Lesser Used Cover Stuck on the Main Work

The cover for The Number Devil: A Mathematical Adventure is not the most used. I've tried to recalculate the cover on the main page a few times, but a blurry De Telduivel image persists in the winning spot.

"Recalculate cover" continues to not change the cover from the low-quality, less popular image.

Another problem: member covers aren't listed in order of uses for this work.

The problems continue to persist.

>4 aspirit: Is this a bug or a 'feature'?

The problem is that this book was originally written in German with the title De Telduivel, as listed in the Common Knowledge.
The image chosen seems to be the most used illustration for De Telduivel, having been used 12 times.
Is this choice being made because the original German title is listed in Common Knowledge?
If so then why isn't the main title of the work listed as De Telduivel?
I would have expected the title on the book cover chosen to match the listed title of the work.

Here's the work on the German LibraryThing site, same number of books catalogued (most in English), same picture - but it matches the title of the work:
https://www.librarything.de/work/186301

The other problem is with the illustration that has been chosen. It's not really been used 12 times - for 8 works it's actually a "Best-guess" image:
Original size: 95 x 141
Used on this work: 12 times
ID number: 4506366
"Best-guess" image for ISBN: 9023481496 (German), 917712782X (Swedish), 9023439724 (Dutch)
Used for ISBN: 9023481496 (6), 902341201X (3), 9023439724 (1), 917712782X (1)
Number: 4506366 / 817663
As can be seen from the illustration information above, it's only used on 11 books with ISBN numbers, is incorrect for at least two (the Swedish and Dutch copies) and is a guess for 6 books.

I suspect this cover problem is probably a standard problem for any translated work.
Should the title of a work always be the title of the English language version of the work on the English language version of LibraryThing?
Should the cover chosen always be for English language version of the work on the English language version of LibraryThing?
Surely it's better if the work title matches the title on the book cover chosen?
If the original title entry in the Common Knowledge is influencing the cover choice then perhaps this should be prevented from happening when the original language of the work isn't the same as the language of the LibraryThing website being used?

>5 newcrossbooks: The original title was the Dutch De Telduivel, not the German Der Zahlenteufel? The German LT site also shows Der Zahlenteufel as the original title. Common Knowledge and Wikipedia might be wrong or misleading, and I can make corrections in those areas. I just want to check what's accurate.

When I looked at the covers, I saw the one in the wining spot as having two uses, less than covers lined up at the top of the covers list, but I'm seeing now it does have 12. So that explains why the blurry Dutch cover is winning... assuming that's the highest number of uses.

It's still strange to me that the covers aren't sorting.

https://www.librarything.com/work/186301/covers

>5 newcrossbooks: To answer a few questions that are more general... and please note that I'm expressing my opinions based on possibly too much time reading old Talk threads....

"I suspect this cover problem is probably a standard problem for any translated work."
Not in my experience. Many of the works I interact with on LT are made up of translated works, but this situation surprised me.

"Should the title of a work always be the title of the English language version of the work on the English language version of LibraryThing?"
No. Some works are most commonly referred to by their original titles, even among readers who primarily read the English translations. The title should be what the work is best known as within the language.

"Should the cover chosen always be for English language version of the work on the English language version of LibraryThing?"
No, the cover should be the one used most often... as long as it's readable. I'm as surprised De Telduivel doesn't fail a quality check.

"Surely it's better if the work title matches the title on the book cover chosen?"
Usually. But it doesn't in this case. The winning cover is in a different language than the titles on both the English and German sites.

"If the original title entry in the Common Knowledge is influencing the cover choice then perhaps this should be prevented from happening when the original language of the work isn't the same as the language of the LibraryThing website being used?"
I don't think that's happening here.

>6 aspirit: No you're quite right, my mistake, the original title was the German Der Zahlenteufel, and it's the Dutch cover being used on the English and German websites, not the German cover.

So it does look as though it's simply the member uploaded cover that is most frequently 'used' is the one that is chosen. The Dutch cover that wins out does benefit greatly from having a large number of "best-guesses" added - and it looks as though that's because there isn't a Dutch cover scan available among the 38 Amazon covers listed.

In comparison one English cover from Amazon is listed as being used approx 723 times (unlike the member uploaded covers, the Amazon covers do seem to sort by highest number of uses).

And the title of the work is presumbly taken from the most frequent title entered, the English edition.

So really the Dutch site is the only one that looks correct to me:
https://www.librarything.nl/work/186301

Interesting language statistics for the 1565 member's copies of the book:
Italian (73), German (55), Dutch (38), Spanish (37), Portuguese (7), Catalan (6), Danish (6), Swedish (6), Finnish (4), Norwegian (Bokmål) (3), Estonian (2), French (1) - so presumably around 1300 English copies.
And LibraryThing ends up displaying a blurry Dutch cover...

The author is German, so it's kind of unlikely the Dutch title would be the original title. (Such things happen though. Unlikely but maybe it actually was published in Dutch before it was published in German)

If I remember correctly, "En attendant Godot" was published earlier than "Waiting for Godot"

I've either misunderstood all along how work covers sort or more than one work is impacted by a bug.

H. G. Wells' The Invisible Man appears to be showing the most used cover first (unlike The Number Devil) but has no discernible order for the covers. A cover used 19 times is after one used 12 times and so on.
https://www.librarything.com/work/21214/covers/155727612

>11 Nicole_VanK: Well, Beckett originally wrote it in French, so...

I'm pretty sure Der Zahlenteufel would have been published first in Enzensberger's native language (German). Most of the time when a fiction title is published in translation before the original, it's because of difficult circumstances in the author's home country, or language politics. Occasionally I think it happens simply because the author is living abroad and it's easier to gain access to the local publishing sector. Neither seems likely to be applicable in the case of Enzensberger, who was already well established in the German literary scene at the time this book was published.

I have no insight into the cover issue, however.

Another example: The Floating Island by Elizabeth Haydon

https://www.librarything.com/work/1292261/covers

The blurry cover used twice is winning over a clearer cover used six times. I've attempted a refresh of covers and refreshing the page; the lesser used (and lower quality image) continues to show up in the prime spot on the main work page, in search results, and on the series page.

Strangely, despite what's shown elsewhere, the more popular cover is what shows up in the touchstone preview.

edited to fix typos

>1 aspirit:

Thanks for the report. This turned out to be a subtle one, involving ISBNs in the wrong version (all ten-digital ISBNs have a 13-digit form). I fixed >14 aspirit: as I worked on the code, and then >12 aspirit: by running it.

There are some cases where this bug may persist, but I don't see them active.

Actually redoing the images may take some time. This is a cached process. But you can use the recalculate links at any time to jump the processing process.

>15 timspalding: Thank you!

ETA: >16 timspalding: When the recalculate link doesn't correct the covers, how long should I wait before reporting the problem again?

That's a good question. I don't really have a good answer to it. As I was just in this code, I have it in my head well, so I'll be watching for complaints more avidly.

We have another example: In a dark, dark room, and other scary stories by Alvin Schwartz. I've tried to recalculate the cover a couple of times. Nothing changed.

>19 aspirit:

Is it fixed now? I think it is, but I don't know what was wrong with it before.

>20 timspalding: I think it is now. Thank you.

I'll reopen this report if I see this happen again.

>21 aspirit:

Thanks!