I've been on LT for a couple of years now, and this is the first outage that has inconvenienced me. And that's what it has done - inconvenienced me. It hasn't destroyed my day, or caused me to lose faith in humanity. And for the record, I do not have my head up Tim's butt, although I am sure he's a nice guy and all. I will be patient and wait for LT to be back up and running, and enjoy looking at everyone's bookpiles, and get on with my life. Some people out there just need to chill.
Is it just me who bought a new pair of books today thinking he could go on with them without LT available for cataloguing ? I did. Although I knew I would miss it, I couldn't avoid getting, for just ten bucks, "Nova" or "The Einstein Intersection" on hardcover from Delany.
My husband Tim (for whom my e-mail the other night was actually intended) is from Ireland. Lucky you, I love visiting that part of the world, and I hoped you took advantage of your ice cream visit to snag a few Magnum bars.
I remember back in June 1999 (I think), the great eBay was down for something like 24 hours, maybe even longer. That company too had to go through some growing pains and learn from experience the need for redundant servers etc. Of course in that case, eBay's outage created a lot of consternation among folks who had built a business around it.
I can't get too exercised about this outage because as much as I love and miss LT, it's a hobby for me. Hang in there, don't let the b's getcha down.
Growing pains... who's never experienced them?! I'm not surprised that "the systems" can (and do) "go down", since we're also their designers/builders. Disappointed LT'ers out there -remember the monetary investment required of you to "LT" your books, etc. You are getting so much more than what you put monetarily into it! Yes, you have also invested your time, but think about how Tim & the LT staff must feel. They've put their lives into this site. This is their full time job and beyond! Tim, Abby,.... keep up the good work. I know "L'ing's" will be looking up!
Am I in the right place?I read an article about library thing but this looks like a blog.Is this supposed to be like shelfari?I dont get it.This says post comments?
Above: Yes, Shelfari is a copy of LibraryThing. LibraryThing is currently having a down time. Shelfari and the 30-odd other imitators (and one or two originals) are not.
News: John says things are looking up. Also, I'm working on a scheme to spread the load among the current servers, if that fails. I am not sure it can handle it, but it's worth a try if John's route doesn't pan out.
Second update: The Sligo Clarion hotel gives you a fortune cookie when you order fries and coffee. I don't know why. Mine says "love overcomes everything." Hold hands and the server will mend.
Maybe you mean a colour but the first book which came to my mind was "End of the world blues" from Jon Courtenay Grimwood. Can't think on another one right now, although I didn't buy it. Should I ?
Expecting my mother-in-law tomorrow for a week long visit, so I've been organizing my books/ things here. No necessity to catalogue but it's a periodic reward (sort of the concentrated umph.) In anticipation of the resurgence of this site, I toying with the plan of composing a text file of the ISBNs or Library of Congress Cat. Numbers, or (if predating these identifiers) just the author's last name, comma, and book title. So when we're back on-line I can jump start my part. This stop-gap plan might be helpful to others here.
Yeah, I think we'll let people back in one IP number at a time. No, I won't tell you which numbers will be first. You'll all go out and use proxies to get a different IP...
It's a very cool side effect of this Terrible Crisis that everyone's chatting together on the blog instead of being holed up alone with our CueCats. But what's REALLY cool is that when LT is back up, I'll actually be able to delete a bunch of my "unread" tags. Hey, every cloud has a silver lining...
Site will be "up by dinner" -- ok, is that 'dinner' as in the mid-day meal of the farm belt? (where supper is the evening meal) or "dinner" as in east coast chic 9pm meal? or the Italian version of dinner at midnight? ;o)
Really, I'm being patient and appreciate all the work you guys are putting into it.
We're not the ones living on fries and coffee! They have some great food in Ireland. Please, relax for a while and eat a decent meal.
"let people back in"
Some of us are honest people, and would never dream of going out and using proxies to jump the queue. (Nothing to do with the fact that we don't even know how to do that.) Surely you'll let those people go first.
And I JUST found the 'take shelves' at work! Oh, sweet irony! Now I am sitting in my little cubicle surrounded by pretty new books, unable to read OR log.
Seriously, though [and my head is near NO ONE'S sphincter], the effort put into fixing these problems is quite heartening, as are the constant updates, which have kept me from total mental collapse. Or boredom. Yeah, OK, boredom.
Those 259 previous comments can still be read (in all their glory). Go to the main LibraryThing blog page and near the top on the right under "Previous Posts" select the topmost field or so. This way Tim needn't repost his comments; they are accessible still. Just twiddling, being helpful and amusinging myself by reading and writing comments.
I literally have been on LT for about 10 minutes of my life.. during that time that it was back up yesterday, or whenever that was. I don't know Tim, John, or Abby. I loved it for the time that I got to check it out, and I'm excited to use it more. But I am SHOCKED at how rude people are being about LT being down. This definitely DOES happen, and whatever your feelings are, there is no reason to be so rude about it all. Why don't you wait until later to politely give them your suggestions?? Complaining and attacking them definitely won't fix anything, and probably will only make things worse because these people who are working their butts off to fix the problem. And this ridiculous stuff about John's vacation... it's none of anyone's business if he was or was not working, people are allowed to take a break from life. John, I wish that you had been on a real vacation instead of a fake one... it seems like you deserve it. I can't wait to use LT more, and thanks for everything you're doing. And go on a vacation when you're done... all three of you! You need it!
Hear, hear! Because we all know that nothing changes behavior one finds objectionable faster and more reliably than a generalized, anonymous scolding in a public forum! (Except maybe a sound thrashing by an ape of some sort. But, sadly, the intertubes can't accommodate ape-scale bandwidth yet....)
This is directed at anyone who thinks this situation is no big deal--
I looked at comptetiters sites- yes I looked- and found something interesting. On the anobii blog there was a post dated May 12th saying they were reaching there 500,000th book. Which feels like no big whoop except there current count is 960,000 plus. The books catalogued doubled in a month, which coincides with the problems LT has been having the last month. I doubt that's a coincidence.
It's dangerous and blind methinks to say this is no big deal. People will go elsewhere for good service.
"**I met my husband online using a Commodore 64 and 300 baum modem in 1989. :D"
Ahhhh ... how I miss all the old romance in life! Tea at Tiffany's; a late supper at the Savoy; a Mediterranean cruise through the Greek islands; a glorious night at the Met. or Covent Garden opera house; drinking and gambling into the night at Monte Carlo; being dressed to the nines in a tux and dancing and carousing in the early hours of the morning to the dulcet strains of Bix Beiderbecke and his hot jazz ensemble; and, of course, those halcyon, carefree hours spent unshaven in my terrycloth bathrobe chatting-up chics on a Commodore 64 via a 300 baud modem. :) Oh, how I miss the eighties! :(
That decade had such class ... such elegance ... such style ... such poise ... such joie de vivre. Unfortunately, all those happy, indolent, lotus-eating, frolics of my salad days spent with a bulky keyboard and a battered Hayes modem are now now just faint, fond memories of a past Golden Age. :(
So thank you so much, Morphidae, for helping me to recapture some of the ecstasy and joy of my misspent youth with such a poetic post ... for a brief moment there all mu past bliss came flooding back to me!
wow mr. anonymous (if thats even your real name!) .. a few months ago I did import my catalog over to anbii to test it out .. I spent a couple of hours there (wasted hours) and quickly rushed back to LT.
I'd bet you a fair amount of money that Tim, John, and Abby feel that this downtime is a very big deal.
your anger is misdirected .. look at your anger .. then let it go.. let it be.
Just a little reminder for us to be grateful for what we have every day. LibraryThing will be back up and running and I'll thank God for letting me participate on this wonderful site. I wouldn't want to be in the support people's shoes. The stress must be immense. Just chill, thing will be ok. And p.s. I'll remember you in my prayers.
Well, go. We won't miss you, because we don't know who you are. Is it possible to disable the ability to post anonymously on here? I don't see any advantage in it, except to people who want to be snarky without being identified,by so much as a made-up user name.
So, disaster, for not only is LT down (ok, so as people have pointed out, maybe that's not so much a disaster, more an inconvenience) but DISASTER, for my bookpile entry isn't showing up on flickr, despite my correct taggage!
