LT2 Author

Author pages have been updated to the LT2 style! This project was over a year in the making and comprises over 120 files changed! The goal was, as always, to update the pages to use the LT2 modern layout engine, while keeping the data density high.

Stephen King's author page


New Features:

1. A more visible Favorite button for indicating your favorite authors!


2. A read-only version of the Common Knowledge data that can be easily toggled to edit mode with one click. This is easier to read, more compact, and should reduce accidental editing of CK data by inexperienced members.


3. Lists and Awards are now displayed for all the author's works.


4. Reviews on the main page and a review sub-page where you can see reviews for all the author's works.


5. Charts & Graphs! A popularity chart is shown on the main page for most authors, and a sub-page contains charts for genres, dates, languages, and more.


6. A new work explorer sub-page that features a table containing the author's works and various pieces of information, including date, reviews, media, and more; there's even a link to add to the workbench! The rating detail view shows the same data as the old author page used to.


7. The "Improve this author" section from the right-hand side has been moved to a Helper Hub subpage.

8. A mini gallery for viewing other author images, adding images, and jumping into the full author gallery.

9. Ability to sort authors' works by popularity or recentness.


10. Associated Authors section added which displays authors associated with works by this author, such as translators, actors, audiobook narrators, etc.

Comparing the old version with the new version using the Lorax style:

Old:


New:


Note: Displaying the dates for works is a new feature. Some of the data is not accurate, but updating the original publication date in the Common Knowledge data for the work will update the dates displayed on these pages. The data is updated weekly. Thank you for your help and patience.

See more screenshots: https://www.librarything.com/gallery/member/knerd.knitter/tag/LT2+Author

See talk post for posting bugs related to this feature.

I've just been messing around with it and I like it. The divisions on the side make sense and I especially like that I can see the books I have from a person without going to my library.

Oh, no.

It's so cluttered that on some pages it's actually hard to find the books! And having everything pushed over to the left makes it a bit hard to read. If I'm in full screen, reviews, "About the Author", etc. stretch the whole page out. It's so bad that I have to reduce the screen size to read them comfortably.

It would be helpful if the main author page still showed if "X is composed of 2 names. You can examine and separate out names". That's a clue that I need to go to the "Helper Hub" to check these. (Frankly, I wish that were still on the main page because it's one of the things I use most, so now there's an extra step.)

ETA: I think part of my issue with the look of this is that there is too much white space to the right of the list of books.

Interesting changes. I'm still poking around, but liking the changes.
Can we get the Edit CK button on the book page?

>3 lilithcat: "I think part of my issue with the look of this is that there is too much white space to the right of the list of books."

Yeah - the two sets of works and the series -- because of the double columned and other wide/expanding (tags, reviews and so on) fields under them, it looks especially jarring on authors with a lot of entries in both. And because the titles in these lists seem so scrunched into each other, it feels even whiter.

Playing around with these changes, getting used to them. A provisional yay?

Edit: I like the "Recent" toggle for the works list

Does the information in the Work Explorer come from user entries or somewhere else? For instance, I'm poking around the page for Victoria Goddard. Those books that list media types list all three, which is mostly incorrect.

Thank you for posting the old vs new comparison - I can now tell that there isn't actually more whitespace, it's just consolidated whitespace - so it's now all off to the right of the list of books so that it dominates the page more than it used to with the previous layout. I love the additional features, and I'm sure I'll get used to the new layout.

>7 Watry: Does the information in the Work Explorer come from user entries or somewhere else?

It uses tables that link the works to media as well as the isbn to media, so I can't say for sure how all of that is getting set or vouch for its accuracy.

There is some neat stuff here! Fun to use charts and graphs to discover the moment when a long-working author suddenly becomes a big success, e.g., https://www.librarything.com/author/vernonursula/charts.

Could the "relationships" field in CK be made to go direct to the other person (if the other person is an author) instead of going through the clunky intermediary of the CK search interface?

>3 lilithcat: "Oh, no."

Yep. This is why I dreaded LT2 ever since it was announced. See the following analysis if you don't understand the desktop user perspective -> https://www.nngroup.com/articles/content-dispersion/

The author reviews page is also very useful.

FWIW, the "more whitespace" next to the work list is exactly the same as it was on the old page. Nothing different. It was a list of works in a single column. It still is. Nothing different.

