LT2: Design drafts are here! — Organization

I hesitate to even say this is a first draft, because I suspect there'll be copious debate about it. But here's a stab at the organization, showing the top two levels (top and sub-tab) and, sometimes, the third-level of left-navigation.

Home

• Home
  
• Profile
  
• Statistics — I want to put this in "library," but not all are library related.
  
• Timeline|Feed|Connections — with luck replacing connections, reviews, share
  
  
  
  • Timeline
    
  • Your Connections
    
  • Find Friends
  
  

Library

• Your Library
  
• Add — page also links to import
  
• Import / Export
  
• More
  
  
  
  • Mobile App
    
  • Widgets
    
    
    
    • APIs
    
    

Explore

• Discover — many categories within it (e.g., popular books, global stats, etc.)
  
• Recommendations|For You
  
• Lists
  
• Early Reviewers
  
• More
  
  
  
  • Apps and Sites
    
  • Store
    
  • &c.
  
  

Community

• Talk
  
• Groups
  
• LibraryThing Local
  
• Site Projects
  
  
  
  • Common Knowledge
    
  • Helpers
    
  • Legacy Libraries
    
  • Wiki
  
  

Account/Person Menu

• (userName)
  
• Profile
  
• ---
  
• Messages
  
• ---
  
• Settings
  
• ---
  
• TinyCat — link out
  
• Litsy — link out
  
• ---
  
• Sign Out (userName)

What is meant by "Timeline|Feed|"? (I'm assuming that "Connections" means "friends" and/or "interesting libraries"?)

>2 lilithcat:

Right now we have a rather bad "Connection" feature. And a "Share" feature—top right—that's like a feed of yourself. And a "Reviews" page that includes a chronological feed of reviews on your books. We need one such feature. We need a single place to see a feed of what you're interested in—whether it's just your own actions, that of your friends, or updates on books and authors you care about.

But I'm delaying anything for this. So we'll probably start by just moving what we have.

Mostly looks good to me.

I'm not sure I like the idea of reviews being listed along with "connections" and "share". Yes, I share reviews to social media but I don't write reviews *for* social media. And wouldn't reviews be on the "share" page also? I would put reviews as a sub-nav under one of the other tabs (any of them, really) instead of a sub-sub-nav under Timeline/feed/connections.

I think it looks good. I'd need to actually use it for a day or two to figure out where the sticking points are.

What, if any, is the difference between the statistics under Home > Statistics and the statistics under Explore > Discover > {unnamed subcategory with global statistics}?

I like the look of this, at least at first glance. I'm very glad to see the "Site projects" sub-nav - I've really missed having an easy way to get to CK, helpers and - most of all - the wiki.

A lot of the other sub-navs are for things I don't really use on LT so I don't really have an opinion on where they go.

>5 casvelyn: I'm guessing the first one is stats for your own library and the other is for LT as a whole.

>3 timspalding:

Tim, I don't know what a "feed" is. Explaining it by re-using the term doesn't help!

And the "timeline" of what? Reviews? Isn't that what we have now on the "In your library and reviewed by others" list? At least when you sort it by date. Personally, I like the ability to sort those by title or votes, too, so hope that won't go away.

I don't think I've ever clicked on the "Share" button until now! Never even noticed it.

>8 lilithcat: I'd never EVER noticed this "Share" thing before, either, and after seeing what came up, it's probably just as well.

Ah, well. So it goes.

I'll probably hate the changes until I get used to them (it's in my nature to dislike change). As long as I can add books and fuss over the details, I'm fine. I'll probably do the same thing after all this is over that I do now, which is to ignore almost everything, except the bits I care about.

No worries.

>1 timspalding: While I'm thinking about it, I'm hoping that my two favorite toys will stick around. Those would be "Folly" and "About you" (which are both SOL at the moment). I like about you for the display of covers recently added for books I have, and the comparisons of libraries between other users and myself.

I'm still waiting on the "Feed" ideas, which are not yet clear to me...

No worries, though. I'll get used to it, whatever "it" ends up being.

I use Import a lot - what is meant by "Add - page also links to Import"? Especially with Import/Export as the next item, that's confusing.

Other than that, I have to agree with >5 casvelyn: - I'd have to use it and see how it feels.

Feed=newsfeed (a common shortening of the term). It's something most of the social sites (especially Twitter and Facebook) have publicized as a standard term. It's also what the portals like yahoo.com, msn.com, Xfinity.com, most news sites call their ever-updating lists of headlines, breaking news, popular stories...

I doubt I'll use it in its new form any more than I do now, on LT. But it doesn't bother me.

I'm hoping "timeline" will be Chris's reading timeline, in actual functional form. That's something I keep trying to use and getting frustrated over its half-done-ness (and then it goes away, then comes back, then...).

>5 casvelyn: I agree with >7 PawsforThought: - the one under Home I expect to be the equivalent of Stats/Memes in the top bar of your Home page now; the one under Discover will be Zeitgeist.

Looks good in general, I need to try it out to find the sticking points for me.

Small point - in the first post, the last three sections (Explore down) are indented one more step than the first two. Which I'm sure has nothing to do with their functionality but will probably confuse someone in this thread.

>10 Lyndatrue: - huh. My "Folly" and "About You" are working fine. I copied most of the modules from them that I was interested in onto my home page (RMUC being a major one), so I never go there - but I checked just now, and both pages are populating fine for me.

I'm pretty excited about discovering I have an action history! I probably clicked share and knew that once upon a time, but the knowledge had faded completely.

>12 jjmcgaffey: I just checked on them, and neither "Folly" nor "About you " are still not fully populating. The only thing in About you that is missing is the book covers, and all those years of users are missing in Folly.

On my list of things that are important, neither of those are high. It often seems to be an overloaded server somewhere (this is a *guess* for which I have no evidence).

I checked with Internet Explorer (my normal browser is Firefox), and the issues are exactly the same.

>14 Lyndatrue: Which modules are you missing from "Folly" and "About You"? Those pages are changeable so other people could have different modules than you.

>14 Lyndatrue: Ah, right - I can see _my_ Thingaversary, I'd forgotten about seeing everyone else's dates in Folly. I am seeing all the covers in Recent Member-Uploaded Covers, though - again, that's the module I copied to my homepage so I see it all the time (though there's more covers showing in About You, since it's a full-width module there and a half-width on my homepage). No idea why it isn't being fully functional for you - I'm also in Firefox.

>394 (harking back to the end of the first thread)...

Reference Desk! I like that...

>15 norabelle414: Sorry that I wasn't more clear in the details. In "Folly" I'm speaking of the module "Selected Thingaversaries". In "About you" (a much more complicated entry), I'm speaking of "Recent Member-uploaded Covers for Your Books" (and I note that there are now two covers, and I'm not sure whether I jumped the gun, or if my adding a book caused it to become briefly populated).

I spent several days going through *ALL* the covers that were suggested, and dismissing them, or in rare cases flagging them. Even more rarely, I preferred one of the suggested covers to the one I was already using. I usually see anywhere from two to fifteen covers in a morning. It's a nice entertainment while I'm drinking coffee.

While I'm thinking about it, I note that "On This Day" doesn't appear in any of those drop down menu things in >1 timspalding: and I really hope that it's still planned as one of the items that continues. It's one of my very favorite things.

>18 Lyndatrue: I hadn't even thought that you might have cleared them all - I've done that a time or two, but then I reduce the quality I'm willing to look at and it fills up again. I'm currently dismissing covers uploaded in December 2014, quality 1500 or better, All covers (not just for my ISBNs), and Show even more is On. I'm getting through them, but slowly - I work on them for a few minutes a day for days at a time, then ignore them for weeks (so the new stuff piles up). It's fun to empty it entirely, though.

You might try hitting the pencil and choosing to look at low-quality covers - see if any show up.

