Covers incorrectly classified as "Custom"

Yesterday in the process of fixing a bug where some covers were not accounted for in statistics (https://www.librarything.com/topic/334497) a new bug was created or surfaced where hundreds of my member-uploaded, high-quality covers are not marked as such.

My cover graph at https://www.librarything.com/stats/lorax/share/u656b4e9b.ued01978a shows hundreds of "Custom" covers. This classification did not appear before the "fix" of the previous bug. Looking at my covers it is apparent that:

* All books added after May 18, 2016 have a "custom" cover - that's the latest date for which my stats show a "high quality, chosen by you" cover.

* Some books added before that date also show a "custom" cover. My guess is that those are books for which I selected a cover after the date where things went wrong, or where the cover I chose was uploaded after that date.

I cannot get a cover out of "custom" - if I select a high-quality member-uploaded cover, whether the same one I was already using or a new one, it remains "custom".

I hypothesize that if I upload a new cover for a book currently marked as "high quality" it will shift to "custom" but I don't want to make my statistics any worse than they already are.

Confirmed. It seems it only differentiates between 'member uploaded best guess by ISBN' and those you've chosen specifically. I have 3500+ 'custom chosen by you', which lumps together the ones I uploaded and the ones I chose from those uploaded by others. 3 are 'member uploaded best guess by ISBN', which presumably if I were to confirm them, would also join the 'custom chosen by you' group
https://www.librarything.com/stats/SandraArdnas/covers

That's not quite right - I do have covers are correctly classified as "High-quality, chosen by you" - but as noted above those were all selected prior to sometime in May of 2016. Since this was before SandraArdnas joined she's not seeing those at all, but it's important to note they do exist.

>1 lorax:
>I hypothesize that if I upload a new cover for a book currently marked as "high quality" it will shift to "custom" but I don't want to make my statistics any worse than they already are.

I've done a test along these lines, if useful to know for pinning anything down:

I took a book in my "High-quality: Member-uploaded cover, chosen by you" which had a cover with upload date Sep 2010 (Custom cover #6225681) (not my upload).
I switched the cover to one with upload date Nov 2020 (Custom cover #12672987) (also not my upload).
The book moved into the category "Custom, chosen by you".
I then switched the cover back.
The book remained in the "Custom, chosen by you" category.

My last "member-uploaded cover, chosen by you" is from 3 August 2015. Not sure why the discrepancy between that and May 2016, maybe I have just fussed with my covers a lot.

I have a few books that are "member-uploaded cover, best guess for ISBN", and those are working normally. The last one is from March 2023.

I note that when clicking the link to go to my library, clicking "member-uploaded cover, chosen by you" goes to a URL that includes "coverstats::yourcustom",
https://www.librarything.com/catalog/norabelle414?deepsearch=coverstats::yourcus...
but clicking "custom, chosen by you" goes to a URL that includes "coverstats::custom" instead.
https://www.librarything.com/catalog/norabelle414?deepsearch=coverstats::custom&...
So I wonder if the missing "your" needs to be inserted somewhere.

>1 lorax: Presumably, prior to the bug fix, the hundreds of your member-uploaded, high-quality covers now classified as custom covers weren't included in the statistics at all? I guess all the custom covers must be member uploaded so are you just missing the split between high quality and low quality cover images?

I purchased a flatbed scanner in January 2016 and have been trying to scan the covers of all books I've catalogued since them. All of these covers (from 27 January 2016 onwards) are now counted as 'custom, chosen by you'. I actually have books going back to 2012 in this category - but all have had their covers scanned post 27 January 2016. Previously none of these books (6,308 in total today) were included in the cover statistics.

I catalogued no books between 26 October 2015 and 27 January 2016 so the change in the way covers were dealt with by LT must have occured at some time between these dates.

In Member-uploaded covers (1,075), I have one cover for a book added to the catalogue on 28 February 2016 which is listed as 'a best guess' cover - no details of where the cover is from. All the rest were added 30 August 2015, or earlier.

>4 Nevov: I can confirm that any changes to a cover will move it into the new custom cover category.

