Wishlist: Just One Little Code Change

Amen.

Amen indeed.

Oh yes please!

I know this has been talked about for some time now, and I have to wonder how it came to be *purple* checkmarks being asked for. Why purple? It's my favorite color, so I'm not complaining, just curious.

4: Because PortiaLong likes purple.

4 Heather, I believe that Leah/atlargeintheworld first came up with purple as the wishlist checkmark colour when we were beta testing Collections.

And could it also be separate from other lists (as a choice if best) ... so not to plug into numbers etc.

I would have a wish-list here if I could separate it out.
A purposely-built particular purple pile!
Bliss!

edited to add - I mean from all my collections numbers.

Just like that!
Perfect!

>4 Heather19: yeah, i started the purple madness! i believe wishlist differentiation was suggested by justjim and purple felt like the right choice to me. we've got green and blue and there was the whole yellow thing... so purple is next, right?

>9 Collectorator: ahh, tis a thing of beauty!

in another note: whatever the wishlist check color ends up being, the "+ add to wishlist" button color should be made to match. (and at this point, i'd settle for almost any color... other than green.)

Collectorator, that's just perfect!

#11 ... it HAS to be purple. There is nowhere near enough purple on LT. Purple makes life interesting.

#9 please feel free to edit the rest of LT to match!

Is this really a difficult thing to do? Anyone know if it is actually trickier than we imagine?

>9 Collectorator:
I like it!

Me too

>9 Collectorator:

Nice :)

I'm fine with any color to distinguish wishlist & ARCHIVED books from the rest of my library.

Archived = Read but not owned.... actually just "not owned"

>17 skittles:
Yeah, me too - for me, the ideal split would be Wishlist and Read But Not Owned one color, and all the rest green, but I know a lot of people would prefer Wish List and RBNO to be different, and I'd be okay with that. Just not yellow - not enough contrast, so the checkmark would be pretty much invisible.

Here's where disagreements will erupt and, if not properly worked out, derail this feature.

I would actually rather read but unowned to be the same color as books read, or failing that, "Your Library."

Depending on the complexity of coding, it might be best to have several different colors of checkmarks available and have users assign them to whatever collections-based meaning (or even no meaning at all) they wish. This would solve this little disagreement, and some people's absolute dislike of certain colors, which has been gone into on other threads.

>21 Collectorator:
Hey, it was just a suggestion.

>20 AnnaClaire:
That's why a three-color system would work better than two.

I expect that user-assigned colors would be a lot more server and coding intensive, so I doubt it will ever happen.

23>

User-assigned colors, maybe, but having a purple checkmark that got used for any collections where the user had chosen "don't use for connections" would seem to be a simple change that would get most of the way to what most people want. So some people would see it for Wishlist, some for Wishlist and RNO, etc.

that all really comes down to how someone actually uses the site. if you use the site to primarily catalog what books you own, then you could put "read but don't own" in "don't use for connections" and get that to work.

however, if, like a lot of us (myself included), you use the site primarily to log what you read, you don't want "read but don't own" excluded from connections. just because you don't own those books doesn't make them useless for connections purposes in this case. but you don't actually want them marked as "owned" either, so lumping them in with green ticks doesn't help.

the only way around that would be to either a) code "wishlist" and "read but don't own" for their own color tick (purple) regardless of their relationship to connections OR b) to institute the three-color system and give "read but don't own" an orange tick (see, lilithcat, we do listen!).

25>

See, there's no solution that will satisfy everyone. Some people who don't want to make a distinction based on ownership status in connections won't want to do so in checkmarks, either. As for so many things here, the best is the enemy of the good, and quibbling about details detracts from the simple thing most of us want:

PURPLE CHECKS FOR WISHLISTS.

The status of RNO can wait, if it's causing all the disagreement.

> 26

i agree, RNO can wait. forever, really. i'm just arguing that if we ARE going to deal with it, we have to deal with it carefully.

i've said it time and time again, give me wishlist checks in a color other than green and i shall never whine again!

eta: at least, never whine about THIS issue again...

HOT PINK & CHARTREUSE CHECK MARKS!!!

.

just kidding.... but I'd still vote for WL & RNO.

edited to ask #28 Collectorator: Any single malt on that top shelf??

That looks so fine, but I'd prefer this:

http://www.beveragewarehouse.com/search/more_info.php?item_id=6086

or this:

http://www.beveragewarehouse.com/search/more_info.php?item_id=2364

but this is also very appropriate:

http://www.beveragewarehouse.com/search/more_info.php?item_id=6068

I agree that we should start with purple checkmarks for wishlist and go from there.

That said, I think a lot of the problems about what colours to use for what occur because the main default collections are either ambiguous or too specific for some purposes.

If we could have three checkmarks, there are three basic things I'd like to mark: Owned, Read, and Wishlist, with more than one checkmark allowed per book. These are the basic relationships people have with books. It has nothing to do with what different people prefer to use for connections.

>32 _Zoe_:.

How about putting a radio button on each collection in the collection editor:

"Owned" (default, green)
"Wishlist" (purple)
"Read" (orange?, you know, to complete the color wheel)
"None" (none)

And then, if one individual element in the library is in more than one collection with different levels, it's like this:

Owned > Wishlist > Read > None

Or maybe,

None > Owned > Wishlist > Read

I can't decide. Why would you have books in your library you wouldn't want to know you owned, read, or wished you had? And would that be more important than another group?

So, if something is in a Wishlist group and is then gets added to the Owned group, the checkmark for that will then be green.

Though, as far as how computationally expensive this is, I'm unsure.

The thing is, collections don't necessarily correspond to only one of those things. I have both read and owned books in my Library.

>35 _Zoe_:.

Good point. I was seeing the sets incorrectly.

I want to draw a Venn diagram now.

How would trumping go, though, were they checkboxes?

34>

And again we get into the sort of complexity that makes Tim throw up his hands and say "this is a mess, I can't possibly please everyone, so I won't do anything". I know that half-solutions around here don't necessarily or even usually lead to full solutions, but I still think that purple checklist for wishlist would be a good start, and SIMPLE.

37 > absolutely!

>37 lorax: Yes - agreed 100%. Start with wishlist, keep it simple, then see how things go from there.

37/38/39/40: Yes.

37/38/39/40/41: YES, oh yes yes YES! Please let's keep this particular wishlist-wish simple.

That said, I would also like a third colour for RNO -- there are some authors (like T. Pratchett) whose author page is full of green check marks and I really don't remember which ones I own and which I've only read-but-don't-own. It would be really nice if there were a colour -- say, blue? -- to set RNO apart. At the moment my wishlist only consists of four titles so that's not a major problem for me but I can well imagine it can be for many people.
And IF one day Tim would allow us to disconnect wishlisted books from all connections and total numbers concerning my "all collections", my wishlist titles would skyrocket and also I would really need the purple colour... as it is now, I don't really much care seeing wishlist books in Recently added, all collections -total amount etc. so I don't use it much.

