Go to a random member, work, tag

Some members wanted a "LT Roulette" feature (http://www.librarything.com/topic/51533).

Here it is:

Random member: http://www.librarything.com/random.php?type=member
Random work: http://www.librarything.com/random.php?type=work
Random tag: http://www.librarything.com/random.php?type=tag

All three are adjusted for the long-tail nature of LT data: Member prefer recently-on members; work requires a book with ten members; tag prefers tags used a few times by a few people.

Tim

Interesting - could be fun!

I do wish I could just push 'refresh' to load another random, instead of having to come back here and re-click (or remembering to cut-and-paste each time).

Cool. So will there also be 'Random author', 'Random group', 'Random talk thread' etc...?

Yeah, probably.

I'll think about how to randomize again.

Try dragging these links onto your bookmark toolbar (if you use one):

Random Book!
Random Thingamabrarian!
Random Tag!

For bonus points: in Safari these shortcuts are automatically associated with command-1, command-2 (etc) in order from left to right. If "Random Book!" is the left-most link in your shortcut bar, then command-1 will go straight there without you having to touch the mouse. :)

I think you might need to do some kind of weighting for random books.

At the moment, most of the works that come up are in the 10-50 member range, and confined to rather dull, predictable stuff (American self-help, Christian books, cookery, children's fiction) - it would be nice to bring in some of the more exotic books that are only owned by one or two members as well. I wonder if it would make sense to go to a 2 member cut-off, but weight the sample by presence of user-added data (reviews, CK, covers, manual combination, etc.)? That might allow you to include oddities without bringing in too much noise, perhaps.

>6 thorold: lol! Well, I tried 'Random Book' and got "Year book - British Goat Society"
by the British Goat Society. 28 members :D

On Random Work I got a book with the delightful title "Mogo, the third warthog." Excellent!

And again, thank you!

I likes it!

I don't know if this is a good thing or not...

I think that I will be using the random book search as a way to feed my combining addiction!!

Just think about all the books I can find that need (proper & correct) combining!!! ooooOOOOO!!!

I'm in trouble now!!!

Uff da!!

Oooo, skittles, I'd never thought of that side of things ... darn it, I'll never get that thesis written now! And not just random book search, but random member search with random libraries full of randomly different random not-properly-combined works ..... and random tags tagging random books randomly entered and not combined properly ... it's endless! ;)

I don't know how to place the links in a place I can find them later. Can they somehow go into my profile, home page, or be in a permanent spot on an LT page? They're quite fun!

My random book is Father Knows Less Or: "Can I Cook My Sister?": One Dad's Quest to Answer…. :)

>10 skittles:
Oh great. Now I'll never get any "real" work done!

Imagine if Tim made a special Combiner's version of the random work link that took you straight to the Edition page! *wink wink nudge nudge*

#12 SqueakyChu

You can set them as favorites/bookmarks, but you can also add them to your profile using html a tags in About Me, which you type like this <a href="/random.php?type=member">Random Member</a>

Correction: href=, not html= as I originally posted!

> 1

Where are these links? (Other than, of course, in your post!)

I would think smacking them into a module on the "Home" page as well as the logged-out version of the front page would both be appropriate.

Or perhaps the "Memes" section?

Should this bring up private members? They just aren't very interesting...

This is neat! I agree that private members should be excluded, if they aren't already.

I think people are definitely playing with it. I have at least three new locations on my profile map. Probably more, but it's easier to spot the ones in entirely new continents/areas.

I'm delighted that people are finding this addictive! Do I get a badge for suggesting it, and if so can it be in the form of a silver heroin needle?

>14 jimroberts:
jimroberts, I copied & pasted the html from #14 into my profile page but the link doesn't work.

Edit: Okay, copy and paste what jimroberts wrote in 14 but change the html to HREF. That does it.

I would like to second fleela's wink and nudge--can we get this to send us straight to the editions page? I can get a lot of nonwork work done like this.