>19 Lyndatrue: On This Day doesn't appear on any of the current menus either, does it? It's a module on one of the Home pages, and Home will still exist - pretty much as is, I believe, I haven't seen any mention of changing it. That's one of the newer parts of LT, anyway.

>17 Crypto-Willobie: Personally, I really dislike the idea of calling the Explore tab "Reference disk".
It reminds me of when the library system I work in had to switch ILS/LMS and one of the things the new system bragged about was how the for works had been designed to look "just like a card catalogue". Every single librarian groaned, and the system developers couldn't understand why we didn't think this was a good selling point.

About timelines and More Power about Date Fields see at:

November 2006. Recommend Site Improvements, Reading timeline: https://www.librarything.com/talktopic.php?topic=4449
September 2008. Recommend Site Improvements, timeline: https://www.librarything.de/topic/45601
August 2009. More Power to the Date Fields!: https://www.librarything.de/topic/67806
March 2015. Finish/improve Reading Timeline: https://www.librarything.com/topic/189256

and many more

>22 birder4106:
September 2008. Recommend Site Improvements, timeline: https://www.librarything.com/topic/45601
August 2009. More Power to the Date Fields!: https://www.librarything.com/topic/67806

>18 Lyndatrue:, >19 Lyndatrue: All of those modules are part of "Home", which will be a top-level tab just as it is now.

>23 MarthaJeanne:
Thank you.

I would appreciate it anyway.
Or something similar.

Initial thoughts, before having looked at the comments, so I'm not influenced:

1) Do we access our own TinyCat via the Library menu (I don't see it there), or via "Account/Person" (I'm not sure what "link out" means in that context)?

2) I don't think putting reviews with Connections is correct. Connections is social and about people - reviews serves the dual purpose of being about our own content and that of others, and in both cases it's book-related rather than person-related. It does go in Home, I think, but probably move it up a level, parallel to Connections rather than nested underneath.

3) I still don't think Local goes under Community, for reasons discussed in the other thread - Local is about finding venues and books, not interacting with people. I'd put it under Explore.

4) Does the separation between "Messages" and "Profile" in the Account/Person menu imply that our messages will no longer be accessed from our profile? If so, where do we go to send someone a message? It would seem odd to send via the profile but receive elsewhere.

More after I read the thread.

It's hard to give feedback on the organization without using it, but I guess I'll get used to it. I would like it to be easier to find recommendations.

How long has that share link been there??? I've never clicked it.

I agree that "On This Day" should remain. It would also be nice if it indicated which authors are in your collection.

"On this Day" is part of your homepage, if you choose for it to be so, and will presumably remain there.

(Everything you access via the Home tab is part of your homepage, whichever sub-page you've chosen to put it on.)

Will "Recently Added" remain as a possible element on the dashboard?

>28 Doondeck:

Yes please.
And in LT of other languages than english, only recommendations and covers that are being translated in that language.

Is there a functional meaning behind the fact that Explore, Community, and Account / Person are indented further than Home or Library?

It niggles at me that the first subnav under Home is also Home. That doesn't occur in any other topnav. Some have referenced the current Home module as a Dashboard, that's an option.

Is the idea that everything would live in one and only one topnav or subnav? Or, is it conceived that links to the same page / module are validly listed in multiple locations?
Example: Legacy Libraries are suited to Site Projects, as listed, but I also see them fitting as a link under Explore (perhaps under the More subnav). If only one location is proposed, I would leave under Site Projects.

I'm not sure I like the idea of reviews being listed along with "connections" and "share". Yes, I share reviews to social media but I don't write reviews *for* social media. And wouldn't reviews be on the "share" page also? I would put reviews as a sub-nav under one of the other tabs (any of them, really) instead of a sub-sub-nav under Timeline/feed/connections.

I mean this page--https://www.librarything.com/profile_reviews.php?view=MEMBERNAME. The right side of the page is a feed of reviews on your books. The left side is a feed of all your own reviews.

I think it looks good. I'd need to actually use it for a day or two to figure out where the sticking points are.

Yeah, well, me too. This is rough. I suspect I'll learn from the comments here, but also by doing.

Tim, I don't know what a "feed" is. Explaining it by re-using the term doesn't help!

So, I don't want to go into it in detail, because it's not going to come in reality until AFTER we change the design. But LT has a number of feeds already--reverse-chronological lists of things done. It has a page for your reviews, for reviews of your books, for your actions, and for select actions by people you follow. We really need one solution. That solution should most resemble the current connections page, with the ability to see different types of data. If you want, it can be only your data.

Anyway, I don't see much point in going too deep into this, because it's not on deck, to use a baseball term.

While I'm thinking about it, I'm hoping that my two favorite toys will stick around. Those would be "Folly" and "About you" (which are both SOL at the moment). I like about you for the display of covers recently added for books I have, and the comparisons of libraries between other users and myself.

Both of those are home-page sub-pages. I think that, for now, we will be keeping the home modules as they are. It's true they overlap with almost everything. So it's a bit of a problem to fit them in.

I use Import a lot - what is meant by "Add - page also links to Import"? Especially with Import/Export as the next item, that's confusing.

See how it is now--both import and add manually are linked to on https://www.librarything.com/addbooks . I think we'll want to put it both places. But we'll see.

Small point - in the first post, the last three sections (Explore down) are indented one more step than the first two. Which I'm sure has nothing to do with their functionality but will probably confuse someone in this thread.

Thanks. Devilish to put indented lists in talk.

>14 Lyndatrue: I just checked on them, and neither "Folly" nor "About you " are still not fully populating

I'll check on yours.

I usually see anywhere from two to fifteen covers in a morning. It's a nice entertainment while I'm drinking coffee.

I know exactly what you mean.

While I'm thinking about it, I note that "On This Day" doesn't appear in any of those drop down menu things in >1 timspalding: timspalding: and I really hope that it's still planned as one of the items that continues. It's one of my very favorite things.

Right. All the current home-page sub-pages will continue.

Personally, I really dislike the idea of calling the Explore tab "Reference disk".

Heh. I get where it's going, but I think we'll pick another term. It's a hard tab to name, though.

1) Do we access our own TinyCat via the Library menu (I don't see it there), or via "Account/Person" (I'm not sure what "link out" means in that context)?

Account/Person menu. "Link out" means it takes you to that website.

2) I don't think putting reviews with Connections is correct. Connections is social and about people - reviews serves the dual purpose of being about our own content and that of others, and in both cases it's book-related rather than person-related. It does go in Home, I think, but probably move it up a level, parallel to Connections rather than nested underneath.

I hear you. We'll give it thought. It's not on deck, so I don't want to get too much into the weeds of functionality.

3) I still don't think Local goes under Community, for reasons discussed in the other thread - Local is about finding venues and books, not interacting with people. I'd put it under Explore.

I'm torn. I can see it both ways. It's about community but in a different sense, perhaps.

Honestly, I put it under community in part because there are too many sub-tabs under Explore.

I'm still torn.

4) Does the separation between "Messages" and "Profile" in the Account/Person menu imply that our messages will no longer be accessed from our profile? If so, where do we go to send someone a message? It would seem odd to send via the profile but receive elsewhere.

I don't know the order we'll do things, but long-term I think the "wall" model we use is dead.

It's not even Facebook-era, it's MYSPACE era. At best it's like blog comments. Dead. It's not a paradigm people get anymore.

I think we need to move to messages only, and all messages being private. As a side benefit, this will get rid of the most important source of site spam--spam accounts posting to their profile.

Again, I'm not sure we'll do that first. I suspect we'll redesign, then change how profile comments work.

Will "Recently Added" remain as a possible element on the dashboard?

Yes. All home-page modules and pages will remain, as far as we've planned.

Is there a functional meaning behind the fact that Explore, Community, and Account / Person are indented further than Home or Library?

