Librarything user feedback improvements

Could Librarything add some options for its users to give greater feedback to those who post threads in Groups?

Examples could include a way for the OP to know how many times a thread has been read...this really helps in understanding what topics are of greater and lesser interest on this site. Another example could a way of "flagging" particular responses on a thread to indicate the reader's appreciation of valuable input from some responses on a thread.

Do you use "hot topics" at all?

I think it would be useful if we could give thumbs up to threads, especially in RSI. The most controversial topic (i.e., the hotly debated one that ends up in Hot Topics) isn't necessarily the best.

As someone who was always picked last for games and sports when I was little, I really don't like the idea of thumbs up for threads. It just adds a level of unfriendliness for those who don't get thumbs. We can just say we like someone's opinion on the thread if we do, can't we?

k4k

That doesn't really help if someone doesn't have time to read all the threads and just wants to look at the highlights.

But do you really want to read the ones that get the most thumbs? All that tells you is who is socializing the most at that moment. Could be the Green Dragon people. Could be the Religion people or the Vampire people. Could be the cat people. ;-) The thumbs won't really give you the threads that you like, because, I assume, like all discriminating (I mean that in the best sense) readers, you cross many lines of interest.

There is no perfect system for doing this, so putting one in place that is judgmental is not consistent to the spirit of LT. Just my humble opinion, anyway.

k4k

Edited to change "conducive" to "consistent". ;-)

> 6 There is no perfect system for doing this, so putting one in place that is judgmental is not conducive to the spirit of LT.

Agreed. It is very "high school".

Agree also!
The loudest voices will then be 'heard' ( thumbs) even more; especially if all the thread isn't read. Sometimes the best response is the quietest.

As k4k says: If one can't be bothered reading all the posts in a thread then thumbs will only skew the opinion more; I'd personally prefer more encouragement to participate. Thumbs up etc would IMHO, reduce this.

I guess being able to tag topics could help but I don't know if anyone would bother tagging them.

ETA: And it wouldn't have the effect desired by the OP.

My wish on LT topics would be that people would use the "about" feature to tag discussions on books.

Although some will respond that the feature isn't that great until it shows up on work pages, I think the primary use is "Are there any hot discusssions going on about the books in my library?" We provide that feature in the "Book discussions" area of Talk, but it hasn't seemed to catch on. It gets very little use.

10> "the feature isn't that great until it shows up on work pages"++
I think I would typically be most interested in Abouts for works I don't have in my library, but might be interested in reading: following a "talk" -> work -> about chain, or even a talk -> author -> which of her books have "Abouts"

It hasn't caught on with me because I would always see a bunch of challenge threads.

10> I hadn't realized that it was there, but having looked at that now, it is just too long a list to deal with. If it could be limited by collection, it might be useful. On the work page is still the best place to me, so that I see it when I am thinking about that particular book.

12> At least on my page, yes there are a lot of pages from challenge groups, but they are not the challenge threads, but the group reads that are running in the groups. Just the kind of thing people from outside the challenge groups ought to be seeing.

13> I should have clarified that I was talking about the feature on the work pages. I missed Tim's pivot to BD.

My wish on LT topics would be that people would use the "about" feature to tag discussions on books.


Well, if that actually showed up on work pages, then it would be far more accessible - otherwise all I learn is that Hogwarts Express is discussing the Harry Potter books, which is less than useful. (And the situation is even worse for someone who shares a lot of books with gangleri, who for some reason known only to himself uses 'abouts' to create lists that contain no actual discussion).

Although some will respond that the feature isn't that great until it shows up on work pages, I think the primary use is "Are there any hot discusssions going on about the books in my library?" We provide that feature in the "Book discussions" area of Talk, but it hasn't seemed to catch on. It gets very little use.

Ah. Well, never mind then. But I will point out that if you think the primary use of a feature should be X, and complain about how X is unused, while people are clamoring left and right for Y, maybe you're wrong about the primary use of the feature.

But I will point out that if you think the primary use of a feature should be X, and complain about how X is unused, while people are clamoring left and right for Y, maybe you're wrong about the primary use of the feature.

Well, I don't think I'm wrong. Discussions are like milk—they go bad quickly. Even if every discussion were marked most works won't have a current discussion going on, so having "abouts" on work pages will not facilitate existing discussions. At best it will lead to periodic revivals of dead conversations. Even that I doubt; people don't like jumping into a conversation that ended a year ago. (I can prove that with numbers if you like.)

