Prioritizing member review from TinyCat library's owner

I've been poking around and exploring TinyCat to see what all the features are, and tweaking settings here and there. Tonight I noticed that when I have Member Reviews turned on to appear on books' Details page, my own review of that book is not the first one that appears. In fact, it isn't anywhere in the section at all.

I double-checked my settings in LibraryThing to make sure that I had given permission to LT to share my reviews, and I have it set to share with "both non-commercial and commercial entities (booksellers, swap sites, publishers, authors, street gangs)" which would certainly seem to cover TinyCat.

I think if the TinyCat catalog owner has reviewed a book in their catalog, their own review should appear in TinyCat at the top of the list of member reviews. Is it possible to do that? Or is there some reason I'm not thinking of at the moment why that would not be a good feature?

Bleah, you're right.

That's enough to make me turn off Member Reviews for TinyCat.

>2 lorax: Yes, if it can't be changed I'm going to turn them off as well.

I noticed this too, but found out that you can customize this. Settings/Detail Page Sections/select "Your Review" and drag it to the top or whereever else you want it.

>4 bnielsen: Thanks for that tip. I hadn't even seen the Your Review section since when I first signed in it was in the "deactivated" section.

Edited to add: Wow, what ugly formatting! When you click the "more" button on a review, TinyCat expands it and strips out all paragraphs to just present one huge lump of text. No one in their right mind would try to wade through that. I might as well just turn reviews off.

>5 rosalita: I'll take a look at the formatting today! We should present the text with the formatting, so it's not ugly.

>5 rosalita: Thanks, Kristi! I can understand if you don't want HTML to come through, but preserving the original reviews' paragraph breaks would be brilliant.

>7 rosalita: I'll second that!

Okay, I made a request yesterday to developers, will note back here when it's updated!

I see bolds missing, but can someone give me an example of an un-preserved paragraph break?

I can point you to a couple of my reviews that show up as a single paragraph on TinyCat, with their corresponding presence on LT. Both of them are multiple paragraphs on LT, with use of italics and touchstones (it would be nice to retain italics because I mostly use them to quote excerpts from the books but what I most want to preserve are the paragraphs):

My review of Just Mercy on TinyCat: https://www.librarycat.org/lib/rosalita/item/124876207

My review of Just Mercy on LibraryThing: http://www.librarything.com/review/124876207

My review of The Lexicographer's Dilemma on TinyCat: https://www.librarycat.org/lib/rosalita/item/53827466

My review of The Lexicograher's Dilemma on LibraryThing: http://www.librarything.com/review/53827466

Thank you for taking a look at this!

no bold, no italic, no paragraph break:
http://www.librarything.com/work/85909/reviews/129625995
vs. https://www.librarycat.org/lib/CtrSacredSciences/item/129625995

and this one:
http://www.librarything.com/work/17684712/reviews/129641233
vs. https://www.librarycat.org/lib/CtrSacredSciences/item/129641233

Thanks!

I just wanted to check in and see if there is anything to report regarding fixing the formatting of reviews in TinyCat? I realize I am a personal (and thus, free) user of TinyCat and I can understand that development priorities are geared toward paying customers, which is completely appropriate (although I would think this would be something some paying customers would want, but perhaps not).

If it seems likely that this won't happen in the coming months, I would appreciate at least knowing that so I can stop checking it periodically and direct my efforts into something other than optimizing my TinyCat entity so that it can be shared with others.

Thank you for all you do, always.

>13 rosalita: Kristi is out this week, and I'm afraid I'm not sure where we are on this, or how likely it is to be coming down the pipeline soon. I'll ask her to reply when she returns.

I'm checking on this with our developers, we'll get back to you with an update soon (within the next few days)! Thanks for your patience, @rosalita.

>15 kristilabrie: Thank you, Loranne and Kristi! You guys rock.

Okay, this should be good! Let me know if you see any issues. :)

>17 kristilabrie: I just checked a couple of books for which I wrote longer reviews, and they look fantastic! The paragraph breaks are there, and even the italics. Most excellent!

I will just note that the automatic profanity filter turned Orioles pitcher Dick Hall's name into D*ck Hall, which was disconcerting if amusing. This was in my review of The Summer Game by Roger Angell, a writer about as far from profane as you can get. I understand the desire for some sort of profanity filter for small libraries (especially when many of them are based in churches), though, and you can still tell what the word is, so I'm not terribly bothered by it.

