Reviews with no review data

ETA: Ah, sorry. "data" should have been "date". I.e. "Reviews with no review date"

I was taking a look at my reviews and sorted them by date
https://www.librarything.com/profile_reviews.php?view=bnielsen

I found three with no review date including a very recent one. (Alas I fixed all three (added something and deleted it again), so the evidence is destroyed.)
But I wonder how it happened.

Anyone else seeing this? And know how to produce the error?

I'm not seeing it, possibly because I tend to edit my reviews after their initial entry.

Did you notice anything else in common with the reviews that were missing dates?

>2 aspirit: Yes, I also tend to edit my reviews after their initial entry. I didn't see anything in common with the three that were missing dates. 3 out of 6000+ reviews is also very few. I _think_ my usual sanitycheck script would have found them if they had been there from the start, but I'm not 100% sure.

Maybe the two old ones were edited recently? On exactly midnight at a full moon? I don't know. (Which is why I asked it any others had seen it happen.)

Hmmm, this will be a fun one to track down. :)

Let's keep this open and hopefully a live example will pop up for us—and if not, all the better!

I have a live example, I think: https://www.librarything.com/work/23962971/reviews/223178399

I added it on August 21 via manual entry and wrote the review while adding the work. Haven't done any other editing after adding, aside from choosing a cover.

Edited to add: Here's a second example that I added a few hours ago: https://www.librarything.com/work/16080861/reviews/223615743

This used San Francisco Public Library as the source. I added it around midnight, so maybe it's something being lost when the date for my time zone is different than the UTC date?

>5 coprime: Thanks. I think that was exactly what I did with one of my three (lost) examples. Manuel entry and a quick review.

>6 bnielsen: You know, that would not surprise me. New records, especially manual ones, are... temperamental. I tend to add these and not touch them for an hour or so at least (a day if I can) - just to allow the servers to catch up with whatever they are doing. Otherwise, I get all kinds of weird things happening - it is as if the record is a ghost one - partially here, partially not :)

>7 AnnieMod: Ah, we have a Heisenbug.

>8 bnielsen: We have a Heisenbug with a Schrödinger's book in the middle of it ;)

PS: I've never heard the term Heisenbug. :) Neat.

>5 coprime: Excellent examples!

Welp, I manually added a test book with a review and got a date on it (https://www.librarything.com/profile_reviews.php?view=kristilabrie), so that case is sporadic, at least. For the 8/21 manual entry do you remember if you added it in a timeframe that would've been a different day than UTC time?

>10 kristilabrie: I don't remember the exact time I added the manual entry, but it's entirely possible that my local date was different than the UTC date. I'm in EDT and I frequently add books at the end of my day, so there's a good 4 hour window where the two are mismatched for me.

>11 coprime: Yeah, seems suspicious for sure. I'm not usually around at 8pm, myself (also ET), but a good lead to test.

ETA: I think I'll test by changing my account's timezone in a couple hours and see what I can find.

Okay, so I've tested, in an 8/31 timezone (while UTC is 8/30):
- manually adding a book and a review - timestamp included.
- editing the review from "Your books" - timestamp included.

I've also tested, in my own (ET) timezone:
- adding a review to an existing book in the iOS App - timestamp included.
- adding a review to a recently added book, from the "Add books" page - timestamp included.
- adding a book (from Amazon.com all media), rating, then reviewing the book from the "Add books" page in one fell swoop - timestamp included.

BUT, I'm noticing that one of my books, for which I reviewed (most) recently, I'm missing a timestamp: https://www.librarything.com/work/20296140/reviews/215542255

Not sure how this is happening, yet. Will keep testing.

A new one:
https://www.librarything.com/work/25306421/reviews/223804434

I thought this was a rare thing, so I didn't really take note of the time of day.

>14 bnielsen: I'm assuming you wrote that review today 8/31, or??

>15 kristilabrie: Yesterday. But yes, it was a quite fresh one.

>16 bnielsen: Can you tell me where on LT you wrote and saved the review? It looks like you added the review while adding the book manually, perhaps? Or did you add the book manually, then go back and edit the entry to add your review? Trying to nail this down as best as I can...

