Collections explanations?

I want a feature that allows me to explain my collections—both default and not-default.

Maybe I'd want it for tags too.

I'm not sure where it'd show up, by default or optionally. But I've noticed quite a few users who's profile about-me goes into what their tags mean, so I'm guessing other people want this too.

Well I would like something where you can make entries on your home page. For example I would like a place to put the URL of the WIKI page which explains collections. Now I have it in another tab, but I still have to search for the URL when I close the tab.

A notepad kind of thing on the home page. I imagine people could make notes to themselves about tagging and collections.

Then an opt-in module for the profile that lets you put out public information on Collections or Tagging would be cool. I say opt-in because so many people don't want things displaying.

I would also like to see the Currently Reading module completed and released, and that should also have a box or display on the profile too.

Description field for each collection in the light box where you edit them and then offer a choice to let the descriptions show up on the profile page. But it's late here, so I'm probably not thinking far enough out of the box.

Like if you hovered over it and a box popped up with a nice description?

:)

Great idea Tim!

You could edit the in the Collection Manager; they should obviously show up on the Profile page. Perhaps expand the collections section, if descriptions have been entered:

Collections
   Mountaineering (31)
      My books about mountains and climbing.
   Currently reading (3)
   Your library (826)
   To read (99)
   Wishlist (18)
      Books I want to own, or maybe just to read.
   Borrowed (11)
      From libraries or other people.
   Matthew's (10)
      Books belonging to my son that I've read.
   Given Away (7)
      Those rare books that I have managed to part with.

I don't think it would be a problem taking up quite a bit of space, because the people that enter descriptions would probably put the descriptions in their "About my library" section anyway.

(Edited to try to fix strange formatting bug: the ...s aren't in the text I've entered. Perhaps the &nbsp indentation is messing with a line length counter?)

I've always used "about my library" for this, since I think most of what people say in that section is self-evident (e.g. "Mostly SF and computer programming"). I don't see any problem with keeping it there.

Yes, a one-line field for descriptions would be great. And yes, I would love that for tags. (And I think it would be awesomely interesting, too, to display those descriptions on the tag page ....)

A 1-line field for tags and collections would be fun. :)

Especially if you could browse through people's descriptions somehow.

*chants* Yes yes yes yes yes yes! I've wanted it for a long time, so YAY for Tim talking about it!

Just voting with my fingers for this feature too.

Yes, I would love a description field - I use it quite a bit in delicious to explain unusual tags or ones where there might be ambiguity. And I'm one of those with explanations of certain tags in my profile. Being able to define my collections would be wonderful.

agreeing with the one line description field for collections & tags... private &/or public descriptions...

For collections, it would be great. For tags (for my tags - YMMV), I think it would be overkill and crowd the page quite a bit - even on the tags page, let alone on my profile.

On the other hand, if it gets coded, I'm sure I'll use it. I've used (just about) everything else Tim comes up with...

13: I don't see this as "text displayed all the time", more of a widget on the tags page.

I agree with jjmcgaffey: this would be great for collections, overkill for tags.

What jjmcgaffey and _Zoe_ said ;)

I think it would be fun as an option for tags. :)

I actually wouldn't use it for Collections (at least, probably not), but I'd *love* it for tags, and I've mentioned it a few times before, before Collections came out.

I would like and use it for collections and tags.
:-)

This thread -

http://www.librarything.com/topic/66491

- has a lot of different ideas about how Collections should be used. I'm sure that Tim's original idea here would help to avoid tension - well, that might be putting it a bit strongly - but I think many would feel happier if they could define their Collections clearly.

As to the question of defining tags, I fear it could lead to a lot of clutter. It has made me think about the cryptic approach to tags. I've tried to be concise, monosyllabic or even acronymic but my obscure tags would really not be of any interest to other people - e.g. BA2 are my childrens' old books, left at home and kept in box #2 in the attic.
Most of my other tags are self-explanatory. I wonder if there is any system-related disadvantage in simply expanding tags if more clarity is needed? The number of tags more than 20 characters long falls off quite quickly after the first couple of dozen examples. I suppose that prolix tags would be a challenge for tag combiners.

20: How would it lead to clutter?

20> Prolix tags are also a pain to type on a new book. Getting one word right is difficult enough (did I pluralize that or not? Is it Cooking or Cookery?). Trying to get several words right, in the right order (right=the same as I did the first time), etc...too much trouble. I have a couple long tags in my hierarchical tags (Science:Mathematics:Probability), but they don't get applied to many books (thank goodness), and they're relatively straightforward - and they're still a pain to put in every time I use them.

