Publication dates at the top of work pages… or not?!

Recently there was a call for LibrayThing to do more with its knowledge of "original publication date" (OPD) either derived from Common Knowledge or, in the absence of that, from surveying the editions LibraryThing has access to. Many uses can be thought of, of course. Lists by year are one.

In response I did some of the back-end work, and, with the encouragement of the people arguing for more use of original publication dates, put the original publication data at the top of work pages, like:

A Tale of Two Cities (1859)
by Charles Dickens

I was expecting a brouhaha and I got it!

In addition—even more controversially—I chose to follow the way work pages work more generally, and show your editions information on the top of the work page, if you had an edition of the work. (Showing your information not the work information is how LibraryThing has always worked, except for a few weeks recently when I moved to show work information, then you information in a box. This was roundly disliked, so I reverted). In such a situation, it would show something like:

A Tale of Two Cities: Norton Critical Edition (1998)
by Charles Dickens

UPDATE: At the insistence of some members it now will show your title and author, but not your publication date. It will show the original publication date. I think this is quite absurd--making a hash of book data by mixing work-level and book-level data. But it will do for now, while I prepare a side-bar thing.

From my perspective, the OPD is a very valuable piece of information about a work. When someone recommends a sci-fi book I haven't head of, I get major hints about it from knowing whether it's (1931), (1951), (1971), (1991) or (2011). It's not surprising that academic citations commonly say Title by Author (date) or that Wikipedia fronts the information too, albeit on the side panel.

So, look around and tell me what you think. Then answer:

1. Do you like seeing dates after the title at all?
2. If we DO have dates, do you want them to be the OPD in all cases, or should your publication date trump it?
3. If you don't like it, would you accept a smaller top-level line, such as series have? (eg., "Original publication date: 1859") How about saying:

A Tale of Two Cities
by Charles Dickens (1859)

4. Can you suggest any other solution that gets this information "up there"? Consider, for example, the Wikipedia side-bar for major works, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Tale_of_Two_Cities . Would such a bar, coming ABOVE quick links, be helpful? Note that, to get what Wikipedia has, we'd need to capture much more information about the first edition. Would that be good, or bad?

Let's converse first, and not do votes.

I think it looks horrible, because it's not the title, it's not as important as the title, and I don't even think it's as important as the author, yet it goes right up with the title. I love knowing the original pub date, but I don't want to see it right next to the title. Especially in works like this: http://www.librarything.com/work/1472

I like the OPD in the top line; I do not like my publication date in the top line.

Maybe:

A Tale of Two Cities
by Charles Dickens
originally published 1859

Please try to reply to all the numbers I gave, if you can. It helps me to understand why people don't like it.

I do not wish to see a date around the title or author of the book on the main page. This is a deal-breaker for me. You know when you add a book via Amazon and it gives you the series name and/or other extraneous stuff in the book title which you have to get rid of? Well this is far worse because you can't get rid of it. Unacceptable.

v

wrt 5: I don't like any of them - as far as I'm concerned that info belongs in the details sections.

also: I don't care whether it's the edition date, the OPD, or any other date under the sun

It's sort of silly that you've started this thread without dealing with the main point of opposition: the edition publication date is not equivalent to the OPD and pretty much no one wants to see it at the top. So I'd say this discussion is poisoned from the start and won't have much to do with OPD.

I will respond to all the questions eventually, though.

Just look at the poll: 26:3:1 say it should be OPD rather than our edition publication date. What are you hoping to change by restarting the discussion in a non-poll format? It may obscure that strong user preference, but I don't think it will change it. I'd really like to have a clean discussion about whether OPD should be there or not (at 5:15:8, there's at least some room for persuasion), but I don't really see that happening when you're starting out by getting everyone's backs up with a much-despised status quo.

1. Do you like seeing dates after the title at all?

As I said before, this is 100% dependent on what date it is. OPD, yes. Some random date of my edition, no way in hell.

2. If we DO have dates, do you want them to be the OPD in all cases, or should your publication date trump it?

OPD in all cases.

3. If you don't like it, would you accept a smaller top-level line, such as series have? (eg., "Original publication date: 1859") How about saying:
by Charles Dickens (1859)

I think this would be more confusing. The date refers to the book, not the author. I'd expect dates beside the author to show when the author lived and died.

I don't think it's really worth thinking of other options until the core issue is resolved. Publication date is not a substitute for OPD, is not nearly as important, and should not be shown at the top of the page. If we can't get beyond that, any other considerations are a waste of time.

1. OPD is something that I am acutely interested in knowing. (I tag my books by era) But I would hate to see it cluttering up the title line. It looks awful.

2. My publication date is displayed in my catalog, where it should be found. Not at all necessary to be at the top of the works page.

3. This would be acceptable but still cluttered looking.
A side box looks nice, but is not particularly needed.

If OPD is going to be shown at the top, I think showing it where it is now is cleanest and most efficient. I wouldn't mind it on a line like series, except then we'd lose a whole line of space unnecessarily.

1 NO

2 If anything is there it should be OPD and not the edition date.

3 I don't think it should create another line there. The problem with after the author is that it often would end up creating another line there.

4 I can see a limited amount of information above the quick links, but not as much as Wikipedia has. (Maybe OPD and Wikipedia link for those who want more.)

It's sort of silly that you've started this thread without dealing with the main point of opposition

That's why it's question #2. It seems to me logically posterior to question #1.

Another solution would be to put green earliest edition on LT into the OPD common knowledge spot where no OPD information is given.

um, Tim. What did you do? The book title no longer shows up in the lightbox when I click on a book from the cover view of my catalog. There is no way to navigate to the book at all from there. I'm on some later version of Chrome and Win 7.

On the topic of showing the OPD even when you have the book, I'm adamant. We're not going to show you edition title, your edition author and then—zoinks!—original edition date. It makes no sense, and will, especially in the case of translated literature, where thee is a legitimate original for the translation, be truly odd.

1. Do you like seeing dates after the title at all?
Not at the top of the page. It's too prominent. I like it in the "Your book information" box, though.

2. If we DO have dates, do you want them to be the OPD in all cases, or should your publication date trump it?
Because our title/author now trumps the work title/author, the publication date should be treated in the same way.

3. If you don't like it, would you accept a smaller top-level line, such as series have? (eg., "Original publication date: 1859") How about saying:
A Tale of Two Cities
by Charles Dickens (1859)
The problem with this is that it links the date with the author, not the work (was Charles Dickens born in 1859?). The following would be better:
by Charles Dickens. Originally published in 1859.

4. Can you suggest any other solution that gets this information "up there"?
I don't want new panels added. We have enough of them already. Also, the long tail wouldn't get the extra data you say is needed, and by definition, most of works are long-tail works.

That's why it's question #2. It seems to me logically posterior to question #1.

This makes no sense. We should decide whether any given piece of information should be shown at the top. Show data because it's important enough to be there; don't decide that you want to show some data just because and then figure out what that data should be.

On the topic of showing the OPD even when you have the book, I'm adamant. We're not going to show you edition title, your edition author and then—zoinks!—original edition date.

So then kill this whole conversation and stop wasting everyone's time. You're clearly going against what the majority of users want, and trying to conceal that fact by leaving out polls isn't going to help.

OPD applies to all editions. It's more than just an edition publication date.

>1 timspalding:

1. Yes. Although the date should probably be in a smaller font or in some other way distinguished from the title. And perhaps square brackets would be better than parentheses.

2. I'm mostly interested in dates for books I don't own and in that case we all seem agreed on original publication date. For those I do own, my publication/printing date is not something I need to see at the top of the page. It's already in the book information box. But then again I was also for work level title and author at the top of the page. To my mind too much information is being repeated between the top of the page and the book information box.

3. Eh. Another line might work. I'd have to see it. But I think I would prefer some other way to distinguish the date while keeping it on the top line.

>16 timspalding: Please, please show a bit of sense. Don't try to push through a feature that most people hate. Either make the change so that it's at least somewhat acceptable to people, or scrap the whole thing and move on to something else. Why do you want to have a big fight about this, annoy lots of people, taint the whole concept of OPD, and ultimately accomplish nothing?

>16 timspalding:
It makes no sense, and will, especially in the case of translated literature, where thee is a legitimate original for the translation, be truly odd.

Interesting thought. But dates in my catalog will only be the original translation date on the off chance that I happen to own a first edition of the translation. I use the date column for printing date, to the best I am able to identify it, as I want to date the physical object.

To base your argument on the hypothetical utility of a date that isn't really available for use strikes me as unhelpful.

1. OPD after the title doesn't bother me, and can be useful, though I'd prefer it in a smaller font to distinguish it from the title.
2. Absolutely OPD. Edition date can be deceptive.
3. The date applies to the book. It should not appear with the author.

1. Do you like seeing dates after the title at all?

I'm not sure. If point 2 can be worked out, I think it might be kind of cool.

2. If we DO have dates, do you want them to be the OPD in all cases, or should your publication date trump it?

For fiction I'm more interested in OPD dates. For non-fiction, I want to have the last time the information was updated date. Since you can't have both....

Wait! Maybe you can have both:

A Tale of Two Cities (1859, 1998 Edition)

You'd probably only want to show both dates when they weren't the same. But this has all the needed info and is very space/wordage efficient.

3. If you don't like it, would you accept a smaller top-level line, such as series have? (eg., "Original publication date: 1859") How about saying:

I'm fine with that.

A Tale of Two Cities
by Charles Dickens (1859)

But not this. I'm in agreement with the people who find this potentially confusing.

1. Yes, but I think I'd like it to be a little smaller than the title (or a different color maybe?) so that it is easily differentiated.
2. I only want to see OPD. Ever.
3. A separate line would be just fine, but it should not be next to the author. It should get it's own line.
4. A sidebar would be fine.

Agree with LShelby in post 23.

1. I don't like seeing a date on the same line as the title, because a date is not part of the title.

2. If we do have dates, I would definitely prefer OPD. In fact I would be very interested to see OPD on the work page. Just not on the first line. And I do not want my edition date displayed prominently--it doesn't interest me.

3. I would like to see it on a separate line, below the author.

I like the idea of having both publication and edition dates somewhere. I don't like seeing it it on the same line as the title or author, it is cluttered and confusing.

#27 - yep. that's the same for me.

It is important information about a book, and it should be prominently displayed. But it is nowhere near as important as title or author

I'd like
Title by Author
originally published* xxxx, your editions yyyy zzzz

* explanation link somewhere about how it's CK knoweldge and or best guessed from edition data.

I vastly prefer

A Tale of Two Cities
by Charles Dickens (1859)

I agree that original publication is the more generally interesting and useful datum. However, when I see

A Tale of Two Cities (1859)
by Charles Dickens

I read the date as pertaining to a particular edition, rather than its position in the author's ouevre, which is communicated more effectively by the first example.

I see that others are very much at odds with me on this, and I think that giving it its own line

A Tale of Two Cities
by Charles Dickens
(First pub. 1859)

would be an inoffensive compromise.

Another option would be the bibliographer style in which the publication date of my copy was displayed first with the original publication date following it in parentheses, thus:

A Tale of Two Cities
by Charles Dickens
1998 (1859)

And as a refinement, first editions could say "1859 (First)" rather than the uglier "1859 (1859)."

1. I like seeing the date in a more prominent position.
2. The OPD is far more important for me, although I admit the water gets muddy with translations and such.
3. I really like your example. Having the date in the same font-size and weight as the title looks odd to me.
4. Not sure.

Really happy to see the OPD getting more love. When I look at my library, it's far more important to me to know when something was written than to know when it was re-published.

1. I don't like seeing the date after the title, at least not without it being set off in some way and with an indication of what date it is. As it is now, simply in parentheses after the title, it looks bizarre, and as though it's part of the title (regardless of which date is displayed there).

2. This tension between work- and book-level data (the same we had with "other authors" is a difficult one. It certainly makes no sense to have the date displayed at the top of the page be OPD if you don't have the book, but the date of your edition if you do (i.e. how it currently is). I'd much rather see a box showing "work information" like original publication date (as Tim mentions in his original point 4).

3/4. Again I think the sidebar makes more sense, although I could see a line for OPD working fine too, depending on the design. Up by the title, though, I don't like at all.

1. Do you like seeing dates after the title at all?
Only if the OPD only.

2. If we DO have dates, do you want them to be the OPD in all cases, or should your publication date trump it?
OPD in all cases

3. If you don't like it, would you accept a smaller top-level line, such as series have? (eg., "Original publication date: 1859") How about saying:

A Tale of Two Cities
by Charles Dickens (1859)

Don't put it after the author. It feels confusing.

On the topic of showing the OPD even when you have the book, I'm adamant. We're not going to show you edition title, your edition author and then—zoinks!—original edition date.

I'm with Zoe on this. Either it's OPD or nothing. When I want the date, I want when it was originally published. My edition's date is totally irrelevant to me and I don't want it there.

I have removed all references to your book's date and replaced them with the original publication date, so it's now.

Your Title (Original publication date)
By Your Author

I think this is nonsense—a hash of work- and book-level data. But it will nicely bring out some people's opinions on the topic.

For me, there are two different questions:

1. Is OPD important enough to display at the top of the page if it doesn't take up any additional space? I'd say yes. Something like displaying it beside the title, but in a smaller and less obtrusive font, would hopefully mitigate some of the concerns without taking up more space. There's also the possibility of the sidebar, but I don't really see where that would go.

2. Is OPD important enough to display at the top of the page if it pushes something else down? I'm more neutral here, but I'd probably lean toward no. Space is precious.

> 33

Hating it. See my #29.

>33 timspalding: Thanks, I think this will help clarify the discussion a lot.

I'm not seeing the OPD in cases where it's entered as YYYY-MM-DD. I think it should display the year in these cases.

What about something like what IMDB does:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0033467/

"OPD" set off from title a bit, and in gray (they also add a link, showing other films from that year, which could also be a possibility for books ...)

ETA: I also think the text should be smaller.

