Are touchstones working?

The touchstones don't seem to be working for me today. Is it just me? Thanks.

Working now. Charles M. Blow

You might have hit on a short window when search was down. Touchstones involve a site search, so whenever site search is down, so are touchstones.

>2 lilithcat: Thanks!

Seems a bit spotty. I have a long list that seems to be trying to work... But, it just timed out.

But a couple of posts I made with just one did work.

I've had no Touchstones since early October - totally dead.

>4 Sergeirocks: An author one worked for me yesterday - Cordwainer Smith

They aren't working properly. !! The first time you enter a post, they work. If you edit that post, without refreshing, the stop working. If you then save that post, all touchstones revert to regular text.

If you lose the touchstones in an edit, I find that deleting a character in the text outside the touchstones usually revives them. You will have to use 'others' again, but they will work.

Yes, it's a bug, but this is a work around util they get fixed.

>7 MarthaJeanne: Has that workaround been working for you as often these past two or three months? I've been feeling as if we're losing touchstones in nearly every edit, and it seems to take more attempts to bring them back in each message.

>9 timspalding: Hello. If you edit your message (maybe by adding a word or a second touchstone), will the touchstone remain?

>8 aspirit: Worked for me yesterday.

>7 MarthaJeanne: my touchstones have been going cold. That is the entire touchstone application shuts down while that thread is up. The solution is to refresh the page. I should add I'm using MS Edge.

>8 aspirit: I've had this issue with touchstones for at least the last couple months. If I edit a post with working touchstones, they all disappear. I've tried many little "tweaks" including re-entering the brackets, retyping the title or author name, and sometimes my edit had nothing to do with a touchstone in the first place, but the site doesn't even try to load them (no little spinning arrow) on the re-post.

>12 dchaikin: "The solution is to refresh the page" Do you refresh before or after re-posting an edited post?

I added 6 books to books read in December, https://www.librarything.com/topic/326986#n7355134,
yesterday and 4 worked fine. Two did not. I noticed a spelling error so I went in to edit it and when I saved it all my touchstones that were working are now gone. I tried one or two of the suggestions above with no success. This is my first failure like this, for what it's worth. The last time I really paid any attention to them was back in October, I think. I'm running Google Chrome on a Windows 10 Pro operating system that is up to date. FYI

>14 ulmannc:

Yep, on a fritz again. I was updating my series list today and every update had been fine until the last one (and now all attempt to edit end up with "504 Gateway Time-out") where touchstones will usually be. Looks like search is broken. Again ;) Which causes the touchstones to get broken...

>15 AnnieMod: Ditto

Touchstones have been hard to use for months. It's on and off, but I'll spend a while adding them to a post of books, then have them vanish when I try to edit the post to strike off a book or fix a typo.

Some books oddly won't touchstone, either. Had to backspace through the bracket on 24535874::Perestroika in Paris on my last post here like 5 times to get it to stop saying no results. Had the same issue before with The Taming of the Shrew.

>17 Settings: There is another workaround. In the brackets type the work number, then two colons (::) followed by the title you want to see.

>18 MarthaJeanne:

Thank you, a bit more time consuming but probably worth it in the long run. Reselecting the correct works on a long post whose touchstones vanished is also time consuming.

Not working at the moment and can't tell if it's a site wide issue or I'm doing it wrong, but I get the concept, I'll figure it out eventually haha.

>19 Settings: I just did one that way and it took much longer than I'm used to, but it did work in the end.

113348::Islandia

Islandia

>13 laytonwoman3rd: I save the post (if there are any changes to be saved), then refresh the page and then select edit. Typically it sort of reactivates.

Note: This isn't about the "504 Gateway Time-out", like in >15 AnnieMod: (I do get this too - but I consider it "normal"). This is about when the touchstone tool simply doesn't work and won't active.

Is there a limit to how many touchstones can load in one post? That 504 Gateway Time-out only seems to happen with long lists of titles in one post.

===Below are touchstones.

CinderellA.I.
Interstellar Cinderella
Ever After

Above are touchstones.====

The generation of all three touchstones took about two minutes. That's not seconds, but minutes, timed.

On the first edit, I can see the touchstone below the text box... and the touchstones remain in the message after saving.

On the second edit, the touchstone links don't appear below the text box. They don't appear from fiddling with the titles or deleting to re-enter the brackets. Waiting two minutes doesn't bring about their appearance. The Preview feature doesn't show the links. There's also no waiting icon or error message.

The links don't return in the third edit, either. I've now spent more than ten minutes on this one message.

>23 aspirit: Thanks! Apologies for the ten minutes, but you captured the problem exactly.

>21 dchaikin: Thanks...I was able to use that method to get back the touchstones in a list of over 70 titles. I cut the list from the post and saved it off-site. Then I added them back in batches of ten, refreshing the post before each new entry. Tedious, but it worked.

Touchstones, Author searches and Work searches have been erratic from 13:40 till 15:40 (GMT +2). Even got Gateway 504 from touchstones a number of times

>26 bergs47:

Site search is down. That affects touchstones.

http://www.librarything.com/topic/295468

Thursday, 12/31/20 at 21.05 CST

I am able to use the site search just fine. But Touchstones are not working.

