Book discussions

Is there any way that a link can be created on the book page, the one with will I like it and reviews, which will take you to an existing debate or allow a person to start a debate that is easy to find.

This is in response to the debate elsewhere. See

http://www.librarything.com/topic/70528#1436640 (This should be a link to post 171 in the other thread )
In case the above link doesn't work (or leads to the wrong place) here's a link to the whole discussion http://www.librarything.com/topic/70528

I (and a few others) thought that this idea was worth separating from the discussion about reviews.


In summary, I think that what some people would like is an easier method of finding a discussion about a book. This is a book site but the number of groups and talk posts means that it can be hard to find or join a debate about a book.

This is a copy of something that I wrote lower down the thread: I linked to the other thread so that I didn't try to summarise the discussion that has taken place already. I will try to answer specific points to the best of my ability. Please bear in mind that this might involve me going back to that long thread to remind myself of the facts.

Another edit -I am not complaining that there is too much talk. I like talk. Even though I'm sure I miss interesting conversations, I don't mind.

This is about the one issue- books! This is in my mind at least primarily a book site, a place to catalogue, talk about and enjoy books. I like the social side but I regard it as a bonus.

There is already a link on book pages to conversations about a book. For example, if you go to the page for A Perfect Spy, on the left you will see a link to "Conversations," between the links for Descriptions and Common Knowledge. The number indicates the number of conversations.

Clicking on the link takes you to a list of threads that discuss the book, followed by snippets from the conversations so you can have a better sense of which posts might interest you.

:) beat me to it rebecca!

>2 rebeccanyc: That is one of the problems. They are not discussions but places where the title is mentioned.
In the debate on the other thread I described trying to find a discussion not just a reference to the book. A discussion I had been invited to, but had not posted in as I had only just started the book. This was a book that is in the middle of a group read but I am a not a member of that group. There was not one link to the actual group read. I presume that is because the title of the book was the title of the thread so nobody felt the need to name the book again. I only found it because I scrolled down far enough to find the original invitation.

So just because there is a link for conversations or a way to search for the title of a book in talk threads doesn't mean that it works in what I consider to be a useful way.

Edit for typo

edit to add - I tried again for the same title, this time the title of the book in the thread heading appeared for part 5 (after scrolling down the list for a while) of the discussion but there was no mention of part 6 which was started today.

calm, I agree. When I joined the site, I was excited to see the "Conversations" links, but after so many times finding only a passing reference to a book, I stopped bothering to look at the links.

ETA missing words -- it's a senior thing

In the discussion Calm refers to above I gave an example of using the conversations feature to find a discussion about The Catcher in the Rye. I had to search through 29 talk threads before I found one linking to an actual discussion of the book. The general feeling in that thread is that the conversations feature has become an extremely inefficient way to find a discussion about a book.
The particular post that Calm linked to is a suggestion of a way to facilitate discussion of a book that quite a lot of us in the thread think has merit.
I think Calm's reason for posting this here is because we would now like to get input on the idea from a wider audience. Also that thread has now pretty much grown into a debate about two different ideas and this serves the purpose of separating the two debates.

Good job, calm, stating what we discussed on the other thread and linking there.

Why thank you sodapop and karenmarie. I really did think that what is a good idea was getting lost. I asked the person whose post I linked if they wanted to start another thread but he asked me to do it.

I like the suggestion. I often see a similar thing on IMDB, but the link is invariably not populated.

Could possibly be extended to authors, but not until we have the ability to separate authors with matching names.

I just finished reading that entire other thread, and then followed the discussion over here. I like the idea of having a dedicated discussion for a single title (or, I suppose, series or author) that can be started or accessed from the works page - where it will be seen by other people interested in the same book. I also like the idea of automatic invites being sent to people who had previously posted reviews for the book when the new discussion is initiated. Maybe there could also be a way to send invites to anyone who has the book in their library (similar to the way I was invited to an author discussion because I had one of her books) - but I wouldn't propose that it be automatic.

> 1

While on the face of it, it seems like a good idea, but I'm not sure, practically speaking, how it could be done. How would the site differentiate between a "mention" and a "discussion"? How much need be said before the post/thread is labeled a "discussion"? Does there need to be a response? Is one response sufficient? What if someone has written a fairly lengthy post about a book and hasn't gotten any replies yet?

> 10

I also like the idea of automatic invites being sent to people who had previously posted reviews for the book when the new discussion is initiated.

Oh, dear god, please no. No "automatic invites", please!

I like the idea of having a dedicated discussion for a single title

I'm terribly afraid this would lead to cries of "you're posting in the wrong place! Go to this thread" if someone had the utter temerity to start a thread somewhere else (which happens already).

Well, I can understand the desire to find a discussion about a particular book, but I don't think it's quite as difficult as some people may think.

First, since the first list of threads reached by the Conversations link lists all threads in which the book is mentioned, it isn't difficult to scan that list for a thread with the book title in the thread title -- that would indicate a thread in which the book at least started out being the topic of discussion.

