Comment on Reviews

It would be cool to be able to comment on people's reviews--sort of the way you comment on blog posts. Sure, you can click on the reviewer's user name and leave a comment on their profile page, but then any subsequent reader of the review won't know that there is a comment and maybe a discussion on the review.

Having comment space invites inane discussions, but I like to think that LTers are above the sort of riff-raff you see on YouTube.

Also, it would be cool to be able to click on the star ratings and see who else rated a book the same way you did. I'd love to know who else gave Eragon .5 stars. Maybe then you could go from there to that person's review.

As to the last part--if you go to members on the Eragon work page and then click on "show all members", you can see who gave which stars.

I don't think commenting on reviews would be an improvement. People already don't review enough, and the reviews I write, I write as reviews, not to start a discussion. But, that's just one person's opinion. :)

and I agree with that opinion.

And I agree with that opinion, as well as the opinion of the opinion.

Me too.

I don't know that I expect to start discussions with my reviews either, but have you never read a review where you'd like to do more than merely give a thumbs up? You know--provide feedback, ask a question, whatever?

I know that the "Conversations" link on the work page takes you to a list of talk threads where the work is mentioned, but more often than not the "conversation" is no more than one mention in a "What are you reading now?" thread. Even with snippets it's difficult to sift through all the one-off mentions so that you can find an actual discussion. A lot of times you can't tell from the name of the thread, or even the specific message where the work is touchstoned.

Perhaps comments can be disabled by default and the reviewer would have to enable them at the time the review is written. Perhaps the reviewer could also disable the comments after a time.

Perhaps this is not such a good idea, but for those of us who would like to enter or initiate a real discussion, something could be implemented that is better than the "Conversations" link on the work page. Maybe a "Discussion" section below the "Review" section, so the discussion is visible on the work page.

6: I understand where you are coming from, but if people want to talk about a particular book or author, that's what Talk is for. If there isn't already a group for that one, start one! I think opening up reviews to comments could lead to a whole mess of problems (I certainly wouldn't want to opt-in to comments on the assumption of having a nice convo, and then get bashed because someone doesn't like my review...)

Also, I think many people would be willing to enter into a discussion--if you approach them on their profile.

Basically, you want to find people with whom you can discuss a certain book, right? There are groups for that, a recent review can point you to someone's profile.

One change that might give you more names to approach for discussion is if LT implements a feature where the last X (5? 10?) people to finish a book are listed under the "members" section. That might give you a starting point for discussion.

I think I just disagree with your assertion that reviews will (or even should) lead to conversations.

(Why do you want the conversation to necessarily be visible on the page?)

I personally like the idea of comments on reviews. Basically, I think promoting book discussion on the site, by any means, is a good thing.

I know people would bash some of my reviews, because some of them are negative reviews of popular books. But a comments feature would also let me respond to their bashing, so I'm not particularly concerned about it.

I've often thought that there should be a mechanism for commenting on or discussion reviews. If there could be a way to launch a thread linking to or from the particular review, that might be helpful. It would show up in talk and have an indication on the review that such a thread exists.

What's the point of commenting on a review? If you want to provide positive or negative feedback, give the review a thumbs-up or put on comment on the reviewer's profile. If you take issue with some content of the review (i.e. "The DaVinci Code was the best book ever!"), either send a profile comment or write your own damned review and start a Talk thread on it.

>10 Bookmarque: I'm fine with folks posting a link to a review in a thread, but not with someone being able to create a link on my review to their thread. It's an ownership thing.

I often chat with people about their reviews, it's one of my favorite ways to make new friends here. But I prefer those conversations happen on our pages, or on the conversation threads, not in the midst of the reviews. It's tedious enough scrolling through all the pages to read all the reviews on a popular book, I wouldn't want any other information bogging it down.

#11 because it's awkward in the extreme and exclusive of multi-party conversation. And begrudging a link next to a bunch of words I wrote is just weird to me. I can't think of how it would detract from the review or somehow diminish my "ownership". How did you come to this conclusion?

I see the appeal. I do. But I also see three arguments against it.

1. Reviewers may feel attacked for their opinions. It may make reviews less of a "safe space" and more of a "contested space."
2. It may discourage people from reviewing; instead, they comment on reviews.
3. Reviews require you to have the book in LT. This prevents a lot of mischief—reviews of hot-button books all require you to HAVE the book, so we don't get, say, the review of Ann Coulter's books on Amazon.

