Goodreads Librarians Group discussion

I've seen a lot of offhand comments about this but couldn't find a thread—apologies if this is a repeat.

Since the last time combining was officially down for maintenance (in April), it's been extremely glitchy. Sometimes a combination goes through right away, but as often as not it takes 15 or 20 attempts—or more!—to combine two single editions. In addition to this being incredibly inefficient, I think these attempts are all counting towards combination limits, which means that it's possible to have a forced pause on combinations when all you've done is combine a small number of things that took numerous attempts.

Are the devs aware of this, and is there a fix in the works? It's been almost two months, and I haven't seen any official mention of this—I'd be grateful for an update.

Indeed. And separating an edition is even worse.

+1 for both merging and separating

I would like to know what they actually did for "maintenance." It worked fine before that, and now it doesn't. They literally broke it, and left it.

Add me to the librarians having trouble combining & separating. Took about eight hours & at one stage the second edition disappeared from view.

Same here.

Carol She's So Novel꧁꧂ wrote: "Add me to the librarians having trouble combining & separating. Took about eight hours & at one stage the second edition disappeared from view."

So far, if I had an edition disappearing it meant the combine had gone through and it would appear soon with the other edition(s).

If after a few tries it still doesn't go through I just come back later, it doesn't seem to help to keep trying constantly. And we have had these moments before, but it is indeed far more frequent now.

I learned by accident something that works about 90% of the time.
Change the author name on the two books that need combining. You might still have to fight, but oddly the system seems to "wake up" and do its job. Then just change the author back.

Tawnya wrote: "I learned by accident something that works about 90% of the time.
Change the author name on the two books that need combining. You might still have to fight, but oddly the system seems to "wake up..."

Or just save without making any changes. That works the same but without incorrect/unnecessary changes.

Well, that explains why I've been having an easier time combining works with authors I've been disambiguating. Otherwise it's still quite difficult/slow.

+1 I gave up trying to combine

I've sent several requests to support asking to combine editions
(For example, The Picture of Dorian Gray
https://www.goodreads.com/work/editio...
https://www.goodreads.com/work/editio...)

Apr 20 - Thanks for writing in! I've created a new developer ticket so the editions can be properly combined. As soon as this is completed, I'll let you know.

Apr 27 - I'm reaching out to let you know our developers are still working on combining the editions. We'll be sure to follow up with you once an update has been received. Thank you for your patience.

May 4 - I'm once again following up on my previous emails to let you know our developers are still working on this. As soon as I have an update, I'll let you know.

May 11 - Our developers are still working on this, and we'll let you know as soon as we have updates.

May 19 - Our developers are still working on this, and we'll let you know as soon as we have updates.

May 28 - Please note our developers are still working on this. ​As soon as I have an update, I'll let you know.

Jun 5 - We wanted to let you know our developers are still working on this, as soon as we have an update, we'll let you know.

Jun 12 - Please note our developers are still working on this. Our correspondence might close now since the issue has been escalated to the developers. However, we'll let you know once it's been resolved.

Olga, since you have a line open with Support, you might ask them to let the developers know that it's not specific to this book and librarians have been having trouble with this since the April combine maintenance?

Olga wrote: "+1 I gave up trying to combine

I've sent several requests to support asking to combine editions
(For example, The Picture of Dorian Gray
https://www.goodreads.com/work/editio...
https://ww..."

I couldn't resist trying and these are combined now.
With over 12 000 editions, this is likely a situation where only Superlibrarians (and Staff) can combine.

I came down to the group to see if I was the only one having issues, it soothes my nerves to know its not just me.

I've started to bookmark the books I try to combine and check back later to see if it actually went through. I am sick of staring at all these TMNT bookmarks though.

I wanted to share a workaround I've found for the "combine" feature that might be helpful. If you select the items you want to combine, try quickly clicking the "combine" button two or more times, one right after the other (like a quick double-tap), or pressing Enter twice or more very rapidly. Usually, two quick clicks or presses do the trick, but if that doesn't work, give it three or four quick tries. I've noticed that just one click often leaves it unresponsive, which can be frustrating. Hopefully, this method works for others too!

Edit: This works best when there aren't a lot of editions, but I've found it sometimes does work even with many editions, or it might just take a few tries. This is still much better than having to try day after day hoping the works will combine.

Arenda wrote: "I couldn't resist trying and these are combined now. With over 12 000 editions, this is likely a situation where only Superlibrarians (and Staff) can combine...."

Thank you, Arenda! I thought so. But in this case 8 emails from the support are even more incomprehensible.

Sorry for missing this! Please add any examples of editions you can't combine. It's helpful if we can try replicate the behaviour on our side.

Jaclyn, it does not depend on specific editions. We have difficulties even when the author has only two editions that need to be combined.

Jaclyn wrote: "Sorry for missing this! Please add any examples of editions you can't combine. It's helpful if we can try replicate the behaviour on our side."

It's random and isn't specific editions.
Sometimes (not often) it works fine and it's done in seconds like it should but most of the time it takes maybe 10+ tries before it works, even if it's just two editions that needs to be combined. I even got locked out of doing edits because I tried too many times not too long ago.

9 times out of 10 it doesn't work like it should. There's definitely something wrong with the combing tool.

Please just have them roll back whatever they did in April.

