Communication: Why less recently / a pledge
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1timspalding
This is in response to a message Greenery posted on the "Board for Extreme Thing Advances." She felt like LibraryThing-user communication had been less great recently, and I think she's right. She also felt that potential improvements were being shelved. She's wrong there, so I want to lay out where things stand:
First, let me make a public pledge. We're going to do internationalization--which includes a wiki-like ability to create versions of LibraryThing for other langauges, an overhaul of the character set issues and the addition of more data sources. And when that's under control, we're going to solve the author issue.
Now, here's why things have been a little choppy:
1. We're back down to three people, with just one full-time coder (me). Christopher (not Chris) is back at school and not finding much time to work. (He's working on the collections feature which is SO close to the end, but, as we all know, the last 10% takes 90% of the time.) Robyn is taking a break to deal with another project.
2. We've been doing a lot of "underground" work. I made a committment to getting the servers in better shape, and, in general, things have improved. Chris has been on this day and night, and it's sucked up a lot of my time too. We transitioned the whole database over from one system (MyISAM) to another (INNO) without any downtime from it. We still have to watch it carefully. You would be amazed that at the peak hours we're sitting there on the phone going "Oh, shit, Greenery just hit refresh five times on some horrible query. Go kill four of them, and then let's figure out why that thing is taking so long."
Although we still have transient slowness, outright crashes have been less frequent (on ever-increasing traffic). Recently Chris had a few hours to bang out some code--he was hired as both sysadmin and coder--and it's great stuff. I am *really* looking foward to some blue water, where he can help code the site more of the time.
3. I have a delicate dance to play between responsibilies. I've been spending a certain amount of time working on interfacing with libraries and with others interested in buying LibraryThing functionality or data. As anticipated when they bought 40%, Abebooks will be taking advantage of LibraryThing more directly in the coming months, and that's required work on our side. Similarly I am flying out to Denver to talk to a bunch of libraries about putting LibraryThing in their catalogs. This sort of thing takes time away from features. I hate that. But getting LibraryThing into libraries would be GREAT. Similarly, I've spent more time talking to reporters, podcasts and such not.* These all take away from new features, but are critical to LibraryThing's survival.
4. The pig push right now is internationalization--all the changes to make LibraryThing extensible to other languages. The changes are both numerous and very basic. For starters we have to take EVERY page of LibraryThing and replace English words with a code. The quantity of work is so great that Abby is actually helping out with it. When the PHP-less librarian is pressed into service writing PHP, you know things are stretched to their limit. (Actually, she's a whiz at it.)
Unfortunately, the internationalization piece--anyway, the substructure--has to come out all at one time, not in slices. We're heads-down to make sure we finish by the Frankfurt Book Fair.
5. The collections should come out in the next week or two also, although I can't promise it since it's out of my hands. Chris does such good work, and his going back to college is such a great thing for him, that I don't want to rush him.
*I'm dropping balls there too. I recently ignored a reporter's email, because I had spent an hour talking to her on the telephone after the email was mailed. Unfortunately, it was a *different* reporter from the same paper. These are problems you want to have!**
**Oh, and you want a real time killer? LibraryThing is SUPPOSED to be on a major radio show, but we don't know when. Every day at a certain time we all make sure we're at our computers, ready to do what we can to deal with 10,000 people hitting the site at the same moment. And so we sit there, constantly refreshing the web page, to see if we're on until, relieved, we discover we're not.
First, let me make a public pledge. We're going to do internationalization--which includes a wiki-like ability to create versions of LibraryThing for other langauges, an overhaul of the character set issues and the addition of more data sources. And when that's under control, we're going to solve the author issue.
Now, here's why things have been a little choppy:
1. We're back down to three people, with just one full-time coder (me). Christopher (not Chris) is back at school and not finding much time to work. (He's working on the collections feature which is SO close to the end, but, as we all know, the last 10% takes 90% of the time.) Robyn is taking a break to deal with another project.
