Lists, stage 2

After much trouble, I've moved forward somewhat on lists.



Examples:

* Lists list http://www.librarything.com/lists.php
* Desert Island: Three Books http://www.librarything.com/list/75/all/Desert-Island-Three-books
* Best Science Fiction Novels http://www.librarything.com/list/1/all/Best-Science-Fiction-Novels

Changes:

1. The "thumbs" interface has given way to "adding" book.
2. Books in lists can now be ordered, so you can distinguish between, say, the best book of 2011 and the 10th-best book. By default, the order is the order works were "thumbed."
3. Reordering can be done by drag-and-drop on right ("Your list") and in the middle if you click ("Your list")
4. A list creator can set the list to be either numbered or unnumbered, or both. If both, the user can choose either. (This was done in case some members don't want to imply an order, but treat every book as equal.)
5. A "score" is added to works, based on how many have ranked the book and how. You can sort by it.
6. Group creators can add images to groups. I can too. I took the liberty of adding some images to some lists.
7. List creators can decide if the list allows "blackballing" (ie., voting down)

Coming soon:

1. Comments on votes.
2. Lists attached to groups.
3. A better list home page, with images.

Thanks for your patience. There's a lot I need to still go through in past discussions. I think, however, this is a firmer basis to build on, and talk about.

Looks good to me. I kinda lost track in the last thread, are collection-aware checkmarks on the to-do list?

Also, how did you manage to start the Best Science Fiction Novels list in December 1969? That's a bit science-fictioney in itself.

are collection-aware checkmarks on the to-do list

Well, let's talk about it. I think yes, but where does it show? Replace the number?

Also, how did you manage to start the Best Science Fiction Novels list in December 1969

Good point. Fixing.

Replacing the number is pretty standard now, but you do have a bit more real estate to play with on this one. What about between the number and the cover thumbnail, aligned to the same top line?

I might be stupid.

But I can't find lists in LT.
I only was able to go there by links in discussion threads.

I mostly start LT from the german site. I have also tried to find them in LT.com, but I couldn't.

Seems far more polished than the first iteration (obviously), and a more complete part of the site now as opposed to a bolt on. Nice work.

A lists home page would be nice. As the comment above says I rely on coming to the talk pages to find the link to the lists. Hard to experiment and review the functionality when you struggle to see the lists.

I didn't look at the previous version, but in its current state it seems pretty intuitive to use. Nice!
I agree that some sort of comment facility would make it more interesting.

Will you return the "Lists you voted on" or "Lists you added to" sorting options on the list home page? I really liked that (or maybe I'm only thinking it was there). There are a few lists I'd like to return to, but it's a bit difficult to find them with so many.

ETA: Here is the link for everyone: http://www.librarything.com/lists.php

ETA2: Just noticed there's still a bug for combined titles: http://www.librarything.com/list/46/all/Favorite-Childhood-Books see #4 - no idea what it is supposed to be now.

I didn't see any voting options. And also added two titles to the desert island list exactly the same way only to have one of them show with my name and being in my list and the other did not show that. It added it to the list, but with no attribution. Strange.

2. Lists attached to groups.

I think it could be a lot more effective just to allow filtering by group membership. I don't really want to participate in multiple iterations of the same list: "75 Book Challenge Members' Favourite Books!" "Read YA Lit Members' Favourite Books!" etc. Instead, let us take the one list "Favourite Books" and choose to filter it so that it shows only contributions from members of a given group.

I'll test it out and comment more later.

I'd also like to be able to arrange my personal list even when the order doesn't count in the overall ranking.

I don't really understand how the unranked scoring works. I just want to have a list where every entry counts as 1, but it seems that it varies based on how many books I add? So when I first added a book, it had a score of 4, but when I've added four books they're all down to 2.83? Does this mean that the vote of someone who adds fewer items is worth more than the vote of someone who adds more items?

I'd just like a plain old count of votes.

The numbering of unranked lists is also really weird. The numbers don't go in order. The book at the top is labelled 3, then comes 4, then 1, then 5. At least when all the books are tied with an equal number of points.

ETA: This seems to have cleared up on reloading.

I also really liked the clarity of a quick count of votes for and against. I think I'd still like to see that somewhere even when the ranking is determined by the score.

ETA: Also, I think I'd like more focus on the score (etc.) and less on the status of my own vote. I'd switch the size and location of the score and my vote.

Does it no longer say who created the list? That was interesting information.

>15 _Zoe_: - should still be there, right-hand side.

> 1

May we have lists added to the "search" page? And perhaps the ability to sort the list of lists alphabetically? The list of lists is getting quite long, so finding a particular list is going to get tough.

I tried creating a new list: the description text I put into the "create list" form didn't stick, but it worked when I put it in again from "edit list". (XP, FF3.6.24)

Checkmarks shouldn't replace the number. Assumedly, the number actually has significance otherwise we wouldn't be numbering things. You don't want to punish users who have books by making them unable to see the numbers.

I'm thinking they should either be to the left of them (without shoving the number right) or to the left of the work name (shoving the work name right). I kind of prefer to the left of the number because then it's easy to easy to see the "completedness" of the list versus your catalog, much like with Series. But I can see how that could be confusing because of the additional check meaning "on your list".

My other observation is that "Add work to list" needs to be far more prominent. My recommendation is right above "All members' list".

ETA: Also, other lists on LT (recommendations) have periods next to the number. For some reason, this one looks kind of funny to me without them.

I didn't even know Lists1 had been released. Followed link here to List page off More Tab, but how do I get there without coming to this page ? How do I create a list ? Where does it fit in to my account ?

#20 by @FicusFan> They weren't really "released" as such, but were in kind of a "working draft" state. That's why Tim posted to RSI to get some input.

Bug/problem: A long-deleted list* still hasn't gone away.

----------
* This one, which I deleted after adding the wrong book and finding I couldn't get rid of it. I replaced the supposedly-deleted list with this one.

Really the biggest thing I'd like to see is a way to keep track of lists that I'm interested in. The simple version is just the ability to star a list and then be able to see all of those. On the more advanced side, it would be even cooler to be able to see when a particular list has new books added.

> 1

7. List creators can decide if the list allows "blackballing" (ie., voting down)

I find this confusing. Does "blackballing" remove a title from the list, as the word implies? Or does it move the book down on the list? (I also have to say that I really dislike the connotations of that word and wish you would find another.)

Clarity would be nice.

1. The "thumbs" interface has given way to "adding" book.

I don't quite get this, either. Surely there is a difference between "thumbing" a book already on the list, and adding a book to the list!

It seems that there is now no way to show that one agrees or disagrees with the inclusion of a book on a list. I have to either add a book or "blackball" it.

#24 by @lilithcat> I think he meant adding a book to YOUR version of the list, which then gets factored into the overall ranking (see the desert island one). It's basically the much-talked-about "composite" lists.

Which makes sense, if you think about it. Look at some of those other lists that were created, like Best Science Fiction novels. There are 39 books on that list. I might go through 10, 20, whatever, but eventually I'll get bored and stop up/down thumbing each of them. So one other choice is only allow thumbs up, which has been beaten to death in the other thread. Another choice is to say "pick X books that fit this list to you". So in the Desert Island list example, the goal is to pick three books you'd take with you to said island. Not to run through a big list of books, thumbing up and down and somehow representing which would be the top three books you'd take to said island.

So instead, you just pick three. Either from the existing ones on the list (by clicking "Add to your list") or works not on the list yet by clicking "Add work to list".) And then the magical algorithm puts everyone's picks together and somehow determines the order.

I have to say I'm still a bit mystified as to how thumbs down fit into that, but I see the general gist of it.

I also think that it's a bit weird that you could add a work to the global list and not to your list. For example, I added a book to the global list that I didn't add to mine. See if you can pick it out by just the title...

Actually, no I didn't after all.

Okay, back to original question:

Can you only drag and drop those items that you've made some notation on? For instance, if I wanted to order the list of Best Science Fiction Books, do I have to Add them to my list or Blackball them just to organize them?

Bug: dragging a work from your list to certain other areas like Blackballed or Related tags takes you to the work page.

28: I think maybe this is a feature?? Clicking the link on Your List let's you move the book. Holding down the mouse key takes you to the work page??

> 25

Okay, that makes sense.

Although, that brings up another thing. What if I don't want a "version of the list"?

I noticed when I added a book to a list earlier that there was a checkbox for "add book to your list". I unchecked the box, and see that the book remains on the list, but says "Score: 0".

I'm just finding this so much more convoluted and confusing that the simple "thumbs up"/"thumbs down". I guess I'd just like an easy way to express agreement or disagreement with a book's inclusion on a list without creating a list of my own.

It's basically the much-talked-about "composite" lists.

I never understood what that was all about.

Maybe it's my age, but I really loathe the word "blackball". It reeks of McCarthyism and HUAC to me. Sorry, but I can't get past that.

#30 by @lilithcat>

Like I said above, I don't think it makes much sense to be able to uncheck that "add book to your list" box. That's certainly convoluted and confusing, and the only real use I can see is to make trouble.

Okay, so maybe I can see ONE use. Say I wanted to make a "Top 10 Pulitzer Prize Winning Books". I would first add all the Pulitzer prize books (515) to the list without adding them to my own. Then I would pick ten.

It seems to be a function that makes more sense for the list creator to prime the list than for the day-to-day functioning of the list.

----
Although, that brings up another thing. What if I don't want a "version of the list"?

It's all semantics. There is ALWAYS a "your version of the list".

Imagine this:
There is a list of 100 books.
You go through and thumb up 25 of them.

Whether you see it or not, there is now a "your version of the list" that are the 25 you thumbed up. You created it by the simple act of voting.

--
(Saved this next part for last because it's a bit lengthy)

"Composite" lists are a bit like preferential voting (does that help?)

Say there is a list where you pick your three favorite colors. Choices on the global list:

1. Red
2. Green
3. Blue
4. Yellow
5. Orange
6. Purple
7. Magenta
8. Cyan
9. Brown

You pick your three:
1. Yellow
2. Purple
3. Brown

I pick three:
1. Blue
2. Yellow
3. Cyan

Someone else picks three:
1. Orange
2. Magenta
3. Yellow

Now how do you take those three lists of three colors and say anything about how the overall rankings would be? One way:

First round of voting taking just top choices:
Yellow: 1
Blue: 1
Orange: 1

No clear winner. Okay, if Yellow was eliminated from everyone's ballots, the new vote total:

Purple: 1
Blue: 1
Orange: 1

No help.

Okay, if instead Blue was eliminated:
Yellow: 2
Orange: 1

Hmm, now Yellow gets 2 votes.

What if instead we had eliminated Orange?

Yellow: 1
Magenta: 1
Orange: 1

Okay, so by this method, Yellow wins the #1 spot because it is the most preferred if you put all the votes together.

Now Yellow is taken off all the ballots and you do a similar thing for #2, #3, etc all the way to #9 (because there were 9 slots on the global list). There may be some ties.

This is just one simplified way for demo purposes and there are a LOT of different ways to do this that handle different edge cases differently (where depending on how you eliminate candidates you cause different winners when there was no easy, clear winner).

> 32

Whether you see it or not, there is now a "your version of the list" that are the 25 you thumbed up. You created it by the simple act of voting.