Okay, SO, I have found more information about this bug, or at least how to look for it:

1. Using goosecap as an example, view their Ratings and Reviews in their Charts & Graphs here: https://www.librarything.com/stats/goosecap/ratingsreviews
2. Click to open the "Review Dates" graph/table.
3. Note the "(23 reviews were made before the system kept track. They have been assigned to the first month.)" and then click on the "April 2020" link to see those 23 books/reviews: https://www.librarything.com/catalog/goosecap&collection=-1&reviewdate=2...
4. All but one of those books was entered after April 2020, which doesn't make sense. If you look at the review timestamp on all 23 of those reviews, they're missing.

An extra, fun bug: Now, click to sort the 23 results in the catalog by any of the columns/fields, such as "Entry date". The catalog filter changes from "Review date: 2020-04" to "Publication Date: 2020-04" (and no results shown). NB: the URL still shows up as https://www.librarything.com/catalog/goosecap&collection=-1&reviewdate=2..., so if you refresh the page, it resubmits the filter properly with the catalog sorting you had selected.

While I still can't figure out how/when this bug is happening, we do at least have a way to SEE it.

A new one:
https://www.librarything.com/work/19938389/reviews

Created today and added from Overcat. I copy/pasted the table of contents in as part of the review.

ETA: I tried to recreate the problem but with no luck. I'll see if I can do better tomorrow. The plan is to describe very carefully all steps when adding a new book and adding a review. And then hope that it ends up as a "no review date" book.

And I have my first of those: https://www.librarything.com/work/21653944/reviews/220733868

Date should have been Aug 24 - I was writing reviews and comments in parallel so even the timestamps should be very close: https://www.librarything.com/topic/340675#7913857

It was in the middle of a series of reviews/comments combos - the ones before and after that got dates, this one did not. Nothing special about this book or the process...

>19 bnielsen: Thanks!

If anyone does post an example, try to include these details if you can:
- Where you're writing the review: the "Add books" page, the "Your books" Review field, the full book-edit page, the "Main page" in the "Your book information" section, the App (which one), etc.
- The list of steps you're taking to write the review: is it while you're manually adding a book? directly after you add a new book (how did you add it? what data source did you use, if any)? adding a review to an older entry? etc.
- What OS/browser are you using?
- Note the date and time (and your timezone) when you posted the review. I want to consider server/timestamp-level stuff.
- The link to the review/title itself.

>20 AnnieMod: Very interesting. So it seems rather sporadic, then. I wonder if something is getting slowed down, at times, and failing to save the timestamp? No idea what that could be...

>22 kristilabrie: I've put in a check for this in my library. I currently have five of them:
- - check reviews with no review date found - -
223772159 OR 223804434 OR 223978464 OR 223978718 OR 223979073

Entry_Dates: : 2022-08-29, 2022-08-30, 2022-09-01, 2022-09-01, 2022-09-01

So it seems I can generate them quite often except when I try to replicate the error :-)

Ah, a new one appeared: 23183830

This one has a review date an hour ago and I just added something to the Private Comment field and Poof, the Review Data went away. WTF?

So maybe the bug can be triggered by taking a record with an existing review and review date and in Edit Book change another field than Review and save the record.

That might fit some of the others (i.e. 223772159 OR 223804434 OR 223978464 OR 223978718 OR 223979073) since I'm sure I changed Media from E-book at some point.

>24 bnielsen:

I very much doubt this is related, but I mention it just in case it helps. I wrote a review yesterday morning, of The Logger's Encyclopedia: A Road to the Past. If I understand the numbers people here are tossing around, it's review #223285824.

It shows a date; no problem there. I don't seem to have any undated reviews (though I don't know how to search for them except listing them by date.) But it is the first review of this particular book, and when I go to Zeitgeist:Reviews and look for Firsts, it's not there. In fact, there is nothing there from September 3 or 4. And "Most-Recently Reviewed Works" shows nothing at all.

Is there something that is preventing dates from being logged in some cache somewhere? Wild speculation on my part, I assure you. :-)

Mac OS 12.5
Firefox 104

Seems to be true in Safari also.

