List your three top small improvements, part 2
Talk Recommend Site Improvements
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1_Zoe_
The original thread was getting a bit long and included some explanations/discussions of how various suggested improvements were already available, so I thought we could use a new one--maybe now they'll read it? I also thought it would be interesting to see which small improvements have already been implemented, so I'm including the old suggestions here and crossing off the ones that have been done (let me know if I missed any).
The improvements suggested in the original thread:
FIX LCC SORTING!
The completely wrong "examples" on the search page.
I'd like a link back to "all topics" from individual topic pages in Talk.
More columns in catalogue view!
Ratings above reviews (and, preferably, above recommendations) on the works page.
Sorting dates (read, acquired, started, entered) recent-first by default in the catalogue view. (accomplished Sept. 3/07)
I would like the add manually button to be much higher on the page.
In Safari: Post a message opens at bottom of thread (ok) but display of page jumps to top of page, which means I have to scroll down to write the message. Working fine in Firefox.
A link to jump to 'your ignored' threads in talk
Search results in talk: have a way to sort or collapse them by thread (or by group?).
Author page: No bold print for "n LibraryThing users own x books by a, ..."
Option to set your library sort view to newest entry date (currently takes me 3 clicks: My library, sort by date, sort descending. As I log in from different computers, I cannot have a persistent cookie plus bookmark.)
Works page: "Find at" include search Google books.
Some form of sort on search results.
A frequent wipe of non-authors with no books
Taking account of ratings in suggester et al.
A way to get to your ignored posts easily.
A way to ignore groups other than never using Your World.
Separate lists for private and public groups.
On the Author pages, fixing the missing info in "You have books by ...", which has been obviously begging to have read "You have ## books by ..." for months and months and months.
In the Zeitgeist, update the sub-pages more frequently
MORE STATS!
Have a date and time stamp on all zeitgeist pages.
Power edit: When I edit my catalog in power edit mode, instead of being returned to the power edit page - with all my books listed - I get the front page of library thing within the frame where my catalog should be. ... Note that when I change a book cover, I'm again redirected to the front page, instead of back to that book's record or my catalog; it's still not desireable but at least it's not within a frame.
Tailored Sort Orders: I'd like to be able to display a different sort order for my main catalog page (alphabetical by title) and my recently_read tag (from most recent date, descending). Note I said "display", meaning that I'd like people dropping in from my blog to by default see the sort order I'd selected for a tag.
More Room for Additional Authors
Say you want to look for an older thread on Talk, one that has now been pushed off the current page and onto an older page: to move into the past, you click "Next". That's simply backwards.
> Taking account of ratings in suggester et al.
and be able to check 'ignore book / author for recommendations' (not that I'd count this as a small improvement)
I'd like to have "Your watch list" show up above "Users with your books"
Am I the only person that wishes our libraries were alphabetical instead of numerical? If I'm scrolling through looking for books or authors that start with S, how in the heck should I know what page it is on?
One, when you select a cover, it takes you to a separate page. I'm okay with that. What I'd like is for that page to take me back to the page I was working on.
Two, I have many books in storage. As I've been adding them, I tag them all with "box##", where the numbers refer to a number on the box. Books that are here are not tagged with a box notation, obviously. Short of going through and tagging each individual book that's here with a tag like "here", I'd love a way to simply say "all books without tag "box*" (where * in this case is the regular expression to match all tags beginning with the three letters box).
When you click on a number in the "Users With Your Books" list on your profile page, it lists all books that you have in common with that user (with the other user's selected covers). This is, of course, very cool. When your collection has multiple copies of the same "work", however, the other user's books that correspond to that work are listed once for each of your own corresponding books. So if, for instance, after having entered my eight different translations of Don Quijote, I were to view books in common with a user who has five translations, I would see the book listed forty times (as if we had forty copies of the quijote in common?!). The program should, of course, list every book in the other user's library that corresponds with each unique work (not each book) in my collection, so that I only see the exact number of books owned by the other user. I don't know if this error exists in any of the "commonality" statistics.
It would be really nice if the library suggestion engine could filter a user's library using a set of user-specified tags to be included or excluded
It would be really nice if there were a new sortable, free-form text field with which users can control the sort order of their collections without being forced to enter "artificial" tags simply to control sorting.
On the Edit page, add two fields. Specifically "Series" and "Volume" (or "Vol.")
Allow the possibility of a user having multiple (but a small number) of lists. For example, one or two Book lists, a CD list, a DVD list.
Add a way to select from the tags previous entered in your library tags to be assigned to a work.
a. Include a way to add tags that others have used to your library of tags, perhaps by clicking on them.
b. Include a way (perhaps on the Profile or Add Books page) to add tags to your list without assigning them to a book yet.
having a profile view counter so you can see how many people have vistied your page.
an email, alert, or message that could be sent to you if people in your watch list or in the top five people you share books with add new books or reviews to their pages
I would love a "last 25 reviews" on the books zeitgeist page
a way to just put a year in date acquired, date started, date read.
The LibraryThing BETA image in the upper left corner has a stray white pixel in the upper right corner of the image.