As the others have said, it's not specific. Almost every combination I tried today required multiple attempts, and sometimes coming back a couple hours later to try again. Here are a few of them (now combined):
https://www.goodreads.com/work/editio...
https://www.goodreads.com/work/editio...
https://www.goodreads.com/work/editio...

Scott wrote: "Please just have them roll back whatever they did in April."

+1

Combine really only works sporadically... I've run into this problem dozens of times... Just two examples of very simple combines that didn't go through:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/combin...

https://www.goodreads.com/book/combin...

Julia wrote: "Combine really only works sporadically... I've run into this problem dozens of times... Just two examples of very simple combines that didn't go through:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/combin......"

Hi Julia, I tried combining them and it worked on the first try! (Hope you don't mind that I did it w/o asking you first 🙏)

Pandan wrote: "Hi Julia, I tried combining them and it worked on the first try! (Hope you don't mind that I did it w/o asking you first 🙏) "

No worries :) I had tried multiple times. It was just meant to echo what everyone is saying, that the combine function is extremely unreliable currently. I've tried combining other editions recently, some worked first try, some after multiple tries, and some didn't go through at all, regardless of how complex they were......

Jaclyn wrote: "Sorry for missing this! Please add any examples of editions you can't combine. It's helpful if we can try replicate the behaviour on our side."

There are several that need to be combined for this author, I only tried once and not again for this topic.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/combin...

Tami wrote: "I wanted to share a workaround I've found for the "combine" feature that might be helpful. If you select the items you want to combine, try quickly clicking the "combine" button two or more times, ..."

Thanks for your tip, @Tami!
I've tried this a couple of times now and the 'multiple click' on the COMBINE-button really seems to work...

Emmy wrote: "Thanks for your tip, @Tami!
I've tried this a couple of times now and the 'multiple click' on the COMBINE-button really seems to work..."

No problem, I’m glad it helped! I forgot to mention that if you ever need to combine three or more separate works, it’s best to do it in parts, two at a time. I can’t combine more than two works at once anymore, but doing it in steps like that always works for me.

Jaclyn wrote: "Please add any examples of editions you can't combine."

As others said, it is random. I was combining French editions with the English editions of a 10-book-series (https://www.goodreads.com/series/3439...)
I combined them in reverse order (10 to 1). Books 1-6 and 10 combined. Books 7, 8 and 9 did not combine.
After being locked out for too many combines and having to wait for the combine function to become available again, I've managed to combine the remaining three titles.

Thanks for the added info. I'm letting the team know there's an ongoing issue here.

Still seems to not work properly ... any updates?

Definitely just as glitchy as in June.

Yep. It got better for me for a few days, and Tami's suggestion has definitely helped, but it's been terrible this week.

It's not even just the combine function, the whole site is broken. Everything I try to do takes multiple clicks, reloads and forever to work (if it does.)

But hey at least we have a new logo.

Considering this is an international company using a fancy font is just dumb. There are native speakers who would have never seen that "g". I really wish companies would actually pay attention to their focus groups. "New Coke" anyone?

Paying closer attention to the "g"s made me notice the font here is one of the odd ones as well. Give me a nice circle with a tail. Nothing special, gets the job done.

Please?

Combine is still hit or miss

Tawnya wrote: "Considering this is an international company using a fancy font is just dumb. There are native speakers who would have never seen that "g"."

Welcome to Oodreads.

Arenda wrote: "Please?

Combine is still hit or miss"

Bump

There seems to be some changes to the combine in the last few weeks, but it is still not reliable.

Add alternate cover edition does not work now. It removes the ISBNs but drops me back onto the original book page.

Scott wrote: "Add alternate cover edition does not work now. It removes the ISBNs but drops me back onto the original book page."

It’s not a sitewide bug where no one can create ACEs, but there is a recurring issue. In some cases (like when the description has periods without spaces), the system reads it as a link and throws the error. That just happened to me, it stripped the identifiers and even put the ISBN-10 back into the ASIN field a minute later, so you don’t even get time to create the ACE manually because the ISBN is already “taken” by the ASIN field. I wrote to support to get it fixed. It’s happened to me before too and it’s really annoying.

+1

Jaclyn - any updates on this issue?

Sarah wrote: "Jaclyn - any updates on this issue?"

Hello! Are you experiencing issues with combine, or with ACE creation?

Jaclyn wrote: "Sarah wrote: "Jaclyn - any updates on this issue?"

Hello! Are you experiencing issues with combine, or with ACE creation?"

Combine.
Sometimes it works perfectly fine within seconds but sometimes it takes 10+ tries before it works if it even works.

I got locked out of the combining tool yesterday for trying to combine two editions too many times because of this glitch.

Same here—it's a lot better than it was right after the April update, but it works better when I double-click (as Tami suggested upthread), and it's still way less consistent than it was six months ago.

Got it, I've let the team know. Thanks for bumping!

A month later this remains unimproved

It had been working better this past week or two, but I haven't been able to combine anything the last 2 days.

This morning (4am my time) when I tried to log on it said the system was overloaded. I did a search to find out if it was me, but no. Those sites that test whether there are issues had the same response. 5 hours later it finally worked. But all day even some simple edits took multiple times before they world update.

Weirdly, during the time when GR was down Amazon acted funky as well. All of my lists were missing and the Kindle app wouldn't load. Yes, parent company. But I have never had both sites act up at the same time. Granted, it was happenstance, but I was getting kind of nervous.