>10 Stevil2001: I've thought about good ways to do this in the past. It's tough because many of the relationships are not authors or in our system in any real way. It's just "interesting" information. And even if they are authors in our system they are often not matched exactly by name. But I'm not saying no to the feature.

>13 conceptDawg: I think it is the loss of the left column that gives the perception that now we have too much white space up there - while it was always there, it was somewhat split in the middle - so it felt less white.

>3 lilithcat:, >5 AnnieMod:

Yes, way too much whitespace to the right of the book titles. When I look at that Victoria Goddard page (which looked fine on the phone in portrait mode), the first impression is basically of a three-column page with the middle column empty. The old layout was better balanced with more whitespace to the left of the titles and less to the right.

I'm heartened, however, to see reviews in two columns. Could we please have that on the Reviews page? I've found that one basically unusable since the single-column layout was introduced.

>11 Taliesien:
I've said it before and I'll say it again: we don't do "mobile-first" design. In fact I usually don't even look at the mobile version of the page until the final 10% of each project. And that's just to make sure things aren't "broken" on the mobile version.

EVERY new feature is designed and built with desktop views as the default and preferred view. Certainly there are a few things sprinkled around that we have done to make the mobile version easier to implement. But for the most part it's designed around desktop use.

LT2 pages ARE NOT LESS DENSE. I check after before update to an LT2 version and they are MORE information dense on the LT2 version. It's a major design point for us in every project. The fact that you perceive it as less dense and more "white space" is a WIN in my book. We've managed to pack the same information into the same space and somehow make it feel like less.

What we DO pay more attention to now is accessibility standards. And for good reason. It's important that everybody be able to use LT without too much trouble. In some cases that means making buttons larger so they have larger hit-areas. In other cases it means reducing the number of colors we use so that text/UI can be slightly more contrasty or bigger default fonts (because let's all be honest, 12px fonts on the original design are ridiculous now with high-resolution displays).

But we've given lots of options with our view styles. Many more than just about any other major website out there.

I feel really stupid, but I cannot find where to edit the author disambiguation notice.

>17 Aquila: If you can navigate your way to an author disambiguation page, it's still at the bottom.

>17 Aquila: I cannot find where to edit the author disambiguation notice. Should be on the helper hub, I think.

>15 AndreasJ:

the first impression is basically of a three-column page with the middle column empty. The old layout was better balanced with more whitespace to the left of the titles and less to the right.

Yes, I think that's it. Looking at the old style above, my eye goes to the work list. Looking at the new style, my eye goes to the white space.

>19 knerd.knitter: I'm going to need more than that, I've hunted all over the Helper Hub. It's not in Edit Common Knowledge, and I can't find it anywhere in the Author Division
https://www.librarything.com/author/blytonenid/helperhub

>19 knerd.knitter: I cannot find where to edit the author disambiguation notice

I see; it's displayed in the Common Knowledge section on the main page for her, but it's not there when you edit. Let me fix that.

>22 knerd.knitter:

There's also no possibility to add a disambiguation notice. Probably related.

I have to say, I am finding all the extra clicks necessary to "Improve this author" really, really annoying. Can we please, pretty please with sugar on top get that back on the main page?

I'm thinking we could have some sort of setting on the helper hub that puts it on the main page?

>23 lilithcat: There's also no possibility to add a disambiguation notice. Probably related.

Yes, that's a bug; I'm working on it.

God. No. This is awful.

There's not a lot of point criticising it, it's so awful.

When I click on an author, I want to see information, not "You may also like". Isn't that what Goodreads is about?

I want the picture, links, CK, and one click access to editing, combining works etc., not whatever this is supposed to be.

And as for disambiguation pages, e.g., https://www.librarything.com/author/williamswilliam , a Disambiguation Notice box that stops after two entries.

God almighty. Awful.

conceptDawg (#13):

Yeah, it just looks like more whitespace because it's in one place instead of broken up across two columns, but if you look at the side-by-side (and again, thank you SO MUCH for that comparison) it's clear that it's the same.

>26 Cynfelyn:

I confess to mild surprise that a list of works apparently does not figure prominently among your desiderata for an author page.

BTW, something I really like about the new look is the inclusion of publication dates in the list of works, as well as the ability to sort by date in lieu of by count.

It would be even better if the sort-by-date was reversible so you could have the oldest works on top.