I have become very dependent on LT. I have been trying to catalog my collection for 15 years, but I have made more progress in the few months that I have been using LT.
This outage is distressing for me. But the service is so valuable that I can afford to be patient.
Even with the service down for two days I still am farther ahead then I would have been without it.
"Is it possible to disable the ability to post anonymously on here?"
laytonwoman3rd, people are posting anonymously because the only other options are to post with a Google or Blogger user id. or with a web page address. Even if some of us have those, if they are NOT the same id. as our regular LT user id. then it is still effectively an anonymous post. I am not sure how folks are posting with their actual LT id. - I'm assuming it is because they use that same id. everywhere on the web (or at least on Blogger and/or Google).
anonymous @5:12, I don't have a Google/Blogger ID. So I click on "Other" and use my LT username. You could use anything you wanted, but if nothing else not using "anonymous" gives people a way of distinguishing among the multiple anonymouses. [This is when I like the /. approach of replacing "anonymous" with "anonymous coward" for people who can't even be bothered to come up with a creative throwaway ID.]
(It *asks* for a web page, but also states that it's optional.)
Despite problems like this prolonged outage, I have no plans to abandon LT. I do worry, however, that it will eventually abandon me. A business model based on collecting a one-time fee of $25 or less doesn't strike me as viable in the long run. That's why I'm careful to download my catalogue at frequent intervals, lest the results of my work vanish into cyberlimbo.
I too am dismayed with the Rudeness and the lack of perspective shown by people who can't deal with the outage.
Yes, you may have paid for it, but as a lifetime member myself, it isn't a large amount. And wouldn't even cover the hour of a computer professional's time.
It also isn't a regular problem, so I think the users should in fact think of it as no big deal. I don't for a minute think that Tim, Abby and John do. That is a distinction that some have failed to make.
Computer problems happen and that is a fact of life. You deal with it, learn from it, and move on.
I have had wonderful service, whenever I have a problem or a question, and I think they do a very good job with the public service also. That doesn't mean they are perfect, or can't improve. But kicking people when they are down is repulsive.
Constructive criticism from members of the community is helpful. Potshots from the 'anonymous' peanut gallery are not.
If you're missing it that much, we have a Commodore 64 and a working Vic 20 in the basement - yours for the asking...(along with an entire MAC museum).
Tim, Abby, John; we're with you so hang in there. LT is the best $25 I've spend in a very long time!
As I've said, the book on top of my to be cataloged queue is by Judith Viorst.
So, I'm driving home today, and Daniel Schorr starts talking about the fans dislike of The Sopranos ending. Means nothing to Daniel because he wasn't a The Sopranos fan. But his good friend Judith Viorst was a big fan; such a big fan that if The Sopranos producers wanted to end it with a big blackout then that was ok with her.
Omen, from my next LT author. Is the big blackout ok with me, even if I'm a fan?
rule42, "lorax" is my LT handle, and my standard blog-commenting ID. Nobody says you need to use your real name, but something consistent and non-ambiguous is always a help.
"Megan" and "Mark" and "Ray" aren't necessarily using their real names, either -- I could just as easily sign things as "Steve" and nobody would ever suspect I was pseudonymous.
"If you're missing it that much, we have a Commodore 64 and a working Vic 20 in the basement - yours for the asking...(along with an entire MAC museum)."
No thanks, avaland, I have my own mini-museum full of techno-artifacts from the 80s and 90s, which I have no intention of resurrecting back to life (in the spirit of BLITEOTW) let alone expanding!
I suggest you offer your old Commodore 64 and a Vic 20 to Tim ... he might be able to utilize them as redundant primary servers.
While I think some have expressed their frustrations rudely, I disagree that it is no big deal. I have two collections on LibraryThing for which I'm responsible, my personal collection (kahudson) and our center's small reading room. We are in negotiations with the library regarding inclusion in their catalog, but that's a long (odd) story. Basically, we needed a temporary solution until we could work something out with them. Having used LT for my personal collection, I suggested it to my supervisor.
The books are being appraised just as we are finishing inputting them. (By my estimate we have 400-600 left.) The appraiser had a deadline of tomorrow. We've brought on graduate assistants especially for this. Obviously, we haven't been able to add them to the system. I understand the downtime, but my supervisor does not. My humble suggestion is not looking as good now.
I understand that things happen. (I would have preferred they happen a month earlier or a month later.) I also understand that these sorts of things take time. No, it isn't a big deal for my personal collection. However, it can be under other circumstances. As I hope that LTers deal with the staff/management courteously and with empathy, I wish that LTers would not minimize the problems this may have caused others by saying it's "no big deal."
has anyone recommended Farina's Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me as part of a bookpile;)? Look forward to getting the site back... Thanks for letting us have it in the first place.
you know ....I have never ever been to a web site that was down for over two days. This is not professional. This is amateur.....and the reason some do 'anonymous is because they may not have a google blog.
Thanks to morphidae and lorax for pointing out the various possibilities for posting here when you don't have a Google or Blogger account. Should have done so myself; I use the "Other" box too.
And the plural of "anonymous" is clearly "anonymice".
I am sure you all have read the same sentiment from everyone else. Like a lot of other LT "addicts", I have been checking back on the site status multiple times a day. I love it and I miss it. I have made more progress in getting my books catalogued in the past few months since I joined LT than in all my years of reading and collecting prior to this. So YAY for LT!
Being in IT, dealing with HW and SW on a daily basis, I know that things like this can happen at any time. One can try and minimize the risk, find workarounds, work around the clock but **NOBODY** can guarantee a 100% uptime through the years. And while it may inconvenience some users and disastrously impact others, you must believe that the people/team responsible for the system are doing everything they can to make things right. Because whether we like it or not, the downtime is a direct reflection of the team's ability to deliver what the users need/want and nobody likes to admit failure (even if it is not something we can control). When you consider a startup like LT where the people supporting the site are also the ones who depend on it for their livelihood, the anguish, worry and stress is only compounded.
So let's all take a deep breath, take a step back, read some books and let Tim and his team set things right.
Last but not least, not sure if anyone else had the same experience but both times that the site was down, I e-mailed the team and both times, received a personal reply back from John with details. Not a canned reply, not a cut-n-paste status from the website home page but an actual reply addressing the issues I had raised in my e-mail. I find it mind-blowingly awesome that in the midst of all the chaos and worry, they could and did take the time to respond to my e-mail. If that doesn't show how much they value their users/customers and take any and all feedback seriously, then I don't know what does.
There! Now that I have that out of my system, it is time to go read some books and wait for LT to come back so I can go back to cataloging my collection.
BTW it is nice to see so many LTers sharing their thoughts on this blog. If nothing else, at least the downtime had the pleasant side-effect of making us gather here. :)
I suggest we just ignore the whiners. They are probably just thugs for the competing sites. Did you see anyone you know from LT whining? I guess not. Let's stop feeding the anonymous trolls.
The Day the Book Site Died A Novella for LibraryThing addicts, by LibraryThing addicts.
Suzie Petulance was not unlike other kids her age: she enjoyed playing with her friends, reading books, and surfing the Internet. One glorious day, Suzie discovered a magical new Web site called LibraryThing.com. She was mesmerized by it, and quickly opened an account (she was, of course, at least thirteen years of age, as the Term of Service stated that she had to be).
She soon began cataloging her books, and even joined some of the sites many groups, where she met scores of interesting new friends from around the world. Suzie was soon spending every free hour on this new and wonderful site, even though it kept her from seeing her friends--or sunlight for that matter. She didn’t mind though, she had made new friends, albeit she couldn’t see them, she new they existed. And her skin had never looked better, so all-in-all she figured this to be a good thing.
Then one hot day in June (she, of course, lived in the northern hemisphere--it was a cool day in June for some of her new friends) a disastrous thing happed. That morning, she sat down at her computer, logged in to her LibraryThing and found...
In generic terms, replicating means they are making a copy of either the data or the whole system from a "source" (backup, another DB, another server) to the "destination" (the rebuilt server). Once done, the site should be up. :)
Time taken to complete this step depends on the amount of data to be replicated and the bandwith (how big the pipe is through which the data is traveling between source and destination) available.
Having said that, a cup of Earl Grey would definitely not be amiss, replicator or no replicator! Live long and prosper, LT! :)
I too am an LT addict. I just want to say Thanks to the peeps that make LT possible. I know you are under a TON of stress to get back online so we can get our fix - just know that it is appreciated!