I wanted people to be able to comment directly on my reviews, so I started a book-review blog. Problem solved. :)

Seriously, though, I think this is also one of those things where existing features (talk and touchstones/conversations links; profile commenting) fill the need well enough (although admittedly not perfectly) that there's not a huge push for development of a new feature.

#15 Agreed. Not a high priority. If you want to comment, you can. It could be made easier though.

One thought I had was to have a link at the bottom of a review that would take the user to an auto-created talk thread. Maybe an umbrella group, "LT Review Discussions." No discussion inlined with the reviews. Maybe a checkbox in the details right under the review, "Allow Discussion of Review." You could toggle the link at will. Though others could still get to the discussion through Talk if they knew for what they were looking.

Ah there's Tim again, coming to the rescue of the imagined oppressed. I understand, but are people that frightened?

>17 Bookmarque:

Okay, but that's only point 1.

But I think point 1 is valid, at least for those who might be uncomfortable with negative feedback. Frightened, perhaps not. Intimidated, perhaps yes.

I think it would be worthwhile if there was a link on the bookpage ("Discuss this work") where it would create a new thread in a pre-existing group or take you to it if it was already created. I think new users might be intimidated by the number of groups and the complexity of the interface in the Talk and Group tabs and this might be a way for those people to get into Talk in a less intimidating way.

Point 1 is very valid. I've been intimidated by talk threads with extremely opinionated posters, and talk is just off the cuff stuff. There are places where it doesn't matter if the only people who are heard are the brash ones, but in reviews, I'd like to hear from everyone, and I think comments would detract from that.

>21 Helcura:: I tend to agree. Even on threads being soundly thumped can make one tend to withdraw. And strongly stated reviews (in either direction) can generate strong feelings. How can X hate that wonderful book I love? Or Y love that horrid one! ;-)

>15 fyrefly98:: The blog option is a good point. I occasionally review and I also blog and post my reviews there. From now on I'll add a link to the blog post in the review.

How about a place in CK for links to talk discussions of the book?

People who want to discuss the book can go there, and the reviews are left as they are.

Points one and two seem to be about protecting phantom frightened people to me (yes, I'm practicing may aliteration). It's totally your call, but it sure does limit things. I guess it's our culture now though. How do people live in the real world I wonder.

>14 timspalding:: I see your points, but:

1. Reviewers may feel attacked for their opinions. It may make reviews less of a "safe space" and more of a "contested space."

I may be naive, but I think that LT has a culture that would actively discourage something like that. I've seen some passionate discussions about books on this site, but they've never approached the nastiness I saw in my days on USENET. I don't think I've ever seen a real troll or a real flame war here. Maybe my skin is thicker for having been around people who are really serious about Babylon 5. Or maybe I have not read every message on every Talk thread.

2. It may discourage people from reviewing; instead, they comment on reviews.

Maybe. But I've read reviews that were actually comments on, or responses to, other reviews.

3. Reviews require you to have the book in LT. This prevents a lot of mischief—reviews of hot-button books all require you to HAVE the book, so we don't get, say, the review of Ann Coulter's books on Amazon.

You're right about that. Perhaps it could be set up where you can only comment on a review if you are a member and have the book in your library. You could even set it up so that the member has to have written a review in order to comment on another review.

>15 fyrefly98:. No offense, but I never follow links to of-site reviews. If the review is simply a link to a review on a blog, I just move on to the next review. I don't even bother. I find it kind of surprising that LT actually allows it's members to be led off the site in this way.

>20 jjwilson61:. I like that idea!

When I made this suggestion, it was with the idea of being able to actually discuss the book with someone who cares enough about it to review it. It would make the Work page a little more sociable. A "Discuss this Book" link would do what I wanted.

I personally would like feedback on my reviews, but maybe that's just me. Maybe I'll add a line at the end of my reviews: "Comments? Feedback? Please message me." Something like that...

Just weighing in:

I would personally like the ability to comment on particular reviews. People who don't want comments on their reviews, should be able to disable it (or have it disabled by default). (Or, heck, make it private....)

On Tim's second argument, that seems possible, but it also seems possible that the ability to comment on reviews would engage more people in review/discussion activities and ultimately encourage more reviews.

I didn't understand Tim's third point. But, at any rate, if flagging were enabled on individual comments as it is currently enabled on individual comments in group threads, that would solve problems, I believe.