Okay. I put what I thought were three separate links on my profile page, but the link to random books and random tags both go to random tags. Why?

I figured it out. I had to put the word "work" in the tag instead of the word "book".

This will be great fun for others visiting my profile page. Thanks, Tim!

Hmm? LT Roulette can become an actual game. See how many times you click on "random member" before you find someone you know.

Just kidding! I'm sure you have more important use of your time. :)

> 26 Just kidding? Three clicks brought me to Felius (LT's sysadmin).

LOL!

I haven't hit anyone I know yet. Uh, I don't have time to play this... :D

ETA: 25 clicks brought me to no one I know. Enough of this foolishness! :)

Tim, what's that "athena" thing in your first link? It seems to be trying to link to a secure portion of the site or something.

Athena is one of the dev servers. Just substitute www if you see it in links.

http://athena.librarything.com/topic/51533
http://www.librarything.com/topic/51533

Ah, I see. Thanks.

I chose random works until I found one that I own. It took 45 tries, which gives an idea of how vast LT has become.

I got Verenigde Staten for the random tag, which sounds much cooler than U.S., I must admit.

>26 SqueakyChu: Well, five clicks brought me to a profile page I know pretty well... my own!

--> 34

Well, how random is that?!

Wow, every third or fourth random book, or its author, needs some combining done. I'm doooommmmed...

edited to fix typo

Shouldn't we have a random author, too?

36> Along the same line, when I at last reached one of my own books, I discovered that its listings were broken into five fragments.

Oh GREAT! *rolls eyes sarcastically* Yet ANOTHER LibraryThing feature to distract me and make me procrastinate!
(yes, it's the feature's fault, I would totally be productive if it wasn't for this feature...... lol Suuuure)
And it only took me 3 times on random work to get to something I own. lol

Got a babe I had never seen before on my first try with random member, so I've put them all on my profile.

I've clicked random member fewer than 100 times, and I've had four repeats. Morphidae came up twice in a row.

Robert

#22 Carnophile
Doh! href=, of course. Some sort of mental blackout I suppose. Thanks for the correction.

What fun. How many hours can I lose to LT now...

I'm famous! Wheee!

This is far too addicting.

Today's my lucky day. First try. It was someone I knew (Cariola). I'm not pressing my luck any more. Your turn... :)

Yikes - this is addicting! I've become instantly addicted to the random member algorithm. I love poking around in other peoples' libraries, and I especially like how Tim's program seems to only bring up active users (I like to sort libraries - including my own - by Entry Date). How very cool.

So far I've seen 2 known to me from their posts: bookmarque and _Zoe_.

ETA:

Being curious, I found that it took dozens of clicks to bring up a book I have and it didn't indicate that I do own it! Owing to a variant title that group of The Silver Gryphon isn't combined with the others and I didn't see a straightforward way to combine... But I did see the same quilting book twice.

46> I think I've fixed it

I removed private users from the random list.

Morphidae coming up 4/100 times is a lot. The data I have is based on who was on the site. It possible she was on a lot in the last X days (I think it's about 5 days now).

I love this - definitely a time sink. It would be great to have it on the home page.

Suggestion: random work within a tag. That way, you can get random children's, random sci-fi, random politics, and so on.

I like.
I prefer that the random selections NOT be weighted.

>34 fyrefly98:,
I got myself on the 4th or 5th try too.

>52 DevourerOfBooks: Well, based on #48, I guess it's not that uncommon that readers who are on the site enough to know about and be using the random buttons would come across themselves. Still amused me, though. :)

I'm starting to feel left out -- not only have I not brought up myself with the random-user button, I haven't even come across anyone I "know" from Talk or from my interesting libraries.

I prefer that the user, at least, be weighted; I really have no interest in the profile of someone who visited once a year and a half ago, entered ten books, and never returned.

On my very first use of the random profile link, I landed on the page of a nearby Purdue University extension. Spooky.