I suggest we just ignore the whiners. They are probably just thugs for the competing sites. Did you see anyone you know from LT whining? I guess not. Let's stop feeding the anonymous trolls.
Don't be ridiculous. It's great that so many users are patient and tolerant, and I'm sure Tim is very grateful for the supportive comments, but people have a right to be upset when a service they've paid for goes down for an unconscionable length of time. You realize there are institutions using this as part of their cataloguing system, right? If you were thinking of doing that, you'd probably be having second and third thoughts about now. And if you'd just convinced your boss to put money into a LT account, you'd probably be pretty pissed off.
I cringe when I see the aggressive comments, too, but you know what? Those people have a grievance and they have a right to express it however seems best to them, and you don't really come off to well calling them "anonymous trolls." This site is not your family or your spouse, it's a commercial website, and people who run such sites have to get used to dealing with heated complaints. I think Tim's doing well at that, and I suggest you leave it up to him. He doesn't need "supporters" who wantonly insult other paying customers.
I miss Library Thing *sniff* I might possibly be going through withdrawal as I have only cataloged a quarter of my book collection, if that (I think I was at 313 when LT died). But in the grand scheme of things a few days without LT will not ruin anyone's life. So long as we don't crash the server again in our rush to catalog new things once the site is up and running again!
that a zombie uprising had kidnapped the Web site's founder and spirited him off to Gibraltar. This wouldn't have been so bad, but it also meant that *gasp* the site was down! Distraught beyond tears, Suzie . . .
Ok, I admit it, I checked out a copycat site this afternoon. Can I just say that Shelfari sucks? I lasted all of about 10 minutes before I decided I'd rather play with poison ivy.
I have spent the most enjoyable 15 minutes of my LT experience browsing the last howevermany comments(adding books is only fun in SM manuals). I think it is a wonderful site, and have recently finished cataloguing my library. Of all the posts I read, only one seemed to legitimately deserve our sympathy –someone had suggested using LT for more than just their own collection and it crashed at a time that only Murhpy could have chosen, proof if any is necessary that shit happens! I too have had the incredibly fast and personal responses that have recently been mentioned, and am not even remotely pissed off by the outage. My hands are beginning to shake as I write this, however, as the latest Ian McEwan book has just arrived... so I have something that has not been bagged!! Thanks you all at LT for wonderful service, and for scrambling as you have! Don't know how many customers you have in Chile, but this one loves ya...
1. We're letting people in batches. We're at about 30% of IPs and it's holding up fine. If you are getting the down page, try clicking the logo to get to the home page. If you get the down page again, sorry, you're not lucky. 2. Various automatic processes will not run until sometime tomorrow. This includes the imports. We're trying to "control" as many factors as possible. 3. Some data, like the Zeitgeist, has not been updated in two days. It will update slowly. It's a big "behind the curve." 4. I'm currently repairing the books that have no work. There will be some problems there. They can be resolved. 5. We are going to do a big wrap-up blog post. What happened. What we learned. What we're going to do. It's not going to happen tonight. We need a little breathing room on this, and also to sleep, eat, talk to wives, etc.
Oh, bliss. I added two books, and updated my thread on the 50 Book Challenge Group. I will leave it there for tonight, so as not to overtax the recovery. Blessings on you, John and who-all. You done good.
LibraryThing was launched on August 29th 2005, the same day and year that Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and the Gulf Coast of the United States of American.
It will take decades to rebuild homes and lives due to Hurricane Katrina's fury.
Do not forget this fact as the small staff of LibraryThing attempts to have all ISPs link into the full service they have provided since 2005.
Glad to see you're back... as long as nothing was lost (and nothing appears to have been) I could live without it for a few hours [but I was VERY glad to see it back ^_^] AND I would like to thank you for having updated us along the way about the outage. More outfits should take a page out of your book and do that when something unexpected happens.
I work with someone who constantly taking down our server to do new things and what not. Why he does while we're all at work is completely beyond me. It always takes a bit of patience to bare (I lack that) and a few 'I swear I'll have his head for this'. ;). I never realized how true what my family was saying about my need for LT, until it broke down.
Congrats to everyone who can now enjoy it again! And many many many ..... oh I'm speechless what to say. THANK YOU SO MUCH LT STAFF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
BTW, when do we hear who won the bookpile contest?
Everything works well again. I gave the system a little workout, but will finish for now, so you can ramp up slowly. Thanks for all the work, updates, late hours. It was but a mere inconvenience in the grand scheme of things...and I managed to catalog almost 1000 comics in our comics collection (I don't use LT for this...sorry). Thank you so much for getting everything going again.
Hooray! Thank you so much for all your hard work to create this wonderful site, and to get it back up and running so promptly. I love LibraryThing. Wishing you all a few beverages and a good sleep, in whichever order you need them most! - tripleblessings
Well done. Thanks too for noting the comment about 'time' in the context of LT. It helped relieve the stress to know where you were in terms of the 24 hour cycle.
Good morning from England and thank you for your hard work and for keeping us in touch. I have looked at the blog but cannot find an answer to the following query. At the present I am unable to 'see' my library. Maybe this is an idiosyncratic problem. Maybe I need to be patient but I htought I should ask for clarification. Many thanks Julie
I was one of the lucky ones. I got in fairly early last night and got my 5 new (to me) books catalogued. I too echo what most have been saying - thank you for keeping us up to date - that was sooooooooo important to me. and thanks for working to get LT back and running. Now if I could just learn about all the other features besides cataloguing . . . .
I blame it all on the magazine Real Simple (an organization and lifestyle management mag.) Two days ago I received my copy and it said "Why don't you... visit LibraryThing.com?"
It must be all the OCD people like me went "oooh... ok."
Yay!! You're back!! I'm very happy, as I'm sure all at LT towers are too . . .
Hmmmm, considering sending you cookies, but they'd only squish in the post, so I'll have to eat them on your behalf (it's a chore, but I'll muddle through).
Thankyou!! For all your hard work and sleepless nights. It's easy to criticize from without, and have a grumble about a site being down. But in reality you, I'm sure, have suffered many times more than any one of us out here.
Just to put things in perspective, the LT outage was annoying, but THIS is an outage: "Russian computers controlling the International Space Station's (ISS) orientation and supply of oxygen and water have failed, Nasa officials say." -- BBC news
The queue took forever to clear out. The newly added books feeds are days behind. I'm not particularly filled with confidence that you guys are back on track yet. How about another update?
I think it turned into a great job of handling the outage, even though it didn't start out that way, and that's very interesting. I say this as someone who hardly thought her life was ruined because LT wasn't available for three days (though I'm happy it's back).
The outage started with a long silence accompanied by a message that the site would be back in 5 - 10 minutes, and no other information. By early Monday evening came updates, engagement, games to while away the time, even the expert closing of blog posts and reopening of others.
I'd say it was a great example of changing a wheel on a moving vehicle -- actually developing a PR plan even while the crisis unfolded behind scenes. Good job.
Catherine, I thought "send food" too, but in our skeptical times I thought that was a poor idea. What if every LTer sent a dollar bill for the late night Pizza or Whatever fund?
As for the self righteous comments to the effect that "I paid for it and LT owes me perfection," I can only shake my head in disbelief. In the real world, things go wrong unexpectedly and people of good faith do everything they can to repair the damage. It happens in big corporations, it happens in nonprofits, it happens in households. . .it just happens. And it happened here.
My own view is that I paid $25.00 to help defray the cost of a service that I love. I do not kid myself into believing that $25.00 pays the real cost of providing me with a personal library catalog and literary community for a lifetime. Whatever else this is, it is also a labor of love. I did not buy any slaves, although I hope I contributed a tiny bit to maintaining the Read Slave.
By the way, I trust nobody with a free account would have the audacity to wax self righteous about this unfortunate event.
One more comment, and I will get off my soap box: "Unconscionable" is a strong word. It means "not guided by conscience; unscrupulous" according to the Random House dictionary. Surely, Language, you did not really mean that.
Yeah. A hiccup. Monitoring code—we're trying to get the load down—backfired. Not related to the previous database issues per se. Think of it as a brief after-tremor...
