Upgrade StorageTags out of sync...how should this work?
Hi All,
I love Zotero...but it's giving me some fits this week...I'm having trouble syncing tags and I wonder if I have a corrupted file somewhere or whether it's my understanding that is off...
I work on four Windows PCs and have the Zotero Firefox extension on each. I haven't done much with the library for some time but made a New Year's resolution to clean it up and start using it. I own a small company and ideally want to have one group library that several of us contribute to and clean up from time to time.
Here are my questions:
1. I currently have 1,900 items taking up about 1.9 Gig of my 6 Gig Zotero account. Is this a medium or large-sized library in Zotero-world? Because accounts can go higher than 6Gig, I assume that I should be able to wrangle a library easily 3-4X this size and expect it to work across several computers and several users. Is that right, or am I likely to encounter syncing problems at a certain size (in either items or computers)?
2. We had a dormant group library where papers were imported with lots of extraneous tags. This week I moved everything in my personal library and deleted the group library after some tag syncing problems...thinking that this would be 'cleaner' for tidying up. But I'm still having trouble with tags that I have painstakingly deleted coming back to haunt me. Right now I'm looking at a paper that has zero tags on the local machine I'm using today but has several tags on the server version of the library. I've sync'd several times...no sign of a problem in sync'ing...but the #!^!^&* tags are still there on the server. The trash is empty on the server and on the Firefox extension. I have shut down the browser and started again. I have shut down the PC and started again. Why Oh Why are those tags still on the server version? Is it because some of my PCs are turned off and therefore not sync'd and they won't disappear until all PCs are sync'd? In a personal library...after a sync...shouldn't an individual item (paper) have precisely the same tags as that item on the machine that just sync'd? Regardless of how many other computers might also host a local copy of that library that has or has not recently been sync'd?
[If the answer is yes then I seem to have some sort of problem...what should I do? Use the option to have the local machine over-ride the server?]
[If the answer is no, it would help me to understand what I should expect to see and whether I need to have ALL computers turned on when making Zotero edits for the server to look like the client. (seems unlikely)]
3. When I get the sync'ing fixed and convert this to a group library...what is the best practice for making changes and additions? Should the permissions be locked down so that only one person makes changes...or at least only one person at a time?
Or does it work quite well for different people to be making changes to different items, possibly at the same time? [I recognize that making changes to the same item at the same time could likely be sticky.]
4. When one of the people with permission to make changes makes a change...do we expect the server to reflect the change right away? ('sync automatically' is ticked on all of our machines.) And then do we expect that change to propagate to the other user's computers next time they sync? This would be my naive understanding of 'sync'. It shouldn't be the case that one of my other computers or one of my colleagues' computers would revert a change...or keep the server from dropping tags, right?
5. I see in the forums that not emptying the trash can keep olde tags around on the client or server. But does everyone who shares the library (all computers and all users) have to clean out their trash and sync...or is it just the person who made the recent change? (Deleted the tag?) Does the server know that there are clients out there who haven't learned yet that the tag is being deleted...and does it keep the tag around until all clients update?
6. We use dropbox for business...and if it made sense we could keep our resources there and use links for the files...using Zotero data sync only...and housing the PDFs in our Dropbox. I'm not sure if that is possible for a group library...is it? But if we can get the syncing to work the way I naively think it should, I am happy to pay for Zotero storage and would prefer to keep the documents there. Again...should this be possible with a library of 2000 items? 4,000? More? Are there lots of people having success with group libraries that size and larger? (with several people making changes to the library?)
7. Finally...this Google Scholar lockout issue...arrrgh...what a pain that is. I don't see a recent note from someone at Zotero giving hope that it will go away soon...is there any hope there? I understand, perhaps, when trying to add metadata in large batches...but I was shut out this week after adding data one paper at a time for an hour in a row. Couldn't have been more than a few dozen requests. The message from Google said that sometimes the user has a chance to enter a code to clarify that they are not a robot...but I was given no such opportunity...simply shut out for 24+ hours. Does anyone know how to trigger such an opportunity rather than being summarily shut out?
Thank you for any insight and thank you for a great product!