2. We've been doing a lot of "underground" work. I made a committment to getting the servers in better shape, and, in general, things have improved. Chris has been on this day and night, and it's sucked up a lot of my time too. We transitioned the whole database over from one system (MyISAM) to another (INNO) without any downtime from it. We still have to watch it carefully. You would be amazed that at the peak hours we're sitting there on the phone going "Oh, shit, Greenery just hit refresh five times on some horrible query. Go kill four of them, and then let's figure out why that thing is taking so long."
Although we still have transient slowness, outright crashes have been less frequent (on ever-increasing traffic). Recently Chris had a few hours to bang out some code--he was hired as both sysadmin and coder--and it's great stuff. I am *really* looking foward to some blue water, where he can help code the site more of the time.
3. I have a delicate dance to play between responsibilies. I've been spending a certain amount of time working on interfacing with libraries and with others interested in buying LibraryThing functionality or data. As anticipated when they bought 40%, Abebooks will be taking advantage of LibraryThing more directly in the coming months, and that's required work on our side. Similarly I am flying out to Denver to talk to a bunch of libraries about putting LibraryThing in their catalogs. This sort of thing takes time away from features. I hate that. But getting LibraryThing into libraries would be GREAT. Similarly, I've spent more time talking to reporters, podcasts and such not.* These all take away from new features, but are critical to LibraryThing's survival.
4. The pig push right now is internationalization--all the changes to make LibraryThing extensible to other languages. The changes are both numerous and very basic. For starters we have to take EVERY page of LibraryThing and replace English words with a code. The quantity of work is so great that Abby is actually helping out with it. When the PHP-less librarian is pressed into service writing PHP, you know things are stretched to their limit. (Actually, she's a whiz at it.)
Unfortunately, the internationalization piece--anyway, the substructure--has to come out all at one time, not in slices. We're heads-down to make sure we finish by the Frankfurt Book Fair.
5. The collections should come out in the next week or two also, although I can't promise it since it's out of my hands. Chris does such good work, and his going back to college is such a great thing for him, that I don't want to rush him.
*I'm dropping balls there too. I recently ignored a reporter's email, because I had spent an hour talking to her on the telephone after the email was mailed. Unfortunately, it was a *different* reporter from the same paper. These are problems you want to have!**
**Oh, and you want a real time killer? LibraryThing is SUPPOSED to be on a major radio show, but we don't know when. Every day at a certain time we all make sure we're at our computers, ready to do what we can to deal with 10,000 people hitting the site at the same moment. And so we sit there, constantly refreshing the web page, to see if we're on until, relieved, we discover we're not.
2boekerij
You--that's plural--are doing a great job. Thumbs up, courage and keep on doing so.
>1 timspalding:.4
When a program was not designed to be--or at least become--multilingual (by design), it can be a hell of a job to transition it that way indeed.
Over here, we might have some experience in multilinguality design, for using e.g. four different languages (or even more) at work is no exception at ours. Thus our tools, too, are built--and designed at once--for dealing with different (user) languages. We call it usability (though we might say it in Dutch).
Please don't forget German uses some awkward characters--i.a. ë, ä, ß and so on. You might want to support those nasty things too.
Then again : thumbs up, courage and keep on doing your great job.
>1 timspalding:.4
When a program was not designed to be--or at least become--multilingual (by design), it can be a hell of a job to transition it that way indeed.
Over here, we might have some experience in multilinguality design, for using e.g. four different languages (or even more) at work is no exception at ours. Thus our tools, too, are built--and designed at once--for dealing with different (user) languages. We call it usability (though we might say it in Dutch).
Please don't forget German uses some awkward characters--i.a. ë, ä, ß and so on. You might want to support those nasty things too.
Then again : thumbs up, courage and keep on doing your great job.
3mvrdrk
I agree. I know there has been a lot going on behind the scenes. Sometimes comments leak out that imply it.
Good luck.
Good luck.
