Automatic Combining failing?

Is it my imagination or are all new entries failing to combine? The last dozen or so books I've added lately have all failed to find partners, even when they exist in the system, and it seems every library I look at lately with new entries has a lot of singletons just waiting to find their friends who are already there too. There just seems to be a lot of combining to do.

Not all. Only about 90%. But then if you edit anything they uncombine, so yes, it adds up to a lot of combining.

Hmm, just seems to have gotten worse in the past few weeks.

I haven't kept up with Talk as much in recent months, so I don't know if this topic came up elsewhere, but I want to thank you, bernsad, for posting this. I got six new books on Black Friday, and entered them in LT either that night or last Saturday, and I was FLOORED to see myself as the only owner when I entered them. Granted, I think four were poetry books, which aren't the hottest items, but by the time I got to How to be Alone by Jonathan Franzen and I was the only owner, I knew there had to be SOMETHING weird going on.

If I had set aside time specifically to add books (besides the ones I'd just gotten, I mean - I still have several dozen non-fiction to catalog), it would have been a BIG annoyance. So, thanks for confirming it wasn't just me!! ;-) But just the same, I hope it gets straightened out soon.

I posted this problem on a related thread: every time I edit the title of a book I add, it 'uncombines'; and I think there are a lot of people having this problem:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/50655

and this thread too
http://www.librarything.com/topic/51285

For me - it is not all entries added; if I don't have to edit the title (and once it happened after I uploaded a cover) the work stays combined correctly. When going in to combine my solitary work I have found quite a few similar situations - i.e. lots of single works under an author needing to be combined. I don't really need to add to my badges this way. :)

Lman, I agree these problems seem related. I read that second thread and it is exactly the problem I'm finding. It seems very few new entries are getting combined automatically and nearly any edit to the edition will cause it to drop its' associations.

Whilst I enjoy a spot of combining this is going to prove fertile ground for combiners for months/years to come if it doesn't get fixed soon.

Maybe it is not all that many - there doesn't seem to be any responses from Tim or Chris in this time - or even Mike, who mentioned in that thread that he knew about the problem a few days ago - or maybe no one notices all that much that their book is not combined properly??? I know of two friends of mine on the site who have noticed it - why I thought it was becoming a big issue...

I was of your opinion Bernsad - we were in for a LOT of combining!!

Still happening. I just entered a copy of Measure for Measure, which would have been a singleton if I hadn't been incredibly alert for the time of day.

This happens to me more times than not. I've started checking the author page every time I add a book. I wonder if it's because I use LC or enter manually in preference to Amazon?

No Irene - I don't think it matters which source you use- I don't use LoC but often Amazon and it still 'uncombines' (as I am now calling it - not sure if that is a word but everyone understands what I mean by it). It is when there is an edit to the work (mine is with title - not review) and it decides to become a lone entity!

I wish someone would acknowledge this problem as I just entered a book, had to edit the title, and it happened again.

Oh it's still happening..every book I enter manually fails to combine. If I add one using 'search' and amend the title (ie, add trilogy title and number of series in brackets) it uncombines. Getting frustrating.

Amending the title is a fair enough reason to lose the connection.

>12 bernsad:
I disagree. Changing a hyphen to a colon or capitalizing letters shouldn't (and did not always) orphan books.

11

Yeah, it is pretty badly rooted at the moment, compared to how it used to be.

>13 DaynaRT: fleela, you're right, a hyphen is neither here nor there, but Severn was suggesting a much larger change "If I add one using 'search' and amend the title (ie, add trilogy title and number of series in brackets)" which the database couldn't reasonably be expected to keep track of.

>15 bernsad:
It used to. Words in brackets used to be ignored.

It is not only editing the title. Books get uncombined when you Rate them and also when you make changes in the Date Read field.

Yes, there is a LOT of combining to do. In fact, I have never seen so much CHAOS all around.

The small group of dedicated Combiners (how many people, 300 perhaps?) are never going to be able to keep up with that.

I think Tim and Chris and co have made a lot of progress on getting things back under control. And we are all hoping that the problems are a side effect of the work they are doing to implement collections and other improvments we all want.

One good side effect of the problem is the number of new combiners that are starting on simple editions-based combining as a result of this. Not that I don't want it cleared up - I am getting very tired of it, but I have personally gotten several people going on combining, and seen others doing the same. Even those who aren't inclined to combine themselves are becoming more aware of the issues, and that the system isn't just blackbox magic.

It's rough right now, but I expect LT to be even better in a few months. In the meantime, I'll do more combining and less entering.

>18 MarthaJeanne:

Yes, I had not lost sight of the "good side effect", even wondered whether it was intentional. Each time I make a change and one of my books gets uncombined, I fix it + all other books on that page.

Yes, I have to admit I'm in that category. A couple of weeks ago I wasn't even aware of the combining tools, now I already have the gold medal in combining.

I still wish this was fixed, though...

I quite enjoy combining, somehow soothes me.

However, the fact that I am in the top 300 (and the fact that anyone can get a "gold medal" in a matter of weeks), just shows how pathetically few people do this combining. (As with many other web sites where volunteers are needed).

If you do some tough combining for 3 hours at a stretch, you will see a considerable change in the results of your connections (ie in the days when there was immediate refresh).

(I am probably completely wrong about this, but) I thought maximization of correct connections was the key value of this site, but the owners / developers are showing a remarkable disinterest in this matter.

>21 edwinbcn:
So, you haven't seen the other threads where Tim and the others are working on this issue?

Even seemingly minor edits are a problem. Yesterday, when working on the cms29631 account I changed the number of copies from 1 to 2 and the book separated from the ones it had previously been combined with.

I'm finding that all the sources seem to work the same way; only a few books that I add are automatically combined. If I want to see the available covers for that work I have to do some combining first. I have noticed that this seems to be more prevalent with books that only have a few copies on LT. The books with many copies autocombine more often.

the owners / developers are showing a remarkable disinterest in this matter

Not fair! There are several threads where Tim's discussed the issue and the work they're doing to fix the problems (which, from what I gather as a total layman, are not simple fixes ...)

23> The books with many copies autocombine more often

Of course. There are many more possibilities for an exact match.

Yeah, but nine out of ten books that I'm adding at the moment have less than 10 books in the system which means a trip thru the combining page to see if there is any other copy that is definitely the same. Since, previously, I had done almost no combining I am only doing the really obvious stuff. I figure that when in doubt, leave it alone is the best policy here.

Since I have LOTS of books with less than 10 books in the system, I learned to combine early on. In fact, now I'm doing a lot more books that many people have. I started with needlework and theology.

> 22
No, I haven't. There's a total information overload on LT. I bet Tim spends half his day catching up on Talk alone.

>24 klarusu:
Fair or not is not the issue. They do have time for gimmicks (ie random page/book/tag) etc.

This thread has been here for nearly two months. I am sure more than a million books are added a month, so that would be 2 million books. Plus, edit mutations cause books to uncombine. With a pool of only about 300 regular combiners (less than 0.001% of the members), these books will never get combined.

28>

Your arithmetic needs some attention. 300 is .06% of 500,000, so 60 times greater than the fraction you stated.

But regardless of that, annoying as the failure of automatic combination is, there's evidence it's being dealt with, possibly as part of a larger set of developments. Others have pointed out that there's evidence of this, which you say you haven't had time to see. I agree, there's a torrent of talk. But just because you haven't seen evidence of concern over the issue doesn't mean it doesn't exist.

And I echo what others have said elsewhere about the therapeutic effect for programmers of the occasional quick, fun hack. Sometimes you need some instant gratification and fun hacks deliver it.