However, for the purpose of getting SOMETHING done to this matter, let's start with purple checkmarks for Wishlisted books :)

11
I did? It seems so obvious now that there should be such a differentiation that I can't remember where the idea came from. Maybe it was me... will I be famous? A Wikipedia entry?

43 > lucky you getting credit, I believe I'd asked for it during Alpha testing, though I won't be so bold as to say I was the first one there either.

9> Thanks. I didn't know what you were talking about.

Yes please. It gets quite confusing.

17> if you are going to do that then I want one that distinguishes owned but unread (ie, books that I own but have not read yet) from read

27> I barely use wishlist, while I have a large number of books that I own but have not yet read. So a flag distinguishing that is more important to me personally than the other flag that distinguishes wishlist books.

There are two questions here:

1. How fast would it be to do? Actually, not that fast. It would be day's work to get it working everywhere.

2. Functionality. Right now green means it's in any collection. So, does green now mean "Your library" or "all collections except wishlist" or what? What if something's in two collections, etc. etc.

I think I'd go with three colors of check-marks and the ability for us to select which color of check-mark (if any) goes with each collection. You could make your library get green, wishlist get purple, and RBNO getting whatever the other color is by default.

Of course there's the problem of what to do when more than one color should apply, but if any of this kills the feature then I agree that we can just go with purple check-marks for wishlist to start.

>49 jjwilson61:

Different parts of the site have different "sensitivities." Books are the most sensitive, especially to speed concerns. So how this should work is something I'd rather figure out all the way, not do piece by piece.

48> On the second point, I think green could still mean any collection but purple would override it if it's in the wishlist collection. On the other hand, if you wanted to make green mean only Your Library, then that would be ok by me.

ETA: On the first point, a day is much better than two weeks.

I guess green should mean "all collections except wishlist", at least for now.

If something is in two collections, either you display two checkmarks or have a hierarchy of which ones take precedence. I'd personally prefer to have two checkmarks displayed, but that could get ugly.

As many people have said, the concern is to get some basic functionality as soon as possible and then go from there.

I like jjwilson's idea of giving us three colours of checkmarks and letting us choose which collections to apply them to.

if you are going to do that then I want one that distinguishes owned but unread (ie, books that I own but have not read yet) from read

This is why I think it would be useful to have more straightforward default collections: Owned and Read. Then if we could display multiple checkmarks without it getting to messy, we could see at a glance whether something was Owned and Read, Owned but Unread, or Read but Unowned.

As many people have said, the concern is to get some basic functionality as soon as possible and then go from there.

Repeat: Your concern, but I have to look after the stability and maintainability of the site.

#48 I would expect green to mean any collections except Wishlist. Purple to mean Wishlist, and both marks to appear for the rare duplicate works that are both wishlisted and otherwise catalogued. (I wouldn't expect this to get ugly until a read/owned mark is introduced)

But I'm aware my expectations of how a site should function don't always match others.

#52"As many people have said, the concern is to get some basic functionality as soon as possible and then go from there.
"
Given Past examples of getting some basic functionality and dropping it like a lead balloon I'm prepared to wait a bit and go for the fully functioning version. However if we could avoid the collections style wait a lot and leave it at basic, that would be even better.

The easy thing for me to know is "Your library" and everything else. Other collections are loaded into memory on a need-to-have basis. Maybe I can add wishlist here, so:

Green: Your library
Purple: Wishlist
Gray: All others

Or:

Green: You have it in some collection. Mouse over to find out which.

Green: Your library
Purple: Wishlist
Gray: All others (Mouse over to determine which)

I personally think that Wishlist is the one that we most need to differentiate from the others. I do however have some wishlist books that are in Read in 20-- and Read but Not Owned collections. My own preference is that in those collections they get the purple checkmark to remind me that I have them in the Wishlist but I realize that may be a pony! Anyway, anywhere else the Wishlist checkmark should be the one shown.

Obviously I need to type faster.

I like:

Green: Your library
Purple: Wishlist
Gray: All others

>48 timspalding:, second point

It would be nice to see the wishlist/non-wishlist appear first: a purple checkmark for wishlist collection books and the current green checkmark for all collections except wishlist. Personally, at this point I'm not all that interested in anything more.

#55: GRRRRREAT!!!

(three part choice)

I like #56

Green: Your library
Purple: Wishlist
Gray: All others (Mouse over to determine which)

Repeat: Your concern, but I have to look after the stability and maintainability of the site.

Honestly, I'm not sure what your point is here. Many, many members have been requesting basic separation of wishlists for a very long time. Others want something more elaborate.

Yes, you have to look after the stability of the site. Implementing this in a way that would destroy the site obviously isn't an option, so wouldn't be included in the "as soon as possible".

Given Past examples of getting some basic functionality and dropping it like a lead balloon I'm prepared to wait a bit and go for the fully functioning version.

I'm not convinced that "fully functioning" versions are ever going to do what I want anyway. We waited years for a "fully functioning" collections feature rather than the simple wishlists that most people were asking for, so now we have a fancy collections feature but still no basic wishlist separation.

Green: Your library
Purple: Wishlist
Gray: All others

Or:

Green: You have it in some collection. Mouse over to find out which.

I'd like a combination of these: Purple checkmarks for wishlists, and also other collections information on mouseover.

I really like

Green: Your library
Purple: Wishlist
Gray: All others (Mouse over to determine which)

Say I don't use the Your Library collection (I don't), would all my green checkmarks disappear?

>63 DaynaRT:.

Then you'd be all gray, I would imagine.

#63 - under my vote, they would all be gray (except for wishlist)

Honestly, I'm not sure what your point is here. Many, many members have been requesting basic separation of wishlists for a very long time. Others want something more elaborate.

You wrote "the concern is to get some basic functionality as soon as possible and then go from there." That's not how this is going to work. The code here--what books you have, quickly--is deep code. We keep a large but shifting number of 47 millions books in memory at any one time, for this, but also for recommendations, "sharing" books, etc. I can't change it lightly, and if I'm going to change it, I should do the whole change.

It's easy to do quick iterations on some code. This isn't that kind of code. I need to be careful, plan it out and think a lot about speed.

Then you'd be all gray, I would imagine.

If we go with my model, yeah.

Well, that sucks.

Propose an alternative.

It's really good to have real information on the level of difficulty on these suggestions so thanks for entering this discussion, Tim!

While you are here, then, could you please also comment on the "total separation" of the wishlist (re: e.g. my message 42)?
I mean that if the checkmark matter is a very complex thing, tampering with the deepest LT code, would it be a good idea to do the whole separation thing at the same time?
Or is it a futile even to ask this as I've understood you're basically against separating Wishlist from "all collections", connections and total numbers?

I could live with the current conception of the green/purple/gray marks, but if I had my druthers it would be something more like this:

Green: your library & read but unowned
Purple: wishlist
Gray: everything else*

Obviously, a green or purple checkmark would automatically override a gray one: I don't need to see a separate checkmark for subject collections, like this one, since all my subject collections would fall under "everything else". But I do think that the rare book to which both green and purple would apply should get one of each.