>1 lorax: Just confirming that I'm also seeing this bug.

newcrossbooks (#6):

Presumably, prior to the bug fix, the hundreds of your member-uploaded, high-quality covers now classified as custom covers weren't included in the statistics at all?


As far as I know, that's correct, but I didn't get a screenshot - I was focused on getting rid of Amazon covers - so I don't recall the counts.

I guess all the custom covers must be member uploaded so are you just missing the split between high quality and low quality cover images?

No, that split is still there for covers that haven't been touched since prior to the date when they broke things. The "Custom" covers are not considered as a subset of member-uploaded, they're a separate thing at the top level.

>8 lorax: I'm very happy that the number of covers listed in the graph now matches the number of books in my catalogue for the first time since the graphs were introduced in 2021. Previously only about 40% of my books were included in the cover statistics as all covers added since 2016 were missing. All my "missing" covers have now been deemed 'custom', rather than added to 'member-uploaded', but can this really be classified as a bug?

I think you'll find that the hundreds of your member-uploaded, high-quality covers that are now listed as 'custom', rather than included in the 'member-uploaded, high-quality covers', were completely missed off being included in the previous chart and haven't simply been switched to the new category. The new 'custom' category doesn't have a high quality/low quality image split, should probably be a subset of 'member-uploaded', and might be better with a different name but isn't this just something that can be added to the list of things that could be better rather than a bug?

(There's also currently a "problem" with the way 'blank covers' are treated in the graphs. There are 51 different blank covers available to choose on LibraryThing, one of which you can choose as your default cover. Any books catalogued using your default blank cover are currently counted as having 'no cover' wheras books catalogued using any of the other blank covers offered are counted separately and listed as 'blank cover'. These 'no cover' books are not considered as a subset of blank cover, they're a separate thing at the top level. Perhaps ideally 'None' would be better labelled as 'Blank cover' and have subsets 'Default' and 'Chosen by you' to match the other groupings - but I don't think the fact that they aren't can be counted as a bug.)

Yes? Fixing a bug (books not being counted) by introducing a new one (books being counted as the wrong thing) is not acceptable. Nobody is asking to return to the previous situation of "just don't show them at all", I think that's obvious. So leave off with the "I think you will find" and accept that some of us want the stats to be correct, not just add up to the right number.

>10 lorax: Books being counted as the wrong thing? It's just a count of the different types of cover used on the books that you've catalogued. I'm happy to understand 'custom' as 'member uploaded covers added since 2016' and the cover stats are all now fine for me.

Something obviously changed in the way LT stored covers in 2016 and, at least until it's clear why the change was made, I prefer to be able to distinguish the 'new style' member uploaded covers from the 'old style'.

As I noted in >9 newcrossbooks: the new 'custom' category doesn't currently have a high quality/low quality image split, should probably be a subset of 'member-uploaded', and might be better with a different name - but these "problems" can't really be categorised as bugs.

newcrossbooks (#11)

I'm happy to understand 'custom' as 'member uploaded covers added since 2016'

I am not. I'm unsure why you are so insistent on keeping this new situation that has existed for a matter of days rather than getting it fixed correctly.

As I noted in >9 newcrossbooks: newcrossbooks

And as I noted in 10, I disagree. Please do me the courtesy of assuming I'm capable of reading a paragraph.

I changed a low-quality member-uploaded cover to a high-quality one and, indeed, it is now classified as "custom" rather than as "high-quality member-uploaded" as expected. I can provide screenshots on request for those who doubt me.

I realize that some people don't care about this. Some people don't care about getting editions right, either, that doesn't mean accurate data shouldn't be available for those of us who do care. Please fix this.

I hear what you're saying here, but this is going to have to wait for someone else to have time to look into it. I did the best I could with at least getting the counts to match up, and this is why I put it as "Custom" because I didn't really know what it meant. Since I was not here in 2016, I don't know what was changed at that time with regards to the covers.

Thanks - as long as this is going to get looked at, I can wait, I just don't want you (LT you, not knerd.knitter you) to think it's good enough because one random member says it is.