Lady into Fox, by David Garnett

Seems to be okay now.

Touchstones are still not working consistently for me. Most of the time i can see them on original entry, but not if the post is updated. They disappear, or in some cases are present for only the first word in the title, and then there is no resolution because the title doesn't exist.

As far as I can see, Touchstones work ok when I first post a message, but if I edit it (even if the edit does not involve the Touchstones at all), they then disappear when I click "Save message". Latest example for me is post #6 at http://www.librarything.com/topic/328747#unread

>31 John5918: Yep, still. In addition, the little check mark in the touchstone list at the end of a thread is not consistently recognizing when I have read or reviewed a book, even when the touchstone itself is present. Connected?

>32 ffortsa: The lack of check at the bottom/on the right is a different bug - it does not show up when it is supposed to be grey (green, blue and purple work) since Talk was changed. It had been reported in another bug report.

I have a couple of issues that may (or may not) be linked to this.

1) If I type the links to a few posts in one posts (ie >post number), the links fail and I just get a list of numbers. I'm seeing this both on my iPad Air (Safari/ iOS 12.something) and on my desktop (Safari/ OS Big Sur) (and also Firefox).

See https://www.librarything.com/topic/328123#7366303 for example.

2) I'm finding touchstones (the ones that do work) very slow to load, even from my catalogue pages.

Just wondering whether there's any feedback on the disappearing Touchstones issue?

>35 John5918: From Tim's sole message above, I'm guessing he's told himself we're all imagining the problem. That's really what it looks like to me, and it's as disappointing as the broken touchstones. I feel like this is going to go the way the sitewide disappearing editions/works issue.

To repeat Tim's experiment, in a more relevant manner:

Mark Twain

Hey, look, a touchstone! Now let's edit the message.

Finding touchstones so broken that I'm done trying to use them until there's some kind of announcement that they've been fixed. Will use bold or italics instead.

>37 lorax: expanded experiment:

Authors

Mark Twain
Jean Webster

Works

Tom Sawyer
Daddy-Long-Legs

Oddly, it took me several minutes of fiddling with Mark Twain's touchstone to get it generate, while the others came up immediately.

Now let's see what this message looks like with an edit (this additional line).

>37 lorax: and >39 aspirit: Touchstones are working in some messages. That's the good news.

The touchstones haven't returned to >23 aspirit: though. More importantly, members are obviously continuing to struggle enough to give up on the feature.

Several times lately I've had to give up on my original message and post a new one with just the touchstones.

Oh, definitely! I was just testing whether or not editing *always* broke touchstones - since it doesn't, it's unfortunately going to be a harder bug for them to track down.

Most of the time they work for me.

I had a post in mid-December, I think, that was a list of books. That one didn't work. Even the first time. Editing didn't help.

More recently I also had one that was initially fine (just one touchstone in that post), but I went in to edit something else and I lost the touchstone.

ETA: I am, however, going on memory.

Well, I've just written a post where the touchstones were definitely working but then I went back and edited it and they've all disappeared.

https://www.librarything.com/topic/328042#7396406

Safari/ Big Sur

I've just edited my post #40 in http://www.librarything.com/topic/326099 and I notice that the author touchstone has worked OK. Can we hope that the problem is now fixed, or is it still patchy, working some of the time only?

>45 John5918: I want to test this further to make it easier to pin down/fix, but I think it may only be happening for posts with many touchstones. I need to find out just how many is the tipping point...

>46 kristilabrie: Actually it seems very variable, sometimes even a single touchstone not appearing on the first try.

kristilabrie (#46):

I think it may only be happening for posts with many touchstones. I need to find out just how many is the tipping point...


That's how it used to work. Many people have reported encountering it for cases with a single touchstone. The problem is that it's sporadic, which suggests it may be related to the general search flakiness - if they happen to edit the post when search is down or slow, even a single touchstone is lost.

>48 lorax: Ugh, yeah. That's definitely a complicating factor. Okay, thanks for the extra info (and to you as well, MarthaJeanne!)

>49 kristilabrie: Agreed with lorax and MarthaJeanne. In my experience it's editing a post that seems to disrupt touchstones.

Sometimes they work - on short messages. But my first entry which is books read in January, they don't. I'm going to quit trying. I fooled around trying to make them work when I had the first problem without success so I'm not going to bother. It's very frustrating.

And then I went to my email and when I came back they were working.

I was quite shocked today to see that a few touchstones stayed after an edit. Certainly wasn't working that way yesterday.

>46 kristilabrie: no. Same thing happens with a single touchstone.

I notice lately that sometimes i get one edit with touchstones working. Then the second edit they die.

Solution is still to refresh page first, then edit, check touchstones and save. This has worked 100% of the time for me.

>54 dchaikin: Thank you. Yes, that worked on the one that just didn't.

>46 kristilabrie: That was two touchstones.