----------

* I could take or leave the mouseover-to-see-which part. It depends on what it does to loading time.

I also really like:

Green: Your library
Purple: Wishlist
Gray: All others (Mouse over to determine which)

No, we're not going to do special things for special collections. It's already possible to avoid having your wishlist be used for collections or recommendations. Having one collection be specially set aside not to add to your all collections account strikes me as arbitrary. We have counts collection-by-collection.

Propose an alternative.

What Collectorator said. I would just have to rearrange my collections again to take advantage of the checkmark color explosion.

The only alternative I can think of right now is to let members designate which collections they wish to act as equivalents to Your Library.

Thanks for the comment Tim, I see your point even though I don't necessarily agree ;) Personally, my biggest peeve with the wishlist is that they appear on "recently added". I know, I know... it's really a tiny tiny peeve, but what can I say, there it is...

Getting back to the matter, I could really learn to live happily with this:
Green: Your library
Purple: Wishlist
Gray: All others (Mouse over to determine which)

This proposal sounds wonderful to me:

Green: Your library
Purple: Wishlist
Gray: All others (Mouse over to determine which)

Just out of curiosity -- and please don't jump down my throat about appearance until Tim has a chance to answer this if you don't like the idea -- would it be substantially harder to do a four-color checkmark system than a three-color one? We could do something like this:

Green: your library
Blue and/or Cyan: read but unowned
Purple: wishlist
Gray: everything else (w/ or w/o mouseover)

If you use either the "Your library" or "read but unowned" (but not both), the only difference it would make is whether you see green checkmarks ore blue/cyan ones.

>69 timspalding:.

The data I find relevant:

Books I have catalogued
Books I want
Books I have/have not read

In aethercowboy-world, it would be as follows:

* Gray would be the fall-through. If It was in my collection, it's gray. Hover-over tells me what collection(s) are represented.
* Anything in Wishlist is purple (unless it's also in My Library).
* Anything in My Library is green.
* Anything To Read is orange(?) (even if it's in My Library).

Then, I would be uber-happy.

I don't care about "currently reading," 'cause I'm readily aware of what I'm currently reading. But if you'd want to make it a color, I won't fight. Same applies to the other OotB collections. If I open up an LT page one day and see a veritable rainbow of checkmarks, I probably won't complain, provided everything has the right color.

Having one collection be specially set aside not to add to your all collections account strikes me as arbitrary.

So why are you willing to give Wishlist special consideration when it comes to these checkmarks?

>80 _Zoe_:
Because Wishlist does not fall under stuff we have or stuff we've read. Therefore, having it look like it does -- by one checkmark looking like another -- is kinda... weird.

Edited for clarity.

>81 AnnaClaire: But how is this different from being "told" in various other ways that we've catalogued it?

Because having the green checkmark for everything implies that we've read the book and/or own it -- since (I think) for most users the bulk of their catalogs is "read" and/or owned.

I guess we'll have to agree to disagree on this one. I don't see how the green checkmark implies anything more than the inclusion of a book in All Collections.

I was going to rant against Your Library+grey. but the more I think about it, the more suitable this would be. Especially with mouseover.

+1 vote for

Green: Your library
Purple: Wishlist
Gray: All others (Mouse over to determine which)

(Although AnnaClaire's suggestion @78 is even better, but I'll happily go with the crowd on this one, especially if it means we'll ever get anything like this.)

So why are you willing to give Wishlist special consideration when it comes to these checkmarks?

Because this is basically a display issue. Changing globally how collections work to make one collection a special, different collection independent of your preferences, is what I'm talking about.

Green: Your library
Purple: Wishlist
Gray: All others (mouseover unnecessary for me)

imo, mouseover would be another code, while nice, might lengthen the time it takes to implement... such as longer than "two weeks")

>88 skittles:
My concern with mouseovers is more along the lines of what it might do to page load times, but you raise a good point too.

Because this is basically a display issue. Changing globally how collections work to make one collection a special, different collection independent of your preferences, is what I'm talking about.

And yet this is exactly what you've done. Even though you say it's "not a collection", All Collections looks and functions like a collection, except that it's "special" and "different" and can't take into account our preferences.

And that's a display issue, too: I just want to hide the thing.

Let's not sidetrack this thread with the All Collections issue.

Is showing wishlist books on recently added a display issue too? Could they be excluded, or get a green border?

ETA: I also dislike seeing wishlist books in the books you share with another library list. Can those be excluded or at least get the checkmark?

90>

It is different.

For one thing, it's the only way to tell, with multiple potentially overlapping collections, how many books you actually have, and thus whether you're at the limit for a free account or not.

Also, you can't put a book in "All Collections", because it's not a collection. It really is different in multiple ways.

I like suitable1's version at 56:

Green: Your library
Purple: Wishlist
Gray: All others (Mouse over to determine which)

(But hope the gray and purple choices will be sufficiently different from each other, as they can sometimes seem indistinguishable onscreen.)

>91 jjwilson61: Well, it's the same issue. I don't care about All Collections per se, I care about Wishlist separation (and lack thereof) as manifested in All Collections, among other things.

I'll leave this thread alone, though, with a couple of final comments: I'd be happy with the green checkbox alone, if it showed the collection on mouseover. I don't care about the purple checkbox either way, since it's become pretty clear that I'm never going to have a wishlist included in my main account. I do agree in principle with spending a day to develop a much-requested feature, though, regardless of whether I'll use it myself.

>72 AnnaClaire: That is exactly what I do NOT want. What I really want is for 'Your Books' and 'Read but Unowned' to be differentiated so that I can easily tell which of a series I own, and which I have simply read. This is important when my son and I are standing in a bookstore in front of a series we enjoy, and have some of at home.

#72 & 90:

If/when this is implemented, then YOU CHOOSE what books go into the green check books. If you put your library under green check then those books will have a green check (this presumes green check will be 'your library'). The books with a purple/other color will be whatever books you put in your wishlist... if you use wishlist. You will be able to put any books you want in your wishlist, including your read/not read/not owned books (what I call archived). The grey checks would be for whatever is not in the "your library" or "wishlisted" books.

Think of it as having three baskets/bookshelves/boxes/shipping containers.

all books that you want to have a green check go into the green shipping container. That is what the rest of the world will call "your library"... no one will know/care what books are there, they will still call it your library.

The books in the purple shipping container are what the rest of the world will call "your wishlist". In it, you can put whatever books you want & they will get a purple check. I may also use this area for my TBR, but since I don't use Currently Reading or TBR (except as a few mountainous regions in my home) it won't matter much.

The grey/gray shipping container will be for all other works. In my library, they will be for short stories contained in other 'real' books; archived books; never buy books. These are books that, for me, don't really exist in my library. They are 'holding' spots for notes to me about books/stories that I have had contact with for some silly reason. Some I bought because I liked the blurb on the back, but hated the book. Some are for books I once owned & loved, but let slip out via BookMooch or Paperbackswap & now reside with other people who will read them.