True, but I looked at that as just a quick and easy way to see what I'd voted on, rather than a "list", if that distinction makes any sense. I guess I just see a difference between "My List", which says to me "I want to create a list of what I think are the Best Travel Narratives" (which I may have no particular interest in doing), and voting on a universal list.

It's a difference of intention and meaning.

#33 by @lilithcat> It's a difference of intention and meaning.

No, I get where you're coming from. I'm just pointing out that there's no "cost" difference. Does that make sense?

> 34

Yep.

Ooops. Is there a way to remove an inadvertant duplication?

bug: I have 'Oryx and Crake' in my list for Best Post-Apocalyptic Stories but the book still has the option to 'Add to your list' and if I do add it then I see 'On your list (2)' even though I don't have two books on my list.

>37 JGKC:
'On your list (2)' means it's second on your list. You can change it's place on your list by dragging and dropping in the right hand box.

#29 by @aulsmith> I think maybe this is a feature?? Clicking the link on Your List let's you move the book. Holding down the mouse key takes you to the work page??

I don't think so. First off, that's just not how web browsers generally treat links by default (dragging them and dropping in the same page doesn't do anything unless you specifically turn it on). Also, if you drag the link to OTHER areas of the page, it doesn't cause it to go to the work page.

Pretty sure it's just a bug.

For starters:

I should have mentioned, since I don't think it was clear, that your lists exist on their own, and have their own pages. So, for example:

My "Best Science Fiction Novels"
http://www.librarything.com/list/1/timspalding/Best-Science-Fiction-Novels

Everyone's "Best Science Fiction Novels"
http://www.librarything.com/list/1/all/Best-Science-Fiction-Novels

I didn't see any voting options

The same thing is going on. Previously you voted up or down. Now you add it to "your list" or you blackball it. The difference is that now, rather than a binary up/down, you can order them in a list.

I'd also like to be able to arrange my personal list even when the order doesn't count in the overall ranking.

You can.

I think it could be a lot more effective just to allow filtering by group membership.

Maybe. I think, however, that having groups and lists linked would build community and offer entry points and links between them.

I just want to have a list where every entry counts as 1, but it seems that it varies based on how many books I add.

If you choose a numbered list, each one is worth more as you go up the numbers. Number 1 is worth 4.

If you choose a unnumbered list, it calculates how many points your list would have if it were numbered and divides it by how many books you have. The effect is that, if you rate 2 books, each book is helped more than if you have 10 books.

I can see it both ways, frankly. Part of the reason I do it this way is that a given lists can include members who choose to rank and who choose not to rank. The way I've done it the net effect of your opinions is the same. If I did it the way you want, choosing to go numbered or unnumbered would translate to having more or less impact on the results. Understand?

ETA: This seems to have cleared up on reloading.

It doesn't re-rank them in place as you vote. This is because an item might be re-ranked off the page. That would confuse people--if they put something on their list and, wham, it went away.

May we have lists added to the "search" page? And perhaps the ability to sort the list of lists alphabetically? The list of lists is getting quite long, so finding a particular list is going to get tough.

Really the biggest thing I'd like to see is a way to keep track of lists that I'm interested in.

Definitely to both. All in good time. This one's a crock-pot :)

Does "blackballing" remove a title from the list, as the word implies? Or does it move the book down on the list?

It moves the book down on the list.

I also have to say that I really dislike the connotations of that word and wish you would find another.

That lists are a social club?

It seems that there is now no way to show that one agrees or disagrees with the inclusion of a book on a list. I have to either add a book or "blackball" it.

The list is the aggregate of members' lists, ordered by how many people include the list on their list and where.

I have to say I'm still a bit mystified as to how thumbs down fit into that, but I see the general gist of it.

I think there's some value to disagreeing--to objecting to a book. That's the idea.

I also think that it's a bit weird that you could add a work to the global list and not to your list. For example, I added a book to the global list that I didn't add to mine. See if you can pick it out by just the title...

By default you don't. In principle I could not show books that have no members. This is something of an edge case, though.

Can you only drag and drop those items that you've made some notation on? For instance, if I wanted to order the list of Best Science Fiction Books, do I have to Add them to my list or Blackball them just to organize them?

You drag and drop your list. You can't reorder the whole site's list directly. (If you could, WARS would be started over it!) Your list does, however, affect the all-members' list.

28: I think maybe this is a feature?? Clicking the link on Your List let's you move the book. Holding down the mouse key takes you to the work page??

Yes. You can move a work. If you just click, you go to the work page.

I guess I'd just like an easy way to express agreement or disagreement with a book's inclusion on a list without creating a list of my own.

They're different metaphors for the same thing. The only difference is that before it was exclusively binary. Now you can say that you think Dune is REALLY great, not just "thumbs up."

Maybe it's my age, but I really loathe the word "blackball". It reeks of McCarthyism and HUAC to me. Sorry, but I can't get past that.

Suggest an alternative.

It seems to be a function that makes more sense for the list creator to prime the list than for the day-to-day functioning of the list.

I can see removing books that have lost their members--again, this is a weird case! Why would someone add a book and then reverse course?

However, when I add comments we'll have to keep it this way. Comments are going to be allowed--I think--even when you don't add a book to your list. So, for example, you could say that although you're only taking A, B and C to the desert island, D would be a good choice too. If D vanishes because nobody picks it, your comment would vanish too.

It's all semantics. There is ALWAYS a "your version of the list".

Well, it's metaphors. In another sense tags are also lists. So are collections. But the way they're presented and manipulated does make sense.

I guess I just see a difference between "My List", which says to me "I want to create a list of what I think are the Best Travel Narratives" (which I may have no particular interest in doing), and voting on a universal list.

Right. The problem is that you might have an opinon but feel a list "means more." I get that. I feel that the added value in letting users make lists is worth the potential loss.

Ooops. Is there a way to remove an inadvertant duplication?

Explain more?

re: 38

Sorry, I'm not being very clear.

The issue is that there is a phantom book in my list. I can "remove" the book by clicking on 'Remove' but the book in question remains listed under 'Your list'.

>42 JGKC:

Thanks. I'm working on it. The problem is that—until recently—it was possible to add a book to the list twice. Now it's not.

I added Ben Franklin's Autobiography. When it seemed not to have taken, I added a different version, and they both appeared on the list (In Founding Father list) I'd like to remove the one with less members.

Instead of "blackball," how about "Disagree?"

Maybe it's my age, but I really loathe the word "blackball". It reeks of McCarthyism and HUAC to me. Sorry, but I can't get past that.

Suggest an alternative.

"Thumbs down"? "Disagree"? "No"?

Tim - I think you may have misunderstood a couple of my messages.

First off, the whole I reported with dragging in 28/39 isn't what aulsmith was thinking I was saying. I think it's just a bug depending on where you realize your mouse.

Second, your response to "It seems to be a function that makes more sense for the list creator to prime the list than for the day-to-day functioning of the list." doesn't seem to have anything to do with what I was talking about, which was the ability to add works to the global list without adding them to your own as well.

Minor points, but just FYI.

(Oh, and in case you missed it - can we have periods next to the numbers?)

I see my question has been asked several times, but I didn't see an answer (I may be blind, sorry):

Where do I find Lists on the site other than coming to the discussion page to find the link?

Another question. Will Works page of books on the lists have a link to the lists they inhabit?

47: I don't think you do yet. I bookmarked it so I can find it without having to find the talk discussions

#47 by @Smiler69> Where do I find Lists on the site other than coming to the discussion page to find the link?

Nowhere. That's frequently how these new features go, especially the ones still in beta testing. I imagine Tim is trying to decide a good place for it to go that's prominent enough that people will notice it.

#48 by @2wonderY> Will Works page of books on the lists have a link to the lists they inhabit?

That'd be excellent.!

40. I can see removing books that have lost their members--again, this is a weird case! Why would someone add a book and then reverse course?

I think removing them is needed. There are several reasons why someone might add a book then reverse course:
1) Someone might decide this book no longer belonged on their personal list of favorites (or whatever the list is). Say, someone's only picking 10, and this one's been knocked out by something else.
2) Someone made a mistake, and added the wrong book (say, a book with the same title, etc.)
3) I did this because I decided I didn't want to use the feature if it required having public voting/lists. So I removed my vote (in the previous version of lists). But the book stayed, orphaned.
4) Spammer deliberately trying to game the system then cover their tracks? Ok, perhaps less likely, but within the realm of possibility.

In any case, if a book no longer has any endorsement for being on a list, it just seems logical that it shouldn't be there.

On another note, I'm also seeing the phantom book bug here, #4:
http://www.librarything.com/list/46/all/Favorite-Childhood-Books

Here's a completely crazy idea I'm going to throw out there:

What if you hid all newly added books until at least two people have added them.

I know, it's crazy and it has definite minuses. But it also has some pluses...

(List creator probably should be exempt, though. Otherwise you couldn't easily "prime" lists. I think maybe there should be a "publish" button when you are ready for a list to go live. You can add and delete to your heart's content at that point and those titles will show up without any kind of "two member" rule.)

How about "demote" instead of "blackball"? I don't like "blackball" either.

I really like the idea of having work pages link to the lists their book is on; fun!

Another vote for having check-marks! Check-marks make me happy :-)

Stink-eye.

I'd also like to put in another vote for getting the next-page links at the bottom of the page too. Such a nuisance to have to go back to the top to get to the link!

>55 staffordcastle:
I'd like to avoid multiple pages completely. It's harder to keep track, especially when titles are being added by others. Stuff might move to the second page after I've looked at that page.

I can "remove" the book by clicking on 'Remove' but the book in question remains listed under 'Your list'.

Fixed. Unfortunately it was fixed at the expense of the item in your list. Re-add?

doesn't seem to have anything to do with what I was talking about

Yes it does. I'm just being unclear. To be clear, there are TWO ways that a book on a list can have no members. (1) User adds it, unchecking the box, (2) Users remove it afterwards.

Basically, I solve the problem by not allowing books to be on the list without being on at least one member list. But allowing comments undermines this idea, if comments can be applied on books you don't have in your list.

Where do I find Lists on the site other than coming to the discussion page to find the link?

Nowhere yet. Coming.

Another question. Will Works page of books on the lists have a link to the lists they inhabit?

Yes. Coming. And more. You should be able to add a work to a list from the work page too, etc.

I imagine Tim is trying to decide a good place for it to go that's prominent enough that people will notice it.

I plan on murdering at least two beloved tabs to make space.

In any case, if a book no longer has any endorsement for being on a list, it just seems logical that it shouldn't be there.

I hear you. What about the comment situation?

Stink-eye.

Nice! I guess I don't like any of these words.

I'd also like to put in another vote for getting the next-page links at the bottom of the page too. Such a nuisance to have to go back to the top to get to the link!

Yeah. Coming.

I'd like to avoid multiple pages completely. It's harder to keep track, especially when titles are being added by others. Stuff might move to the second page after I've looked at that page.

We're going to need to have. Lists are going to have hundreds of works on them. You'll notice single members' lists never go into pages.

> 57

Stink-eye.

Nice! I guess I don't like any of these words.

The word "blackball" means "to exclude", and, in this case, it doesn't, so it's confusing.

What all the suggestions made have in common, and what makes them better than "blackball", is that, unlike that word, they do not imply that the book will be removed from the list.

>58 lilithcat:

No, I agree. I just haven't found the word yet.

I like the way this is working now.