I would find it extremely useful if the works that I have in my library were somehow marked on the author pages. Maybe some checkmark in the front of the title
The touchstones could use some minor fixing. More and more frequently, when I modify the touchstone by choosing "other" and then picking an author from the list it ends up linking to something called "fulltext" instead of the proper author.
remember that I have selected "Skip confirmation (for barcodes and ISBNs)" on "add books" so I don't have to select it at the start of each cataloguing session
do something to the tabs at the top of the screen so that the left-aligned tabs aren't overlapped by the right-aligned tabs in 800 x 600 resolution
make the zeitgeist page smaller or quicker to load somehow
Having the option to "ignore" a thread/topic while I have the thread open.
When adding books, the mass market material is usually in some version of Amazon by ISBN but often without the cover if it isn't fairly new/popular. I would like an Advanced option to display User Covers to select when it is showing me titles to confirm if Amazon didn't have one.
Sizes of Members' library in Zeitgeist: while the biggest libraries are listed, I'm curious to see what the whole membership looks like.
I'd like to be notified if I appear to be adding a book I've already added, especially if it's an identical ISBN. I would like it if I could catch the (probably) bogus data *before* I add it, rather than having to purge those records afterwards.
I would like to be able to discard recommendations such as:
33. The Union Forever (Lost Regiment) by William R. Forstchen
37 copies. Average rating 3.67. Why?
because I once tried to read a book in the series and didn’t like it, and I therefore want to be recommended something else.
Taking account of the reader's ratings in Suggestions. i want the Suggesters to give the strongest weight to the books i rank the highest.
Let us mark other users for watching and then let us see when they have added new books or added new reviews.
When we view our list of groups, highlight the groups for us that contain unread messages.
On the helpers log for work combination, an undo button would be useful, which would split the work back to the way it was.
only allow combinations by members with messaging enabled on their profile page.
Disallow the combining/separating of works by non-members.
Change the 'work' link on the combiners log. The link would be more helpful if it pointed to the book information page rather than the social information page.
And the ability to "uncombine" multiple books at the same time.
I'd like to see the LT authors arranged by genres/categories, so I'd have an idea whether I might be interested in checking out the work of an unfamiliar author.
Can I see a book's overall rating (not mine) from the social info page listed with my books? Just trying to prioritize my TBR list, also curious about divergent opinions when scanning my tagged books. Thanks!
Disallow database editing by non-members
Add a "Personal call number" field in the user data
Telepathic interface
Author Pictures
1) Set up a auto-message notifying people who've added author pictures which breach copyright etc that they've been flagged and are in quarantine (plus comments on whoever flagged them as the exact reason is usually given).
2) Disallow anyone from adding author pictures unless they have LT messaging enabled (so that #1 can happen)
3) If can't do 1 or 2 - Work out a way for people who have free libraries to see the quarantine area - even if they can't unflag.
4) Update the help/description information at "add picture" so people merrily adding loads of pictures can understand why they vanish. Maybe an example of a "good" vs "bad" picture comment (eg - "copyright xxxx Permission from author emailed to LT" vs. "found on google images")
Combining - ditto for non members NOT being able to combine works.
Add a bit more combining advice for newbie's - maybe a combiners FAQ link?
Talk - Find out how the new members manage to send plaintive messages asking for help that don't link to any groups & so you cannot reply to their message. Fix it. I feel sorry for them!
Can any new member automatically be given membership to the FAQ group?
Groups - make the groups a bit easier to search and navigate.
a way to find threads that never got a reply
make 'give yours' on the swap page work again (specific ISBN instead of work)
properly introduce Altay
a permalink for each talk post (to make it easier to link to them)
Add 2007 as edition publication date at the personal statistic page.
there's a bug in the parsing of hrefs that sometimes causes the text after the link to get "eaten"; hover over the link and you'll see how in addition to the href there's some HTML (BRs) and some user-entered text.
I'd like to see more stats on "only a few people have this book". You can get some of it by clicking on the entry in your library. Similarly, it would be interesting to see how my "unique" book may have been the seed for someone else's acquisition of it. A metric of influence, if you will.
One small thing would be when you are selecting the languague of a book, if you put in a small language at the primary listing (where you have to first press "show all languages") you then have the large list for secondary & original language. This means a lot of scrolling, although you can put in the first letter of the language. So, if the primary languagw is Lithuanian, and the secondary language is French, you can put in F to get to the top of the list of every language which begins with an F. It would be nice to be able to type in more of the letters and get there more quickly.
Another thing would be for (older) books without either an ISBN number of a LC card number, to be able to add into the search the information that comes up in parentheses when you do a search via Amazon, such as date or publisher. If you put in a title and author and get back 185 responses, it is actually quicker to type in the whole thing manually than laboriously scroll through the entire listing popping up from Amazon.
Put up a _second_ color style sheet which could be chosen in 'edit profile'. This way the many people who like the colors as they are could keep them and the ones who'd prefer clearer colors (and a _not_ brownish/pinkish header) could switch to the other one.
A (straw) poll feature for groups, per yahoo discussion groups. (A major addition, I'm sure, but might be useful in choosing books to discuss, etc.)
I would love it if, after tagging several books in 'PowerEdit Mode', the selected books were automatically deselected. I've mistagged books several times, having forgotten to click 'Deselect all'.
