I put a book on my WL on the 18th, when it was WL'ed by 12 other people in the system. So at that point my status was 12 out of 12.. This is what's puzzling me: just now I looked at my WL: now I'm 17 out of 24. How is that possible? How can I be any lower down in the queue than #12?

Fiona

The same thing happened to me today.  Hopefully, someone can tell us why...

This is the vacation season.  People put their shelves on hold for vacation.  This also puts their WL on hold thus taking them out of the queue.    However, when you put your shelf on vacation hold, you do not lose your position so when they take their shelf off of hold, they reappear in the wish list queue.  Also, their could have been RWAP reported by folks at the front of the line as well as books going lost in the mail.

That's a helpful clarification, Mary, because as it happens (heh heh) *I* have my Bookshel on Hold. I'm not on vacation--I just got overwhelmed by a flood of requests that came in, and I needed to take some time off from wrapping and mailing books, so I could take care of business in my family and around my house..

What you're saying is: when I take my Bookshelf off hold, I'll reappear in the queue. Now I am still convinced that since I entered the Wish List at 12 out of 12, I should not be lower in the queue than number 12, when I re-enter the queue. Right. I hope that will be true!

But Mary, I still have a question: why does my WL *say* that my position in the queue is 17 out of 24--when it's not? If I'm not currently *in* any of the queues, why doesn't it just put some kind of placeholder in all of those spots in the Wish List, like "BS on Hold" or something? I mean if the status info is false, why is it displayed it to the swapper? (I know--you may not be able to explain the why's and wherefore's of TPTB. =grin=)

Fiona

You may still be lower than 12.  When you put yourself on WL and were in position 12-there could have been a few people ahead of you on vacation, maybe a book went lost, a pending request could have timed out, a book could have been marked RWP-all affecting the # of people ahead of you. 

Then again while your on vacation 6 people ahead of you could have received books and no longer be in line.  The WL lines constantly fluctuate. 

It shows the place holder in your WL so you can see where you are.  Some people go on hold because they have credits but don't have postage money or the time to mail books out.  But they still want WL books. So when they near the top they go on autorequest which puts them actively back in the line for that book.  So right now you are indeed 17 of 24-presumably because 5 people before you came off hold or had a bad book transaction that put them back in line for the WL book.

When you pull up a book it does not show the people who are on hold in the # of wishers. That why you might look up a book and see that there are 12 wishers-but then when you add it to your WL it shows you as  14 of 14-because 2 people are on vacation.  I don't know why they do this.  I guess so when people are posting books they know that it won't get offered to some of the people on line because of vacation holds. So if it's declined by all the active wishers people don't wonder why it goes on their shelf.  Which is what happens if  hte only wishers for a book are on vacation-if the book is posted it goes on the shelf for anyone to order. 

If your WL is on auto-request, going on vacation hold wouldn't make you disapper from the queue.  The system would automatically request the book for you as long as you have credits available.  Only if you're not on auto-request would you disapper from the queue entirely until you come off of hold.

Yup to the above explainations...but a shift of six does seem rather large :-)

When you do a search on the book, the number wishing listed in the details may not be accurate. For example, I have wishlisted a book that said there were 10 wishers, put it on my WL, immediately went to my WL to change to autorequest and the queue information said I was 13 of 13, 30 seconds after it was there were 10 wishers on the details. I don't know if that's a reflection of people with vacation holds not auto-wishlisted, or if information updates in one area faster than another, or what...but I never believe what it says in the book information as far as # of wishers.

Now, if someone else had ordered the book previously and there was a problem transaction or the book went lost in the mail or the request was cancelled by the sender, I could go to 14th or 15th in line (or further back) too, because those folks resume their place in line ahead of me.

Cheryl

The site has been doing some tinkering on the WL lately. Last week (or the week before?) Around the 9th there was a major shift in the other direction where a lot of people were posting a major shift up in the WL lines. This could be a correction of that too.

eta: I went back and checked on a book that I'd posted about at the time of that shift and I have moved back in line by 5 spots. That size of a shift is hard to explain because it can easily be holds going on and off too.