>26 Cynfelyn:
I want the picture, links, CK, and one click access to editing, combining works etc., not whatever this is supposed to be.
All of that is there. And in most (all?) cases it's exactly where it was before. The only difference is that we've moved the "helpers" stuff to a new page dedicated to it. This is mostly to alleviate erroneous edits to author/book data by inexperienced users, which is a constant battle. If you want to edit author or work combinations/separations there is now a minor barrier to entry. The new dedicated page also allows us to add more functions on that page in the future, much like what we've done with Awards helpers hub. The sidebar was just too constraining.

And remember that we have a vast audience. What you want on the page might not correlate with what all other people want on the page. We have to try and make it work for all (or at least most).

The notice box stops after two entries?
Not sure what you mean there. If you can elaborate, it might be a bug that we can fix.

>30 conceptDawg:

The only difference is that we've moved the "helpers" stuff to a new page dedicated to it.

Unfortunately, that is a significant difference to those of us who do a lot of work on the author pages. I'm often doing separating, combining, splitting, work assigning, aliasing, all in one sitting, and there's way too much back-and-forth now. I wouldn't call it a "minor" barrier.

Pushing a fix for some of the bugs mentioned here and in the bug tracking post.

When I minimize sections on one author page (e.g. About the author, Series, or Works, or Associated Works, etc.), they are also minimized on other author pages. Is that intentional behaviour?

I don't think I want that to be remembered across author pages.

>26 Cynfelyn:

I want to see information, not "You may also like".

Agreed. I might not mind a list so much, but I really don't like the photos. Don't like the graphs, either. The stats are just silly. Who cares if Lawrence Wright(1) has 187 ISBNs?

Fortunately, it's possible to hide these things.

>32 knerd.knitter: Thanks, I can edit the disambiguation now.

Personally, I really like the update and think it looks good. I’m glad to see the dates by the titles - that can be very helpful.
And I love that there are more stats and graphs.

Shouldn't the left sidebar from the More Info pages also be on the main author page? All other pages that have subpages have that left sidebar on the main page as well as the subpages.





(Other pages with the left sidebar: Home, Charts & Graphs, Recommendations, Groups, Talk, Local, Zeitgeist, etc.)

>30 conceptDawg:

(i) "If you want to edit author or work combinations/separations there is now a minor barrier to entry."

In that case can we please have some way of registering that we are on a work session, cataloging works, contributing 'Other authors', CK etc., and don't want to be going in and out of author profile pages every time we add a contributor, rather than just having a little browse.

Because much as I am dedicated to LT, it won't take a lot of unnecessary faffing about to take the joy out of it. I can see myself getting dispirited, and joining the vast majority of members who just add titles and primary authors.

(ii) "The notice box stops after two entries?
Not sure what you mean there. If you can elaborate, it might be a bug that we can fix."

I'm on https://www.librarything.com/author/williamswilliam
Bottom of the page. Perhaps you'll have to click to open up the bottom of the page, Common Knowledge, and you'll see what used to be the "Disambiguation notice", but is now limited to William Williams (1) and William Williams (2). If you want any of the other William Williamses 3 to 25, you have to click again to open it up.

(iii) BUG. Each of the William Williamses (okay, I only looked at four out of 25, the top of the list, no's 6, 2, 3, 21, each of them) reported that "You have 4 books in your library, or see them here", when in fact all four of them are by William Williams (24).

>15 AndreasJ: the first impression is basically of a three-column page with the middle column empty
Exactly. And the empty middle column is the widest column. (This is on 1920x1080 full screen.)


And the extra space isn't even used... on https://www.librarything.com/author/williamswilliam-2 the title "Grawn-sypiau Canaan, neu gasgliad o hymnau ; gan mwyaf o waith y diweddar…" is truncated at that point, even though there's at least twice as much room available.

>37 r.orrison:
Left nav
Yes. This was debated internally. We wanted to remove it everywhere on author pages (like the main author page has now) because there really wasn't much actual navigation on Author pages before. But then realized that you kind of felt lost once you did a dive into the subpages or even worse, disambiguation pages. So we added it on sub pages. Now, I think, we have enough extra content on subpages to warrant it again.

I think that might be a mistake and we should put it back on the main Author page. We'll see.

>38 Cynfelyn:
Yes. Those are both, in fact, bugs. We'll get a fix for them.

>39 r.orrison:
It's not another column. It's just a wider main content section because we removed the left-side navigation bar on Author pages. (see comment just above).