I'm glad to know that OPD is important to other people.

That date tells me A LOT about what I can expect within a book's covers, be they leather, paper or *shudder* electronic screen.

>37 jbd1: I like this. Gray, and smaller. Not sure about a link, though.

ETA: The link idea is growing on me. I think it will be good as long as the text itself is sufficiently small.

#37 yes!

If it ends up absolutely necessary to put some sort of date next to the title (which I won't go so far as to say I hate, but I really, really dislike) it should at least be a different size font from the title. Parentheses (or even brackets) do not set it off enough.

1. Do you like seeing dates after the title at all?

NO! I don't want any extraneous information included with the title.

2. If we DO have dates, do you want them to be the OPD in all cases, or should your publication date trump it?

2. My publication date. I don't care much about having the dates here. The date of my edition is what matters to me, but that's in the "Your book information" box, so adding it elsewhere would be duplicative. OPD is pretty much irrelevant to me.

3. If you don't like it, would you accept a smaller top-level line, such as series have? (eg., "Original publication date: 1859")

I'd rather not. (Frankly, I don't like having the series info there, either! I find it distracting.)

How about saying:
A Tale of Two Cities
by Charles Dickens (1859)

This looks as though the date refers to the author, not the book.

4. I guess I don't want it "up there".

33: No.

v

1. No, not really, especially not the way it's shown at the moment:

Your Title (OPD)

I don't think it's clear enough what the date relates to - most LT users don't follow the New Features or RSI groups.

2. OPD definitely. I think this has much more relevance to the work than the particular date my edition was published. I'm not that bothered about the fact that my edition of The Mysteries of Udolpho was published in 2008. To me that is a lot less relevant than the fact that the original work was published in 1794. Knowing when a work was first published tells me a lot more about the work than the date of the copy I own.

3. "How about saying:

A Tale of Two Cities
by Charles Dickens (1859)"

No. As other people have pointed out, it's really unclear. Did something happen to Charles Dickens in 1859?

I would be ok with lemontwist's suggestion (msg 4) of:

A Tale of Two Cities
by Charles Dickens
originally published 1859

and LShelby's suggestion (msg 23)

A Tale of Two Cities (1859, 1998 Edition)

and reading_fox's suggestion

Title by Author
originally published xxxx, your editions yyyy zzzz

4. I would be ok with a wikipedia style sidebar.

A few other thoughts:

What about Work Title (originally published YYYY), with smaller font for the parentheses and text therein? I think this would address the issue of it being confusing, though at the cost of clutter.

Better, I think: if the year is a link, as Jeremy suggested, and the link goes to a page like this one on iMBD: The page is called "Most Popular Feature Films Released in 1941". I think that if we could click through to a page like that, it would be clear what the year was referring to.

#45 Which would actually get us back to the original RSI request? :-)

>46 souloftherose: Yup :D. Funny coincidence, that ;)

The original request was so peaceful, too. No one would have minded the existence of one more page.

> 47

No one would have minded the existence of one more page.

Oh, please. You know perfectly well that, whatever happens, someone will mind!

Now that I've thought it through more, the date doesn't belong on a line with the author—it should go with the title it refers to. I like the idea (repeated above) to use a different weight of font to clarify that it's not part of the title.

1. Do you like seeing dates after the title at all?
Yes, although I will give credit to the argument that it could be mistaken for part of the title. There are certainly titles that it would be a bigger issue for than others. Some change in font or color should solve that.

2. If we DO have dates, do you want them to be the OPD in all cases, or should your publication date trump it?
Original publication dates in all cases. The original publication date of a history book instantly tells you something about it. A book about abolition originally from 1850 would be more valuable for research than one from 1920. The same would be true of a book on the same subject published this year compared to one from 1990. OPD in all cases please.

3. If you don't like it, would you accept a smaller top-level line, such as series have? (eg., "Original publication date: 1859") How about saying:
A Tale of Two Cities
by Charles Dickens (1859)
When I see that I think, is that when Dickens was born or died? The date belongs to the title.

No one would have minded the existence of one more page.

Let me be clear about why I'm doing it this way.

Doing stuff with original publication date requires a fairly involved change in code. Even doing it by CK alone is not easy. To make lists you need a single, definitive date for a book. CK data isn't like that—it allows multiple dates and multiple languages. Further, because it is a very complex and flexible fielded wiki store, it can never be queried across all books with the sort of rapidity that would be needed. So, to do it I need to:

1. Calculate a single date for each work.
2. Put that date in a new, index table with seven million rows.
3. Make sure changes to CK always change that table.

That's a fair amount of work. For reasons already explained, I also want to attempt OPD on other books. That requires doing an all-books analysis for all works that don't have CK, and storing it in the table, together with a bit, probably, showing whether it's CK-based or derived.

That level of work is WAY more than would be justified by the mere special zeitgeisty page in the original request. If that were all that was at stake, there would be no chance of this happening.

Fortunately, I think we can get a lot more out of this, such as:

1. The original proposal.
2. Raising the status of the OPD generally, which I think is interesting. I incline strongly toward the "Wikipedia" model, where the OP gets its own box on the right, with the work title, OPD and cover of the original edition.
3. Factoring dates into recommendations, either generally or as a knob people can twiddle. I think some people would, for example, like to see a list of recently-published books they should get, without all the classics. I also think recommendation-diversity (the effort to "mix up" recommendations a bit, to make them more interesting) would favor a list being tweaked so that a recommendations list for a given work never be all from one decade, for example.
4. Stats pages, where you can see the OPD of your books averaged, or whatever.

There are probably more.

I am strongly in favor of #4. Preferably replacing the "date of your editions" graph currently on the stats page.

(just kidding, you can keep the old graph, but I reserve the right to continue to hate it.)

1. Do you like seeing dates after the title at all?

No, I'd rather the title be by itself as it was.

2. If we DO have dates, do you want them to be the OPD in all cases, or should your publication date trump it?

OPD always. I know the other is more valuable to collectors so this is personal preference only. I would think that we want to avoid edition specific stuff in that area. If you went with publication date, what date do you use if there's more than edition in a catalog?

3. If you don't like it, would you accept a smaller top-level line, such as series have? (eg., "Original publication date: 1859")

The separate line would be fine with me although I don't think having the date up there is necessary at all. The nice thing about the extra line is that it clearly denotes that this is the OPD rather than the edition pub. date which the date alone doesn't.

The other approach, Author (date), doesn't make sense to me.

4. Can you suggest any other solution that gets this information "up there"?

Isn't it already "up there" since it's in the "your book information" box? That puts the OPD on the work page twice already. I agree it's a useful peice of data but not so important that putting it up a third time wouldn't seem like overkill.

As for the wikipedia bar, if we really want a complete bibliographic record of the first edition I'd put it on a separate page.

Overall, I'd much rather we did other stuff with the date, like Zoe's idea of most popular by year for LT as a whole or a graph of my library by OPD (like the graph by edition date in Library Statistics).

>51 timspalding: Thanks for that explanation. It makes a lot of sense. And I have nothing in general against your overall approach, except inasmuch as I might now get blamed for a feature that a lot of people don't like just because I proposed a different, more harmless feature.

For reasons already explained, I also want to attempt OPD on other books. That requires doing an all-books analysis for all works that don't have CK, and storing it in the table, together with a bit, probably, showing whether it's CK-based or derived.

I do think you should forget about this for now and show a bit of faith in your users. Again and again, you've been surprised at how much people will contribute with the slightest incentive. Do the other OPD stuff, and give it a month or even just a week, and then reassess whether CK is still insufficient and likely to remain so.

I incline strongly toward the "Wikipedia" model, where the OP gets its own box on the right, with the work title, OPD and cover of the original edition.

I'd rather see the date shown more prominently, similar to how it is now, but just a bit smaller and less obtrusive. Cover of the original edition is only interesting in some cases (when it exists and is different from the cover I already see--that is, not for new books).

Mostly I'm just sad that you constantly push down the aggregate work data that I care most about, and won't let us rearrange the right sidebar.

Factoring dates into recommendations

I agree that this would be very helpful. Book-to-book recommendations tend to be more dependent on date than on pretty much anything else (clumping around whatever else was popular in the given year), and I'd like to be able to get beyond that.

Basic principle: I like showing information efficiently. I don't so much like adding information that pushes everything else down.

1. Do you like seeing dates after the title at all?

YES. Very much so.

2. If we DO have dates, do you want them to be the OPD in all cases, or should your publication date trump it?

I want it to be OPD in all cases. Looking around as it is now, it doesn't seem difficult to find the edition / work date.

3. If you don't like it, would you accept a smaller top-level line, such as series have? (eg., "Original publication date: 1859")

Not applicable, since I do like it, but sure, a smaller top-level line with the clarifying phrase is another good choice. It drives me nuts on Amazon that you can never find the original publication date -- I slaver after *some* indication of what the OPD is in book records.

> 51

I incline strongly toward the "Wikipedia" model, where the OP gets its own box on the right, with the work title, OPD and cover of the original edition.

The more I think about it, the more I prefer this idea. I can much more easily ignore those boxes on the right. They're there when I want them, but I wouldn't find them as distracting as if the info were right up there with the title/author info.

>56 Collectorator: I think he was talking about a different sort of list, but Lists with a capital L should be coming in the near-ish future too :)

I do think you should forget about this for now and show a bit of faith in your users. Again and again, you've been surprised at how much people will contribute with the slightest incentive. Do the other OPD stuff, and give it a month or even just a week, and then reassess whether CK is still insufficient and likely to remain so.

I understand where you're coming from, but to get to full coverage would require users adding 3 times more edits than they've added in the last five years. Anyway, the hard part programmatically isn't the calculation I'm proposing. The hard part is the CK part of it, and the table.

Anything that ends up with LT having LISTS is completely supported by yours truly

I've never contemplated that anyone would be against lists. I'm not sure it belongs here, but I'd be interested in why?

1. Do I want to see dates?
~ Could be useful
2. OPD or publication date?
~ OPD
3. Compromise?
~ Since I like the idea of dates in theory, n/a
4. Side bar?
~ Not above quick links, or at the very least, moveable. I use quick links quite a bit, and enjoy the convienience of the current placement.

I'm not crazy about it in any permutation at the moment.

When I added a book yesterday, I thought I'd gotten crap title data in my import & went back in to change it, before I realized it was displaying my edition date. I don't need that--it's in the book details--unless I have multiple copies of the book. I don't have so many multiples that it's an urgent issue.

I hate the date being after the author's name. I immediately associate dates in parentheses after a name as a reference to the author's lifetime, not to when s/he authored the book.

Any display that does not clearly indicate that the date is intended to be the OPD would be a fail from my perspective.

I like the idea of having the info in a sidebar rather than up top with the title. If I own the book, having it up top is only confusing.

1. Yes.
2. OPD.
3. A separate line is OK by me.
4. A sidebar is OK by me.

Damn and blast. I thought this hadn't happened yet, but looked at a book I added a couple of days ago and there it was. It looks like crap. I hoped that deleting my copy and re-adding it manually would help, but it doesn't. I loathe and despise the way this looks.

to get to full coverage would require users adding 3 times more edits than they've added in the last five years

Still, I'd try it. Have your users ever failed you before? There are all sorts of crazy data-entry projects that get done almost instantaneously.

I thought I'd gotten crap title data in my import & went back in to change it

As the discussion continues, I would act immediately to reduce the size of the date and maybe make it gray as well. It's a trivial change from a programming perspective, but one that could make a big difference.

Does this mean author pages could format to list titles by publication date rather than popularity?

That'd be cool!

For argument's sake, I've changed the size and color of the text:



Does this mean author pages could format to list titles by publication date rather than popularity?

Thank you. An excellent additional suggestion.

>67 timspalding: Thanks, so much better!

Agreed.

Yeah I think it's much less objectionable this way, too.

1) Yes, but offset from the title as in the IMDb example (smaller font, lighter color). Edited to say: @67: yes! that looks great

2) OPD is preferred. That a book was published in 1840 means a great deal more to me than the fact that my particular edition was published in 2007.

But I do see some value in listing both:

Brave New World (original: 1932; edition: 1969)

If both dates are the same it would be nice if the info could be compacted:

Brave New World (original/edition: 1932)

3. A smaller top-level line would also be fine, but I wouldn't want the date(s) associated with the author. Not just because it's a title-related date and not an author-related one, but also because there could easily be several people listed as authors and the date would get lost amidst all the data.

A third line would be preferable to adding the dates to the second line.

> 67 Well, better than before, but that's not saying much.

In any case, it's meaningless. It has no context. As far as the casual user is concerned, that could be any random date. I still don't understand why I have to see it. I have the book in my catalogue, so the information is in the "Your book information" box.

I don't need it after the title, and I don't want it there, any more than I want ":a novel" or "A detective whosis mystery" or any other extraneous garbage. The publication date is not part of the title and it shouldn't be where it looks as though it is.

As far as the casual user is concerned, that could be any random date.

Well, if it gets linked to the list of all works published in that year, that problem at least will be resolved. So I wouldn't worry about the casual user.

I know that doesn't help with your other concerns, though.

Tim, you've noted that it doesn't work for books that have a month in the date?

In agreement with lilithcat here.

eta: No actually: it's loathsome whatever. Now there's some more fiddle-faddle been added in there.

v

I've changed it so that, if you have both book and work, it says that. If you have only book it says "edition (DATE)." If you have only work, it says (DATE).

Tim, you've noted that it doesn't work for books that have a month in the date?

I can work on the algorithm. The goal is to not have it put "1962 (conceived)" or whatever. It's only accepting 1400+ four-digit dates now. That can change to accommodate your situation.

> 77

Looks fine to me.

77: Now this is getting to the point of too much information. I liked the previous option better (edition, grey, smaller font).

67,77: I like it, though, petty, I'd prefer decluttering of punctuation. Instead of "edition, 2010; original, 2009", what about "edition 2010, original 2009"?