A bug that I've noticed is that if you go to the little settings gear, and switch your list to unnumbered, it works for the list in the green sidebar, but if you choose "Your list" at the top of the main list, that list is still numbered.

I suppose "blackballed" is used because there's so much vehement opposition to the idea of disagreement expressed by a thumbs-down, but is it really going to do any good? Are people who feel personally violated by a thumbs-down going to be okay with a blackball? Blackballing feels much more nuclear to me -- like I'm going to remove it from the list unilaterally and entirely, rather than just saying "no, actually, I personally didn't think The Eyre Affair was a big disappointment" as a thumbs-down does.

How about just "disagree": The user registers disagreement with the inclusion of the item on the list.

If you choose a unnumbered list, it calculates how many points your list would have if it were numbered and divides it by how many books you have. The effect is that, if you rate 2 books, each book is helped more than if you have 10 books.

I can see it both ways, frankly. Part of the reason I do it this way is that a given lists can include members who choose to rank and who choose not to rank. The way I've done it the net effect of your opinions is the same. If I did it the way you want, choosing to go numbered or unnumbered would translate to having more or less impact on the results. Understand?

So, what about making completely unranked lists work differently from ranked+unranked combined?

There are some cases where we really just want a cumulative count. In "Books Read for TIOLI" or "Books Read in 2012" or whatever, it just doesn't make sense for a book read by someone who has read fewer to count for more overall. The interesting thing is just which books were read the most.

I think I wrecked the amusing Let's Make A Story With Titles (paraphrased) list: wanted the de Maupassant to be the last entry, but couldn't quite figure out how to do that. Sorry to all concerned, it was a very nice project.

#57 by @timspalding> Okay, going to try one other way to get this across with a question:

What is the purpose of allowing a user to add a book that is not yet on the list while at the same time not adding it to their personal list?

(I already gave an example of the one case I thought of above, but I'm wanting to see what you (Tim) say. That's what my comment that he replied to was about, but you seem to keep going off on a tangent after quoting something I said on the subject. Not a big deal but just kind of confusing.)

Ok thanks everyone for clearing that up. I'll just keep track of this thread, which I should do anyway to find out more about this feature.

Very cool one by the way, thanks Tim!

64> It just takes enough "stink-eyes" to move it down to the bottom.

For the action of changing the position of a book in one's copy of a list, I think promote/demote or up/down would work.

James

So, what about making completely unranked lists work differently from ranked+unranked combined?

Good idea. Done.

>69 timspalding: Thanks!

I think it could be a lot more effective just to allow filtering by group membership.

Maybe. I think, however, that having groups and lists linked would build community and offer entry points and links between them.

Thinking more about this one. I'm certainly all in favour of community building, cross-linking, etc. But I think there could still be times when a filter would be useful and would prevent unnecessary reduplication. Maybe we could have both?

As part of the group zeitgeist, there could be sections for lists that the group members participate in (both raw--lots of members participating--and weighted--group members participate in a given list more than LT members as a whole), with links directly to the sublists formed from group members' contributions.

Could the lists show our default cover when the book doesn't have one? It looks uneven when there are lots of gaps. This is especially striking in something like most-anticipated future releases.

Also, I'd like a link somewhere by the "x participating members" to see the names of those members, as links to their sub-lists.

So, what happens when people have created their long personal lists and done their blackballing, and then the list creator comes back a month later and decides to restrict the list to 5 items each and disable blackballing? Does all the extra information just disappear?

I think that eventually it should be impossible for the list creator to change these things after the list has been created. They can always make a new one if they want to try something else. I can understand allowing editing for now since some of the options are new, but in the end I see it causing more harm than good.

>74 _Zoe_:

I've made it so delete only works in first 60 minutes. The others won't affect past lists. But I think you're right, there needs to be some limit.

There's some weird thing where clicking to see other people's lists actually shows my own list, even though it says it's their list. This is happening in the Books Read in 2011 list.

On books with no members:
- and the comments question: I haven't played around with this, but I would think that you need to have a book on your list to comment on it.
- and the blackball/demote/disagree question: If a book has no members endorsing it (say, someone changed his or her mind), but several members blackballing it, should it appear? On the one hand I'd think not, but then maybe if people cared enough to blackball and especially to leave comments about why, then it does seem like that info should stay around somewhere. So my proposal would be to create a special, separated "blackballed" list, which appears at the bottom of the group list and at the bottom of someone's personal list. So, at the level of the personal list: if person A adds some books to a list, and blackballs a couple of other books someone else put on the list, the blackballed books should not show up in the main personal list but in a separate "blackballed" section of that list. Then, at the level of the group list, if a book has only got blackball votes, and no positives/endorsements, it should go in a separate sublist. (The latter probably wouldn't happen much, but it might.)

As for the language of blackball, etc., I'd be tempted to have something like "disagree" or "remove."

Slightly off-topic, but prompted by a thread in the French Connection group: what about something similar for lists of authors?

Is there another thread where we can discuss/suggest other desired list-related features?

Maybe where it says "Lists: (users)" and "Thumbs down: (users)", it could also say how many people have listed it or thumbed it down? So "Lists (12): (users)", etc.

Are member lists capped at 50, or is it just a coincidence that I've seen several with 50 items and none with more?

I think there's something really weird going on. Like member lists are showing random other books from the list in order to get to 50, if there are at least 50 items in the list and the members haven't listed that many themselves.

I'm still not really happy with the Add to Your List and Thumbs Down links being at the top and larger than everything else. I'd rather highlight information. Add to Your List and Thumbs Down could go at the right of the score line.

Also, once we have the collection checkmarks somewhere, the absence of that other basic collection is going to be very noticeable.... You know, the information that's at the heart of listsofbests....

There's some weird thing where clicking to see other people's lists actually shows my own list, even though it says it's their list. This is happening in the Books Read in 2011 list.

I'm not seeing that. Describe how?

I think there's something really weird going on. Like member lists are showing random other books from the list in order to get to 50, if there are at least 50 items in the list and the members haven't listed that many themselves.

Show me an example?

I'm still not really happy with the Add to Your List and Thumbs Down links being at the top and larger than everything else. I'd rather highlight information. Add to Your List and Thumbs Down could go at the right of the score line.

I disagree.

Also, once we have the collection checkmarks somewhere, the absence of that other basic collection is going to be very noticeable.... You know, the information that's at the heart of listsofbests....

Coming.

There's some weird thing where clicking to see other people's lists actually shows my own list, even though it says it's their list. This is happening in the Books Read in 2011 list.

I'm not seeing that. Describe how?

I click on the name of a person who's voted for a book, and I see my own exact list of 10 books, even though it says twice on the page that it's their list.

I think there's something really weird going on. Like member lists are showing random other books from the list in order to get to 50, if there are at least 50 items in the list and the members haven't listed that many themselves.

Show me an example?

Best Books Read in 2011. The main page says that I'm the only one who's listed Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, for example, but I see it on everyone else's lists. Maybe it's a browser thing? I'm using Chrome.

I'm still not really happy with the Add to Your List and Thumbs Down links being at the top and larger than everything else. I'd rather highlight information. Add to Your List and Thumbs Down could go at the right of the score line.

I disagree.

I guess it depends on how you see people interacting with lists. Is the main thing to come, state your opinion, and go away, or is the main thing to refer back to the list (possibly many times) for information about other people's views? The voting buttons are generally only interesting once; on the next 99 visits they're just noise.

Coming.

Awesome :D

You know, the information that's at the heart of listsofbests....

Coming.

Really!? A "read" indicator? That might really make me want to use this feature, since I've been wanting a way to track my reading (although privacy might still be an issue). It'd be fun, though, to be able to have a list of something like the 1001 books, and then make my own sub-list of the ones I've read - or failing that, at least to have checkmarks to see which ones I've marked as read, while looking at someone else's list.

Funny, I thought _Zoe_ meant star ratings! :-D

I click on the name of a person who's voted for a book, and I see my own exact list of 10 books, even though it says twice on the page that it's their list.

Lead me through a specific example. I don't get this. ALL other users give you your list?!

>88 timspalding: Well, all two of them.

Here's a partial picture:



She did not actually list that third book.

Oh, this is actually a subset of the other problem. It just happens that all books on the list are also on my list. So the people who have only added a couple of books are having their list filled out by other books from the list.

Collection checkmarks have been added, beneath the numbers.

>89 _Zoe_:

Will check out.

Confirmed. Working on it. I'm in your account. Mwahahaha.

Eek!

> 77
but I would think that you need to have a book on your list to comment on it.

At first blush, that seems reasonable. But why shouldn't I be able to comment to say why I disagree with a book being on the list?

The bug with all books being on so-and-so's list is fixed. Thanks.

At first blush, that seems reasonable. But why shouldn't I be able to comment to say why I disagree with a book being on the list?

Right. That's my feeling.

93, 94 -ok, so could that not be linked to whatever "blackballing" ends up being called, and that separated as a separate (sub)list, per my suggestion in 77?

Or even if it's not linked to blackballing, perhaps a separate sublist could be created for any books you don't have on your own list, but have commented on from a group list.

>94 timspalding: Thanks!

I think the real question is whether non-listers should each be allowed a single comment, or whether each item on a list should have an embedded Talk thread.

I should clarify that I think it should be possible to comment on neutral books as well, not just those that I've listed or blackballed.

Also, I think each list should have an embedded Talk thread at the bottom, like the GoodReads ones do.

And a trivial point, but "thumbed down" would be much better than "thumbs downed".

Glad to see the checkmarks. Thanks! But the checkmarks underneath the numbers instead of next to them seems... messy.

Hey Tim, any chance of getting periods next to the number (he asks innocently)?

>99 _Zoe_: - Shudder. Yes, yes it would.

So... I clicked on a wrong book by accident (correct name/wrong author). I see I can remove that book from my own list. I cannot, however, remove it from the aggregate list. I can thumb it down. Is that all I am allowed to do?

And a trivial point, but "thumbed down" would be much better than "thumbs downed".Glad to see the checkmarks. Thanks! But the checkmarks underneath the numbers instead of next to them seems... messy.

I think it's messier the other way. I don't want to survey the whole list and then make the column extra wide if a single entry 99 down is held by you. It would look odd. I'm content.

Also, I think each list should have an embedded Talk thread at the bottom

I need to think about this. I'm going to do everything else before I add either comments or that. Opinions wanted.

Could you put the name of the list in the browser header bar? That way I wouldn't have to scroll to the top of the list to remember what list it is.

This may already be true but I think that 'Your list' and "Thumbs downed' should have points systems independent of one another.

#103 by @timspalding> It would look odd. I'm content.

Well, bully for you. I, on the other hand, find the lists unusable for easily scanning to see which books I have and don't. Hopefully you mainly created lists for your own contentment. ;)

This may already be true but I think that 'Your list' and "Thumbs downed' should have points systems independent of one another.

Explain this to me?

Well, bully for you. I, on the other hand, find the lists unusable for easily scanning to see which books I have and don't.

Because the check is next to the number by being directly under it, not to the right. Not impressed by that. If it's unusable, then the version you want is 95% unusable.

#107 by @timspalding> I'm honestly at a loss to explain this to you, Tim. It's kind of like the "thumbs downed". I honestly have no idea why anyone would possibly ever think that was preferable, much less poll the audience. It just seems self evident that when you make a list, you put the checks to the left of the items (numbered or otherwise) so you can easily see which ones have checks when you scan down the list. I guess I'll have to poll the audience, too.

