"Enqueued job to combine works" message

[Moloch]

I was combining some books and I got the following message:

"Enqueued job to combine works. Large works can take a while to complete, please check back in on the status in 15 minutes."

This is the first time I see this message. The books weren't combined. I wonder if combines aren't going to be immediate anymore but will be queued like deletions. I hope not because thay would slow down things a lot.

The books I was trying to combine had very few editions (one 1+1 editions, the other 4+1 editions)


edit: A few minutes later, they are indeed combined. Is it going to be always like this (not seeing the result of the combine immediately anymore)?

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

I saw this for the first time just a few minutes ago. It looks to me as if this is an improvement, that we are less likely to get errors and timeouts. Not sure I'll be checking back in 15 minutes on the little ones. I'll have to rethink my strategy for some of the more prolific authors with several uncombined editions for the same work.

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

I do see a problem with it, though. I combined 2 English-language titles. Then I saw 2 Spanish-language titles of the same work. I had to wait to see how to combine these with the English titles.

[Moloch]

Elizabeth (Alaska) wrote: "I do see a problem with it, though. I combined 2 English-language titles. Then I saw 2 Spanish-language titles of the same work. I had to wait to see how to combine these with the English titles."

Still not really happy with this change.
On the separate tool page, when you click "separate" now you are redirected to the combine page for the author. Sometimes, for the same work, you need to separate more than once, and now you need extra clicks to go back to the Separate tool page.

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

Moloch wrote: "On the separate tool page, when you click "separate" now you are redirected to the combine page for the author. "

I have not yet used the Separate Tool. I did separate one edition yesterday, but of course didn't have to use the tool.

But I had a lot of trouble with combine when there were a lot of editions. Sometimes I couldn't even get to the Confirm Combine page without its timing out. So maybe this is their solution.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Sorry for the confusion caused by the change in the messaging. To clarify a bit, no actual functionality has changed — only the messaging has been changed to be more accurate.

For context, we’ve always enqueued combines. Unfortunately, the "processing" page didn’t accurately capture the progress. This was especially true when it timed out, since that often did not mean that the combine would not go through a few minutes later.

How long any given combine takes to go through will depend both on the number of editions and works involved in your specific case, and how many others have recently been queued.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Moloch wrote: "On the separate tool page, when you click "separate" now you are redirected to the combine page for the author. Sometimes, for the same work, you need to separate more than once, and now you need extra clicks to go back to the Separate tool page."

Thank you for that feedback. We are going to change that. Watch this space.

[rivka, Former Moderator]

Using the separate tool should no longer redirect you off the separate tool page.