66: Does this mean author pages could format to list titles by publication date rather than popularity?
This would be nice.

> 77 Not a big fan of both—starts to look cluttery. Redundant when you have a first edition, too.

>77 timspalding: I still don't want anything to do with the edition date. I don't think that's nearly important enough to have such prominent placement on the work page. It's not a key identifier of the work.

I can work on the algorithm. The goal is to not have it put "1962 (conceived)" or whatever. It's only accepting 1400+ four-digit dates now. That can change to accommodate your situation.

Thanks. I agree that it shouldn't do things like "1962 (conceived)", but if the date is 2011-09-01, it should display as "2011". While hopefully retaining the other data, so that it can do monthly breakdowns like GR does, but that's less critical.

>79 Mareofthesea: Mareofthesea, do you mean OPD rather than edition? That would be in keeping with what you said before in #61.

I prefer #67. Have no use for my edition date.

> 73

Well, if it gets linked to the list of all works published in that year, that problem at least will be resolved.

How so? "Click a link and you'll find out why we have this random-looking date here"? Ridiculous.

1. Do you like seeing dates after the title at all?
Yes

2. If we DO have dates, do you want them to be the OPD in all cases, or should your publication date trump it?
OPD

3&4
Both are ok with me

>85 lilithcat: I'm afraid that's how most of the site works. The title doesn't specify that it's our title; the "popularity" number doesn't say what exactly it means; the tags section doesn't come with an explanation of what tags are. People manage to get by with a bit of common sense and clicking around.

#77 I would be happy with that. The 'Your book information' box has vanished again though.

1. Do you like seeing dates after the title at all?
No. Too much clutter. The gray is slightly better, but still too much clutter; page is less clean.

2. If we DO have dates, do you want them to be the OPD in all cases, or should your publication date trump it?
OPD. But then I also think the *work* page (not the book page) should display work-level title and author(s) at the top regardless of whether I have cataloged the book.

3. If you don't like it, would you accept a smaller top-level line, such as series have? (eg., "Original publication date: 1859")
Yes, this would be ok, especially if it were only on the front/main work page. I also like it because it makes it clear what the date is (unlike the simple date in parentheses).

4. ... Would such a bar, coming ABOVE quick links, be helpful?
I'm not a fan of adding another box on the right column, and I use quick links a lot so I wouldn't want them shoved down.
I do, though, think there could be a case for having the *work* page really be a work page, one that prominently showed the information applicable to all editions, and then have sub pages show the info for other editions.

85> That's how most of the internet works. Don't know what that is? Click on it.

How would people feel about:

Work and edition: (1952, 2007)
Work: (1952)
Edition: (edition 2007)

?

The 'Your book information' box has vanished again though.

I don't think so. It's only there if you have the book.

I'd be interested in hearing what people think about identifiers versus information on the work pages, and other related things, here.

Jeremy and I are leaning toward a box on the right with original title, cover and date below quick links.

(Can we get an option somewhere to be able to see the work page as if we didn't have a copy (without having to sign out)? I just want to be able to see the generic work page, not personalized with my info, so I can see what this new feature looks like there, see how other authors & title are set so as to be able to fix them, etc.)

>91 timspalding: I'd still prefer just to see the OPD. But I realized that it's not too critical because I can still make it display what I want by deleting all my publication dates. That would be a bit tedious, though.

#91 "I don't think so. It's only there if you have the book."

Sorry, I wasn't clear. When I go to the book page for a book in my catalogue, the 'Your book information' box has gone.

>93 timspalding:. Cover or title page, yes. And, as I said, I think it makes more sense to do this after, rather than before, we have a better editions layer :-)

93 Jeremy and I are leaning toward a box on the right with original title, cover and date below quick links.

On my pages that would not be visible, since I have a lot of quick links even on the main work pages and sub-pages (and even more on the "get this book" page).

#93 - Yes!

>93 timspalding: I think cover would only be interesting for a limited set of books (old, but not ancient). Not sure it would be worth pushing down the other stuff.

>97 jbd1: I don't know enough about how editions will work to know whether this makes sense. I had thought editions would be based on groups of books, not based on the work. But when you get into old enough works, no one will have catalogued a first edition.

How about a box on the left, replacing the cover, but *only* on the main/front work page?

>101 rsterling: I think the cover is an important visual. Maybe below it? But some of those links are important too.

So I guess my preference would still be to show the date where it is now, since that doesn't displace anything else.

> 87

Really? You think that people seeing the title of a book on the work page don't realize it's the title of the book? But who can tell what that date is all about?

If it didn't have a cover, or only a tiny thumbnail of one, it could perhaps fit on the right above the quick links.

The "work details" page would be a great place to add a bigger image of the original cover/title page if we had one. There's a lot of white space there:
http://www.librarything.com/work/19485/workdetails
I could also see that middle part getting rearranged a bit to emphasize more "original publication" info, before getting into the stats about LT holdings.

>103 lilithcat: I really don't think the date is as incomprehensible as you make out.

>104 rsterling: - I definitely agree that the we can do much more with the "work details" page ...

83: Yes.

93: I like.

> 91

Three separate lines? That's kinda weird and duplicative, isn't it?

> 93

A better idea. But I'm not sure about the cover. It's already on the left, no?

77>

I don't mind that look. It is clear that the dates are not part of the title, and explains exactly what dates they are.

About Original Title: I think it's only worth showing if it's different from the title showing on the page (and in a way more meaningful than capitalization, too). So I'm not sure it would be worth having a dedicated box for that. I think I'd rather just show it as a separate line at the top (like Series) in the cases where it was relevant, and not alter the page otherwise.

And then I'd keep the simple OPD where it is now, also not taking up any more space.

>77 timspalding:- I could live with that presentation of information or a sidebar containing that info. All I prefer is that the OPD is displayed in an easy to find manner.

I don't like this innovation at all. It makes a nonsense, for example of my copy of The Tudors by Christopher Morris:

http://www.librarything.com/work/533791/details/78358180

This book was published in 1955 and my copy is a reprint of 1960. I don't want my copy to be combined under a generic title which comes up as The Tudors (1967) - my copy isn't.

By all means have this information in its own field, but NOT as part of the title!

>113 boldface: That shouldn't be happening; it seems that the OPD is just entered incorrectly.

This book was published in 1955 and my copy is a reprint of 1960. I don't want my copy to be combined under a generic title which comes up as The Tudors (1967) - my copy isn't.

Someone entered the original publication date wrong. Change it. It's on the main work page.

Also, let me know if there's been enough discussion and it's time for polls ;)

Does Bowker collect any type of OPD data that LT could borrow?

No, there isn't much in Bowker data we can use.

Unless Amazon cuts us off. Then they're our lifeline.

>119 timspalding: Users, I tell you. Users can do amazing things.

>121 PhaedraB: I've never really understood that argument. How is a quick summary of user opinion meaningless?

122>

For me, the issue is often the binary nature of the question. It lacks subtlety. It lacks finesse. It lacks the emoticom it probably deserved. ;-) Thus.

>123 PhaedraB: Ah, thanks for that clarification. I've heard the same point made many times in all seriousness.

I was thinking that it would take at least nine polls to clarify this issue, and even then some options would be left out.... It would definitely be nice if they could be more than just yes/no.

Too many polls are a problem. In a thread with more than 2-3 polls, poll fatigue sets in, and I get annoyed with them and stop responding.

125 > What he said.

She. :)

Okay, so it's still incomprehensible to me. What if there are two issues at stake, and three options for each issue? You would just weigh in on the first issue (OPD or OPD + edition date or just edition date) and then be too tired of it to give an opinion about where to put the data as well?

Can I ask a quick question about phase two? If I wanted to pull the list from, say, 1977, where would I go on LT to do that? Under one of the main tabs? Somewhere else?

128: Because I look at it and think: "Ach, not another poll!!!!"

They can be useful for quick summaries on very simple issues. But not for everything, and only when used sparingly.

(Look at any thread with many polls, and you'll see that participation tapers off significantly as the thread goes on. Very few people bother to go back and continue voting on the additional issues.)

ETA It's also that questions are often vague, or don't take some significant issue into account. So that's partly due to the binary nature. BUT, it's also just about the number of questions. I'm the same with some online surveys. I'll agree to participate in something, but if I find it's just going on forever with confusing, too minute or complex, or just too many questions, I'll abandon it.

>129 VisibleGhost: - doesn't exist yet.

>130 rsterling: Would you be more likely to vote if you knew the developers were paying attention? What if LT sent out an official 10-question yes/no survey? Would you do it, do part of it, or not do it at all?

I think the issues here are very simple, and are exactly the sort that could be easily summarized by polls. What data do you want to see, and where do you want to see it?

Would you be more likely to vote if you knew the developers were paying attention?
Not necessarily. It depends on how well phrased and conceived the questions were, how many of them they were, and how strongly I felt about the issue. If the developers were sending me surveys every week or even every month, I might do the first one or two, but then I'd ignore or reroute to the spam folder.

>133 rsterling: I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree. I'd much rather Tim quickly be told what users want and then spend his time actually developing, rather than inefficiently and ineffectively trying to gauge sentiment based on a lengthy discussion.

Even when the developers aren't involved, I'd rather users figure out quickly what the core areas of agreement or disagreement are and then focus on resolving the sticking points.

132 - "What data do you want to see, and where do you want to see it?"
These are open ended questions, not yes/no questions. Setting up polls limits the answers, and ignores possibilities by framing the issue in a certain way from the beginning. Trying to fix that by adding sub-polls (if you said yes here, then what about yes or no on this) just gets confusing. Multiple choice is not necessarily better, because again it's limited to how the question-writer conceives of the question and the options. Open ended questions and discussion are often better for getting at people's views on complex issues. For something very simple, where there are only two options, polls work well. Or, when the discussion has gone far enough that the various possibilities have been whittled down to two, then a poll makes sense. But not all the time, and not for everything.

I'd much rather Tim quickly be told what users want
The problem is, polls may or may not do that. It depends on how many people vote, how clear the questions are, what they include and what they leave out. People who do survey research learn early on that survey design and question wording are crucial for getting meaningful results, and are very difficult to do well. And even then it's not necessarily valid to generalize from a voluntary survey to "what users want."

>135 rsterling: But I don't think it's really as open-ended as that, in the context of Original Publication Date. There are basically only three choices, or none of the above: OPD, OPD and edition date, or just edition date. I'm pretty sure Tim is going to end up displaying one of these prominently on the work page, and it's just a matter of which and where.

Side discussions like whether the Work Details page should be improved are nice, but I don't think that's ultimately going to change the core issue. Even if work details are improved and OPD is shown prominently there, the question of whether it should be shown prominently on the main work page will remain.

I have nothing against open discussions in the early stages of an idea, but when it comes to the point when action is about to be taken, I don't think they're an effective way of getting users' preferences across.

Yeah, my feeling is that polls can be useful, but not always. They can't surface new ideas and options very well. They don't make people feel included, because they tend to shut down conversation by presenting things in a binary form, and because people on the losing side can start to feel that their opinion doesn't matter anyway. Lastly, to work, they need to be very high on a post—like first question—and not be more than a few of them. Otherwise people start tuning out and you get the opinion of the people who want to take lots of polls.

In this case, although the idea of making the date smaller wasn't actually a new one(1), it was new to the conversation. Ditto other suggestions. Polls would have shut that down, I think.

In general, I think we've reached the point where most users are either happier with what we have or aren't that pissed by it. I think the actual answer is an original-edition box, below the Quick Links. But that's not coming today, so this will be up a while.

---

1. I thought of it as fallback position before the feature was even introduced. Mwahahaha.

>136 rsterling: The thing is, for all the problems with polls, I think non-poll feedback is even less meaningful. At least poll results are clear; looking at a discussion and figuring out what people as a whole are thinking is a lot more difficult, if not completely impossible. And discussion suffers even more than polls from lack of participation.

I think non-poll feedback is even less meaningful

What do you mean, exactly? Reading messages gives me a sense of the intensity of feeling you don't get from polls, and about what about a feature is loved or hated. I mean, if polls solved issues, we could turn Pro and Con into a series of polls. And that's not even a case where anything comes of a discussion.

I do very much like polls after a conversation has reached a certain stage—especially on a poll restart, because of the "buried vote" problem. They can provide a sort of reality check, on what people think who aren't yelling think.

>138 timspalding: I still don't want the edition data there. And I suspect that I'm not the only one.

The idea that polls would have excluded the suggestion that the text be small seems pretty silly to me. When have people ever stopped suggesting ideas for improvement, even after a feature has been released?

>140 timspalding: Yeah, but how many times have you scrapped a feature entirely because one or two people were yelling, and you missed the suggestions for compromise? I'm thinking of the original reading checkmarks, with the connection to the date fields. The obvious solution was to make the connection optional, not to eliminate the feature entirely, but the intensity of a few people overwhelmed the whole conversation and any hope for sanity.

Anyway, I'm still going to add a poll, even if it is too late :P

Look, at this point, a poll is telling us that more people think that "polls are meaningless after a while" than don't think that. Whatever their reasons for responding that way, if you think that polls do convey some information, then that result should suggest that polls are not always useful, not least because they sometimes alienate or annoy potential respondents.

Vote: OPD alone is better than OPD plus edition date
In what context?

then that result should suggest that polls are not always useful

All Cretans are liars. I'm telling you this as a Cretan, you understand?

>142 _Zoe_:

Better for what? Brush your teeth with? Better to be saved? Better to be shown? Are you asking if LT should allow works to have just one date attached instead of allowing you to have your edition date somewhere as well? Or are you asking what is better to be shown on the work page? If so - are you talking about showing both dates in the same page (with commas?), both dates in a separate submodule, both dates in the same space with the edition date shown if no OPD can be found? Or something else?

1. Yes, assuming they're dates I care about and that they're typographically distinguished from the actual title.

2. I'm primarily interested in OPD, which I've long wished were more prominently displayed on work pages. This thread has however warmed me to to the idea of showing both original and edition for books I own (and presumably also on other people's copies if I enter their book pages).