No, it's just shitty formatting. Argh.

It niggles at me that the first subnav under Home is also Home. That doesn't occur in any other topnav. Maybe there's no better way.

Well, it's sort-of true with Library > Your library. And the Explore > Discover naming is… dodgy. But I agree, it's not what I'd like. I can't think of a better way, compromising between what we have and where we want to go.

Is the idea that everything would live in one and only one topnav or subnav? Or, is it conceived that links to the same page / module are validly listed in multiple locations?

Most things will fit under one of the nav/subnav combinations, or under the account subnav. I can forsee some that have no tab selected, such as our About page, Press Page, etc. And we've discussed whether or not a work page should be under explore, a book page under Library, etc. At present book and work pages have no tab.

Example: Legacy Libraries are suited to Site Projects, as listed, but I also see them fitting as a link under Explore (perhaps under the More subnav). If only one location is proposed, I would leave under Site Projects.

Some crosslinks are inevitable. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, as the man says. But I hope not to have any sub-tabs under two different tabs.

>31 birder4106: And in LT of other languages than english, only recommendations and covers that are being translated in that language.

For many languages, that would be very bad. Not all languages are as well represented as Spanish, German, and French. And in Sweden, for example, I think most LT users have at least as many books in English as in Swedish, and are as interested in them.

>34 anglemark:

It might make a good filter anyway.

>33 timspalding: Yeah, well, me too. This is rough. I suspect I'll learn from the comments here, but also by doing.

Is it feasible to set up a separate usability test site where people can go to use the in-progress UI (once it's to that state)? You'd probably get a lot more helpful feedback that way.

>34 anglemark: This Swede has about 10 times as many books in English as in Swedish.

>33 timspalding: I mean this page--https://www.librarything.com/profile_reviews.php?view=MEMBERNAME. The right side of the page is a feed of reviews on your books. The left side is a feed of all your own reviews.

Yes, that's what I was talking about. I think it belongs elsewhere (same as >26 lorax:).

>36 brightcopy: It's certainly something we'd like to do. It's complicated for this particular project because the old site isn't designed to be able to do a single replacement of the navigation like this. It's one of the things we're working to solve in the update.

We'll certainly try and have a beta version available at some point.

>1 timspalding: That sounds perfectly corking. Toodle pip.

I'm going to need lots of examples. Here are the ones right now I don't understand:

statistics

Timeline/Feed/connections

Add - page also links to import

More ( under Import/Export| and all of the subs under it.

Discover

Apps and Sites under More

Etc under More

Site Projects - I see what is under it by why this name?

Wiki

By omission from this list, I understand what is going on and what will be in that particular function.

I'm a little late, since I see a lot of discussion has gone on here, but let me say that I mostly like this. As an organization, I think most of it makes sense.

The one thing that worries me somewhat is having to drill down three tiers in some places (or four, for APIs -- but that's specialized enough that I doubt it will matter much). Most of the things that are down three tiers are OK -- specialized, plus it's clear where to look.

The one that bothers me most is the SITE PROJECTS sub-heading under COMMUNITY. I agree that everything under there makes sense as a SITE PROJECT -- but, other than cataloging my books, those are the areas where I spend the largest part of my time. In fact, I probably spend more time there than cataloging -- as soon as I enter a book, I start adding all the COMMON KNOWLEDGE I can, which takes a lot longer than typing an ISBN. And the lower-down something is, the harder it is for people to find. Don't hide your best stuff. :-)

(Of course, if others felt the way I do, Common Knowledge would have a lot more good data and a lot less bad. :-)

Granting yet again my minority status, if it were me, I'd promote SITE PROJECTS to be its own major heading, with the sub-headings you have. Probably you can shorten the heading to "PROJECTS." Or CONTRIBUTIONS Or, for that matter, KNOWLEDGE.

I grant that contributions there are for purposes of community -- but common knowledge, in particular, is useful for me in dealing with my own library, too ("Just which books do I have about Robert Bartlett?").

Also, I'd be tempted to add one more sub-heading under SITE PROJECTS. For lack of a better title, perhaps REPAIRS. :-) All the things that need to be done to fix bad cataloging data: Combine/Separate Works. Author division. Work-to-work relationships. These are very hard to find, and are scattered across different pages, and for the books I deal with, there is a tremendous amount that has to be done. :-) I waste a lot of time looking across various pages for the one I need.

The menu in >1 timspalding: looks sensible. Standard. The way I'd expect a website menu to be laid out. Which is a good thing: navigating a website should require as little conscious thought as possible.

A few comments on various points brought up in this thread:

• Add my vote to the ones asking for reviews to be removed from under Community. I think I'd want them to show up under Library, because I don't think of my reviews as primarily social-oriented. But that's just my view, and I'm prepared to accept that it's a minority one.
  
  
• I applaud the inclusion of the Site Projects subnav. Putting these items together in a prominent place is exactly the kind of change I'm looking forward to seeing LT embracing. (Tim, if you feel like the Explore tab is overcrowded, why not move Early Reviewers to Site Projects?)
  
  
• Should work pages highlight the Explore tab and book pages the Library tab? Well, obviously!
  
  
• I'm also interested in beta-testing the menu. Where do I sign up?

In fact, I probably spend more time there than cataloging -- as soon as I enter a book, I start adding all the COMMON KNOWLEDGE I can, which takes a lot longer than typing an ISBN. And the lower-down something is, the harder it is for people to find. Don't hide your best stuff. :-)

Okay, but where is it now? Not within the tab structure at all.

It is at the bottom of the page. I think we'll probably continue that, but, honestly, I havent' thought about it yet.

Tim, if you feel like the Explore tab is overcrowded, why not move Early Reviewers to Site Projects

Hmm.

>44 timspalding: wrote, quoting me:

In fact, I probably spend more time there than cataloging -- as soon as I enter a book, I start adding all the COMMON KNOWLEDGE I can, which takes a lot longer than typing an ISBN. And the lower-down something is, the harder it is for people to find. Don't hide your best stuff. :-)

Okay, but where is it now? Not within the tab structure at all.

It is at the bottom of the page. I think we'll probably continue that, but, honestly, I havent' thought about it yet.

Also at the side of the work page, which is how I access it. And that makes some sense, since Common Knowledge is generally associated with particular books. I grant a certain difficulty in making something that goes with a book be part of the whole structure of the site. But my real argument was for promoting the site projects, because they are knowledge to which everyone contributes.

Although, the more I think about it, the more my interest is in getting all the "Librarian-esque" tasks in one place, so that I don't have to figure out which section of which page lets me combine works or split authors or whatever.

waltzmn:

This thread is not about the work page, at all. We haven't seen a redesign of that yet - well we have, but we were specifically told not to worry about the content part of it, only the top nav. It's just about the top tabs, which are going to be reduced in number and converted into drop-down menus.

OK, when I first saw "redesign," I literally laughed out loud, thinking, "OMG, they're going to crowdsource this to death!" I remember the uproar over the color change from salmon to chocolate mousse years ago as well as the tensions associated when GR accounts flipped over to LT and, when LT acquired Litsy. The idea of change seems to outrage some veteran LT users on a visceral level. #OKBoomers :-D

I actually applaud the efforts to make the platform more navigable and intuitive without having to resort to a well of patience and/or a cheat sheet of tricks. As it stands, LT is rather Byzantine in its architecture:

• Adding a book in particular has always annoyed me-- so I love the idea of a more direct way to do this;
• Having formatting options in the text box would help, rather than having to go reference, "The New How To Do Fancy Things In Your Posts Thread"
• I have the tag mash search copied over on a desktop stickie because here is no way to do this from the site itself. Is it possible/feasible to put a tag mash search in the Explore tab?
• There are always sections of this platform that I never access unless I'm on a scavenger hunt (Talk, Local, More and, Zeitgiest.) Maybe others use them to great effect, I don't know but if you're condensing tabs, re-ordering them in some way in an effort to create more surface space, or enabling us to move unused tabs out of the way, I'm not against it! Right now, I am kind of disappointed that Groups will not be its own tab with the groups we belong to dropping down from that but that's because of my own heavy usage of that tab. Also, do users really access Talk more than Groups? (I extrapolating from the order in which you've listed the items in the Drop Downs, but I know this could just as well be a random order.)
• Under the Library tab, is it anywhere on your task list to be able to import a Litsy list of books?
• I'm not a fan of the wall of text presentation and, moreover we need some dead or safe spaces on the face of the pages to scroll when on a mobile device such as a tablet or smart phone. With the new iOS upgrade, swiping and scrolling seem to be much, much faster and, scrolling has become something of an adventure on Litsy!
• And finally, yes, I like the added color. I can't say that I think anything looks bigger, but it does look better.