Second, by scrolling past the initial list, you get to the snippets section. It is easy to see from that if the book is just being listed (for example, in a What Are You Reading? thread) or if there is some more substantive discussion around it.

And if there isn't one already, there's nothing to stop someone from starting one! But, please, no automatic invites!

I do think it might be nice to have a "Start a Conversation About This Book" link on the conversation page that would take you right to starting a new thread in, say, the "Book Talk" group.

Edited for clarity.

Maybe I didn't make myself clear, the search doesn't work for titles of threads. Not off the conversation link, not off the search talk link.

It searches for the book title in the thread, so unless somebody writes the title within the thread search doesn't find it! Most often people write the title to mention what they are reading; what they have just bought.

When you are actually discussing something, like in a group read, you don't need to keep mentioning the title.

Is that a clear enough explanation of why I think this idea is worth considering?

The point is that Talk needs to be restructered. I know Tim is opposed to the use of forum systems, but that way the content of talk get's organised.

Visually Talk is chaos and really needs a redesign. Also double groups need to be deleted (really, 15 Twilight groups?). It's only clutter and chaos for people. It's very difficult to find things back. And maybe the general groups also need to be cut back. It's just too much.

I propose the following, where a good redesign of the Talk could suffice, while not needing a forum system

When selecting the talk tab, the page shows the following categories and subcategories (or forums)

Announcements
Feedback, with the subcategories
--bug reports
--support
--improvements

Librarything Projects
-- I see dead people
-- Early Reviewers
-- BETA-group
-- Combiners
-- Author Chat

Books
-- General discussion (replacement for the general groups, green dragon, political groups)
-- Subcategories by author (good place for the author-groups)
-- Subcategories by genre (for the genre specific groups or discussion)

In each category the topics can be found (or the author/genre groups for example)

What needs to be refined:
- search
- touchstones
- bring affinity back!
- on the work pages: let the conversations option work better to include all discussions, and showing it of more prominent.
- a neater way to find all your posts back
- a neater way to track discussions, favorite them, bookmark them, star them or to ignore them.

Sorry, I didn't understand that you were talking about the fact that threads that only mentioned the book title in the thread title don't show up in the conversation list. I do understand what you are saying about how the conversation list gets populated, and there is certainly a possiblity that a whole thread about a book could exist without anyone mentioning the title of it in any of the posts, but I do wonder how often that occurs.

Ok I just tried doing what was suggested in post #12. If you ignore the discussion of Catcher in The Rye that was started in Book talk yesterday, in response to something that was said in the other thread (And currently sits somewhere like 15th in the list of conversations), you actually have to scroll through 68 links before you find one that mentions Catcher in the Rye in the title. I, personally do not think that that is a very efficient way of finding a discussion of a book. As to scrolling down to the snippets, well with 268 conversations it's a long ways down to the snippets and then a heck of a lot of snippets to read through before you find what you're looking for.

And if there isn't one already, there's nothing to stop someone from starting one! This was talked about a little in the other thread and the problem with this is - How do you make other readers aware of the existence of your discussion and stop it from become lost in the jumble of other talk posts?
A link on the works page that would either start a discussion or join an existing one would at least make the existence of that discussion known to people visiting the works page -who presumably have an interest in that book.

I know that threads often wonder off the stated topic but #14 sophies-choice can I say that you are entitled to your opinion, but I started this thread to discuss an idea which was being overwhelmed by a separate issue. I don't mean to be rude but I think that is off topic, could you start you own thread please. Also that is a cut and paste of your answer on another topic (for people who are interested- SqueakyChu's thread about ideas for helping people who feel lost on LT. http://www.librarything.com/topic/70963.) which I consider a separate issue.

I am going to try my hardest to keep this to one topic. So I am not getting into a discussion of why that is unworkable in my opinion. Send me an invite to the appropriate thread and I'll give you a full, logical argument on why restricting the number of threads would be wrong.

I am asking for an easier way to find or start a discussion about a book, not restrict the way this site works now.

#11 I'm terribly afraid this would lead to cries of "you're posting in the wrong place! Go to this thread" if someone had the utter temerity to start a thread somewhere else (which happens already).
This was a worry that was brought up in the other thread and needs more discussion. But I don't think a general discussion thread of a book should stifle discussions in other groups. I think, for example, a discussion of Pride and Prejudice in a general book discussion group would be very different than a discussion of Pride and Prejudice in say one of the Jane Austen groups. I think there should be room for both but I understand your worry about people telling you you're in the wrong place.
That having been said The Catcher in the Rye discussion was started in Book Talk yesterday (partly as an experiment) and so far no-one has said "You're posting this in the wrong group" or "There's already a discussion of this book in x"
But interestingly another discussion of The Catcher in the Rye was linked to in one of the messages in order to illustrate a point that was being made. The upside of that being that anyone reading the discussion in book talk now also becomes aware of the existence of the other discussion.