-Dale
I love Zotero...but it's giving me some fits this week...I'm having trouble syncing tags and I wonder if I have a corrupted file somewhere or whether it's my understanding that is off...
I work on four Windows PCs and have the Zotero Firefox extension on each. I haven't done much with the library for some time but made a New Year's resolution to clean it up and start using it. I own a small company and ideally want to have one group library that several of us contribute to and clean up from time to time.
Here are my questions:
1. I currently have 1,900 items taking up about 1.9 Gig of my 6 Gig Zotero account. Is this a medium or large-sized library in Zotero-world? Because accounts can go higher than 6Gig, I assume that I should be able to wrangle a library easily 3-4X this size and expect it to work across several computers and several users. Is that right, or am I likely to encounter syncing problems at a certain size (in either items or computers)?
2. We had a dormant group library where papers were imported with lots of extraneous tags. This week I moved everything in my personal library and deleted the group library after some tag syncing problems...thinking that this would be 'cleaner' for tidying up. But I'm still having trouble with tags that I have painstakingly deleted coming back to haunt me. Right now I'm looking at a paper that has zero tags on the local machine I'm using today but has several tags on the server version of the library. I've sync'd several times...no sign of a problem in sync'ing...but the #!^!^&* tags are still there on the server. The trash is empty on the server and on the Firefox extension. I have shut down the browser and started again. I have shut down the PC and started again. Why Oh Why are those tags still on the server version? Is it because some of my PCs are turned off and therefore not sync'd and they won't disappear until all PCs are sync'd? In a personal library...after a sync...shouldn't an individual item (paper) have precisely the same tags as that item on the machine that just sync'd? Regardless of how many other computers might also host a local copy of that library that has or has not recently been sync'd?
[If the answer is yes then I seem to have some sort of problem...what should I do? Use the option to have the local machine over-ride the server?]
[If the answer is no, it would help me to understand what I should expect to see and whether I need to have ALL computers turned on when making Zotero edits for the server to look like the client. (seems unlikely)]
3. When I get the sync'ing fixed and convert this to a group library...what is the best practice for making changes and additions? Should the permissions be locked down so that only one person makes changes...or at least only one person at a time?
Or does it work quite well for different people to be making changes to different items, possibly at the same time? [I recognize that making changes to the same item at the same time could likely be sticky.]
4. When one of the people with permission to make changes makes a change...do we expect the server to reflect the change right away? ('sync automatically' is ticked on all of our machines.) And then do we expect that change to propagate to the other user's computers next time they sync? This would be my naive understanding of 'sync'. It shouldn't be the case that one of my other computers or one of my colleagues' computers would revert a change...or keep the server from dropping tags, right?
5. I see in the forums that not emptying the trash can keep olde tags around on the client or server. But does everyone who shares the library (all computers and all users) have to clean out their trash and sync...or is it just the person who made the recent change? (Deleted the tag?) Does the server know that there are clients out there who haven't learned yet that the tag is being deleted...and does it keep the tag around until all clients update?
6. We use dropbox for business...and if it made sense we could keep our resources there and use links for the files...using Zotero data sync only...and housing the PDFs in our Dropbox. I'm not sure if that is possible for a group library...is it? But if we can get the syncing to work the way I naively think it should, I am happy to pay for Zotero storage and would prefer to keep the documents there. Again...should this be possible with a library of 2000 items? 4,000? More? Are there lots of people having success with group libraries that size and larger? (with several people making changes to the library?)
7. Finally...this Google Scholar lockout issue...arrrgh...what a pain that is. I don't see a recent note from someone at Zotero giving hope that it will go away soon...is there any hope there? I understand, perhaps, when trying to add metadata in large batches...but I was shut out this week after adding data one paper at a time for an hour in a row. Couldn't have been more than a few dozen requests. The message from Google said that sometimes the user has a chance to enter a code to clarify that they are not a robot...but I was given no such opportunity...simply shut out for 24+ hours. Does anyone know how to trigger such an opportunity rather than being summarily shut out?
Thank you for any insight and thank you for a great product!
-Dale
Do I understand correctly that that tag problem currently is just that they're displayed online? Have you tried a hard reload of the library page (ctrl+shift+r)?