>34 lilithcat: "Fortunately, it's possible to hide these things."

Is it? How?

I can see, comparing Enid Blyton with William Williams (24), that sections without content, e.g. Awards, Reviews, Lists in WW24's case, don't appear. But is it possible to personalise these LT2 author pages to permanently hide, e.g. About the Author and You May Also Like?

>41 Cynfelyn:

There's a down arrow to the left of each section's title. If you click on that, the section will be hidden (except for the name) and the arrow changes to an "up" arrow. Click it again, and the section opens.

Is there any way to select a focus point for Author photos now they are limited to a square or should I add a cropped version to use as the main picture?

Example: Kate Elliott

Was the list of pseudonyms/other names removed intentionally from the page or am I missing it somewhere?

Take Will Wiles. He recently started writing fantasy under the name W. P. Wiles.

The only place I can see that name is under the Helpers tab, if I open "examine and separate out names."

If I do not know to look there (which most people that do not do a lot of LT updates won't) and I am not aware that he is the same author, there is nothing on this page to tell me why a book by W. P. Wiles (The Last Blade Priest) shows up here.

I can understand hiding the mess that was under some writers with the misspellings and what's not but with authors using multiple names, this is a major loss of information.

First reaction: $#%^ that's ugly.

Everything I use all the time now takes an extra click to get to. Ugh.

>43 Aquila:

Oh, dear. It's fine in the Author Gallery, but not on the main page!

>42 lilithcat: Yes. I've got that. But I took you to mean that you could get personalise what you saw of the LT2 author page pro-forma, so as to not be served up with, e.g. the 'You May Also Like' or 'Statistics' sections, much the same as the 'Unused' option on your personal 'Home' page.

But perhaps I was getting my hopes up.

>40 conceptDawg: It's not another column. It's just a wider main content section
I know that, I didn't say it was another column - I agreed with a previous comment that the first impression is of an empty middle column. There are sections below the fold that use the full width of that section. But until you scroll down, it's just empty space.

And as wide section for the main content, why when there is content that could use it, is that content cut off? See https://www.librarything.com/author/williamswilliam-2 and the title "Grawn-sypiau Canaan, neu gasgliad o hymnau ; gan mwyaf o waith y diweddar…" which is truncated but is actually much longer and could make use of the empty space but doesn't.

>48 r.orrison: Because people are afraid of change. We walk a tight line between changing everything (design/content) and changing just enough to get new features into the pipeline. Things will continue to change as we flesh out what's possible and what people like/don't like.

Also, sometimes we just miss something. There's also that. ;)

Further to >44 AnnieMod:

Something is different for this author. The list of pseudonyms/other names is under "About the Author" for Charles Holme for example. but not for Will Wiles.

>44 AnnieMod: and >50 AnnieMod:
Yes. That looks like a bug. We seem to not be sending the About the Author section there. We'll take a look.

>51 conceptDawg: Thanks. Took me a second to realize it is localized and I just somehow managed to check an author page that has an issue. :)

Do you want me to post about it in the Bugs thread as well?

>26 Cynfelyn: When I click on an author, I want to see information, not "You may also like". Isn't that what Goodreads is about?

My man, it's the 12th section on the page. And it comes with new information—related authors. There's all sorts of other new information on the page too now.

>31 lilithcat: Unfortunately, that is a significant difference to those of us who do a lot of work on the author pages. I'm often doing separating, combining, splitting, work assigning, aliasing, all in one sitting, and there's way too much back-and-forth now. I wouldn't call it a "minor" barrier.

What do we think about my idea that if you click something you get it as a work-page section from then on?

I can understand hiding the mess that was under some writers with the misspellings and what's not but with authors using multiple names, this is a major loss of information.

I think this is a fair point. It's tricky, because so many authors did have a mess under them. I'm not sure there's a way to distinguish between them. But we need to think about it.

>44 AnnieMod: Take Will Wiles. He recently started writing fantasy under the name W. P. Wiles.
The only place I can see that name is under the Helpers tab, if I open "examine and separate out names."

It should be with the biography, but I believe that, if there's no bio, it's being hid. We'll look into it.

>56 timspalding:

Yes https://www.librarything.com/author/gladwellmalcolm

>54 timspalding:

Yes, I think if we could do that, and it sticks, that would likely be satisfactory.