>13 lorax:

If you can, give me the exact page of the cover, like "This page, four image from the left," etc. I'll take a look.

Also, you might look at the page not as yourself. I think "custom" is what we call it when it's YOURS.

timspalding (#16):

I looked in a non-logged-in incognito window and see the same thing as I do when logged in as myself. Good thought, though. I've noticed that in some places particularly in cover dialog the site just uses "custom" to mean "member-uploaded".

Here's a minimal test case, the one I changed this morning (so I have before-and-after screenshots, as well as of the popup windows for changing it):

https://www.librarything.com/work/2239327/covers/32339785

Previously I had been using the Amazon-provided cover. This morning I switched to the sole member-uploaded cover which was uploaded in November 2022. I was not the uploader. It switched from "Amazon-provided" to "Custom" (and I have screenshots to prove it).

>16 timspalding: I just added the "Custom" category as it was the covers that were not getting displayed in the chart previously.

>16 timspalding:, >18 knerd.knitter: As the one 'random member' referred to in >15 lorax:, and the member who first raised the problem of covers not appearing in the stats nearly two years ago, I can say that the recent fix by knerd.knitter is a big improvement and has solved the original bug of the missing covers for me.

As I note in >9 newcrossbooks: there are some cosmetic changes that it would be nice to make to get the information displayed in a better format, not just the fact that the new 'custom' category would be better as a subset of member uploaded, but also the 'blank cover' / 'no cover' discrepancy could be handled better.

As I note in >11 newcrossbooks:, I would prefer to be able to distinguish the 'new style' (post 2016) covers from the 'old style' (pre 2016), but other random members may disagree.

For God's sake, your bug is fixed so you've made it your mission in life to make sure other people's stay broken? What is WRONG?

Just a quick note that this is still happening - while I'm sure some people are content to translate "Custom" to "User-uploaded cover of unknown quality" in their heads (even though it doesn't show in the pie as a user-uploaded cover of any sort) it means my ongoing project of replacing all low-quality covers is now impossible.

Agree that this is an issue, and is almost worse than not having them counted in the stats at all. Here's my new chart for covers... it's awful. The vast majority of my covers are recent and self-uploaded, so the custom category is drowning out any useful information.

>22 lemontwist: But the custom covers are all your recent and self-uploaded covers - covers that weren't included in the stats at all before. The chart just shows, at a glance, that the vast majority of your covers have been chosen, or uploaded, by you (so presumably are of acceptable quality to you?).

And if you click on the chart you get the full information about the status of your covers so the custom category isn't really "drowning out any useful information".



From this detailed breakdown you can easily locate your one low quality cover, a "best guess" chosen for Sled Driver: Flying the World's Fastest Jet. If you replace this with a better cover the new cover will be added to your "custom, chosen by you" statistics, wheras previously it would have dropped off the cover statistics completely.

You're lucky, you've only got 125 covers to update to give all the books in your collection "custom, chosen by you" covers - and for 89 of those it may just require the same member-uploaded cover used already to be reselected.

>23 newcrossbooks: You can try to tell me that I like it, but I don't. I don't think it's useful. I don't like it.

>24 lemontwist: I'm not trying to tell you that you have to like it, just that all of the information that was contained in the previous chart is as easily accessible as before, with the bonus that the number of covers now matches the number of books in your catalogue.

Coincidentally it's now exactly one year since you first posted about the bug in the cover image graph:



The problem of the large number of missing covers is now fixed so what, exactly, is the new bug that you are complaining about?

This is the place to post or discuss bugs on LibraryThing (this includes TinyCat). It's not a wishlist for features, nor a list of things that could be better.

The new bug, as many of us have clearly stated, is that many if not most of our "member-uploaded, high-quality" covers are not correctly classified. Previously these were not shown in the graph at all; now they are shown under an incorrect category, which is still a bug.

It's quite clear you're happy with the situation. Not everyone is. Nobody is suggesting we go back to the previous situation of not showing them at all, so I'm not sure why you're so adamant about leaving them as "Custom" rather than correctly classifying them.

>22 lemontwist: Argh, that's especially bad!

