Goodreads Librarians Group discussion
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[Resolved] Are merges stuck for you too?
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annob [on hiatus]
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May 20, 2023 11:52PM
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In the last few hours I had three of my May 12th mergers go through, so it does still work even though it's glacier slow moving.
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I'm sorry to say I see zero progress on merges I did since the 11th, making this the 11th day.I'm still responding to requests in the superlibrarian thread, but maybe we should stop and wait for this to be fixed.
Mod
Mod
Jaclyn wrote: "Deletes should still be going through (slowly), and should be back to normal within a couple of days. Sorry for the long wait here!"I am currently unable to observe any progress being made on my 34 queued deletes. What I am witnessing instead is a growing number of librarians disregarding my librarian notes and combining items before the merging process has been fully completed. It would be greatly beneficial if there were a means to communicate and notify them of the potential errors in their actions.
Oh, David, I'm so sorry. And I'm sorry for those people whose adds, ratings and reviews will now probably go to the wrong edition.Would this type of thing help?
A librarian note "Waiting for merge, do not recombine"
Or even editing the title to such which you can correct when you recombine?
My standard librarian note is "merge ongoing, please don't combine". The problem is that librarians ignore the message and combine anyway. The only thing I can do is flag the edit, which is quite futile.I didn't think of editing the title. If this problem persists, it might be a solution, but I'm concerned that it will bother the readers who shelved the book.
Mod
What would be helpful? We can follow up with them based on your flags (I can prompt the team).
Or would an announcement in the Group asking librarians to be mindful of this when merging make a difference?
Jaclyn wrote: "What would be helpful? We can follow up with them based..."If a technical solution is possible, I'd wish for the deleted edition to remain visible on the combine page until the merge is completed (user shelvings = zero). I belive librarians other than those who visit this group are unaware that changing classification doesn't result in an instant merger, and that's why they override our Librarians notes. They think it's completed because the edition is invisible.
I don't wish to side-rail this thread, but I believe it is crucial to facilitate effective communication among librarians. The current system relies on librarian notes; reminding librarians to be mindful of each other's notes is a positive step. However, I suspect librarians who don't mind librarian notes also don't mind forum messages.
I tried private communications, but these librarians tend not to accept private messages. Enabling librarians to send private messages to anyone, similar to staff members, could potentially alleviate this issue.
Mod
David, I don't know if your merges have started going through (or anyone else's!). Staff did a merge for me on the 20th and it hasn't gone through either. (Done because of an ISBN move request.)
Honestly, I think it is the bot using up valuable resources that is the problem.
My merge from the 15th still hasn't gone through.
None of my merges from May 11th onward has run through. At least one more was recombined by another librarian, who actually deleted my note.ETA: Jaclyn, I flagged the edit and, in the explanation, asked that you be notified. If you also need to be notified through a support ticket, I can do that.
Mod
David wrote: "My standard librarian note is "merge ongoing, please don't combine". The problem is that librarians ignore the message and combine anyway. The only thing I can do is flag the edit, which is quite f..."And it might not be ignoring. For ages combines were done when only one edition left. Being in the librarian group is not required and no one will reread the manual daily to find possible changes. (Especially as it's now less handy and changes are just within the rest of text)
In the past former mod sent a message to all librarians in few cases of changes.
Maybe that can be done with a short summary of all the latest changes with links to the manual?
☕ Lachgas ♿ wrote: "For ages combines were done when only one edition left."If has never been OK to ignore a librarian note.
My librarian notes have been "don't combine even though it looks like there is only one edition : merge is still pending" or something to that effect. Maybe in all caps...
I think people honestly think it has already gone through and the librarian has forgotten to recombine.
Still doesn't mean they should have done it, but that's likely the reason
Emily wrote: "I think people honestly think it has already gone through and the librarian has forgotten to recombine."+1
Merging still seems frustratingly slow. In the past day I've had one May 13th merger to go through. That's almost 2 weeks of queuing.
Jaclyn wrote: "Deletes should still be going through (slowly), and should be back to normal within a couple of days. Sorry for the long wait here!"One of my May 13th deletes went through but that's about it. I still have more than 30 deletes stuck, starting as old as May 11th, so 16 days.
I'm sorry Jaclyn, but it has been five days now and things are very far from being "back to normal within a couple of days".
Combines seem to be working better.
Yay, another single merge from the 13th went through. That's sad.
Mod
Agreed. Most of the team was out yesterday for Memorial Day. I'll follow up when they're back in later.
Another merge from the 14th went through. It's still extremely slow, with everything from the 14th onwards (and a single one from the 11th) still stuck.I'm still keeping track of all my queued deletes, but it is becoming difficult.
Mod
In the last hour I was lucky to get another merger through, this one queued on May 14th. That means the queue time has increased to around 17 days. I do wonder if the shrinking queue Jaclyn reported has to do with fewer new items sent to be deleted. I know my merger quota has sunk to almost zero since this delay became unmanageable.
Something odd I noticed today for the deletions that I still had pending, the book I'm merging is gone and isn't linked to the deletion anymore in the log.Here is an example.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/edits/...
The top edit in the log was me marking an edition with a truncated ISBN for deletion (ISBN13 entered into ISBN10 spot). Usually the edition is still attached to that edit until the deletion goes through (after which it links to the default edition). But now, there's no edition attached to that edit at all and it doesn't reference what book I was deleting at all.
Going through my personal librarian edits, it looks like all of my deletions that are stuck in the queue (from around May 17th onward) look this way now.
Here's another example in case you need it (second edit in the log).
https://www.goodreads.com/book/edits/...
Two merges from the 14th just went through. Delay is now 19 days. My queue keeps growing since more is added than removed.
Five mergers went through for me in the past day. The newest of them was queued on May 22. I'm glad to finally "see" the script work through the long queue a bit quicker, but disappointed it drops about half of my queued items in incomplete state. It's no fun having to re-queue items while the waiting time is so long.
I see some progress, but like annob, many of my merges, going back to May 11th, are skipped. I'm not even sure how to re-queue them as I did not keep a link to the original. Any ideas?
Sometimes I can find the queued edit page by searching for the book title in my browser history. But that of course depend on when we last cleared our browser history, so not a great solution.
I had some merges from the 20th and 26th that went through, so the speed is improving. (Although if that is archived by skipping or missing merges it is not the best way)
Some anecdotal statistics: Merges up to May 27 went through, so the queueing time may be as low as eight days (down from three weeks). Out of about 30 merges I kept an eye on, three were skipped, so about 10%.
annob wrote: "Sometimes I can find the queued edit page by searching for the book title in my browser history. But that of course depend on when we last cleared our browser history, so not a great solution."This seemingly simple and obvious suggestion was actually all I needed, thank you. I managed to locate all the skipped merges and re-queue them.
Teamwork! :)
Renske wrote: "I had some merges from the 20th and 26th that went through, so the speed is improving. (Although if that is archived by skipping or missing merges it is not the best way)"Thanks for this. I see the staff merge from the 20th went through and I can recombine.
It appears it's worked it's way to June 2nd queued items by now. In spite of dropped items I feel hopeful the queue time will be back to normal soon.
These days I do hardly any merges where the merge target is a specific edition, but I did one earlier today and it went through after about 3 hours.
Mod
Indeed, things seem to be back to normal. I guess this thread can be locked.
I keep trying to do a combine (I've tried every few days), and it says since it's a large one, to check back in 15 mins. But it never seems to take.
With large works, it’s best to try to combine only small number of works at a time. I’ve found there are only a few times in a day when things will go through.
Combines are certainly getting rejected/delayed sometimes, but I always find that they get sorted out eventually.
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