>57 timspalding: I already said that it was a bug.
It's on our list of things to fix. Likely tomorrow.
A few things from above have already been fixed (better reviews layout, even on other pages {except work pages}, being one of them).

Two columns on the Reviews page! Thank you!

In the Common Knowledge section, when there is no CK in the langauge of the subdomain you're on, it's fetched from another language version. This is of course standard CK behavior, but here the information that the CK is fetched from another language is missing, which gives a very strange impression. On the English site it's not very noticeable, because English is the by far most used language for CK, but for smaller languages the CK section looks like a hodge-podge of mistranslated and weird strings.

I'm not sure what's the best solution here, but it looks very confusing as it is.

>59 conceptDawg:, >60 paradoxosalpha:

Yay! :)

Are we being locked out of editing CK in other languages other than the one we're logged into?

Take https://www.librarything.com/author/hawkeandrew CK: English (1), Welsh (3).

I can only edit the English CK (gender) or add new English CK on his www page, and only add and edit Welsh content on the Welsh site, at https://cym.librarything.com/author/hawkeandrew

Switching between languages on the line below the 'Common Knowledge' title seems to switch off the editing pencil and double-clicking on a line.

This is going to be inconvenient if those of us working in more than one language site have to log in and out of LT language sites.

Although having logged into the German site, https://www.librarything.de/author/hawkeandrew , I can't get either the editing pencil or double-clicking to work.

>63 Llyfryddwr: Yeah, it seems like it. That needs to be changed, for the exact reason you stated. I add information in other languages when I have it, but I'm not going to log in and out of LT to do that. I don't ever log out of LT!

>63 Llyfryddwr: When you click on edit, the CK line should change from just English, Welsh, to include the 52 more languages to edit. (At least it does on .com when I tried it in Chrome.)

If it turns off the pencil, you might need to go to the LT2 author bug thread and post the loss of the edit ability there -- including what OS and web Browser you're using.

I wonder if a two-column option would be feasible for things like the books list and the series list. For authors with a lot of books it's a bit unwieldy. I like that we can close up sections we don't want to see all the time. Any chance of moving them around like the home page? Just some thoughts. Hopefully positive ones. Some of us like what you're doing.

>65 gilroy: Yes, you can get the list of 52 languages, and click on one that you aren't logged into, in my case, Hungarian or Maori for example, and see that language's existing CK. That's not a problem.

But can you then add or edit and save CK to any of the localisable fields (so not Legal name, Gender, DoB, DoD) in that language? I can't in Firefox.

I was wondering whether this was policy, part of the "to alleviate erroneous edits to author/book data by inexperienced users ... there is now a minor barrier to entry" before reporting it as a bug.

>67 Llyfryddwr: I can't edit that in Chrome either.

Just pushed some bug fixes.

- Fixing combine page bug where primary only was lost
- Fixing loss of functionality on assigning works to authors
- Fixing issue with long disambig not with link in the middle breaking "see more"
- Fixing issues with uploading author images
- Fixing issue with disambig authors showing works for all others instead of just their own on “view your works” (>38 Cynfelyn:)
- Fixing issue with missing “other names” when there was only one (>44 AnnieMod:)
- Fixing issue with editing other language CK (>63 Llyfryddwr:)

>67 Llyfryddwr: Hmmm. I can get the pencil, open the field, enter text, but when I hit save, it remained blank. So yeah, bug

>70 gilroy: I can get the pencil, open the field, enter text, but when I hit save, it remained blank

It appears that it does save if you refresh. Can you verify that? I will figure out why it's not showing up right away.

>71 knerd.knitter: Clicking on Hungarian and English within Ruth Prickett's Welsh author site, https://cym.librarything.com/author/prickettruth , I've just added a couple of rubbish test 'Enwau eraill' (Other names). Neither displayed until I refreshed the page, but seem to display OK now. I'll delete them later.

P.S. Has "Recalculate the author page" option been junked, and now we rely on refreshing within the browser? I don't know if it was just psychological, but I felt "recalculate" forced the LT system to push through some edits that "refresh" didn't touch.

P.P.S. Scrub my P.S. I've just found "Recalculate", moved from the right-hand column to the last item at the bottom of the Helper Hub page.

>71 knerd.knitter: Yep. Edit, save, then refresh makes it show.
Interestingly, erasing it works immediately.

>72 Cynfelyn: The option to recalculate got hidden under the Helper's Hub now.