That is how I "imagine" the checkmark system to work & how I will use it.

YMMV

>95 MarthaJeanne:
I came up with a possible solution in post 78. (If Tim said anything about the relative difficulty of four colors versus 3, I missed it in all the other arguments.)

What I was hoping to avoid was having "read but unowned" be forcibly made "everything else" like some sort of miscellaneous junk.

WShat's wrong with keeping it easy?

Replacing the code "if book in account show green else show + sign or nothing (depending on where it is)" with:

If book in Wishlist show purple
else if book in Your Library show green
else if book in account show grey
else show + sign or nothing (depending on where it is)

should be not that hard.

In this way overlapping does not matter - there is a clear order...

>96 skittles:
It would be neat if we could assign what color goes with what collection, but I don't get the sense that it'll happen that way. At least not if the discussion here is much to go by.

#99: That's what I mean. It doesn't matter what color or name that they are called. It is how WE use it.

My collections are not the same as everyone else's collections.

My tags are not the same as everyone else's tags.

It won't matter what colors are used, what will matter to me is IF I can use it & HOW I can use it.

Example:

"If There Exists" a series that has 20 books.

A: I have books 1-7, 9-11, 13-18.
B: I thought books 8 & 12 stank & I got rid of them.
C: Books 19 & 20 are not yet published.

When I look at the series page, I will see:

Books in Set A will have Green checks
Books in Set B will have Grey/Gray Checks
Books in Set C will have Purple/Other Checks

See? At this point, take a deep breath. Sure, LibraryThing is needed for you to have a list of what you have. But when I present you with a book in your LibraryThing library—here, here's a book!—do you really have deep doubts about it's most basic status, like whether you have it or you have it on your wish list?

Perhaps some "software" is so potentially customizable, and so hard to put in code, because it should live in your head.

do you really have deep doubts about its most basic status, like whether you have it or you have it on your wish list?

Huh? Yes. And I have a much smaller library than a lot of people (though maybe not a much smaller wishlist).

Hey Katie:



Do you have that book, or do you want it?

>102 katieinseattle: You have a "To read but unowned" and a "Wishlist" collection. What is the difference?

At first blush I thought I would be fine with:

Your library
Wishlist
All others in catalog

But the way I have assigned collections, the last would be a motley set.

The following of my collections are in neither Your Library nor Wishlist:

Read but unowned
Selections copied
Digital copy
Loan from library
Probationary wishlist

Those are very different sets in terms of my connection to/interest in the books in each. It seems odd to lump them all together.

That being said, my particular concerns should not hold back a feature that works for most people (if that is the case here).

I just think that, most of the time, we know the ontological status of a book when the book is brought to our attention. I'm not against doing colored check marks. Colors are pretty, and they add an at-a-glance thing. But how often are you really unsure if you want something or you've already read it? And how many such fine distinctions can we cram into a simple feature before it's just clever, ugly and telling things you already know?

>101 timspalding: But when I present you with a book—here, here's a book!—do you really have deep doubts about it's most basic status, like whether you have it or you have it on your wish list?

Yes.

My TBR pile has grown exponentially (which for me means owned but unread) because of all the fine people here on LT. Which means I don't know if something is on my wishlist or on my TBR pile - I know I wanted it at one time, but I don't always remember if I bought it and added it to the TBR shelves.

When looking at series it would be really nice to be able to tell which I have, which I don't have but have read, and which I want to get. Maybe I already know in my head which ones I want to get, but I don't know if I've added it to the wishlist yet.

>107 Talbin: "Which means I don't know if something is on my wishlist or on my TBR pile - I know I wanted it at one time, but I don't always remember if I bought it and added it to the TBR shelves."

Exactly :)

>108 jjwilson61:
That's what I need also :)

>106 timspalding: You see, for some of us, you've created a delightful monster that makes some of us crave books and sometimes buy them indiscriminately. And then, as we age, we forget what we merely want and what we actually own. :-)

Series are where I have the most need for different checkmarks too. Both my husband and my son read books in many different series. Add to that the series I keep track of for myself and, yes, there are often times I have no idea if a certain book is owned or wishlisted when looking at the series page.

@103 Yes, I can do this for some books. Incidentally, for that one it's neither, so it would be gray under the most popular color scheme here since it's in neither Your Library nor Wishlist. Also incidentally, I read that one only a few months ago, so it's pretty easy to remember. I have many more I read years ago and might not know if I still own them, or I've had it on my TBR list forever and can't remember if it was one that I already picked up somewhere or not.

I was just surprised at your question because it seemed obvious, at least to me, that a lot of people here don't instantly know what they have or don't have--because they have a lot more books than I do, because they give away books or trade them, because they have things in storage, etc., etc.

@104 The difference is that "To read but unowned" is books I intend to get from the library, and "Wishlist" is books I want to own, either because I've already read them or because they're reference books or some such that would be useless to get from the library. This is idiosyncratic and I'd probably dump them all into "Wishlist" if we got the colored checkmarks.

ETA: It looks like I sort of half-assedly proved my own point as I totally forgot Krakatoa was in my wishlist. Also, you're kind of cheating pulling stuff from my wishlist as it has only 5 books in it, which in theory should not be hard to keep in my head (though apparently it is). If we had colored checkmarks, my wishlist would have 686 books in it ("To read but unowned", which would get dumped there), and would be a lot less easy to track mentally.

Since we're collecting opinions, I like anniemod's logic:

If book in Wishlist show purple
else if book in Your Library show green
else if book in account show grey

Most of my books are in multiple collections, and I usually know whether or not I own them (although not always! :) so green/purple would be fine. I'm not interested in mouseovers.

(edited to close tag)

101 & 106> "See? At this point, take a deep breath. Sure, LibraryThing is needed for you to have a list of what you have. But when I present you with a book in your LibraryThing library—here, here's a book!—do you really have deep doubts about it's most basic status, like whether you have it or you have it on your wish list?"

I have doubts, as I hold the book in my hand, whether I've read it or not.

Which is why I wanted a flag for that, owned but not read.

Oh, and I also have doubts about whether I own a book that I pick up at the library or book store, but then if I own it, it should be on my list. Of course I might have it on my list because I put it into the Wishlist collection, therefore I'd get a false positive. It is in there, but I do not really own it.

"Perhaps some "software" is so potentially customizable, and so hard to put in code, because it should live in your head."
But my head is filled :(

"I just think that, most of the time, we know the ontological status of a book when the book is brought to our attention."

If it is a book that I have not read, that I might have been interested in in the past, and picked up, and read a little of the back, front, etc. Then find the book in the library again, then no, I do not immediately recall if I own the book. Or, for that matter, if I have read it.

I wish my brain didn't work that way, but it did.

The flags, for me personally, would be more than "pretty".