:-)

(>31 birder4106:)

>34 anglemark:
I understand your argument. But still wants to give to concerns that ...
There is a world outside the English speakers.
Not everybody speaks a foreign language or is able to read books in one.

But if I can only read in one language, then I am only interested in books in that language.

Foreign languages are also supported by LT. Better in some places than in others.
But there is still a lot to do.

>35 timspalding:
It would of course be best if the languages ​​in which I wish recommendations could be defined.

If I understand Tim in >35 timspalding: correctly, such a possibility is planned.

>37 PawsforThought: But are you using se.librarything.com or www.librarything.com? @birder4106 is admittedly only talking about the non-English sites. Myself, the reason I use the Swedish site is mostly that I enjoy translating, having worked a lot in that field.

>48 birder4106: Yes, generally I share your concerns when it comes to the non-English sites.

My brain is exhausted from reading the first thread. Will have to come back later (just marking my spot).

> 46 lorax wrote:

This thread is not about the work page, at all. We haven't seen a redesign of that yet - well we have, but we were specifically told not to worry about the content part of it, only the top nav. It's just about the top tabs, which are going to be reduced in number and converted into drop-down menus.

A valid point, but two counter-arguments. First, the outline at the top of this discussion places Common Knowledge in the menu hierarchy. Common Knowledge is currently part of the work pages, so what I'm talking about is applicable to the hierarchy at the top. Second, I would maintain that getting author and edition information correct is an inherent and necessary part of Site Projects, just as much as Common Knowledge or Helpers. It is certainly a valid part of the discussion to propose that the Special Projects features get their own menu -- and if it does, then we should put all the projects on it.

I don't know if this is "important" -- my library is not at all typical (90% non-fiction or at least pre-twentieth century fiction, probably at least 30% of it pre-ISBN era; hundreds of instances of multiple copies of "the same" work which are only "the same" because LT does not distinguish, say, multiple translations or multiple differently-edited versions of the same Greek writing; over 1000 books for which LT does not have a cover of my personal edition). For me, having higher-level and easier access to features for disentangling this mess would be an immense benefit. I realize that this is much less likely to be useful for someone who does not have three Greek copies of the Iliad and about six original-language versions of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight!

Very glad to see an "Add Book to Library" option directly on the book page. So much better than going to "Add books", searching, and trying to figure out which book page is the one I was just looking at ....

... or have I been doing it wrong all this time??

... Yup, there's the button. ARRRRGH, how long has that been there?!?!

>52 Cecrow: There's an Add to library button on the book page now, too. Clicking on it takes you to the Add book page, which I'm assuming the one on the redesigned page will too.

>53 PawsforThought:, oh is that all it does? Okay, so my problem stands, then. I search for it, get a dozen results, none of them is the one I was looking at. Generally I'm successful, but I especially ran into this challenge when adding Homer, or "The Collected Stories" by (fill in the blank). Maybe this isn't a new design topic, nvm. I just thought if a button's right there on the book page, maybe it'll tie in a little better.

>53 PawsforThought: , >54 Cecrow:
conceptDawg has explicitly said in this message that the Add book button is going to be redesigned, too, so that it functions like people think it should (i.e. it adds a book to your catalogue instead of taking you to the search page).

This is related to talk of a "Generic Edition" -- author, title, no isbn, no publisher info, as discussed in this thread.

>47 Tanya-dogearedcopy: Also, do users really access Talk more than Groups?

I do. Once you've subscribed to your groups you just use the Your Groups and Post option on the Talk page and there's no reason to go back to groups unless you want to search for new groups to join.

>55 Petroglyph: I know. I was just pointing out that there is an equivalent button now. It took me lteral years before I notised that button.

>55 Petroglyph: One thing that concerns me about the "Add Book" change is, if it doesn't take you to the search page, where will it take you?

One of the things I like about going to the search page is that I usually want the kindle version. So I add a comma, then the word "ebook" in the search box after the title. Otherwise, I usually can't get the kindle version. This has been very convenient.

I've decided that whatever happens will be OK. We'll adjust after grumbling for a few days.

One thing I'd really like to see: when choosing column layout for the catalog, I use "private comments" and "comments" for specific things.
Comments is for condition, dustjacket, what I paid for it, etc
Private comments is for taking note of things like inscriptions, signatures, things left in books, etc.

I'd like to be able to have both be public. Using "comments" for both columns only doubles the "condition column" and I'd like people to see my private notes. I think it would be nice to have both a "private comments" column and like a "comments 2" or "notes" column or something?

Sometimes, especially with PRE-ISBN books, I have this issue where I'm looking directly at the work page on a separate tab, which has a cover and a few members whom I share the book/books with, but on the search while adding I keep having to add "empty" work pages with no cover or members until I get to the "right one" because I can't tell what I'm adding. In the search it's just a list of the same title with different capitalization and/or punctuation or title layout. I had a struggle one day with a book where I ended up adding ten "empty" copies until I got to the one that shows up as "4 members" or however many. Am I making any sense?

Edit: are we still going to have the "interesting libraries" feature or will this be called something else?

>45 waltzmn:

Although, the more I think about it, the more my interest is in getting all the "Librarian-esque" tasks in one place, so that I don't have to figure out which section of which page lets me combine works or split authors or whatever.

I really agree. Having a dedicated page for doing metadata and "librarian stuff" would make things a lot easier. It's kinda of hard to figure out where and how to do these things sometimes.

I think there should be a place dedicated to tagmash, or an easier way to do it or something as well. It took me a while to figure out how.

#OKBoomers

#shotsfired

LT is rather Byzantine in its architecture:

You say that like it's a bad thing!



Common Knowledge is currently part of the work pages

Just in case anyone needs me to say it, Common Knowledge will not be REMOVED from all the places it is now. It's just getting a tab-level link.

conceptDawg has explicitly said in this message that the Add book button is going to be redesigned, too, so that it functions like people think it should (i.e. it adds a book to your catalogue instead of taking you to the search page).

Yes, but it's really logically separate from the redesign. And may come before or after, depending on the relative speed of work between @conceptdawg and myself!

I've decided that whatever happens will be OK. We'll adjust after grumbling for a few days.

Salmon all round!

>60 toast_and_tea: Sometimes, especially with PRE-ISBN books, I have this issue where I'm looking directly at the work page on a separate tab, which has a cover and a few members whom I share the book/books with, but on the search while adding I keep having to add "empty" work pages with no cover or members until I get to the "right one" because I can't tell what I'm adding

You're getting confused about the book/work distinction. When you add a book on the Add book tab you're adding a book from that source to your library. That book will have a cover if the ISBN of the book matches the ISBN of a book in Amazon that has a cover. At the moment you add it you will be the only member. Then the system tries to combine the book into a work that consists of all the members with the same work in their library. So, if you add a book and it only shows that there is one member then either you really are the only member on LT with that work, or the automatic combination failed for some reason and it will have to be manually combined. There's a whole group, Combiners!, dedicated to helping with that step. The last thing you should be doing is going back to the Add Books page and adding over and over.