21> I think abbottthomas is visualizing it the same way I was - on the tags page, under each tag, is a line or two of text explaining it...ghahh. What a (visual) mess that would be. If instead it was something separate...infiniteletters said it might be some kind of widget on the page. Not sure how that would work, but it probably would reduce the visual clutter.

on the tags page, under each tag, is a line or two of text explaining it
I would expect that such descriptions would be personal, and would only appear if you entered them, if you don't enter them, they won't be a mess. I would hope that they wouldn't take up any space if left blank.

I don't know about the Tags, but I think I would like to say something about my collections. Specifically, I don't use the system defined collection Favorites, though I did create a Stinkers.

I know which books I hated, but am unsure where to draw the line at what I enjoyed. It is just 5 star, is it 4.5, is it something that is maybe a low rated book, but that sticks with me ?

#20, I have posted in that thread and this proposal, while it sounds like a good idea, wouldn't solve the problem I expressed there which is that I would like to be able to decide whether a collection appears in "Recent Activity" on my profile page and as "owned" on work pages. I already explain what my "Books to investigate" collection is on my profile page in the "About Your Library" section -- this suggestion is just a formalization/extension of that capability.

>25 rebeccanyc: I think this seems like functionality that they'll eventually implement via the checkboxes.

I'm starting to think, though, that the whole system of users creating various new collections and checking boxes to specify which collections should be included where makes everything a lot more complicated than it needs to be, especially for new users. It doesn't help that the default collections are for fairly minor categories like "read but unowned". It seems to me that the two most useful collections for casual or new users would be "Read" and "Owned", unambiguous categories that LT could use to get meaningful work page statistics.

The Recent Activity etc. could then be more specific and completely clear: "rebeccanyc now owns Book X", "rebeccanyc read Book Y", etc.

#26, I hope this will be implemented via checkboxes, but it is not currently implemented via checkboxes, which only deal with whether a collection appears in Connections and is used for Recommendations, not whether books from it appear in Recent Activity on a profile or show on the Work page as owned. My alternative suggestion is for the Recent activity and Work info to indicate what collection a book is in. (The collection I'm interested in doing this for is my variation of a wishlist, "Books to investigate."

26: Now that's a good idea. :)

I'd like this feature, though I think it may get a little too cluttered as well. It's currently all on my wiki page (and taking up a lot of space).

> It seems to me that the two most useful collections for casual or new users would be "Read" and "Owned", unambiguous categories that LT could use to get meaningful work page statistics.

_Zoe_, you put a finger on the very thing that has given me trouble with the use of "Your Library", the terminology / naming.

When I first came to LT and we had but one undifferentiated catalog (called things like "your books") to work with, the terminology used around the catalog clearly implied to me that it was books in my possession (or that of my household). I don't think anyone would refer to a wishlist book, for example, as "mine". At that time, I was completely unwilling to add wishlist, discarded, borrowed, etc. books to LT because to me it violated the purpose of the site as indicated by the chosen terminology. Talking about my perceptions here, to explain.

Of course at the same time, Tim has said from the start that the purpose of the site is much broader and people should (and do!) use their accounts as they will. My (unspoken) response to that was "then why didn't things get named properly?" and "how about a way to break things out so we can be clear about the status of each book?" The latter has become Collections. The success of Collections in fulfilling that use is of course still being debated.

Of the LT-defined Collections, most of them are unambiguously named. I happily started using Wishlist, Currently Reading and To Read with no doubt that any viewer would know what I meant by putting a book in any of those. I turned off Read but Unowned not because it was ambiguous, but because I wanted finer distinctions. So I created Borrowed, Removed-didn't like, Removed-outgrew, etc. so again, I wouldn't need to explain what I meant.

Then there was Your Library. Yeah, I just moved into using it for the books I/we owned because that's what I'd been doing originally. But it quickly became clear that I would need to explain (done so on my profile) because it, like the original pre-Collections catalog, was ambiguous.

_Zoe_ is correct that LT-defined collections named "Read" and "Owned" would be unambiguous, and I'd be happy to use them if we got them.

Can I ask if you can't create those 2 (Read, Owned) as user defined and then move stuff out of Your Library, and turn it off ?

I think the ambiguous nature is both helpful and a drawback. Because it can be anything, everyone can use it the way they want. But that variation means that it isn't going to be clear what it is to others, without either a name change or a label or explanation to go with it.

