Help with editing series

[Sarah_Delphino]

Hi,

tl;dr: I can't edit my auto-generated series's info (Short Description and Series Information), and the first several Stories in that series do not have links to the series/next stories. I need a moderator, possibly one with direct db access, to help fix these two issues.

The Misadventure

I discovered a bug in series, and through a series of misguided workarounds, I believe I have corrupted by database entries. I posted this as help/feedback over a week ago and haven't received a response, so I'm posting here. (I'd post in Tech Support, but I don't have permissions.)

I'm writing a novel/series called Subclasses. Before I came up with the name, I had used a temporary name for my series called "Sub, Sex, and Software", and I added all new stories to that series. Then I changed the name to "Subclasses" and things seemed to be doing okay, except that every time I posted a new story, the series in the New Story page would say "Sub, Sex, and Software" after I selected the series. (The series selection box, itself, said "Subclasses".)

I thought to get around this, I would just delete my series and recreate it with the right name. When I did recreate it, I got an error saying that I already had a series with that name.



So, I created a new series called "Subclasses (WIP)". Everything was working fine, but every time I posted a new story, it would be added to both "Subclasses (WIP)" and the auto-generated series "Subclasses", which would make it look like I had two series on my profile page, each with the full set of stories. So, I decided to just keep the autogenerated series and I deleted "Subclasses (WIP)".

Then, when I went to edit the auto-generated one with my desired Short Description and Series Introduction, I got that same error about a series with the same name already existing. At this point, all of the stories say they're in a series on the My Works page, however, none but the last couple stories have links to the series when you actually open them up, so people opening chapter 6, for example, don't have a direct link back to chapter 1; they have to click on my author profile for each chapter they want to read.

Finally, I recreated "Subclasses (WIP)", intending to manually re-add all the stories to that and just bear with having a duplicate series in my profile page. However, when I went to add the stories in "Series Works", each story was listed 3 times, and whenever I tried to click the + next to any of them, I got an error that simply said, "Not found".

Thanks in advance!

 

[EmilyMiller]

Hi,

I’m sorry about your problems. But the only people here are authors and readers, not site admin.

What you need to do is to start a conversation with both @Laurel and @Manu who are the co-owners and also - as far as anyone knows - the entire staff.

If you don’t know how to do that, click on either of the @s above and then “start conversation”, I’d PM both, so you might need to add the second name manually

Good luck

Em

 

[Sarah_Delphino]

Thanks so much!

Hi,

I’m sorry about your problems. But the only people here are authors and readers, not site admin.

What you need to do is to start a conversation with both @Laurel and @Manu who are the co-owners and also - as far as anyone knows - the entire staff.

If you don’t know how to do that, click on either of the @s above and then “start conversation”, I’d PM both, so you might need to add the second name manually

Good luck

Em

 

[MillieDynamite]

You can't have stories in more than one series. But you can have multi-part stories inside a series or sequels to stories. I plan on a second Just a Friendly Drink in my Just a Friendly Series Series. The next one will be entitled Just a Friendly Drink Two.

 

[StillStunned]

The next one will be entitled Just a Friendly Drink Two.

Humble suggestion? "Just a Friendly Drink or Two"?

 

[Sarah_Delphino]

You can't have stories in more than one series. But you can have multi-part stories inside a series or sequels to stories. I plan on a second Just a Friendly Drink in my Just a Friendly Series Series. The next one will be entitled Just a Friendly Drink Two.

I know you can't (or at least shouldn't be able to) have stories as part of two separate series, though I did, apparently, get the DB into that state by having both a series I created and an auto-generated series. When I tried adding my stories back to "Subclasses (WIP)", I had already re-deleted the auto-generated series. I had the same issue, though, where it said the stories weren't found.

Plus, it's better if the series is just handled automatically by the system. I just want to change the Series Intro and description and have the stories that are already marked as part of the series actually apply that information to the story pages themselves. The series knows its stories, but the stories don't all know their series.

 

[Devinter]

@Sarah_Delphino - I had the same problem this summer. The issue is that when you delete a series, it remains somewhere in the database, invisible and unreachable. I am able to duplicate this issue at will so it's clearly a bug in the system. The only work-around I found was to remove all stories from the glitched series, then wait for the website to auto-create a new series, putting the correct stories together. Then I simply didn't touch that new auto-series in any way; Didn't change name, picture, anything. Because if I did.. Well, the loop just began anew.

 

[MillieDynamite]

A time loop is a tricky thing to navigate.

@Sarah_Delphino - I had the same problem this summer. The issue is that when you delete a series, it remains somewhere in the database, invisible and unreachable. I am able to duplicate this issue at will so it's clearly a bug in the system. The only work-around I found was to remove all stories from the glitched series, then wait for the website to auto-create a new series, putting the correct stories together. Then I simply didn't touch that new auto-series in any way; Didn't change name, picture, anything. Because if I did.. Well, the loop just began anew.

 

[Devinter]

A time loop is a tricky thing to navigate.

I tried to write a time loop story for the 25th anniversary challenge, but found it quite challenging, so I just started over from the beginning..

 

[MillieDynamite]

And again, again, again, and again. Yikes.

I tried to write a time loop story for the 25th anniversary challenge, but found it quite challenging, so I just started over from the beginning..

 

[ElectricBlue]

@Sarah_Delphino - I had the same problem this summer. The issue is that when you delete a series, it remains somewhere in the database, invisible and unreachable. I am able to duplicate this issue at will so it's clearly a bug in the system. The only work-around I found was to remove all stories from the glitched series, then wait for the website to auto-create a new series, putting the correct stories together. Then I simply didn't touch that new auto-series in any way; Didn't change name, picture, anything. Because if I did.. Well, the loop just began anew.

I had something similar, but managed to fix it by completely starting again.

@Sarah_Delphino it looks like you tried to do that. Maybe try deleting the series construct, but wait 24 hours before you build a new one. From what I can see, the series software runs once a day, so you might need to wait, to let it catch up.

I've got a vague memory that's what I did, which fixed a long-standing glitch.