What's the deal with not seeing what books we share with others? Why has the feature been disabled and when we might see the feature come back again? Thanks for being honest, unlike some websites...
i'm still having problems with LT....is it just me? When it came back up, I initially couldn't do searches, but eventually I got that back too. But now i'm getting that "server too busy, search disabled" message. i've been getting it for about a day now, so i'm starting to get a bit concerned. is it turned off until the new server is up? if i had some idea of when it might be back or what the holdup is, i'd stop checking every hour...
Hi. Which searches are you doing and from where? Some of the searches HAVE been turned off. We're running very hot right now, and until the spare server arrives we don't want to risk another downtime. Still, I don't recognize that exact message. Are you searching your own catalog or the whole site?
Tim: When I try to use the Search page (http://www.librarything.com/search), all 8 options on that page are disabled "Due to heavier than normal traffic, searches below are temporarily disabled."
Library searching within my own library page works fine, along with tags and authors from their pages, respectively. There's no alternate method for works though.
The main search was disabled after the downtime, came back, then was disabled again.
"Unconscionable" is a strong word. It means "not guided by conscience; unscrupulous" according to the Random House dictionary. Surely, Language, you did not really mean that.
I don't have the Random House, but Merriam-Webster (a standard reference for editors) includes the sense "excessive, unreasonable," which is how it's most commonly used; if the RH doesn't include a comparable definition, you should chuck it and get a better dictionary.
Uh, Language, the FIRST definition of "unconscionable" in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary is "not guided or controlled by conscience, unscrupulous". The SECOND definition is yours. :^)
Uh, Celeste, M-W orders definitions historically; the first definition is the earliest attested, not the most commonly used. This is my major gripe against M-W dictionaries, otherwise probably the best general-purpose American dictionaries -- since most people don't understand the ordering (who reads dictionary prefaces?), they naturally take the first definition to be the basic one, which often leads them badly astray. (Look up "bead": how often do you use it to mean 'prayer,' which is the first definition in M-W?). The New Oxford American, a more up-to-date reference, has two definitions: "not right or reasonable" and "unreasonably excessive." Do you see anything about "conscience" in there? No, because that's not how it's used today.
I don't blame you for not knowing how M-W orders its definitions, but next time you want to get picky with someone whose username is "language" you might want to make sure of your ground first.
Utterly unlearned, Language, that's me. I bow to your superior ability in finding only YOUR definition in dictionaries. It is a special skill of which you are obviously proud. However, I find your habit of belittling others in discussions unconscionable. Enjoy your cream.
I bow to your superior ability in finding only YOUR definition in dictionaries. It is a special skill of which you are obviously proud. However, I find your habit of belittling others in discussions unconscionable.
Excuse me? You started this; if you hadn't felt the need to snipe at me (for no reason I can see) I wouldn't have had to point out the fact that you neither know the meaning of the word "unconscionable" nor know how to use a dictionary. If your feelings are hurt that easily, you shouldn't pick quarrels. And it's not my definition, it's the definition, unlike yours, which is completely obsolete. You don't even have the grace to admit when you're wrong. Enjoy your life.
Okay, too much heat for this blog, and into the ad hominem range the TOS prohibits. I suspect that both of you would regret anything more said anyway. I'm turning comments on this post off.
178 Comments:
I've been on LT for a couple of years now, and this is the first outage that has inconvenienced me. And that's what it has done - inconvenienced me. It hasn't destroyed my day, or caused me to lose faith in humanity. And for the record, I do not have my head up Tim's butt, although I am sure he's a nice guy and all. I will be patient and wait for LT to be back up and running, and enjoy looking at everyone's bookpiles, and get on with my life. Some people out there just need to chill.
Lost, aimless, adrift, purposeless, directionless, unsettled, rootless...
I think I'm going through dt's
I've been a bit lost without LT having just unpacked 4 boxes of books to put on the newly built bookcases.
But it's not the end of the world.
If you look at the contacts there are FOUR staff running the whole operation.
And though I'm in the UK so noting was happening in MY mornings, I look forward to the resumtion of service soon.
I am decaying away
give me my LT
no breaks now.
This moment I realize how much LibraryThing has become a part of my life :)
Must.. index.... book... soon.
Thanks for the good work guys, and hopefully it comes up soon! Best wishes!
Is it just me who bought a new pair of books today thinking he could go on with them without LT available for cataloguing ? I did. Although I knew I would miss it, I couldn't avoid getting, for just ten bucks, "Nova" or "The Einstein Intersection" on hardcover from Delany.
My husband Tim (for whom my e-mail the other night was actually intended) is from Ireland. Lucky you, I love visiting that part of the world, and I hoped you took advantage of your ice cream visit to snag a few Magnum bars.
I remember back in June 1999 (I think), the great eBay was down for something like 24 hours, maybe even longer. That company too had to go through some growing pains and learn from experience the need for redundant servers etc. Of course in that case, eBay's outage created a lot of consternation among folks who had built a business around it.
I can't get too exercised about this outage because as much as I love and miss LT, it's a hobby for me. Hang in there, don't let the b's getcha down.
Growing pains... who's never experienced them?!
I'm not surprised that "the systems" can (and do) "go down", since we're also their designers/builders.
Disappointed LT'ers out there -remember the monetary investment required of you to "LT" your books, etc. You are getting so much more than what you put monetarily into it!
Yes, you have also invested your time, but think about how Tim & the LT staff must feel. They've put their lives into this site. This is their full time job and beyond!
Tim, Abby,.... keep up the good work. I know "L'ing's" will be looking up!
Am I in the right place?I read an article about library thing but this looks like a blog.Is this supposed to be like shelfari?I dont get it.This says post comments?
Above: Yes, Shelfari is a copy of LibraryThing. LibraryThing is currently having a down time. Shelfari and the 30-odd other imitators (and one or two originals) are not.
News: John says things are looking up. Also, I'm working on a scheme to spread the load among the current servers, if that fails. I am not sure it can handle it, but it's worth a try if John's route doesn't pan out.
Second update: The Sligo Clarion hotel gives you a fortune cookie when you order fries and coffee. I don't know why. Mine says "love overcomes everything." Hold hands and the server will mend.
It might be difficult to hold anyone's hand, with my head ensconced where it is, Tim. ;o) *joke*
Thanks for handling this whole thing with such grace, all of you on the LT team.
Here's hoping for some seriously good mojo!
I just got two books in the mail today from Amazon. They're sitting there uncataloged. That's not natural.
Well, we could play 20 questions in the meantime...
I'm thinking of something blue.
Hey, Clam, turn on the light. It's dark in here.
*shrieks*
Turn it off! Turn.it.off!
9days: Forget-me-nots?
We could also have a down time book challenge.
marise
Something blue - that would be me because LT is down.
So sad - so blue
Morphy, I'm going to need therapy now. :o)
Maybe you mean a colour but the first book which came to my mind was "End of the world blues" from Jon Courtenay Grimwood. Can't think on another one right now, although I didn't buy it. Should I ?
"Blue Mars" from Kim Stanley Robinson, which I own, would do. Now it's my turn. I'm making plans for this "summer". Anyone ?
Polar City Blues is fun.
Caroline541,
You win!
Your turn.
this is a sad thing but one that can be corrected with time and a little patience- carmela
computers are weird
Expecting my mother-in-law tomorrow for a week long visit, so I've been organizing my books/ things here. No necessity to catalogue but it's a periodic reward (sort of the concentrated umph.) In anticipation of the resurgence of this site, I toying with the plan of composing a text file of the ISBNs or Library of Congress Cat. Numbers, or (if predating these identifiers) just the author's last name, comma, and book title. So when we're back on-line I can jump start my part. This stop-gap plan might be helpful to others here.
YAY! That other thread was getting ridikulus.
Next, of course, we'll have to deal with the crash that results from all us junkies logging back on when the stie is back up...
Umm 'site"
But you knew that
Yeah, I think we'll let people back in one IP number at a time. No, I
won't tell you which numbers will be first. You'll all go out and use
proxies to get a different IP...
Tim: Any chance of collecting your status comments from the previous entry and adding them to the text of this entry?
