that with cemeteries: it guesses the location based on the address, but you can enter the exact lat & lon co-ordinates to 6 digits.) There are hundreds of million works on here which are constantly being updated and managed by millions of volunteers... half a million bookstore addresses shouldn't be much of a problem. Just give us the tools to do it!

>59 r.orrison: Yeah. It's a possibility. Some of our geocodes are used by other parts of the system so we'd have to think through the issues, but I think it's something that we could work around. Just have to find the time to put this tool in the work pipeline. Obviously it's a very edge case and low-return type of feature. But not out of the question.

The real issue was a bug in the code. So hopefully these fixes and improvements will negate the need for much work.

The large part of this issue has been fixed, so I'm going to mark it as such, but let's open a new bug report for any of these edge cases, if needed. Thanks.