Tag expansion delay / 2am downtime
UPDATE: (1) Work-logic is still coming. In that connection, you will see incorrect "shared" numbers if you look at your catalog early this morning. It's still calculating the "initial" guesses. I had to redo it to correct for forgetting to hint that titles differing only with respect to capitalization were probably the same book... (2) I've expanded the tag field. If I don't notice a performance impact, it will stay that way.
The current tag field is capped at 255 characters. A post yesterday begged for an expanded tag field, and I said I'd look into it. I didn't get to it last night, but I will tonight.
I'm going to take LibraryThing down at 2am EST (11pm PST, 7am GMT—see I got the GMT right this time!). This will give me time to do the tag thing and bring some works-based stuff online. I've had to rewrite the "people who own X also own Y" system. In the process, I've added the ability to see the recommendations raw (Harry Potter wins!), weighted (the current system), omitting books by the author of the suggesting book, and flagging the books you already own. With luck, I'll bring that live tomorrow.
The current tag field is capped at 255 characters. A post yesterday begged for an expanded tag field, and I said I'd look into it. I didn't get to it last night, but I will tonight.
I'm going to take LibraryThing down at 2am EST (11pm PST, 7am GMT—see I got the GMT right this time!). This will give me time to do the tag thing and bring some works-based stuff online. I've had to rewrite the "people who own X also own Y" system. In the process, I've added the ability to see the recommendations raw (Harry Potter wins!), weighted (the current system), omitting books by the author of the suggesting book, and flagging the books you already own. With luck, I'll bring that live tomorrow.
posted by Tim at 3:41 PM
22 Comments:
Ooooh, I didn't notice when it changed, but I realised this evening that you can now successfully sort within a selection (e.g. books by one author, or with a common tag). Hoorah! Working out which books of a series one has has just become a little easier although it would be easier still if we could sort by comments field too - I don't think I'm the only person using that to distinguish volumes in a series (tagging isn't really adequate for that, unfortunately).
I use tags to distinguish volumes in series and in sets. I use the tag "series" for things like Lord of the Rings, Hitch-hicker's Guide to the Galaxy (both of those I also tag "trilogy"), and Harry Potter. I use "set" currently just for Japanese books which are sold in multiple volumes even though their English translations are sold in single volumes. I also often use a per-series tag such as "harry potter", "lotr", or "h2g2".
Then I use plain numeric tags to show which number it is in the series or set.
Thank you very much, Tim. I appreciate this tremendously.
anonymous (hospice volunteer)
hippietrail, how do you then sort 24 volumes of a set to find out which one is missing?
What are the limits on other feilds. I have hit limits on title and author, but I accept that most people will use "lord Dunsany" rather than "Edward John Moreton Drax Plunkett 18th Barron Dunsany" personally I'd like to mention it's an Irish peerage in there somewhere. Comments I have made very large without problems.
Dear Tim,
I thought that maybe I could be of help if I cited specific problems as they happen.
I wanted to share my library items on Burney with friends. I advised them to go into the search engine for all the books: hit zeitgeist, and then hit search.
However, when the friend (and then I) got to search although by hitting "Burney" (Fanny Burney is the author) in the author search column throughout Library Thing, we could reach all the books in my library by
Burney (16), we could not also reach all the books on Burney.
I typed Burney into the tag mechanism and kept getting back as a reply there is no such tag.
But there is. We have a tag called Burney precisely to be able to reach the books by and on Burney.
When it works.
So the friend could not reach the set of books more valuable as a search. For type "Burney" into Amazon and you easily reach 10 books by her and more.
Why did the search engine deny I have a tag "Burney."
I still have the experience occasionally that when I type a name of an author into the search engine on my own catalogue, I get back senseless lists of books. If I persist, sometimes the search engine kicks in properly, but not always.
Sylvia (my other pseudonym)
Tim,
Looking forward to all the improvements - LT just keeps getting better and better!
One thing I noticed, though, is that on my profile page it says I do not share any titles with anyone (which I know is not true). Is this what you are refering to in your update where you say, "you will see incorrect "shared" numbers if you look at your catalog early this morning."
Sharon (SharonGoforth on LT)
hippietrail, how do you then sort 24 volumes of a set to find out which one is missing?
Aha. I don't. The only way you could currently get sorting would be to put the number also in another field such as the first tag or the comment field.
In the long term I can think of two ways: either specific fields for series and sets or the ability for users to create their own custom fields.
Any chance you could increase the limit on the title field? I've run into that one quite a few times (e.g. my set of the complete works of William Makepeace Thackeray where there is a title for the set followed by the titles of the works contained in each volume).
Not a huge problem - just a "wish list" item :)
Thanks!
Please disregard my earlier comment - they're back.
Sharon
Maybe you should put some kind of indication in the tags entry area that they should be comma separated, as I ended up entering a lot of tags with just spaces between, not realizing it wouldn't separate them automagically.
Another cool feature in the "profile" area would be "People who have your books and have approximately the same number of books". Obviously not that wordily put. The current "People that have your books" will always just list the persons with the largest library, which kind of makes it pointless.
Did I dream this? Somewhere (I think in the list of shared books on another user's page) I recall seeing
"You have this book. Go to your copy." Now when I click on a shared book on someone else's page, I just get the social data, and no link to my copy.
[Tim: I had to redo it to correct for forgetting to hint that titles differing only with respect to capitalization were probably the same book...]
Could you hint about diacritics too?
http://www.librarything.com/author/reichskathy
Déjà dead
Deja Dead
Kathryn
When I edit a listing, if I add tags or comments, and then go to the "Change cover" feature, when I grab the new cover I lose all other edits I had not yet submitted; if I do it the other way around (i.e. change the cover --without submitting it--) and then add tags, and submit it all at once, it saves everything. Can you make it stop that? (I mean stop losing stuff, not stop saving stuff...but you knew that.)
I and I think somebody else has previously reported the "edits lost when changing cover" bug.
Until it is fixed the workaround is to change the cover first, then do your other edits. Then finally click submit.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Chris,
http://groups.google.com/group/LibraryThing
I also had an email return from Chris' mail server.
Hi Tim, I'm the user who asked for the Tag field's aggregate characters to be expanded to 300 (at least).
My "problematic" books are still not allowing me to add any more characters in the Tags field (e.g. I can't get that "death of moth" field to budge!). I've been trying this off and on over the last 3 days, since you mentioned that you were going to be working on it.
So - can you kindly post a quick note here when this update has been made successfully?
Many thanks!!
anonymous hospice volunteer
Hey. Two issues:
The characters-per tag limit wasn't changed. It is currently 20. Let me know if you *need* it to change. I'm not sure if I can do it, however.
There are two places where tags can be entered—the catalog and your edit page. The former was still restricting the length (but not truncating). The latter wasn't. I've fixed it so that neither truncates or restricts.
Let me know how it's going.
Hi Tim,
The characters-per tag limit wasn't changed. It is currently 20. Let me know if you *need* it to change.
Nope, I never needed that one to change. My main concern was the limit on the aggregate characters across all tags. So I'm happy!
There are two places where tags can be entered—the catalog and your edit page. The former was still restricting the length (but not truncating). The latter wasn't. I've fixed it so that neither truncates or restricts.
OK, now I understand! I had tried to make the change via the catalogue, and of course it hadn't worked ... but it never occurred to me to try the edit page instead. As you say, that has been fixed; and just now I was finally able to lay "death of moth" to rest.
I am absolutely thrilled. This will make a world of difference in usability for us. Your responsiveness and hard work is very deeply appreciated. Thank you so much!
anonymous the hospice volunteer
tst
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