#48: timspalding

What counts as being "on the site"? Logged on, recent activity (posting, book entry etc). I can't believe that logged on means anything, I'm mostly logged on in several browsers on a couple of machines - why log off?. But, I disable javascripts for google-analytics, so maybe i don't show up as active at all?

>It possible she was on a lot in the last X days (I think it's about 5 days now).

Uh huh. Your point?

:D

56: I'm curious about that too. I know many people who have private computers never bothering logging out (me!), so I doubt it's that... maybe any noticable activity, like Talk posts or book edits?

<geek>

HTTP - the protocol which your browser uses to talk to a web server - is a stateless protocol. This means that each time it asks the server for something it's as though the conversation started from scratch.

Web developers have implemented a number of workarounds that sit on top of HTTP to keep track of the overall conversation between the server and a particular browser. This is called "session management", and generally involves a shared secret that uniquely identifies a session.

When you log out, you throw away that session identifier. Next time we see you we'll re-authenticate you and establish a new session. If you don't log out, then we'll recognise you next time from the identifier we agreed on the last time you were here.

Some sites will keep track of how long it's been since they saw you last, and if it exceeds a certain amount of time then they'll force you to re-authenticate. It's also possible to separate the mechanics of session handling between the browser and the server from the overall concept of a single "session" browsing the site.

The short version is - if we see a user visit the site, then they're "logged in". If we don't see them for a while, then they're not logged in anymore. ;) Looking at the code I can see that "a while" is currently 10 minutes.

Looking at the code again I can see that you don't have to be currently logged in to show up as a random user. One of the conditions is that you have to have been one of the X most recent users to have logged in, whether you're logged in now or not.

There you go, far too much information! My wife's eyes would have rolled back in her head the moment I said "stateless protocol". ;)

</geek>

*reads felius's post, smiles wide, and stars topic* I looooove it when you guys explain this kind of stuff!! Satisfies that little part of me that actually *is* geek.

Playing around with random member: there sure are a lot of cat pics used as profile pics!

#59: felius
Thank you.

I seem to vaguely recollect that one of you mentioned stopping using sessions, did nothing come of that? I think it was in association with the "too many cookies for IE" problem.

I just did random profile and got infiniteletters. You're irrepressible!

So what happens if I'm logged in all the time?

?

Randomness is often hilarious - http://www.librarything.com/work/2540710/editions/

I'm getting a lot of non-English tags. I was wondering if anything could be done? If not, no worries.

No, no, no! If you don't change it, I'LL LEAVE! I WILL!

59> So you're defining "logged in" as different then logged in, which is confusing especially since Tim in the past has talked about logged in in the real sense. However, the best that I can gather from that explanation is that only the last n users that have done something on the site (sent an http message from their browser to the site) can be listed.

68: jjwilson61
The terminology being used is confusing. The new, special meaning of "logged in" would be better called "recently active" - unless it has really confused me!

>I'm getting a lot of non-English tags. I was wondering if anything could be done? If not, no worries.

We're doing all we can! How many countries do you think we can invade at a time?

> Randomness is often hilarious

Hey, we're mentioned in that book—I think they interview me, or maybe Abby. We got free copies and everything.

One of the conditions is that you have to have been one of the X most recent users to have logged in, whether you're logged in now or not.

So, if you're always logged in, you'll never show up?

Or if you're using "logged in" to mean "active", what happens if you leave LT open in a tab all the time, even though you may go away and not look at that tab for hours or days?

As I understand the explanation in #59: felius, you become active, or your activity status is refreshed, when your browser sends a message to LT. If LT then receives no further message for a few minutes, your active status lapses.

Tim, are you goumg to put these links on the Memes page?

The first tag I tried today was a page that couldn't be displayed, and from the second tag I found this:

Sleeveless black linen dress, yellow flowers

Very peculiar things you find with random searches.

Looks like another person who needs to find out about Squirl. Right up there with the perfume collection ...