But I would rather it DIDN'T deselect those selections since I often have to continue working with those books.
allow users to set their own preferences for all the little things like that
I would like to be able to choose how many reviews are visible at once in the "in jennythereader's library and reviewed by others" column of my reviews page.
Check for bugs in "edit" function for messages, please.
I'm finding that pieces in the "edit" box don't make it to the revised message, e.g., a last parens, a paragraph break, first couple words of a sentence.
Separating Talk threads into pages of ~50 posts.
when you click on a shared book on someone's profile page (in common books link in the right-had column) it would be nice if that took you to the edition owned by the person whose profile you're looking at instead of to the general page for the work.
I would dearly love to have a separate location field, so I can enter a description of where each book resides.
But without a doubt, since the first day I started using Library Thing I've wanted a "Currently Reading" field.
On the profile page, put the link to edit your profile behind "Edit your profile" instead of "to prevent commenting".
I'd really like to have access to the 'Series' field that already shows up when you export your library to a CSV or tab-delimited file. If that were on the Edit page and/or a choice for a column, I could track series and sequence for all my many many series.
And another thing I'd love to have is an extension of the PowerEdit 'add tags' - extend it to other columns, so I could add say to my Author or Dewey Decimal column.
an easier way to select a bunch of books for PowerEdit would be very helpful.
If it's too complicated to grab the user's time zone on the Talk pages, how would it be to put the current server time at the top of the page, so that we don't have to remember how many hours to add/subtract?
A "Talk" link at the bottom of the topic pages (one click less to get back to the topic list)
On the date fields at the bottom of the book edit pages, some kind of date entry widget would be nice. Or at the least a cookie that remembers whether you're a DMYer or an MDYer.
A "next" button in threads, so when I get to the end of a thread I can hit "next" and go to the next unread thread without having to go back to the Talk site.
As someone mentioned above, a "location" part separate from the tags.
if someone could fix the "alphabetize tags" function, that would be great.
On the various library pages where it shows "(1) 2 3 4 5 6 7 ... 22 (show all)" instead have the first letter/s of the item at the top of the list, e.g. if it's sorted by title, it would show "(1) A B Ca Cr ... W (show all)".
Stable sorting -- computer programmers should know what that means. If I sort by title, then sort by author, it should remain sorted by title for each author.
Series field -- with room for series name and number within series.
Search by Publisher (Minority Interest but valuable)
I would love to be able to sort my library by series.
I would like to be able to go to Tools, click on Cleanup, and have choices: Images needed, Tags needed, Reviews needed.
I second webecca's Cleanup idea.
I would LOVE LOVE LOVE if we could drop and drag to order our collections.
I'll put in one more request for a series field.
I'll second the motion for a Series field. I would want this in advance of being able to use ISSN numbers.
When you're looking at the main Talk page, the group name in each topic should link to the group, rather than being part of the link to the topic.
What i would like to have is a private "location" field, or the option to make some tags private.
A simple (non-ISBN) text import. No lookup, just the same as manually entering all those books. Just some sort of tab-delimited (or whatever--Euro character, whatever) file. "The fields must be in this order or it won't work." "This field must have data in this format or it won't work." I can follow rules.
I agree with the first poster. The LC column should sort properly.
And in the spirit of some other posts, my 3rd suggestion is "a simple (non-ISBN) text import.
enlarge the size of the Date field by just one character. Actually, the Date field probably should be enlarged by two or three characters rather than just one, to allow for cases of two copyright dates ("c1998, c2002") or other date anomalies.
The improvements suggested in the original thread:
FIX LCC SORTING!
More columns in catalogue view!
Ratings above reviews (and, preferably, above recommendations) on the works page.
I would like the add manually button to be much higher on the page.
In Safari: Post a message opens at bottom of thread (ok) but display of page jumps to top of page, which means I have to scroll down to write the message. Working fine in Firefox.
Search results in talk: have a way to sort or collapse them by thread (or by group?).
Author page: No bold print for "n LibraryThing users own x books by a, ..."
Option to set your library sort view to newest entry date (currently takes me 3 clicks: My library, sort by date, sort descending. As I log in from different computers, I cannot have a persistent cookie plus bookmark.)
Some form of sort on search results.
A frequent wipe of non-authors with no books
Taking account of ratings in suggester et al.
Separate lists for private and public groups.
On the Author pages, fixing the missing info in "You have books by ...", which has been obviously begging to have read "You have ## books by ..." for months and months and months.
In the Zeitgeist, update the sub-pages more frequently
MORE STATS!
Have a date and time stamp on all zeitgeist pages.
Power edit: When I edit my catalog in power edit mode, instead of being returned to the power edit page - with all my books listed - I get the front page of library thing within the frame where my catalog should be. ... Note that when I change a book cover, I'm again redirected to the front page, instead of back to that book's record or my catalog; it's still not desireable but at least it's not within a frame.
Tailored Sort Orders: I'd like to be able to display a different sort order for my main catalog page (alphabetical by title) and my recently_read tag (from most recent date, descending). Note I said "display", meaning that I'd like people dropping in from my blog to by default see the sort order I'd selected for a tag.
More Room for Additional Authors
Say you want to look for an older thread on Talk, one that has now been pushed off the current page and onto an older page: to move into the past, you click "Next". That's simply backwards.