>26 lorax: What are currently being catalogued as "custom covers" are simply all of the covers that each individual catalogue owner has specially selected to illustrate their catalogue from 2016 onwards. They can be "high quality" or "low quality" - it's up to the catalogue owner to choose the cover they want to use, if they're not happy with the cover that LT automatically suggests. The fact that your covers may all be "member uploaded, high quality" doesn't mean that you can assume all "custom covers" fit this description.

And what's the crititeria for deciding "high quality", versus "low quality" images anyway? Many images listed by LibraryThing as "member uploaded, high quality" aren't necessarily what can really be described as high quality, as I'm sure you are aware. I would guess that LT has quietly dropped the distinction and now relies on the user to judge cover picture quality. It looks as though "high quality"/"low quality" images have not been available to use to catalogue books since 2016 and would suspect that, over time, the cover quality category will disappear.

>27 norabelle414: Yes, the big block of red is a bit harsh. Perhaps dark green would be better?

>28 newcrossbooks: And what's the crititeria for deciding "high quality", versus "low quality" images anyway?

I believe "high quality" refers to number of pixels. If the image has lots of pixels, it's high quality; if not, it's "low quality." I don't know the cutoff, but for as long as I can recall, "high quality" has referred to the large images. Of course, by that definition, a photo can be "high quality" and blurry, out of focus, and with a lot of extraneous background. :-/ But at least it's objective.

>30 waltzmn: Thanks - but the question was really intended to be rhetorical.

In fact when "high quality" images were introduced in 2008, any image with a height greater than 142px was designated high quality, because that was the size of image that LT used to downsample images to. See Tim Spaldings statement on the matter, and the associated thread.

Looking at some of my "low resolution" covers I would guess the height requirement for "high quality" images must have been upped to greater than 250px high at some point, as requested in the thread.

As you say, it is an objective definition, but I think fairly meaningless these days. Mobile phone have made it very easy to take high definition photographs of covers, but many of the images of covers taken this way cannot really be described as "high quality". I guess this is why the "high quality" and "low quality" designations appear to have been dropped in 2016.

>31 newcrossbooks: They haven't been dropped, covers are still organized on cover page so that low res ones are at the bottom. Only stats fail to show the difference. The fact that people occasionally make crap pics on phone at high resolution is irrelevant.

>32 SandraArdnas: OK, you're quite right - images are still labelled "high quality" (but not "low quality"). So what did change with the way images are stored from 2016 onwards to make them disappear from the stats?

It doesn't really change my main argument though - exactly what is the bug that needs fixing? I am told that the bug is that 'many if not most of our "member-uploaded, high-quality" covers are not correctly classified' and that 'now they are shown under an incorrect category'.

In fact what has happened is that any book covers that have been specifically chosen or uploaded by the catalogue owner since 2016 have now been classified as "custom, chosen by you", a new category - prior to this change all of these covers were missed from the stats.

Before the fix we were informed by knerd.knitter that there was a type of cover that was "getting left out of the counts (something that seems to be "custom")" but that it wasn't known how they're different from other covers. Because of this it seemed eminently sensible to me that they were moved to a new category, rather than merged with the old "member-uploaded" covers. Clearly others disagree, but I fail to see how anyone can claim that they are now 'shown under an incorrect category' or that they're 'not correctly classified' - they've simply been put in a new category.

I'm not trying to argue that everything is perfect in the way the cover information is currently laid out or the charts are displayed, just really that the problems are now more of a cosmetic nature than a bug.
As I noted in >9 newcrossbooks:, "The new 'custom' category doesn't have a high quality/low quality image split, should probably be a subset of 'member-uploaded', and might be better with a different name but isn't this just something that can be added to the list of things that could be better rather than a bug?" and "There's also currently a "problem" with the way 'blank covers' are treated in the graphs."
And in >11 newcrossbooks: "Something obviously changed in the way LT stored covers in 2016 and, at least until it's clear why the change was made, I prefer to be able to distinguish the 'new style' member uploaded covers from the 'old style'."