4chrisgann
Some people have already found it, but you can get a lot of behind-the-scenes tech info about LT off my blog. Of course I need to disclaim that my personal blog is not sanctioned, condoned, or really even recognized by LibraryThing, but it does contain a ton of technobabbly that is more or less directly about what's going on here in the tech and development departments. Basically, it's a place for me to vent and solicit some ideas :)
LibraryThing was created by Tim as a tool for himself and some of his friends (and some of their friends) to catalog their books. It grew quickly, and it's reached a point where certain priorities need to be re-arranged in order to continue providing the service at all sometimes. The site now has almost twice as many cataloged books and registered users as when I started (26 June). Traffic has doubled, database accesses have tripled, and storage requirements have grown accordingly. These items take a lot of time to deal with, but if they're not addressed in a timely manner, things begin to fall apart. Unfortunately this has taken away precious development time, but it's for a good cause! It gives all of us more time to develop later -- and have a stable foundation -- to build the future of LT.
I won't post a link to my personal blog here, because this post is as an employee, but feel free to check out my profile if you want.
-c-
LibraryThing was created by Tim as a tool for himself and some of his friends (and some of their friends) to catalog their books. It grew quickly, and it's reached a point where certain priorities need to be re-arranged in order to continue providing the service at all sometimes. The site now has almost twice as many cataloged books and registered users as when I started (26 June). Traffic has doubled, database accesses have tripled, and storage requirements have grown accordingly. These items take a lot of time to deal with, but if they're not addressed in a timely manner, things begin to fall apart. Unfortunately this has taken away precious development time, but it's for a good cause! It gives all of us more time to develop later -- and have a stable foundation -- to build the future of LT.
I won't post a link to my personal blog here, because this post is as an employee, but feel free to check out my profile if you want.
-c-
5Hanno
May I question the wisdom of doing this internationalization?
First, I would bet good money that a significant majority of internet using book-people with collections large enough to need cataloguing know their English well enough to handle LT. I dont think making the site available in various language is going that help that much to it's popularity.
Second, why doing this wiki style? Yes, it is more elegant, innovative and buzzwordy. But wouldnt it be much easier to keep all the text hardcoded and just get people on these forums to more or less agree(say, by vote) on the translations? You get wiki-style reliability and user participation without the need to recode half the site.
First, I would bet good money that a significant majority of internet using book-people with collections large enough to need cataloguing know their English well enough to handle LT. I dont think making the site available in various language is going that help that much to it's popularity.
Second, why doing this wiki style? Yes, it is more elegant, innovative and buzzwordy. But wouldnt it be much easier to keep all the text hardcoded and just get people on these forums to more or less agree(say, by vote) on the translations? You get wiki-style reliability and user participation without the need to recode half the site.
6GirlFromIpanema
I don't know about "majority of internet using book-people with collections large enough to need cataloguing know their English well enough to handle LT"...
I did a statistic on the German users of Bookcrossing (available only in English) three years ago, broken down by Länder. There was a *significant* gap between users in former West-Germany and former East-Germany. By number of inhabitants, the Land of Northrhine-Westphalia and all 5 eastern Länder are about the same (18 vs. 16 Mio), but the 5 Länder only had 25% of the membership that NRW had at that point (the gap has closed a bit).
Access to the Internet was nearly equal at 50% then so I attributed this to the generally lower knowledge of English in the East. This goes at least for people who were schooled before 1989 (basically all over 35, which is the LT target group rather than the teens&twens). Generally, membership from Eastern Europe is much lower than from Western Europe (*often there is a good knowledge of German in E. Europe, so one could gain members from these countries with a german localisation).
Those countries where users created a help or mirror site in their own language have experienced a boost in membership (Spain, Italy).
This is all from my own perception of that site, I have no connections to them other than being a long time user.
(edited to add correct numbers from old posting, and to add a thought*)
I did a statistic on the German users of Bookcrossing (available only in English) three years ago, broken down by Länder. There was a *significant* gap between users in former West-Germany and former East-Germany. By number of inhabitants, the Land of Northrhine-Westphalia and all 5 eastern Länder are about the same (18 vs. 16 Mio), but the 5 Länder only had 25% of the membership that NRW had at that point (the gap has closed a bit).