Right having got to the end of that I feel like I might be being clear as mud so if it's not clear let me know.

I linked to the other thread so that I didn't try to summarise the discussion that has taken place already. I will try to answer specific points to the best of my ability. Please bear in mind that this might involve me going back to that long thread to remind myself of the facts. (I am copying this and putting it at the start of the thread)

#11 lilithcat, what is wrong with an invite along the lines of author chat. I received one for an author who is on my wishlist, so I couldn't join the discussion. I suppose I could have said "I would like to read your books" but I just ignored it. It is much quicker and easier to ignore a short notice that someone wants to discuss something, than to actually trawl through threads or invite every one you know might be interested to a discussion and how do you know that someone wants to discuss something. What do I do PM everyone who has reviewed it or has a copy in their library? I think that would be worse than a short automatic invite or it might be a revival of a dormant thread. I don't have an answer for what would be the best way. That is why I want to discuss the topic.

Edit (in brackets in the post)

And if I'm not mistaken the suggestion was the invite would only go out one time - when the discussion thread was started. Newcomers to the site would be able to find the discussion via the link on the works page.

#19 Yes I don't really want to summarise it either but I can also see how anyone going to it might not want to read through the whole thing - it's a bit of a monster. (For anyone thinking about reading it I suggest you start at post #171 which Calm linked to in the opening post here).

An addition to my OP which I am inserting into the discussion (because if you are anything like me you don't start at the beginning when you come back to a thread).

I am not complaining that there is too much talk. I like talk. Even though I'm sure I miss interesting conversations, I don't mind.

This is about the one issue- books! This is, in my mind, at least primarily a book site, a place to catalogue, talk about and enjoy books. I like the social side but I regard it as a bonus.

I like the idea and think the benefit is to Find other people who want to talk about the book.

I don't see the problem with automatic invitations, just ignore or delete them, or perhaps there can be an opt out.

>13 calm:: "the search doesn't work for titles of threads...It searches for the book title in the thread"

Actually, my impression (and I could be wrong) it that it searches off touchstones, which means conversations that don't use the touchstone (and mentions of titles which don't touchstone properly) aren't reported.

#23 gwernin
Well that's worse than the situation I thought I was describing, because touchstones don't always lead you to the right book and I don't know anybody who touchstones the book title in the heading of a thread.

Edited to add -and you are even less likely to touchstone in a thread about a book than in a general thread because you are already in a group of people discussing that book.

24: Touchstones don't work in thread titles.

#25 Thank you gwernin.

I can only hope that somebody can listen to this and find a solution. Even if it is just the information that I am asking for a pony, (which from my understanding of the site is asking the impossible).

I admit I don't know if it is even possible to add a feature that I see as an improvement, computers are alien creatures to me and programming is beyond my comprehension. I also don't want to add to people's confusion of navigating the site but I thought that, if possible, this might make at least one aspect of the site more user friendly.

As to the concern of "you're posting in the wrong area," this is the sort of thing I'm worried about and the concern I raised.

Here's the typical thing that I see today that made me think of it:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/70424

This person posted in Book Talk - and they're immediately redirected to Name That Book. Which is nice and all, but if they post their topic as-is, they'll be reprimanded in that group for not following several rules. The first being that their topic is too vague. Someone did reply and another user pointed to the new topic in the "correct" forum.

So this is where I would worry that a discussion posted in Book Talk or a form elsewhere would be met with, "if you want to discuss the book, go to that book's forum!"

ETA - That being said, I do sympathize with the difficulty in sifting through the discussions and trying to find a real discussion on a book. I'm not wholly opposed to the idea of an IMDB-like discussion forum for each book.

Why wouldn't a user whose specific desire to discuss a book not welcome the existence of a central talk thread to discuss it? And, if the said user wants to discuss the book in ways that aren't popular with the current users of a central thread, why wouldn't s/he start a new thread and post a link in the main thread for that book?

It's not so much that as it is the fact that individuals that post these little - you went to the wrong area! missives seem to forget that a person was actually trying to reach out and talk to other members. Sometimes folks get so wound up in making sure that the corners of LT are all neat and square, they sort of start getting territorial about what general talk forums are supposed to be.

Again, I have nothing against them in general - but as an enhancement, not as a way to "clean up" general talk. If a book discussion manages to break out in general talk with the existence of these forums, it should still be allowed to live. :)

I saw Richard's full suggestion in the other thread. I didn't read the entire rest of the thread, but I do want to say that I think it would be a huge improvement over what we have now. I very rarely find anything interesting or indepth using the "conversations" link. The "your books" link in Talk is generally noise.

I also like the idea of having invites, but agree it should be strictly opt-in. Maybe instead of notifying reviewers there could just be a "Get discussion notices on this book" button attached to the work page?

Oh Good idea Dandylion. That way people don't feel like they're being spammed and people only get notices for books they're interested in discussing.