>33 newcrossbooks: *shakes head*

The Bug is that all covers that have any member selection OR upload are all lumped under "Custom."
If I upload a cover - Custom
If I chose a cover that someone else uploaded - custom

The bug is the LOSS of categories that should exist.

>34 gilroy: *shakes head*

Previously all covers that have any member selection OR upload were all lumped under "member-uploaded"
If I uploaded a cover - Member-uploaded
If I chose a cover that someone else uploaded - member-uploaded

There is no LOSS of categories that you argue should exist.

>35 newcrossbooks: This isn't an RSI, but a bug report, so why you keep arguing with everyone is a mystery. Developers will decide whether totackle this and when. Give it a rest

>35 newcrossbooks: Incorrect.

You upload a cover - Not counted.
Someone else uploads a cover - Member uploaded.

Now it all goes to Custom. Has since 2016.
If you are happy with where it is, why are you bothering to fight people wanting it fixed and giving you MORE detail?

>36 SandraArdnas: What exactly is the bug supposed to be?
The cover numbers now add up correctly.
Covers are assigned to particular groups correctly, and exactly as intended by LT.
The only 'problem' seems to be that there is now a new 'custom' group that some members aren't happy with/don't understand why it's been introduced.
What, exactly, do you expect to happen to 'fix' the 'bug'?
This bug report has been filed by a memeber who complains that 'hundreds of my member-uploaded, high-quality covers are not marked as such'. In fact the covers are now marked as 'custom' covers, a new category recently introduced to differentiate between the post 2016 cover uploads and older cover uploads, as something has changed in the way LT stores its cover images. They have been moved into this category intentionally, it's not a bug.
This looks to me to be a bug report set up to try to push through someone's idea for an RSI and I would not like to see the post 2016 'custom' covers category simply merged with the old 'member uploaded' data, which is what I think is being asked for.

>37 gilroy: Incorrect.
You upload a cover - Now added to 'custom, chosen by you'.
You choose a specific cover - Now added to 'custom, chosen by you'.
As far as I can see, no new cover uploads are being added to 'member uploaded' covers, thery're all added to the new category 'custom, chosen by member'.
The only covers classified as 'member uploaded' that now get added to catalogues are 'best guess for ISBN' covers - and I've never been offered one of these for a post 2016 book (Looks like the 'best guess for ISBN' module is probably ignoring 'custom' covers - which would count as a bug).
The covers that have been completely missing since 2016 are now classified as 'custom' covers - it's a new category deliberately chosen to include covers added since 2016 when something was changed in the way they were stored.
What MORE detail do you expect to get after the 'bug' is 'fixed'? If you simply add the 'custom' covers to the old 'member uploaded' covers then you're actually getting LESS detail!

>38 newcrossbooks: Wow. I did specify that my post in >37 gilroy: was prior to 2016. Did you miss that?

Less detail? We have the full count, but we have less details now than what the bug report is asking to fix.
We're asking it to give us back the regular details we had, plus some.

Member uploaded cover - selected by you
Uploaded cover BY ME

Because those are different categories.

You still make no sense why you are continuing to argue. This is a bug from a bug fix. In normal IT world, something that happens.
Yes, we have everything counted as custom now. But that's not great.

But you do you. Apparently, you feel the need to argue.

>37 gilroy: Wow. The 'Custom' category was only added this month. It contains the covers added since 2016, that were previously not counted at all, but is a completely new category.
Covers uploaded prior to 2016 were assigned to the 'member uploaded' category, regardless of who uploaded them.
Post 2016, until this bug fix, uploaded covers weren't counted, and didn't appear in the statistics, regardless of who uploaded them.

"Give us back the regular details we had, plus some"?

Member uploaded cover - selected by you - These are now classified as 'custom, chosen by you'. OK, as I've said previously, this category should really be a sub-category under 'member uploaded covers', and could be split into high/low quality images, but this doesn't make it a bug (This is the place to post or discuss bugs on LibraryThing (this includes TinyCat). It's not a wishlist for features, nor a list of things that could be better).

Uploaded cover by ME - You've never been able to get this detail, although I believe it's been suggested previously in an RSI.

