What's right with Talk and Groups?

Corresponding to the thread about what's wrong, I think we need to look at what's working here. I'd say LT has built a pretty successful community already, and it might be a good idea to elaborate its strengths in order to make sure they aren't lost in any changes.

1) The Talk system makes it easy to follow (most) threads of interest.

2) Site norms are strongly community-based; it's generally the users who decide what behaviour is acceptable and what isn't.

3) There's pretty much no moderation.

4) Some of the groups have managed to create a really wonderful atmosphere, like the 75 Book Challenge or (copying what MerryMary just said) the Green Dragon.

5) The layout is very clean.

6) The level of discourse is generally high.

2 and 3 are looooove for me. I really, really like that Talk here is kinda self-censored... People are allowed freedom and the ability to use common sense, and no one person gets to decide what kind of threads are or aren't allowed just based on their opinions.

Honestly, I'm on of those that love the way the threads are shown. I hate... what are they called.. "threaded" or "nested" replies, it always confuses me on other sites, I love the way Talk threads are set up.

No flashing animated cutesy signatures on every single thread post. Another thing I don't like about most other forums; LT is a book site, and I can't imagine trying to talk seriously about a book or author or whatever while being distracted by those types of sigs.

3: Honestly, I'm on of those that love the way the threads are shown. I hate... what are they called.. "threaded" or "nested" replies, it always confuses me on other sites, I love the way Talk threads are set up.

No flashing animated cutesy signatures on every single thread post. Another thing I don't like about most other forums; LT is a book site, and I can't imagine trying to talk seriously about a book or author or whatever while being distracted by those types of sigs.

Agree with you whole heartedly - I hate threaded forums (where's the last post? what are we discussing now) and fairy avatars or flashing signature lines.

I really do like the relatively simple layout here on LT.

I don't understand this bundling of gaudiness with nested threads. I don't like, much, gaudiness.

I do like nested threads. It is easier to stay on topic, and when there is divergence to diverge sensibly and return to the topic.

This thread, however, is about what's right with talk and groups. I can live with them and have.

Robert

5: I didn't necessarily mean to bundle gaudiness with nested threads, however, my general experience of other forums is that they seem to occur together.

I don't like each for different reasons:
Gaudiness - because it's distracting.
Nested threads - because I'm simple, I find these hard to follow - I'm always lingering in some nested thread that's long since died out and all the action is happening somewhere else.

Moot point. I'll change my gender before I change to threading.

... Have I mentioned lately how much I love Tim?

So that Timosina thing was not merely some glib joke?

I disagree strongly with Zoe's no. 1. If I want to follow one thread in a huge group I have to star it. Then I get far too many stars by doing that and still lose the ones I really want.

And it takes far too much time to x out threads I'm not interested in in high traffic groups. I thus tend to want to drop them because I'm seeing noise and losing what I really want to read.

2>

No flashing animated cutesy signatures on every single thread post.

What you said.

>10 majkia: Oh, that's what the (most) was for. There are definitely certain improvements that could be made, some of which I did list in the What's Wrong thread.

I've also suggested in the past that we should have multiple starring options, so we could use yellow stars for medium-priority threads and red stars for high-priority threads, or something along those lines.

Not a bad idea. I've thought of it too from time to time. It'd had to be simple. Making it like GMail labels and it'd start to fell like work.

I agree 100% with Heather19 (#3) and TineOliver (#4) about loving the simplicity of the way the Talk threads are set up and the absence of cutesy signatures.

>13 timspalding: I'd start by adding just a single star colour, if that's the comment you were referring to. Click once for yellow, click again for red (blue? whatever), click a third time to make it go away.

>15 _Zoe_:

Yeah. Agreed.

I use stars to mark those threads I want to read first when I'm looking at my Your Groups view. I'd like another way to mark threads that have content I'd like to keep track of but not necessarily any current conversation. So one way to highlight the first kind of threads in the Your Groups view and another way to just see second kind of threads (like the Your Starred view).

>16 timspalding:
I asked for that on Twitter. I know you read it 'cause you starred it. ;)

One thing to look at when we're considering what is right with talk is the number of members who don't catalogue any books. There are two groups I belong to where I see this happen:

In the Folio Society Devotees, there are some very interesting posters who have no books catalogued but who participate regularly in discussion. I assume they joined purely to get access to Talk, so the group is definitely doing something right.

I think maybe half of the posters in Name That Book have joined LT specifically to ask their question. They're probably being sent here by Google, since the LibraryThing group page is the #1 hit for both Name that book and Name this book. That group is definitely working well: the success rate for questions is very high, and while so many of the questioners are drive-bys, I'm sure some of them stick around to have a better look.