>31 FicusFan:, Of course you can. But _Zoe_ said it well in another thread--no matter how unambiguous, we can't really use user-defined Collections in any meaningful way globally across the site. Look at how we already have Wishlisted and Currently Reading stats on our Home pages. Of course people can still use them "any way they want", but I do think it's much less likely, and thus produces better data, when things are named unambiguously.

And I don't think anyone is suggesting losing Your Library. Keep it, where the ambiguity can be useful. But don't make it the sole solution.

Even "owned" isn't completely unambiguous. Does it mean currently owned (the way I--and I suspect many if not most users--use "Your library"), or does it mean ever owned?

"Read" could mean entirely read or read in. (Someone might even understand it--with a long e in the imperative--as to read!)

My "Borrowed" collection is not a subset of "Read but not owned." In my case "Borrowed" means currently in my possession but belonging to someone else, whereas "Read but not owned" means I used to own or formerly borrowed the book and read it then.

The more I think about it, the more I suspect that short collections explanations would be useful.

>33 paradoxosalpha: You're correct, of course.

I guess my point, following on _Zoe_'s, was that names like "Owned" or "Read" or "Borrowed" are less ambiguous than "Your Library".

I agree that we'll never achieve perfect unambiguity in the naming, and I don't think that's desired. But I think some of us are hoping that with names that are less ambiguous, the resulting statistics will in turn be more meaningful and useful.

33> That's funny. I just created a Borrowed collection, that does exactly what yours does - the distinction between 'not mine but currently in my possession' and 'read it but do not currently own it'. I've got some Read and RNO books in Borrowed - I need to return them - but most of my RNO have already gone back to their owners. It's the first time one of my personal collections has matched another person's perfectly.

I learn a lot from users. We've made a huge number of changes in collections because of users. (Most were done on the beta group before we launched, but the beta group is open to anyone.) Nobody can say we haven't listened or responded, to many points or to this point. I've written this point many times.

But there is a point when we've made up our mind on core issues, and that point has been reached. It's true that it may be too late to change the default collections--except for adding new ones. But that's not why we're not changing them. We're not changing them because we think we're right on this. We can add features—like collection explanations, or extra check boxes, or even more default collections, but the core paradigm is what we want it.*

"Your library" is intentionally ambiguous, and collections are intentionally optional and non-proscriptive. LibraryThing is now and always will be a general-purpose book-listing application. From the start until now people have used it to list books they own, books they want, books they've read and many other categories--sometimes marked off with tags (and now collections) and sometimes not. We welcome every use of the system, have defended users who don't follow the majority use. We would like members to see that their use is simply that.

For all the flexibility of tags, there was an unmet need. We made collections to meet it—or anyway to meet some of it. The collections system is designed to:

1. Give users the ability (but not the requirement) to sequester their books more strongly, for searching, sorting, displaying and so forth.

2. To gently, optionally and customize-ably suggest some of the possible uses for LibraryThing—to fight the idea that LT is "for" one of the many possible ways it can be used, and entice people into using it more broadly.

3. To give users a way to affect certain features—to make sure their wishlist books, or their childhood love of Nancy Drew books doesn't have any impact on their connections, or recommendations, for example.

4. To allow us to aggregate and report on data in some interesting categories. Not every collection is interesting when aggregated, but I think "Wishlist" and "Currently reading" are.

Now, we could have started with no collections at all, and left everything up to the members. But that would moot points 2 and 4 above. So we started with a list that embraces some important categories of interaction with books, without implying that you have to use it in one specific way.

Every classification system implies something about the world. The GoodReads system divides the world of books into "read," "currently reading" and "to read." It implies that books are about read-ness. Some people clearly want that. But I can safely say that many LT users do not. For my part, I think that's an impoverished way to see your books—the way people see books who aren't fundamentally book lovers, let alone collectors. It's a classification system that sees books as "done" or not, as if any book worth reading is ever "done." I don't throw my books out when they're done, and I reread them. And neither of these activities are why I want a catalog of them on LibraryThing! And that leaves aside reference, essays, poems and short stories the "read"-ness of which is very problematic. Down deep, LibraryThing isn't a simple reading tracker. You can use it as one, but we're not going to reorient the system for the benefit of a minority.

LibraryThing's system is intentionally modest, and not based on a read/unread/to be read paradigm. The main collection means whatever you want it to mean. I suspect most users will keep their books in that base collection, called "Your Library." The others represent things that people wanted that have fairly different existential statuses. In the limitless ways of categorizing books, books you merely want stand out more than most. If you disagree, don't use it.