>25 waltzmn: Thanks. I really hope this isn't a browser related bug, since that would mean that the LT backend trust us to tell it the date :-)

>25 waltzmn: Reviews -> Firsts had never shown ALL first reviews - there is an algorithm of what shows and what does not. Although it seems to be misfiring in the Recents section (see https://www.librarything.com/topic/343963 so there may be an issue in the Firsts as well). But if your review has a date on it, it is NOT caught in the mess we are talking about here. :)

>27 AnnieMod: But if your review has a date on it, it is NOT caught in the mess we are talking about here. :)

Hmph. I take it you have never been looking to squash a bug and said, fourteen seconds before the whole system melts down, "No, it can't be in that section of code. :-)

LT has two dates issues. I don't think they're related, and said so. I also have enough programming experience (47 years) to never say never. :-)

>28 waltzmn: LT probably has more than 2 dates issues floating around. :)

It can be connected but the lack of it in Firsts is not just because of that - it was never “list all firsts”. :)

>29 AnnieMod: It can be connected but the lack of it in Firsts is not just because of that - it was never “list all firsts”. :)

Fair enough -- although I'd suggest someone take a look at that algorithm. Or, rather, at the list of dozens of Firsts posted on September 2, which did show up. Because they are not reviews -- and a great many have been so flagged. (Not by me, for the most part; I saw how many there were and gave up.) Presumably the algorithm is considering the book being reviewed, rather than the bogus nature of the review -- but when one person is posting dozens of reviews per day, a large portion of which have been flagged as non-reviews, you have a problem. When you post those as Firsts, and do not post mine, which is a carefully-written, considered, useful review of a book that not many people have heard of, that's an even bigger problem.

Apologies if that sounds cranky; my cranky message was the one before. :-) This is just an observation that "Firsts" right now is pretty useless because it's polluted by someone who is misusing the Reviews field.

>30 waltzmn: That’s an old problem - a review is a review no matter if it is a good one or not (or if it is a review at all) and Recents and Firsts had always been polluted by these - in a way they are part of how one can find these non-reviews to start flagging them :) It is how I noticed the problem in the Bug report I linked - I tend to check to see what needs flagging in those.

I think that what shows in both has to do with number of users who have the books (and other metrics).

Here's one. I just posted--minutes ago--my review that appears here:
https://www.librarything.com/work/120982/reviews/84207033
No date!

It doesn't appear on my reviews page:
https://www.librarything.com/reviews/paradoxosalpha

But it does appear in Recent Activity on my Profile page:
https://www.librarything.com/profile/paradoxosalpha

I composed it in the Edit Book page, for a book I cataloged a long time ago.
Chrome Version 105.0.5195.102 (Official Build) (64-bit)
Windows 10

UPDATE: I went back and made an edit on the Reviews page for the book (link at the top of this post), and after the save, the date was added. The review now appears on my reviews page also.

>32 paradoxosalpha: It was always on your reviews page (and on the work reviews page) - it just floated to the bottom as the review page is sorted by date so the outliners which have no date go at the bottom of the list (aka behind your oldest review). So if you had reversed the date order, you would have seen it. Sort my reviews by reversed date if you want to see where they float. :)

>33 AnnieMod:

Makes sense.

An old review of mine has actually lost its date: https://www.librarything.com/review/20274499

I sorted by dates today and realized this is now at the bottom, when in fact it would have been posted something like February 2008. I might have recently been on its Edit book page, but I don't think I would have been on its Reviews page and/or made any changes to its review.

Hmmm. I had two. One was quite recent, https://www.librarything.com/work/13582019 and needed an edit, so it now has today's date. (Should be 25-08-2022). The other https://www.librarything.com/work/2983502/details/44030579 should be April 2009.

>35 Stevil2001: That's what I was guessing in >24 bnielsen:. Changes somewhere in the book record that's not the review seems to lose the Review Date. At least that's my theory :-)

I just (as in within the last five minutes) edited this a bit https://www.librarything.com/work/119479/details/221297957
Using Edit Book (https://www.librarything.com/work/119479/edit/221297957) and adding something to Comments and changing Media to Ebook and sure enough: The Review Date disappeared.

Change Media back to Hardcover. Still no Review Date.
Added a line to the review and Review Date came back.

This looks reproducible! I think changing the Media to Ebook, saving, and changing it back again, saving again, often makes the Review Date go away. What a weird bug!