3. I'd be equally happy with them on the author line or on a separate like as on the title line.

4. That might be nice too. I never use the quicklinks anyway ...

Also, on the subject of ponies, I'd like the stats page to graph my collection by original publication dates. That'd be far more interesting to me than the current graph of edition dates.

>147 AnnieMod: See the clarification. Or be deliberately obtuse; your choice.

No, "better to brush your teeth with" was not what I had in mind.

>145 _Zoe_:

What exactly do you mean with "OPD+ Edition Date)? Which if the following options do you mean for a book with OPD 1955 and your copy from 1989
- 1955, 1989
- 1955 (if specified in CK); 1989 otherwise
- 1955 if specified; empty if not.
- 3944
- Something else?

146 :)

145 - so assuming that there's going to be a date in parentheses after the title (which the discussion above suggests that there won't be), do we want OPD alone or OPD plus edition?
I'd prefer no date(s) in parentheses, and a line specifying the OPD with a label so you know what it is. If there is to be a date in parentheses, I'd prefer a label specifying what that date means.
But overall I'd prefer no date in parentheses.
So I think, for the poll, that's "none of the above."
If we're going to keep some kind of date, then I'm pretty agnostic about whether it has both or just one, because I don't think we should have either on that part of the page.

? 149

She's not being obtuse. "Better" in what sense? Better graphically? Better for conveying information? Better than nothing? Worse than nothing? What?

>150 AnnieMod: Note that these are not poll-specific problems. Anyone can decide at any time that they just don't want to communicate effectively and will deliberately misunderstand what the other party is saying.

I found it much easier to answer Tim's original questions, and much easier to understand and interpret other people's responses to them, than I have found answering and interpreting the responses to these polls.

>152 lilithcat: You think "better to brush your teeth with" was a serious interpretation and not a deliberate misunderstanding? Give me a break.

Anyway, I'm done for now; carry on.

>154 rsterling: Yes, but you allowed Tim four questions, while saying that that was unacceptable for polls. Also, note that the situation we ended up with doesn't actually match people's responses, clear though they may have been: the majority of people said OPD was preferred.

>153 _Zoe_:

The point is that the poll is not clear at all - you try to ask "Is blue better than green"? For painting a sky - yes. For paining a tree - not so much.

Same with your question - better for what? Visually showing information? Nicer looking? Something else? And there is the small issue of what "OPD + edition date" means exactly -- see the options above. Because for example a "1955, 1989" is something I would like but 1955 replaced by 1989 if noone had specified 1955 in CK is not. So if you mean the first, I should vote no. If you mean the second, I should vote yes.

>155 _Zoe_:

It was a deliberate attempt to show you that the question is unclear... So read after the brushing of the teeth - there are enough actual real interpretations after that.

Ack, I was trying to walk away but people keep saying things! Maybe I should just resign myself to not getting any work done today.

I think people responding to a poll have to use some amount of common sense. Maybe "I prefer..." would have been a better wording than "is better", but the basic sense is "should be implemented". If Tim is going to show one of those things, which should he show? The one that you want to see on the site is the one that you consider "better".

OPD+edition is the status quo; you can see how it looks on the page right now. It's not a replacement of one by the other, but both at the same time. So you should vote no.

Edited to fix typo!

Tim wrote:
All Cretans are liars. I'm telling you this as a Cretan, you understand?

That's not really fair. Cretans, it is assumed, always lie, polls, allegedly, only sometimes mislead.

Conversations are like that.
Tim had 4 mostly open ended but clearly phrased questions. To try to use polls to get at all the options that elicited would require at least 9 polls, you said, and I think probably more, if questions were to be phrased in ways that were unambiguous (which would require a lot of "if you responded no here, then what do you think of this).

4 mostly open ended and clear questions is much less confusing and cumbersome than 9+ yes/no questions.

ETA No one is objecting to polls per se, just to the overuse of them and to the use of them in cases where they're not suited.

That's not really fair. Cretans, it is assumed, always lie, polls, allegedly, only sometimes mislead.

Sorry. I wasn't criticizing polls, but pointing out the weird logical situation you get in when you say that polls are useful, and then a poll says that polls aren't useful.

4 mostly open ended and clear questions is much less confusing and cumbersome than 9+ yes/no questions.

But what do you make of the fact that the final outcome doesn't actually reflect the answers to those questions? That seems like a serious problem to me.

This is going to give me headaches, I fear.

I understand OPD. I would value doing more with OPD, though not necessarily displaying it the way it is now.

However, I've generally used the publication date field for the year my copy was printed (as far as I could determine). And "printing" and "edition" aren't the same thing.

But it's small and grey now. I'll probably ignore it.

Edit: Wow. Flashing screen is disturbing.

Edit: I'm in favour of fewer punctuation marks in the dates.

Sorry. I wasn't criticizing polls, but pointing out the weird logical situation you get in when you say that polls are useful, and then a poll says that polls aren't useful.
Yes, and in the original statement I was pointing out that, logically, someone who thinks polls tell you something needs to pay attention to the results of a poll where, overwhelmingly, respondents think "polls get meaningless after a while."

To be fair, the poll doesn't ask whether polls are useful at all, just whether they get meaningless after a while, whatever respondents took that to mean. At any rate, if we think that this particular poll does convey any meaning at all, it seems to suggest that many people have some problem with polls, and that those who do not are in the minority. For anyone who thinks polls matter, that result ought to matter.

But what do you make of the fact that the final outcome doesn't actually reflect the answers to those questions? That seems like a serious problem to me.

Can you give a specific example?

If what you're saying is that the final outcome isn't one of the things originally asked about, then I think that's perfectly fine, and that the open-ended questions allowed new options to come to the table.
If you're saying that decisions should be made by counting up responses and choosing the one with the biggest number (and that we should do that with the qualitative responses above, and that the final outcome here wasn't the one with the highest number), then I don't think that's the right way to go about making decisions, especially since conversations evolve, and options are not discussed in exclusion from one another.

Yes, and in the original statement I was pointing out that, logically, someone who thinks polls tell you something needs to pay attention to the results of a poll where, overwhelmingly, respondents think "polls get meaningless after a while."

Yup. Hence my great (and ineffective) efforts to convince those respondents that they're wrong. But I know I labour in vain.

>167 rsterling: I'm saying that the responses very strongly favoured OPD over edition information; only a few people said that they wanted to see the edition date at all, while just as many people said strongly that they actively did NOT want to see the edition date. Responses after the edition date was added were more mixed, but also very few in number--leading to my suggestion that it was time for polls to clarify the issue, and things just deteriorated from there ;)

So, you're saying we're wrong when we tell you why we don't find polls always useful? When we say we get tired of answering them, we aren't actually tired of answering them? (And our failure to answer them has no effect on their meaningfulness?)

>170 rsterling: Heh, approximately. Maybe more like positive encouragement? "I know you have the stamina to answer just two more polls!"

> 164

what do you make of the fact that the final outcome doesn't actually reflect the answers to those questions?

Several things.

1. The answer wanted by the majority cannot be, or is not easily, implemented.
2. The responses are so nearly evenly split that Tim goes with what he thinks best.
3. The final outcome is a compromise among varying responses.

Indeed, I don't know why you assume that the outcome should "reflect the answers to those questions". The answers should be taken into consideration. They may call Tim's attention to something that he had not considered. But he's not required to do what "we" (that is, the majority of people who bother expressing an opinion) want.

polls always useful

Seriously, can we stop arguing about polls and argue about dates?

Wow. Flashing screen is disturbing

Huh?

But I know I labour in vain.

You're in America, sister. Spell like an American.

So this topic is about polls, right?

> 173

Seriously, can we stop arguing about polls and argue about dates?

I don't think pols should date. They always seem to get themselves in trouble.

Oh, where is that "like" button when you need it?

1. The answer wanted by the majority cannot be, or is not easily, implemented.
2. The responses are so nearly evenly split that Tim goes with what he thinks best.
3. The final outcome is a compromise among varying responses.

I don't think 1 and 2 are even true, though. The majority said clearly that they preferred OPD, some very strongly; only a couple preferred edition, and one wanted both. It also wasn't difficult to show OPD alone--in fact, we had that at one point.

Given these considerations, it's not at all clear that the result was a deliberate compromise rather than a misunderstanding of what people were saying. It is clear that Tim himself favoured edition data from the beginning, and in the absence of the clear summary that polls provide, it's a lot easier to push a favoured interpretation.

Of course Tim doesn't have to accept the wishes of the majority. But he's usually pretty upfront about saying when he's going his own way.

Seriously, can we stop arguing about polls and argue about dates?

I think mostly this needs to go into a separate discussion about work pages (conveniently, I started such a discussion just this morning....)

Basically, edition information is not important enough to show at the top of the work pages.

Our titles are important because they're the principal way of knowing what work we're even talking about. When it gets beyond basic identification, the work page is for work data.

>Basically, edition information is not important enough to show at the top of the work pages.

Says who? If I own the book or I am looking at someone's book (as opposed to looking at the main work page), I probably want to know about this book; not just about the work.

>178 AnnieMod: So where does it stop? Should all their data go permanently at the top of the work page, above any of the broader work information?

> 177

Basically, edition information is not important enough to show at the top of the work pages.

It's a heckuva lot more important to me than the OPD.

(Probably going back a hundred posts or so):

I can live with the current state (edition date; original date in small grey letters)

It's actually useful. The big question is, why does it have to be on the same line as the title?

>180 lilithcat: But what's your argument for why it should be on the work page? Some data was added that you aren't interested in, so you should get some data that you do care about in return?

I've laid out what I think is a fair criterion: Show work data on the work page, except in the case where the data plays a major part in the basic identification of the work.

Obviously everyone will have different standards for what's important, but we can at least make some attempt come up with a broadly applicable guideline.

>179 _Zoe_:
The name and the author come from the book when it is your own book. It makes sense that anything on the same lines should come from there as well.

Compare:
http://www.librarything.com/work/304559/book/51505435
and
http://www.librarything.com/work/304559

The book is mine so for me both look the same. For someone else, if they look at my book, it will make more sense for information on the same line to be coming from the same source.

The smaller gray dates are a big improvement. I would prefer not to have the added edition date on books in my catalog but I can live with it. Can anyone summarize any other open questions? (And nothing about the usefulness of polls please).

>183 AnnieMod: Possibly where we're disagreeing is about whether OPD applies to your own book. I think it does. Publication date of a particular edition seems like a different piece of information entirely, not the personal equivalent of OPD. I would be perfectly happy to show OPD from my own OPD field, if such a thing existed (Tim?). But the data just isn't available anywhere except CK.

Would it be different if OPD were shown on a separate line, under Series? In that case it would be with other CK-drawn data.

>184 eromsted: The other major question is where it should be displayed: next to the title where it is now, on a separate line, or in a sidebar?

>183 AnnieMod:

Why do you put the question as "either/or" when it is "and"? I am not saying "remove OPD". I like the way it is now - having both dates there when I look at a book and just OPD when I look at a work I do not own. Because for my book there are two important dates: the OPD and the printing date of my book.

>186 _Zoe_:
Thanks. I prefer the date where it is. As I've said elsewhere, the original publication date is for me the third most important bit of information about a book after title and author. I want it displayed prominently. The difference in font size and color is sufficient for me to distinguish the date from the title. A separate line or sidebar box would push the rest of the information further down the page. I prefer not to have this happen unless absolutely necessary.

>187 AnnieMod: Yeah, I think the two things have somehow become tangled. We should look at them both separately:

1. Is OPD important enough to show at the top?
2. Is edition publication date important enough to show at the top?

You say yes to both; I say yes to the first only; lilithcat says yes to the second only.

Because for my book there are two important dates: the OPD and the printing date of my book.

My point is that for the work page, the things that are important for the book shouldn't be the focus, unless they're part of the basic recognition of the work (if the title changed, I wouldn't even know what work I was looking at).

Where OPD still applies to your copy (and so I argued that the source didn't matter, whether in your catalogue or the work page), the reverse isn't true: individual edition dates don't apply to the work, and so shouldn't be strongly emphasized on the work page.

>190 _Zoe_:

I understand what you are saying :)

But they will be emphasized only in 2 cases:
- You own the book
- You look at someone's copy of the book and NOT at the work itself.

In every other case, you see only work-level data.

So having the publication date from the book in the two cases above makes sense as it is a logical continuance of the "get the name and author from the book" theme.

> 190

You say yes to both; I say yes to the first only; lilithcat says yes to the second only.

Wrong. I say "no" to having any date up there with the title. I simply disagree with you as to the relative importance of the edition date and the original publication date.

So having the publication date from the book in the two cases above makes sense as it is a logical continuance of the "get the name and author from the book" theme.

I can definitely see what you're saying; I just worry that we have to choose some limit to this, or we'll lose the whole concept of the work.

But maybe I'll just give up and delete all my own dates, so I don't have to worry anymore :)

>192 lilithcat: Oops, thanks for clarifying.

Also, I agree with qebo that the commas should go. Too much clutter.

I disagree about the commas; I think they're needed.

>193 _Zoe_:

I'd say that if I go for /work/XXXX, I should see the same regardless if I have the book or not (still seeing the book section below but the title, author and dates should be work level). Then there are two different views (/work/X/book/Y and /work/X) where these top values do not depend on possession. But this is a different conversation.

It just does not sound logical half the data to be from the book, half from the work and both to be on the same line. :) That's all.

>195 jbd1: Needed for what?

>196 AnnieMod: Yup, that makes sense. I just don't think it's practical, because people will be confused if they know a book by one title and try to go to its work page but see a different title.

Also, can we have Date Read at the top of the work page?

>197 _Zoe_: Needed because otherwise it would look very strange. Either a common or a colon needs to be there to set the text off from the date.

173:

"Flashing screen": nothing to do with the dates, just the page acting weird when I hit "post message". May even be normal, but more extreme than I remember.