>63 jjwilson61:. I mean I always end up deleting all the "blank" copies.
None of the books I read have ISBNs, so that might be part of the issue?
Maybe I didn't explain it correctly, I don't know, I just wish it were easier to find the "right" book.

I go to a book page, that lists members that also have it, and hit the "add to your books" button. The first thing on the search isn't always the "edition" you started at, so the only way I can find the right one is to go down the list and "add" until I come across the one that people have also added. The page that I was looking at showed at least 10 members that also had the same book.

>64 toast_and_tea:

Copies of an individual work can be added to LT from so many different sources, so it isn't so much a matter of finding the edition that other people have added as it is of making sure that the copy you add to your catalog is properly connected to the others already extant on the site. In many cases, the combination occurs automatically, but that is not always the case. When you click on the "Add to Your books" button, the current workflow brings you to the Add Books page, with the title of the work you were looking at already entered in the search bar. Going with a simple title search is most likely to net a large number of results that are of varying quality (and potential relevance). The exact nature and general quality of the results is going to depend on where you were telling the search to go.

If the copy you choose to add from this list of results shows no other members, rather than deleting the record and trying again with a different copy, I recommend looking to see if it just isn't combining properly. As previously noted, not all books are going to automatically combine with the extant copies on the site, and I believe the lack of auto-combination is likely to be more common when there isn't an ISBN to key off of. Once a particular copy is successfully combined with its fellows, then the link is remembered, and future members adding that copy should not have to go through the combination process (though they may still need/want to do data clean-up so things match up properly).

Just wondering...Is Tim looking into "Books you should borrow" when looking at another members books. If so I have several suggestions. If not I guess I'll wait until this update is done and then make a failry useless "Recommended Site Improvement" for my ideas :-)

>66 guido47:

Yeah, not accepting suggestions for that at present! Get in line :)

>58 krazy4katz:

About the search for books:
It would be nice if filters for hardcover, ebooks, language etc. could be set.

>64 toast_and_tea: I'm not sure what you mean by a "blank" copy. If you mean that it doesn't have a cover than that's a whole different process. Unless you've specifically set the cover of your book to a member-uploaded cover the system uses the ISBN to get the cover from Amazon. If that doesn't work I think it uses the most common member-uploaded cover for the work, which won't work unless your book is combined correctly.

I see you're point about finding the right edition but I'm not sure what that means to you. If you want all the fields, like publication and publication date, to be filled in correctly for your edition you do need to find an exact match in the sources, but for pre-ISBN books you may not be able to find the exact edition in the library sources, so you may just need to have to enter that information yourself.

>64 toast_and_tea:, I always do a through search for the work first, and find what I think is the correct page. Sometimes I request assistance with combining before I can settle on one (pretty terrible at that myself). Then I go to Add Book, and hope I pick the result that links me to that one. If it's a miss, I have to delete and try Add Book again.

Cecrow (#70):

That's a rather unnecessarily convolute workaround. Just start on the Add Books page, do your search there (library sources, include ISBN if there is one and publisher if it's a pre-ISBN edition), and then combine or ask for help combining if it isn't attached to the work.

Without delving deeply at all, but only giving a superficial glance so far: I do not like the color scheme. That red is too intense, and I feel a tension between the red and the brown because they are too close and yet not close enough. They are also very organic and remind me too much of, shall we say, natural processes. A comfortable library leather, yes, great; but don't make me look for a body among the stacks.

I come here to give my attention, not to have it grabbed.

Okay already, we all know change is hard and sometimes learning our way around a new website is frustrating.
Maybe Tim et al can have a coterie of selected members volunteer to beta-test the new design for a week? (Not me... C&O is not my forté).

IDEA! How about a game to teach us how to navigate? With a fun book-icon if you solve at least one "find your way" clue?

So giving an opinion that was requested warrants a blast? Only favorable opinions wanted, I guess. All right, then.

>69 jjwilson61: a "right copy" means a book page with tags, other covers members have uploaded, sometimes a cover on the left side (other times it's the generic marble, but other covers are available), a list of other members who have added the book, reviews, etc

a "blank" book page has no tags, no members, and no covers of any kind, with the same title and author, just spelled or punctuated differently or some minor thing like that.

> showing the top two levels (top and sub-tab) and, sometimes, the third-level of left-navigation.

I started looking at it, but when I compare it to the latest screenshot, there are a lot of subpages under 'Your Books' (in the left column). Can we see the first draft with all sub-pages? Or does that list not exist yet?
It could be an external link, for example to a workflowy list (which has 'collapse/expand all and can be shared via URL as 'view only').

In general: in my opinion the sitemap (= list of all pages) should _not_ contain duplicates.
Example: 'Profile' is a subpage under Account/Person. It can not at the same time be a subpage under 'Home'.

(Off topic – will it ever be possible to get notified of new posts in a talk thread via email?)

> So giving an opinion that was requested warrants a blast?

I don't see post 73 as a direct reply to your post 72.

> I do not like the color scheme.

I agree that the brown and the red in the latest screenshot don't look good.
The brown should stay as it is at the moment and the red should be darker, probably as the line under the main menu is at the moment (hard to tell, because it's only used for the line and text).

I think there have been really long discussions about the colours. No need to change them now.
It looked better in an earlier screenshot.

Personally I would love to be able to chose my own colours, but I guess that won't happen during this redesign.

>75 toast_and_tea: Then by right copy you mean a book that has been combined with the work you had been looking at. You would help improve the site by, instead of adding books until you find the right one, you choose the book that best matches yours and if it comes up blank, then manually combine it with the work.

One thing that has become obvious from reading through the comments is that there seem to be a number of different routes to get to the same place, no matter what place you're trying to get to!
And, the idea that people have to figure this out, that it's not intuitive from the moment when you arrive on the site, is the reason the site does need an overhaul.

In terms or organizational tiers in the proposed dropdown menus, it all makes sense but I think the doing will be more informative than the telling. Perhaps a beta roll-out as was suggested earlier would be a good idea.

Color scheme is not a hill I want to climb, much less die on, but FWIW, I do not find the purposed chocolate and maroon/red combo scatological or off-putting. I find the colors soothing, and that the background highlighting of the tab in maroon/red works for me.

From what I can see, we're not losing anything content-wise and the changes purposed make navigation more direct and easier for those on mobile devices as well. Unless I missed something? (Could very well be as I have not read every single comment.)

>78 jjwilson61: I went to the page of the book I've been trying to add today. I can't seem to add the right one. I went to go combine it with repeats I was seeing but it seems the page has already been combined with the "no members" copies so I guess I can't find the right one. I can't "find" the one listed on the link below to add it. When I try searching the first part of the title as well as the whole long title, almost all "search where" options come up with absolutely no results, other than Amazon, which is where the first two search results came from.

This is the book I've been trying to add: http://www.librarything.com/work/4788051

but this keeps happening:


even though when you go to the work page I've linked, it says that my search results have been combined with the work I'm trying to add.

I've tried Overcat and many other Search where? options to get the right one but I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong at this point.

>80 toast_and_tea:
a work is the rolled up version of all the books that LibraryThing thinks are the same. if there are substantial differences in title, author, or ISBN, (or any of those are the same!), LT's algorithm may need a little help.

I have helped it by combining your copy with "Dec 6th 1880" in the title with that work page you linked. the titles and authors are different enough that without an ISBN, LT thinks they're different. so your book isn't rolled up into the work, and you can't select the cover from the available ones that others are using, their tags don't appear on your book's work page, and so on.

you can manually combine the books into a work by using the "add to workbench" link on the right side of every work page, then "combine works" when you have them all grouped together. just be sure they are the same book!