I have 40-50 series I am in 'active' pursuit of collecting. while 9 times out of 10 I can accurately tell you if I own it or not, it's that 10th time that is important. Certain authors like Asimov, I've read a lot of I also own a lot of but I can never remember which is which with out a list.

If possible, I want 96.

Otherwise, I'd like the green/purple/grey model.

>104 christiguc: You have a "To read but unowned" and a "Wishlist" collection. What is the difference?

To read (but unowned): To borrow/checkout from library/buy as a last resort

Wishlist: Things I have read and want to buy/would pay full bookstand price for.

#117: For many here, wishlist not only includes what we would pay "full price for" but the books we have on our Bookmooch & Paperbackswap wishlists.
...........................................................

My question to the group:

We have collections & we can personally add more collections. We can pull up books by collections & tags. If we have a series tag & then have the wishlist collection, couldn't we pull up the wishlist collection in our library view & then by series tag & see which books we need to get? Or tag our wishlist books with the family member's name & see what books we need to get for them whilst looking in the wishlist collection? Why are we limiting ourselves to the series page only? Yes it is easier to look at the series page with different colored checks, but there are alternatives ways to get the information.

>118 skittles:
None of that is easy to do on a mobile device in the middle of a crowded bookstore. The series page is the simplest way to look at series information.

>106 timspalding:
Tim, I have over 7,000 books on LT, and I'm way not finished entering our library. Many of these books we've had for years; I don't remember them all. Many were bought by my husband; I should not duplicate them, but read the copy we already have. The "standing in a bookstore" argument is key here.

I would be fine with your msg #55 plan:
Green: Your library
Purple: Wishlist
Gray: All others

The additional ornamentation of mouseover to see which on grey checks would be nice, but I can live without it.

personally, i think that wishlist differentiation is important for LOTS of reasons, but at this point, it's MOSTLY the "standing in the bookstore" scenario.

i don't have anywhere as many books as some people on here, but i have moved 5 times in 3 years and my books go in-and-out of boxes a lot. that being said, i honestly have NO CLUE when it comes to some books. some have gotten lost over the years, some i read many times from the library but never got around to buying. some i've just picked up in a bookstore so many times that it FEELS like i've purchased it. and then there are those that i have but i want to purchase a different (usually special) edition. work duplicates would be WAY easier to figure out if they were checked with different colors*.

since most of the other functionality of the site CAN be figured out by simply clicking different collections, i would be more than happy with:

Green: Your library
Purple: Wishlist
Gray: All others

i will know, at the very least, that "read but unowned" books that i'm not particularly looking to buy fall under gray. that's completely fine. that should be the only owned/read/to read/wishlist category that falls under gray, so it's basically like "read but unowned" has it's own color. perfectly acceptable.

*i know, i know, they don't have checks at ALL at the moment, but it would be OH SO NICE if they did.

I really love the three color with mouseover suggestion floating about. It's simple, it's easy to remember on a glance, and it /is/ actually customizable, because I can choose what I'm throwing in 'my library'. It's a very flexible sort of default collection.

I absolutely love the suggestion in 56, but I'd go for no mouseover if it makes it easier to code (i.e. more likely to get done.)

I have to disagree with Tim's assumption that most of the time we know the ontological status of our books. I have a number of books cataloged that I've wanted for years, but didn't have the means or the need to buy them immediately. Over time, I've acquired a number of them as I've come across them, but I wouldn't swear to which ones I have and which I don't. It becomes even harder when it comes to books I borrowed from the library, but then decided I wanted to own, since I have the recollection of reading it and the sense memory of holding the book in my hands.
In series, especially, where I'm likely to either to have the entire set of books either owned or wishlisted, it would be helpful to know at a glance which is which.

The whole basis for me joining this site was a way for me to know - hopefully at a glance (or few clicks) - whether I own/read/ wish I had a book. Whether this book IS the same one I own/ have read, even though the cover is different (because they DID change it); even though the title is different (because it is published under more than one title) or is it one I just got! Was it #5 or #6 I need...etc, etc.

I want a quick check (a purple checkmark would be perfect) to tell me. I still buy duplicate copies now but happily not so many; I still can't remember, in a bookshop, which particular book I own, or now, have read and do not own.

To me, this is the next step in collections...I want a list that is separate to my numbers (because they are separate to my library) which won't show as recently-added, because I wish to add them but as yet haven't, and I can separate from books I actually own or have read because I have done neither; and, most importantly, find all this easily when I am looking at books. They are wished-for books only - and thus, in my mind, separate. But my mind cannot remember without help.

The above suggestions, in particular message 9, are exactly what I would like to see developed next, in regard to this. And why I don't have a wishlist (something that I feel is missing) on this site as yet.

Since the only three books I have in wishlist are also in 'Read but unowned', I suppose I could just move all of 'Read but unowned' into the wishlist. if the only differentiation is wishlist. Most of them I don't want, but it would give me the functionality I would like.

This - being able to tell what I own and don't own - is one of the major reasons I'm on LT. When I cataloged my books, I came up with several dozen duplicates - not intentional ones, but the "Oh, here's that book I've been wanting!" variety. It's very hard to train myself to stop looking, just because a book finally shows up...

I'd love the green/purple/gray set, mouseover would be nice (but wouldn't apply in the place where most people want it - on mobile). And it would need to be green>purple>gray - I've got a lot of Wishlist books in Read but not Owned (read it from the library or in a bookstore and now I want it), so those should be purple.

The green-purple-orange Venn diagram, suggested in another thread, would be even better - but this one has the advantage of, y'know, maybe actually being doable in reasonable time and without too many weird side effects.

It would be nice, though not necessary at the start, if there were another checkbox (like the Use for Recommendations/Use for Connections ones), that says something like Treat as Wishlist - for those collections that aren't the default wishlist but should have purple checkmarks. But it would also work if people put their stuff both into Wishlist and into various sub-categories (sub conceptually, not in software*), so that's nothing important.

*For instance, everything in my Read but not Owned is also in Read. Read but not Owned is, for me, a conceptual sub-category of Read.

>106 timspalding:

Tim - you are obviously too young to have had the experience of getting to the kitchen from the living room, and then gazing round absently, thinking: "Now ... what did I come here for?" Seriously, there are books that I am so familiar with from having stared at longingly in the bookshop that I would now swear that I owned (as katie said above).

>125 Lman:

Nicely put, and exactly the same reasoning led me to abandon my experiment with using the Wishlist collection.

do you really have deep doubts about its most basic status, like whether you have it or you have it on your wish list?

OF COURSE! That is precisely why I found LibraryThing in the first place!

I would come home from the library book sale and find that 3 of the books I purchased were duplicates (again...sigh) and that I had passed up 4 others that I thought I owned but it turns out that I had actually borrowed or given away or the dog ate...

I own hundreds of science fiction books, I have read thousands of science fictions books, I have heard of many, many, many more. Pick a random book from Andre Norton's author page (I have only read a few of those in the past decade) - likely I will have NO IDEA which category it belongs to.

