Heads up: watch out for deleted descriptions when combining

[Liralen]

(Not a question, but I know a lot of active librarians check this folder!)

Once upon a time, combining kept existing descriptions in place, and blank default descriptions would not overwrite default descriptions with text. This is no longer the case, and I keep running up against it. (Have reported it, or something similar, to Support, ages ago, but...no change.)

So just a heads-up—if you're running combines and one edition has a blank or shoddy description, it's worth copying the better description and refreshing after the combine to make sure the better description is intact.

I'm going through my shelved books to fix descriptions that Amazon has replaced with garbage like 'Excellent book' or 'Book by [Last Name], [First Name]', and this is one thing that's coming up.

[Sandra]

Thanks for the tip Liralen.

[Mesembryanthemum]

YES. Thank you for this warning. This happened to me a few weeks ago. "My" edition had a wonderful description, but one of the other editions had a blank (one space) description. After combining, guess which one GR chose as the default for all editions? Even better, there was nothing in the change log to record the previous (deleted) description.

Because I was the one who did the combine, I noticed the problem right away. So I submitted a bug to GR staff immediately, and a very helpful person restored the original description the next day. I was lucky that they were able to find and restore the deleted information -- it seems like that's not always possible.

Ever since then, I've made sure to save the description of a book I'm combining. Usually, I open the best to-be-combined description in a separate tab, and leave that tab open until the combine has finished. Or I might copy the text into a temporary file, just in case.

But is there a way to save all the descriptions of the books on my shelves, in case someone else -- or a bot -- combines editions and GR erases the good description? Clearly, we can't rely on the change log. I would love to know how to save valid descriptions from inadvertent destruction.

[annob [on hiatus]]

Mesembryanthemum wrote: "... there was nothing in the change log to record the previous (deleted) description."

This is the worst part. It means the data is lost forever. Thank you Liralen for bringing this issue up, as it gotten worse in the last couple of days.

[Liralen]

The change log will also sometimes credit the librarian who did the combination with deleting the default description. At least that way it can still be recovered, but it offends my sensibilities when the log shows that I've deleted a description when I hadn't even looked at the edit page, just the combine page.

[Mesembryanthemum]

Liralen wrote: "The change log will also sometimes credit the librarian who did the combination with deleting the default description. At least that way it can still be recovered, but it offends my sensibilities when the log shows that I've deleted a description when I hadn't even looked at the edit page, just the combine page.."

YES. It's the GR combine function that does the deletion, not me!

And it seems like it's not just combines. I often see in the change log that I have supposedly changed or deleted a description when I did NOT touch it and didn't do a combine. Grrrr.

[Elizabeth (Alaska)]

Mesembryanthemum wrote: " I often see in the change log that I have supposedly changed or deleted a description "

Yes, the change log has become somewhat unreliable. It logs things we *didn't* do and sometimes fails to log things we *did* do.