>80 toast_and_tea: When you first add a book, especially a pre-ISBN one, you may get "no members" on the Add Books page. Often (not always), ten or fifteen minutes later if you look at the work page you'll see it's been combined. This one, according to the Editions page of the work page you linked, has both of the editions showing on your Recently Added list combined into it. If you keep adding and deleting editions, what you get is a lot of unconnected books floating around LT, which may end up combined with the correct book eventually (as zero-copy books).

Right now, the way things are set up, going to a book page on LT and trying to add from there is fairly useless. It would be better, as >71 lorax: said, to start at the Add Books page, enter the title of the book you have - or better, "title, author" - and search for it in Overcat and a few libraries. When you find a copy that matches what you have in your hand, add that to your library. Even if it says "no members" when you add it, keep that one because it matches _your_ book. Then a few minutes later, click on it and go to its work page; if it isn't already combined, try the "Recalculate title/author" on the lower right. If that doesn't work, try Editions on the lower left, see if there's a Potential Work Combination available. And if neither of those work, go find a good ("right") work page for the book you're adding, and ask in Combiners for help connecting them. Adding and deleting various editions of the work is the slow and awkward way, really!

Now this may not be true after the Add Books redo mentioned various times in this thread - one of the points mentioned is that there will be Add Books buttons that actually add the book from the page they're on, with all the connections. But that's not what we've got now - the Add Books button just does a search on the title of the book (no author, no year, no any of the details that can get you the right edition to match your physical book). As I said, fairly useless (though admittedly, your demo book has an unusual title!).

>81 keristars: >82 jjmcgaffey:

Thank you. I've been feeling rather stupid this past week as this happens almost every single book I add (probably because they're old obscure books) and I thought I had a handle on the site after being here 5 years...I'm sorry if I frustrated any of you.

I don't always own the physical book itself, a lot of times I find things online and add them "for later" so to speak and catalog them just like I would a book I own, so it's hard to compare dates and publishers and such since I don't have any edition on hand.

>83 toast_and_tea: Right - that's where the proposed "generic edition" would come in. But still, pick one that looks good to you (in Add Books), and then connect it to what's on LT; that's better than adding and deleting and trying to magically hit on the one that LT can and will immediately connect. Because sometimes there isn't one that will connect instantly/automatically - but it can always be connected, by you or the Combiners. And if you figure out how to use Workbench you'll be ahead of me - I just go ask for help at that point.

It's actually more useful (as someone said, up thread) to enter one that doesn't exactly match anything that's already on LT and then connect it. Then the next time someone tries to enter that book, there's more points for LT to consider for auto-combining.

IDEA! How about a game to teach us how to navigate? With a fun book-icon if you solve at least one "find your way" clue?

Good idea. We often have such hunts, so this would be that.

sunny (#77)

The brown should stay as it is at the moment and the red should be darker

It looked better in an earlier screenshot.

In the earlier screenshot, the red was *brighter* than it is in the current version!

Bleah.

I'll do the game, so I can get the icon, but I don't like the idea of forcing hand-holding on us. Why penalize those of us who have been here a long time like this?

>86 timspalding: I vote for a dead salmon icon :)

AFAIK treasure and other hunts are not compulsory. No gunpoint forcing or hand-holding or moonlight strolls.

Well, of course they aren't compulsory, but I sort of feel like "this indicates you aren't a total incompetent at the site" is a rather strong push to do this one. The next regularly-scheduled treasure hunt would seem to be a perfectly fine way to get people who aren't familiar with the site more familiar with it, without needless "now THIS is how you get to a book page" hand-holding for those who are already familiar with it.

>83 toast_and_tea: And sometimes the book just isn't in any of the sources. Even if other people have cataloged that book on LT when you look at the Source field for their book it shows that they entered it manually. If that's the case then you'll have to enter the book manually too, it's an option that's easy to overlook; it's link is below the sources on the Add Books page.

Would this be a good time to ask for having the dead salmon colour scheme back?

In case not, l'll agree with various that the read is to intense. As a rule of thumb, I think UI elements should only be red if they're trying to warn me of an error or similar.

"Explore" strikes me as uselessly vague, but I'm not sure what would be better.

If the profile comments are replaced by private messages à la ... almost every other website where I've got an account I'll be delighted.

Regarding something from the old thread, please don't use icons only for the top categories. I hate trying to guess what on earth the designer might have thought that icon would be suggestive of. Tiny text is fine, I can zoom, but please don't make it icon only.

Will member recs reside under Explore -> Recommendations? They feel rather Community-ish.

The LibraryThing app uses an attractive teal (blue-green) with the chocolate pudding brown. FWIW.

>51 waltzmn: I don't know if this is "important" -- my library is not at all typical (90% non-fiction or at least pre-twentieth century fiction, probably at least 30% of it pre-ISBN era; hundreds of instances of multiple copies of "the same" work which are only "the same" because LT does not distinguish, say, multiple translations or multiple differently-edited versions of the same Greek writing; over 1000 books for which LT does not have a cover of my personal edition). For me, having higher-level and easier access to features for disentangling this mess would be an immense benefit. I realize that this is much less likely to be useful for someone who does not have three Greek copies of the Iliad and about six original-language versions of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight!

As someone who also has a bunch of "foreign" language books and a lot of translations of same, THIS DRIVES ME CRAZY, and I've never seen any indication it's going to be fixed. I had to resort to my own tag, "not a duplicate," but they're all still marked as duplicates, which is infuriating when trying to accurately catalogue stuff.

Same thing happens with audiobooks and hard copy books. They're not the same!

>2 lilithcat: "Feed" sounds an awful lot like the Goodreads format. You can see the activity of all your friends, a bunch of your friends, none of your friends, &c &c.

Right now we have a rather bad "Connection" feature. And a "Share" feature—top right—that's like a feed of yourself. And a "Reviews" page that includes a chronological feed of reviews on your books. We need one such feature. We need a single place to see a feed of what you're interested in—whether it's just your own actions, that of your friends, or updates on books and authors you care about.

Yup, that's pretty much Goodreads. I suppose "feeds" and "timelines" coming to LibraryThing was inevitable (although isn't that what Litsy was supposed to be for?). I'll go on ignoring the social media side being rolled out and keep cataloguing and hope there's as much attention paid to that, I guess.

Google search is probably playing a big part in this. Right now when you search for a book title via Google, you get Wikipedia, Amazon, Goodreads, and so on. They've already mentioned that when new users or non-users somehow get to LibraryThing via searches, they're apparently baffled and give up on the site immediately.

>51 waltzmn: >95 the_red_shoes:

Maybe I'm reading this wrong but on the Main Page for a book I have in multiple differing editions (but which LT considers to be the 'same' work) I find each copy listed separately; and if I put enough unique identifying info in the Publication field it's easy to tell them all apart.

For instance for Shakespeare's The Tempest...:

Your other editions

The Tempest (Arden I) by William Shakespeare; London, Methuen 1902, Third edition, revised, 1926

The Tempest CASSETTE by William Shakespeare; Caedmon home-taped from LP

The Tempest CASSETTE by William Shakespeare; Arkangel

The Tempest (New Variorum) by William Shakespeare; Lippincott (1892), 10th Edition: , 465 pages

The tempest by William Shakespeare; Harvard UP 1954 1958, cloth

The Tempest (The New Shakespeare) by William Shakespeare; Cambridge UP 1921 1969, paper

The Tempest (The New Shakespeare) by William Shakespeare; Cambridge UP 1921, cloth

The tempest by William Shakespeare; Oxford : Clarendon Press, 1987.

The tempest (Folger Library General Readers Series) by William Shakespeare; New York : Washington Square Press, published by Pocket Books, 1961.

The tempest (The BBC TV Shakespeare) by William Shakespeare; London : British Broadcasting Corporation, 1980.