Certainly you'll let AOL users on first, since you feel so bad for us having crappy IPs : )
It's a very cool side effect of this Terrible Crisis that everyone's chatting together on the blog instead of being holed up alone with our CueCats. But what's REALLY cool is that when LT is back up, I'll actually be able to delete a bunch of my "unread" tags. Hey, every cloud has a silver lining...
Site will be "up by dinner" -- ok, is that 'dinner' as in the mid-day meal of the farm belt? (where supper is the evening meal) or "dinner" as in east coast chic 9pm meal? or the Italian version of dinner at midnight? ;o)
Really, I'm being patient and appreciate all the work you guys are putting into it.
I posted two photos to Flickr a while ago and tagged them as LTdown. Do I need to do anything else as they are not showing with others?
"Don't go on a hunger strike."
We're not the ones living on fries and coffee! They have some great food in Ireland. Please, relax for a while and eat a decent meal.
"let people back in"
Some of us are honest people, and would never dream of going out and using proxies to jump the queue. (Nothing to do with the fact that we don't even know how to do that.) Surely you'll let those people go first.
Can anyone tell me what books to buy .. I can't buy a damned thing without my LT TBR list! How can I not buy books ??... arrrgggg!!
And I JUST found the 'take shelves' at work! Oh, sweet irony! Now I am sitting in my little cubicle surrounded by pretty new books, unable to read OR log.
Seriously, though [and my head is near NO ONE'S sphincter], the effort put into fixing these problems is quite heartening, as are the constant updates, which have kept me from total mental collapse. Or boredom. Yeah, OK, boredom.
Those 259 previous comments can still be read (in all their glory). Go to the main LibraryThing blog page and near the top on the right under "Previous Posts" select the topmost field or so. This way Tim needn't repost his comments; they are accessible still. Just twiddling, being helpful and amusinging myself by reading and writing comments.
I literally have been on LT for about 10 minutes of my life.. during that time that it was back up yesterday, or whenever that was. I don't know Tim, John, or Abby. I loved it for the time that I got to check it out, and I'm excited to use it more.
But I am SHOCKED at how rude people are being about LT being down. This definitely DOES happen, and whatever your feelings are, there is no reason to be so rude about it all. Why don't you wait until later to politely give them your suggestions?? Complaining and attacking them definitely won't fix anything, and probably will only make things worse because these people who are working their butts off to fix the problem.
And this ridiculous stuff about John's vacation... it's none of anyone's business if he was or was not working, people are allowed to take a break from life. John, I wish that you had been on a real vacation instead of a fake one... it seems like you deserve it.
I can't wait to use LT more, and thanks for everything you're doing.
And go on a vacation when you're done... all three of you! You need it!
I strongly recommend Macintosh servers....
I miss my Mommy
i think i will do a couple of cartwheels and squeal loudly in delight when the site is back up and running!!! :)
anonymous said...
> [lots of things at 3:11 PM on 6/13/2007]
Hear, hear! Because we all know that nothing changes behavior one finds objectionable faster and more reliably than a generalized, anonymous scolding in a public forum! (Except maybe a sound thrashing by an ape of some sort. But, sadly, the intertubes can't accommodate ape-scale bandwidth yet....)
peace...rainbows...puppies...cool shade...moonlight on sand...bluebirds...peace...
This too shall pass. We will again be as one. Embrace the peace...Become the peace...
Love you all.
This is directed at anyone who thinks this situation is no big deal--
I looked at comptetiters sites- yes I looked- and found something interesting. On the anobii blog there was a post dated May 12th saying they were reaching there 500,000th book. Which feels like no big whoop except there current count is 960,000 plus. The books catalogued doubled in a month, which coincides with the problems LT has been having the last month. I doubt that's a coincidence.
It's dangerous and blind methinks to say this is no big deal. People will go elsewhere for good service.
"**I met my husband online using a Commodore 64 and 300 baum modem in 1989. :D"
Ahhhh ... how I miss all the old romance in life! Tea at Tiffany's; a late supper at the Savoy; a Mediterranean cruise through the Greek islands; a glorious night at the Met. or Covent Garden opera house; drinking and gambling into the night at Monte Carlo; being dressed to the nines in a tux and dancing and carousing in the early hours of the morning to the dulcet strains of Bix Beiderbecke and his hot jazz ensemble; and, of course, those halcyon, carefree hours spent unshaven in my terrycloth bathrobe chatting-up chics on a Commodore 64 via a 300 baud modem. :) Oh, how I miss the eighties! :(
That decade had such class ... such elegance ... such style ... such poise ... such joie de vivre. Unfortunately, all those happy, indolent, lotus-eating, frolics of my salad days spent with a bulky keyboard and a battered Hayes modem are now now just faint, fond memories of a past Golden Age. :(
So thank you so much, Morphidae, for helping me to recapture some of the ecstasy and joy of my misspent youth with such a poetic post ... for a brief moment there all mu past bliss came flooding back to me!
Rule42
Trunk Monkey! That made me giggle.
wow mr. anonymous (if thats even your real name!) .. a few months ago I did import my catalog over to anbii to test it out .. I spent a couple of hours there (wasted hours) and quickly rushed back to LT.
I'd bet you a fair amount of money that Tim, John, and Abby feel that this downtime is a very big deal.
your anger is misdirected .. look at your anger .. then let it go.. let it be.
Just a little reminder for us to be grateful for what we have every day. LibraryThing will be back up and running and I'll thank God for letting me participate on this wonderful site. I wouldn't want to be in the support people's shoes. The stress must be immense. Just chill, thing will be ok. And p.s. I'll remember you in my prayers.
merrymary ... I think that's a book.. "Being Peace" - by Thich Nhat Hanh
(a very good book! )
"people will go elsewhere for good service"
Well, go. We won't miss you, because we don't know who you are. Is it possible to disable the ability to post anonymously on here? I don't see any advantage in it, except to people who want to be snarky without being identified,by so much as a made-up user name.
So, disaster, for not only is LT down (ok, so as people have pointed out, maybe that's not so much a disaster, more an inconvenience) but DISASTER, for my bookpile entry isn't showing up on flickr, despite my correct taggage!
Thus I am posting a link here.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8877178@N07/544534806/
There. :-)
Has the site been down? I'm afraid I've been too busy doing things like going to work every day to notice.
I have become very dependent on LT. I have been trying to catalog my collection for 15 years, but I have made more progress in the few months that I have been using LT.
This outage is distressing for me. But the service is so valuable that I can afford to be patient.
Even with the service down for two days I still am farther ahead then I would have been without it.
"Is it possible to disable the ability to post anonymously on here?"
laytonwoman3rd, people are posting anonymously because the only other options are to post with a Google or Blogger user id. or with a web page address. Even if some of us have those, if they are NOT the same id. as our regular LT user id. then it is still effectively an anonymous post. I am not sure how folks are posting with their actual LT id. - I'm assuming it is because they use that same id. everywhere on the web (or at least on Blogger and/or Google).
Under choose an identity, pick "Other" then all you have to do is type in your name. No website is required.
anonymous @5:12, I don't have a Google/Blogger ID. So I click on "Other" and use my LT username. You could use anything you wanted, but if nothing else not using "anonymous" gives people a way of distinguishing among the multiple anonymouses. [This is when I like the /. approach of replacing "anonymous" with "anonymous coward" for people who can't even be bothered to come up with a creative throwaway ID.]
(It *asks* for a web page, but also states that it's optional.)
Thanks, mothy-drawers ... :)
Despite problems like this prolonged outage, I have no plans to abandon LT. I do worry, however, that it will eventually abandon me. A business model based on collecting a one-time fee of $25 or less doesn't strike me as viable in the long run. That's why I'm careful to download my catalogue at frequent intervals, lest the results of my work vanish into cyberlimbo.
"multiple anonymouses"
anonymouses ????
Anonymii surely?
We're all anonymous on the web, lorax ... or should that be Mr. Lorax?
Rule42 (NOT rule42!)
I too am dismayed with the Rudeness and the lack of perspective shown by people who can't deal with the outage.
Yes, you may have paid for it, but as a lifetime member myself, it isn't a large amount. And wouldn't even cover the hour of a computer professional's time.
It also isn't a regular problem, so I think the users should in fact think of it as no big deal. I don't for a minute think that Tim, Abby and John do. That is a distinction that some have failed to make.
Computer problems happen and that is a fact of life. You deal with it, learn from it, and move on.