>73 gilroy: Interestingly, erasing it works immediately

I don't think it really does except that it clears the field every time. I am looking into this but I need to talk with other developers to figure it out.

>70 gilroy: Figured out the issue with CK data on other languages. Will get fix out soon.

>54 timspalding: I see your idea has been implemented and I'm loving it! It's removed my only objection to the LT2 changes. Thank you!

>76 ExVivre: I'm also happy with this fix, thank you

Just pushed some bug fixes:

- Fixing another issue with editing other language CK (>70 gilroy:)
- Fixed issue with author relationship links not going to author page

>20 lilithcat: Maybe it’s being trained on LT1 (and virtually every other website I can think of), but I focus first on the center of the page expecting the margins to offer … well, peripheral or ancillary information and links. Hence, what I see first - centered - on the LT2 author page is the white space, amalgamated, redistributed, and concentrated at my natural focal point. It’s likely to take me a loooooong time to get used to what seems a massive change in organization. And I can’t find most of what I’m accustomed to using.

Case in point: I was trying to figger out why Sean Dietrich’s author page has a period after “Sean,” and whether it can be revised. knew exactly where to look in the LT1 layout; I haven’t a clue where to find it in LT2 …

ETA: I like the left-margin space on this Talk page. It helps focus attention on the central material, even though it’s virtually all blank. I miss a right-margin column less.

>71 knerd.knitter: Not sure whether incomplete editing action is only an LT2-author page issue. This morning, as I entered original publication dates on four works, I was able to open and add the CK, but saving left the field open as if I were still editing. Only on refresh did the field close with the new CK data in place.

>81 jasbro: I've had that too today, adding a character and a place to a work.

>40 conceptDawg:
I think there's value in having constancy between pages, for the overall feel of the site when navigating around, and no left-hand sidebar gives (to me) an impression of something being missing. And practically, it is beneficial to be able to get immediately to a lower down section via a navigation without need to scroll/page-down at all, so I would second your thought to add the left-nav back. Maybe suitable to have it in 'desktop view' but not in 'mobile view' if that fits with the distinction between those concepts, if it's something more uniquely beneficial to desktop users?

>66 Bookmarque:
>I wonder if a two-column option would be feasible for things like the books list and the series list. For authors with a lot of books it's a bit unwieldy.

Yes, the Series and Works sections feel like they are lacking in comparison to the Lists section further down the page, which is columnised and responds to how wide your screen is. If worried about suiting all preferences, our user homepage has that 'Toggle Multi-Column Layout' button at the bottom, to switch it all to one column, a similar idea could be done here if felt necessary for those who might prefer the one column. Letting the page be made into a denser mode (four or five columns of series, two columns of works and associated works) than was ever possible in the LT1 design, would be a boon.

Thank you for the option to have the links from helper hub directly on author page. That was my main gripe about the new look.

I second the idea to make 'modules' on the page sortable/moveable, like on our home pages. For now, I've just closed author info and tags so it doesn't take too much scrolling to see what I usually wish to see.

Another request if I may is to have separate lines from CK show as separate lines, rather than one after the other separated by ;. It's really far more readable that way.

Generally, I really like the new page, but would also be in favor of left sidebar with navigation links. Without it, there's a lot of whitespace between the main and right sidebar, even on laptop, and I imagine it's even more pronounced on larger screens.

Under Work Explorer > Biographies, the page for Umberto Eco does not include the Short Biography present on the Main Page > Common Knowledge. It would be useful to have both Main Biography and Short Biography on the Work Explorer > Biographies page.

I acknowledge this is asking for a pony disguised as a reaction to a New Feature: Displaying the results of an auto-search for biographies (including autobiographies) for the author under Work Explorer > Biographies would also be useful. Of course the user could simply do a search and get the same info, but then it would not be part of the Author Page.

>30 conceptDawg: "a minor barrier to entry" dozens of times a day.

"What you want on the page might not correlate with what all other people want on the page. We have to try and make it work for all (or at least most)."

And god forbid you should ask us what we want, or listen to us when we tell you.

Oh come on now. What other website has the owners, designers and coders explain their changes and then adjust when necessary? You may not like everything they do, but nothing is just dropped and left with no dialog or explanation or room for discussion. Just because they don't agree or don't concede to everything doesn't mean they don't listen or ask. The very fact that you have a place to complain where the creators are present basically negates your objection.