Don't you think that most people who are interested enough in a book to write and post a review would generally also be interested in discussing that book with other interested people? I'd prefer an opt-out. An "I'm not interested in receiving discussion notices on this book" button when the review is posted on a book that doesn't already have a discussion group/thread started. Once someone has opened a discussion, anyone going to the work page, or posting a review, would see that a button inviting them to "click here to go to a discussion about this book".

Well the initial suggestion was to invite anyone who had reviewed the book but I got the impression that the reaction to that was negative so I'd settle for allowing people to choose to wether they want to get invites.

> 32

Don't you think that most people who are interested enough in a book to write and post a review would generally also be interested in discussing that book with other interested people?

No, I don't. I review every book I read. That doesn't mean I want to engage in extended discussions about all of them. For the most part, I say all I want to in my reviews.

I'd prefer an opt-out.

I always prefer opt-in. Perhaps those long-ago dealings with Book-of-the-Month club have colored my opinion, but my general view is that one should not be required to reject something before having it sent. The onus should be the other way.

Definitely agree with lilithcat. It is *not* true that people who read the book and post a review would most likely be interested in discussing the book, and to assume that and spam them with invites and such would be completely wrong.

Invites aside I'm not really a huge fan, as I'd worry about someone thinking, "ack, I'm busy this week and I'd rather not write a review this week in case I get a random invite for a chat!" which could end up leading to no review from them at all - would you be more/less likely to use a dedicated mini-forum for a work?

Something similar to the IMDB-ones:

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0068646/board

These are my reasons for having a link to some kind of discussion from the book page. ETA a link the user chooses to follow or activate; somewhere for people to express an interest in a book; find old discussions and an opt in to "I would like to discuss this book" if a thread is revived by new interest.

If a book comes up in recommendations or talk I use the book page to see "reviews" and "will I like it".

The reason I took this away from the other thread is that I didn't want the idea tied to a review. I certainly don't think that writing a review is a good enough reason for believing that you want to talk about a book.

My rational is that this is not just a book site. There are people who catalogue or review who don't join the social side. Just like there are people with no books in their library who enjoy the social side. These are people who either wouldn't want or wouldn't get any automatic notification. What if you are just interested in discussing the book before adding it to your library?

I believe that no one should be forced to use LT in a way they don't want to.

My library is also heavy on certain genres that don't fully reflect my interests as "will I like it" only matches what I have already added to my catalogue it doesn't replace talking to someone about why they find the book interesting (or not).

In conclusion I would like to be able to discuss a book I have read or that I would like to read more fully. I would like a function that leads me to a fuller conversation about the book.

sorry, calm, I can't resist responding to #14 sophies_choice

I absolutely do not think Talk needs to be restructured. I don't think it needs to be moderated, controlled, categorized, or managed.

When there are problems users work with TPB to get them resolved. When somebody puts a thread out there that others don't want to respond to because it's in the "wrong" place or is too out there, it simply doesn't get responded to.

Why would you want to replace general groups, Green Dragon (why this one in particular?), political groups?

And, even though I don't look at them, what's the problem with 16 groups for Twilight? I honestly don't see how that hurts anybody yet gives pleasure to Twilight enthusiasts. I read the Twilight series and liked it, but don't feel the need to discuss it. So I ignore the groups.

I prefer less control to more control.

#38 karenmarie
Yes, I know you can't control what other people say in talk and everyone has a right to react to anyone else's post or idea however they want. I have absolutely no chance of keeping a thread on topic, I think if I hadn't just read the whole thing in reply to another post I might have just sighed and ignored it. I really don't want anybody thinking that I am trying to curtail or prevent discussion but I would like for the idea someone else raised elsewhere to get serious attention.

Ideas can get muddied by someone saying "this is the problem" without even considering the suggestion or explanation.

karenmarie/38: I am not convinced that having 16 groups for Twilight DOES give pleasure to Twilight enthusiasts. It seems to me that the people isolated in the 16 different groups would have more lively discussions if they FOUND each other. I watch Newest Groups, and having seen new twilight groups pop up so frequently, I was sort of tracking those twilight groups way back when. I found that most of the new groups were created by young people, who each thought that they were creating the only twilight group. Interesting observation: When sorted in order of date created, you can see, in general, that the longer established groups have more members and more active talk, and the newer the group, the fewer members there are to talk amongst themselves. With an exception: when one of those new twilight groups showed up during a time when there were few other new groups being created, so that it stayed on the Newest Groups list for quite a while, and was SEEN and joined by twilight-loving new users.

TOS says: "the creation of multiple, duplicative and contentless groups is against these terms."

I contend that the problem of so many duplicate groups lies at the point of Group creation. From watching my own teens, I believe that young folks tend to jump in to things online without the cautious, instruction reading, lurk and learn process which, judging from other comments in the forums here, characterize us older users.

Don't want to get verbose on the subject, since its off-topic, but if interested, check out the comment on my profile titled "THOUGHTS ON GROUP CREATION", where I've gathered a lot of talk posts made by many people on this subject.