72> A web server typically has no knowledge of what you are doing until you you do something that causes the browser to send a request to the server. So leaving LT up in window or tab shouldn't be enough to keep you active.

Now, I suppose it would be possible to program the javascript on a web page to send a request to the server every so many minutes as long as the browser window is open, but that would be very atypical.

That private member seems to have a lot of linen dresses. All with pictures, too. Maybe I need to check silk as well.

MarthaJeanne, don't forget the cotton & wool :-)

I searched on "sleeveless" following your earlier post, and found quite a "laundry list" ...

Wow...I haven't seen anyone using LT to catalog their clothes before...

I don't dare put MY collection on LT. I read talk, and someone would find it and I'd see the comments. (Even if I did it as a private member in a separate account.)

I have all my dresses on LT. Or rather, there are no dresses I own that are not on LT.

Hey, me too! I've also found that it's great for keeping track of my pet turtles.

I have some fabric with quotations printed on it, that I'm planning to make into a blouse. Maybe I should list it here too - it is reading material, at least!

Tim, I went looking for Squirl just now, and only found a page that says "It works!" Is it defunct?

I am loving this feature so much! Each day I check a few, esp. random members. People are so interesting.... Ive also been reminded of a few books I wanted to read. Great addition.

Are these availalbe somewhere besides this post?

I think a home page module would be a good place for it.

Another useless distraction... while so many useful features are postponed without end..

I suspect that a piece of quick and easy code that works well, doesn't require downtime to implement, pleases fair number of users, doesn't mean that other parts of the site need reworking... is useful to keep the programmers' spirits up.

I know that if I'm struggling with a piece of complicated needlework that just doesn't want to do what I think it should, I'll put it down for an hour, do some simple cross stitch or crochet, and then go back to the first piece with renewed vigour - and better success.

Not entirely useless edwinbcn, it's a really good source of tracking down singleton works that need to be combined. I tend to go through a batch of random thingamabrarians every day and sort their libraries by shared works and then work on the author pages of any that are showing as 'no other members'. I've found it's created a really efficient route for combining and each time you do it this way, you're making a significant improvement to the accuracy of data for an individual's library.

>89 klarusu:

The minor way it helps you with your Combining effort stands in no comparison with the massive failings in Automatic combining happening all over the site.

http://www.librarything.com/topic/51187&newpost=1#lastmsg

Automatic combining and Making sure combinations stay put, would be a real feat. Chaos is abounding, which you, as a combiner, must have seen.

I don't need a random access function to find uncombined works. You can randomly access any author's work page to find masses of uncombined books.

Those database problems are the sort of headache-inducing long running issues that programmers need to get away from every now and then in order to be able to take a fresh look, and a five-minute feature that works great and makes lots of people happy is essential to maintain sanity.

You're obviously not a programmer.

Automatic combining and Making sure combinations stay put, would be a real feat. Chaos is abounding, which you, as a combiner, must have seen.

Oh, utterly and I'm not disputing that but from what I've seen, Tim and crew are putting a lot of effort into fixing what isn't a simple issue right now. As Tim said in the original thread :

"That's the kind of 30-minute feature I might just sneak in on the train home tonight :)"

And it appeared the next day, so I don't think that it's really taken too much away from fixing the bigger problems. Besides, what's useless to one is interesting or fun to another, not everyone uses LT in the same way....

I want to thank some of the posters here for making me realize that I'm not the curmudgeon that I thought I was.... you have really raised the standard & I'm not about to try to reach such a pinnacle.

I have days when I get a little grouchy & I've been known to snap at what I consider silly & ill-informed postings.... or at people who choose not to read the information available in the forums... while I will may occasionally still post a sharp reply, I know that I will never be able to achieve the level shown here.

Thank you for showing what may be the ultimate perfection that I will never reach.

>93 skittles: Tee-hee!