Seriously Tim - I think you may not realize how indispensable a tool you have created for many of us. I read or re-read 4-5 books a week, multiply that by the 30 years that I have been reading and you honestly expect me to remember whether I actually own a copy currently?

The
green - your library
purple - wishlist
grey - any other (mousable would be nice but unnecessary if it would slow load times or be hard to code and delay this)

would be great! (although I would probably advocate orange instead of grey as more easily distinguishable at a glance, plus the symmetry of all secondary colors would look balanced to me but...)

As skittles described in 96 you can put whichever books you want to have a certain color check in the appropriate collection. There is no rule about which books you consider "Your Library" - different LTers use it for different things. So if you want green to indicate books you OWN put those in "Your Library", if you want green to indicate books you have READ then put those in "Your Library", if you want green to indicate "books that I have copied onto my hard-drive in digital format but haven't yet backed-up to my external hard-drive" then put THOSE in "Your Library".

Perfectly expressed by PortiaLong.

Substitute Agatha Christie or Georgette Heyer for Andre Norton, and that is why I joined LT.

Nothing to add to PortiaLong :)

Nothing to add to PortiaLong, yet (loudly) echoing PortiaLong.

Totally agree with PortiaLong.

Spot on description PortiaLong.

PortiaLong, that's exactly what I meant & thanks for the appreciation of my post at #96.

another point, for my books, the shipping containers that I would need to sort my books are the ones commonly found on ocean going vessels. The storage/moving pods wouldn't be large enough. Maybe I could downsize to a semi-trailer container... with bookshelves & tables throughout.

<3 Portia, as always. :)

People are persistently misunderstanding and misstating my point, no matter how carefully i say it.

The question is not whether LibraryThing is useful for knowing whether you have a book. Of course it is. The question is, when a book is in your LibraryThing account, and we tell you it's in your LibraryThing account, if many members are commonly in real confusion which collection it is in.

PortiaLong has said the "you don't understand us" point most eloquently. And, guess what? She has zero books in her wish list or read-but-unowned list. I can't for the life of me figure out how highlighting these collections with colored checkboxes is remotely relevant to an account that has neither. (Yes, maybe she's holding off doing wish lists until she gets colors, though she didn't say it.)

For Katie, I showed her one of eight books in her wish list. Of course she knew it was a wish list book. I think I could do the same with you one-by-one and, mostly, you wouldn't be in doubt. If you were one time out of ten, would clicking on the work to find out be so onerous?

I'm not saying it doesn't happen. Certainly some members have gigantic wish lists, and others track books they own versus ones they've read and given away. And there are an infinitude of other statuses which might sometimes be confusing.

That infinitude is important. Features are a tricky thing. As I've said repeatedly, this feature is not something I'm going to do and redo again and again. The code here is too "deep" to mess with without a concrete plan for how it's going to work. It needs to be something that is useful to many users. Is this one? I'm not sure.

Besides being useful in theory, it has to be implemented in a way that a large group of people find appealing and the remainder don't hate. But I don't see this. A number of things have been proposed, and they don't agree. My simple scheme—green, purple, gray—was liked by many of you. But not all. MarthaJeane's reaction was that this was "exactly what I do NOT want." If I spend ten hours on a feature and make a small group of people happy, a small group unhappy and most people don't care, except that they notice the site got a little more complicated--isn't that a waste of ten hours?

I think the great diversity of opinion about what this feature should do, and the great enthusiasm about it will evaporate when I actually make such a feature. For example, if I go ahead and do the three-color version, PortiaLong won't benefit, and MarthaJeane will feel I made the site worse. Those of you who have proposed more complex systems will feel ignored, etc. etc.

All this sends me back to basics. Fundamentally, collections can't fully represent what books mean to us. We all use them differently, with much of the "meaning" in our head, not in a computer. Even if all this were false, collections can't be easily reduced to colors. There are too many of them, and people use them in all sorts of different ways. And books can belong to more than one. Reducing all this complexity to a few colors loses all that. I suspect that that any feature that does it will please a few, alienate some others, and be ignored by the majority of users.

So, I'm not against it, but I would very much like people to understand my reservations here.

>She has zero books in her wish list or read-but-unowned list. I can't for the life of me figure out how highlighting these collections with colored checkboxes is remotely relevant to an account that has neither

Then I will say it as I had a few more times before - I do not use Wishlist because there is no way to differentiate it from what I have now. And with all the books I have, I cannot always remember if I just wanted it or I actually bought it. Any way to differentiate in series and author pages - and I start working on my wishlist. Until then - it will just confuse me.

MarthaJeanne doesn't like the idea of green for "Your Library & Read but Not Owned", which Annaclaire suggested in 72.

Clicking on the work to tell which doesn't help if there's 20+ works in a series or on an author page.

I also don't use wishlist as heavily as I could because I can't always distinguish which books I have or don't have.

Count me as another person who doesn't use wishlist heavily in order to avoid confusion. I keep my list of "that's interesting and I might like to buy it sometime" books on Amazon. Wishlist here is hit or miss, and is mostly books I've had out on ILL and therefore have already entered in my catalog, or very occasionally books I've come across on LT. I don't use it for books in series at all because it would be actively unhelpful to me in picking out which ones I don't have.

You're missing our point, Tim.

Of course there are lots of people wanting lots of different things, and you will never be able to satisfy all the requirements that are floating around, but there are two fundamental things that people need to know about a book record that is in their system (whenever they see the equivalent record come up in any context within LT):

Do I need to acquire a copy of this at some time in the future? Yes/No
Have I got a copy in my possession/ownership (because it might be on loan) at the moment? Yes/No

There are four states:
- I don't want a new copy and haven't got it, but it's in my library so I probably read it in the past.
- I want it and haven't got it: Wishlist.
- I don't want a new copy and it's in my library: all is well with the world.
- I want a new copy, even though it's in my library at the moment: e.g. my old copy is falling apart, so I need a replacement and that is why it's on my Wishlist, or I've lent it out and don't expect it to be returned.

These categories are pretty much separate from Collections, so to my mind the request has little to do with collections ... if it wasn't for one thing. If I have something that is marked as 'I want it and haven't got it', then I do not want to see this work used when munging with other libraries or otherwise counted in my statistics.

ETA:
In fact, the wishlist yes/no applies at work level, rather that book level, which is why I don't understand why the 'Add to my wishlist' button doesn't just add the work level details directly to the library.

>143 Collectorator:

Here's my wishlist on WikiThing. Someone's pointed out that the work numbers may change through combination activities: haven't got my head around how to solve that yet.

I am another person making limited use of LibraryThing wishlists - particularly because I cannot see in series listings which ones I already have, and which I want to buy. Short new series are OK - I know where I am with those, isolated technical books are ok, but as already commented for Authors like Andre Norton, where I read many books from the library many years ago, and am gradually picking up second hand copies now, adding the ones I want to the wishlist causes too much confusion.