My bottom line thought: people seeking specific conversations lose out when they can't find each other.

Implementing something like what is mentioned in the OP, and also revamping the Create a Group process, would go a long way toward helping users find each other.

You know, some journal literature indexes (e.g., MedLine) have a feature that allows keywords and subject headings and what-not to be marked as "major" or "minor" aspects of the indexed work. It occurs to me that if the "touchstone works" and "touchstone authors" lists at the top of the thread had a user option then we could mark discussions that way.

Then the book-link on the left of works pages could have a "see all mentions of this book" and "see in-detail discussions of this book". Then, Tim et al could set up a group that was "books discussed" that held threads dedicated to individual book titles. Add a link on the works page to "start a discussion of this book" and to each current dedicated-thread discussion.

>41 lquilter: So users would self-identify the classification? As long as it defaulted to "unclassified," that would be an improvement. Although I'd worry about losing the classification when editing posts - since we lose corrected touchstones anyway (yeah, I'm sneaking that hint in here).

Another issue of sorts - when you do pull up the conversation threads today from the work:

http://www.librarything.com/work/159696/conversations/49352830

This book is easy because there are only 2 conversations. Let's say you're really desperate to chat about the book and you that there's a post from yesterday (how convenient!). Well, it's in a challenge thread, but maybe the snippit implies that the book is being read soon.

If you click on that topic, it goes to the top of my thread. Which is 147 posts long. Why doesn't it go to the post where that mention took place?

Well I just tried it (twice to be sure) and both time's it jumped to the correct post and the mention was highlighted in yellow.

It's highlighted, but stays on the top post for me - FF/XP. It's always done that for me. Which is what makes that so annoying.

Hmm. I using Safari. Don't know what to tell you - Other than, buy a Mac! LOL

If you're offering to buy me one, sure! =P

Maybe ask about it in bug collectors - because surely a feature should work the same no matter what platform you're using. (But be prepared to be overwhelmed with tech talk.)

If we are talking web browsers I am on Google chrome and clicking on the extract where the title is mentioned takes me to the actual post. If I click on the thread title, I go to the start of the thread.

It is nice to know that there is away of getting to the mention of the book in a long thread but I still do not think that it answers the problem when there are lots of mentions of the book title in talk.

Huh, interesting - for me (FF3.0.13/XP), if I click on either the extract or the title of the post, it goes to the top of the page, hangs for a second, then jumps to that post. Maybe you start clicking/scrolling down too soon, stephmo? I don't know.

Okay - after a massive reboot, it now works for me. PreReboot, not so much. I'm guessing Sodapop isn't going to buy me a shiny mac now. :(

But - enough of this - back to the classification problem. I'm trying to envision how this would work. When the touchstones come up, would a person then be asked to mark it as "list/trivia/game/conversation" at the same time?

While it sounds good, I could easily see this getting ignored and reverting to a default setting when posts were edited (all of my instances of the book Skim by Mariko Tamaki revert to Skim the Fat by The American Diabetes Association if I don't fix it with the edit. So I worry that we might lose classifications with the same issues.

Which is where the idea of individual book forums does become more appealing to me - I wasn't a huge fan at first, but it does sound better. Plus, it does allow for the discussions to stay there as a separate history of "deliberate discussions." We'd always have the touchstone discussions to go to on top of everything else...but it would be a logical starting point for many people.

I had some trouble following all the posts here, so, hopefully I'm not being too redundant.

I love Richard's idea from the other post - that on each work page there could be a link to start a Talk group about that book, and then, if one is created, have a link to that group.

I hate trying to find conversations on a book - for many reasons (It's difficult, time consuming, there is way too much noise in the search results and said conversation(s) is unlikely to exist. Plus, if there are multiple conversations on a book, there is no clean summary of them. Touchstones are only OK.)

I have on suggestion to add: On the work page there could be option called "Conversations about the book highlighted by users" where users can manually post a link to a Talk thread, presumably one that discusses the book. Then, right on the work page would be list of all the main conversations about the book - and this just sounds wonderfully clean and neat to my optimistic imagination.

A CK field where links could be entered to discussions of the book?

#52 - I didn't have CK in mind, that doesn't seem right. Something more along the lines of adding another section to the work pages. Something like this:

▾Would you like it
▾Conversations about the book highlighted by users (or perhaps "Highlighted Conversations")
▾Member reviews
▾Published reviews
▾Common Knowledge

#53 dchaikin That is one of the things that I was trying to say i.e. a link to existing data. Very nicely described from my vague description of something on the book page.

The original Inane Reviews thread conflated two issues, discussion of books and discussion of reviews. calm has started this thread with the emphasis on better access to discussions about books. As was mentioned by several people in Inane Reviews and as calm has posted (elsewhere, #3 and #4), there are groups for those who want to discuss reviewing or reviews:
Book Reviewers

Do you review books on LT or elsewhere? This is a list on the what, how and why of reviewing.

and Reviews reviewed

If you have written reviews and wouldn't mind knowing what others think of them, join this group. You can comment here on other members' reviews, but in return, by joining the group you give them permission to comment on yours. Only members can post comments.