> Taking account of ratings in suggester et al.
and be able to check 'ignore book / author for recommendations' (not that I'd count this as a small improvement)
I'd like to have "Your watch list" show up above "Users with your books"
Am I the only person that wishes our libraries were alphabetical instead of numerical? If I'm scrolling through looking for books or authors that start with S, how in the heck should I know what page it is on?
One, when you select a cover, it takes you to a separate page. I'm okay with that. What I'd like is for that page to take me back to the page I was working on.
Two, I have many books in storage. As I've been adding them, I tag them all with "box##", where the numbers refer to a number on the box. Books that are here are not tagged with a box notation, obviously. Short of going through and tagging each individual book that's here with a tag like "here", I'd love a way to simply say "all books without tag "box*" (where * in this case is the regular expression to match all tags beginning with the three letters box).
When you click on a number in the "Users With Your Books" list on your profile page, it lists all books that you have in common with that user (with the other user's selected covers). This is, of course, very cool. When your collection has multiple copies of the same "work", however, the other user's books that correspond to that work are listed once for each of your own corresponding books. So if, for instance, after having entered my eight different translations of Don Quijote, I were to view books in common with a user who has five translations, I would see the book listed forty times (as if we had forty copies of the quijote in common?!). The program should, of course, list every book in the other user's library that corresponds with each unique work (not each book) in my collection, so that I only see the exact number of books owned by the other user. I don't know if this error exists in any of the "commonality" statistics.
It would be really nice if the library suggestion engine could filter a user's library using a set of user-specified tags to be included or excluded
It would be really nice if there were a new sortable, free-form text field with which users can control the sort order of their collections without being forced to enter "artificial" tags simply to control sorting.
On the Edit page, add two fields. Specifically "Series" and "Volume" (or "Vol.")
Allow the possibility of a user having multiple (but a small number) of lists. For example, one or two Book lists, a CD list, a DVD list.
Add a way to select from the tags previous entered in your library tags to be assigned to a work.
a. Include a way to add tags that others have used to your library of tags, perhaps by clicking on them.
b. Include a way (perhaps on the Profile or Add Books page) to add tags to your list without assigning them to a book yet.
having a profile view counter so you can see how many people have vistied your page.
an email, alert, or message that could be sent to you if people in your watch list or in the top five people you share books with add new books or reviews to their pages
I would love a "last 25 reviews" on the books zeitgeist page
a way to just put a year in date acquired, date started, date read.
The LibraryThing BETA image in the upper left corner has a stray white pixel in the upper right corner of the image.
I would find it extremely useful if the works that I have in my library were somehow marked on the author pages. Maybe some checkmark in the front of the title
The touchstones could use some minor fixing. More and more frequently, when I modify the touchstone by choosing "other" and then picking an author from the list it ends up linking to something called "fulltext" instead of the proper author.
remember that I have selected "Skip confirmation (for barcodes and ISBNs)" on "add books" so I don't have to select it at the start of each cataloguing session
do something to the tabs at the top of the screen so that the left-aligned tabs aren't overlapped by the right-aligned tabs in 800 x 600 resolution
make the zeitgeist page smaller or quicker to load somehow
When adding books, the mass market material is usually in some version of Amazon by ISBN but often without the cover if it isn't fairly new/popular. I would like an Advanced option to display User Covers to select when it is showing me titles to confirm if Amazon didn't have one.
Sizes of Members' library in Zeitgeist: while the biggest libraries are listed, I'm curious to see what the whole membership looks like.
I'd like to be notified if I appear to be adding a book I've already added, especially if it's an identical ISBN. I would like it if I could catch the (probably) bogus data *before* I add it, rather than having to purge those records afterwards.
I would like to be able to discard recommendations such as:
33. The Union Forever (Lost Regiment) by William R. Forstchen
37 copies. Average rating 3.67. Why?
because I once tried to read a book in the series and didn’t like it, and I therefore want to be recommended something else.
Taking account of the reader's ratings in Suggestions. i want the Suggesters to give the strongest weight to the books i rank the highest.
When we view our list of groups, highlight the groups for us that contain unread messages.
On the helpers log for work combination, an undo button would be useful, which would split the work back to the way it was.
only allow combinations by members with messaging enabled on their profile page.
Disallow the combining/separating of works by non-members.
Change the 'work' link on the combiners log. The link would be more helpful if it pointed to the book information page rather than the social information page.
And the ability to "uncombine" multiple books at the same time.
I'd like to see the LT authors arranged by genres/categories, so I'd have an idea whether I might be interested in checking out the work of an unfamiliar author.
Can I see a book's overall rating (not mine) from the social info page listed with my books? Just trying to prioritize my TBR list, also curious about divergent opinions when scanning my tagged books. Thanks!
Disallow database editing by non-members
Add a "Personal call number" field in the user data
Telepathic interface
Author Pictures
1) Set up a auto-message notifying people who've added author pictures which breach copyright etc that they've been flagged and are in quarantine (plus comments on whoever flagged them as the exact reason is usually given).
2) Disallow anyone from adding author pictures unless they have LT messaging enabled (so that #1 can happen)
3) If can't do 1 or 2 - Work out a way for people who have free libraries to see the quarantine area - even if they can't unflag.