I have had wonderful service, whenever I have a problem or a question, and I think they do a very good job with the public service also. That doesn't mean they are perfect, or can't improve. But kicking people when they are down is repulsive.
Constructive criticism from members of the community is helpful. Potshots from the 'anonymous' peanut gallery are not.
Appropriate stack of books considering the situation. (See titles on spines.) Hope things get going again soon. Thanks for your site and your concern.
Pat
Rule42,
If you're missing it that much, we have a Commodore 64 and a working Vic 20 in the basement - yours for the asking...(along with an entire MAC museum).
Tim, Abby, John; we're with you so hang in there. LT is the best $25 I've spend in a very long time!
My LTdown bookpile photo
Just testing if I can post real links here. At least the post "Preview" function works under "Other" ... because it doesn't if you post anonymously!
Rule42
I blame the current zombie apocalypse. Will be waiting patiently for LT to come back up.
As I've said, the book on top of my to be cataloged queue is by Judith Viorst.
So, I'm driving home today, and Daniel Schorr starts talking about the fans dislike of The Sopranos ending. Means nothing to Daniel because he wasn't a The Sopranos fan. But his good friend Judith Viorst was a big fan; such a big fan that if The Sopranos producers wanted to end it with a big blackout then that was ok with her.
Omen, from my next LT author. Is the big blackout ok with me, even if I'm a fan?
;-)
Who would have thought readers would be so impatient. I'm betting they all have big piles of books they could be reading.
rule42, "lorax" is my LT handle, and my standard blog-commenting ID. Nobody says you need to use your real name, but something consistent and non-ambiguous is always a help.
"Megan" and "Mark" and "Ray" aren't necessarily using their real names, either -- I could just as easily sign things as "Steve" and nobody would ever suspect I was pseudonymous.
Okay, I uploaded my Book Pile photo. It's my first one ever so I have no idea when to expect it to show up (or if I even did it correctly).
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8881494@N03/544823559/
"If you're missing it that much, we have a Commodore 64 and a working Vic 20 in the basement - yours for the asking...(along with an entire MAC museum)."
No thanks, avaland, I have my own mini-museum full of techno-artifacts from the 80s and 90s, which I have no intention of resurrecting back to life (in the spirit of BLITEOTW) let alone expanding!
I suggest you offer your old Commodore 64 and a Vic 20 to Tim ... he might be able to utilize them as redundant primary servers.
Rule42
While I think some have expressed their frustrations rudely, I disagree that it is no big deal. I have two collections on LibraryThing for which I'm responsible, my personal collection (kahudson) and our center's small reading room. We are in negotiations with the library regarding inclusion in their catalog, but that's a long (odd) story. Basically, we needed a temporary solution until we could work something out with them. Having used LT for my personal collection, I suggested it to my supervisor.
The books are being appraised just as we are finishing inputting them. (By my estimate we have 400-600 left.) The appraiser had a deadline of tomorrow. We've brought on graduate assistants especially for this. Obviously, we haven't been able to add them to the system. I understand the downtime, but my supervisor does not. My humble suggestion is not looking as good now.
I understand that things happen. (I would have preferred they happen a month earlier or a month later.) I also understand that these sorts of things take time. No, it isn't a big deal for my personal collection. However, it can be under other circumstances. As I hope that LTers deal with the staff/management courteously and with empathy, I wish that LTers would not minimize the problems this may have caused others by saying it's "no big deal."
has anyone recommended Farina's Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up To Me as part of a bookpile;)? Look forward to getting the site back... Thanks for letting us have it in the first place.
you know ....I have never ever been to a web site that was down for over two days. This is not professional. This is amateur.....and the reason some do 'anonymous is because they may not have a google blog.
Thanks to morphidae and lorax for pointing out the various possibilities for posting here when you don't have a Google or Blogger account. Should have done so myself; I use the "Other" box too.
And the plural of "anonymous" is clearly "anonymice".
Anonymii surely?
Surely not. What justification could there be for that form?
I think anonymi is most common, though I personally prefer anonymoi.
I prefer anonymeeses.
I wish they would update the main page. Every time I click, I feel a moment of hope, and then disappointment.
Incidentally, the new Nick Hornby book "Slam" might be a good addition to the bookpile.
Has anyone here read the poetry of A. Nonny Mouse?
Look Familiar?
Anonymice! LOVE it. How can I work it into a conversation? Besides this one?
I am sure you all have read the same sentiment from everyone else. Like a lot of other LT "addicts", I have been checking back on the site status multiple times a day. I love it and I miss it. I have made more progress in getting my books catalogued in the past few months since I joined LT than in all my years of reading and collecting prior to this. So YAY for LT!
Being in IT, dealing with HW and SW on a daily basis, I know that things like this can happen at any time. One can try and minimize the risk, find workarounds, work around the clock but **NOBODY** can guarantee a 100% uptime through the years. And while it may inconvenience some users and disastrously impact others, you must believe that the people/team responsible for the system are doing everything they can to make things right. Because whether we like it or not, the downtime is a direct reflection of the team's ability to deliver what the users need/want and nobody likes to admit failure (even if it is not something we can control). When you consider a startup like LT where the people supporting the site are also the ones who depend on it for their livelihood, the anguish, worry and stress is only compounded.
So let's all take a deep breath, take a step back, read some books and let Tim and his team set things right.
Last but not least, not sure if anyone else had the same experience but both times that the site was down, I e-mailed the team and both times, received a personal reply back from John with details. Not a canned reply, not a cut-n-paste status from the website home page but an actual reply addressing the issues I had raised in my e-mail. I find it mind-blowingly awesome that in the midst of all the chaos and worry, they could and did take the time to respond to my e-mail. If that doesn't show how much they value their users/customers and take any and all feedback seriously, then I don't know what does.
There! Now that I have that out of my system, it is time to go read some books and wait for LT to come back so I can go back to cataloging my collection.
BTW it is nice to see so many LTers sharing their thoughts on this blog. If nothing else, at least the downtime had the pleasant side-effect of making us gather here. :)
Nita
I suggest we just ignore the whiners. They are probably just thugs for the competing sites. Did you see anyone you know from LT whining? I guess not. Let's stop feeding the anonymous trolls.
But what does "we're replicating" mean in terms of how soon the site will be up?
OH! A Replicator!
"Earl Grey! Hot!"
:o)
The Day the Book Site Died
A Novella for LibraryThing addicts, by LibraryThing addicts.
Suzie Petulance was not unlike other kids her age: she enjoyed playing with her friends, reading books, and surfing the Internet. One glorious day, Suzie discovered a magical new Web site called LibraryThing.com. She was mesmerized by it, and quickly opened an account (she was, of course, at least thirteen years of age, as the Term of Service stated that she had to be).
She soon began cataloging her books, and even joined some of the sites many groups, where she met scores of interesting new friends from around the world. Suzie was soon spending every free hour on this new and wonderful site, even though it kept her from seeing her friends--or sunlight for that matter. She didn’t mind though, she had made new friends, albeit she couldn’t see them, she new they existed. And her skin had never looked better, so all-in-all she figured this to be a good thing.
Then one hot day in June (she, of course, lived in the northern hemisphere--it was a cool day in June for some of her new friends) a disastrous thing happed. That morning, she sat down at her computer, logged in to her LibraryThing and found...
Take it, someone.
In generic terms, replicating means they are making a copy of either the data or the whole system from a "source" (backup, another DB, another server) to the "destination" (the rebuilt server). Once done, the site should be up. :)
Time taken to complete this step depends on the amount of data to be replicated and the bandwith (how big the pipe is through which the data is traveling between source and destination) available.
Having said that, a cup of Earl Grey would definitely not be amiss, replicator or no replicator! Live long and prosper, LT! :)
Nita
I too am an LT addict. I just want to say Thanks to the peeps that make LT possible. I know you are under a TON of stress to get back online so we can get our fix - just know that it is appreciated!
I suggest we just ignore the whiners. They are probably just thugs for the competing sites. Did you see anyone you know from LT whining? I guess not. Let's stop feeding the anonymous trolls.
Don't be ridiculous. It's great that so many users are patient and tolerant, and I'm sure Tim is very grateful for the supportive comments, but people have a right to be upset when a service they've paid for goes down for an unconscionable length of time. You realize there are institutions using this as part of their cataloguing system, right? If you were thinking of doing that, you'd probably be having second and third thoughts about now. And if you'd just convinced your boss to put money into a LT account, you'd probably be pretty pissed off.