Access to the Internet was nearly equal at 50% then so I attributed this to the generally lower knowledge of English in the East. This goes at least for people who were schooled before 1989 (basically all over 35, which is the LT target group rather than the teens&twens). Generally, membership from Eastern Europe is much lower than from Western Europe (*often there is a good knowledge of German in E. Europe, so one could gain members from these countries with a german localisation).
Those countries where users created a help or mirror site in their own language have experienced a boost in membership (Spain, Italy).
This is all from my own perception of that site, I have no connections to them other than being a long time user.
(edited to add correct numbers from old posting, and to add a thought*)
7boekerij
Though I know this might seem rude :
May I paraphrase the wisdom of doing this internationalization?
First, I would not bet good money that a significant majority of internet using book-people with collections large enough to need cataloguing know their German well enough to handle BT. I do think making the site available in various language is going that help that much to it's popularity.
If you change German for English (or whatever language), still that statement stands, I think.
One good reason why e.g. MS Internet Explorer is so popular, I think--or rather I am sure, even I know--, is that it is available in many different languages. Thus, users can pick a language as they see fit, most probably their own language. Though many will add MSIE is a rather crappy browser--we are not going to discuss thas matter here, are we, for they might be right (and most probably are right)--still, MSIE has got a major advantage : it is available in your language. Whatever other usability advantages (or lack thereof), the latter is vital.
Hey, even most educated people, wherever in the world they might be living, do not speak English.
Then again, even those people who do speak English might gain many advantages from the availability of LT in other languages, too. For books might be more than pageturners by (pick your favorite bestseller author) only. Whatever language is your mother tongue, books and languages can and do open new worlds to you.
In my personal situation, English is the fourth language I was learning. You might think someone speaking but three languages--or more than three, but without English being one of them--is underdeveloped indeed. You might think so.
Finally, thought this might shock you--again--, even at the Internet, most information is not available in English.
Note :
I am fully aware that, rude and shocking as all those facts could be, some people might tend to flag this message as abusive. Feel free to do so. Though, the latter possibility will not undo the facts--whether you like them or not. Nor is this message off topic, I think. Nevertheless, if you think it is, please say so--and explain.
Edited to correct some typos.
May I paraphrase the wisdom of doing this internationalization?
First, I would not bet good money that a significant majority of internet using book-people with collections large enough to need cataloguing know their German well enough to handle BT. I do think making the site available in various language is going that help that much to it's popularity.
If you change German for English (or whatever language), still that statement stands, I think.
One good reason why e.g. MS Internet Explorer is so popular, I think--or rather I am sure, even I know--, is that it is available in many different languages. Thus, users can pick a language as they see fit, most probably their own language. Though many will add MSIE is a rather crappy browser--we are not going to discuss thas matter here, are we, for they might be right (and most probably are right)--still, MSIE has got a major advantage : it is available in your language. Whatever other usability advantages (or lack thereof), the latter is vital.
Hey, even most educated people, wherever in the world they might be living, do not speak English.
Then again, even those people who do speak English might gain many advantages from the availability of LT in other languages, too. For books might be more than pageturners by (pick your favorite bestseller author) only. Whatever language is your mother tongue, books and languages can and do open new worlds to you.
In my personal situation, English is the fourth language I was learning. You might think someone speaking but three languages--or more than three, but without English being one of them--is underdeveloped indeed. You might think so.
Finally, thought this might shock you--again--, even at the Internet, most information is not available in English.
Note :
I am fully aware that, rude and shocking as all those facts could be, some people might tend to flag this message as abusive. Feel free to do so. Though, the latter possibility will not undo the facts--whether you like them or not. Nor is this message off topic, I think. Nevertheless, if you think it is, please say so--and explain.
Edited to correct some typos.
8richardderus
Tim #1: Thanks for the work you do, sight unseen but site very much seen, and you and all those around you deserve kudos for keeping up the pace in challenging circumstances.
Boekerij #7: What could possibly be abusive about your post? I completely don't see it. Not even the tone seems objectionable, and the content is provably correct.
Boekerij #7: What could possibly be abusive about your post? I completely don't see it. Not even the tone seems objectionable, and the content is provably correct.
9GreyHead
Boekerij #7: What could possibly be abusive about your post?