Intentional modesty means that the default set may not be perfect for every use. That's why you can change them so easily. So, if you want to use LibraryThing as a reading tracker only, you may want to add some collections. Go ahead and add them. I suspect that you'll find the world isn't divided into read, unread and to-be-read. You'll find some books are technically owned but actually lost, or read, but not finished, or "to be read" but not soon. I have a bag of books that are moldy. Where does that go? (And why do I need to mark this, when I know perfectly well which they are?)

Lastly, you are also free to mix tags and collections, using them where they best fit your situation. Other systems—every other system on the planet—has only one system, tags with some defaults—limiting ones, I think. In that as it everything we aim for flexibility and non-presumption about how people are going to use the system.

Thank you Tim. For everything really.

v

For bludgeoning you with verbiage? Gratitude accepted! :)

There's bludgeoning, and there's bludgeoning.

v

'Nuff said, really! Thank you Tim. Diversity rules OK.

We've made a huge number of changes in collections because of users. (Most were done on the beta group before we launched, but the beta group is open to anyone.)

There was never any real discussion of features in the BETA group, just discussion of bugs. We were constantly told to hold off for the feature discussion, because it would come "later". Now it's suddenly too late.

4. To allow us to aggregate and report on data in some interesting categories. Not every collection is interesting when aggregated, but I think "Wishlist" and "Currently reading" are.

This is what I don't understand. What makes "Wishlist" and "Currently Reading" indisputably more interesting than "Owned" and "Read", to the point where aggregating owned and read data isn't even worth considering?

The GoodReads system divides the world of books into "read," "currently reading" and "to read." It implies that books are about read-ness. Some people clearly want that. But I can safely say that many LT users do not... Down deep, LibraryThing isn't a simple reading tracker. You can use it as one, but we're not going to reorient the system for the benefit of a minority.

I never said that Collections should be exclusively about read-ness. I suggested adding both Read and Owned collections. I don't think adding a default collection constitutes a reorientation of the system; it would just provide a better way of aggregating data, because data based on "unspecified" isn't very good. As you said above, aggregating data is one of the four main purposes of Collections.

The GoodReads system divides the world of books into "read," "currently reading" and "to read." It implies that books are about read-ness. Some people clearly want that. But I can safely say that many LT users do not. For my part, I think that's an impoverished way to see your books—the way people see books who aren't fundamentally book lovers, let alone collectors.

Whereas I think putting the emphasis on Owning books (rather than reading them) makes it seem like the main function books serve is sitting on shelves and looking pretty. Maybe that makes me a reading lover and not a book lover, but I think deemphasizing the Reading-ness of books devalues what the books are actually *there* for. Sure, books aren't ever "done" - but having a "to read" category implies that its opposite should be an equally valid category... and according to the site, it isn't.

Basically inner completeist thinks that having RBNO without an Owned, and a CR and To Read without a Read is missing half of the picture.

> 36 Thank you, Tim. You've clarified for me some points I was fuzzy on. It's important to me to understand the intent of the system designers, and now I understand better.

I'll say that just for myself, Collections has worked well for your points 1., 3. and 4. As for 2., it's not an issue for me. The original LT fit my needs pretty well already, with Collections only improving things. If it hadn't, I wouldn't be here now to participate in these discussions.

> 41 I suggested adding both Read and Owned collections.

I agreed in another thread that I liked this idea too.

> 36 We can add features—like collection explanations, or extra check boxes, or even more default collections, but the core paradigm is what we want it.

Tim has just said this is feasible, and he didn't say he didn't like the idea.

Could somebody explain to me why this is still sounding acrimonious like an argument?

36: Thanks, Tim. Even if I don't agree 100% with some decisions, I very much appreciate the thought (and communication) that goes into them.

I'm primarily interested in your goal #1, and I wasn't sure what to expect from collections because I was aware of other goals and concerned that they might detract, but I am delighted with the result. Even though I'm using collections for subject divisions rather more than you might have anticipated (or approved).

Just to correct something about GoodReads - It comes out of the box as it were with those 3 distinctions, but they give you the option to add other specially defined collections that act like the system defined collections (different than shelves as tags).

I have added Quit and Reference. They are above the line, and always presented as options when I add a book to GR. They are all (system and specially defined ) exclusive shelves, meaning a book can be in only 1 of them at a time.

So while GR may be set up to start with tracking only reading, it can be easily tailored to tracking ownership, or some other mixed focus. Whatever the user wants.

I won't say that GR is in the same league as LT, but they are, in this instance extremely flexible.

