What's with all the blank events?

There seem to be a lot of events listed as "Untitled event" that also lack a description. Effectively, they're simply a date & time and a location -- in other words, an appointment, not an event.

They can't be filtered, because both the title and description fields are blank, and therefore have no text by which to filter.

How and why do we have them? Is there anything that can be done about them en masse? Frankly, I refuse on principle to individually hide each. And. Every. Blank. Event.

Not seeing this.

On what LT page are you seeing it? What venues?

Books of Wonder has this problem:
http://www.librarything.com/venue/1828/Books-of-Wonder

So does Henri Bendel at the moment. It won't (sort of) after October 1st, though.

Edit: The New Museum Store has a batch, as do Newel and the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art.

I've deleted some if it looked like they were trying to duplicate something that was already there, I didn't realize that it was a widespread problem.

Did some research:

http://www.librarything.com/venue/27077/George-Mason-University-Fairfax has them

http://www.librarything.com/venue/3193/University-Bookstore has them

http://www.librarything.com/venue/83859/Ritz-Carlton-Half-Moon-Bay has them

http://www.librarything.com/venue/81017/Santaluz-Club has them

http://www.librarything.com/local_add_v2.php?event=673001 is from randomhouse

http://www.librarything.com/venue/3578/Warwicks has them

http://www.librarything.com/venue/1948/Tattered-Cover-Book-Store-Colfax-Avenue-D... has them

Some of them are as far as 1 year in the future, so this will continue to annoy people

...And the bug report.

Powell's had a bunch, including duplicates. Some events were listed for the same date and time at both City of Books (main store) and the nearby warehouse. Looks like it is probably incomplete information coming from the publishers.
http://www.librarything.com/venue/3811/Powells-City-of-Books-Portland-

I filled in details for some, deleted others at the warehouse. Looks like someone else has been working on them too.

Might want to let Tim know directly. My guess is that something in the process where he's "grabbing" data from publishers etc isn't working for one or more of the sources.

I have done so.

More found:

Mecox New York City has one on the eighth.
Doyle New York has a pair on Monday. It's an auction house and there aren't any other events listed: unless these really are the result of a bad feed, the venue may be of questionable applicability.

Doyle has a book signing at that day and time, so it is a relevant venue.

If you click on "event webpage" for these blank events, you'll be able to figure out what events they are for. These blank events all seem to be coming from a particular publisher, Random House. And if you look at the list of events on their website, you'll see that some of them are missing details the "author" column, which is probably what's being used for event title when it's grabbed for LT purposes.

ETA - that applies to the ones listed in 10. Probably not to the Powell's one, though. Maybe LT needs a better filter for "problem" and empty data when grabbing events.

Maybe LT needs a better filter for "problem" and empty data when grabbing events. (#11)

Or at the absolute rock-bottom least, an official ruling about what to do about them: given the proliferation of blank events, "hunt down what it may or may not be and then change the event on LT" isn't a good option.

Many of them do not have event webpages, which makes finding the actual event referenced difficult.

The Park Avenue Armory has three blank events. The "event webpage" link for all three go to the same place.

No response from Tim on this?

I have heard nothing from Tim.

Neither have I.

Bump.

Bump.