I'm still experiencing the touchstone-death-on-message-edit phenomenon. It's very irritating, and often takes quite a while to get the touchstone working again. It has no relationship to the number of touchstones in the post. A single touchstone is enough.

Try >54 dchaikin:'s suggestion of refreshing the page. Yes, I agree it's high time this was fixed.

I'm going to copy and expand on >39 aspirit:'s experiment to try to find a living example of this issue when site search is working, as requested by Tim.

Works

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Daddy-Long-Legs

Authors

Mark Twain
Jean Webster

Series

Harry Potter
Little Blue Truck

Edit #1: I am editing this post now, adding no further Touchstones. Touchstones still worked.

Edit #2: Touchstones are not showing as working. Also attempting to add Touchstones:

Pride and Prejudice
Umberto Eco
The Lord of the Rings

Edit #3 clarified text, added no Touchstones. Touchstones still broken.

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Daddy-Long-Legs
Mark Twain
Jean Webster
Harry Potter
Little Blue Truck

Testing again:

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Daddy-Long-Legs
Mark Twain
Jean Webster
Harry Potter
Little Blue Truck

Edit 1 to OP: touchstones still here.

Edit 2: touchstones gone.

We are trying to get a reproducable series of steps together.

Testing again:

The Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Daddy-Long-Legs
Mark Twain
Jean Webster
Harry Potter
Little Blue Truck

Going to refresh the page after posting.

Edit 1: just adding this text. Touchstones still here. Refreshing page after saving this message.

Edit 2: Touchstones still here. Not refreshing page after save.

Edit 3: Touchstones gone.

Edit 4 after refreshing the page: Touchstones return.

Okay, I think I have specifics for this bug (at least what I'm seeing today):

1. Make a post with touchstones. Do not refresh the page.
2. Edit the same post and save. Touchstones are still there.
3. Edit the post again and save. Touchstones are broken.

OR

1. Go to a thread where you have a post with Touchstones.
2. Edit the post once and save (doesn't matter if you add anything). Touchstones are still there.
3. Edit the same post again: Touchstones are now broken.

This happens for every single post in a thread: each post with Touchstones has one good edit you can make, without refreshing the page, and the Touchstones will remain. I edited post >61 kristilabrie: and >63 kristilabrie: once each and the Touchstones remained. Editing either post a second time, without refreshing the page, removed the Touchstones.

Refreshing the page seems to "reset" this threshold.

Guns, Germs and Steel
Traviata

Okay, it looks to me like refreshing the page always fixed this. So I would recommend people do that if they want to edit something twice, for now. But I'll look into why the JavaScript isn't firing the second time.

THIS SUX

Can someone tell me how to get a touchstone to stick for this freakin book

x + y. A Mathematician's Manifesto for Rethinking Gender

https://www.librarything.com/work/24849487

I've tried twenty different things

eh, nm

it look s as if the "x + y" in the title are problematic--perhaps should look into that, PTB.

Okay, I think I have fixed it. Honestly, I don't understand something in the code, so I need to check it with Chris in the morning. But I think it's fixed.

24849487::x + y, A Mathematician's Manifesto for Rethinking Gender

That's frustrating. It finds it but it won't take. I'll leave it because you can see some of the things I tried.

x + y. A Mathematician's Manifesto for Rethinking Gender

>68 LolaWalser: Well, it may not be quite the way you'd want it, but the touchstone works. I just left x + y. outside the brackets.

And it keeps working through several edits.

Note: I tried removing the Canonical title, but that stripped the + from the work title.

Testing The Martian

>73 conceptDawg: Will he get off the planet?

That would be spoilers.

>74 bnielsen: Shh! I'm partway through finding out the answer!

What conceptDawg said.

So I think we think it's fixed. It was doing a lookup that was failing, but the lookup was unnecessary.

So, any remaining problems here?

>78 timspalding: I'm still having the Touchstone issue.

I add a post containing Touchstones, which usually work.

I notice a Touchstone is not linked to the correct title/author, so I click on edit to fix the post and choose the correct alternate Touchstone.

I save, sometimes the Touchstones are there, sometimes not.

If they are not showing and I refresh, click edit, let the Touchstones load then save, I have them back.

BUT...when I refresh, I usually lose the alternate Touchstones I selected. For example:

Tiltawhirl John by Gary Paulson

Touchstone on the right side shows up as "Tilt-a-Whirl' by Chris Grabenstein.

I click on (others) link and choose the correct book by Paulsen.

I save. It's there.

BUT if I go back in to edit the post, and the Touchstones don't save, AND I refresh the page to get the Touchstones to show up again, the alternate Touchstones have reverted to the original incorrect Touchstones:

Tiltawhirl John by Gary Paulson shows up as "Tilt-a-Whirl' by Chris Grabenstein again.

I hope that helps clarify the issue.

Tiltawhirl John by Gary Paulson

I'm really not seeing this issue. Is anyone? Can anyone give me a step-by-step that causes it for them?

Note: You don't need to refresh the page, ever. The bug described above was fixed.

>81 timspalding: I have to refresh the page when the Touchstones don't load after an edit.