4) Update the help/description information at "add picture" so people merrily adding loads of pictures can understand why they vanish. Maybe an example of a "good" vs "bad" picture comment (eg - "copyright xxxx Permission from author emailed to LT" vs. "found on google images")
Combining - ditto for non members NOT being able to combine works.
Add a bit more combining advice for newbie's - maybe a combiners FAQ link?
Can any new member automatically be given membership to the FAQ group?
Groups - make the groups a bit easier to search and navigate.
a way to find threads that never got a reply
make 'give yours' on the swap page work again (specific ISBN instead of work)
a permalink for each talk post (to make it easier to link to them)
there's a bug in the parsing of hrefs that sometimes causes the text after the link to get "eaten"; hover over the link and you'll see how in addition to the href there's some HTML (BRs) and some user-entered text.
I'd like to see more stats on "only a few people have this book". You can get some of it by clicking on the entry in your library. Similarly, it would be interesting to see how my "unique" book may have been the seed for someone else's acquisition of it. A metric of influence, if you will.
One small thing would be when you are selecting the languague of a book, if you put in a small language at the primary listing (where you have to first press "show all languages") you then have the large list for secondary & original language. This means a lot of scrolling, although you can put in the first letter of the language. So, if the primary languagw is Lithuanian, and the secondary language is French, you can put in F to get to the top of the list of every language which begins with an F. It would be nice to be able to type in more of the letters and get there more quickly.
Another thing would be for (older) books without either an ISBN number of a LC card number, to be able to add into the search the information that comes up in parentheses when you do a search via Amazon, such as date or publisher. If you put in a title and author and get back 185 responses, it is actually quicker to type in the whole thing manually than laboriously scroll through the entire listing popping up from Amazon.
Put up a _second_ color style sheet which could be chosen in 'edit profile'. This way the many people who like the colors as they are could keep them and the ones who'd prefer clearer colors (and a _not_ brownish/pinkish header) could switch to the other one.
A (straw) poll feature for groups, per yahoo discussion groups. (A major addition, I'm sure, but might be useful in choosing books to discuss, etc.)
I would love it if, after tagging several books in 'PowerEdit Mode', the selected books were automatically deselected. I've mistagged books several times, having forgotten to click 'Deselect all'.
But I would rather it DIDN'T deselect those selections since I often have to continue working with those books.
allow users to set their own preferences for all the little things like that
I would like to be able to choose how many reviews are visible at once in the "in jennythereader's library and reviewed by others" column of my reviews page.
Check for bugs in "edit" function for messages, please.
I'm finding that pieces in the "edit" box don't make it to the revised message, e.g., a last parens, a paragraph break, first couple words of a sentence.
Separating Talk threads into pages of ~50 posts.
when you click on a shared book on someone's profile page (in common books link in the right-had column) it would be nice if that took you to the edition owned by the person whose profile you're looking at instead of to the general page for the work.
I would dearly love to have a separate location field, so I can enter a description of where each book resides.
But without a doubt, since the first day I started using Library Thing I've wanted a "Currently Reading" field.
On the profile page, put the link to edit your profile behind "Edit your profile" instead of "to prevent commenting".
I'd really like to have access to the 'Series' field that already shows up when you export your library to a CSV or tab-delimited file. If that were on the Edit page and/or a choice for a column, I could track series and sequence for all my many many series.
And another thing I'd love to have is an extension of the PowerEdit 'add tags' - extend it to other columns, so I could add say to my Author or Dewey Decimal column.
an easier way to select a bunch of books for PowerEdit would be very helpful.
If it's too complicated to grab the user's time zone on the Talk pages, how would it be to put the current server time at the top of the page, so that we don't have to remember how many hours to add/subtract?
A "Talk" link at the bottom of the topic pages (one click less to get back to the topic list)
On the date fields at the bottom of the book edit pages, some kind of date entry widget would be nice. Or at the least a cookie that remembers whether you're a DMYer or an MDYer.
A "next" button in threads, so when I get to the end of a thread I can hit "next" and go to the next unread thread without having to go back to the Talk site.
As someone mentioned above, a "location" part separate from the tags.
if someone could fix the "alphabetize tags" function, that would be great.
On the various library pages where it shows "(1) 2 3 4 5 6 7 ... 22 (show all)" instead have the first letter/s of the item at the top of the list, e.g. if it's sorted by title, it would show "(1) A B Ca Cr ... W (show all)".
Stable sorting -- computer programmers should know what that means. If I sort by title, then sort by author, it should remain sorted by title for each author.
Series field -- with room for series name and number within series.
Search by Publisher (Minority Interest but valuable)
I would love to be able to sort my library by series.
I would like to be able to go to Tools, click on Cleanup, and have choices: Images needed, Tags needed, Reviews needed.
I second webecca's Cleanup idea.
I would LOVE LOVE LOVE if we could drop and drag to order our collections.
I'll put in one more request for a series field.
I'll second the motion for a Series field. I would want this in advance of being able to use ISSN numbers.
When you're looking at the main Talk page, the group name in each topic should link to the group, rather than being part of the link to the topic.
What i would like to have is a private "location" field, or the option to make some tags private.
A simple (non-ISBN) text import. No lookup, just the same as manually entering all those books. Just some sort of tab-delimited (or whatever--Euro character, whatever) file. "The fields must be in this order or it won't work." "This field must have data in this format or it won't work." I can follow rules.