Edit: And now no flashing at all.

Figures Tim would wait until I got a full-time job, and can't live on LT, before mucking up the work pages.

OPD - do not want, especially not at the top.

#16: It makes no sense, and will, especially in the case of translated literature, where thee is a legitimate original for the translation, be truly odd.

Why? The Iliad was published in 800 BCE, Pope's translation in 1720. How does that make The Iliad (Pope's translation) by Homer (1994) make sense?

I love this new feature. Just sayin'.

195,198: Ick. (But whatever. Not an issue I much care about.)

You're in America, sister. Spell like an American. (#173)

Maybe you're talking to a transplant. But I can't be sure: all I did is let the second foster cat out of the bathroom, and all of a sudden there are four dozen new posts to this thread.

I don't think pols should date. They always seem to get themselves in trouble. (#175)

Polls have nothing on topics, particularly the heated ones. See also, my response to #173.

I like this. It is cluttery...but it's cluttery with useful information. The greyness also helps, because it's easier to ignore when I don't want to consider it.

Hmmm, now I need to make sure my edition dates are correct...and work on OPD, when I can.

Going back to the original set of questions:
1. Yes, if they don't look like part of the title
2. OPD is _much_ more important. It's interesting seeing when my edition is from, but only as an offset from OPD - not to mention that my edition's date is already in the Book Information box (99+% of the time).
3. Not with the author - the smaller grey by the title is good, or a line with Series (on the same line! Chop off series if they get too long - don't take up another whole line).
4. A sidebar might be interesting, with more info. Or even - a sidebar, or info box, ONLY on the Work Details page. That's where more info about the work as a whole should be, anyway. Quick info on the main page, details on the details page(s).

51 and 67 make me happy.

And - does anyone (everyone?) else hear Zoinks in Scooby Doo's voice?

I hate it. And I don't understand WHY all of this is happening.

1. Do you like seeing dates after the title at all?
NO. NO, no, and no. Title and author are the main important things; Dates are not on the same level and shouldn't pretend to be.

2. If we DO have dates, do you want them to be the OPD in all cases, or should your publication date trump it?
My info, duh. If you show my-edition title, why would you show not-my-edition date?

3. If you don't like it, would you accept a smaller top-level line, such as series have? (eg., "Original publication date: 1859") How about saying:

A Tale of Two Cities
by Charles Dickens (1859)

putting the date by the author, as has been said before, makes even less sense then this feature in general. What is the date doing there? Is it the date the author was born, or died, or wrote the book, or what?

4. Can you suggest any other solution that gets this information "up there"?

WHY? Why are you so insistant that SO much information gets "up there"? First series, then Other Authors, now dates.... when will it stop? Are you determined to show the entire CK up at the top?! I *thought* there was a reason the CK fields were all together down the page. I don't get why the sudden push to have so much information cluttered at the top.

So, to summarize where I'm at.

1. I think we've reached a point of semi-compromise. With smaller gray text and, for now, very few books with data, fewer people are screaming their heads off against this. Not a few say they like it too. I'm not minded to change it immediately, because I don't see a clear way to do so that doesn't create as many opponents and supporters. Also, we have fronted the data and given people an incentive to work on original publication dates. We'll see how that pans out.

2. I want to revisit this, especially the notion of making a "First edition" box on the right, beneath quick links. But this isn't my most pressing feature right now, so it will have to wait.

Maybe. I didn't think I needed to weigh in again, since I had already said I don't want the dates, so I don't think the lack of screaming is necessarily indicative of satisfaction. I've seen several people above say they really don't like dates up there at all, and that since you made the text gray.

I'm still not really a fan of having dates there at all, on that title line. I dislike it only slightly less since it's gray, but I'm still not really a fan. I just think it's too cluttered. If there are to be dates there, I don't really want my edition, but then others do want editions. To me the best compromise would be to take it off that line entirely (go back to the way it was), and put OPD info somewhere else, either a box, or another line.

I agree with rsterling, on all points.

Tim wrote:
I want to revisit this, especially the notion of making a "First edition" box on the right, beneath quick links.

Could that location be user-configurable? Because I expect to look at such a box far more often than quick links.

1. No. This is only a good and applicable if one reads a lot of Non-Fiction or Classics.
2. My edition.
3. No

>207 timspalding:. I am not screaming, but I do not appreciate your compromise. I hate, disdain, what you are doing here. Jeez. Get rid of it, smaller gray print does not make it tolerable. Sidebars are acceptable, but as you have it now, it is both objectionable and contemptible. F**k it. I suppose I could articulate my total distaste at your choice better, but why bother as you aren't listening anyway. I do, however, agree with post 208.

Just for the record - I'm not screaming every 2 minutes because that's boring and unproductive but rest assured that I am screaming quietly and will continue to do so as long as I see dates at the top of the page where I expect to see author and title and nothing else. Non-negotiable as far as I'm concerned and this will never change so please don't take silence as acceptance.

If a box or some alternative doesn't emerge within a reasonable amount of time, then there will be kicking as well. Especially once people start adding more OPD dates and the infection spreads.

v

Tim, you have such wonderfully passionate customers/members. That must be great, even if some of us are unable to converse politely.

Myself, I treasure the OPD and think the solution with smaller grey text in brackets is acceptable, but as long as it's somewhere "up there" I'm happy.

I LOVE the OPD. It's something I track for every book.

ETA:

What do I do when a book has no OPD at the top but there is one in CK? I think it's because the date is showing in a YYYY-MM format. I added one with just YYYY. Is that what should be done or is there some other reason it wouldn't be functioning for this particular work?

http://www.librarything.com/work/18931

I'm also happy to see OPD there.

I still don't think edition belongs there, and I still think you need to come up with some coherent policy about what the work pages are for. If we're drawing from book data, I don't see why I can't have Date Read up there; it's more relevant for my book than the date of whatever copy I happened to pick up.

Also, in cases where the edition date and the OPD are the same, I think you should just show the single number.

>215 Morphidae: I think Tim is going to deal with that eventually, so you don't have to change anything, but it also seems harmless to add a year-only date so that it shows now.

I am constantly amazed at the inability of many vocal LT users to look at the User Interface as being for all users, not just themselves.

As message 211 says, this new feature is mostly useful for readers of non-fiction and the classics. However, there are a lot of us on LT. I fail to see what is so hideous about this feature that the rest of you can't put up with it. Someone called this a "deal breaker" as if it would mean the end of their ability to catalog their library here.

Lighten up!

I don't know; I'm interested in the OPD just as much for recent fiction.

I just realized something I don't like - for annotated books that are considered separate "works" from plain versions or translations, the OPD is that of the annotations. See eg. the Landmark Arrian, which has an OPD of 2010, when the date I'd be more interested in is circa 150.

But I guess there's little to be done about this as long as we treat annotated editions the way we do?

What I don't understand (after reading _almost_ every post - gave up on some of the poll controversies - in this thread) is why can't the OPD be linked with the work details and the edition date with the book details?

The main reason I dislike (toning down the 'hate' I posted on another thread - but yunno, we hate because we love) the position of the year next to the title is because it looks ugly and out of place to me. I would like to see the OPD AND the date of the edition I have to:
*compare
*for all the many reasons mentioned in this thread (especially for newer more up-to-date or revised editions)
*and for completeness.

It just looks unclean to me sitting in the title (as others posted) cos it ain't IN the title - is all.

Adding to that...when I look in the box for 'your book information" both dates clearly show there - OPD with work and edition date with my book.
Why the need to duplicate all this above?

(edited to correct grammar)

I LOVE the date(s) where they are but would be equally happy with a sidebar either just before or just after the Quicklinks.

I would prefer that the dates not be there,but I can live with this.

omg, Tim! What have you done???!!! My world is spinning out of control. My brain is soooo overloaded I cannot cope. This is an outrage and a crime against humanity. For all that is holy please remove those tiny, gray letters that are virtually indistinguishable from the title and author and convey no information at all. Please.

/s>

I'm not liking the latest top dates arrangement much. It's too cluttered for my taste, and I would certainly remove the commas and reduce the semicolon to a comma! But its general effect on my use of the site will be approximately zero.

In the Swedish translation I have removed the commas. Translator's privilege. ;)

> 217

As message 211 says, this new feature is mostly useful for readers of non-fiction and the classics. However, there are a lot of us on LT.

Yes, and I am one of them. And I truly dislike this. It is not useful for me.

I fail to see what is so hideous about this feature that the rest of you can't put up with it.

It is extraneous information tacked onto the title. It is irrelevant to me. And it's ugly.

Someone called this a "deal breaker"

I won't leave LT, because there's nothing out there that even comes close. I know, because I spent a good deal of yesterday looking for an alternative. But the fact that I did that should tell you something.

I confess I'm baffled why Tim thinks the commas are necessary. Not that I particularly mind them, but removing them should have neglible impact on readability or comprehensibility.

208> Maybe. I didn't think I needed to weigh in again, since I had already said I don't want the dates, so I don't think the lack of screaming is necessarily indicative of satisfaction.

Maybe we should have a poll? ;)

229> I don't recall Tim weighing in, but Jeremy said he thought they were necessary to separate the words from the numbers. I don't see it though. The words and numbers look completely separate to me without the need for an extraneous comma.

Yeah, I still hate it too. see 227.

> 230

>231 jjwilson61:, 232 et al: log in to the Swedish site se.librarything.com and have a look at how nice it looks without the commas. Although I didn't remove them in the translation for aesthetical reasons, but because they really are unidiomatic in Swedish.

> 234

I think they are unidiomatic in English too.

So, maybe this was already clear to others, but I just figured out that no dates show up at all, not even for my edition, unless the OPD is filled out in CK. Weird.

Also, there are some works of which I have several copies. For those, it doesn't make sense to me to have one of those arbitrarily winning as the edition date on the work page. I would expect the edition date to reflect the edition I'm looking at (i.e. the book), IF I'm looking at a particular edition/book. Again, that suggests to me that edition date shouldn't be showing at all on work/xxxx pages, but only on work/xxxx/book/yyy ages. But again, I'd rather there were no dates on the title line at all.

217: "I am constantly amazed at the inability of many vocal LT users to look at the User Interface as being for all users, not just themselves.

As message 211 says, this new feature is mostly useful for readers of non-fiction and the classics. However, there are a lot of us on LT. I fail to see what is so hideous about this feature that the rest of you can't put up with it."

So, are non-fiction and "classic" readers the majority here? Do us fiction-readers not get a say because we are supposedly the minority or *not* the users this feature is aimed at? Should we all just shut up about a feature that affects *everyone* just because *some* people like it?

My main bitch about this feature is simply that I don't like where things are headed here. It used to be that that top space was *just* for title and author. They are, after all, the most important and obvious things about a work, whether it's fiction or non-fiction or what.

Now we have other-authors, series info, AND publication dates? Where is this going to stop, and *why* does all that less-important stuff *need* to be shoved up at the top, when it's been perfectly fine hanging out in CK?

When I finally got around to looking at a work page with this in mind I found it easy to read and informative. Furthermore I don't see how adding one more piece of information in parentheses (the one I looked at had one year enclosed) could be problematic. I frankly don't understand the opposition to it.

Robert

I'm sorry, I don't see that series isn't important, and I certainly don't see that series is some sort of anti-fiction thing—indeed, quite the opposite.

I've removed the commas—or will in a few minutes. I agree with less here.

Again, I'll look into moving stuff very soon.

I would expect the edition date to reflect the edition I'm looking at (i.e. the book), IF I'm looking at a particular edition/book. Again, that suggests to me that edition date shouldn't be showing at all on work/xxxx pages, but only on work/xxxx/book/yyy pages.

This makes sense to me.

As message 211 says, this new feature is mostly useful for readers of non-fiction and the classics.

I think this is just not true. If I'm reading a classic, I probably know approximately when it's from, but it doesn't really make much difference to me whether it was published in 1870 or 1880. I think it's far more significant to see whether some recent fiction book is from 2010 or 2000. It says a lot if a book is still being talked about after 10 years, as opposed to just being the latest thing that people will forget about immediately. And this is something that I might not know off the top of my head. Classics are generally pretty recognizable already.

Also note that Series, which also shows at the top, is far more significant for modern fiction.

Now we have other-authors, series info, AND publication dates? Where is this going to stop, and *why* does all that less-important stuff *need* to be shoved up at the top, when it's been perfectly fine hanging out in CK?

In my view, it's about efficiency of displaying information. OPD is worth showing because it's a major piece of information about the work, and also because it takes hardly any space to show. I think it's gone too far with the multiple dates and text.

From 217: As message 211 says, this new feature is mostly useful for readers of non-fiction and the classics.

Yeah, like _Zoe_, I don't think that's even true. I'm a reader of classics and non-fiction, and I don't like the dates in their current place. I don't, because I think the top section is now unnecessarily cluttered, and dates of whatever kind don't need top-billing in the same way as title and authors. I am interested in original publication date (not so much in edition date), but I'd like to see it somewhere else.

Just to chime in here - I am rarely interested in the publication dates of the classics I read. Novels from the last decade or so - oh yes, a lot. Helps order them properly... :)

Is there, or can there please be, an option to only show *one* date when there aren't multiple editions? Example, with books that only *have* one edition, haven't been republished or whatever, it seems sort of redundant to see "(original 2003; edition 2003)".

>243 Heather19:

This means that you have a first edition?:) So it is not as redundant as it seems. Besides... how can LT determine which book has only one edition?

The simple way, I'd think, would be to show only one date if both dates are the same. Then those who have classic first editions and those who have bought the only (so far) edition of a new book see one date; those who have reprints/reissues/etc see two.

245: That makes sense. I agree that maybe LT doesn't know if it's an "only one edition" book, but just showing one date when they are the same should be easy enough, right?

Of course it will get more complicated when LT can handle more-than-year dates (mm-dd-yyyy, mm-yyyy) - it will have to truncate and then compare. But still.