>86 DuncanHill: And god forbid you should ask us what we want, or listen to us when we tell you.

They did. When you open helper hub, there's an option in the upper right corner to make all hub links available directly on author page

>88 SandraArdnas: Which I just discovered for myself. I've searched through this thread and can't see it announced. And it doesn't actually say that that's what it does. Yes, better than not having it, but why not label it clearly, and why not have it on the actual author page?

>89 DuncanHill: You are cranky ;) We got what we wanted, I'm very happy. Hated the idea of having to open the hub page every time I needed to do some of those things

>89 DuncanHill:

https://www.librarything.com/topic/354692#8266625
https://www.librarything.com/topic/354692#8267338

>91 lilithcat: One saying Tim was thinking about it, and one saying "thank you" but not telling any one else where to find it.

But yeah, I should have realised that was an announcement and explanation shouldn't I?

>92 DuncanHill: So, in the middle of an update, while resolving bugs and implementing requested features, you think it is paramount they spent time on announcing this one to your particular liking. If the aim is to not get our requests met, you're on a good path. If you bothered to read the thread, you'd notice several of us commenting on it and thanking for it. For the time being, that's good enough for most of us.

Was in intentional to have all "other names" and "relationships", "organizations" and "occupations", "places of residence", "awards and honors", etc. on the same line, separated only by a semi-colon?

It was way easier to read, particularly when there were a lot of those, when they were on separate lines.

See, for example Mark Twain

>94 lilithcat:. Agreed.

>93 SandraArdnas: I did bother to read the thread. And did I say paramount? No.

I think it would be a good idea to tell people when requested features are implemented, and how to find them.

>94 lilithcat: >95 Cynfelyn: Yep, I also asked if they could be on separate lines

Further to my >80 jasbro: above, and looking at a legal pad on my desk this morning (yes, I still use paper for some things!), I'm reminded how thoroughly conditioned I am to seeing a 1-inch, left-hand margin on most everything I read. On paper, I can use that margin for ancillary notes, etc., but it's jarring to see text without that "buffer" between the far-left edge and my starting focal point. I'm less concerned about the right-hand margin - because it's already there. Similarly, a systematic (but unscientific) survey of every other website that I've stored at the top-level bookmarks on my browser has either marginal spacing or a tool ribbon at the left-hand margin, generally with the focal point of their various landing pages centered on my desktop (and on my iPhone). I'm withholding judgment on whether I can eventually retrain myself to focus left on top-level LT2 author pages. (Incidentally, I also miss a left-hand margin on Series pages, where there's typically a boat-load of unused blank space between truncated titles and unused sequence number spaces. But I digress ... )

Just pushed some changes:

-Changing Favorite button to "Add to Favorites"
-Changing an issue where the disambig page was not linked
-Changing associated authors to not be associated with themselves
-Changing semi-colon separated items in CK to be line breaks
-Fixing title sorting on work explorer
-Updates to left-nav
-Updating CK to stick as view or edit mode

>99 knerd.knitter: Thank you, it looks better and better.

One thing to remember: not every change/feature is universally agreed to by all developers and staff. Just as in every job and workplace there is debate among us about nearly every change to LT because we are all passionate about the product.

And in the end I must defend those changes (whether I agreed with them or not) because I'm the one responsible for making them usable, efficient, streamlined, and (hopefully) aesthetically pleasing. Mostly in that order.

The fact that the picture on the LT2 author page only samples the primary author picture has already been mentioned (no. 43 above), and you have to click through on the picture or on 'Author Gallery' to see the whole picture.

But has the picture caption been missed out deliberately on the Author Page, and now only visible in the Author Gallery? See e.g. Christina Hardyment for a picture uploaded in 2019 and tranferrd from LT1, or Joey Barton, added to LT2 today.

>102 Cynfelyn: We made a decision to go with squared author pics for this space. It could change in the future, but for now that's how it is.

caption
Yes. That is already fixed and will probably be released some time today.

Delighted with the ability to now sort an author's work by date.
Ideally there would be an alphabetical sort option too.

>104 kleh: If you click on "Work Explorer", there's a table and you can sort by each column, including title. I think this is what you want.

Is there any way of editing the Author Biographies? Clicking the Left hand column/Biographies, or Helper Hub/Curate author biographies both lead to a module where you can thumbs-up, thumbs-down or flag the biography as it stands, but not break into it.