.... I really have nothing to say about default Collections.

But re the orginal topic, I'd still really love an option to explain collections, AND tags. I don't understand the "clutter" arguement, because can't it easily be made into a drop-down or default-hide type of thing?

>So while GR may be set up to start with tracking only reading, it can be easily tailored to tracking ownership, or some other mixed focus. Whatever the user wants.

And this differs from LT how?

It doesn't, but in your verbiage you were saying that GR was only geared towards tracking reading.

No, I hear you.

Just chiming in to say..."damn glad to be here."

LT suits me down to the ground. I can track my reading, I can indulge my inner collector, I can expound to my heart's content. I can look at data if I want to.

Thanks for everything done, doing, and to be done.

This is what I have put into my profile -

"Collections
Pending a more embedded labelling of Collections, I should make it clear that 'Your Library' contains all the books I actually own and no others. I like the opportunity given by Collections to define and display more clearly than with tags groups of books of particular interest to me. The various Penguin collections and the Opera programmes are in this category and are sub-sets of 'Your Library'.

'Non-book items' and 'Maps' are not included in 'Your Library' and are notchecked for Connections or Recommendations. I have also isolated those children's books for which I have no particular feeling, despite storing them, in a 'Children's Books Archive' collection, again not participating in Connections or Recommendations.

I do not list any read-not-owned books - I think it would be pretty meaningless after 60-odd years of reading - and I don't keep a wishlist here. Another small, free* account as 'theabbottsdesires' is my wishlist in embryonic form.

*Yes, I do feel a bit of a tightwad!"

This approach suits me - I am not trying to sell it ;-)

Edited to reflect a change in dealing with children's books after discussion on another thread.

>51 abbottthomas:

I sympathize with your feeling of aversion to read-not-owned after a long history of reading, but I'm still gratefully using that collection, because it lets me post reviews of books that aren't currently on my own shelves, without breaking the integrity of the catalog in My library.

Also it keeps me from recommendations of books I've read but don't want to own. "Religious" about keeping them out of my library though.

I would like to place my vote in favor of (the original topic here) a system for explaining my tags and collections. This would be helpful for my own reference as well as for explaining myself to other users. I do currently use a little bit of tag explanation on my profile page, and would likely leave it, for lack of much else to say there, but would love to expand on the concept in a more interactive fashion.

As to the issue of these explanations being seen as clutter, I feel strongly that such explanations should not appear directly in-line with the text of the page. They should be "floating" or spontaneously appearing when you point at a tag or collection link, much like the "edit | tag page | RSS" that currently appears when we point at tags on the tag page. Or perhaps better and more versatile than that would be to put the explanations in the little explanatory flags that mouse-pointers sprout when pointing at buttons and images (like the one that says "Show tags and collections" when you point at the Tags button).

If tag and collection explanations are invisible until pointed at, then they simply don't appear when you point at a tag or collection that lacks an explanatory note, so this shouldn't be a problem for people who aren't interested in them or find even the invisible-to-floating-flag format too cluttered.

Vote "Yes!" on tag tagging!

I would love to be able to post explanations for tags and collections - Now I keep expanding my profile to post explanation on what is what...

You know, at first I was thinking, "tag explanations would be overkill" but now that I think about it...wouldn't this help with tag combining questions?

I realize we can't get everyone to define their tags, but if you do have the ability to define your tags and you do use 999 to describe Britain's emergency call service - this does give a concrete argument to not combining it with 999 challenge rather than having a large game of "I've come up with a possible alternate explanation for the tag, it can never be combined."

Although, being able to see date clusters on tag usage might solve some of those issues...

But it could definitely take those arguments out of the realm of possibility and into reality. It's an important distinction.

#56: I'm a combiner, but the 999 example you give is exactly one of the reasons that I never combine tags. I leave tag combining alone...

For me, tags are a notation to myself regarding that book or that group of books. It is for myself & not to necessarily be understood by anyone else.

I don't understand tag combining. What does it do, why is it better than leaving them uncombined, what impact does a tag combination have on the book its attached to ?

> 58: It does not influence the book it's attached to. But it will influence things like tag watching and searching.

In many cases, especially since LT is also used internationally, essentially the same tag could be given in many ways. So the reason to combine is to enable users to find books tagged "World War 2", "WW2", "WWII", and "Deuxième Guerre Mondiale" simultaneously (for example). Otherwise they would have to search every possible variation separately.

>59 Nicole_VanK:: Thank you. It makes sense now.