Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

Merges are getting stuck again. I have merges waiting for more than five days. I sent a message to support and got the following response:

Thank you for taking the time to write in about this. I've confirmed with our developers that they're already aware of this issue and are working on fixing it. I've added your report to the developer ticket, so that they have as much information as possible while investigating and implementing a solution to the problem.
Unfortunately, at the moment there is no workaround for this, so we must wait for the developers to find a solution in order to be able to change the status of the books and make the necessary edits. We appreciate your patience in the meantime.

Oh no :( I noticed they were taking longer last week but they went through eventually now they are stuck altogether. Merges getting stuck are particularly frustrating.

Oh, it couldn't be a problem caused by the bot, could it?

Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "Oh, it couldn't be a problem caused by the bot, could it?"

No! What on earth would make you think that?? 😏

What I am seeing now is that some deletes work "correctly" which means they take about a day (16 hrs currently) and everything is fine, while others are completely stuck and I can't requeue since I get the usual "Unexpected Error" page.

It seems like a flip of a coin, but I doubt this is the case and I would assume there is something behind it. If someone else is seeing this and can provide more insight, we might want to avoid some deletions, if we knew what to avoid.

David wrote: "What I am seeing now is that some deletes work "correctly" which means they take about a day (16 hrs currently) and everything is fine, while others are completely stuck and I can't requeue since I get the usual "Unexpected Error" page."

Same for me.
From the many deletions of duplicates I've done yesterday and today, so far three of them have given an "Unexpected Error" page. The one from yesterday is the only from yesterday that didn't go through. I haven't noticed anything about these error editions unfortunately.

David wrote: "If someone else is seeing this and can provide more insight, we might want to avoid some deletions, if we knew what to avoid."

I have noticed something about the duplicates that gave an error when changing the status to deleted: all of them have two authors.
If that is indeed the issue, deleting the secondary author(s) before changing the status should prevent the error.

It's certainly worth a try.

I now have 24 stuck deletes in my list; some have been stuck for more than two weeks.
I think Arenda nailed it, I went back, and at least 90% of the stuck deletes had more than one author. The other 10% I cannot check since the edition is gone.
ATTN Jaclyn, here are some examples of stuck deletes:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/edits/...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/edits/...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/edits/...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/edits/...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/edits/...

Also, with a librarian note that says (quoting)

Merge ongoing, please don't recombine, see merge policy

I don't understand why other librarians are still combining some of them.

David wrote: "Also, with a librarian note that says (quoting)

Merge ongoing, please don't recombine, see merge policy

I don't understand why other librarians are still combining some of them."

Maybe librarians rashly using autocombine?

ETA Off-topic, but a very strange thing I have noticed since yesterday: all threads I open appear to have been posted in the Adding New Books folder, even when they were posted in Questions (like this one), or in the Supers folder, or in the "general" section, etc. What is that about??

lethe wrote: "ETA Off-topic, but a very strange thing I have noticed since yesterday: all threads I open appear to have been posted in the Adding New Books folder, even when they were posted in Questions (like this one), or in the Supers folder, or in the "general" section, etc. What is that about??"

Yes. I've been seen this problem all yesterday and today. Even threads in other groups have the "Adding New Books" folder/link for this group at the top. Very confusing.

I was going to clear my browser cache before reporting it (I have a billion tabs open). But now I won't bother because I know it's not just me.

Mesembryanthemum wrote: "Yes. I've been seen this problem all yesterday and today. Even threads in other groups have the "Adding New Books" folder for this group at the top. Very confusing."

Thanks for confirming. Just now I noticed it in another group as well. Curiouser and curiouser.

/OT

Thanks for these reports. The folder weirdness could be related to this change. I've notified the team so we can fix it.

Regarding deletes getting stuck, I've also let the team know about this. Will let you know when I hear back.

Deletions should be working as expected. Please let me know if this isn't the case.

Jaclyn, I listed five examples of stuck deletes above. None of them has resolved. I have about 20 more if you need.

I've forwarded on those examples.

It looks like the issue with the stuck deletes is solved now.
I had four of them and I still had the book pages bookmarked, even though the edit page gave an error. Today I could access the edit pages for these books, so I've re-queued them again to be merged (after deleting the secondary authors to be sure) and all merges have gone through now.

I can verify, I am now able to requeue the stuck books. That's a solution to most of them, since I also had them bookmarked. The rest are probably lost forever.

Thanks for the updates. After talking to an engineer on our side, she thinks it could be due to the examples in this thread (5) all single being editions on a Work with shelvings, so they are not allowed to be deleted. Not sure if we're missing something here.

Either way, glad you've been able to requeue the books!

I believe the engineer is wrong, but the issue is moot. I was able to re-queue all of them, and the delete went through, so all is now well.

I've still got one that's been cranking away since Thursday morning (July 20th). The numbers keep slowly increasing on the target edition, so it's still working on the merge. It's just painfully slow (an increase of 13 in 8 hours).

I can't resubmit because I unwisely didn't keep the deleted record open; it was an empty edition with no ISBN or ASIN identifiers, just hundreds of adds.

Merge edition: https://www.goodreads.com/book/edits/...

Target edition: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...

Jaclyn wrote: "all single being editions on a Work with shelvings, so they are not allowed to be deleted. "

Perhaps the engineer doesn't understand when and why we merge