Yes, we have everything counted as custom now. But that's not great. - Fine, agreed it's not perfect - but it's not a bug.

Exactly what outcome are you expecting from this bug report?

How would you like the cover information to be displayed after 'the problem' is 'fixed'.

Exactly what outcome are you expecting from this bug report?

How would you like the cover information to be displayed after 'the problem' is 'fixed'.

All high-quality member-uploaded covers, regardless of the date they were uploaded or chosen, are classified as "High-quality, chosen by you" under "Member-uploaded covers".

All low-quality member-uploaded covers, regardless of the date they were uploaded or chosen, are classified as "Low-quality, chosen by you" under "Member-uploaded covers".

All covers are in one of the categories that existed prior to the introduction of the spurious "Custom" category, and no covers are missing. The "Custom" category is removed.

That is to say, they fix the bug that they introduced by fixing a prior bug. If bug fixes never introduced new bugs there'd be a lot fewer programming jobs.

>38 newcrossbooks: What exactly is the bug supposed to be?

If you don't understand what is considered a bug here, why do you care? Its not as if you'll be the one fixing it, is it. I am seriously curious why do you bother arguing with people here. What is it to you that you spent at least half hour on it, probably more?

>43 SandraArdnas: Perhaps if you read the rest of this thread, and the original thread that started this whole thing off, you might understand better?

The reported 'problem' isn't a bug - the program is categorising covers exactly as intended. There was a valid reason for starting the new 'custom' category and differentiating these covers from the old 'member-uploaded' category.

This bug report is simply one person's attempt to railroad through their idea of how the covers should be categorised.

As I've already stated I would prefer the covers in the new 'custom, chosen by you' category not to be merged with the old 'member-uploaded, chosen by you category, though it would be good to make it a subset of the 'member-uploaded' covers and to differentiate between high and low quality images. It would also be good to be able to distinguish between covers that have been uploaded by you and those that have simply been chosen by you. The 'no cover' category, which is where the catalogue uses your chosen default cover, would be better as a subset of a 'blank cover' category and better labelled 'default' with the current 'blank cover' category renamed 'chosen by you' and made a second subset of the 'blank cover' category. But these are just my thoughts on how the covers would be better categorised - the sort of thing you should suggest in the Recommended Site Improvement section, not try to push through by starting a spurious bug report.

>44 newcrossbooks: If it's not a bug, someone from staff will say so and close it. Until then, it's an open bug report whether you like it or not and no matter how many more posts you make on the topic. I for one do NOT want a group that makes no sense to anyone not privy to intricacies of LT development over tjme. So FWIW, you got no from me for that

newcrossbooks (#44):

There was a valid reason for starting the new 'custom' category and differentiating these covers from the old 'member-uploaded' category.


No, there wasn't. The reason was that, as knerd.knitter states in this thread, she didn't know what the situation was with those covers, and created a new category to get them on the page somehow. It was not a deliberate attempt to differentiate (had it been, they'd have been called something like "All user-selected covers chosen since 2016" or something and lumped under user-selected covers), it was a stopgap measure. A hack.

Still, despite newcrossbooks' protestations, an issue and a problem.

Still a problem. I'd be happy to bump this less frequently if I got acknowledgement that it's going to be fixed - I know everyone is busy but as anyone who knows me knows I'm also a stickler about complete and accurate data and being unable to see mine makes me itchy.

I think timspalding needs to look and see if there's anything we can do or not. He's aware, so hopefully we'll have an answer for you soon. Thanks for your patience.

Any progress on this?

I'm just getting back from vacation, thanks for your patience with my reply. I'll remind timspalding about this, but I'm assuming no progress and I'm not sure if he'll be able to respond to this this week... thanks for holding, still!

bump

Thanks for the bump! I've given up on fixing covers for now since doing so just puts them into the junk drawer.

Bump. This should be a one-minute fix - find where in the code "Custom" is defined as a cover type and instead correctly classify those covers - and it's been languishing for six months.

Bump. It's distressing that blatantly incorrect data is just allowed to languish for close to a year when it should be such a simple fix.