We focus on the review rather than the reviewed book, on the language of the review more than the reviewer's opinions. Among other things, this is a place you can try out, polish and refine your review before or after posting it.

and others more specialised.

Edited for html fail.

I saw on Reviews Reviewed that jimroberts (founder of the group) had seen my post referring to them on the inane reviews thread and asked them as a group if they would post a description of what they provide for reviewers. Therefore I can only say:

Thank you for posting here (#55 ) jimroberts. I sometimes think that unless you had infinite time you could never discover every aspect available on LT. I often try to point out groups and threads that might be of interest to others. I am sure there is much still to be discovered.

11>

How would the site differentiate between a "mention" and a "discussion"?

I can think of a couple ways to get at that, partly:

1. Exclude certain groups that are more likely to just be lists without discussion, like some of the challenge groups. (I know that people who frequent those groups tell me that there are occasional discussions there; all I can say is that I never saw one when I followed links, so I've stopped following them. This could be a user-selectable feature.

2. As you say, require more than one mention. A single post, no matter how thoughtful, is not a conversation.

Oh, dear god, please no. No "automatic invites", please!

Heartily seconded.

I'm terribly afraid this would lead to cries of "you're posting in the wrong place! Go to this thread" if someone had the utter temerity to start a thread somewhere else (which happens already).

It's all in the tone. Personally I think fragmenting discussion because everyone is terrified of offending someone by saying "You might not be aware that there's an active discussion over at this other thread, and you might get more responses there" is a worse prospect.

Instead of automatic invites, I was thinking I'd like to be able to get a page listing all the discussions of any book in my library. It would probably work best if they were grouped by book and if you could sort it various ways, possibly by my rating of the book, number of reviews, alphabetically by title and alphabetically by author.

I like the idea of users being able to highlight a thread about a book. It means that things like group reads would be listed, because someone would likely be motivated to make that link, but 'what are you reading' and challenge threads where the focus was not discussion or a particular book would likely not.

It also saves the problem of auto-invites and to some extent, the feeling that there is an 'official' space for discussion on that book. It may also serve to help users find interesting and active groups that are invested in discussing books that they love!

Also, I suspect it would take far less work on the coding end.

Yes to easier instigation of more specific discussions over books - group read threads are perfect examples how interesting other people's ideas are.

I like the idea of inviting reviewers to contribute, and I really can't see that having an invite or two a week is such a problem (apart from bluetyson who will be inundated) who writes more reviews than that?

I would consider such invites spam.

I like the idea of an easier way to start a discussion about a book and having it linked to the work page without being so hidden in the clutter of the "Conversations" list.

I would consider automatic invites to be spam unless I had specifically signed up for them -i.e. "Notify me if anyone starts a discussion about a Robert A. Heinlein book." - Check. (on the author page or a book specific one on the work page or even on the tag page - "Notify me if someone starts a discussion about a book with tag "WTF.")

If it were possible to sign up for such notification I would want to be able to do it whether or not I had written a review for the work.

NOW, if someone wanted to personally leave a comment for me on my profile that they had started a discussion and inviting me to join in to further discuss an idea they had found intriguing (or disagreed with) in my review - I wouldn't object to that (of course they could do that now without any change in the system.)

Alternately, we could fine-tune the current "Conversations" link to allow people to indicate Discussion vs. Mention (like Major vs Minor edit on a Wiki) - like put a checkbox next to the touchstones listed for a thread and people could check a work if it was the major theme of the thread and not just something mentioned in passing. Those threads could then sort to the top when you clicked the conversation link (like a thumb for a review.)

Similarly having a "links" section for works like we do for authors would allow greater flexibility - folks doing "Group Reads" could put a link to their thread on the Work page and drum up more contributors. I wouldn't limit the "Links" section to just thread links though - you could link to relevant web pages - like an author's web commentary on the book, etc.

PortiaLong/62: Agree with your paragraph 5. I've been thinking along those lines, too, and actually proposed something similar a few weeks ago. (At: http://www.librarything.com/topic/70528#1438667 but as that thread is 479 posts long, I copy it here.)

Having recently joined my first challenge group, I found it very difficult to choose potential reads (for books with few reviews), having to wade through all those links which turned out to be just book listings, looking for conversation threads that had –conversation. I think this is a great idea – a logical place to find a real discussion (about the book, not the reviews).

I would not want to lose the just-a-list links; wonder if there’s a way to separate them – a module on the book page, for each type. It makes me wonder – would users find it cumbersome if there were two options for a touchstone? Here I’m LISTING this book title. Here I’m DISCUSSING this book. There has been much discussion in other topics about ways of doing Lists (Publisher’s Series, among other things), so just wondering.

#62/63 : Interesting posts, and great ideas.

One worry I have about labeling the touchstones is that the touchstones themselves fail quite often.

