New Lists Pages

The List page has been updated to the LT2 style.

Examples:
* Noirvember: The Best Noir https://www.librarything.com/list/44080/all/Noirvember-The-Best-Noir
* Best Science Fiction Novels https://www.librarything.com/list/1/Best-Science-Fiction-Novels
* Mythical Monsters of the World https://www.librarything.com/list/43957/Mythical-Monsters-of-the-World
* Best History Books about Epidemics https://www.librarything.com/list/24/all/Best-History-Books-about-Epidemics

Changes:
* The page is LT2-ified. So it works on mobile and is accessible.
* It's generally cleaner and less fussy.
* The covers and text are larger, for readability, but we tightened other things. An average list on our screens has gone from showing 4.5 books to 4 "above the fold." This is while using the largest of the display styles. If display styles with smaller fonts* are used, like Lorax—which uses the smaller font sizes of the old pages—then you actually see more content on the new pages, so overall we’ve really tightened up the layout.(1)
* We've added "Related Lists" on the side.
* The small display of your list has been removed from the right. It was handy, but fussy, confusing to some, nearly impossible to keep synced with the items in the main list, and couldn't be mobilized. Instead, go to "Your List" and reorder there.
* The reorder mode provides a much more compact list, making it easier to move items about.
* We've removed the "score" previously shown. It's hard to explain and not adding much.(2)
* Larger lists are now much faster to load, with a progressive loading in extreme cases.

What Lists is missing is a decent "Explore" page, with links to popular lists, etc. It's a home page thing for historical reasons that no longer apply. That will be coming soon.

Kudos to @knerd.knitter and @conceptDawg for taking the lead on this.

What do you think?

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1. Click "Change Style" at the bottom of the page.
2. Basically, it's the number of people who have the book on their list, minus a smaller penalty for down-votes. With some other math that makes the score a decimal. See? That was boring to explain.

Sample image of new page.

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And sample of a comparison between new and old pages. (using Lorax for the new page)

Thanks for the Lorax hint, it's a while since I futzed with the styles option.

It all seems smooth and usable! Thank you.

I have never been a big user of lists but it looks good to me.

Also, the lists provided as examples had some very interesting titles on them, which led me to re-visit a though I’ve had many times on LT - I’d like to be able to mark books as “interesting” (something I want to have a closer look at in the future) but not adding it to my library. As far as I know (and despite a decade on this site there’s a ton I’ve never heard of) there’s no such feature currently. Or have I missed something?

>1 timspalding: 2. See? That was boring to explain.

But the key benefit was understanding why an item was 1st on a list, and not 2nd, etc. Now how do we know?

Also: am I right in thinking that part of "the other math" was a weighting based on which place the item had on each voter's list? So, my 1st Ranked item was weighted more than my 5th Ranked item, which makes sense.

ETA Unless you're saying the math and the rank score remains the same, it just isn't listed on the page. I can see the utility in that: the rank itself tells you the score must be higher. I initially understood you to mean the score was taken away altogether.

On my phone, I can't find the "Add Work to List" button that appears at the top right of the desktop view shown.

>6 paradoxosalpha: That right side content is moved to the bottom of the page on mobile screens. I’m working on changing that but that’s where is is for now.

>7 conceptDawg:
I looked there and still don't see it.

Under the pagination bar comes the "About This List" section, with no button in between.

Out of curiosity, how are the related lists determined? Is it by sharing books in common?

I'm still getting used to it, but I think overall I like it, especially now that the buttons are different colors.

>7 conceptDawg: >8 paradoxosalpha: Not there for me either. Neither is "Add to Favorites"

Plus the button with the #s next to Related Tags is squished with the label - if you press it, it untangles but if it is turned off, it shows only a squished button and no text.

Safari on iPhone if that makes a difference.

And I'm using Chrome on an Android phone, so it seems not to be phone OS or browser-specific.

I have not been able to find the button to add a new work to a list either. Duck Duck Go on Android.

I’ll check on this and figure out what’s going on with the missing button for some people.

The Add Work to List button cannot be translated.

But thanks for using the tag translations on translated pages! I think this is the first LT2 page where I see that. I thought you had decided to abandon tag translations.