Currently, colored checkmarks show up under the numbersETA: Maybe part of the misunderstanding was that I was really asking for was for the checks to be to the left, not right.

>103 timspalding: I think that allowing people to comment on an item on their own list is important and non-controversial, so I wouldn't leave that until the very end. Our comments could show only on our own sub-list pages for now.

The next step could be to show our comments only on our sub-pages, but add an icon next to our name in the list indicating that we do have a comment for a given book. (Though it would be nice and still unobtrusive if the comment showed just by mousing over the comment icon.)

The things that require thought are what to do for comments on books that we haven't listed, and whether there should be any Talk-like functionality beyond individual comments. But there's no need to put the whole comment thing on hold while thinking about those particular issues.

If I'm understanding the current state of things then the first book in an ordered list is awarded 4 points and then the next book is awarded something less than 4 and so forth...my original thinking was that books thumbed down should use the same method of subtracting points.

But that was based on an assumption that 'Thumbs downed' would also be rank ordered if 'Your list' is rank ordered...and I'm not sure that my assumption is correct.

Basically, the logical side of my brain wants an equal points system for both sides of the coin.

It does strike me as a bit odd when a book with 7 people in favour and seven people opposed ends up with a score of +12. I'd be happy if we could rank our thumbed-down books as well.

But I also wonder whether we should have a way to note ties on our own lists. I might have a strong opinion about first, second, and third places, but just want to give everything after that equal value.

Could you put the name of the list in the browser header bar?

Done.

my original thinking was that books thumbed down should use the same method of subtracting points

Right. No. Thumbs-down are all worth the same. You can't reorder them. I can see it both ways, but I think the situation is complex enough.

It does strike me as a bit odd when a book with 7 people in favour and seven people opposed ends up with a score of +12. I'd be happy if we could rank our thumbed-down books as well.

Thumbs-down is worth less than thumbs up. This is intentional. "This is great" should trump "Boo!"

Thumbs-down is worth less than thumbs up. This is intentional. "This is great" should trump "Boo!"

But we don't just have "this is great". We also have "this is pretty good" (say, #25). Why should that trump Worst Book Ever? It would make more sense if the two sides balanced out.

I don't buy the complexity argument there at all (though I'll concede the point about ties, for now). Specify "worst" beside the number 1 in our thumbed-down list, and you're good to go. It would actually make the overall rankings easier to understand, too.

re: 113

I get what you're saying but won't "boo" eventually trump "great" once 'Your list' grows past a certain number of books?

And "great" would always trump "boo" if the thumbed down books started by subtracting 3 points and went from there.

Just my two cents and I won't be too bothered if the point system stays as is.

I'd also like to put in another vote for getting the next-page links at the bottom of the page too.

Done. Only happens if there are five books on the page.

>116 timspalding: Thanks.

Oh, but when I click on the next page link at the bottom, I still want to end up at the top of the new page.

I get what you're saying but won't "boo" eventually trump "great" once 'Your list' grows past a certain number of books?

True. It happens at 16.

The score formula for a ranked list is:

In list: (1 / SQRT( rank )) * 4
Thumbs down: -1

This means:

1 : 4
2 : 2.83
3 : 2.31
4 : 2
5 : 1.79
6 : 1.63
7 : 1.51
8 : 1.41
9 : 1.33
10 : 1.26
11 : 1.21
12 : 1.15
13 : 1.11
14 : 1.07
15 : 1.03
16 : 1
17 : 0.97
18 : 0.94
19 : 0.92
20 : 0.89

What if we could rank our boos, but they were offset a bit from the positive numbers? So a #1 boo is worth a #4 great, #2 is worth #5, and so on. It would still give the positive votes a bit of an advantage, but it wouldn't be nearly as extreme.

(I'd be happier with #1 boo = #2 great, or better yet #1 boo = #1 great, but a somewhat more balanced system would still be preferable to the status quo.)

I think giving significant (or any) preference to positive votes will just end up skewing the lists toward the books that the most people have heard of, rather than the ones that may be obscure but are most appropriate for the list. And then the whole feature will be a lot less interesting.

ETA: As has now been demonstrated on the Great Books About Language list. The top book* is very well-known, but has as many people opposed as in favour. Sheer popularity (in the sense of how much a book is known and read) is already easy to measure, though. We can just go to the "language" tag page to find out about Eats, Shoots and Leaves. And at this rate The Mother Tongue will soon be next on the list, despite having more opposed than in favour. Sort of defeats the whole purpose of down-voting.

*Clarification: The top book at the time was Eats, Shoots and Leaves.

Translation bug: "Thumbs downed" (or "Thumbed down") needs two forms, one for singular (used in the "Thumbs downed | Remove" by the book title) and one for plural (used under Your list in the green box).

There is a more obvious, more technical bug as well, go to se.librarything.com/list/34/all/Favourite-Books and look at the star ratings.

Maybe this has been mentioned above, though I can't find it, but isn't it strange that someone's personal list includes thumbed-down books?

Looking at Biggest disappointments www.librarything.com/list/35/all/Biggest-Disappointments , I can see that Crypto-Willobie disagrees with American Gods being a disappointment, but going to his personal list, www.librarything.com/list/35/Crypto-Willobie/Biggest-Disappointments, it's listed there (without any clues to that he actually disagrees with it being a disappointment).

Apologies if this has been mentioned before, but if so I couldn't find it.

We're shortly going to need:

-A "Member's Lists" section/flip on the Profile page
-Tags for lists

I'm so pleased with this.

121>

Wow, that really does make the lists a lot less interesting, when "Lots of people have heard of this but most don't think it belongs on the list" gets a higher rank than "Not as many people have heard of this, but everyone who has loves it."

#124

God, please, no tags on lists.

#121

No offense meant, but if you're just going to look at the tags page, why the heck do we need the list feature in the first place?!?!?!?

> 34

#33 by lilithcat> It's a difference of intention and meaning.

No, I get where you're coming from. I'm just pointing out that there's no "cost" difference. Does that make sense?

Y'know, having played with this for a while now, I'm finding that there is a cost difference. I am not as inclined to "add a book to your list" as I was to "thumbs up" a book. So I'm much less engaged with the list feature than I had been.

121> ETA: As has now been demonstrated on the Great Books About Language list. The top book* is very well-known, but has as many people opposed as in favour.

I think part of this is that before when people thumbed items on the list there was no order and now what had been an unordered list was turned into an ordered one. So I bet there are a fair number of people who have Eats, Shoots, and Leaves as their number one who never intended it to be number one.

#129 by @lilithcat> So I'm much less engaged with the list feature than I had been.

Fair enough. I, on the other hand, was less engaged by the thumbs up version. I just couldn't see myself going through a list of 100 books to thumbs them up. On the other hand, adding ten books to a personal list is much more appealing to me.

So I guess we cancel each other out on the engagement factor. ;)

>131 brightcopy:

Oh, I dunno: which of you is more intense in your disengagement?

I hasten to add: Meant to be good-natured ribbing of our community's tendency to get into the nitty gritty, no offense intended.

>128 gilroy: The intention was for lists to create different results from tag pages. It's only the unbalanced weighting of votes that's making the two converge.

>130 jjwilson61: Yeah, I think people's lists should only end up ranked if they deliberately rank them. Not a top-priority feature (especially with the way down-voting works right now; I'll end up converting all my lists to unranked anyway), but it would be nice to have.

I don't think that will actually address the underlying problem, though. If downvotes don't actually make a difference, we might as well not have them at all. As the number of voters increases, the subject lists will just become duplicates of the tag pages, where popularity trumps relevance.

(And I still can't believe that the weighted view of the tag pages was accidentally removed and never restored! ARGH.)

So I guess we cancel each other out on the engagement factor. ;)

Of course, if we had two different kinds of lists then everyone could be engaged ;)

Question: if a list creator goes back and edits a list so that thumbs down aren't allowed, should previous thumbs down be erased? Thoughts?

I think as Tim has sort of hinted before with the comments on works not allowing them to be deleted, at some point a list becomes "public property". I would think at that point, it should get locked down on the settings. There'd still be your own copy of the list, though.

Might be nice to have private lists to fill in the gap for the times when you would want something of your own you can fiddle with later, though.

I think previous thumbs down should still be stored on the individuals' lists, even if they aren't counted.

I've actually been starting to wonder whether it should just be possible for everyone to flip between various ranking methods....

That strikes me as a sensible compromise, should list creators continue to have power over the lists.

> 135

I think as Tim has sort of hinted before with the comments on works not allowing them to be deleted

I think that's a disservice if the individual inserting a book into a list suddenly realizes that it doesn't belong there (within moments, not within months) and cannot have the deleted entry removed from the aggregate list where it will forever remain inappropriate (but will always be credited to the person who made that mistaken entry).

:(

I think giving significant (or any) preference to positive votes will just end up skewing the lists toward the books that the most people have heard of, rather than the ones that may be obscure but are most appropriate for the list. And then the whole feature will be a lot less interesting.

I think you're getting distracted by theory. Of course it will be skewed toward books that the most people have heard of! Down-votes don't help that. If you haven't heard of a book, you're not going to down-vote it.

Even if they could in theory, they won't in practice. People include the book on their list six times more often than they thumbs-down it.

ETA: As has now been demonstrated on the Great Books About Language list. The top book* is very well-known, but has as many people opposed as in favour. Sheer popularity (in the sense of how much a book is known and read) is already easy to measure, though. We can just go to the "language" tag page to find out about Eats, Shoots and Leaves. And at this rate The Mother Tongue will soon be next on the list, despite having more opposed than in favour. Sort of defeats the whole purpose of down-voting.

I really don't see what down-voting has to do with it. Popular books will appear on more lists.

Now, I get your larger point. Lists will inevitably skew toward popular books. I propose that there be a "weighted" sort that takes that into account. Basically, instead of being by score, it would be by score divided by popularity. (Probably score divided by the square root of popularity plus 500, or something.)

Maybe this has been mentioned above, though I can't find it, but isn't it strange that someone's personal list includes thumbed-down books?

I'm on the fence about thumbs-downing generally, but, no, I think it's interesting to know what books someone thinks doesn't belong. What we hate is interesting.

-A "Member's Lists" section/flip on the Profile page
-Tags for lists

Yep.

Oh, I dunno: which of you is more intense in your disengagement?

That begs the question whether the intensity of an opinion is something we should capture or not. And that's the question they're arguing too!

If downvotes don't actually make a difference…

They do make a difference.

Of course, if we had two different kinds of lists then everyone could be engaged ;)

No, engagement will be split between two different types of lists, not between people who want one or the other but between the 1% who want one or the other and the 99% who find the whole distinction trivial.

I've actually been starting to wonder whether it should just be possible for everyone to flip between various ranking methods....

It is possible. Your list can be ranked or un-ranked. Use the little preferences "gear" on your list.

I think that's a disservice if the individual inserting a book into a list suddenly realizes that it doesn't belong there (within moments, not within months) and cannot have the deleted entry removed from the aggregate list where it will forever remain inappropriate (but will always be credited to the person who made that mistaken entry).

No, I hear you. How about that you can remove it from the list if:

1. Nobody has added it to their list or thumbed it down.

I wonder if we should add "You added it."