(Unsolicited musing: It seems to me that "reviews" could be moved out of the book database structure and basically become a type of "groups", albeit a group which is displayed only on the particular book. Each book then effectively becomes a group, with each review its own thread. This might permit tighter integration between groups and reviews, including the touchstone feature.)

Like other users, I never follow URLs off-site. I don't like them in reviews, even though I've used them a couple of times, and would really rather have a "related URLs" field.

25>

I really don't want the work pages to be social, though; I'd prefer that people start up a Talk thread in the appropriate group (perhaps leaving a profile comment for the original reviewer, as a courtesy) rather than clutter up the work pages with a lot of back-and-forth. Some people never use the social aspects of LT (and it's possible that some peopleexclusively use those aspects, never entering a single book or looking at any libraries or works pages), and I don't think we should force the mixture of the two on people who don't want it.

I tend to agree with all 3 of Tim's points in 14.

For what my 2 cents is worth, I'm not wild about having comments on reviews for many of the reasons already addressed and for reasons addressed in the "thumbs down" thread I commented on a couple months ago (not sure where it is now).

Regarding following threads to off-site reviews... I don't follow these links myself; on the other hand, I always post reviews on my blog as well as (or even before) LT, aiming at a different audience, and it would seem harmless to put a link in the LT review for people who want to comment, or even want to know more about what I do when I'm not on this site without the trouble of going to my profile first ;-)

and I tend to agree with >27 lorax: about not forcing a mix on the work pages.

>27 lorax:.

Fair enough. But we are back to the problem I mentioned above: there is no easy way to find a Talk thread about a particular work that is actually about that work and doesn't merely mention it in passing.

Anyway, I don't need the actual discussion thread on the Work page. A link from the Work page to a Talk thread about that work would be fine and it wouldn't clutter the page.

And I imagine that there are people (like me) who would like to enter the social aspects of LT but are overwhelmed (I won't cop to being intimidated, I just don't have the time to figure it all out) by the complexity of the Talk/Groups function and discouraged by the results of the Conversations/Search features. A simple link to a place where you people can actually discuss the work might open up the social aspect of LT to a lot more people.

rather than clutter up the work pages with a lot of back-and-forth

So the comments could be hidden behind an icon showing how many there were.

1. Reviewers may feel attacked for their opinions. It may make reviews less of a "safe space" and more of a "contested space."

I know you hate to hear this, but just add an opt-out. There are times when options really are beneficial.

2. It may discourage people from reviewing; instead, they comment on reviews.

I'm really not convinced about this one.
First, I don't think it's necessarily the case.
Second, as a user rather than someone trying to sell reviews to libraries, I'm more interested in a continuous discussion than in multiple disjoint reviews anyway.

3. Reviews require you to have the book in LT. This prevents a lot of mischief—reviews of hot-button books all require you to HAVE the book, so we don't get, say, the review of Ann Coulter's books on Amazon.

A valid concern, but easily addressed: only allow comments about reviews of books that you have in LT.

I wonder if it would be possible for Talk search to list the thread names first and then everything else.

How would a work + thread setup deal with combination and separation?

I was probably unclear - I was just thinking that the Talk search results could be sorted with links to threads that had the search term in the title before links to talk comments that had the term. That would make it a lot easier to find Talk threads about the book in question and discuss reviews in that context.

#14 (Tim)

At first I thought commenting on reviews was a fairly good idea. But, I certainly think Tim is right.

What if each comments section had a link to a thread devoted exclusively to that book? Basically, there would be a new type of Talk topic—the book thread. (Yes, right now you can touchstone a book, but it's not linked in this 1:1 way.)

I'm throwing out ideas here.

How would that work with combining / separating? Would it cause too big of a headache keeping things straight?

>38 timspalding: Having such a thread would certainly be better than not having it, but in a lot of cases (i.e., for popular books) I don't think it would really work.

The combining / separating issue is a red herring. The answer is that it will work just as well as it does for the other CK fields, which is not very well.

Tim, if we're considering book threads might there be author threads and series threads as well?

And I'm envisioning that the threads would be created in a new standing group called something like Book Discussions (and Author Discussions and Series Discussions) which people could watch if they wanted to be informed of all the Book (or Author, or Series) discussions going on.

40> I'm not sure what you mean. A popular book shouldn't have any trouble getting a spirited discussion going. If the thread idea isn't going to work somewhere I would think it would be for the least popular books where someone might click the Discuss button to create the thread but not get any responses if no one else checks out that book page. That's one reason I suggested the standing groups so that there's another way for people to notice the discussion thread.