I cringe when I see the aggressive comments, too, but you know what? Those people have a grievance and they have a right to express it however seems best to them, and you don't really come off to well calling them "anonymous trolls." This site is not your family or your spouse, it's a commercial website, and people who run such sites have to get used to dealing with heated complaints. I think Tim's doing well at that, and I suggest you leave it up to him. He doesn't need "supporters" who wantonly insult other paying customers.
I miss Library Thing *sniff* I might possibly be going through withdrawal as I have only cataloged a quarter of my book collection, if that (I think I was at 313 when LT died). But in the grand scheme of things a few days without LT will not ruin anyone's life. So long as we don't crash the server again in our rush to catalog new things once the site is up and running again!
As one of the lucky winners of the IP lottery I can say 'Looking good!'. Hang in there, everybody.
(Pechmerle, continuing Dodger's tale:)
that a zombie uprising had kidnapped the Web site's founder and spirited him off to Gibraltar. This wouldn't have been so bad, but it also meant that *gasp* the site was down! Distraught beyond tears, Suzie . . .
Ok, I admit it, I checked out a copycat site this afternoon. Can I just say that Shelfari sucks? I lasted all of about 10 minutes before I decided I'd rather play with poison ivy.
I have spent the most enjoyable 15 minutes of my LT experience browsing the last howevermany comments(adding books is only fun in SM manuals). I think it is a wonderful site, and have recently finished cataloguing my library. Of all the posts I read, only one seemed to legitimately deserve our sympathy –someone had suggested using LT for more than just their own collection and it crashed at a time that only Murhpy could have chosen, proof if any is necessary that shit happens!
I too have had the incredibly fast and personal responses that have recently been mentioned, and am not even remotely pissed off by the outage. My hands are beginning to shake as I write this, however, as the latest Ian McEwan book has just arrived... so I have something that has not been bagged!!
Thanks you all at LT for wonderful service, and for scrambling as you have! Don't know how many customers you have in Chile, but this one loves ya...
Thank you!
Is the "import books" feature currently down? I'm adding by hand right now, but with a little over 300 books, the evening looks daunting.
But thank you!
Hi. Some points:
1. We're letting people in batches. We're at about 30% of IPs and it's holding up fine. If you are getting the down page, try clicking the logo to get to the home page. If you get the down page again, sorry, you're not lucky.
2. Various automatic processes will not run until sometime tomorrow. This includes the imports. We're trying to "control" as many factors as possible.
3. Some data, like the Zeitgeist, has not been updated in two days. It will update slowly. It's a big "behind the curve."
4. I'm currently repairing the books that have no work. There will be some problems there. They can be resolved.
5. We are going to do a big wrap-up blog post. What happened. What we learned. What we're going to do. It's not going to happen tonight. We need a little breathing room on this, and also to sleep, eat, talk to wives, etc.
I got on for about two minutes....hit the tag button and lost it again.......geez
Define lost it. Got down page again?
This comment has been removed by the author.
xxx ooo to all you hardworker LT staffers. Put your feet up and have a beer.
Hurrah! Three cheers for the Library Thing Team!
Yay! Welcome back. Immediately cataloged 8 books. ( I found a first US edition of MRS. MINIVER at a garage sale this afternoon.)
Thanks for working so hard over the past few days to get this site up and running again. As my kids might say, you rock!
...and I do have more books to catalog now! Yay!
Oh, bliss. I added two books, and updated my thread on the 50 Book Challenge Group. I will leave it there for tonight, so as not to overtax the recovery. Blessings on you, John and who-all. You done good.
Snagged a quick backup to Yojimbo. Everything is there and the site looks good!
I will lay off for a few days to ease server stress. Great job to the LT crew. Perseverance pays off!
Best
Daland
Good work folks.. I know it's been a hectic couple of days, but it's been appreciated...
A sober note on rebuilding from damage.
LibraryThing was launched on August 29th 2005, the same day and year that Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans and the Gulf Coast of the United States of American.
It will take decades to rebuild homes and lives due to Hurricane Katrina's fury.
Do not forget this fact as the small staff of LibraryThing attempts to have all ISPs link into the full service they have provided since 2005.
LT name Quotato
Real name Ray
Bravo to the staff who worked hard over nights and vacations and across continents to get the site back up!
Glad to see you're back... as long as nothing was lost (and nothing appears to have been) I could live without it for a few hours [but I was VERY glad to see it back ^_^] AND I would like to thank you for having updated us along the way about the outage. More outfits should take a page out of your book and do that when something unexpected happens.
I work with someone who constantly taking down our server to do new things and what not. Why he does while we're all at work is completely beyond me. It always takes a bit of patience to bare (I lack that) and a few 'I swear I'll have his head for this'. ;). I never realized how true what my family was saying about my need for LT, until it broke down.
Congrats to everyone who can now enjoy it again! And many many many ..... oh I'm speechless what to say. THANK YOU SO MUCH LT STAFF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
BTW, when do we hear who won the bookpile contest?
Everything works well again. I gave the system a little workout, but will finish for now, so you can ramp up slowly. Thanks for all the work, updates, late hours. It was but a mere inconvenience in the grand scheme of things...and I managed to catalog almost 1000 comics in our comics collection (I don't use LT for this...sorry). Thank you so much for getting everything going again.
Thanks to the LT Staff. I appreciate your tireless work in bringing the system back.
Sleep! Eat! Talk to the wives! Even talk to your *own* wives! Congratulations on coming back up.
Many thanks! Have a few pints!
Yeah, I love you guys.
♥
YAY! THANK YOU!
Hooray! Thank you so much for all your hard work to create this wonderful site, and to get it back up and running so promptly. I love LibraryThing.
Wishing you all a few beverages and a good sleep, in whichever order you need them most!
- tripleblessings
Thanks !!!
Thank you all for working so hard on this!! I'm so glad LT is back up, it really makes my day. Thanks, and take that well-deserved break!
Thanks so much folks! Great to have it working again. You must really need a good lie down now...
yay!!!!
I was in withdrawal for the last 3 days lol
But nevertheless I was patient. I knew Tim and his gang will prevail! or they wouldn't get this far with LT.
I have my share with puter troubles and it ain't pretty but still.
Now get your pizza guys XD
It's still not showing my library ):
That which does not kill us makes us stronger!
P.S. Don't decide the bookpile contest too soon - I won't be able to photograph my entry until late tomorrow night!!
You folks are simply great. I can't wait to get back to my favorite obsession.
Thanks for your long hours and hard work!
Well done. Thanks too for noting the comment about 'time' in the context of LT. It helped relieve the stress to know where you were in terms of the 24 hour cycle.
Good morning from England and thank you for your hard work and for keeping us in touch. I have looked at the blog but cannot find an answer to the following query. At the present I am unable to 'see' my library. Maybe this is an idiosyncratic problem. Maybe I need to be patient but I htought I should ask for clarification. Many thanks Julie
Glad to see you back online!
I was one of the lucky ones. I got in fairly early last night and got my 5 new (to me) books catalogued. I too echo what most have been saying - thank you for keeping us up to date - that was sooooooooo important to me. and thanks for working to get LT back and running. Now if I could just learn about all the other features besides cataloguing . . . .
Oh, it's back up! I guess that means that all the parental attention I've been getting will tail off again now.
Yesterday I was singing "I want my LT please...." Today, all's right with the world.... Thanks all.
It's easy to be great when things go well, Tim and all have been great under duress. Thank you!
I blame it all on the magazine Real Simple (an organization and lifestyle management mag.) Two days ago I received my copy and it said "Why don't you... visit LibraryThing.com?"
It must be all the OCD people like me went "oooh... ok."
Yay glad to see that LT is back up!
I'm sure the developers could use a vacation after this nightmare! Thanks for getting everything back in working order :-)
Yay!! You're back!!
I'm very happy, as I'm sure all at LT towers are too . . .
Hmmmm, considering sending you cookies, but they'd only squish in the post, so I'll have to eat them on your behalf (it's a chore, but I'll muddle through).
Thankyou!! For all your hard work and sleepless nights.