I think Boekerji believes that a post of his was flagged in anotehr group. I can't find it now but if I remember correctly it was the post before his that was flagged - the flag appears after the post it refers to - and there wasn't anything obviously wrong with that either so probably just an errant mouse.
I think Boekerji believes that a post of his was flagged in anotehr group. I can't find it now but if I remember correctly it was the post before his that was flagged - the flag appears after the post it refers to - and there wasn't anything obviously wrong with that either so probably just an errant mouse.
10jcbrunner
What I find not pleasant in Boekerij's #7, is mind reading of others and asserting tenuous opinions as facts (ie the weak MSIE argument; generally speaking, open source software such as Open Office is available in more languages, especially obscure ones, than closed software.). In my interpretation, the post basically accuses Hanno of both ignorance and elitism. Both assertions are neither merited nor helpful to the discussion.
I think Hanno questions Tim's growth and internationalization strategy, a standard topic in international marketing and management. Failed international expansions are legion (see Walmart in Germany, Amazon.de also shut down its German development center). According to the German saying: The devil hides in the details. Tim's co-owners will be able to give advice.
Necessary ingredients for success are (incomplete): the technical capability (data sources, äöü/date support, etc.), a sufficiently large local user base to start viral, self-sustaining growth and dedicated marketing and support (e.g. who handles German language emails?). Currently, I do see issues on all three counts.
A second aspect for discussion is the level of localization (l8n): From an easily implemented superficial translation of texts and tags (Ihr oder Dein Profil?), to a medium l8n with customized localized links (Harry Potter und der Feuerkelch) and recommendations, to a deep l8n with separate databases and separate accounts (see Amazon, ebay or Wikipedia for different strategies).
PS The Frankfurt Book Fair is impressive. When I attended, I was one of the repressed few not to give in to the Gollum-like book grabbing urge.
I think Hanno questions Tim's growth and internationalization strategy, a standard topic in international marketing and management. Failed international expansions are legion (see Walmart in Germany, Amazon.de also shut down its German development center). According to the German saying: The devil hides in the details. Tim's co-owners will be able to give advice.
Necessary ingredients for success are (incomplete): the technical capability (data sources, äöü/date support, etc.), a sufficiently large local user base to start viral, self-sustaining growth and dedicated marketing and support (e.g. who handles German language emails?). Currently, I do see issues on all three counts.
A second aspect for discussion is the level of localization (l8n): From an easily implemented superficial translation of texts and tags (Ihr oder Dein Profil?), to a medium l8n with customized localized links (Harry Potter und der Feuerkelch) and recommendations, to a deep l8n with separate databases and separate accounts (see Amazon, ebay or Wikipedia for different strategies).
PS The Frankfurt Book Fair is impressive. When I attended, I was one of the repressed few not to give in to the Gollum-like book grabbing urge.
11andyl
On localisation (NOTE this is typical abbreviated l10n - because there are 10 letters between the initial L and the terminal N).
It would be nice to have LT localised for my locale (en_GB) rather than US English. OK so most of the modifications are going to be minor - catalogue instead of catalog etc. but it would be a good test of the l10n changes.
To be honest I think that the support issue handling German language emails is going to be the hard one. If you have the user-interface totally in German people will expect to send emails in German. The same would be true with all other languages that the UI gets translated to. We all know the value of the blogs, google groups and now talk when it comes to mutual support, and to find out what new changes have been put live and for apologies and excuses when things go wrong. For the native German speaker who doesn't have English their experience will be diminished.
It would be nice to have LT localised for my locale (en_GB) rather than US English. OK so most of the modifications are going to be minor - catalogue instead of catalog etc. but it would be a good test of the l10n changes.
To be honest I think that the support issue handling German language emails is going to be the hard one. If you have the user-interface totally in German people will expect to send emails in German. The same would be true with all other languages that the UI gets translated to. We all know the value of the blogs, google groups and now talk when it comes to mutual support, and to find out what new changes have been put live and for apologies and excuses when things go wrong. For the native German speaker who doesn't have English their experience will be diminished.