I do like that idea of using labeled touchstones if we could get an overhaul of touchstones in general, to make them more reliable.

I don't know that the labels would actually be used. Most of the time that you add a touchstone you add the brackets and it resolves correctly (well it would if touchstones were fixed) so you just keep typing and probably wouldn't notice the mention/discussion box.

In addition, consider this scenario:

Member A tags their post "I'm reading ThisBook" as a Mention and goes on to other things. Member B takes up the subject and goes starts a lively and interesting discussion, but the touchstone is still tagged Mention.

> 67

I think I'd rather have that than what we have now. In that scenario, we're only missing a few mismarked things. in the current one, we're missing almost /everything/.

I'm not sold on any one idea yet, but I do fervently believe that LT's track record in encouraging discussion on books is not very good, and it's an area that we really ought to improve on - after all, we /are/ a social networking site. If I just wanted a catalog with no interaction, I could do that on my PC!

>68 Aerrin99: Aerrin99, LT's track record in encouraging discussion on books is not very good, and it's an area that we really ought to improve on - after all, we /are/ a social networking site. If I just wanted a catalog with no interaction, I could do that on my PC!

This is the crux of the matter for me. I'd be happy with any reliable system of starting/finding/tracking discussions about the books. I am a fervent user of the social parts of the site, but these shouldn't be the be-all and end-all of the "Talk" area. I really do want to find someone(s) with whom to bat ideas about a particular book that's struck me.

In my experience online, the best book discussions I've seen are those in which many people agree to read the same book or a book about the same topic at the same time. If more groups could formalize this structure, better (i.e. more in-depth) book discussions would result, I believe.

I really like the idea of discussion/mention touchstones, accompanied by a fix of touchstones in general. It seems like the most straightforward way to integrate easily-findable book discussions into the already-existing structure of LT.

>66 jjwilson61: I don't know that the labels would actually be used. Most of the time that you add a touchstone you add the brackets and it resolves correctly (well it would if touchstones were fixed) so you just keep typing and probably wouldn't notice the mention/discussion box.

The way I envisioned it when I wrote paragraph 5 of post 62 was that there would be check boxes next to the touchstones listed at the top of the thread and that anyone could - at any point - check them to have the thread listed as "Discussion" instead of the default "Mention" - it wouldn't have to be the person who created the original touchstone. It could also be "unchecked" by anyone if the thread became largely involved in something else and was not longer a major discussion of that work.

Hi there PTB! Renewing my request for this particular pony.

Still whining and gritching for my pony over here....

Just wanted to chime in to offer my support for the OP's suggestion, and to note that various other users have also suggested adding a feature like this in other threads and contexts recently.

The common thread seems to be: people want an easier way to start, find, and join in discussions about a work!

(Tim, if you're listening/reading, what do you think?)

Also would like to see the OP's suggestion realised in some form ...

Good bump Richard. PTB can I have this pony?

I'd still like an easier way to actually talk about the books.

This really is an interesting idea, calm! Aren't you glad we thought it up in that thread last year? Now we lobby patiently for it.

I find it interesting that some of the best discussions of individual works (that I've found) are in the new Hobnob group ... yet if I hadn't started there, I'd never know to look there for those particular discussions. And the problems with search, noted above, still apply.

I think people do want to discuss individual works in some depth, and be able to revisit those discussions later in a convenient way.

Still wondering if this is but a pipe-bomb dream....

14.>> I'll second this. http://www.librarything.com/topic/71022#1443225

And add to that list a neater way to ignore groups in which you're not interested. Currently, one first has to visit a group to ignore it... if that visit could be bypassed in some way, so much the better.

I also prefer the opt-in method. Not just because of the Book-of-the-Month club, but also because of what my former bank did to me. The bank wanted to offer overdraft protection - fine and dandy with me... but they did one major thing wrong. They made it an opt-out system. Bad move. They should have presented the offer and allowed me to choose whether or not I wanted to participate.

81>

I agree 100%, but Tim has a very rosy view of things, and likes to make ignoring as difficult and obscure as possible. (As you may recall, he only introduced ignoring members very recently and after a great deal of dragging his feet, and then made it as hard-to-find as possible.)

True, but I find little value in attempting to read languages other than English with no knowlege of said languages. About 90% of the groups I'm ignoring are hosted by non-native English speakers... I don't begrudge others their time and space here on LT, but I don't see the need for me to sort through 100 threads I can't read for just to find one that I can. I don't have the time or inclination to do that, nor to learn the other languages either.

Okay, two weeks later, I'm re-upping my request for the pony. Pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeze?

YES! I want this pony too!

Conversation on the works page gets too bogged down in challenges and games - I want to easily find one place where a book discussion can happen.

I like the opt in feature for an automatic invite...I would like the option of opting in for ALL my books not just the ones I review.

My only concern/question is how to merge this discussion thread onto all the different work pages for the same book?

My only concern/question is how to merge this discussion thread onto all the different work pages for the same book? I fear I don't even understand the question! All the different work pages...?