It's easy to criticize from without, and have a grumble about a site being down. But in reality you, I'm sure, have suffered many times more than any one of us out here.
Wahoo! Great to see you back!
hjrdntttSooo many reasons to love this site: innovation, passion, all-out coolness.
And your response and constant communication during the downtime was amazing ... I mailed in my lifetime membership check this morning.
Woohoo, LT!
Just to put things in perspective, the LT outage was annoying, but THIS is an outage: "Russian computers controlling the International Space Station's (ISS) orientation and supply of oxygen and water have failed, Nasa officials say." -- BBC news
It would be good to hook up OUR oxygen to the server. I suspect that the site would get a lot more stable.
WOW, what a great idea, Tim. Give the site a pure oxygen boost ... that will certainly add much needed fuel to all the LTMB flames!
And here was I thinking that this site only ran on hot air?!
Rule42
I thought you folks did a GREAT job of handling the outage.
Thanks again for Librarything. $25 seems a paltry sum for the value this provides.
John, I wonder if Wordie was more heavily used the last couple of days--the silver lining for me this week has been discovering Wordie.
The queue took forever to clear out. The newly added books feeds are days behind. I'm not particularly filled with confidence that you guys are back on track yet. How about another update?
I think it turned into a great job of handling the outage, even though it didn't start out that way, and that's very interesting. I say this as someone who hardly thought her life was ruined because LT wasn't available for three days (though I'm happy it's back).
The outage started with a long silence accompanied by a message that the site would be back in 5 - 10 minutes, and no other information. By early Monday evening came updates, engagement, games to while away the time, even the expert closing of blog posts and reopening of others.
I'd say it was a great example of changing a wheel on a moving vehicle -- actually developing a PR plan even while the crisis unfolded behind scenes. Good job.
Catherine, I thought "send food" too, but in our skeptical times I thought that was a poor idea. What if every LTer sent a dollar bill for the late night Pizza or Whatever fund?
As for the self righteous comments to the effect that "I paid for it and LT owes me perfection," I can only shake my head in disbelief. In the real world, things go wrong unexpectedly and people of good faith do everything they can to repair the damage. It happens in big corporations, it happens in nonprofits, it happens in households. . .it just happens. And it happened here.
My own view is that I paid $25.00 to help defray the cost of a service that I love. I do not kid myself into believing that $25.00 pays the real cost of providing me with a personal library catalog and literary community for a lifetime. Whatever else this is, it is also a labor of love. I did not buy any slaves, although I hope I contributed a tiny bit to maintaining the Read Slave.
By the way, I trust nobody with a free account would have the audacity to wax self righteous about this unfortunate event.
One more comment, and I will get off my soap box: "Unconscionable" is a strong word. It means "not guided by conscience; unscrupulous" according to the Random House dictionary. Surely, Language, you did not really mean that.
I managed to add one book to my library and then things went kaput again. I hope I'm the only one seeing this...
Um...is anyone else getting this:
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '.' in /var/www/html/inc_magicDB.php on line 318
(just be me, just be me, please dear Gods not again, just be me)
i'm suddenly getting a blank white page for all but the main page of LT. can't access my profile, talk, etc.
mayqueene said...
Yup. Getting that one on add page, all other pages are blank. Seems like it's down again.
I'm getting a blank page.
I'm getting a blank page when I try to access my library.
I am not getting any messages, only blank pages.
Except for the main page and the blog it is loading blank pages. Hmmmm... it was working earlier today...
Oh, no - is it down again? I just added a few covers and then tried to look the groups, but got a blank page. Other links give a blank page too.
I'm getting it too, with variations.
Parse error: syntax error, unexpected '.' in /var/www/html/inc_magicDB.php on line 319
Now no pages except the home page loading.
Has anyone e-mailed John?
*sob*
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but LT has gone whacky again... I can't sign in and my page goes blank...
oh no-o-o-o-o-o!
It was down for me a couple minutes too, but up now.
I think it's back up. Maybe just a hiccup?
Do we need to pay $25 for Shelfari?
Yeah. A hiccup. Monitoring code—we're trying to get the load down—backfired. Not related to the previous database issues per se. Think of it as a brief after-tremor...
*WHEW!* I'm back in. Thank you Tim! @:)
I felt better that it didn't say anything about SQL --- not that I have a clue what any of it means. *laughing*
Argh. None of my LT posts are showing up.
:o<
*phew*
Seems back to normal.
Will the book swap info be back soon? Sure hope so!
Delighted LT is back! Thankyou!
Posting the following link as my bookpile photo is still not appearing on LTdown:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8840300@N02/543909377/
"Do we need to pay $25 for Shelfari?"
I don't know much about Shelfari, although I did note Jen's comment. I do know about LT and know that it is worth supporting.
What's the deal with not seeing what books we share with others? Why has the feature been disabled and when we might see the feature come back again? Thanks for being honest, unlike some websites...
Melissa, my understanding is that that feature sucks a lot of resources which are needed during this recovery period.
This comment has been removed by the author.
I've uploaded my LTdown photos!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/86595022@N00/
i'm still having problems with LT....is it just me? When it came back up, I initially couldn't do searches, but eventually I got that back too. But now i'm getting that "server too busy, search disabled" message. i've been getting it for about a day now, so i'm starting to get a bit concerned. is it turned off until the new server is up? if i had some idea of when it might be back or what the holdup is, i'd stop checking every hour...
Hi. Which searches are you doing and from where? Some of the searches HAVE been turned off. We're running very hot right now, and until the spare server arrives we don't want to risk another downtime. Still, I don't recognize that exact message. Are you searching your own catalog or the whole site?
Tim
Tim: When I try to use the Search page (http://www.librarything.com/search), all 8 options on that page are disabled "Due to heavier than normal traffic, searches below are temporarily disabled."
Library searching within my own library page works fine, along with tags and authors from their pages, respectively. There's no alternate method for works though.
The main search was disabled after the downtime, came back, then was disabled again.
"Unconscionable" is a strong word. It means "not guided by conscience; unscrupulous" according to the Random House dictionary. Surely, Language, you did not really mean that.
I don't have the Random House, but Merriam-Webster (a standard reference for editors) includes the sense "excessive, unreasonable," which is how it's most commonly used; if the RH doesn't include a comparable definition, you should chuck it and get a better dictionary.
Uh, Language, the FIRST definition of "unconscionable" in the Merriam-Webster Dictionary is "not guided or controlled by conscience, unscrupulous". The SECOND definition is yours. :^)
Uh, Celeste, M-W orders definitions historically; the first definition is the earliest attested, not the most commonly used. This is my major gripe against M-W dictionaries, otherwise probably the best general-purpose American dictionaries -- since most people don't understand the ordering (who reads dictionary prefaces?), they naturally take the first definition to be the basic one, which often leads them badly astray. (Look up "bead": how often do you use it to mean 'prayer,' which is the first definition in M-W?). The New Oxford American, a more up-to-date reference, has two definitions: "not right or reasonable" and "unreasonably excessive." Do you see anything about "conscience" in there? No, because that's not how it's used today.
I don't blame you for not knowing how M-W orders its definitions, but next time you want to get picky with someone whose username is "language" you might want to make sure of your ground first.
a bowl of cream for "Language", please. MEeeeooowwww!
Anonymous: It's not entirely clear what your position is, but I do like cream.
Utterly unlearned, Language, that's me. I bow to your superior ability in finding only YOUR definition in dictionaries. It is a special skill of which you are obviously proud. However, I find your habit of belittling others in discussions unconscionable. Enjoy your cream.
I bow to your superior ability in finding only YOUR definition in dictionaries. It is a special skill of which you are obviously proud. However, I find your habit of belittling others in discussions unconscionable.
Excuse me? You started this; if you hadn't felt the need to snipe at me (for no reason I can see) I wouldn't have had to point out the fact that you neither know the meaning of the word "unconscionable" nor know how to use a dictionary. If your feelings are hurt that easily, you shouldn't pick quarrels. And it's not my definition, it's the definition, unlike yours, which is completely obsolete. You don't even have the grace to admit when you're wrong. Enjoy your life.
Okay, too much heat for this blog, and into the ad hominem range the TOS prohibits. I suspect that both of you would regret anything more said anyway. I'm turning comments on this post off.
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