12timspalding
Thanks for the comments. Some replies:
1. While every *truly* educated person knows Greek, I have decided that LibraryThing will have to lower itself to the level of the hoi polloi. (Yes, THE hoi polloi; I DO know that's redundant, but it feels right!)
2. I agree that MANY of LibraryThing's early-adopters—scholars and book maniacs—are comfortable in English, LibraryThing isn't for them alone. And besides, being able to read a language is not the same thing as having no preference. If pressed, I an order a beer in Turkish, but I'm happy I don't have to do that every time I want a beer in the US. Also, although it gets easier around 3-4 beers, my linguistic ability deteriorates after 5.
3. As stated, the big issues are: (a) Translation of site, (b) Technical capacity and (c) Dealing with users. There's a fourth one: figuring out what FEATURES should change. We're only part way through the thinking on that, but, for example, by default a German-language user should see German-language reviews (always with the option of seeing all reviews).
The translation is, as stated, going to be wiki style. That means that users translate the site. I'm not sure I understand this criticism "But wouldnt it be much easier to keep all the text hardcoded and just get people on these forums to more or less agree(say, by vote) on the translations? You get wiki-style reliability and user participation without the need to recode half the site."
Either way, we'd need to recode the site. The question is whether to "fork" all the pages—have one version in English, one in German and etc. or to build in the structure that *abstracts* the words from the page. Doing that is better practice anyway, and is almost done.
The reason to go for wiki-like changes over translating it and then getting users to "agree" is that the latter would require us to hire a translator. Quite frankly, there is no way LibraryThing could expand to most languages without user help. We might handle German and French, but there are never going to be enough users in some countries to justify the up-front cost. Fortunately, lots of users are eager to help us out here.
On the technical issues, the point is that LibraryThing *should do those better anyway*. I'm sure we're all agreed on that. This is the biggest problem we're tackling. Wish us well!
On dealing with users, I think it's going to have to be something like the following:
1. Help/FAQ groups for all languages. Most LT help is user-to-user now anyway.
2. A notice in the terms that best results can be obtained when writing us in English.
3. Helpful users passing on problems.
4. Abby and I dusting off the languages we do understand, and using machine translations where we need to.
5. If the community gets big enough we are in NO WAY against hiring someone who speaks the language natively. For that matter, since we think everyone who works for LibraryThing should answer user emails, we'd love to hire a smart German, or Dutch or Russian hacker who could handle emails from time to time.
This is not exactly a new problem. I'm sure RemembertheMilk doesn't have a Uzbek speaker on staff, but that's one of their languages. Ditto Bookmooch and Portuguese, Google and Klingon--okay, they probably do.
Lastly, LibraryThing's international expansion is VERY much in line with what LibraryThing is about: cataloging books and connecting people through them. Books are, after all, not in English alone, and I thrill to see the day when a French reader of Egyptian novels in translation gets reading suggestions based upon the English-only collections of like-minded Americans.
Tim
1. While every *truly* educated person knows Greek, I have decided that LibraryThing will have to lower itself to the level of the hoi polloi. (Yes, THE hoi polloi; I DO know that's redundant, but it feels right!)
2. I agree that MANY of LibraryThing's early-adopters—scholars and book maniacs—are comfortable in English, LibraryThing isn't for them alone. And besides, being able to read a language is not the same thing as having no preference. If pressed, I an order a beer in Turkish, but I'm happy I don't have to do that every time I want a beer in the US. Also, although it gets easier around 3-4 beers, my linguistic ability deteriorates after 5.
3. As stated, the big issues are: (a) Translation of site, (b) Technical capacity and (c) Dealing with users. There's a fourth one: figuring out what FEATURES should change. We're only part way through the thinking on that, but, for example, by default a German-language user should see German-language reviews (always with the option of seeing all reviews).
The translation is, as stated, going to be wiki style. That means that users translate the site. I'm not sure I understand this criticism "But wouldnt it be much easier to keep all the text hardcoded and just get people on these forums to more or less agree(say, by vote) on the translations? You get wiki-style reliability and user participation without the need to recode half the site."