At least you turned it into a positive. I admit I read the response, blinked and just kept thinking, "and this pithy comment was supposed to produce what type of response?" And then I started picturing the typing and then the person imagining what the LT staff would do when they read the post:

post read

Fantasy Result -

Tim: Oh my - someone hated our lovely little 30-minute feature that actually took no time away from larger development since I was on a train and could have relaxed doing stuff for myself...this is a sign that I've done wrong and they've rightly called me out, haven't they?

& Co: Yes they have!

Tim: What should I do now?

& Co: Clearly, you know the answer!

Tim: I know, lots of personal apologies, tons of swag to the offended user, development of their feature and then I shall promptly kill myself so as to never offend them again...

& Co: Shall we join you?

Tim: Well...

& Co: Just kidding! We read the post too, of course we must join you - they were serious and very disappointed in us! We didn't stop you from rolling this out...we will send out an e-mail to everyone that was the least bit happy or delighted with said feature instructing them to do the same so that user is hopefully not as unhappy in the future.

;)

Honestly, I really don't know what they expect, but flies, honey, vinegar and all that...

#93 - Aww, skittles, don't give up! ;)
#94 - Tee hee hee!

Maybe we could get Tim to create a 'Curmudgeon of the Week' badge to go with the helper badges ....

#94 & #95: Thank you.

What is so "silly" about the comment about this "useless function" is that the miscellaneous combining has gone up... and not because of the problems with new entries not auto-combining, but because regular combiners are using the "useless" random link function to find works that need combining!! and that includes the authors of those random works!!

Useless? HA!!!

Addictive?? definitely!!

I agree. I think it's very helpful (I just combined a some works from an author I never would have come across otherwise). Plus, the random user bit is entertaining.

I'd forgotten about the random user link...

I don't use it, since as a private library, I don't think that it is fair that I rummage through someone else's library, but no one can rummage through mine.

>I know that if I'm struggling with a piece of complicated needlework that just doesn't want to do what I think it should, I'll put it down for an hour, do some simple cross stitch or crochet, and then go back to the first piece with renewed vigour - and better success.

Exactly.

#100, you're welcome to rummage through mine!

skittles, same here. Rummage away. :P

Please make me stop!

25 random members turned up 3 people I know of, I can’t say I know them, 2 LT authors, and at least 6 different nationalities. Bolivia, Canada, Great Briton, Norway, Sweden, and the US.

Now, spring semester has started, I have texts to read, and papers to research so I have to stop this.

>101 timspalding:

Wait, Tim crochets? How did I miss this? ;)

Nah, cross-stitch!

Random book is evil. It just made me buy a book I hadn't thought of buying. Evil!

How come you get the good ones?

Looking at random works, I found a birthday present for my oldest great-niece, a book that is perfect for her but that I would never have discovered in any other way. Therefore, although the ideal LibraryThing regimen would be strictly Tayloristic, I am reconciled to allowing the galley slaves - er, programmers (and why won't the del tag work?) - an occasional refrigerium.

107/109: What book?

So, how does the "random tag" function handle combined tags? Does it just redirect to the most prominent one or does it skip them entirely?

I like that I can now use the "will you like it?" function on the works I pull up using "random work." Now we neecd a "will you like him (or her)" function for random members!

Now we neecd a "will you like him (or her)" function for random members!

Wasn't there something like "affinity"?

Just marking the page. Fun idea!

Shouldn't these be placed somewhere besides a dormant thread, so they can be found outside talk?

There is - on wikithing. See http://www.librarything.com/wiki/index.php/LibraryThing_Roulette.

> 115: Not sure if you'll think that would work for you, but I often leave LT links I find useful in (private) comments on my own profile page.

116> Maybe someone who understands these things better than I do could add that link to the main Wiki page. (As part of random fun!)

There are several other fun little things hidden away that ought to be added as well.

I've bookmarked Random Work and use it as my entry point to LibraryThing... clean up anything that needs cleaning up before I do anything else.

>118 MarthaJeanne:

Done.