I've learned something today. I only read reviews of books that I have already read. Apparently, other people do it the other way round. I've honestly never thought about that before. I guess I do write reviews in hopes of sparking conversation (despite what I wrote in #6 above). Maybe I should adjust my expectations.

>38 timspalding:. I like the idea of a book thread, but really, some books (most books) would have empty threads. Does anyone really have much to say about Five Little Peppers and How The Grew or Mama's Bank Account?

I would hope that the thread would only be created if someone wanted to start a conversation about that book.

>42 jjwilson61: The current Talk system isn't designed for threads with 1000+ messages. Even a couple hundred is unwieldy; I often skip interesting-seeming threads just because they're too long. The lack of threading (which is a decision I agree with), lack of pages, and inability to mark which message you've read up to mean that a "discussion" thread about Harry Potter or Twilight just wouldn't work. It would either degenerate into largely unconnected comments, or it would be mostly ignored (maybe both).

I like the idea of comments on reviews. I don't think comments on reviews need necessarily be limited to discussion about a particular book, but could also potentially include dicussion about the review itself.

In order to keep the comments out of the works section, always keep them hidden unless pulled forth.

In regard to protecting Bookmarque's "phantom frightened people", simply allow each user to disable the option to have comments posted about his reviews. You could have a line that says "Comments invited" for people willing to hear comments. I'd love to have that option. It would help me decide if my reviews are really helpful and interesting to others.

Tim, please don't simply dismiss this idea, but do think it over.

By the way, I find it very (!) exciting that our reviews are now being posted at libraries in addition to just here at LT.

39, 41, etc have a VERY good point. It seems to me that comments on reviews would just be yet *another* thing that would get mixed up in combining and seperating, and no one, especially the diligent workers of the Combiners group, needs more trouble like that.

So Tim, since you are responding to this thread: Are there *any* plans to sort out the CK-info problem, problems with info getting messed up and left behind etc etc in combining/seperating? *ANY* plans with that at all? If that's not going to be fixed, it doesn't seem like adding to the problem is a very good idea....

39

Actually, it wouldn't be part of CK. CK is a system for discrete chunks of fielded cataloging. It's not a foruming system. Rather, I'd add a field (or link to a series of rows) to each topic entry in the database, basically for the main-topic of that thread (eg., a work).

In theory, it could have combining/separating problems. To some degree, it has to. Even if everything worked perfectly, there is not always a "right answer." If you combine all the Narnia books together, and then start a thread, what's the right answer when it's split back out again? If you start a thread about the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe, then combine the books together, then split them out, it's not immediately apparent how to decide what the new work number should inherit and what it should. In such a case I'd probably attach the data to the most popular EDITION of the work, so that it moved around in a fairly logical way most of the time. But even if LT has actual technical problems—mostly to do with caching—many of the problems are not of our making, but of the basic difficulty of the issue—"you can never step in the same river twice."

More generally, yes, I'd like to spend some time nailing down CK combination issues. I understand they cause some pain.

>45 _Zoe_:

So, I see your point. I see a couple solutions:

1. The solution is that the problem isn't that big. That is, I don't see huge threads for a LOT of books. If a few have it, well, maybe that's not the end of the world?

2. We can finally implement a formal system of cutting messages off at a number (300?) and creating successor messages.

3. We can simply allow members to create threads whose PRIMARY topic is a certain book or author. That way, those would show up higher—or marked somehow—in the "conversations" part of a work page. But you wouldn't be restricted to having just one thread. You could have ten threads about LOTR, for example—on various different facets, etc.

>48 timspalding: tvguide.com does something similar for movies.

Say I'm wanting to remember a real Indiana Jones movie and I decide to look at details:

http://movies.tvguide.com/indiana-jones-temple-doom/102071

I can go to their discussion tab and see the latest post (about a new Wiki at the moment):

http://movies.tvguide.com/indiana-jones-temple-doom/message-boards/102071

Or I can look at a collection of messages for the movie:

http://community.tvguide.com/forum/Indiana-Jones-Temple/700014025

Which only has the Wiki post, but the ability to do a lot of other messages.

Every movie/show has this setup. So, if you're the only fan of the short-lived Not for Publication on DuMont show in 1951, you get this:
http://www.tvguide.com/tvshows/publication/message-boards/203482

And you can start messages...