I agree with the first poster. The LC column should sort properly.
And in the spirit of some other posts, my 3rd suggestion is "a simple (non-ISBN) text import.
enlarge the size of the Date field by just one character. Actually, the Date field probably should be enlarged by two or three characters rather than just one, to allow for cases of two copyright dates ("c1998, c2002") or other date anomalies.
2DromJohn
I'd like to separate titles that do not have an author. Did I only dream that this was doable for a couple of days earlier in August?
On the Book Information page, I'd like to see which "Other copies and editions of this title" had which ISBN. Another separation issue.
On the Book Information page, I'd like to see which "Other copies and editions of this title" had which ISBN. Another separation issue.
3libroozle
Confirm adding a book if I'm entering a title for a second time. I'm sure this should be selectable, as a preference setting, as for libraries and/or people who actually have their books in some kind of rational order it would be mostly annoying.
4melannen
Ooh, how did I miss this? I'd been meaning to go through the thread and do this for awhile, so thanks so much for taking it on!
I don't really think it's as bad as it looks, though - a lot of those unanswered requests have been mostly fixed, or rendered less important, due to other fixes that affected them, and many of the others are either things that *would* be major database changes, or they're things that LT is philosophically opposed to implementing. There's still a whole load of minor fixes on that list that haven't even been touched on, though, but I'd like to see another site this complicated where a list of user requests would have even that much crossed off.
Although, let me re-iterate: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS SORTING! SHOULD WORK!
My other current pet peeve is more characters in the search field. And make combining at *least* as hard as separating, even if it's just adding in a few extra useless clicks. But mostly, SORT.
I don't really think it's as bad as it looks, though - a lot of those unanswered requests have been mostly fixed, or rendered less important, due to other fixes that affected them, and many of the others are either things that *would* be major database changes, or they're things that LT is philosophically opposed to implementing. There's still a whole load of minor fixes on that list that haven't even been touched on, though, but I'd like to see another site this complicated where a list of user requests would have even that much crossed off.
Although, let me re-iterate: LIBRARY OF CONGRESS SORTING! SHOULD WORK!
My other current pet peeve is more characters in the search field. And make combining at *least* as hard as separating, even if it's just adding in a few extra useless clicks. But mostly, SORT.
5_Zoe_
That's true, a lot of the suggestions aren't small at all. Maybe we need a new thread for tiny improvements.
6infiniteletters
4: And make combining at *least* as hard as separating, even if it's just adding in a few extra useless clicks.
I'd rather the reverse... Separating on a large scale is such a pain.
I'd rather the reverse... Separating on a large scale is such a pain.
7melannen
Well, yes. The other way to make combining harder than separating is to make separating easier. Which would be the *preferred* way, but might be more complicated to implement.
8lorax
Lots of these aren't "small" improvements by any stretch (like drag-n-drop ordering, collections, taking ratings into account in the Suggester, or the "show the size of all 250K members' libraries on the Zeitgeist please!")
There actually weren't all that many that were mentioned multiple times. Excluding the 'major feature, not minor improvement' items as based on my very non-expert opinion, the ones that were left that were mentioned more than once were, for general reference:
Fix LCCN sorting
Have sorting by date default to recent-first
Make the "series" field accessible and sortable (this was mentioned six times, the most of anything)
Restrict the ability to combine or separate in some fashion (this came in second, with 4 mentions; the exact suggestion varied, with some wanting it limited to permanent accounts, others to any logged-in user. I doubt Tim would be amenable to the first, but the second might be acceptable.
Have an easy way to see which books in your catalog lack {tags, reviews, cover images}
There were also multiple requests for allowing more flexible date format, but that has the potential to be really complicated, unless the people asking for that would be happy with an entry of '2001' being treated as '01/01/2001' or some other default date.
There actually weren't all that many that were mentioned multiple times. Excluding the 'major feature, not minor improvement' items as based on my very non-expert opinion, the ones that were left that were mentioned more than once were, for general reference:
Fix LCCN sorting
Have sorting by date default to recent-first
Make the "series" field accessible and sortable (this was mentioned six times, the most of anything)
Restrict the ability to combine or separate in some fashion (this came in second, with 4 mentions; the exact suggestion varied, with some wanting it limited to permanent accounts, others to any logged-in user. I doubt Tim would be amenable to the first, but the second might be acceptable.
Have an easy way to see which books in your catalog lack {tags, reviews, cover images}
There were also multiple requests for allowing more flexible date format, but that has the potential to be really complicated, unless the people asking for that would be happy with an entry of '2001' being treated as '01/01/2001' or some other default date.
9taleswapper First Message
I'd like to have an API for grabbing the ISBNs and Reviews from my books with a particular tag. I want to make a blog widget that grabs the cover from Amazon (using my Amazon API id) with links to Amazon, the LT combined page, and the URL in the Reviews box.
10antqueen
Actually, as far as the dates go, all that would really be needed is a way to say how to display a given date, a format field of some sort, and 3 values (year only, year/month, and year/month/day) are probably all that's needed there. It doesn't matter how it's stored, just how it's viewed.