Oh, thank you. I would have done it, but realized that I had no idea of how to go about it, and didn't want to make a mess.

#119: r.orrison
Great idea!

r.orrison, how does one bookmark Random Work?

> 1
Thanks Tim, very nice feature.
> 119
Great Idea :-)

With "http://www.librarything.de/random.php?type=work" I was able to "randomize" a work out of the German LT.
But how can I get a German book out of the German LT?

123:
Do you know how to bookmark a page normally in whatever browser you use? Once you've made a bookmark, you can edit it, at least in FireFox. Here's how to do it in FireFox:

Copy the random work URL "http://www.librarything.com/random.php?type=work"
Bookmark this page
Right click on the bookmark and select Properties
Paste into the Location box
Change the Name
Click Ok

>125 r.orrison:
Cool; thanks!

By the way, in case anyone else is wondering, you can do this in MS Explorer too.

#1 by @timspalding> work requires a book with ten members

I only get works with 1-6 members.

#128 by @anglemark>
I'm only getting works with 0-9. Not that I'm complaining. I don't see why the long tail should be dismissed. And if people really do use this feature to look for things that need combining, they should want these lower numbers.

I've added it as a module under "Helpers," since it's often used for that purpose. It has all sorts of new random things.

Very nice! Place takes me to "People/Characters". The rest are fine.

Fixed. Thanks.

I could see it going under a new Discover->Knowledge subpage. It would be joined by all sorts of fantastic CK-related modules that so far have only appeared in my dreams, soon forgotten upon waking.

It's somewhat depressing how little the "discover" sections on the homepage are getting used.

#135 by @timspalding> As in the % of members who have never clicked on any of them?

Yeah, and daily.

You know, here's a thought that you might consider depending on how important Home adoption/usage is to you. You could create a tour to show people what stuff is actually there, walking them through step-by-step. You could even have a wizard style interface that let them check/uncheck stuff from each screen as part of their initial setup. Like it had a checkbox, then the module name, and a one or two sentence description of each.

Then turn on that tour for everyone. Their would be buttons for "Never show me this again" and "Skip this for now".

Lot of work, of course. But worth it?

135>

I'm about to head out for the evening, but I'd like to give this some thought (memo to self). I pretty much use LT exclusively for "discovery", so I would figure to use these modules, but I find the ones on offer completely uninteresting.

Maybe I can come up with an idea or three for modules I would consider useful.

#137 by @timspalding> Yeah, and daily.

Well, I know I'm not going to use it daily. Talk is simply where I spend 95% of my time on LT, so I use the Talk tab. But I find the Home stuff way cooler to poke around in every once in a while than I did the old one.

Here's a though that I'd love to see done well (if possible). A way to doc a module holder at the top (or bottom?) of my Talk page (or maybe just Talk topics?). That module holder could rotate between a set number of modules.

It'd be kind of like a "Did you know?" box that some sites/applications have, only possibly much more interesting. And it'd be completely optional (and maybe on by default?) Maybe even a tag line at the bottom that says "See other stuff like this" and it takes you to Home.

>140 brightcopy: Well, I know I'm not going to use it daily. Talk is simply where I spend 95% of my time on LT, so I use the Talk tab. But I find the Home stuff way cooler to poke around in every once in a while than I did the old one.

Yes: I will use those discovery places, but Talk is enabling in the way the web is generally. That is, when at work, when I have 2 minutes while waiting for the pasta to cook or my kids are playing in the bath ... I click on Talk, similar to checking email again. I know I shouldn't, but I do.

When the shiny bauble loses a touch of its shine, I'll stop touring the Home sub-pages and Talk quite so much, and get back to writing reviews, reading other reviews, and nosing about new works I've not heard about. That's when I'll use the Discover modules.

And incidentally, I'll be using the Helper modules: I've already voted on Tag combinations / separations, which I'd never done before, as well as Spam candidates.

