Author combining appears to be down.

Greets:

I was working on trying to combine Jack Prelutsky with a number of his aliases. I get the "It's a popular author, hold your horses" page but no flopping whale. Going back after a few moments, it appears the combination request has not gone through.

http://www.librarything.com/author/prelutskyjackstevens

http://www.librarything.com/author/prelutskyjack

I had this Sunday when trying to combine "danielsilva" and "silvadaniel". I waited at least ten minutes before messing with it, though the flopping whale had disappeared almost immediately, so I couldn't use it as a guide.

I had the same problem trying to do an author combination with Haruki Murakami but I was able to combine a smaller author. So the problem seems to be with authors that hit the whale threshold.

I've noticed this too. But only with authors with lots of works. Small author pages seem to combine just fine.

So possibly a bug of some kind with the server that went out not being able to help with the load? (wild guessing on my part)

(edit: with the slowness of talk posts lately, it's probably related somehow. I've had more talk posts not show up immediately these last few days than I have had in the last few years.)

I just tried to combine some of the James C. Dobson author records floating around. Never saw the whale.

Leaving this here so I can follow up on it if and when the issue gets fixed.

I suspect this happened during a brief period this afternoon when servers were in trouble. Can anyone show me an example that doesn't work now?

This "Karl Marx" http://www.librarything.com/author/marxk&norefer=1 still can't be combined into the main Karl Marx page.

(Brought up by gangleri in this thread: http://www.librarything.com/topic/99437, but I just retried)

p.s.: and it's been so since a couple of days already, so it can't have been caused by a failure that only happened today.

I just tested the Canonical Name removal fix on that author, it should actually be K (first name unspecified) Marx -- someone had put in "marx, karl", which was wrong. There are other authors named Marx whose name begins with K, so I would say http://www.librarything.com/author/marxk&norefer=1 shouldn't be combined with http://www.librarything.com/author/marxkarl.

I agree K. Marx shouldn't be combined with Karl Marx - or only temporarily if that facilitates work combining. But that's another matter than not being able to combine them (which is what this bug report is about).

Agreed. I just didn't want the assumption that they should be combined to be left standing.

Further example that still doesn't work:
http://www.librarything.com/author/vernejules&norefer=1
with
http://www.librarything.com/author/julesvernes

I don't know if this is related, but I have been unable to edit assignments for http://www.librarything.com/author/strayerjosephreese. There's one book assigned to unknown which I have been trying to assign to Author (1) since yesterday. I had been doing some assigning yesterday and hadn't run into any problems until maybe 10 or 11 AM Eastern. I haven't tried with any other authors, but this one still isn't working.

I think that's another bug. I've noticed that if a work is the only one not attributed to the main author - as is the case here (I guess the other author got combined or separated onto his / her own page) - assignment gets refused. Try the "Keep Undivided" button instead.

>14 Nicole_VanK:, Thanks BarkingMatt. That worked. I have been able to edit assignments for other authors since my last post, so probably unrelated.

I'll try my James C. Dobson when I;m not on my laptop battery.

I had this problem yesterday. Though I saw the whale for a few moments, then whale went down for a deep dive and never returned. Page just sat there. No link appeared. Author page examined to find no merger had occurred.

Might have been the server issue mentioned above. I will attempt to recall which author I was attempting to merge and see if it works.

Whale disappeared immediately. Waiting to see if it reappears and or page moves on from wait screen.

Updated: Ok, merger failed. Whale disappeared immediately then nothing happened. Tried to temporarily merge Michael and Michael Crichton to merge books. Since I couldn't merge those books on an edition level. Since one was actually written by his penname John Lange, I attempted to merge John Lange and Michael. Despite John Lange being merged into Michael Crichton. Oddly, the merge worked, and merge was quickly. Well, that isn't odd, the odd part was that John Lange was able to be merged into Michael despite already being merged into Michael Crichton. I combined Binary with Binary and separated the authors. Lange now became a seperate unmerged author. I can't fix the other Crichton books on there as they were written under the Crichton name.

Update 2: Oops. Now I can't combined John Lange back into Michael Crichton.

Please post a message if this works again. Thanks in advance.

test objects:
http://www.librarything.com/author/markxkarl
http://www.librarything.com/author/805595324
http://www.librarything.com/author/2748482541
oho also
http://www.librarything.com/author/markskarl

I tried my James C. Dobson again. Got the whale but it went away after a few seconds.

I can confirm. I see the whale for a few seconds but the actions is aborted.

But it was a whale of a good time watching it go. :D

Still happening.

Another report here: http://www.librarything.com/topic/100080

Just tried another combination. Somewhat by accident as I didn't know I'd end up in whale territory. Sneaky whales.