48> 300 is too many. Loading gets slow by 100 and REALLY slow by about 200.

50>

Are you on a really slow connection? I've never noticed a problem, as in no perceptible slowdown, for fewer than ~250 messages.

Yeah, I never had problem with this either.

I've got a broad band connection, but a slow computer. I must not be the only one with this problem - Combiners caps the main topic at 200 messages.

Right now I only read topics over 100 if I've been following them and am really interested. OVer 200, I just don't bother.

Okay, sure you're probably not alone in this. Explains why some long threads - like "please fix this book" in combiners - get split up. Always wondered about that.

54>

Yeah, but they're split at 200, which seems reasonable; lots of people notice a slowdown around that point. I'd never seen anyone complain about slowness as low as 100.

I saw someone a day or two ago who said she doesn't ever access any over 100 because of slowness. I often notice it there, but it's about 200 that gets really bad for me.

Of course that varies a lot from day to day, and according to time of day.

Also bear in mind that for some of us, the data goes further than for others. How international does LT want to be? International connections tend to be slower than national ones (more nodes). The US has a lot more broadband connections than most countries. In Western Europe it's getting better fast. But world wide only about a fourth of connections are broadband.

It also depends on the messages in the thread. Threads with lots of one-liners can go much higher before there is a noticeable slow-down.

I'd be interesting to know how much of a role is played by connection speed and how much by rendering. The latter is a tricky thing—dependent on page structure, browser and computer power, not to mention thread content.

I'd be interesting to work on an automatic method. But today I'm head down on the catalog page. It's getting slow, and it's not well adapted for collections.

T

But today I'm head down on the catalog page.

Could you add a few extra columns while you're at it? :)

I was thinking of taking some away...

And for my more relevant response:


1. The solution is that the problem isn't that big. That is, I don't see huge threads for a LOT of books. If a few have it, well, maybe that's not the end of the world?

I think it's important that the system work for the most popular books as well. After all, those are the ones people are most likely to look at.

2. We can finally implement a formal system of cutting messages off at a number (300?) and creating successor messages.

The thing is, it's not just a loading issue, though that's part of it. The other part is that a long thread is difficult to read because it has so many different sub-threads and because reading a thread is currently an all-or-nothing proposition. Successor messages would help, but they would still contain content relating to earlier messages, and a 300-message thread is still overwhelming to read all at once. So this would be an improvement, but it wouldn't be enough.

What I'd really like would be a way to mark what message we've read up to (resetting the unread marker at a given message); then I could read maybe 20 messages and come back for more later.

3. We can simply allow members to create threads whose PRIMARY topic is a certain book or author. That way, those would show up higher—or marked somehow—in the "conversations" part of a work page. But you wouldn't be restricted to having just one thread. You could have ten threads about LOTR, for example—on various different facets, etc.

This seems more promising.

I still think review comments could play a valuable role alongside this feature, though.

>60 timspalding: :P

Back to the topic of this thread...

I really like review comments.

I'll give an example. I reviewed a book on Amazon and found what I thought was an unnecessary part to a book I read (local author, loved the rest of the book). This author is following the comments on his book, I'm sure. A comment was made to validate what I wrote, the commentor agreeing with my point of view. Yes, he could have just written another review. Perhaps he didn't want to write a review. Right there was emphasis on the fact that he agreed with me and a focus on just one aspect of one book.

I think it could work very well - just keep it hidden with the option to open it.

By the way, on my recent visit to Amazon, I was overwhelmed with all of their options of where to go and what to do. I think they have really gone overboard. I don't want this to happen to LT. Even with all of the options of things to do here at LT, they are separated to a degree in which they do not seem overwhelming at first glance. A second reason, as mentioned in another thread, to keep many of LT's features a bit aside is so there's always a new treasure to discover here.

Now reverting again to slow load...

What about automatically taking message number 100 and using it to begin a new thread by copying and pasting it to message number 1 on part 2 of the same thread. Is that even feasible to do in coding or does that always have to be done manually?

>60 timspalding:

*readies pitchfork and torch*

As someone who's written a fair number of reviews I would be very interested in feedback/comments about them / the books. One-one comments work to a certain extent, but a standing book thread idea would be great, or work page comments.

I think it would have to be optional as there are some fairly easily intimidated people on LT who perhaps have never even seen usenet, and used to a much more civilised discourse than is sometimes found on the net.