My concern is that some lists have such books by their very nature. For example, "What's the best Shakespeare play?" has all the plays on it, even though nobody thinks some of them are in fact the best.

No, I hear you. How about that you can remove it from the list if:

1. Nobody has added it to their list or thumbed it down.

That suits me. Even a time limit suits me.

I wonder if we should add "You added it."

That's redundant. We don't nned it. I can see each book in my own list of books.

My concern is that some lists have such books by their very nature

Only the person who entered it will be able to remove it so, unless (as in your example) the original person didn't enter all of the Shakespeare's play, that should not matter.

139>

You're missing the point

On the "best books about language" list, "Eats, Shoots, and Leaves" is currently in second place. It is on seven lists and has eight thumbs down -- net opinion is negative. Yet it appears above two books (The Power of Babel and Le Ton Beau de Marot that are on four lists each and have zero thumbs down -- unanimous acclamation, but less well-known. In what universe does this make sense other than as a proxy for number of copies on LT?

>142 lorax: Exactly.

I've actually been starting to wonder whether it should just be possible for everyone to flip between various ranking methods....

It is possible. Your list can be ranked or un-ranked. Use the little preferences "gear" on your list.

No, I mean the whole list. I've switched back and forth a few times on some of the lists that I created; it's interesting to compare the results, and non-creators might also appreciate that option.

>142 lorax:

Okay, I've changed the algorithm. It was:

1 / SQRT( rank )

it is now

1 / rank to the power of .25

This comes out to be:

1 : 4
2 : 3.36
3 : 3.04
4 : 2.83
5 : 2.67
6 : 2.56
7 : 2.46
8 : 2.38
9 : 2.31
10 : 2.25
11 : 2.2
12 : 2.15
13 : 2.11
14 : 2.07
15 : 2.03
16 : 2

The result is that being in first place in a member's list doesn't help a book that much. The "grade" of the ranking hill is shallower.

Thumbs-down is worth -2. The result is that "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" is at number 4. I think this is fair. A lot of people think it's a great book about language. I feel that allowing one thumbs-down vote to cancel out one up vote would be the equivalent of allowing people to shout down others.

it's interesting to compare the results, and non-creators might also appreciate that option

About two people will enjoy that :)

I'm going to work on bigger things now. There are still big elements missing here!

>144 timspalding: I'm pretty sure this is just going to conceal the problem while the lists have small numbers of voters. If the downvotes aren't actually equal, the lists are still going to approach the popularity-based tag lists as the number of participants increases.

As it is, you're letting the positive people "out-shout" the negative. And we already have a whole separate option for this, disabling negative votes entirely! If everyone has an equal say, where a #1 positive equals a #1 negative, then no one is out-shouting anyone.

Do we really need to ask for a third option that allows equal negatives?

I'm not sure what I think about the shallower vs. steeper grade in general. I'd like to wait a while until the lists are more developed and then compare some concrete examples.

No, engagement will be split between two different types of lists, not between people who want one or the other but between the 1% who want one or the other and the 99% who find the whole distinction trivial.

Finally, I get to be part of the 1%!

Woo ho!

How about that you can remove it from the list if:
1. Nobody has added it to their list or thumbed it down.

That sounds good. Perhaps add: "or commented on it"?

That then goes back to the question about how to display thumbs-down and comments:

I'm on the fence about thumbs-downing generally, but, no, I think it's interesting to know what books someone thinks doesn't belong. What we hate is interesting.
Sure it's interesting to know what the person thinks doesn't belong, but if it's going to be there, it needs to be clearly indicated as such on someone's personal list. Right now they're all mixed up, with no indication that someone didn't want the book there.

So what about my suggestion above to separate the books someone's given thumbs down, and list them separately below the other list. (The same could be done for comment-only books where someone hasn't added a book to a personal list but has commented on it.)

144) I dislike the change in 144.

144>

I feel that allowing one thumbs-down vote to cancel out one up vote would be the equivalent of allowing people to shout down others.

But allowing one thumbs-up to cancel out two thumbs-down isn't?

This is an improvement, however. How much is being on a list worth if there's 's only one item on it? It seems counterintuitive for the "this is the only book on this list I've heard of" first-place vote to outrank third place on an extensive list of "I've read all of these and carefully ranked them" -- privileging the votes of the uninformed.

What we hate is interesting

I couldn't agree more, but I take issue with the characterization of thumbs-down as hating something. Many of the lists take the form of "Best books about X"; saying "no, this isn't about X" via a thumbs-down isn't at all about the quality of the book. (Galileo's Daughter, for instance, is on the Science list. I think it's a good book, but I don't really think it's about science. Statements like that -- that a thumbs-down is invariably an opinion about the quality of the book -- mean I haven't expressed that opinion.) Or the "Books you should have read but haven't"; how to say "no, actually I have read that" other than by thumbing it down?

I've started a separate conversation about embedded Talk topics, suggested by Zoe.

http://www.librarything.com/topic/131725

I'd like to wait a while until the lists are more developed and then compare some concrete examples.

That's going to be my watchword for a while here, on all these scoring issues.

Finally, I get to be part of the 1%!

You are the enemy!

Sure it's interesting to know what the person thinks doesn't belong, but if it's going to be there, it needs to be clearly indicated as such on someone's personal list.

Isn't it?

144) I dislike the change in 144.

Thanks. Which aspect of it--the shallower descent, or the down-vote being relatively more powerful?

privileging the votes of the uninformed

Yeah, but there's also something gross about a popular book getting burried because the cognoscenti don't like it. Best books about language? Well, to you "Eats, Shoots and Leaves" isn't about language. I too wouldn't classify it as such. But other people feel differently. I don't think they should be shouted down.

I couldn't agree more, but I take issue with the characterization of thumbs-down as hating something

Right. That's the problem. It embraces both dislike and inappopriateness. No, I'm not going to have two such options. Let's put that in the comments.

When I created this list I wrote a couple-sentence description, but now it is not there, and I can't remember exactly what I said :-(

Me: Sure it's interesting to know what the person thinks doesn't belong, but if it's going to be there, it needs to be clearly indicated as such on someone's personal list.

Tim: Isn't it?

No. If I look at Lorax's science list, I can't tell that she's given thumbs down to Galileo's Daughter. It's just on the list, at #5.

http://www.librarything.com/list/45/lorax/Best-Science-Books-for-Non-Scientists

That should definitely be marked as a thumbs down somehow, but I also think it should be removed from the regular ordered list, and put somewhere separate. It doesn't make sense to have it mixed in.

this whole thing is waaaay too complicated for me... if I need a list I think I will just make it one of my collections. I think this is for people that would like to see the overall most popular books in a category. As if we didn't have enough TBR books on our shelves already! :)

me too, mysterymax. I've been semi-following this race of the infinitesimal distinctions unrecognizable by the casual user, and my desire to look at or create lists has been completely eradicated. Yay.

#158 by @Bookmarque> Next up, I recommend touring the sausage factory.

yup, sucks the joy right out of it doesn't it?

That should definitely be marked as a thumbs down somehow, but I also think it should be removed from the regular ordered list, and put somewhere separate. It doesn't make sense to have it mixed in.

Oh! Got it. That's a bug. Will fix.

I think this is for people that would like to see the overall most popular books in a category. As if we didn't have enough TBR books on our shelves already!

Right. This isn't for people who want to make private lists of items within their library. That's what tags and collections are for.

> 149

Sure it's interesting to know what the person thinks doesn't belong, but if it's going to be there, it needs to be clearly indicated

Actually, I wouldn't even have to remove my mistaken entry book from an aggregate list if I could comment beside the entry that it was indeed a mistaken entry.

Are we going to be able to edit our own comments?

#154 by @timspalding> You are the enemy!

Looking back at each of the polls we posted and our own positions, I think we're BOTH part of the 1%... X)

(Okay, not 1% exactly, but small minority.)

154) the shallower descent. Other than the list I put together for favorites, wherein all are 5 stars, I think there should be a sharper and quicker impact on placement on a numbered list.

Gut feeling, no basis for it. Something about having the ability to have a longer list with the realization that the lower ranked ones wed going to have less impact on the list. You really have to want to include a book once you are down below 1. Much harder to reach that point now.

> 132

no offense intended.

None taken.

Right. This isn't for people who want to make private lists of items within their library. That's what tags and collections are for.
Errg. What about those of us who want to make (possibly private, but at least personal) lists of items not in our library, like a list of books I want to read, or a list of books a group is collectively trying to read, such as these groups:
http://www.librarything.com/groups/1001bookstoreadbefo
http://www.librarything.com/groups/manbookerreadinggrou

Tags and collections are just really not user-friendly for that purpose (for seeing a whole list and then keeping track of which ones I have or haven't read, or someone else has or hasn't read.)

Is there a way to use a Lists feature for that purpose?

The more I look at the feature, the less use I see in it. I don't feel like its worth the time and effort to develop.

Will we eventually have a way to see which lists we've participated in?

Gut feeling, no basis for it. Something about having the ability to have a longer list with the realization that the lower ranked ones wed going to have less impact on the list. You really have to want to include a book once you are down below 1. Much harder to reach that point now.

I'm confused. You're saying there's no point in contributing past #1? 4 vs. 3.36? That seems a modest slope, especially since it's another 15 before it goes below 2. Past score of #1? That happens past 200.

Will we eventually have a way to see which lists we've participated in?

Yes. Coming.

The more I look at the feature, the less use I see in it. I don't feel like its worth the time and effort to develop.

That's fine. This has long been one of the most-requested features. Nothing will please everyone.

Errg. What about those of us who want to make (possibly private, but at least personal) lists of items not in our library, like a list of books I want to read, or a list of books a group is collectively trying to read, such as these groups:

This doesn't work for that, why?

#167

Not every feature is going to be interesting for every user. The fact that there has been lots of interest on the New features talk topics on this feature, and a reasonable amount of activity on the lists themselves despite it being still in development shows that many people do find it interesting.

This doesn't work for that, why?

By this I'm assuming you mean this new feature, right?

Ok, here's what I'd ideally like:

-- A list of, say, all the Booker prize winners, or of recommended reading for all X Studies students; ideally that list could be sorted by author or something.

-- A checkbox or other way I could indicate I'd read it.

-- The ability to choose whether to keep my reading progress private, just for my own use, or to make it public.

The last of those criteria makes the current feature, for me, not useable for that purpose, but even putting that criterion aside, I'm not sure how well this feature would work for reading tracking. Any suggestions? One, it's always sorted by the most popular things on the list. Two, there's currently not a quick way of scanning the list to see which ones I've read. Three, the lists are limited to 100 books per page. Now, those issues are certainly fixable, but #2 is crucial for using for reading tracking, and #1 highly desireable.

I don't think this is a general all-purpose reading tracker.

172. Sure, as currently designed. But that could be a cool use of Lists, or a cool kind of list.

#173 by @rsterling> And, likely, something people will use lists for that, as long as they don't mind the public part of it. Because you can still create a global list "What I'm reading in 2012" and your personal copy of the list will work for your own reading list.

The only thing (beyond the privacy) it needs to fill the role is a checkmark tied in with a default Read (past tense) collection. Though you can sorta fudge that right now by putting them all in the default To Read and taking them out when done. Kind of reverse of what you'd expect, though. And apparently everyone loves the checkmark under the number instead of beside it, so you've already got that, too. ;)

169) typing on the phone is hard.