2. That should not be the expected behavior. I think this is somethgin going wrong and someone will soon offer a fix/explanation. If nothing else, take a full backup of your local Zotero, and then do a reset with "Reset to Zotero Server" checked. make sure you have a full backup of the local just in case soemthing goes wrong.
3. Multiple people making changes to different or even same item should not be an issue. If it were, sync would break soon and often. One option to allow everyone to contribute but still have few people with full control is making two groups. A main group that stores all your items with only afew users having admin/edit rights. And then have a second group, that acts like a scratchpad. All users of the first group have admin/edit rights in the second group. When items are added to the second group, the admins of the first group pull it to the first group and delete it from the second group (this could be daily, weekly, whatever suits the admins). Thus, the second group will only have a few or no items at any given time.
4 and 5. If a user with rights makes a change, it should be immediately reflected on the server, irrespective of how many other computers are still waiting to sync. And that change should propagate to other computers as they sync. I think (though not sure), the changes are processed by the server in the order they are made. So, if one computer deleted a tag, it will be deleted from the server and clients. Later, if another user added that same tag, it will be added on server and clients. I don't know if tags have an internal unique id separate from their visible name, but I would assume they do.
6. Groups do not allow linked attachments, so storing files in a Dropbox folder is not possible. I have been asking for this feature and hope it will come soon after Zotero 5.0 is launched.
7. Since this issue is based on how Google interprets/applies limitations, I doubt there is any good workaround.
From Zotero's perspective, the biggest issue is that you're making it impossible to troubleshoot this properly by erasing data on the server, followed by the fact that you're causing unnecessary server load.
Thank you for the notes...I am encouraged that it is supposed to work the way I want it to work and encouraged that our foreseeable needs are well within the limits of what is considered to be a medium library.
Adam wrote:
"Do I understand correctly that that tag problem currently is just that they're displayed online? Have you tried a hard reload of the library page (ctrl+shift+r)? "
The way I see it, the problem is that the system thinks it has sync'd...but items are not in sync. Tags that I have well-and-truly deleted from my local library (good riddance) are hanging around in the server version and sometimes (seemingly having to do with when I bring another PC online and it syncs with the server) these tags are brought back into my local copy of the library...from whence they had been recently deleted.
Fortunately the bulk of my work the last week has been adding metadata to items that lack it and as far as I can see, none of the syncing problems have dropped the new metadata. It looks like the syncing discordance is confined to tags...but I can't say for sure.
So I will continue to add metadata. Does it help if I provide someone at Zotero with an example or two of items that have ghosts-of-tags-past on the server side?
I will not take extreme measures with cleaning out the library and trying to start clean at this time...I'm happy to try to help identify the specific problem. As long as I'm not losing items or metadata other than tags...I'm okay. I can go thru and fix the tags on 2k items once we figure out how to get them back in sync.
Happy weekend,
-Dale
Also as a thought -- do these have any notes or attachments? Note that notes and attachments can have tags of their own. Make sure those are deleted, too.
Schill & Wild 2006. https://www.zotero.org/dalerhoda/items/itemKey/FZANID7A
Local copy has one attachment...a pdf...and neither the PDF nor its parent have any tags.
Server copy has two attachments...a pdf and a snapshot...neither attachments have tags, but the parent item has three tags...two of which I have deleted locally and one of which I have renamed.
Example #2. St. Laurent 1998 https://www.zotero.org/dalerhoda/items/itemKey/G3ER9EFP
Tags have been removed from local copy but the server copy has six tags.
Local copy has one snapshot attachment with no tags.
Server copy has two snapshot attachments, neither have tags.
Thanks for looking,
-Dale
a) you're syncing successfully? I.e. if you hover over the green sync arrow at the top right, you see a reasonably recent timestamp?
b) these really are the same items? If you paste FZANID7A into your local Zotero's search bar in "all fields & tags" mode, you see the item with a single attachment and no tags?
It just seems very odd that both tags and attachments would sync properly in spite of successful syncs.
I assume that your final sentence was missing the word 'not' ???
"would NOT sync properly in spite of successful syncs." Is that right.
I agree...it's odd and frustrating.