11melannen
I think most people, including me, would be happy with dates if '2005' sorted with or before 2005/01/01 as long as it wasn't stored that way in the catalog. That's the standard way to sort when there are dates of differing specificity. It's having to put false data into the catalog that bothers us.
The "series" field is probably more complicated than it sounds, if you really want to make the series data meaningful througout the site, which is how it ought to be done. Not that a stop-gap method to carry over until we have a real works relationship system would be bad, but we can use tags for stop-gap stuff.
Restricting the ability to combine comes up in discussion often; Tim is adamantly opposed to it, and I can see his point (even if I don't agree, after a day spent meticulously separating.) Making separating easier would probably reduce the complaining here, even if it didn't solve the problem. :D
We can already see which books lack tags pretty easily, using sort. It would be nice to do that for non-sorting fields, though. Something else that does come up.
Changing default sort order would be nice, but it's something that I would want the community to officially weigh in on first: it's more a convenience thing than a quick fix, and I can see why some people might like it as it is. (Being able to customize your default sorts would be awesome, but a more major change, and also something Tim is opposed to.)
I wouldn't judge just by how many requests there were, though, since people were probably leaving off things that had already been requested in order to keep their own list under three. There's a great many things on that list up there that would go on my more-than-three list.
The "series" field is probably more complicated than it sounds, if you really want to make the series data meaningful througout the site, which is how it ought to be done. Not that a stop-gap method to carry over until we have a real works relationship system would be bad, but we can use tags for stop-gap stuff.
Restricting the ability to combine comes up in discussion often; Tim is adamantly opposed to it, and I can see his point (even if I don't agree, after a day spent meticulously separating.) Making separating easier would probably reduce the complaining here, even if it didn't solve the problem. :D
We can already see which books lack tags pretty easily, using sort. It would be nice to do that for non-sorting fields, though. Something else that does come up.
Changing default sort order would be nice, but it's something that I would want the community to officially weigh in on first: it's more a convenience thing than a quick fix, and I can see why some people might like it as it is. (Being able to customize your default sorts would be awesome, but a more major change, and also something Tim is opposed to.)
I wouldn't judge just by how many requests there were, though, since people were probably leaving off things that had already been requested in order to keep their own list under three. There's a great many things on that list up there that would go on my more-than-three list.
12asiago First Message
Is there a way to fix it when two different books become commingled together? William Wharton's "Birdy" and "Franky Furbo" are all on the same page, but they're (very!) different books.
13sabreuse
>12 asiago:, there sure is -- on the author page, click on "combine/separate works" at the top of the list of the author's works. And come play in the Combiners! group, where we have great fun arguing for years about whether this or that really should count as the same work or not...
14markbarnes
I'd like the add books functionality tweaked.
I'd like to know about duplicate ISBNs BEFORE I add a book, not afterwards. I know that could create a serious database resource hog, so I propose this only happens if one book is returned (which happens frequently if you add by ISBN, which I guess many always do for modern books). I'm sure that the extra resources that this takes would be compensated by much less books being deleted, which is an even worse hog.
I'd like to know about duplicate ISBNs BEFORE I add a book, not afterwards. I know that could create a serious database resource hog, so I propose this only happens if one book is returned (which happens frequently if you add by ISBN, which I guess many always do for modern books). I'm sure that the extra resources that this takes would be compensated by much less books being deleted, which is an even worse hog.
15BTRIPP
There are lingering issues that I'd love to see fixed, but have tried to "detach" from, as they seem to be on the "when everything else is done" list.
#1:
On the Author Pages, there is a line which says "### LibraryThing users own ### books by Author Name. You have books by Author Name (see yours)." ... obviously, this should say "You have ## books by", but the number has been missing for a very, very long time. Sure, you can click through the "see yours" link and count them up, but the number is incredibly conspicuous in its absence, and creates a nagging dissonance every time I look at an Author page!
#2:
Updating the sub-pages of the Zeitgeist. Frankly, I only look at one, which is the "prolific reviewer" listing, but the "1000 most prolific reviewers" list seems to only be updated twice a year (it was updated in January or February of '07 and then about a month ago). Why bother having the list if it's not getting updated? And, why isn't the reviewer list updating when the "most-recently reviewed books" next to it IS current?
#3:
This is probably just an interface problem between LT and my system, but I still have funky things happen when I log on (it shows me logged on, but doesn't "recognize" me in terms of library comparisons, etc.). Now, I keep LT open in a browser tab 24/7, so this only comes up if I have to reboot, but it's very strange and I know that Tim has looked at the info several times in the past with no resolution as to what might be happening.
I suppose it's a GOOD sign that I have to dig deep enough to have that as a third improvement, though!
#1:
On the Author Pages, there is a line which says "### LibraryThing users own ### books by Author Name. You have books by Author Name (see yours)." ... obviously, this should say "You have ## books by", but the number has been missing for a very, very long time. Sure, you can click through the "see yours" link and count them up, but the number is incredibly conspicuous in its absence, and creates a nagging dissonance every time I look at an Author page!
#2:
Updating the sub-pages of the Zeitgeist. Frankly, I only look at one, which is the "prolific reviewer" listing, but the "1000 most prolific reviewers" list seems to only be updated twice a year (it was updated in January or February of '07 and then about a month ago). Why bother having the list if it's not getting updated? And, why isn't the reviewer list updating when the "most-recently reviewed books" next to it IS current?