>38 bnielsen: The one I have caught into this belongs to an ebook (which never changed its format since it was added). Just as a data point.

>39 AnnieMod: I don't think the Media field is required for the bug to appear. I _think_ any field other than Review will do. Your >20 AnnieMod: suggests that Comments also triggers the bug.

>40 bnielsen: Thread comments, not book comments. :) The only fields I changed when adding the review on this one would have been the cover and Other Authors (if I had not set the translators there earlier). But if that is the case, I should have a lot more of these - that is my standard pattern.

>38 bnielsen: I do not see a date on your review.

>24 bnielsen: Ohhh, that's an interesting detail to test. Will try that. (I see that >38 bnielsen: has reproduced it for you, so good work! Now to narrow down...)

>42 MarthaJeanne: Sorry! I kept on testing, so it ended up without a review date. I should have said that.

I had my first experience of an old review losing its date today, after I added a tag to the record. I "fixed" it by editing the review, so it got today's date. This will get really irritating if it persists. I use my review dates to track my reading.

>45 paradoxosalpha: Quite agree. I just fixed six of my books the same way. Since the bug (see >38 bnielsen:) is now reproducible, I'll "fix" all my examples of it.

Might be another bug?

https://www.librarything.com/work/28754641/reviews

lists 2 reviews, but only one member (me) and displays only 1 review (mine).

>47 bnielsen:

I have often seen that. I assumed the invisible review was from a private library.

>48 paradoxosalpha: In this case, not just a private library, but a nonexistant one, because bnielsen is the only member with the book.

>48 paradoxosalpha: I've just seen it go up from 1 to 2, when I edited my one and only review of a book of which I was the sole owner. I don't seem to be able to make it go from 2 to 3, though.

Looks like a bug, walks like a bug and sounds like a bug :-)

>46 bnielsen: But it's not reliably reproducible. I just added tags to two of my books with reviews and the review dates are still there. We still need to pinpoint exactly when this happens.

>45 paradoxosalpha: How did you add the tag to your book before the review date went missing? From the "Your books" "Tags" field, somewhere else? Did you use an existing tag in your catalog, or a new tag? What time and timezone do you remember adding the tag? (Even better if you can link me to the book, too.)

Still digging on this...

Scratch that, so it seems to be only in the book-edit page that it reliably reproduces. Testing a few other spots to be sure!

To reproduce:
1. Add and save a review to one of your books OR view a book with an existing review.Go to the reviews page and see there's a timestamp on the review (if it hasn't already disappeared from this bug).
2. Click to edit the book, so you go to the book-edit page (nowhere else) (e.g. https://www.librarything.com/work/21984367/edit/157444204 in my library)
3. Make any edit, or do nothing. Just click to Save the page.
4. Look at the reviews page for your book, now, and find your review (e.g. https://www.librarything.com/work/16026605/reviews/123092411).

Bug: The timestamp for your review is now missing.

NB: You can find your missing timestamp reviews by looking at the Review Dates Graph (e.g. https://www.librarything.com/stats/kristilabrie/ratingsreviews) and clicking to view the "(X reviews were made before the system kept track. They have been assigned to the first month.)"

I tested some edits on "Your books" and in the iOS App and didn't see the timestamp removal, FWIW. Seems to be restricted to the book-edit's "Save" button, from what I can tell.

To members: Please don't re-add your timestamps by editing your review/s. We will do our best to restore the original timestamps, so this will confuse the issue until we can get to it. Thank you!

Clean test for Tim:
1. logged in as kristi_test_01
2. added a new book: https://www.librarything.com/work/28306029/reviews/224414858, and reviewed from the "Recently added" page. Timestamp included:

3. reviewed an existing book: https://www.librarything.com/work/23591165/reviews/172202138, from "Your books". Timestamp included:

4. added a new book: https://www.librarything.com/work/27855599/reviews/224414872, and reviewed from book-edit page. Timestamp included:

5. For Book 1, I simply clicked the "Save" button on the book-edit page. Review timestamp removed.
6. For Book 2, I added a tag from the book-edit page and clicked "Save". Timestamp removed.
7. For Book 3, I made a few edits to the author, tags, and barcode fields in "Your books". Timestamp remains.