>245 jjmcgaffey:, 246

And how do we differentiate between:
- both dates are entered and are the same
- no OPD in CK
- no date on your own copy.

All of those technically end up with only one date for the book.

Is there a reason we need to differentiate between those three? Honest question, since I'm not "into" this data like some others are...

Is there such a big need to see duplicate dates, in order to know for sure that both of those fields *are* filled in?

Maybe an "original and edition 2003", then, if it's so important to show that both are filled in? I just don't like the redundantness of having the date twice, that's all. I don't care how it's worded.

And how do we differentiate between:
- both dates are entered and are the same
- no OPD in CK
- no date on your own copy.
All of those technically end up with only one date for the book.

If there is no OPD in CK, then none of the dates will show at the top of the page.

I take that back. I must have been seeing a bug earlier, when I didn't see any dates.

Is anybody seeing a date for 11/22/63 up there? The CK date shows in the CK section. I was curious how a date title would look with dates.

>249 Heather19:

Uhm.. If you put a date there and it is not clear what it is, what is the point of it being there? It is a useless number if it can be OPD or my date or for all I know the year when this book will be added to the school program.

I do not mind how it is said exactly but making it undecipherable is just not a good idea IMO.

>250 rsterling:
I think there was a problem - yeah. Even if it was still a problem, I would think it a bug. So it was still a valid question....

>251 VisibleGhost:

Someone reported that one as a bug already I think - anything besides a year and it is not shown.

251 - Here's an example for that work, with an edition date (from someone's book page):
http://www.librarything.com/work/11022382/book/80270326

253 & 254- kinda funky lookin' but not superbad.

248> Somewhere way up this thread, someone suggested that when the dates are the same it show as (original/edition yyyy). It shouldn't be a naked date, I agree. But

- both dates are entered and are the same (original/edition yyyy)
- no OPD in CK (edition yyyy) (as shown in the link in 254)
- no date on your own copy. (original yyyy)

conveys the information reasonably well, without the duplicate dates. I don't much like it with the 'and', but I'd put up with it if the slash won't work for some reason.

>256 jjmcgaffey:

No argument about that -- I was just pointing that simply putting a date there with no explanation makes no sense. :)

Bah. I still think it looks ridiculous without the commas, as I've said from the start. Unless it's going to say "this edition published in YYYY; work originally published in YYYY" (which I'm NOT suggesting) I think the commas are necessary for clarity. "original 1797; edition 2008" reads much more jarringly (and less clearly) to me than "original, 1797; edition, 2008."

That said, if it's moving soon anyway, we can stop arguing about this and move on to the rest of it.

Still, bah.

Tim,

Before I get started on adding OPDs, could you let me know if I should add YYYY if there is a YYYY-MM? In the example I gave above, the OPD wasn't showing next to the title and it is the only reason I can think of.

I suspect he'll code it so that it shows YYYY even where there are YYYY-MM-DD (or YYYY-MM) dates in the CK field, so I wouldn't spend a lot of time adding YYYYs at the moment.

>258 jbd1: In Swedish I'm experimenting right now with "Orig publ YYYY; this edition YYYY". Perhaps too long? I'm trying to make my mind up.

Rather, I wouldn't spend time adding extra YYYY entries for works where YYYY+ is available.

>261 anglemark: - Right, if there were additional phrasing to make it into some reasonably readable thing, then the lack of commas would be less annoying.

When we're talking about real estate at the very top of the page, I think we really have to consider every character and whether it's worth it.

My preference would still be to show just the OPD in parentheses (six characters), but if we're going to try to fit in edition data there as well, which still seems inappropriate for a work page, then even omitting unnecessary commas is important.

I would just show YYYY in cases where only the OPD is entered, and cases where the OPD and edition date are the same. Yes, this means that people might have to check to see whether their book had an edition date at all. No, I don't think this is so difficult that the distinction has to be made clear at the top of the page. The book information box is right there, for those who care.

For cases where OPD and edition are different, I'd show (original YYYY, edition YYYY), or maybe something else like (published YYYY, yours YYYY). And I'd still follow rsterling's idea of showing the edition data only on the book page work/xxxx/book/yyy, not on the main work/xxxx page.

There's no question there's a tension between "work" and what the page is actually used for. While called the "work" page, it has always done double duty, and should. In fact, it is the primary page for a book/work, and is used for every book or work-related link, eg.,

1. LT recommends (work page link)
2. This book is recommended because you have (work page link)
3. You share (work page link) with this user
4. Here are all your series books, including (work page link)

etc. As you can see, this "primary" page sometimes is about a work, sometimes about your work and sometimes about the book which belongs to the work.

To take another tack. What's the most important thing about The Case of Charles Dexter Ward? Maybe its the title, but probably the most important thing is that I have it. Yes, I don't have the work. "Works" can be had. But I have a work that belongs to the work. And this is surely pretty important.

So, we aren't going to achieve consistency on this. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin the small minds, or so the fellow says. The "work" page—the main page—is always going to include some book-level information, if you have it.

I agree. Whether you have the work is important but I can't tell that from a quick glance at the page. The page looks very much the same whether it's performing as a work page or a book page. I don't have any suggestions at the moment but it's something to think about.

217: It was I who said this is a deal-breaker and I mean it. You don't snear at people who complain about secondary book information appearing with the title of a book when it is added to to LT via Amazon? At least in that case it is editable. I view book title and author as primary information. Other information, however valuable, interesting etc etc is secondary and has no place in the primary spot. It looks a mess, it distracts and irritates. Like lilithcat, if there were somewhere else to go, I'd be there.

Count me as one of the old stupids of LT: I find things get increasingly complicated and unusable and I'm no longer interested in the continual learning process unless things are glaringly obvious. That's perfectly fine by me when the improvements are ignorable, even if over time I use LT in a less sophisticated way (for example I rarely combine books any more - I haven't the energy to learn the ins and outs of aliasing, other authors, the peculiar behaviour of zero copies and whatever else). However, when the fundamental user experience is compromised, like here, then it's time for toys out of the pram. I appreciate that the current solution is intended to be temporary but the concept of temporary tends to be very elastic, like '2 weeks'.

v

Maybe its the title, but probably the most important thing is that I have it.

No, I think you're wrong here. What use is it to show that you have it if you don't first know what it is?

So, we aren't going to achieve consistency on this. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin the small minds, or so the fellow says.

An even more foolish product of small minds is the assumption that since there's some necessary inconsistency, we should give up on reasoned principles entirely and just throw together any random stuff. Which is basically how the argument seems to be going.

Actually, the more I look at it, the more I like having OPD and edition publication info there after the title. The title large and black and the publication info smaller and grey works perfect for me.

But it's no biggie either way. Of all the changes to LT over the years, I'm surprised that this is so contentious. It's interesting. I suppose we all use LT in different ways and for different purposes. And we're all different, of course.

#267

I think you overstate your case massively.

How exactly is the fundamental user experience compromised? Obviously there are individual preferences to seeing extra information - but people (in general) are very good at filtering out bits they aren't interested in.

Everything that you could do before still works as it did before. Page flow is unchanged. It isn't making anything more complicated or unusable. You don't have to learn how to do something new. IMO it is a minor visual change. At some times it seems that with these visual changes that Tim can't win. If he changes something there is a huge outcry, if he changes nothing, there is still a huge outcry by those who want to see it.

I guess one person's minor is another's major. Stick those numbers down below where the series stuff is and it is perfectly ignorable. As it stands, I have no desire to visit a work page again.

v

> 269

I think it's contentious because it adds extraneous information to the title. At least, that's why I find it so annoying, particularly as it is information that can just as easily be found or entered elsewhere on the same page. Might as well move all a work's CK information to the title line. It's as annoying to me, as I've said, as ":a novel", or "(A Detective Whosis Mystery)" or "(An Albatross Classic)".

Besides, it's ugly and offends my aesthetic sensibilities. ;-)

Tim, if part of the reasoning being these dates is to show me whether I have the book, that's something that could be accomplished in much better and clearer ways (and that I don't think dates do well anyway). The book info box does that, but why not just a green check mark at the top of any work page where you own a copy. That already has a meaning on the site, and would take up very little room and be aesthetically cleaner.

I wonder if it's time to revisit the short form CK....

#272: See, I frequently appreciate those. (A Hercule Poirot mystery) means I can recognize what it is immediately. The Hollow by Agatha Christie could be from a series I read, or a series I don't. You Are Here by Genevieve R. Cogman in my Recommendation list tells me absolutely nothing; I recognize neither author nor title. In Nomine: You Are Here, however, is much more clear. At least on the Work page, putting the series up top clears that up.

Tim, if part of the reasoning being these dates is to show me whether I have the book

It's not.

Your reasoning applies to whether work pages should front your book title, when you have the work, or not. But I already made that change, and was roundly beaten back. So we're back to where we were. However, I understood that objection—it was a judgement call. The reaction of a handful of users over this, far small, change? Well, I'm a bit taken aback by it.

I'm quite happy with it in its present format. Interesting information is made visible, but kept distinct from the title.

Any chance of having something like this?

BOOK TITLE (edition date) (OPD)

Where the title and edition date would be in the same font and size and the OPD would somehow be made to be less visible (smaller or lighter or whatever).

I see the point, but I think that wouldn't make any of the people who hate this like it, and might even do the reverse.

1. Do you like seeing dates after the title at all?
- hell yes, love it.
2. If we DO have dates, do you want them to be the OPD in all cases, or should your publication date trump it?
- both, but OPD is more interesting to me.
3. If you don't like it, would you accept a smaller top-level line, such as series have?
- huh?
4. Can you suggest any other solution that gets this information "up there"? Consider, for example, the Wikipedia side-bar for major works, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Tale_of_Two_Cities . Would such a bar, coming ABOVE quick links, be helpful? Note that, to get what Wikipedia has, we'd need to capture much more information about the first edition. Would that be good, or bad?
- as far as your willing to go, IMO.
5. Will I read 278 other posts or your follow-up to this post
- probably not, just wanted to post a vote in the "thank you, I like this" category.

>276 timspalding:

Don't worry about it, Tim. They're going to be very busy now that they have to write to EVERY ART MUSEUM IN THE WORLD demanding the immediate removal of dates from the Title/Artist/Material descriptions.

Tim, can you divulge just a tad bit of your LT-agenda and tell us how much more stuff you plan to put at the top where the title/author are? Because honestly that's my big objection to this, and If I know ahead of time that you *want* to continue cluttering up that top layer, maybe I can talk myself into not hating it so much.

(sorry, that came out fairly passive-aggressive. I really was trying to be nice about it.)

>282 Heather19:

I don't plan to add any more in the area you describe.

My plan is to look at moving the date into the sidebar. I don't plan to move series, which I see as critical.

Next time I have a chance, I plan to add put work-level secondary authors (eg., http://www.librarything.com/work/137886) past 4 or 5 under a "see more" link. So that'll save some space.

The reaction of a handful of users over this, far small, change? Well, I'm a bit taken aback by it.
By "this far smaller change," do you mean the dates at the top of the page? I'm not surprised there was a reaction. They were introduced without any prior discussion or request, and without any real indication as to why they were being added. And, well, in the first post, you did ask for a reaction: "1. Do you like seeing dates after the title at all?"

I counted up those above who unambiguously said they do not want dates (ETA: on the title line), and those who unambiguously said they did, and if I counted correctly, I got 18 who don't want dates, and 18 who do. Then there are some answers that were ambiguous or undecided, and a couple of people who didn't like dates originally but changed their minds after the text was put in gray. The point being: that's more than a handful who don't like dates at the top, and more or less equal to the number who've said they do like dates.

I do think some work-level info and OPD would be useful somewhere, and I'm happy you're asking users what they think and trying to work out what would be best.

1. Do you like seeing dates after the title at all?
I like it, especially now that it is visually differentiated from the title.

2. If we DO have dates, do you want them to be the OPD in all cases, or should your publication date trump it?
Since this is the work page, and since where I have the book, the edition date is in the box, I would overwhelmingly prefer the OPD. Having my edition date at the top is duplicative.

3. If you don't like it, would you accept a smaller top-level line, such as series have? (eg., "Original publication date: 1859") How about saying:

A Tale of Two Cities
by Charles Dickens (1859)

I agree with others who think that this is confusing, and makes the date seem to apply to Mr. Dickens, not to the book.

4. Can you suggest any other solution that gets this information "up there"? Consider, for example, the Wikipedia side-bar for major works, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Tale_of_Two_Cities . Would such a bar, coming ABOVE quick links, be helpful? Note that, to get what Wikipedia has, we'd need to capture much more information about the first edition. Would that be good, or bad?
I think this would be acceptable, though the point is very valid that in many cases the cover would be the same as the cover on the left, and in many others a first edition cover could never be available.

This turned into a strange battle- aesthetics vs. data hounds.

P.S. I like the idea of having the date be a link to a page of titles published that year! Tim, I think your other ideas of things to do with OPD sound very interesting!

286. I like data. I just don't like this particular display of it.

#284

The problem with just using numbers is that if you dislike it you will speak up. If you are enthusiastic about it you will speak up.

If you merely like it then you might not. I am sure that there are many people who are reading are not speaking up with unambiguous support because they do not see it as an issue big enough to comment on. Until now I hadn't. So for some at least silence is assent.

For the record - count me as a supporter.

284>

A casual reading of your post might suggest Tim introduced OPD out of nowhere, when in fact it's been asked for repeatedly. I guess none of the requestors gave much thought to where the data should appear. CK was obviously not acceptable. So, where?

I didn't like the original iteration of the date in parentheses in the same font weight as the title; it confused me when I first saw it. It's ok now.

As with so many features/changes/adjustments, after a short while the display will be taken for granted and missed if removed.

As to a "handful" of objectors, you counted 18. In terms of the entire user base of the site, 18 is a handful. We noisy, read-everything, comment-on-everything, have-an-opinion-on-everything users tend to forget what a teeny minority we are.