Either way, we'd need to recode the site. The question is whether to "fork" all the pages—have one version in English, one in German and etc. or to build in the structure that *abstracts* the words from the page. Doing that is better practice anyway, and is almost done.
The reason to go for wiki-like changes over translating it and then getting users to "agree" is that the latter would require us to hire a translator. Quite frankly, there is no way LibraryThing could expand to most languages without user help. We might handle German and French, but there are never going to be enough users in some countries to justify the up-front cost. Fortunately, lots of users are eager to help us out here.
On the technical issues, the point is that LibraryThing *should do those better anyway*. I'm sure we're all agreed on that. This is the biggest problem we're tackling. Wish us well!
On dealing with users, I think it's going to have to be something like the following:
1. Help/FAQ groups for all languages. Most LT help is user-to-user now anyway.
2. A notice in the terms that best results can be obtained when writing us in English.
3. Helpful users passing on problems.
4. Abby and I dusting off the languages we do understand, and using machine translations where we need to.
5. If the community gets big enough we are in NO WAY against hiring someone who speaks the language natively. For that matter, since we think everyone who works for LibraryThing should answer user emails, we'd love to hire a smart German, or Dutch or Russian hacker who could handle emails from time to time.
This is not exactly a new problem. I'm sure RemembertheMilk doesn't have a Uzbek speaker on staff, but that's one of their languages. Ditto Bookmooch and Portuguese, Google and Klingon--okay, they probably do.
Lastly, LibraryThing's international expansion is VERY much in line with what LibraryThing is about: cataloging books and connecting people through them. Books are, after all, not in English alone, and I thrill to see the day when a French reader of Egyptian novels in translation gets reading suggestions based upon the English-only collections of like-minded Americans.
Tim
13GreyHead
I imagine that you've already looked but I stumbled across Pootle and http://translate.sourceforge.net/ a few days ago. They look like potentially useful tools if I ever get back to coding multi-lingual stuff.
14_Zoe_
Isn't it irritating when phrases feel right but are somehow wrong on a more technical level? When I think about it too much I become almost convinced that it's necessary to say "the level of twn pollwn", but then then it really doesn't belong in a sentence pretending to be English....
(Sorry for the completely off-topic post. It's just something that's always bothered me: when I learned enough Greek that I felt I could legitimately use the phrase "hoi polloi" without being pretentious, I also knew enough Greek that I wasn't satisfied with the way it would fit into a sentence. And so I don't think I've ever used it.)
To make this on-topic, I'll just say that translating the site into ancient Greek should obviously be a top priority.
(Sorry for the completely off-topic post. It's just something that's always bothered me: when I learned enough Greek that I felt I could legitimately use the phrase "hoi polloi" without being pretentious, I also knew enough Greek that I wasn't satisfied with the way it would fit into a sentence. And so I don't think I've ever used it.)
To make this on-topic, I'll just say that translating the site into ancient Greek should obviously be a top priority.
15BoPeep
To 'the hoi polloi' you can add dozens of other phrases that just don't sound right in their grammatically/factually correct form. Still, it's nice to stand up for accuracy now and then, even if it's becoming increasingly futile as time goes on. I continue to use words like 'anticipate' in a purposely limited fashion - and never where I mean 'expect' - but ... that's a conversation for alt.usage.english, not LT, however much some things I read here make my red pencil twitch. :-)
I vote for Latin, just to be awkward.
I vote for Latin, just to be awkward.
16richardderus
I model selfishness here, but...what the hell, I court BoPeep's twitchy red pencil and say...please look at the unique message boad functionality over at http://forums.prospero.com/foxfirefly/
Their design allows for conversations between users to be referential; its thread search function has a wonderful "Unread Messages to Me" criterion, oh the wonders of it all....
Their design allows for conversations between users to be referential; its thread search function has a wonderful "Unread Messages to Me" criterion, oh the wonders of it all....
17timspalding
That's a neat feature. I do think Talk might need some tweaking to get right, so I'm open. But not this week.
Firefly was such a great show...
Firefly was such a great show...