It used to be that you'd reach something below score of 1 around book 16 on a list. I've forgotten now what that was.

I like the fact that you can include a lot of books on your own list, depending on type of list, but I also liked how book 16+ was at an overall list score point below a thumbs down point (if thumbs down was around 1).

I realize lists and discussion have been on-going for a long while now. I only found them yesterday and my thoughts are barely coherent.

Long member lists are now constrained with a "more":

Was:


Now:

"Active list" algorithm has been improved, updated. Dystopias FTW!

> 169
Errg. What about those of us who want to make (possibly private, but at least personal) lists of items not in our library, like a list of books I want to read, or a list of books a group is collectively trying to read, such as these groups:

This doesn't work for that, why?

Could there be a list type where the list creator is the only one that can add books and without voting? This would make the existing structure more useful for personal lists as well as lists based on objective criteria (like books assigned in such and such a course) as opposed to the subjective ones we see a lot of now (like best fantasy novel). Checkmarks could serve as the tracking feature.

Those objective lists could also be built collaboratively but there would need to be some ability to curate the list if incorrect items got on it.

Wow, really wishing there was an ability to hold off on "publishing" a list until you've got the initial setup.

I created the list Funny Novels Post-1960. Only it didn't start as 1960. It was much further and kept creeping back as I accidentally added stuff before remembering the date was earlier than the one I had set. Would have been very useful to be able to delete and keep it from going live while I got everything sorted out.

(Of course, I think it's going to be a difficult list, anyway, due to the date requirement. I was just trying to get something along the lines of "modern" novels without using that vague term.)

Various stuff coming up later. Dinner with friend now.

Yeah, but there's also something gross about a popular book getting burried because the cognoscenti don't like it.

What's wrong with this? It seems reasonable to me that an entertaining book like The Mother Tongue that also happens to be overflowing with factual errors wouldn't end up at the top of the list.

Why should those who are more informed have less of a say? Why should they be shouted down (which is what happens when one group is speaking louder than another: i.e., when some votes are worth more), rather than giving everyone an equal say? How does it make sense to talk about some people being shouted down when everyone is speaking at an equal volume, but not in the other case?

When I created this list I wrote a couple-sentence description, but now it is not there, and I can't remember exactly what I said :-(

This happened to me at least once as well, but I thought I had imagined it or clicked something wrong.

I definitely think there will be demand for fixed lists like 1001 Books, Booker Winners, etc. Not sure about the best way to do it, though.

Tim: Yeah, but there's also something gross about a popular book getting burried because the cognoscenti don't like it.

#181 by @_Zoe_> Why should those who are more informed have less of a say?

So many assumptions packed into that, eh Zoe? :D

Oh, and BTW, I also ran into the disappearing description when I created a list. Bummer.

I've been having trouble with the Favorite Books list in that it's really hard to rate different sorts of books against each other. So then I made it unsorted, but some of those books I really do like less than the others. It think it might go a long way to solving my problem if we could make several books the same rank. So I could have 5 books that were all really good but I really can't decide between them, so I could rank them all at first place and go from there.

I prefer Tim's modified scale because there isn't as much difference between 1 and 2 and with lists like Favorite Books there isn't likely to be much difference in preference between the first and second ranked books. I think I'd prefer the algorithm to be linear but I can see that that would lead to problems with negative numbers after a while.

Not sure if this has been suggested before, but it'd be nice to have a list of the participating members somewhere rather than having to comb through the various books on the list. Could basically work like the "Helpers" box on the bottom-right of the Series pages. List each member with the number of books on their list in parentheses. Names would be clickable, taking you to their list.

>185 brightcopy: Yup.

Shouldn't these two:

http://www.librarything.com/list/58/all/Books-That-Made-Me-Cry
http://www.librarything.com/list/59/all/Books-That-Made-Me-Cry

. . . be combined, somehow? Should it be possible to have two lists with the exact same title?

#187 by @foggidawn> I'm wondering if that's a bug related to the first of those two having no title. You can put anything you want in the url, like:

http://www.librarything.com/list/58/all/Title-That-I-Made-Up

I wonder if LT is somehow using list 59's title for the blank 58 as well.

Hmm, more evidence. All the links to the members' individual lists are like:

http://www.librarything.com/list//SqueakyChu/

That's a bad sign.

(Of course, it's also weird that you can have no title anyway.)

ETA: Oh, and the "About this list" has blanks for "Started by:" and "Type:". Yeah, that's definitely a bug.

It's weird to show empty parentheses when a work has no ratings. Either say something like (unrated) or leave them out entirely.

Is there some workaround for books that don't yet show up in search?

> 190

A manual entry?

I haven't read any of the books on the "Novels that you shouldn't waste your time on" list. Yay me!

Anyway, the juxtaposition of "Add to your list" and "Thumb down" strikes me as strange. As I gather, they're essentially equivalent actions (one shifting a book upwards, one downwars), yet you wouldn't guess that from the names.

Forgive me if this has been asked before, but would it make sense for us to be able to "star", "heart" or "favorite" a list? Having a "favorited" section would aid in the ability to follow what transpires on certain interesting lists, whether we have participated in them or not.

Does "thumbs down" mean "This book shouldn't be on the list"? Do I end up creating a list?

Maybe someone could walk me through it. Where is the explanation for what lists are and how they work?

Bug Work Around

If you want a description on your list, you need to save it, and then edit it. The description "takes" with the edit, though not on the initial creation.

(Sorry if this has been posted before)

I'm liking the lists. One of my favorite type of lists is the most anticipated/looking forward to/new release sort of list. A problem that I don't know I have a solution for is what to do as those type of lists become outdated when the books are actually published. Without the ability to delete books from a list like that, it's quickly going to become cluttered and less useful. A workaround would be to create a looking forward to in 2012, or break it down in 6 month intervals or something, but the problem with that is then you have a bunch of lists taking up space that aren't useful or interesting anymore. Is there a way to delete lists that go dormant after a period of time?

>196 tottman: As we go forward, you're right that lists like "most anticipated 2012 releases" or "most anticipated spring 2012 releases" would probably be better.

But I think that, like groups, dormant lists will just end up falling out of sight eventually. They won't do much harm, and so won't need to be deleted.

Lists now list lists by contact of yours—interesting libraries, etc.

198 - I see that on the individual lists' pages, but you said list lists: is there a list of lists, sorted by type of contact? In other words, is there a page or section of a page somewhere that points me to the lists my contacts have made / contributed to?

>198 timspalding:. Thanks. I'd still like a complete list of participants, though.

I really hope that someone, anyone, is keeping up with all of this (I certainly am not) and will be able to write the help files/blog release notes!

Seriously, the development cycle and the use cases have gone way beyond my understanding. Of course, I am a bear of very little brain, so that is to be expected. Other, even more cleverer users, will have to have all this explained to them when it is released into the wild.

I think there is a lot of development work to go before it is released. There are a lot of things still missing:
- display only those list entries that you own
- explain what the sort by 'Date' actually means
- Display which lists you have contributed to
- Display which lists you have starred, which requires that you can star lists you are interested in
- ability to delete 'null' entries (where the work has been combined out of existence)
- a view (or perhaps search) by Thingamabrarian, so that you can see which lists they have contributed to
- visibility from work page (but Tim has indicated that is coming).

If I was at all interested in this feature as a long-term goer, I'd think it was crying out for tags. As it is, I think it has gone in entirely the wrong direction and should have started out with individual lists (which would have given private users some investment/benefit from the exercise) and then added the option for aggregation and then gone for the free for all.

As it is, I think it has gone in entirely the wrong direction

I'm still hoping there's more to come. Assuming the kinks get ironed out, the current lists seem to work fine for what they are. However, there are so many things one could do with a lists feature, things that might also interest people who aren't as interested in the current (social, popularity) kind of list. There were lots of suggestions in previous talk threads:
http://www.librarything.com/topic/75014
http://www.librarything.com/topic/112336
(ETA: There's also this very useful wiki page, which links to many of the previous discussions and suggestions about Lists:
http://www.librarything.com/wiki/index.php/Lists_%28recommended_feature%29 )

At any rate, I think it's too soon to cross Lists off desired features, since many members were asking for other kinds of lists too. Tim did suggest at the outset that this is only a first kind of list. I'm still hoping he can be won over on private lists, reading tracking lists, etc. and I'm sure there are other good ideas in those old threads.

Maybe we could use a poll on private lists...

Yeah, I can see that I'll eventually want to be able to tag lists, and view them based on my own tags (i.e., I'd like the tags to have a personal function, like catalogue tags and not like group tags).

I'm sure the list feature is going to be developed further, so I wouldn't give up on it yet.

reading tracking lists

Can you clarify what you mean by this? Lists that show which ones we've read (so we can record our progress through the 1001 Books, for example), or lists that just record our reading for a given year? I think the first is likely to happen, but the second not so much, because the catalogue already does that.

You can now get a full list of members for a list.

I'd like to use lists for an easily reorderable wishlist and What's on Deck list

#205 by @timspalding> Thanks! But could you reconsider the location and the hidey-ness of it? It's rather clunky to try to click around and see each persons list:

Click show all. Click username. Wait for page load. Click show all. Click next username. Wait for page load. Etc.

And for location, if there's a lot of users participating (which is the point of the feature eventually, right?), it's going to shove down all the lists tremendously. You designed a much better way in the Helpers list on Series pages.

ETA: Though if it's below Related Tags, I suppose many people won't have the room for it without paging down. Bleh. I think the users lists are probably more interesting than the tags.

>205 timspalding: Thanks! Could we also have a "hide" button to go with it?

>206 majkia: Can you not do this now?

Zoe, I suppose I can but it keeps saying what we're doing could disappear, so am waiting for a sign that lists won't evaporate.

Is there any way we would later be able to choose the edition of the book we want? For example, in the list of Ugliest Cover Art (which I've just deleted, by the way), there was no way to bring up the correct book cover for the edition I wanted.

In the meantime, I'll just stick to lists of works in general.

Lists that show which ones we've read (so we can record our progress through the 1001 Books, for example), or lists that just record our reading for a given year?
The former, not the latter. See my earlier comments on reading tracking.

>209 majkia: Oh, good point. I suspect that the lists are going to stay at this point, since they got through the first super-preliminary version, but I guess we can't be sure yet.

>211 rsterling: Good, that's what I thought. Is there some other phrase that would describe it more precisely than "reading tracking"? I'm not sure that reading tracking in general is going to be a separate kind of list, anyway; presumably we'll be able to show reading status for all lists. The key thing for something like the 1001 list is that it's a fixed list, which is the trickier thing to handle.

I just made a list. When I searched for a title, I accidentally clicked the wrong book, but I didn't realize this because the choices disappeared as soon as it was added. By the time I finished adding my books, other people had added books to my list. But now there are two books on the lists that, even when I hit delete, are still present. I dont' want Nancy Drew on my list of books about sisters.

Also, it was somewhat disconcerting to have people adding to the list before I even finished!

Yes, there should be a 'Go Live' or 'Done' button to click before the list is published.

Okay, members and friends links now don't reload the page. To get the "permalink" you need to click on "So-and-so's list."

"Hide" has been added.

"Beta" message has been changed. The data will stick.

I'm not convinced lists should be held back until their creator considers their first list complete.