Also, #239 changes your data to 19 "for". And if you counted me as an "against," I think in light of display changes I'd prefer to be shifted to "for." 20 v. 17. Uh, oh--the power balance shifts.

I will resist the temptation to create a poll. ;-)

I just came upon this thread after seeing dates after some of my books, and gave up on reading everything written here. Here are my thoughts about Tim's original questions.

1. Do you like seeing dates after the title at all?
I like having the information, but there's a cluttered look to it after the title (see 3).

2. If we DO have dates, do you want them to be the OPD in all cases, or should your publication date trump it?
I looked at three "classics" that I own. Two of them just show my edition's date on the work page. I find it extremely disconcerting to see "edition 2005" for a book that was originally published in the early 20th century, or "edition 2008) for a book that was originally published in the middle ages on the work page. For another, it shows both the OPD and the edition date, which is marginally better. Ideally, I would like the work page to only show the OPD and my book page to show both. Apologies if this has been discussed above -- I don't have the time or the patience to read through 290 posts.

3. If you don't like it, would you accept a smaller top-level line, such as series have? (eg., "Original publication date: 1859") How about saying:

A Tale of Two Cities
by Charles Dickens (1859)

I like this better, but see my comment in 2.

4. Can you suggest any other solution that gets this information "up there"? Consider, for example, the Wikipedia side-bar for major works, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Tale_of_Two_Cities . Would such a bar, coming ABOVE quick links, be helpful? Note that, to get what Wikipedia has, we'd need to capture much more information about the first edition. Would that be good, or bad?

I do like seeing the OPD, but not if it involves a tremendous amount of work/coding -- after all, it is in CK.

Just in case my previous post was ambiguous, yes, I like this setup for displaying the OPD and my edition.

Count me in too. I didn't comment before because I really didn't have much to say.

As you can see, this "primary" page sometimes is about a work, sometimes about your work and sometimes about the book which belongs to the work.

I've been thinking more about this and why your examples didn't strike me as odd. I think there's a difference between the work page talking about general instances of the work and the work page talking about specific instances of the work. It's not weird for the work page to say "You have a copy of this work"; that's still something about the work in general. Where it starts to seem strange to me is when you say "You have a copy of this work, and it's a paperback from 2007." That goes beyond something that's relevant for the work as a whole and gets into book-specific details that I don't think should be a top priority on the work page.

> 290

CK was obviously not acceptable.

Why not? It seems the obvious place for it.

295 >

I said "obviously" because the OPD field was already there, yet posters were still asking for that date to be featured more prominently somewhere. As I recall, people were asking for some use of the date that would encourage the CK field to be filled in more often. So the mere existence of the CK data was deemed insufficient.

>295 lilithcat:
What's wrong with just displaying the OPD in the CK section?

I think the CK section of the work page is good for data entry but crappy for data display. I basically never look there to see what info has been filled in except when I'm filling in data. To the extent I look at CK info, I look at it displayed elsewhere, not in the work page CK section.

You don't think OPD is interesting. But for those of us who do, it seems perfectly obvious to have it at the top of the page where you can see it immediately. I like BogAl's analogy of museum labels. I see author, title, and date as the critical basic information about any work.

In addition, though we don't have it yet, Tim has talked about automatically filling in OPDs for works without CK data. The CK OPD will then be more like canonical title, a way to correct bad data. But it won't make much sense to have the basic display location of the date in the CK section when CK isn't the primary source of the data.

291> The ones that show only your edition are lacking OPD in CK - one good thing about this display is that it will (hopefully, along the lines of other uses of CK data) encourage people to fill in the data in CK. If it's disconcerting without an OPD, go down and add it! (yeah, I'm working on mine. Slowly).

I'm going to wait to enter OPDs until they are pulled from CK when there is more than YYYY (like YYYY-MM.) It's too much work right now as I think there isn't an OPD then scroll down and there is one.

Any idea when the fix will be in?

290: A casual reading of your post might suggest Tim introduced OPD out of nowhere, when in fact it's been asked for repeatedly.
But we've had OPD for a long time now, as part of CK, so I'm not sure how someone could think that. We're explicitly talking here about the dates at the end of the title line: what Tim asked about in the first post.

And as to the specific numbers for or against, sure, it might tip to more than 50% on one side or the other. I'm not going to keep a running count, and anyone else can go through and try to tally the responses. My point was that there are roughly equal numbers of people responding for and for against, and that neither of those is just "a handful." In site terms, yes perhaps, but in response terms, no. Tim asked for reactions, and around half of the people who've responded don't like the dates on the title line. That doesn't necessarily mean all those people are opposed to showing the OPD more prominently somewhere.

297 But for those of us who do {think OPD is interesting}, it seems perfectly obvious to have it at the top of the page where you can see it immediately.
Yes and no. I think OPD is interesting. I'd like it to be displayed more prominently. But I do not like it on the title line. I wouldn't mind a separate line for it, or maybe a side box.

Neither the Yeses or Nos are homogenous. Not all the yeses prefer dates on the title line for the same reasons (or prefer the same dates), and not all the nos have the same reasons for disliking dates there.

292f it's disconcerting without an OPD, go down and add it! (yeah, I'm working on mine. Slowly

Good point about adding them. Sometimes it's easy to find the original publication date in the book itself and in these cases I've entered them in my own book information, so I can -- also slowly -- add them to CK. In other cases, this information is not on the book's copyright page -- what do you recommend as a source for finding OPDs that aren't included in the book itself?

Holy shit! Just looked at a work page for one of my books and that looks awful. Think I'd better read this topic to see what's going on.

#302

And sometimes the copyright page isn't correct. Sometimes they only list original publication date for the country this particular edition is published in.

#302: Worldcat for a lot of things.

I really disliked this at first (when it was only the OPD and it looked like it was part of the title) but now after seeing it for a while in the smaller gray font and including the edition data (and without commas), I cautiously like it. Mostly I don't even notice it, really.

The one issue I have is that when I have several editions of the same book, it picks one date and ignores the rest, even when looking at the book page for the different editions. I'd like to see (original 2003; editions 2003, 2004, 2010).

>306 bluesalamanders:

All your books and their editions are listed in the "Book information" box.

Yes, I know that. It just doesn't make sense to me that the edition date shown at the top is so arbitrary.

>308 bluesalamanders:
When you have multiple copies of a work the edition date shown matches the edition displayed at the top of the book information box. This also matches the title, author, and cover shown. You can select a different edition by clicking a title in the "Your other editions" section of the book information box. The title, author, date, cover, etc will change to match the newly selected edition.

I don't know how it selects which edition to show if you just land on the main work page. I think it may be the most recently added.

Interesting! I hadn't seen that because it doesn't do that for my copies of Sunshine, I assume because the book information includes both dates (like 2010, c2003). So it shows 2003 for all the different editions I have.

Yes, I know that. It just doesn't make sense to me that the edition date shown at the top is so arbitrary.

Can you explain what you mean exactly? That it's shown is arbitrary? That the date itself is arbitrary?

If you have more than one copy, the edition date for (only) one of these is shown, but which of your several editions wins out seems arbitrary.

ETA The same goes for book title/author, of course.

>310 bluesalamanders:
The original publication date comes from CK. In the case of Sunshine by Robin McKinley that's 2003.

The edition date comes from the publication date field in your catalog not from the publication field. Three of your four copies of the book have 2003 in publication date field. The fourth has 2004.

This copy has 2010 in the publication field but 2003 in the publication date field. This copy has 2004 in the publication field but 2003 in the publication date field. Those two mismatches are likely the source of the confusion.

I see, the problem is with the book data. Thanks, eromsted, I didn't know where the edition date was pulled from and it didn't occur to me to see if that might be the issue.

1. Do you like seeing dates after the title at all?
Yes, especially if it is slightly offset by smaller type and different colour as it is now. Perfectly fine with me.

2. If we DO have dates, do you want them to be the OPD in all cases, or should your publication date trump it?
Definitely OPD. And only OPD, nothing else please. An EPD has no business of being on a work page at all (unless in the "your book information" box). This eliminates the need for unwieldy explanations like "original" or "first published".

The OPD is the single most important indicator of the historical context of any book. It is the "birthdate" of a book and it is appropriate that it should be listed in close proximity to the title or in another prominent position. As I come from a biosciences background I'm used to seeing literature references in the form of author – year – title. However, I have no strong opinions about placement; I'm comfortable with having the OPD after the title but an extra line would be equally fine. Like some users before me I am unable to understand why such a comparatively minor layout change breeds such acrimonious controversy.

3. If you don't like it, would you accept a smaller top-level line, such as series have?
I think the current solution is excellent. (A position after the author’s name is not a good answer. As has been repeatedly mentioned this suggests year of birth/death.)

4. Can you suggest any other solution that gets this information "up there"? Consider, for example, the Wikipedia side-bar for major works, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Tale_of_Two_Cities . Would such a bar, coming ABOVE quick links, be helpful? Note that, to get what Wikipedia has, we'd need to capture much more information about the first edition. Would that be good, or bad?
Such a sidebar above quicklinks could be nice. I don't care much about covers though but I realise many people want them. Might be historically interesting in the long term. But keep the OPD behind the title anyway. And only the OPD.

1. Do you like seeing dates after the title at all?

Yes, if it's original publication date.

2. If we DO have dates, do you want them to be the OPD in all cases, or should your publication date trump it?

No, my edition's publication date should not trump it. I don't care, I suppose, if my edition's publication date is listed in a subordinate fashion below the primary bibliographic data.

3. If you don't like it, would you accept a smaller top-level line, such as series have? (eg., "Original publication date: 1859") How about saying:

A Tale of Two Cities
by Charles Dickens (1859)

I like this variant quite a bit. It even ties the date to the author, which makes a lot of sense.

Other comments?
I really don't care for the current scheme, which I find to be too busy and wordy:
Title (original DATE; edition DATE)
by Author

I like a parenthetical date by the title, but only if it's one date, and only if it's the original date -- e.g., Title (OPDATE).

I would propose this:
Work Title
by Author (OPDATE)
Your edition: TITLE by AUTHOR (ED DATE)

1. Do you like seeing dates after the title at all?
No.

2. If we DO have dates, do you want them to be the OPD in all cases, or should your publication date trump it?
I guess the OPD is more important, as my own data might come from unreliable sources.

3. If you don't like it, would you accept a smaller top-level line, such as series have? (eg., "Original publication date: 1859")
How about saying:
A Tale of Two Cities
by Charles Dickens (1859)

That's still too much for me. The date just doesn't belong there in my opinion... I prefer to keep the main information minimal.
I could agree with a publication date displayed closer to the Series information.

Still hoping the dates-with-months problem can be resolved sooner rather than later.

I have not been here for a while and came back to find these funny looking gray numbers after the titles of my books. I have not read the entire thread so please forgive me if this not an original thought. I would prefer to see a short phrase under the author, such as "originally published in 1852". Alternatively, I would rather have the OPD in CK.

I agree with the idea that the edition should not be part of th work info. Especially since the book info is right below.

Thank you,

k4k

Still hoping the dates-with-months problem can be resolved sooner rather than later.

Yes. I can dive right in. I think the revised algorithm should be to choose the earliest date that conforms to the pattern

four-digit year after 1400
properly formatted YYYY-MM-DD

My worry is in picking up wild dates. By using 1400+ I'm trying to hit modern "publication," not composition, in the case of ancient documents. For one thing, many of those dates won't "parse," so I can't tell what's earliest and pick it.

If it's better, I can move to picking the first date on the list, whatever it is, and allow any sort of string there. But I'm thinking people will not like it if (c. 150 BC (composed)), or whatever ends up at the top.

Hmm. I'm not sure about publication rather than composition, but I guess it seems better than the alternative.

For YYYY-MM-DD, I hope you'll just display the year at the top. There's too much noise there already, and the precise month and day are really not critical, top-of-page information.

Also, there are properly formatted YYYY-MM dates that should be considered as well.

>321 _Zoe_: - I definitely agree with just dispaying YYYY at the top, and that the YYYY part of YYYY-MM dates should be included.

>320 timspalding: - I think I'd stick with the 1400+ year thing rather than allowing a string, which seems to have the potential to get even more messy.

Not sure if this have been mentioned before, but one of the problems with adding data after the title, is that titles obviously vary in length. Line breaks and arbitarily shortened titles are common for long titles. Appending data to this results in a really messy display.

Examples:
http://www.librarything.com/work/4589011/book/79712907
http://www.librarything.com/work/10907538/book/69719829
http://www.librarything.com/work/134167/book/80154581
http://www.librarything.com/work/8976494/book/74227533

Not sure if this have been mentioned before, but one of the problems with adding data after the title, is that titles obviously vary in length. Line breaks and arbitarily shortened titles are common for long titles. Appending data to this results in a really messy display.

Examples:
http://www.librarything.com/work/10907538/book/69719829
http://www.librarything.com/work/134167/book/80154581
http://www.librarything.com/work/8976494/book/74227533

Since my collection is for myself, not a bunch of data-hounds, I don't mind seeing the original publication date in the Book Information box. I DON'T LIKE SEEING ANY DATES IN ANY FORM AT THE TOP. I am interested in MY books data and all of that should be in the book information box. There appear to be too many mistakes in the data for you to get correctly which edition I have. Too often I have looked at the data that come up with the book when added and it differs totally from the information on the book in my hand.

#320: Earliest isn't necessarily good. A number of anthologies currently list the year of publication, and then the (earlier) years of publication of the included works.

I like the way it looks now.

#326

I have always thought that usage was a poor one and not to be encouraged.

The CK is for the work - not for the component pieces of a work.

328 - agreed

328 & 329 -- hear, hear.

I'm always so happy when I go to the page of a book I don't own and see a nice, clean single date.