>53 kristi_test_01: That was me, by the way. Sorry.

>52 kristilabrie: I went to find the missing timestamp of my reviews (https://www.librarything.com/catalog/fuzzi&collection=-1&reviewdate=2011-06) and discovered that under the "reviews were made before the system kept track" there is a book I reviewed in August 2022, last month!

The others listed include the one for which I was trying to get a review date.

This bug is still in force. I just lost the date from my review of Utopia Avenue. This one is an LTER book, and I observe that the review date is still visible in my LTER record.

>57 paradoxosalpha: Yes and since >53 kristi_test_01: is now a month old I've fixed the rather few errors in my LT catalogue.

I just sent a reminder to timspalding, thanks for your patience all.

Should I leave my Utopia Avenue review bereft of date for Tim's benefit, or can I date it to get it back in to view?

I would leave it. Per timspalding, see >53 kristi_test_01:

Another interesting aspect: Although my Utopia Avenue review is bereft of a date, and thus appears at the bottom/beginning of my Reviews page and the date-sorted Reviews on the Work page, it still appears in the Hot Reviews feed. So it's still "recent" according to some datum.

Update: I can no longer reproduce this bug following the previously identified steps (>52 kristilabrie: and >54 kristi_test_01:). Has anyone else been seeing this bug recently?

There's no date on a recent review I did:

https://www.librarything.com/work/7246698/reviews/196646170

I noticed this on my iPad yesterday, and on my work computer this morning (Windows 10 Enterprise).

>64 fuzzi: Do you remember (approximately) when you posted the review? Did you make any edits via the book-edit page during or after? Any details you can offer as to how/when you posted your review (including what device/browser you used), and anything you remember for that record after, will really help. Thank you!

>65 kristilabrie:

I was able to reproduce this. I can do so no longer. The question is if you can get it to happen some other way, or in some other sequence, their being many ways to post reviews.

My experience was not that the date was missing on the initial posting, but that it later went away after editing some other non-review element of the record. For Utopia Avenue (which I since re-dated, sorry), it was when I added a star rating to the already-reviewed book.

>65 kristilabrie: I posted the review maybe October 20th, or early morning on the 21st. It was no later than that, as I posted the review also on my challenge threads about 8:30 am ET on the 21st.

I usually write my reviews from the book's main page, clicking "edit" under the book's information section: https://www.librarything.com/work/7246698

I posted it either at work (Windows 10 Enterprise) or with my iPad.

>68 fuzzi: Okay, thanks! I'll try to play around with some actions. Do you remember editing that book after you saved/posted the review, in any way? Similar to what >67 paradoxosalpha: mentioned?

>69 kristilabrie: I can't recall. Sometimes I do, but that was one of over 100 reviews I've done this year, so the particulars of the review don't stand out for me.

Appreciate the help.

I seem to have a few. Some of them could be dated by comparing to my comments in talk, but I'm fairly sure some lost their dates when I edited the entry.

Under “Reviews” at top of book’s Main Page it says there are 17, but when you click to see the reviews there are 18 of them, as indicated at head of list.

>72 booksaplenty1949:, Sorry, what book are you talking about? Is this referring to the missing review timestamp being discussed in this thread?

So will the reviews which are still missing dates get their dates restored by LT behind the scenes? I still have one stuck (https://www.librarything.com/work/21653944/reviews/220733868) - not a new one.

>73 kristilabrie: Yes—-fuzzi’s review of Conspirator, as linked in message 64.

>74 AnnieMod: Yes! timspalding is going to work on restoring the timestamps, I'm not sure if he's waiting to fix the bug first or not. (Probably so.) Thanks for your patience, if you can wait before trying a workaround to make a new date.

>76 kristilabrie: No worries. I am leaving it alone - I just wanted to make sure it is still the plan. :)

Okay, this is fixed. Basically all the missing data created by this bug has been fixed. There are some books from LT's first few years that are also missing their review stamp, but that was from another bug long ago, and can't be restored.

>79 timspalding: Yep, my only date-less review has its expected date now. Thanks!

The only one left was entered, acquired and read in 2009. I assume it was reviewed back then, too. I have no problem just leaving that one.

Marking as fixed. Yay!

>79 timspalding: >82 kristilabrie: thank you!!!