The tempest (Arden III) by William Shakespeare; Walton-on-Thames : Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1999.

The tempest (New Penguin) by William Shakespeare; Harmondsworth : Penguin, c1968.

The tempest by William Shakespeare; New York : Cambridge University Press, 2002.

The Tempest (The Pelican Shakespeare) by William Shakespeare; Penguin Classics (1999), Paperback, 128 pages

>95 the_red_shoes: I agree it probably won’t be fixed because hard copies and audiobooks use the same words, just a different medium, so they are considered the same. I guess you can say that for translations also. However if you look at the editions you will find what you are looking for if they are combined properly. A big if.

>51 waltzmn:, >95 the_red_shoes:, >98 krazy4katz: About 18 months ago I suggested that the media type was included in the work duplicate page: https://www.librarything.com/topic/290842

People agreed that would be useful, so I hope that happens as part of the redesign. It would be useful to be added to the list of 'Your other editions' as well, as that seems to be pulling the same information.

>51 waltzmn: waltzmn: >95 the_red_shoes: the_red_shoes: > 97Crypto-Willobie

Maybe I'm reading this wrong but on the Main Page for a book I have in multiple differing editions (but which LT considers to be the 'same' work) I find each copy listed separately; and if I put enough unique identifying info in the Publication field it's easy to tell them all apart.

Agreed, but part of the issue is that straightening out such messes is tricky. Some of this is a problem with LibraryThing's internal database and the way it files works, which is not at issue in a redesign. (I've already mentioned one example: The Variorum Chaucer's photographic facsimile of the Hengwrt Manuscript of the Canterbury Tales. It is not a copy of the Canterbury Tales; it's a book of photographs with a transcription. Might as well lump it with The Complete Photographs of Ansel Adams; at least the Adams and the Hengwrt book are both books of photographs!)

In any case, the issue is that examples such as yours, or my various oddities, need a lot of work splitting and joining even accepting the LibraryThing system that lumps things that shouldn't be lumped. The features for this are very scattered and often quite hard to use. They could be reorganized in the redesign. It wouldn't solve the database problem, but it would make it easier to do the few things we can do.

>100 waltzmn: I guess right now all you can do is write disambiguation notices. Those are very helpful. They have prevented me from making a lot of mistakes when combining.

>99 Maddz: I guess I am not sure what the work duplicate page is.
I know the media type is on the page for the personal copy of each of my books. Well, things will be different anyway. I guess I will find out how much when the revisions are finished. I am still concerned about how I will find the kindle versions of the books I want to read, but no point in worrying until it all happens.

>101 krazy4katz: Work Duplicates is under Stats/Memes (second-to-last link on the left side) - it's literally just a list of books that (LT thinks) are duplicates in your catalog. The books are links, so you can go look and see the details - but a media type on that page would be extremely helpful for quick checks.

> here's a stab at the organization, showing the top two levels (top and sub-tab) and, sometimes,
> the third-level of left-navigation.

Here's how I would order these: workflowy.com/s/lt/8rIlPikZzCF5defO

There is 'Expand all/Collapse all', hidden behind the ... on the same line as the title LibraryThing.

Italics are items that I moved around.
Brackets = comments.

>102 Taliesien: Glad to meet another calibre user using it to store reviews. I started doing that a couple of years ago and now I'm all caught up back to 2000. Thank goodness for the Reading List plugin :-)

>102 Taliesien: Tim and Chris have stated numerous times that none of the functions of LT are going away, so I don't understand what your complaint is, exactly. That people will have an easier time navigating LT? That other users will have more of things they care about?
And calling other people riff raff really isn't nice. I've used Apple (on desktop) for over a decade, and I really don't appreciate being referred to as "dumb" because of it. Just because people like things to be easier rather than uneccessarily cumbersome doesn't mean they're dumb.

...from Basil Fawlty's advert for Gourmet Night: "No riffraff."

Some people happen to like Riff Raff

>1 timspalding: Have you looked into setting up some kind of public card-sort test? The websites I find easiest to navigate usually started with something like that.

I'm still curious as to how exactly the mechanism will work - it's not clickable drop-downs, you've said, so how will we actually get to the submenus? Will we have to go to page of the top-level menu to see the next level? Is it going to be some kind of hover? Will sub-sub-sub-menus slowly fill the screen, or will we go to landing pages for some of them?

Anyway, your sort is probably fine and I'd get used to it! The only thing that's making me *headtilt* is the stuff under "Home".

I would expect "home" to be just "home" and not have submenus; that's what I see on other sites. "Profile" is also under the user menu, and it can probably stay just there. "Statistics" fits better under "Explore" (especially if it includes both your library stats, other stats, and zeitgeist, which really ought to go together.) "Feed" and "Connections" are things I would look for under "Community" first, since they're social, and a reading timeline would probably go with your library.

Question
On my Profile Page, I can’t edit “Favorite Authors”. Could that be fixed or changed?

Change is needed. I imagine we’ll all learn to adapt and in about three months from date o launch, we’ll be just fine with it.

>110 Matke: Just click through to the author page of the one you want to remove or add, scroll down to the "Members" section, and click on "Favorited" (if you want to remove them) or "Add to favourite" (if you want to add them).

>3 timspalding: That sounds good to me, Tim

>111 PawsforThought:
Thank you, Paws!

I have a hard time visualizing all of this. Plus, I have been less active for a while. I do some cataloging but don't participate in the forums like I used to. Even though I like what we have here, I trust it will all work out for the best in the end.

HT to >113 Matke: for pointing me to these threads.

Ok I have browsed through the comments in the last two threads, and getting the distinct impression that most of you use LT as a catalogue site. The idea of cataloguing my library overwhelms me; thats not why I am here. The majority of my time here is spent in book discussions,, or reading reviews. I want to know what this new design will do to the groups, reviews and touchstones. If it will help manage the groups better, making touchstones work better, I am all for it. But if its going to change the way I am able to chat with others, it will not work for me (btw I am another dinosaur who only uses my phone for calls and maybe photos, and pretty much use a standard computer screen. I hope this new design is not going to make this site more difficult for me to use) There are many of us who see change, and run for the hills. Ive been through one of these redesigns before and frankly that site ended up dissolving when people left. Please don't lose us in your quest to make the site better.

>115 cindydavid4:

getting the distinct impression that most of you use LT as a catalogue site

That's because it is a catalogue site. "LibraryThing is an online service to help people catalog their books easily." See: https://www.librarything.com/about

Which is not to say that it's wrong to use LT for other things, just that it shouldn't come as a surprise that most people are here because of its basic function as a catalogue site, and that they'd like any changes to continue to support its intended purpose.

no I understand that; its just that I spend all my time in groups that I guess I don't realize the magnitude of it. I understand too that they'd want changes the support what they are doing. I'd just ask that at the same time they do not ruin it for others who are here for the book chat (and I know many people are both, so I'd think it would be worthwhile to make it so that the new changes work for both)

> 117 cindydavid4Today

no I understand that; its just that I spend all my time in groups that I guess I don't realize the magnitude of it. I understand too that they'd want changes the support what they are doing. I'd just ask that at the same time they do not ruin it for others who are here for the book chat (and I know many people are both, so I'd think it would be worthwhile to make it so that the new changes work for both)

I think you've found the nub of the issue. For all the complaints (including mine), LibraryThing is a pretty good cataloging site; if the data in its catalog database is imperfect, it's because there is no perfect database of this information! And if LibraryThing isn't pretty (I'm not sure I agree, but let's accept it for the sake of the argument), it's better looking than the software they use at my local public library!

So the areas that most need to be improved are the ones you are interested in seeing improved. But, because those areas are relatively weaker, the people most interested in them are not the ones who are the most intense LibraryThing users. The people who are are here are intensely defending their turf because they don't want to lose what they have. Or are arguing about fixing relatively small things because LT already mostly serves their needs.