I've held off on this a while to really get used to it and see what I think

1. Do you like seeing dates after the title at all?

No. Like I said, I've tried to just go with it for a while and it still strikes me as rather extraneous. It's just not that important. I think this might have something to with a different part of the LT Venn diagram than I occupy. I don't collect a lot of books where the date matters one bit. PD is one of the least frequent things I check about a book. I do check it from time to time, but just not that often. I can see how if you were on that other part of the Venn diagram that involves collecting a bunch of antique books or multiple copies of the lots of books, you might care.

2. If we DO have dates, do you want them to be the OPD in all cases, or should your publication date trump it?

N/A

3. If you don't like it, would you accept a smaller top-level line, such as series have? (eg., "Original publication date: 1859") How about saying:

A Tale of Two Cities
by Charles Dickens (1859)

I'm sure I'll "accept" whatever is implemented because what's the alternative? If the question is really "will it bother me less", the answer is probably no. Again, just don't see that as very pertinent information.

4. Can you suggest any other solution that gets this information "up there"? Consider, for example, the Wikipedia side-bar for major works, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Tale_of_Two_Cities . Would such a bar, coming ABOVE quick links, be helpful? Note that, to get what Wikipedia has, we'd need to capture much more information about the first edition. Would that be good, or bad?

Don't really think much of the sidebar idea if it squishes down sidebars of stuff I actually use. Especially since sidebars aren't user-configurable (there's a feature you'd love!)

You said you were planning to change the "Your book information" section to something like "Bibliographic". I'd favor the date and possibly some other information going there. You're already putting it next to the work title/author when "Your book information" is being shown. The problem, of course, is that this section currently only shows if you have the book. Changing it to Bibliographic and having it show on all work pages would avoid that problem.

I can see how if you were on that other part of the Venn diagram that involves collecting a bunch of antique books or multiple copies of the lots of books, you might care.

I'd say this is really the key distinction between OPD and edition date. Edition date to me seems like something that's more important for collectors, while OPD can be relevant even if you're just interested in the book's content.

#333 by @_Zoe_> But my feeling is that even in the OPD case, it's not so relevant that I need that content available on every page right at the very top next to the single most important piece of information about the work (the title). On those cases where OPD is important, a single page down or two to the ck tends to suffice. And if it's even more vital to you, you can rejigger your page to put the CK at/near the top of the sections.

This just looks like a solution in search of a problem.

>334 brightcopy: Well, my position was always that it's valuable relative to the amount of space it takes up. Six characters is tiny, so I think it's worth it there. Once we get into whole lines of text, not so much.

I do wish CK had nicer display formats available. I would never put the whole CK box near the top, because it shows too much irrelevant information (character lists will probably never trump anything else), because there's too much empty space now that the short form is gone, and because it's just generally ugly.

335> I understand your POV. For one of my books, the text "(original 2002; edition 2002)" is as long as the title. Tim's always going on about clutter whenever we want something, so I'm not sure why "clutter" isn't a sufficient complaint.

But back to your point about just having a single year date. I think the problem there is you strip it down so much, it's confusing. If I, random user, see a single date up there and I don't know whether it's my date or not. I think it does need a label to give it context. I just think it needs to go somewhere much less prominent.

Lots of things are tiny. Place of publication maybe only six characters ("London") or fewer ("Paris"). The number of pages (which apparently a lot of people think is critical information) is small ("120pp").

(Personally, I am considering deleting the "publication date" from my records. It's redundant, as it shows in the "Publication" field as well, and at least I wouldn't have to see that ugly bit of data behind the title of my books.)

I'm happy to see the original publication date, and setting it in grey distinguishes it from the book title. I have no problem with the current format.

I happen to agree with brightcopy on this as I stated in #319. I don't know why I feel so strongly about this, but somehow it has hit both an esthetic nerve and my sense of order.

k4k

334 This just looks like a solution in search of a problem.
Yup. That was pretty much my first reaction to the whole thing: why?

337 Personally, I am considering deleting the "publication date" from my records.
That's how I feel about the "other authors" in my catalog, since they're now cluttering up this top section too. The top of the work page is just a mess now for many books I have.

>336 brightcopy: I think if it were a link to a labelled page, like on iMBD, it would be clear enough. People would have to click once, but then they'd know.

Place of publication maybe only six characters ("London") or fewer ("Paris"). The number of pages (which apparently a lot of people think is critical information) is small ("120pp").

Do we even have a field for place of original publication? I wouldn't want to add more edition information to the work page. Of course at some point there's a value judgement about what's important; I think OPD is worth it for the small amount of space it takes, while you don't, but I don't think place of original publication would be as valuable, even if the data existed. I suspect that most people would agree at least about the relative order of importance of those two things, even if they don't think either is important enough to show at the top.

Also, "(London)" is eight, and the 1 in the dates is particularly thin ;)

Personally, I am considering deleting the "publication date" from my records.

Yeah, I'm considering this too. But I haven't quite been able to bring myself to do it yet.

When new features lead people to want to delete information they were previously happy to have, maybe that's not a good sign...

>343 rsterling:. I agree (on both the other authors and the dates thing, in fact). Tim's back today from Denmark, and hopefully between all the SantaThing madness we can actually sit down and talk about all this stuff. Please, everyone, don't do anything drastic yet, since none of this is settled. I hope we can find some reasonable way to do this.

343: Yup! I was also almost at the point of a mass publication date delete but thought I'd hold off for for the moment.
344: Crossed fingers :)

To put things into perspective, for those for whom the BBC website matters, just look at what they have done to their site. In a single day, it's gone from being my basic news source (I don't watch TV), to being deleted from my tabs due to total unusability and unsuitability for my interests. Probably I'm in the minority and the bulk of users are screaming with joy, who knows.

v

#345

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/ hasn't changed only the front page. They had the front page in beta for around a month.

I'm not going to delete my publication dats because of this (although I have thought about it), but I certainly am not going to enter any OPDs.

Whereas I'm eagerly waiting for the fix to choose years where the OPB is in YYYY-MM format so I can enter a bunch of OPBs. I LOVE this change and it's a very important piece of information for me.

>348 Morphidae: I'm eagerly awaiting that change as well, while simultaneously thinking of deleting my edition dates. I love the pages where it shows a single clean date.

I would also consider deleting my publication dates, but they make such a nice graph on the stats page. I can't think how a graph of the physical age of my library is of any use to me, but I'm rather attached to it regardless.

(I would value a graph for original publication dates. I use tags for centuries and decades, but those are for historical setting as well as publication date.)

To understand the meaning for a lot of books, it is very important to know when the book has been written. Therefore OPD is very important information for me.
I am looking forward to be able to sort my library on OPD.

Thank you, Tim

1. Do you like seeing dates after the title at all?

YES. Different font colour/size is important, though.

2. If we DO have dates, do you want them to be the OPD in all cases, or should your publication date trump it?

OPD. Don't care about edition date.

3. If you don't like it, would you accept a smaller top-level line, such as series have? (eg., "Original publication date: 1859") How about saying:

A Tale of Two Cities
by Charles Dickens (1859)

I like it better when it specifies what the date stands for, e.g.

A Tale of Two Cities (first published 1859)
by Charles Dickens

> 348, 349, 351, 352

Amen!!

"Author, Title (OPD)" is how I think of books when I list them in my mental database, and having the top of the LT page match my mental template is nothing but good, as far as I'm concerned. The edition date matters less to me, but I don't mind having it up there. (What can I say . . . I'm a historian . . . "When in doubt, add the date!")

-- edited to expand the list of people I'm agreeing with --

Now that we have had this for a while, I find that it is a significant improvement for me. OPD is important to me as a reader; edition date is important to me as a collector. I used to include OPD in my tags to get on the front page; no longer necessary! So, thanks Tim.

Now all we need is for our library statistics to reflect the OPD rather than the edition date :P (Sorry, this has been bugging me for a while. Seeing that my average date is 1989 makes no sense to me, and I have to remind myself every time that it's the edition date the statistics are referring to, which I don't even keep track of so the statistics are incorrect, anyway)

> 355

Edition dates may not mean anything to you, but they do to me. While I'd like a similar display for OPD, I have no desire to be rid of the current edition date graph in statistics.

355/356: Isn't that what a lot of this comes down to though, personal preferences? one person doesn't care about edition dates, one person does.

I, personally, don't give a crap about OPD, but I know a lot of people do. I certainly don't like it up at the top, since I don't *use* it or care about it, but if enough people benefit from the feature and *do* like it, I guess I can deal.

I do hope there can still be some compromises tho, so maybe at least I don't have to keep seeing the redundant "(original 2000; edition 2000)" type of stuff...

355>

The actual dates of your editions might not matter to you, but they do to some. I agree having a similar graph for OPD would be very cool, however!

>358 lorax:
I think it would be very cool too!

358, 357 and above - I think there's a lot of cool stuff the site could do with both kinds of dates - editions and OPD - but that's separate from the question of whether to display them after the title at the top of the work page. So the debate isn't really who likes which kind of data in general, or data-hounds vs. non data-hounds, but whether or not data should be displayed in this particular way, on the work page. Both kinds of data are important to me (OPD and edition), but I don't like the current cluttered display after the title.

The edition date is already displayed in the "book information" box, third line down. So it's pretty prominent already (probably no need to scroll down on most screens). OPD is also displayed in book information, though further down, at the bottom of the box. Why do we need something more than that?

360: Exactly.

v

> 360, 361

You're both right!

360>

I think there's a lot of cool stuff the site could do with both kinds of dates - editions and OPD - but that's separate from the question of whether to display them after the title at the top of the work page.

Um, obviously? When I'm responding to a specific issue I generally don't mention the millions of things that it's separate from.

363 - I wasn't responding specifically to you, but to the conversation in general about the usefulness of OPD vs. edition dates; yours was simply the latest reply on that issue (hence: "358, 357 and above").

Since the thread is about dates at the top of work pages (not the value of date-based features in general), I was trying to steer back to the core topic. That these are separate questions might be obvious to you and to me, but perhaps not to everyone, especially if the thread detours to consider other date-based features. Earlier in the thread some people were presenting this debate about dates at the top of the work page as if it boiled down to data-hounds vs. those who care less about data. I'm just reiterating that it's important not to confuse the two.

ETA: Put differently, what I was trying to say -- as a general comment -- was "not liking OPD/edition/any dates next to the title does not mean not liking OPD/edition/any dates at all" and "caring about OPD/edition/whatever date in general does not necessarily entail liking that info next to the title."

Way back in 283, before his trip, Tim said he was looking at moving the dates to a sidebar box. So yay!

#365 by @jjmcgaffey> In other words, Tim is looking to move the quicklinks, cover images, and ratings further down the page to make room for publication dates.

Again, just don't see the importance justifying the positioning. Wish these dates could be made as a quick link, and people who find them so valuable could add them right in prime position. But, alas, that'd just be called "configurability" and that hardly ever flies around here.

In other words, Tim is looking to move the quicklinks, cover images, and ratings further down the page to make room for publication dates.

Yup. At least with the current positioning they don't push anything else out of the way.

Though if I'm being honest, I have to admit this won't really bother me too much. After all, I have Greasemonkey and Stylish. Any true annoyance I feel is simply due to trying to put myself into another user's shoes. Though I suppose there's the slight annoyance when I'm browsing on the iPad or android phone.

I've just continued this thread in order to broaden it out a bit and ask for thoughts on a preliminary, still-being-formulated proposed solution.

>360 rsterling:
The edition date is already displayed in the "book information" box, third line down. So it's pretty prominent already (probably no need to scroll down on most screens). OPD is also displayed in book information, though further down, at the bottom of the box. Why do we need something more than that?

These statements are only partly true. The book information box only appears if you have the book in your catalog. So it is only an alternate location for the OPD when you have the book. I'm probably more interested in the OPD when I don't have the book. And it is definitely something I want to see at the top of the page.

The edition date in the book information box comes from the publication field. The edition date currently displayed after the title comes from the publication date field. These will usually be the same, but are not necessarily so. (See, for instance, the confusion one member was having above starting in message 306).

For me the big difficulty with edition date is not that it is cluttered to have two dates (though it is) but that for many users it may be bad information. The OPD is at least true about the work, assuming it is correctly entered. The edition date is only true about your copy if you have taken care to check to make sure your data matches your books.

(I saw Jeremy's message after I wrote this. And it is a direct response to a post above, so I'm going to leave it here.)

>370 eromsted: - no worries, entirely fair :-)

The OPD is at least true about the work, assuming it is correctly entered. The edition date is only true about your copy if you have taken care to check to make sure your data matches your books.

Yes! This is a critical point.

(I know there's a new thread, but I think this agreement is better off here.)

370>

The OPD is at least true about the work, assuming it is correctly entered. The edition date is only true about your copy if you have taken care to check to make sure your data matches your books.

Well, yes. Likewise the title, ISBN, author, and publisher are only true about your copy if you've taken care to check your data matches your books. People who don't care about data aren't going to be looking at the fields they don't care about, so why worry about whether a feature making use of data they couldn't care less about will be accurate for them? It's not doing anyone else any harm.

People who don't care about data aren't going to be looking at the fields they don't care about, so why worry about whether a feature making use of data they couldn't care less about will be accurate for them? It's not doing anyone else any harm.

It used to be possible to ignore a field that we didn't care about, but we can't just not look at it when it's at the top of the work page.

> 374

It used to be possible to ignore a field that we didn't care about, but we can't just not look at it when it's at the top of the work page.

Which is exactly why I dislike this.

>375 lilithcat: - I was counting the seconds until that answer came! :-)

Yup. So we're back to the difference that OPD is at least correct. Un-ignorable correct data is far, far better than un-ignorable incorrect data.

374>

Good point. I suppose it's too much to hope for that it would prompt them to fix their data. ;-)

>378 lorax: I did consider just deleting it all, but I can't quite bring myself to do it.

> 377

So we're back to the difference that OPD is at least correct.

Only if it's correctly entered. I don't know why you assume that that bit of data is going to be correct more often than other bits of data.

Because every other time Tim's made something that takes advantage of a piece of CK data, that item of data has suddenly gotten a lot more full and a lot more correct.