16> Well...I actually see that a lot in certain groups. I Survived the Great Vowel Shift has a couple threads that started - oh, three years ago? - and still regularly get revived. But I admit that that group is a little odd. Heck, most of my groups are either a little odd or LT tools (as in, Bug Collectors, Welcome to LT!, BETA...).

I admit up front that I am technologically challenged (I still have trouble with "call-waiting"). Having said that, I would love a simple way of extracting the Touchstones lists to either a printable version or some other way to easily separate the list from the Internet. I am not even near-adequate at using the browser on my 'droid (my daughter says I don't need something that sophisticated). Am I in the right place to ask this?

Not quite - if you asked in Welcome to LibraryThing! or in FAQ or in Talk about LibraryThing, it would be more appropriate for a "how do I?" question. This group is really for asking for new stuff to be added to LT - so this would be where you put your new thread asking for this functionality, after everyone agrees that it's really not possible (as far as I know!) to extract the touchstones list.

Well, on a desktop/laptop browser, you can swipe over it (click with the mouse near the top; hold down the button and move the mouse down so that all the text you want turns blue (and preferably, so that no other parts of the page turn blue)) and copy-and-paste it - that gets you the text though not the links. I have no idea how you'd do that in a mobile browser, though - my Note has real problems with copy-and-paste, both in the built-in browser and in Firefox. Mostly the selecting-text part of the trick.

Actually, I get the links when I do that, and would rather not have them. What surprises me is that I actually can catch the list without the rest of the page.

Using Firefox and Word.

Oh, that's weird! Copying once - pasting to an LT message box: text, no links. Pasting to Notepad++: text, no links. Pasting to Word (2002): links. Very strange!

MarthaJeanne - bet if you pasted to the message box then re-copied you'd get just the text. It works for me - and doesn't require opening another program, just hitting the End key and doing another paste-and-copy. You don't have to post the message, just paste to the Add a message box.

OK, so it is possible to extract a touchstone list, with some manual fiddling. New thing learned!

Note pad. Interesting. Use Notepad first, and then Word. Mostly of course for LT things, but also other uses getting things from the Web into a document. This has been very useful. Learn something every day.

>21 jjmcgaffey: It's the way the programs work. Word uses/supports Rich Text, Notepad and browser text field boxes (unless you're in something with a WYSIWYG editor maybe) are plaintext only, so the embedded link has no way to be pasted in also.

Although some will respond that the feature isn't that great until it shows up on work pages, I think the primary use is "Are there any hot discusssions going on about the books in my library?"

So that's what abouts do? I suspect the feature might be used more if it was clearer from the talk page that that's how "Book discussions" works.

What I thought abouts did was including it as a "mention" on the work page. Seems on closer inspection that a mere touchstone suffices for this.

Since "Are there any hot discusssions going on about the books in my library?" isn't a question I'm asking myself, well, ever, but I do use mentions now and then, I guess I should simply forget about the whole abouts thing.

(Tangentially, I think the unwillingness to revive old threads is a bit of a read herring - finding and reading old discussions is often interesting even if I don't care to revive it, or have anything to add if I did.)

However, a suggestion that should leave everyone unhappy: on the mentions list, highlight touchstoned threads that are also abouted, as they're the ones most likely to to contain useful content. Doesn't add anything to the work page, yet let's people use abouts to find discussions from it.

Abouts have actually been added to the work pages now. So it's almost like we're making progress, except that the conversation previews are still missing ;)

I agree that it can be interesting to read old discussions even when I don't have anything to add. And I'm far more likely to be looking for conversations about a particular book (whatever I've just finished), regardless of their date, than I am to be looking about conversations happening now, regardless of what book they're about.

Abouts have actually been added to the work pages now.

Where?

>26 AndreasJ: On the Conversations subpage. I think current Abouts are shown in the right sidebar of the main page as well.

27> Thanks. Turns out it only shows if there are any, and the ones I looked at earlier tonight didn't have any.

Still think non-current abouts should be highlighted on the conversations page.

There are a lot more works than there are conversations going on about works. It's always going to be hit or miss, at best. The more useful way of getting to them is going to have to be in talk, which has an "All discussions" and a "Your discussions" mode designed to tell you about conversations about books.

>29 timspalding: Going via Talk is never going to be useful if you're trying to find a discussion about a particular book, which I suspect is what most people are doing.

>29 timspalding:/30 Yes, what Zoe said. While sometimes it may be nice to see if anything is being talked about, normally people want to see if something they just read, or some favorite, or one that popped up in their mind because they were thinking about ___, etc, has any discussions.