The logic in 113 would suit me fine - I might change how I use "My Library" and "Wishlist" to make frull use of it, and would certainly make more use of the wishlist collection

For Katie, I showed her one of eight books in her wish list. Of course she knew it was a wish list book. I think I could do the same with you one-by-one and, mostly, you wouldn't be in doubt. If you were one time out of ten, would clicking on the work to find out be so onerous?

WTF? Honestly, I have no idea what you're talking about. Did you even read my response? Where I said I didn't know it was a wishlist book, and that if you actually implemented this so that the "Wishlist" collection meant anything, that collection would be 700 books strong, not 5?

I have no idea how you're getting the idea that nobody can agree on this and everyone will just scream about it, either. To my eyes it somehow looks damn near unanimous and I'm honestly puzzled as to whether or not we are actually reading the same words in the same language.

Okay: Proposal.

1. Purple - Wish list
2. Blue - Read but unowned
3. Green - Your library
4. Gray - All other collections

If something was in two collections, it would be colored according to the first of them. If this system is put in place, it will almost certainly remain this way for a long time, as is. There will be no opting out of it, or customization. I may show other collections in a mouse over, or I may not.Note: I changed the order.

>148 timspalding:
acceptable: certainly (and voted so)
I would prefer the dominance order to be
1. Purple - Wish list
2. Blue - Read but unowned
3. Green - Your library
4. Gray - All other collections
but opinions are likely to vary... on this

For me wishlist is unlikely to overlap much with "Your Library", but "read but unowned" may be a significant subset of "My library" that have one significant difference, I cannot lend them to people.

but as I said in line 1, your proposal is definitely acceptable

The proposal fails the key test. When (or rather, if I ever get a mobile device that I can access in a bookshop and) I look up a book on LT to see if I need to buy a copy, even if it is already in my library then I won't see it as purple and know that I need to buy it.

The proposal also doesn't address whether wishlist only items will be excluded from all other LT calculations.

>150 Noisy:

Change the way you use your collections and do not keep books both in Your Library and Wishlist? In this case you will see the proper colors. It won't matter what is done - some people will need to change their usage... As for the rest - I would call this first steps - let's start somewhere instead of waiting for a full solution that takes care of colors, inclusions and so on.

Okay. I've changed the order. That satisfies you, right, Noisy?

The proposal also doesn't address whether wishlist only items will be excluded from all other LT calculations.

No. That's not on the table. I don't see it ever being on the table. You have control over recommendations and connections. We can add other check boxes, perhaps, but wish lists aren't going to be treated as utterly outside of the normal collections system for totals purposes.

I didn't want to say anything discouraging about the old order, but I like the new order better.

Yes, Just start with 1 little purple check, then the next step..................

I don't care about the total, but I would like to wishlist books excluded from the books shared between libraries calculations.

>148 timspalding:

Fine.

My personal preference would be to put Wishlist last on the list. But I understand why other want it this way and it is a minor issue for me.

This is FicusFan. I have given up on the wishlist issue and actually added a 2nd account (this one). That way I can add my vaporware books (wishlist, read but unowned) and not have them add to my stats and counts inappropriately. It also doesn't confuse me with all green checks.

The down side is that it isn't a complete picture of what I have, what I want and what I read in the past, but don't own now. I can live with it, because for me its the lesser of 2 evils.

Even though I have everything separated in accounts, I would still like to see the different colored check marks, both for me, and for others who have actually stated pretty clearly why they want it, and what problems it would solve.

Tim, for how long is the poll open? I want to think this through and do not want to miss voting. I am also in a way different time zone.

>148 timspalding:
Excellent - I think this will cover both the people who want Owned/Not Owned differentiation, and those who want Read/Not Read differentiation.

I am another user who doesn't use the wishlist collection because of the lack of different-colored check-marks.

Go for it!

ETA: New order okay by me!

Either

1. Purple - Wish list
2. Blue - Read but unowned
3. Green - Your library
4. Gray - All other collections

or

1. Green - Your library
2. Blue - Read but unowned
3. Purple - Wish list
4. Gray - All other collections

is acceptable to me, since I don't use "Read but unowned" and don't have anything in "Your library" that I don't own.

157: That wouldn't work for me at all, I'd never see wishlist items because almost everything I have is in more than one collection (I use them as first-order tags).

>153 timspalding:

I'm going to go all _Zoe_ here and say that if things that are only on wishlists are still counted in (in particular) the 'Members with your books' on the profile page, then I am never going to use wishlists, or will create a new account. In fact, if my 'Members with your books' is screwed by the wishlists of other people, then it is seriously devalued, in my opinion.

>152 timspalding:

Changing the order does address my first objection, but since I am never going to be using wishlists if your statement in 153 holds, then you could safely ignore my opinion.

Hey, no going all-Zoe on my ass here!

In fact, if my 'Members with your books' is screwed by the wishlists of other people, then it is seriously devalued, in my opinion.

What if they choose to include them as relevant to connections?

I think Wishlisted books are quite relevant to connections; a person who would like to own a book I would like to own definitely qualifies as sharing interests with me.

Noisy--don't you think this site cannot be all things to all people? get a life.

What am I, invisible?

>163 timspalding:

I'm afraid that I'm one of those people who never let a book go once I've acquired it (other than the spare copies of The Left Hand of Darkness that I keep around to give to people who say they don't like science fiction), so consider a notional library to not be a real library. Also, I've not delved into Collections with the intention of establishing the Connection sort of relationships. I consider that 'wishlist' is a separate concept to Collections, and only started to use it because it was the option that was available. When I found that it didn't do what I wanted, then I stopped using it and transferred my wishlist to WikiThing. Like FicusFan in 158, I'll be creating a new account, if I can't think of a way around a little problem I have with my WishThing on WikiThing.

I really like the order as currently showing in 148.

I think that sometimes I will want to see what other people have wishlisted the same books as you and sometimes I will want to limit it just to physically owned books. And if I can't decide myself why would I expect others to agree on what should be displayed. So Tim could implement a way to change what we see on the fly, but I doubt he'd do that. Maybe the best we can do is to have the check-marks show on that list too.

166> I don't think Tim is continually monitoring this thread and you only gave him 16 minutes.

#166 - Do you hear something?

>165 StunningSun:

I agree that LT can't be all things to all people. It's just a philosophical objection, and I trust that things will work out alright in the end.

However, for me (and that's the only person I can talk for) a solution that doesn't separate out wishlist only records from site calculations in general makes the site worse. I can state my opinion on that and stand up for myself, can't I?

It's not as if I'm going to walk off in a huff. In fact, if my wishlist passes the 200 book mark then Tim will get more money out of me!

> 166: On the other hand: you might be invisible. Have you checked your pulse lately?

>170 jjwilson61:, true but 162 got a reply in 2 minutes between 159 and 166!

I'm not paranoid, they really are out to get me!

>164 staffordcastle: I think Wishlisted books are quite relevant to connections; a person who would like to own a book I would like to own definitely qualifies as sharing interests with me.