#215 by @timspalding> Good compromise. Though I do fear the sizing is going to get problematic when you have, say, 100 participants. That's true no matter where you stick it on the screen, of course. Not sure what the solution is. Multiple pages of participants?

Multiple pages of participants

Meh. I can do another "show all" hiding all those after 100 or whatever.

#217 by @timspalding> I think what you're saying is equivalent to multiple pages of participants, just without the link to each page chunk, right? So (show all) shows the first 100. Then maybe (show more) hides the first 100 and shows the next 100, etc.?

So, how to improve the "lists" page? How to list a bunch of lists.

Goodreads does it by showing name and then the top X books in the list. I suppose this is the right answer, although it takes up a lot of room.

My inclination is otherwise to do it like the groups page ( http://www.librarything.com/groups ), with picture, name and basic details. But people aren't adding pictures to lists.

List description bug fixed.

>219 timspalding: I'd just show the cover of the first book.

I've added lists you're voted on and lists you might be interested in. Both are rough. The latter doesn't currently exclude ones you're already voted on...

Probably not worth it, but it'd be cool if it incorporated multiple covers. This is just something I whipped up for Best Science Fiction Novels:



The cover fit algorithm is easier than you probably think. But yeah, it's more complicated than just showing a single cover (especially when figuring out when to re-generate the icon).

(And, of course, I'm assuming there'd be a toggle to switch the lists from just "name of list only" to "names and pictures" to satisfy people who aren't into graphics.)

BTW, for anyone interested in having their colored checkmarks on the left of the numbers:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/131913

This post is specific to the question of using Lists for tracking reading (now or potentially).

Lists that show which ones we've read (so we can record our progress through the 1001 Books, for example),

Incidentally, another obstacle to using the current structure for this purpose is that anyone can add any book, and so LT lists currently can't be limited to the books actually on the 1001 books lists.

I'm not sure how other list sites have gotten around this problem. I know ListofBests makes a distinction between "award" lists, "definitive" lists, and "personal" lists, where the first two can be edited by the community but the latter can't. See here: http://www.listsofbests.com/lists/home/books
But I don't think they've implemented any way to "lock" lists, and people there occasionally complain that someone has deleted a book off the list or added one that doesn't belong.

We have the same risk with "series" and "awards" in CK, but Lists, as they stand, would be perhaps even more problematic, because of the way books are added to them and because there's no way to remove books that don't belong.

Still, I'd love to see a slightly modified kind of list that would allow communal management and reading tracking of some kind. (Perhaps one way to get around the "this book isn't a 1001 book / Booker winner / whatever" problem would be to allow anyone to add books, but have a voting system for deleting books that don't belong. That would allow a community list to get built up easily and quickly, but would also enable some community oversight to limit the books to those that belong.)

Even better would be some kind of integration between series/awards CK pages and lists, which would save a lot of time.

#225 by @rsterling> One possibility would be to use a "publish" feature as has been suggested here before, combined with a "lock" feature. So before a list is published, the creator would add all 1001 books (whew! not going to be much fun with the current interface) to the list and make sure it's right. Then they would lock it. Then they would publish it.

226 - The disadvantage of "locking" though, is that some lists are actually fluid. The 1001 books list has changed across the different versions of Boxhall's books. Award lists need the ability to change too, since new books get added. Also, I think it would be better -- for this kind of list -- that the list be communally maintained, rather than "owned" exclusively by one person.

whew! not going to be much fun {to add 1001+ books} with the current interface
No doubt. But then, we have the CK award page already; hence my suggestion about integrating lists and CK pages somehow. Perhaps there could be a way to "import" a CK page into a list?

#206>

I'd like to use lists for an easily reorderable wishlist and What's on Deck list

Can't you do this already with tags and/or collections?

206 I'd like to use lists for an easily reorderable wishlist and What's on Deck list

228 Can't you do this already with tags and/or collections?

I wasn't the one who posted this, but I have yet to figure out a good, easy, and user-friendly way of using tags and collections to make an ordered wishlist or to-read list. I've given up trying to use LT for that purpose, much as I'd like to use LT as my all-purpose place for keeping track of book-related stuff (wishlists, to read lists, reading progress lists, recommended reading lists for X topic).

Sure, you can hack it with tags and collections, say, by adding numbers to the beginning of the tag list or the beginning of the comments field, then sorting that way, but it's such a pain to try to maintain a rank-ordered system like that using the catalog. If Lists could be designed to make an ordered priority list of what I need to read or buy, where I could easily reorder the list, indicate when I'm "done" or delete something, and have the next thing move right up -- wow, *that* would be really useful (does any other site offer that feature?). I'm sure I'm not the only reader on LT who would think so, either. (Again, though, public vs private lists would be crucial here.)

What do people think about list images? I like em. But I may be in the minority here.

229> Actually, in a lot of ways the Wishlist collection doesn't really work. Works on your wishlist get included in books you share with other people for example. I doubt Tim would consider it but it might be worth moving wishlists from a collection to a list.

#230 by @timspalding> I like them. But then I always think covers brighten up otherwise monotonous text on a website. Maybe it's just the way my brain processes, but it helps me better tune out the extraneous stuff (sidebars, headers, etc.)

I also like the dragging and dropping on Your list page, but... well, I think the extra GUI frills (blue backgrounds, thick borders, etc.) might be just too distracting for actually reading the list. Maybe tone it down?

ETA: Also a bit weird that when you click on your list, you get:

All members > brightcopy's list (profile page)
All members' list | Your list

Seems like the top line should probably just replace the second line.

231 on wishlists: I completely agree. I've thought about purchasing another account so I can separate my wishlist, but then it would be a pain to manage. But then I barely use it now, and don't like it all mixed up, so maybe I'll just delete my wishlist stuff and start using Amazon's again.

When we first started talking about lists, though, I did wonder if it would be a better solution for keeping a wishlist, but the current lists aren't really ideal for that. Also, if wishlists were lists, they would lack the tagging and other features that the catalog has. Probably makes more sense just to make the wishlist collection work better and differently (separate it / don't include it in shared books, recently added, default statistics, etc.).

What happened to the list of lists I've created?

There should also be a "Your Starred" section, once we have stars.

Now that these are getting more popular, it seems like we need lists distinguished by language. I haven't seen any non-English lists yet, but once the feature is announced and more prominent, I'm sure we'll get some. So we need for the system to assign language based on LT version, but maybe also to be able to set or change the language of a list, like we can with groups.

Under "Your Lists," it looks a bit funny if you haven't got any: it's just a little blank space and then the "You might be interested in" heading. Suggestion: perhaps suppress the "Your Lists" heading for people who don't have any, or else put in a little "None yet. Create a list" link.

Also, some instructions would be useful, and the "create a list" lightbox could use a note that lists are public, so people know that before making one. (Still hoping for other options there...) The lightbox also still has the term "blackballing," which seems to have been dropped elsewhere.

I have an anomaly:



See that [Untitled]? The URL is http://www.librarything.com/list/0/all/%5BUntitled%5D

Clicking on it takes me to Best Science Fiction Novels.

I think this may be related to post #187/188.

On reflection, I think I'm not really a fan of lists having pictures beyond the covers. The individual list pages have plenty of pictures already, in the form of covers, and the extra one at the top is just distracting.

And if you eventually want a more graphical representation on the work page, the cover can just stand in for that.

I worked on the main lists page, working on a way of presenting lists and covers. It's preliminary. Let me know what you think of the basic idea.

Works on your wishlist get included in books you share with other people for example.

If members want me to disable that, we can do that. As it is, I think it's useful to know when someone has a book you're interested in. In other respects, you control whether it makes connections or not. If there are other ways people want to improve the wishlist collection, I'm all ears. I am, however, pretty sure that any way of improving it is going to be opposed by as many as favor it.

Yes, wishlists are not orderable. Ordering collections by arbitrary numbers is not a feature. If members insist, we can do that. Or we can consider making lists allow books. But, obviously, adding a book to a list is not going to change how you relate to others.

Why do some lists have covers showing while others don't?

If members want me to disable that, we can do that. As it is, I think it's useful to know when someone has a book you're interested in. In other respects, you control whether it makes connections or not. If there are other ways people want to improve the wishlist collection, I'm all ears.

Good to hear - maybe another thread is needed on this. I know there have been some discussions on this in the past, and I've seen others also say they didn't want wishlist books to show up in shared numbers and calculations.

Can I put in another vote for having the options of comments around votes (or whatever they are called at present), and a talk section linked to a list.

I was going through one list and saw one of my suggestions had been thumbed down - I thought it would be interesting to know why that person thought that way (not disagreeing with their vote just interested in their opinion). A natural place to start this discussion or for them to show their reasoning would be nice.

I like the cover display.

I'd still like to maintain the distinction between lists we've participated in and lists we've created, though. The latter option seems to be gone entirely.

The key list improvements I'd like to see at the moment are:
a) stars
b) comments with votes
c) an embedded discussion thread for the list as a whole

I also think having a way to deal with fixed lists (1001 books, prize winners, etc.) is important. It might be worth starting a new thread specifically about this.

And the reading tracking will become even more desirable once that's done.

Why do some lists have covers showing while others don't?

I was just doing it to the top ?5. If I did it to every one, there'd be thousands of covers on the page and it would take forever to load. We're still testing this out. The answer will be, I suspect, some "spotlighted" ones, lists of others and ways to get full lists.

Good to hear - maybe another thread is needed on this.

Fine. Start one. We can hash it out.

Thumbs up on the new presentation.

240, 247> I've started a new thread here, http://www.librarything.com/topic/131953.

Damn Harry potter box set image isn't doing great things for Best Fantasy Novels.

Especially considering that LoTR is the #1 spot with score of 119.86 and HP is #2 with score 70. Why wouldn't LoTR show up? It seems like a big enough difference in score that it's not just because of caching.

Weirdly enough, The Neverending Story shows up as the second thumbnail cover, and it's down at #9.

Similar problem with Best Science Fiction Novels missing the Left Hand of Darkness cover.

The Lord of the Rings cover also doesn't show up for Favourite Books.

>250 brightcopy:

Half-fixed. It wasn't sorting them by rank. It now is, but the covers chosen aren't always the same ones.

Another question is why on Best Fantasy Novels, the cover for The Children of Llyr,The Second Branch Of The Mabinogion (item #99 at the moment) doesn't show up at all. It's a 1 member book, but it does have a member-uploaded cover. And the user added it to their catalog Feb 2011.

ETA: 252> Half-thanks! ;)

>252 timspalding: So it should now be showing them in order? Because Lord of the Rings still isn't showing up for Favourite Books.

Also, do you have a list of things you're planning to do, or should we just keep repeating points if you've passed by them without acknowledgement?

I'd still like the list of lists I've created to come back.

I'd like to see the number of works in the Recent Lists section as well, and it might also be nice to show the number of participants in that line.

I'd like some way of knowing if a list has changed since the last time I looked at it.

I'd like some way of knowing if a list has changed since the last time I looked at it.

Tell me what, how. A new book? Votes? Could be hard.

244> I think an opportunity for comments might be interesting, too. I have thumbed down books if they seem not to fit with the intention for the list - e.g. a non-fiction book in a fiction list - but some clearly thumb down books they don't like. One of my suggestions was thumbed down and by going to the thumber's page I found a review of the work in question which made very clear why she had. That was interesting, if a bit of a fiddle.