I'll confess to being one of the latter. Yet, if LT can improve its other features, or just make them easier to find, without interfering with its core functions (and without hurting our eyes :-), then that's great. As others have said, we'll adjust.

But don't be surprised that people get very intense about their features, because it's those features which brought them here. :-)

I get it, thanks. Just so long as they aren't surprised if a reader asks how something will impact my enjoyment. But I will keep quiet while you all hash it out.. In the meantime I have books to read :) Oh and thankyou for not being flippant, and taking my post seriously. Very much appreciated

>103 jjmcgaffey: Thank you! I have seen this before, just forgot where it was. I have The Hobbit in duplicate and it does tell me that one is a paperback and one is an ebook. There should be more duplicates than I see, however.

>120 krazy4katz: If you know of duplicates, they probably need combining.

>121 MarthaJeanne: Thank you. I will check.

Looking forward to more sneak peeks!

Excited for the redesign! Long overdue, especially usability and accessbilitywise.

But I echo the statements of people who want to track their reading here. That would be very nice if that would be possible in the future.

As a longtime member, on the topic of keeping members and attract new ones: this is a though one. I certainly don't use LT that much as I used to. I can't pinpoint exact reasons. It just lost some of it's charm I guess. And that since a few years the atmosphere in Talk isn't that great anymore (and that it is a pain to navigate if you don't want to put 95% of the groups on ignore)

royalhistorian (#124):

I've never had a problem navigating Talk, and I have only a handful of prolific groups on Ignore. Do you use "All topics" by default, rather than "Groups and posts" which shows threads in groups you have joined or that you have posted to?

I agree about the atmosphere in Talk lately though. I think people have just left.

> Tim, >conceptDawg, kristalibrie

The last post by one of you was on the 1st of November by Tim (https://www.librarything.de/topic/312459#6956277). And the post
did not even concern the redesign.

Are there any news?
I'm curious like a cat.

>126 birder4106: I know @conceptDawg and @timspalding are still working on the redesign where they can, but we're also getting into the busiest time of the year for LibraryThing with the holidays, so there might not be a ton of progress over the next month or two is my guess. If you can sit tight a bit longer hopefully we'll have another update for you all soon. :)

>127 kristilabrie:
Thank you

I like the outline. It makes sense. It gives me the information I need. The one charge I suggest is to put add books on the first page. That is the major action and most other actions flow from it.
Thanks for your work.

>127 kristilabrie: I still remember ‘Collections’ ... just tell everyone it will be ‘two weeks’ and we’ll be fine 😂

>130 klarusu: So what does it tell you that they aren't even saying 'two months' yet?

>131 MarthaJeanne: :-D :-D

There was a an update post in the past week.
Talk post: Design Drafts 2.0

Making lots of progress in the last two weeks. We're still a bit away from flipping the switch though. LOTS of debris has built up in the corners of LT's codebase in the last 15 years.

Echo what >134 conceptDawg: says. @conceptDawg has been working very diligently on this and making excellent progress. Feeling very good about the direction this redesign is going, all things considered! Thanks to all who understand the effort that's going into this... and to those that don't, for your continued patience. :)

>134 conceptDawg: & >135 kristilabrie: Oh goodness, it's a massive undertaking but it's really coming together well. I was only teasing ;-)

Of course! :)

... very much looking forward to updates on this thread. (-:

I wouldn't expect much until January 2, but yes.

I understand LibraryThing is mainly a book-cataloguing website.
You say on the 'Add Book' page (I use the French version), it can be used
to catalogue movies and music.
Unfortunately, the 'Roles' you propose when adding 'Other authors'
are only valid for books.
Therefore, it would be great if each user could define the roles (s)he
needs to choose from, depending on the item (book, CD, DVD).
For each type, it should be possible to define the roles and to save it,
so we don't have to add them manualy.
For example, for movies :
- director, writer, actor, actress, composer
and for music :
- orchestra, conductor, stage director, set designer...

It would also be great if each user could add to his / her own
library books directly from other users.

When should we expect the update?

Jeez, let them get back to back to the office and settled in after the holidays before pestering them.

I'm working on my stuff, but CH is the design maven and he's on vacation this week. I don't expect he'll get out much next week either, as he'll have a backlog and we have a lot of high-level decisions to make.

>143 timspalding:
So, two weeks? ;)

I have missed this whole phenomenon until just now. I will say this, though:

1. The overall appearance of the new design is generally fine.

2. I agree that the "description" taking up a lot of the book page is unnecessary. Where is that coming from? If it's being yanked from another site by a crawler it's probably an intellectual-property time bomb waiting to go off. If it's being auto-generated by a script based on input on this site, it's probably going to be gibberish half the time. Simply from an aesthetic perspective, however, I am not going to lose sleep over it myself. (Apparently these already exist: I literally did not know that.)

3. Automating the "add to library" function is not a bad thing. It's a good thing. In fact, it's a good thing and I never understood why it hadn't happened before. So having one button in lieu of the "select database" etc. steps from the original system is an improvement, at least for books that go in easily.

4. That being said, you need the ability to edit an entry by hand, because the databases are not always correct, or your book is sometimes odd in some way. I have an unusually large percentage of books that I have had to enter by hand, or at least revise by hand after auto-entry. A redesign that destroys a user's ability to add or revise entries manually would be about the only thing that would cause me to stop using the site. (I see comments suggesting manual manipulation is not going away, but I won't pretend to have read all of both threads on this topic.)

5. For those keeping tabs, I primarily add using the app (for works that can be scanned) and also use the app to search my own catalogue when I'm in a bookshop. I do almost everything else from a PC.

pjkorg (#145):

That being said, you need the ability to edit an entry by hand, because the databases are not always correct, or your book is sometimes odd in some way. I have an unusually large percentage of books that I have had to enter by hand, or at least revise by hand after auto-entry. A redesign that destroys a user's ability to add or revise entries manually would be about the only thing that would cause me to stop using the site. (I see comments suggesting manual manipulation is not going away, but I won't pretend to have read all of both threads on this topic.)

Tim has said many, many times that functionality is not going away. You don't need to read *all* the posts, but before panicking it might help to at least read the staff ones.

Since I joyfully retired from gainful employment almost 7 years ago, I have not spent much time reading comments on LT. I'm too busy reading and cataloguing, hiking, and taking ballet and tap classes for the aged and decrepit. It's a real joy to read through these comments on the redesign (everything changes if you live long enough) and see the names of so many familiar original members. Love it!

>142 jjwilson61: I wasn't pestering?

>148 toast_and_tea: No, you weren't.

As many of us are waiting to see if the redesign fixes layout problems on the site, I think it's a common question. Is the wait expected to be two more weeks (😉), six months, or longer?

Is it possible to pin the LT tabs to the top of the page so that they don’t disappear when you scroll down? It’s me being a bit lazy, I know, but then you don’t have to scroll all the way up again (in Talk, for instance) if you want to go to another section of LT.

>150 humouress: At the bottom right of the page click Top Bar: Scrolls with page to change it to Top Bar: Always visible.

Is that what you want?

>146 lorax: "You don't need to read *all* the posts, but before panicking it might hlep to at least read the staff ones."

Agreed. However, not everyone who wants to contribute to the discussion is aware of who the staff members are. Maybe a different colored bar above the post - the shaded box with the post number, member name, and date/time stamp. If that were a different color for staff members, it would make it easier to pick them out. Especially in these topics with so many posts.

I'd like to have input, but it's daunting to go through hundreds of posts, especially since Tim Spalding is the only staff member I know. I wouldn't even know who to look for.

>152 margaretbartley: Staff posts do have a little L logo to the left of their names. They are easy to miss if you're scrolling quickly, so making them a little more prominent wouldn't hurt.