I'm looking at https://www.librarything.com/author/lawwilliam/annotations , where a spelling mistake and a missing punctuation make the second sentence unnecessarily difficult.

>106 Cynfelyn: Not at this point. We are getting those biographies from various sources (wikipedia, bowker, etc.) and we don't (yet) provided editing.

+1 to 104 kleh -- Adding "alphabetical" to "sort works" would be very helpful.

... Not sure if this is a bug, but I'm adding it here because I bet it's related to the new LT2.

I added a new book to my library ("Thief in the Night" by K. J. Charles) and it doesn't show up on that author's list of my works page, count, etc.

update: I was able to locate this edition by looking in editions, to combine. I'm holding off combining for a bit in case this is a legit error of some sort.
* https://www.librarything.com/combine.php?work=29060131

Author picture does not show up on "Work Explorer" page.

K. J. Charles is the example:
* https://www.librarything.com/author/charleskj
* https://www.librarything.com/author/charleskj/workexplorer

>109 lquilter: It just didn't auto-combine, presumably because these stragglers do not have the author data, which is why it isn't on author page too. The larger group is already on author page.

As for no picture in work explorer, it seems to happen across the board, not just this author, so probably a bug

>110 lquilter: Author picture does not show up on "Work Explorer" page.

Wasn't showing on any sub-pages. Pushed a fix.

>112 knerd.knitter: Author images are not showing properly on split author disambiguation pages - see https://www.librarything.com/author/nationalmuseumofafri. Images are showing on the splits, but not in the mosaic on the top left.

I think there is a book count issue on the author pages.
Looking at this author: https://www.librarything.com/author/berkshiredanielrober
It has two lines for each book. But when I go to combine the two lines together, it only shows one line for each book.
Not sure where the glitch is.

This is actually a fault of a No editions work existing for each of the two books. (And I've misplaced the proper way to combine them.)

>114 gilroy: Done.

We've added a new feature onto the images in the author gallery. Since the author page images are square now, some of the images are cropping poorly, so we've added a way for members to adjust how the author images are cropped for the author page. You can see an example here: https://www.librarything.com/pic/187826. If a choice was made by an LT staff member, editing is not allowed, but since there's no way for us to find everything, we're opening it up to members.

Let us know if you find any problems!

Thank you, now Bella Chagall has a head again!
but Charles Groenhuijsen not yet : https://www.librarything.com/pic/6145904 . Is that because the picture is in landscape / horizontally?
something similar for https://www.librarything.com/pic/4262340

Yeah. The system is crude--top, middle, bottom. It can't handle left-right-middle, or for that matter 12% left, 6% middle, zoom in 11%, etc. It is what it is.

May I ask do staff have the facility to refocus horizontally even in a basic left-middle-right way, should the need arise? I'm thinking (edit: beyond the good examples in >117 EMS_24:) an image where the author is lying sideways reclining, etc, could end up cropped to the crotchal zone and be quite embarrassing to have us unable to do anything about.

>119 Nevov:

No, except by re-uploading. The switch we have is a crude one—a series of "types" of images (crop top, crop middle, crop bottom), not fine-grained control. We could build a whole new system that allowed that, but it would be a lot of work for a tiny, tiny number of images.

Thanks for the info, if you can stand more prying – does the system note the user who selected the crop? I appreciate that the route this feature went – from admin-tool to general use – might not have begun with thoughts of bad actors, but being available to all, it could be worthwhile to have it show a username as a soft method against misuse, and to let you take action in event of repeated vandalism. If we notice suddenly a batch of {category} authors get photos bad cropped, all by the same user. Caution, pony ahead: a helper action for the Zeitgeist "Username cropped a picture of Authorname" could be a useful thing to expand it into one day, so as we can spot accidental or purposeful mistakes.

>121 Nevov:

Yes. You may notice that the feature is disabled for some authors; this is because a LibraryThing staff did it.

It was keeping track of the user before, but I've added tracking of all actions--not just the last one. This will allow for better tracking of problems, and adding it to one of the author badges.

I do have to say I am missing the fact that the work list on an author page used to include the review count. Right now it will say something like:

Ship of Fools (1997), 114 copies

But it could say:

Ship of Fools (1997), 114 copies, 1 review

I liked being able to tell at a glance if a particular work had reviews or not. I can see how this has been partially superceded by the new "Reviews" module but I don't think that's totally the case.