>258 timspalding:

up/down/static arrows for each work each time a work is marked (added/incremented/thumbed down), or hourly, or daily ...

I'm just not convinced the granularity is right. Do I care that a list I know has had #12 and #13 flip?

253 (The Children of Llyr,The Second Branch Of The Mabinogion)

Not at present. Works have a top ISBN right now. Although that book does have a custom cover, it was applied to a single non-ISBN version. The work page digs deeper, but that takes time. At present, that's just a limitation of the system.

>252 timspalding: So it should now be showing them in order? Because Lord of the Rings still isn't showing up for Favourite Books.

Is now. But note that some custom covers are going to look squished, because their "ratio" wasn't recorded right. Fixing soon.

I'd still like the list of lists I've created to come back.

I'm sorry, refer me to a post. It's showing all lists.

I'd still like the list of lists I've created to come back.

I'm sorry, refer me to a post. It's showing all lists.

Right, but it used to have a specific section for lists that I created. That seems to have been replaced with "lists I've participated in", which isn't the same thing.

#262 by @timspalding> The work page digs deeper, but that takes time.

I meant to mention that it had no ISBN. But I still just don't understand what you mean by this. Do you mind a short explanation? Again, this book was added Feb 2011. Are you talking about taking time referring to other members adding the work later?

For fun and reference, I made a poll thread about desired list features. Even if everything is going to be done eventually, I think it's useful just to have all the requests listed in one place, and it may be helpful to see which ones to prioritize.

I meant to mention that it had no ISBN. But I still just don't understand what you mean by this. Do you mind a short explanation? Again, this book was added Feb 2011. Are you talking about taking time referring to other members adding the work later?

The work-level table remembers one ISBN per book—the bestest one. ISBNs can have either an Amazon cover or a custom cover. The solution would be to have the work table also remember the top custom cover, if there was one. 99% of the time that would just be extra space in the db, slowing a critical table down. The best solution would be to reengineer it some way—there are various options. But it would require that.

>263 _Zoe_:

Oh, sorry. I knew that. I thought that you had created lists and they were gone. (I read too fast.) Yes, your thing will come back. I think the answer is something like groups—a home page with some juicy info and then subpages with more detail, including one for "your" stuff, including that.

>266 timspalding: Thanks. Yeah, subpages would be fine.

261> I'm just not convinced the granularity is right. Do I care that a list I know has had #12 and #13 flip?

I might. It's just frustrating to be interested in a list and check on it a day later and not be able to tell if it changed or not. You're missing out on the whole horse-racing aspect.

One thing in particular would be able to find all the works that have been added to a list since the last time you looked at it, so you could either add them to your own list or blackball them.

#266 by @timspalding> Okay, that's understandable. I was just confused with that quote. Made it sound like, without you making any code changes, this one would work itself out.

On the basis of extremely preliminary data, the ability to star lists of interest is the top request.

>270 _Zoe_:

I know. It's coming.

Fixed the sizing issue you probably didn't notice, but would have screamed about when a custom cover had an odd aspect ratio and it looked like a funhouse mirror.

And… I'm off, to drive my wife to a writing colony and leave her there for three weeks!

>271 timspalding: Thanks. Could you update the "coming soon" list if you have a chance?

>272 timspalding: Oh, but there's still some weird sizing going on--The Children's Blizzard looks weird on the main list page in "Books discovered on LibraryThing", but it's fine on the individual list page. I'll take a picture later.

#272 by @timspalding> And… I'm off, to drive my wife to a writing colony and leave her there for three weeks!

Careful, she might read this and spoil the whole plan!

258: What about adding a "date of last change" to the lists on the list home page. Then I would be responsible for knowing when I looked at the list last and if it's changed since then.

It might be nice to have a "collapsed" version that gets rid of all that extraneous stuff like thumbing, participants, etc. and lets you just see the list in a format like the Series.

As has been mentioned before, we really need to be able to remove works that are accidentally added to lists. I just added an adapted version of The Secret Garden to a list while I was scrolling down to find the real version. (The right work, held by 13,687 members was the very last one on the pop-up list.)

I've been trying to figure out what would be useful for the personal list pages (the ones that show all the lists we've created/participated in/starred), and I think I'd ultimately like it to be basically like the catalogue with various columns, sortable where possible: List title, cover pictures, list creator, my tags (also editable), number of participants, number of works, date created, etc.

It seems like punctuation (specifically apostrophes) messes with the search function. For instance, I had trouble adding Spindle's End to the Favorite Fairy Tales Retold list. I managed to work around the problem by searching by author name.

>281 foggidawn:
I've noticed this too. It should be fixed, if only because it will drive otherwise mild-mannered users positively batty.

So, connecting Lists to Groups isn't really a priority at all.

You can now remove books from a list entirely if it appears on no member's list.

So, connecting Lists to Groups isn't really a priority at all.

Ugh.

It seems like punctuation (specifically apostrophes) messes with the search function. For instance, I had trouble adding Spindle's End to the Favorite Fairy Tales Retold list. I managed to work around the problem by searching by author name.

Fixed. Thanks.

>284 timspalding: Don't worry, ranking thumbed-down books isn't a priority either, but I still plan to argue for it once all the more important stuff is done ;)

> 284

Thanks, Tim.

>284 timspalding:

Yes, thank you. I feel better now that I've removed my mistake.

>286 _Zoe_: I think we've just discovered your catchphrase!

I was surprised at the low interest in ranking thumbed-down books.

>289 norabelle414: :)

I'm finding that the covers make it much more interesting to browse the main Lists page; I'd like to see them extended further down the lists.

I'd like to be able to link a list to another work, for bibliographies that are included with other works, or for lists of other works referred to in a work.

So, connecting Lists to Groups isn't really a priority at all.

I think that attaching a thread to a list is adequate. Attaching a group would be overkill. Or did you mean something else?

>292 jjwilson61: I don't know what exactly Tim had in mind with his point #2, but I thought he meant a way of creating a list that was somehow associated with an existing group.

Any chance of having an option to view the lists page without covers?

And can we have some way of visually dividing the different sections? Borders, shading, or whatever.

> 294
I second the motion for an option to view lists without covers..

Thirded

Is it currently possible to "star"/"favourite" lists without creating your own? So you can keep up with them (check for new additions)? If not, will it be in the future?

Any chance of having an option to view the lists page without covers?

Yes, I think a few "modes" are in order. On the list.

Thirded

Motion carried.

And can we have some way of visually dividing the different sections? Borders, shading, or whatever.

Define "sections" here. Top vs. list?

Is it currently possible to "star"/"favourite" lists without creating your own?

Coming!

I don't understand why there is no thumbs up but only an add to your list which is not an opposite equivalent of thumbs down. I don't necessarily want to start a list, but I'd like the ability to at least agree with the list maker. Weird for the sake of being weird I think.

I would like the inverse of Bookmarque's suggestion in #299. I would like to be able to copy titles to my own list without agreeing with the listmaker(s). For example, I haven't read most of the books on the dystopias lists, but there are several that look interesting. So I would like to be able to make a list of those books I would like to find more information on, without boosting the rankings of books I haven't actually read yet.

MAN: Okay, how many of you kids would like Itchy & Scratchy to deal with real-life problems, like the ones you face every day? (the kids all cheer and agree) And who would like to see them do just the opposite - getting into far-out situations involving robots and magic powers? (more cheering) So, you want a realistic, down-to-earth show... that's completely off-the-wall and swarming with magic robots? (The kids agree)

NELSON: Yeah, good.

MILHOUSE: And also, you should win things by watching!

The man sighs. The light is turned on in the observation booth, and Meyers appears at the mirror.

MEYERS: You kids don't know what you want! That's why you're still kids: 'cause you're stupid! Just tell me what's wrong with the freakin' show!

(I wish FOX wasn't so obnoxious about scrubbing every Simpsons clip off youtube. It's just not the same. *sigh*)

300> That's because personal lists aren't personal lists, they're just components of social lists. It sounds like you'd like to be able to create your own real personal list by copying books from social lists. Last I read, Tim was reluctant to make real personal lists though.

Last I read, Tim was reluctant to make real personal lists though.

But users do want them. From the List Poll Thread:

"Here's a separate poll for lists that only you can add books to:"
Vote: personal lists
Current tally: Yes 31, No 6, Undecided 3

And see also:
Vote: Private lists ("lists that only you can see")
Current tally: Yes 24, No 16, Undecided 6

>300 SylviaC: I wonder if you could get around this just by creating a different list--"Dystopias I want to read", for example. It's a bit more work than just clicking on the work on the current list, but could still be done pretty quickly.

re: 298

Different sections as in 'Active lists', 'Your lists', 'Recent lists', 'You might be interested in', and any other sections that may be added to the main Lists page.

299: I don't understand why there is no thumbs up but only an add to your list which is not an opposite equivalent of thumbs down. I don't necessarily want to start a list, but I'd like the ability to at least agree with the list maker.

300: I would like the inverse of Bookmarque's suggestion in #299. I would like to be able to copy titles to my own list without agreeing with the listmaker(s).

Agh! I would like both! I just don't want them to be tied to each other. Adding sth to your list & giving it a thumbs up on the shared public list = completely different things.

Adding sth to your list & giving it a thumbs up on the shared public list = completely different things.

The idea is that your list is tied to the public list (Tim has not implemented truly personal lists yet, and it's not clear that he will). The social list is just a mashing together of everyone's personal versions of that list so up-thumbing and putting it on your list are the same thing.

I'd like to be able to view a list in the order it would be in if thumbs down weren't allowed.

307: Yes, I get it but - as other people on this thread have already pointed out - it doesn't feel the same. It doesn't have the same weight (adding > thumbing up). I might want to indicate "This book is a good read and I can see why you would choose to have it with you on a desert island" with my thumbs up without saying "I would take this with me to a desert island".

right. they're not the same. I don't want to create lists all over creation, I only want to participate a little, but I can't so lists are not interesting or useful at this point. Also that there are limited powers a list creator has is off-putting. Eh, I guess you can't please everyone.

So, it looks like we can order our books even for unnumbered lists, but the ordering doesn't actually stick.

Also, I don't know where the "best dystopias" part of this URL is coming from: http://www.librarything.com/list/109/_Zoe_/Best-Dystopias

This the link I get when I click on the lower "_Zoe_'s list" text in the Books I may read for February TIOLI list.

The cover of The Children's Blizzard looks distorted on the main Lists page, even though it's fine on the individual list:


Main page


Individual list page

I see that on the Lists Home page, the first several "Active Lists" and "Your lists" show book covers. This is, frankly, useless, since for the most part it is impossible to read the titles. So why have it? At least show the title as well.

Also, where did "lists you created" disappear to?

I hate to add to the burden (I keep cringing every time a request is thrown at you), but is there a way that you could possibly mark "new additions" to lists? I visit lists that I'm interested in keeping track of, but I can't easily pick out the books that have been newly added to them.

315: Order them by date and go to the bottom of the list. Those are the newest entries.

is there an easy shortcut to find the main lists page? If so, I can't find it.

ETA: I mean like on the MORE page, or on the BOOKs page or on the left navigation pane, or...

316: Thank you, I feel like a nimrod for not having found that.

317> No, Tim hasn't fully released this feature yet so there isn't a way to get to it except via this (and the previous) thread.

>317 majkia: ...or, of course, 'favorite' www.librarything.com/lists and you are there in a click.