I was not able to combine Daniel Silva and Daniel Silva. Whale appeared then quickly fled the scene. (Was working up to a temporary combination of Daniel Silva and Daniel Sillva to combine Moscow Rules)
http://www.librarything.com/author/silvadaniel

hmm, unrelated but I'm never near the correct thread when I see this, so I put it here. The 2 tags listed on Daniel Sillva's page:
1. the death of a journalist leads allon to russia
2. where he finds in terms of spycraft he has something to learn. he's playing by moscow rules now

I've just tried combining some variants of Diana Wynne Jones and I'm getting the same problem. The whale appears briefly then vanishes and nothing seems to happen however long I wait.

Okay, I'm going to work on

http://www.librarything.com/author/silvadaniel
http://www.librarything.com/author/danielsilva

Nobody touch them until I say so, okay?

Fixed and improved in various small ways (eg., translation).

Off to try my James C. Dobson combines.

edit: Looks like someone beat me to them as all the ones I had bookmarked have already been done. I did a couple of empties that I had noticed. Went smoothly. Never got the whale.

reedit: And one one title author. Went fine. No whale page at all. Straight to the author's page after a few seconds.

And: Someone got my Jack Prelutsky's up there in the first post as well.

Well I feel useless. *sniff*

I was so looking forward to the flopping whale. But nooo, whoosh and the recombinationed author was there.

28> Sorry to have taken your fun! I got so excited about it being fixed, and also so bored with nothing to do at work that hour-ish, I couldn't resist the temptation of a list of authors needing combining. ;)

One thing I noticed: often, the first combination I did for each of the really big authors took a while but didn't get me the flopping whale. Just the Firefox "loading" thing on the tab. After that first one, though, they generally went whoosh like ari.joki described.

Also: why on earth are authors who have no books in the system still showing up on the author search page? Shouldn't they be quietly hidden or something? I tried to combine one and got the loading thing for a few minutes, then "Sorry, this author does not have any works in the system" message and a failed combination.

>30 keristars: "why on earth are authors who have no books in the system still showing up on the author search page?"

The topic http://www.librarything.com/topic/99615 "author combining: dormant author urls, shadow author urls" relates to this.

User who have such author urls (zero work author urls) in their catalog may edit such a record at an unknown moment in time. As a result works will "reapear" there (at the originaly zero work author url). This is what I call "unpredictable" baheviour for the whole system; for all people involved in such a work / having / sharing such a work.

31: Aha! I knew there'd been a thread about it very recently, which is probably why I was especially annoyed about it.

But I'm not sure we're talking about the same thing. The ones I referred to in message 30 would not fall under "User who have such author urls (zero work author urls) in their catalog may edit such a record at an unknown moment in time. As a result works will "reapear" there (at the originaly zero work author url)." - that kind of author takes combinations without any trouble.

Mostly when I groused about the problem in message 30, I was being rhetorical and not expecting much of an answer. The authors that wouldn't combine are "true" no works authors - you can see it when you try to combine the "Jule Vernes" with "Jules Verne": http://www.librarything.com/search_author.php?searchbox=jules+verne&combinew...

You'll get the result "This author, or form of author, does not currently have any books in LibraryThing. (continue)", with the "continue" link taking you back to Jules Verne's author page.

I visit my Statistics page now and then to tidy up the Male/Female and Dead/Alive lists. What I want to do is get rid of all the "Not Set" names - but I can't. I have quite a few names on those lists that have no books listed or (at least) no books in my library. I would love to get rid of them.

I have quite a few on the Dead/Alive list that I can't find. I'll keep plugging away on that. But most of the names on my Male/Female list are authors that either don't exist, or don't exist in my library. How to erase them?

Can't those authors be combined into proper ones?

>I wish I had an easy way to find out why those authors in the D/A and M/F lists who have no books in my library show up on my lists at all.

Hope you can make out that really convoluted sentence! :-/

>35 staffordcastle: , probably also earlier messages
I started a general discussion at http://www.librarything.com/topic/100457 "confusing issues related to refferences to top level (and other level) author urls"
Are there other issues as well?

>35 staffordcastle: What exactly are "D/A and M/F lists" ?

>36 gangleri: Sorry, I should just stop using abbreviations.

Dead/Alive
Male/Female

which were just mentioned two posts above mine.

I;m currently combining a pair of Somerset Maugham author records and I didn;t get the landing page with the whale. It just sat there for about 30 seconds and then reloaded the main author's page.

Does that sound right?

Gotta admit from a technical point of view, I;d rather have the whale and the landing page. Else you;re going to get folks reclicking that link in an attempt to make thngs go faster or who think that nothing is happening.