#3:
This is probably just an interface problem between LT and my system, but I still have funky things happen when I log on (it shows me logged on, but doesn't "recognize" me in terms of library comparisons, etc.). Now, I keep LT open in a browser tab 24/7, so this only comes up if I have to reboot, but it's very strange and I know that Tim has looked at the info several times in the past with no resolution as to what might be happening.
I suppose it's a GOOD sign that I have to dig deep enough to have that as a third improvement, though!
16lilypadma
In power edit I would like to see an option to change tags without the two-step add/delete work around process. It's not intuitive. At least add some text instructions alerting/reminding people who want to change tags that they need to add new tags before they delete the old tag that is "showing." Make it clear that if the page is showing books with a particular tag that they will be removed from the page after that tag is deleted. Maybe put it in bold.
17beechgirl First Message
I'd like to underline the need (mentioned in message 1 of this thread) for a separate field for personal call numbers. I am going to enter a nonprofit group's library into LibraryThing and they have already labeled the books with shelf numbers. I don't think it's a good alternative to clutter up the tag or comment field with these numbers. What other workaround is there? If we had a field for this info, we could sort on it and see what books are actually missing. I'd think many groups would find a separate field for personal call numbers useful.
18infiniteletters
17: What's wrong with sticking the personal call #s in the Dewey/LOC fields?
19Nichtglied
#18 - Because they would be neither.
20andyray
REC #1:
i am delighted that zeitgheist has expanded the LT user's top 2,500 libraries. let us keep it to 10 percent of the users. right now you are roughly at 275,000, of which 10 percent is 2,750 libraries. to do this economically in time spent, only update the number of libraries each 50,000 members added on. example, you have 2,500 libraries listed now -- when you hit 300,000, add another 500 libraries.
this is the one zeitgheist feature i want to make it on, but i only post my books as i read them. if i were to post all the books in my house, i'd be within the top 500 for sure.
REC. #2 -- periodically (twice a year?) PURGE the various lists, espcially the membership. Someone above mentioned non-authors who have no books should be purged. Well, by mistake I became two members by inadvertently entering my AOL name. Please purge aandyray from this site. only andyray should exist. that extra a created an invisilbe member.
REC #3: Is it a "flag abuse" offense on LT to mention one's own work? LT guidelines say quite clearly one should not promote one's own work, but i was flagged several times for suggesting my new book be the "August Book of the Month" for a reading group. What's wrong with that? Please review wording of policy.
i am delighted that zeitgheist has expanded the LT user's top 2,500 libraries. let us keep it to 10 percent of the users. right now you are roughly at 275,000, of which 10 percent is 2,750 libraries. to do this economically in time spent, only update the number of libraries each 50,000 members added on. example, you have 2,500 libraries listed now -- when you hit 300,000, add another 500 libraries.
this is the one zeitgheist feature i want to make it on, but i only post my books as i read them. if i were to post all the books in my house, i'd be within the top 500 for sure.
REC. #2 -- periodically (twice a year?) PURGE the various lists, espcially the membership. Someone above mentioned non-authors who have no books should be purged. Well, by mistake I became two members by inadvertently entering my AOL name. Please purge aandyray from this site. only andyray should exist. that extra a created an invisilbe member.
REC #3: Is it a "flag abuse" offense on LT to mention one's own work? LT guidelines say quite clearly one should not promote one's own work, but i was flagged several times for suggesting my new book be the "August Book of the Month" for a reading group. What's wrong with that? Please review wording of policy.
21amberwitch
I woud very much like to be able to add all the intervals I've read a book - not just one startdate and enddate. Some sort of grid would be nice, but a button adding two more fields would be just as good. Am I the only one who want to know when I've reread a book?
I would second the "a way to just put a year in date acquired, date started, date read" request.
A series field would be nice.
An original title field equally nice.
And a read checkbox.
A Danish library that actually work on the Add books page.
And I almost forgot: a larger Publication field. This is where I put info about original title, translator, illustrator etc. and it is frequently too small, so I have to move it to the Comments field (where the info doesn't belong)
I would second the "a way to just put a year in date acquired, date started, date read" request.
A series field would be nice.
An original title field equally nice.
And a read checkbox.
A Danish library that actually work on the Add books page.
And I almost forgot: a larger Publication field. This is where I put info about original title, translator, illustrator etc. and it is frequently too small, so I have to move it to the Comments field (where the info doesn't belong)
22sabreuse
>20 andyray:,
I like your rec #1. I'm not sure it needs to stay at 10% forever, but some way of regularly scaling the definition of "largest" makes sense given the way LT has grown in the year I've been here -- and I still feel like a newb compared to a lot of people.
For your #2, have you tried emailing Abby to request deletion? She seems to be the point person for a lot of membership-related things. LT staff are IME very responsive, but posting here is simply less likely to be seen quickly.
I like your rec #1. I'm not sure it needs to stay at 10% forever, but some way of regularly scaling the definition of "largest" makes sense given the way LT has grown in the year I've been here -- and I still feel like a newb compared to a lot of people.
For your #2, have you tried emailing Abby to request deletion? She seems to be the point person for a lot of membership-related things. LT staff are IME very responsive, but posting here is simply less likely to be seen quickly.