(Hoping to lure the PTB from their aeries to explain this concept.)

I may not have used the correct technical terms but here is an example of what I meant.

If you search for Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, you will get 262 matches. Now, they may all be the same story by Mark Twain but they each get their own page showing the correct cover, publisher, dates, etc...but they are not linked together in a way that a conversation on one work page will show up on the other's work pages.

I would hope that any book discussion could be linked to all the different versions of the book. I would hate to miss out on a discussion just because I had some obscure version of the book, say an abridged version from childhood or a rare first edition or something like that.

Also, if there is some kind of opt in email notification then I would only want to receive it once, even if I had both a hardcover and a paperback copy of the book.

updated to reflect that I am NOT a PTB and perhaps one of them can word this a little better.

Ohhh, I get it! Hmmm. Nothing is without challenges, is it? I still think this is a useful idea! He said, hinting broadly....

Not really on the current topic but more directed to the idea in general - I wonder if a way to avoid the challenge threads would be to say "if more than X books are touchstoned in a thread, don't link it up." I'm not sure what X would be, possibly 50 or something. I'm pretty sure once you get 50 touchstones in a thread, any discussion of a particular book is likely to be minimal and tangential.

> 88: Actually the main entry I get to when I do that search has 15,153 entries (and counting I guess). Okay, yes I'm sure the others are all, or at least mostly, essentially the same story. But is that enough? Essentially there is not that much difference between Shakespeare's "Hamlet" and Disney's "Lion King" either. Should they be combined?

Some of the others listed under that title are probably adaptations and/or abridgments. I think such should not get combined with the real thing. But let's hope "editions" and "connections" materialize soon. That should make it possible to indicate the relations beteen works without actually combining them.

88> That just shows that there's probably some combining that needs to be done on that book. Looking through the list there are also a lot of that story and another story or two by Mark Twain in the same book. That can't be combined, but do you really want discussions emanating from a combined work like that?

I think there real problem is what happens when someone combines all the works of Mark Twain together and the Combiners laboriously sort them out again. How does the system know where all the discussions should end up (and hopefully LT wouldn't have merged all the discussions when they were erroneously combined). But that problem is essentially the same problem we have now with CK when the wrong books get combined.

I'm not suggesting that the different work pages get combined...just that the book discussion can be linked to (or otherwise recognize) all of them.

I haven't done any combining and I don't know or even understand all the intricacies involved in it, so I may not be saying things quite right. I do understand why people want to keep certain editions seperate but it seems like a book discussion wouldn't need to be edition specific, at least it wouldn't matter to me.

I wonder if a way to avoid the challenge threads would be to say "if more than X books are touchstoned in a thread, don't link it up." I'm not sure what X would be, possibly 50 or something.

I'd prefer the super-touchstone solution: rather than trying to eliminate threads without sufficient discussion, let us specially mark threads that do contain real discussion. I think this would be the most natural way to deal with the whole work discussion issue.

93> Work pages are not edition pages. All editions of a work are supposed to be combined into one work. The only ones that shouldn't be combined are books that contain multiple works, books that are only partial works (although all the Volume 1's should be combined together) and abridgements. Note that translations should be combined with the original work, except when the original is in a dead language (Tim's Dead Language Exception).

Thus, it if someone wants to talk about Huck Finn, there's a main work that he can do that on. He shouldn't discuss the original it on a work page for an abridged edition since some of what he wants to discuss may be different between those editions. So, I don't think that this is as much a problem with the proposal as it is a misunderstanding of how works are treated on LT.

94> No, Zoe, don't suggest that. Touchstones area already broken. If you get them to implement Super-touchstones then they'll be Super-broken! :D

:D The theory is that this will be an added incentive to fix all touchstones already.

I agree it would be nice to have the touchstones working properly.

_Zoe_/94: I know that discussion has been had to death in previous threads, but I'm jumping on it again, too. And this may be the only time I've ever said this ;) but ...

Tim - please listen to _Zoe_!!!

>99 countrylife: Hey, there's a first time for everything! ;)

I also like Zoe's suggestion in that it uses a folksonomy approach to deciding what is a book discussion, and what is not, and as such it's dynamic rather than a fixed system. I'd assume this would still work with the OP in that there would be a page that would bring together all the threads / posts / reviews / whatnot which were "marked" as discussion-worthy.

But, ah, yeah: touchstones would still be nice.

I also think we need a better way to find discussions about books. The conversations list is not very useful to me (as discussed by others above).

Maybe we could recommend talk pages for a book like we recommend other books. Something like "LanaE recommends Book talk: Some Thread for discussion of this book." (Obviously better wording would be needed).

There would be the potential for people linking to inappropriate talk threads (i.e. self-promotion, spam). But we could manage this with flagging. I think this approach serves as a useful list of places where the book was discussed in a meaningful way and is not tied to touchstones or other automatic lists.

Whatever approach is taken I would appreciate a way to identify book discussions.