Better Helpers Log

Crossposting https://www.librarything.com/topic/384254

If this community has requests, please let me know there.

>1 timspalding: Not necessarily related to the new log, and this is probably a pony/unicorn hybrid. But it would be nice to have a "work never" like we used to have "author never"... but I can see how that would be really complicated due to the distinction between works and editions and whatnot.

>2 lemontwist: In effect we have that. If two works are likely to be thought to be combinable, you can make a work relationship. That not only shows a reason why they shouldn't be combined, but makes the process more difficult. Given the weird ideas people come up with, I think ir's good that this can be undone, always hoping that borderline cases will be discussed in talk.

The 'never combine' was not one of my favourite features.

>3 MarthaJeanne: I thought the idea was to be able to nix countless bogus combination proposals (which on some pages amounted to such numbers that developers had to up the memory allowed, otherwise the page kept crashing). Work pages produce even more useless combination proposals than autor pages. While a better algorithm that wouldn't be se trigger happy to combine would be preferable, the ability to remove them is at lest some help

>2 lemontwist: I can make it so that two works can't be combined. It would have to follow work numbers, if there were more combinations. So if 1 is nevered to 3, then 1 and 2 comes together, the new 1 or 2 would be nevered to 3.

That's doable. Shall I?

Editions are trickier. In theory, that's also possible, but there are so many more of them.

>3 MarthaJeanne:

I love how members think of new ways to work the system. So the idea is that relationships prevent combining, so if you want to never you make a fake relationship?

>5 timspalding: No, I was thinking of the works that need to be kept apart but are related.

When it comes to those long lists of fake suggestions on the edition page, I have long since learned to just ignore them. Even when there are works that need combining, they are almost never there anyway.

>5 timspalding: It's not so much about preventing combination, (if I understood correctly), but about removing the clutter of bad suggestions. Or are the two connected and unless the combination is prevented, the system will recreate them at some point? Either way, being able to remove them would be grand. They appear both when going to editions from the work page and again on the workbench after we do legitimate combining, offering the same litany of works

I'm unclear: Does making a work relationship now prevent it as a suggestion?

>8 timspalding: If this was directed at my comments, work relationships do prevent combination, but Im talking about suggestions that are totally unrelated, not combinable, not relatable. Just removable :)

What I mean is that in the past a suggested author combine could be "nevered". It didn't mean you couldn't combine them, just that it wouldn't show up on the author page anymore. (It wasn't really "never" combine, just "ignore this by moving it off this page.")

The editions pages now show some pretty awful crap sometimes, even though I do find legitimately useful combine recommendations on the edition pages. This typically happens when one of the works has a crappy title, usually a URL that somebody pasted in from audible or something. It would be nice to have an "ignore" that made that go away.

I'd give an example but everything on LT is taking way too long to load right now and it's testing my patience.

OK, now that the LT website is back up...

America's Oil Wars
https://www.librarything.com/work/2291486/editions

Check out the suggestions:
Essential Truths of the Christian Faith
The lively years, 1920-1973

America's Oil Wars doesn't accidentally contain any editions of the suggested combines. The two suggested combine works don't contain any editions of America's Oil Wars.

Why are those there? They aren't helpful. I'd love to click "ignore" and make them go away. Nobody should be combining those works.

Sometimes the list of suggestions comes up because there's a bad edition combined with the work, which is helpful because then I can separate the bad edition and combine with the correct work. Super helpful. Then once that's done the bad suggestion goes away from the edition page because it's no longer being flagged by the system as something that seems like it should be combined. (I imagine it searches for editions with similar titles.)

For example, Essential Truths of the Christian Faith showed up as a suggested combine under Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage, and it made me search through the editions list under Endurance and find that two were actually the Christian Faith book, so I separated them and combined with their rightful home.

Now if you look at Endurance's editions page, the Christian Faith book doesn't show up as a recommended combine anymore. That's the system working well.

>11 lemontwist: For a much more dire example, a list of combination suggestion for Pratchett's Colour of Magic https://www.librarything.com/combine.php?work=1044440 And that one is sort of middle of the road, as in at least it doesn't take several minutes to load. More popular books usually get much worse, as do those that have on of those 'audible link' titles combined

>13 SandraArdnas: I waited about a minute before giving up, that one must be a real doozy!