I am sorry to lose the 'score', even if I didn't understand the maths. I used here - https://www.librarything.com/topic/343954#n7944723 - to create a league table of authors of works contributing to the list.

I also quite liked seeing how each voter had ranked each book. I suppose I could look at everyone's list in turn but that would take too long.

The new arrangement does look better though.

I have not been able to find the button to add a new work to a list either. Duck Duck Go on Android.

Can you confirm that you are signed—and it knows you're signed in—in when you are trying this? A quick clue is whether there's an "Add Books" tab/option at the top of the page.

I am sorry to lose the 'score', even if I didn't understand the maths. I used here - https://www.librarything.com/topic/343954#n7944723 - to create a league table of authors of works contributing to the list.

I'm going to propose that Lucy add it back, but hidden by default, with an option to see it on the right, much as the "Flag Items" shows the flag buttons.

I also quite liked seeing how each voter had ranked each book. I suppose I could look at everyone's list in turn but that would take too long.

I dunno. We could do the same as with the score.

ETA Unless you're saying the math and the rank score remains the same, it just isn't listed on the page. I can see the utility in that: the rank itself tells you the score must be higher. I initially understood you to mean the score was taken away altogether.

Yes. The score remains. It's just hidden.

Out of curiosity, how are the related lists determined? Is it by sharing books in common?

No, actually, it's shared tags on the books. I wanted to make sure that two lists were linked if they were about Science Fiction, but shared no books.

I am still working on it, and will probably add shared books.

For interest, I posted about this on Twitter while I was doing it, writing:

1. Things that don't work—calculating similarity between lists of books by plotting them on ten-dimensional space, based on the proportion of books in DDC classes, and calculating distances between points. As you might guess, literature screws it up. It's all 8XX.
2. Doing it by 26 LibraryThing genres works pretty well, though. (The easiest way would be to do overlaps, but two science fiction lists are similar even if they no overlaps.)
3. Now I'm going to do tags, which will probably catch things like "Best Books of 2021" and "Worst Books of 2021," because they'll both share hugely salient spikes of "Read in 2021." Computing tag similarity is a big pain, though. There are 185 millions tags in LibraryThing!

>17 timspalding: Thanks for the rapid response ;-)

>17 timspalding: Thanks for the in-depth explanation. Just a thought: What if we could also tag lists? If all the best books of XXX lists were tagged "best books", for instance.

>19 sturlington:

That's a good idea, I think. Groups allow that. With groups there's a hidden layer of approval going on. Basically, the first time a tag is used, LT staff have to approve it—I get an email. (This is hidden from the users, I believe. They see it immediately.) This is to prevent spam and ridiculous over stuffing. I think we'd need that.

>20 timspalding: But isn't it the season for overstuffing? Or is that just related to eating?

>21 gilroy:

Stockings!

>17 timspalding: Yes, I m signed in. I can see my own version of the list. I can also see a button to add books on the list to my own version of the list.

What I cannot do is add an entirely new work to the list.

>23 MDGentleReader: Ditto.

This issue should be easy for staff to verify. It appears to obtain for all phones.

There is also some oddness for pagination of Your List and Your books. If I click on next page, or explicit 2 for Your Books, it switches to page 2 of LibraryThing list. Same for Your Books list.


Cannot get images from Junk Drawer to show, sorry.

I saw the missing buttons on a mobile device as well, so I think it's happening always. We'll look into it.

>25 MDGentleReader: I'll look into this issue too.

I'm also working on a toggle for showing the score.

>1 timspalding:

Tim, your misquotation of Jabberwocky in the list description for "Best Science Fiction Novels" is killing me every time I go there. I assume it was just a bit of lorem ipsum when you set the list up, but now that there are 387 participating members, would you mind either giving an accurate description, or at least conforming the quote to its source?

>27 paradoxosalpha:

Ha! I hadn't seen the list when it started, so that misquotation jarred me too when I saw it for the first time via this thread.

ThexAdd Work button appears at tge top now. Thanks!

That list really has really matured into something interesting. Reading the thumbs-down comments I often scratch my head about why people consider books "not sf."