>18 rosalita:

automatic profanity filter

WHAT???

I do not recall reading anywhere that my own reviews in my own catalog were going to be edited for display in TinyCat. I don't think I actually swear anywhere, but it's obviously as stupid and oversensitive as any such automatic filter.

Kristi, I've turned off my reviews for my own catalog in TinyCat, but is there any way short of disabling sharing altogether I can do this for my reviews showing up in other people's? I agreed to have my reviews shared, not something that happens to share some text with my reviews but is represented as being mine.

>18 rosalita: Profanity filters doesn't sound like something Tim would do. Are you sure there isn't something installed on your computer that's doing that?

>20 jjwilson61: Well, when I view the review on LT, the name shows as Dick, not D*ck, so I really don't think so. (You can see it here on LT: http://www.librarything.com/work/64819/reviews/104471934 and here on TC: https://www.librarycat.org/lib/rosalita/item/104471934).

I'm open to another explanation if you have one but it seems clear to me that TC is bowdlerizing reviews. As I said, I don't necessarily have a huge problem with it.

>20 jjwilson61:

I can confirm that I see the bowdlerization in rosalita's TinyCat and not on her Reviews page on LT.

It does bother me very much, less so its existence than the fact that it was not, AFAIK, disclosed, when something that edits our reviews should be very prominently explained. I would rather see any review that mentions someone by the name of "Dick" dropped entirely than to give someone the impression that the bowdlerization is what I actually typed.

That is ridiculous! I'm with Lorax. Any review that doesn't pass the profanity check should just be dropped.

Even better, the whole filter should be dropped.

Can we mark that our reviews are not to be shown in TinyCat?

At the very, very least, give Dick a pass.

Yeah, I knew that there was a screening process where reviews not matching some criteria were dropped and that's ok, but they shouldn't be changed.

>20 jjwilson61: I have a lot of books by Philip K. Dick and I'm also seeing this. Silly, silly thing as Subject says "Philip K. Dick" and the reviews Philip K. D*ck.

>25 jjwilson61: Whoever did this, is an *

We've been here before:

I bet they won't play this song on the radio
I bet you they won't play this new * song
It's not that it's * or * controversial
Just that the *ing words are awfully strong
You can't say * on the radio
Or * or * or *
You can't even say I'd like to * you one day
Unless you're a doctor with a very large *
So I bet you they won't play this song on the radio
I bet you they daren't * well programme it
I bet you their *ing old Programme Directors
Will think it's a load of horse *

Not to pile on, but it also bowdlerizes Moby-D*ck in reviews.

Should we bump this out to a new thread, or do you think the new activity will be enough to get kristi's attention?

Kristi's on many issues relating to reviews right now, including this.

>29 lorax: I've 'red this thread.

>18 rosalita: Well then, we'll have to come up with a new solution for proper names, I think! Thanks for pointing that out. Looks like we're handling library reviews on TinyCat the same way we handle them on LibraryThing for Libraries—by starbombing profanity (or words that are being miscalculated as profanity, as it turns out).

We're adding a setting underneath your TinyCat Content Settings soon that will allow you to enable or disable (which will be the default) the profanity filter for User reviews. Your own reviews ("Library's review") will not be starbombed.

>19 lorax: I'm adding a new Talk thread here (http://www.librarything.com/topic/227251), so we can discuss whether LibraryThing should exclude TinyCat from the "Restrict reviews to LibraryThing" setting or not, on your LibraryThing's Account Settings > Your book reviews. Please check that out as soon as I've added it!

>32 kristilabrie:

We're adding a setting underneath your TinyCat Content Settings soon that will allow you to enable or disable (which will be the default) the profanity filter for User reviews. Your own reviews ("Library's review") will not be starbombed.

Thank you.

But they will still be edited when appearing in other people's TinyCat reviews, correct?

>32 kristilabrie: If that's what the library has chosen (to "Enable" the profanity filter), then yes. Please see the new Talk thread here for "Your book reviews" setting: http://www.librarything.com/topic/227251!

Thanks. I'll post the thread to other group/s.

But we also need the ability to have our reviews hidden on any library that chooses to have the filter enabled.