But I'll never do that daily. You're too eager! And rather than compare my time on Talk with my time on Discover / Helpers, I think it would be more appropriate to compare my time on the latter pre- and post- the new Home.

One thing I have to say about Home, though, is that it feels MUCH easier to find random stuff like the Helpers logs or Lists or whatnot than digging around in the More tab used to. (Well, especially Lists since there was no non-manual way of getting to them.) It feels like it surfaces more of the website, making hard to find stuff a bit more organized and accessible.

It feels like it surfaces more of the website, making hard to find stuff a bit more organized and accessible.

I feel so too, obviously.

I asked for a random place, and got "Maurice Wookey"! I asked again, and got "Lucy Maud Montgomery"! It looks as though random places is returning random characters.

Suggestion for another (sigh) random link: a module or section of LT. So, link to the CK section, or the WikiThing, or the Recent Conversations featuring Your Books, etc.

Idea being, it further highlights the depth of LT to users who may be stuck in a rut but don't realise they're missing out on something they could really enjoy.

What about "random wiki page"? I love that link on Wikipedia.

#147 by @norabelle414> I don't know, have you SEEN all the cruft in the wiki? Maybe only a random page that's actually linked to by one of the "Help" links at the top-right of the page.

Should be working now—places.

We should do a random venue and LT local venue.

Holy shit, what a great idea Tim!

Okay, I'll go do that.

Okay, you can now go to a random venue and LT Local location.

Thanks Tim. Go eat some cake.

Added random page, which takes to a random one of the other things!

My head is spinning! Too much meta in that cake.

I spoke too soon: I just took a stochastic tour of LT using the Random Page feature: now my head is spinning. It's the Burroughs cut-up applied to a web-based social networking site, and it happened right here on LT first, ladies and gentleman.

158 > You get so many extra points for the literary reference...

Yeah, and daily.

This sort of gets at the problem that I have with the current homepage as opposed to the old one: the modules don't all update at the same rate, and I can't just skim over the whole thing at a glance to see what's new. I've added the modules I like to my dashboard, but I still need to work at reordering them so that the modules most likely to change are at the top. Once I come to a module that hasn't changed since the last time, I tend to stop looking at the whole page.

I don't want to click on multiple different subpages every time.

The whole beauty of Talk is that it gathers posts from all our groups etc. in one place and shows the newest at the top. It's dynamic in a way that the homepage isn't.

Well that was random.

The whole beauty of Talk is that it gathers posts from all our groups etc. in one place and shows the newest at the top. It's dynamic in a way that the homepage isn't.

People want the home page to do different things. Some want it to constantly update. Some want it to be a launching pad. Some want it to be an at-a-glance. Your tastes are shared by some, but they cannot win.

Customization means that you can decide how YOU use it. Nobody has to win. So the only thing that remains is for you to suggest new, dynamic modules, or modules that could be made more dynamic. How about if you speak to that?

>162 timspalding: That's fine. But then don't complain that not enough people are using it daily!

I'm happy to suggest modules, and have done so before. Here's one to start (currently at the airport and about to start boarding):

Books read this week/month/year (by finished date; options to rank by total number read or to show all the books in order, with repeats)

And number of pages read! (Assuming books without that data are as voluminous as the average for the period, I guess.)

I was about to ask if you would really be so analOCD to enter how many pages you read each day, until it dawned on me you meant the total of pages of the books you've read to date (in a given time period per the suggestions in >163 _Zoe_:)

165> It was/is a Goodreads feature - enter the page you've reached, and it displays percentage of the book finished. So, if it's made easy, yes, some people might well do that. Especially on huge books. And once that data's entered you could do some interesting totals/averages/etc...

I probably wouldn't - I tend to enter books read into LT after the fact, or for huge ones sometime after I start and sometime after I finish. But some people would.

ETA - correction, I probably wouldn't unless those interesting totals/averages/etc were very interesting. Which Tim is good at coming up with...

That feature is coming soon, very soon.

* rubs hands together in anticipation *

Two weeks?