>28 elenchus: Where is this misquotation? I'm just wondering if I am missing something.

Either I'm blind or we still can't delete a list we've created. I have one I'd like to start based on tags, but want to get rid of it if it doesn't do what I think it will do. If I can't delete it, I probably won't create it either.

>31 al.vick:

It's part of the list description (meta-data) at the top. No real idea why that quote would be attributed to that particular list, apart from @paradoxosalpha's supposition it was meant as a bit of lorem ipsom, perhaps to demonstrate the description function.

ETA Correction, it was part of the meta-data, but appears to have been removed.

>31 al.vick:, >33 elenchus:

Yeah, Tim seems to have revised it to say: "Future worlds, alien vistas, speculative scientific developments... LibraryThing members choose the best of science fiction!"

Thanks, Tim.

Any thoughts about being able to delete a list once it's started? I wouldn't do it if it was set up the way I want, but I'm still hesitant to start one if it isn't.

We'll get a delete function in place soon.

However, we'll have to make it only work if nobody else has contributed. If you've started a list of best Sci-fi and 500 people have contributed, you can't delete it.

Fair? Edge cases I need to care about?

Yup, that's fair. For testing purposes, could I make it a closed list then open it if it does what I want?

>36 timspalding:

I've been hoping I could get "Delete This List" removed from Lists I Started for over 9 years now. This particular list became pointless once somebody else contributed. (See the list's Description to see why.)

You used to be able to click on a participating user and see their list, and then there was a link to the participating user's profile. Has the link to the user's profile moved somewhere I can't find or is it gone? If it's gone, can it come back?

>39 norabelle414:

Yes, I noticed that. We need to add that back somehow. Noting that here for Lucy when she's free again. (We're all on another project at the moment.)

While we're on this, can we also have a Save Order button at the bottom as well as a return to top button? I've done a few reordering sessions and forgot to save because the button is at the top.

>39 norabelle414: Added back in

There used to be an option for "sort by date added to the list", which was handy for reviewing whether there had been any new contributions since the last time I looked at/contributed to a list.

So Question 1 is "is that gone, or am I just missing it?" And Question 2 is "is it gone because I'm the only one who used it, or would anybody else like to see it come back too"?

>43 hipdeep: That option was removed; it would be good to know if anyone else would like it back.

>44 knerd.knitter: Yes please!!!!

>43 hipdeep: >44 knerd.knitter: and >45 norabelle414: I too would like that option restored!!!

>44 knerd.knitter: Yes, please. Otherwise old lists become almost pointless once you looked at it once or twice - wading through hundreds of entries to find if something new was added is not much fun (or a good use of one’s time).

>43 hipdeep: >45 norabelle414: >46 jillmwo: >47 AnnieMod:
Seems like a significantly desired function. Added it back in. Should be working, but let me know if it's not

I think we need to consider the label. "Date" is ambiguous. Absent another clue, I think most people would assume that sorting by date would by sorting by publication date. I'd propose "Added."

Proposal:

1. Change it to "Added"
2. Add the date added back in, by default hidden.
3. When sorted by "Added" the date added is shown.
4. Add "Show added" like "Show scores"?

>50 timspalding: That sounds sensible. I think calling the field just "Added" is fine anywhere it is being displayed along with the date, but if you choose to add an option to show/hide the field, I think the label should be "Show Date Added".

I'm not sure if my use case is unique. I participate in the Books Read in XXXX lists. For the past several years, I would share the external link to this list on social media so folks would know what I read in the prior year. Some of the changes to lists have made it hard to do this as I have in the past.
First, the external link is gone. This isn't a big deal as I can grab the URL from the address bar in my browser.
Second, the link only displays 100 entries, which was true for the old list format. However, there are now paging links, but they do not work. Clicking on page 2 as an external user just takes you to the full Library Thing list as opposed to the one I'm trying to share.
Third, the former, and desired, sort order is gone. I add to this list in the order that the books are read, which is how I would like to share it. However, when a non-user looks at my list, it presents 100 books from my list, but in the order their global rank order. I would prefer that it sort by the rank within my list. The rank in my list is shown, but the list cannot be sorted by this order. This also appears to be true when viewing any other users list as a LT user.
In general, I like the look and feel of the new lists, but for the reasons above, I don't think I can share this list with others as I have for the last several years.

>50 timspalding: Done.

>52 Rtrace: The external link was removed since the URL in the top bar shows the correct URL now. And I believe these bugs with sorting and pagination are fixed; please let me know if you are still seeing them.

>54 knerd.knitter: Yes, it all looks great now. Thanks so much.

I can't find how to change a list from numbered to unnumbered, if both are allowed.

>56 FAMeulstee: Added this configuration back in.

One issue I've encountered is that with a list of >100 books, it's extremely difficult to move a book that's 101+ to be on the previous page of books without removing and readding stuff.

So here's a thing that I miss - seeing other people mentioned on a work who also have the book on the same list. I especially liked scrolling my Yearly Read list to see who else read the same books. Now it's gone. ☹

>59 Bookmarque: If I understand what you meant, I think you're talking about having the member list showing when you view Your List? I just put it back, because it was a good point. : )

The way you describe it is odd, but if you mean this -



then yes - I like to see others who have the same book on the same list, especially for the yearly lists. Thanks!!

Any thoughts/progress on making lists delete-able? I'll know whether or not the list is working the way I want it pretty quickly and so don't have plans to get rid of one a lot of people have worked on.

That said, I do have a requirement that I wonder how could be enforced - that participants leave a note or comment on the item they are adding. At the very least pointing to a review they have made on the work. Those that don't have to be reminded or deleted. The point is to make a considered list with opinions on the items included. Does that make sense?

I also want to be sure I can delete an item that doesn't belong if I use tags to make the list and something is mis-tagged.

Any thoughts about my last post here? I'd still like to put this list together, but don't feel confident in doing so and keeping it the way I envision. Thanks.

>59 Bookmarque: >60 knerd.knitter: To weigh in on the Members of the List question. Having the members listed on each book is nice (like in >61 Bookmarque:) but it was also nice to see the list at the top of everyone who was a member of the list.

It shows in Tim's screen shots in >2 conceptDawg:. But now it doesn't seem to be there.



The new layout for Groups shows the recent members in the right section. Could the members for lists show there too?

ETA, sorry I meant conceptdawg's screenshots, not Tim's

>64 mahsdad: Agreed, I miss this too. You can't even see how many members a list has on the list page anymore, even though you can see that information on the home page module.

I've just started exploring Lists recently so I have a few questions.

- Is there a list of Lists? Suppose I wanted to start a list of Newbery Award books, but more than likely someone has already done that so how would I look for it?

- Is there somewhere (possibly at the top of the list of Lists) that explains what Lists are about and how their ranks are calculated, what 'numbered and unnumbered' means, who creates them, why do they create them, who can add to them and when ... and so on?

- I've created a list for the BBC World Book Club which I'm gradually adding to. Can I add a description to explain what the list is about {i.e. podcasts broadcast monthly on BBC (World Service) Radio chatting to the authors of a book or (in the case of, say Pride and Prejudice) discussing the book. I'm adding the months of the relevant broadcasts in the explanations, but this may not be obvious.}?

May I say I'm very glad we have the 'date added' sort option or I'd never be able to work out what point I'm up to, to keep adding (I've still got about eight years to go).

>66 humouress: Check out the Awards page for the Newbery Medal: https://www.librarything.com/award/204/Newbery-Medal

You can search Lists by searching in the main search box and then filtering using Lists in the lefthand menu (computer) or top dropdown (on mobile).

ETA:
And yes, there's a description field for Lists, if you've already created it you should be able to go to Edit this List to add a description.

And LibraryThing Help is contextual, if you go to the Help link at top right when you're on a List page it'll take you to the wiki page with information about Lists https://wiki.librarything.com/index.php/Lists it mostly links to discussions about the feature from when it was launched and changed.

>67 PawsforThought: Ooh, I like that page. I didn't know we had those. (One for the next Hunt?) Thanks for the link.

>68 Aquila: Thanks. I'll check those out, too.

ETA: I found the description, thanks. I thought I looked at it before but I must have missed the description box.