Likewise.

>169 jjwilson61:
What would be a scenario where it's important to know which books you and another actually own? It's nice to see what people have read in common, but where does actual possession become crucial?

works for me. Mouseover would be especially useful for grey where I can see that I own it but it's in my Rubbish collection, or OtherHalf's books, two very different responses!

The point is that when scanning someone else's library, or series page, or any other long list I don't want to be opening each book in turn as a seperate page just to check whether I'm remembering it correctly. I want to see clearly and quickly what that books' status is.

(working on something else, but have my ear to this)

where does actual possession become crucial?

The Excorcist ;-)

I guess actual possession isn't critical, but it seems that there's that much more of a feeling of a solid connection if you know both of you actually possess the books in common.

179>

Heh. As a librarian, I'm pretty well obligated to hold a different view. But I do (shh!) see your point.

142>

In fact, the wishlist yes/no applies at work level, rather that book level,

Maybe for you it does, but certainly many people want a particular edition (a hardback to replace a battered old paperback, or a first edition, or the new edition of a reference book, etc.)

Or you are two pine nuts.

ETA: re: 181. Lorax was too quick, and got in between.

Tim-in-148: proposal accepted :) I thought over the order of the colours and I think it works quite well (for me, at least). So far, I've used the Wishlist only to enter books which are also on my read-but-not-owned -collection (no, hold it!, there's one book that's an actual "wish", I haven't read yet it) so it's a natural order that wishlist "overrides" Read-not-owned.

As it REALLY pisses me off that wishlisted books are shown on "Recently added", I entertained the thought (for a second) of doing the same as FicusFan but then I read the message from kristenn ("What would be a scenario where it's important to know which books you and another actually own? It's nice to see what people have read in common, but where does actual possession become crucial?") and I realized that maybe I have to rethink my position on this... enlargen my view, so to speak :)
I'm _still_ very annoyed about the Recently Added -point but well... maybe I have to loosen up a bit :) I'd really like to use Wishlist a lot more and I'm thinking these changes might "let" me do just that :)

(Still, Tim, whenever you're ready to let the users define which collections are shown on recently added.......)

What would be really awesome is if the system could say 'recently wishlisted' for books added to the wishlist. I expect that's pretty deep code, though - I'll be thrilled just for the checkmarks!

>185 Aerrin99:: I didn't even dare suggest it -- thanks for being braver than I was ;)

Basically, Most Recent Activity & Connection News now state "XX rated", "YY added", and even combines the two "DD rated, added" -- what a glorious day it would be if it could also state "ZZ wishlisted" !!!

With Recently Added, maybe it could show (in mouseover) something like "Wishlisted Pride and Prejudice" ?

Tim, your view on the technical side of this would be greately appreciated!

#148
I would be 100% happy with this, and have no complaints.

Hmmm, I'm going to have to think about this a little. I will say just something that would say what collection it was when I hovered over it would be a great help. I went ahead and voted yes on the colors in your survey since I think it seems to make sense to me.

I guess I hadn't realized exactly how the wishlist feature works. I've been using it for books I know I want. To Read collection is so I can keep track of books I want to read at some point and need to locate. I think I recently had "To Read" removed from making connections, like the wishlist. (Did I create To Read? No else seems to reference it mcuh, but I just don't remember. The long week fried my memory)

I'd agree with others that series is one of the important areas for this type of thing. Since I'm usually reading several series that tend to have long times between publications. I try to get a lot of books don't tend to be entirely distinctive, at least from their library titles (I'm a not-so secret comic junky).

Another reason though is I've noticed at times I will put something accidentally in the wrong collection when adding books. At least on my system I need to have my collections set before I do a search, otherwise even altering the collections before I click on the link doesn't "kick in". So I'll occasionally forget this and later notice instead of adding something "to read" I have it in my library. (I've been meaning to investigate this more, I don't know if it's really happening or my brain is just making it up). This would be a nice visual "double-check" to make sure the book is in the space I expect it to be.

>At least on my system I need to have my collections set before I do a search, otherwise even altering the collections before I click on the link doesn't "kick in"

This is how it is designed to work.

> 189

maybe so, but my first impulse is to do something like the following...

1) "Oh, I need to add book x"
2) go to add books page and type it in
grab an isbn/title/something
3) hit return, like I do in a lot of other places when I've put in a search
4) look at the collection thing, decide what collections I want it in.
5) right click on the book for more info to make sure it's what I want in some cases.
6) click to add it.

I've gotten to the point where if I make this mistake I catch myself before I add the book and click on the search button again. But really, the search is the first action I'm tempted to do on that page, not set the options. It's a mild annoyance because it's easy to fix when I notice it. To me the "tags" and "collections" options are associated with the books you choose, not the search you do.

In my brain I consider the clicking the link/accepting a book the "final action". It should reflect the options chosen on the page at that time. The fact it doesn't seems more like a technical glitch where the javascript just isn't updating an event listener rather than a concious design.

Sorry to babble on it so long. It's not really relevant to this thread except since it's designed in such a way I enter things in wrong frequently and the checkmarks might help me notice. I might retrain myself at some point, but it'll likely take a while. Just another benefit of implementing this is that mistakes might be caught a little easier.

>138 timspalding: PortiaLong has said the "you don't understand us" point most eloquently. And, guess what? She has zero books in her wish list or read-but-unowned list. I can't for the life of me figure out how highlighting these collections with colored checkboxes is remotely relevant to an account that has neither. (Yes, maybe she's holding off doing wish lists until she gets colors, though she didn't say it.)

I AM holding off doing wish lists until I get colors - I edited out that part out of my post as it was already very long and I have said it a number of times in the past and it is mentioned on my Profile page and LT wiki page (http://www.librarything.com/wiki/index.php/User:PortiaLong#9..29_Purple_Wishlist_Checkmarks_.28and_others.29). (Not that I could reasonably expect Tim to know that :-) )

Regarding read-but-unowned: I don't use that collection but "Your Library" is all the books/works that we have available at our house and "Portia's Books- HANDS OFF" includes the subset of "Your Books" than are mine personally PLUS the books that I have read but do not own (since I joined LT in 2007). So, for me, Read but Unowned (since May 2007) is all the books in "Portia's Books" that are not ALSO in "Your Library" - without differently colored checkmarks I don't see any reason to put them in their own collection. If I want to see if I have a book I check "Your Library", if I want to see if I have read a book (recently) I check "Portia's Books." (I can't yet go to the author's or the series page and see an "at-a-glance" distinguishment yet, but Tim's involvement in this thread has my hopes sky-high.)

Crunching the numbers: All Collections - Your Library = the books that I would like to have different colored checkmarks for that are currently catalogued on LT - for me that number is currently 151 (which is not a trivial number if you expect me to remember all of them in my head, if you ask me). Once/if we have colored check marks I will move my wishlist here from BookMooch (where I have 207 books wishlisted) and may start to catalogue books that I read before 2007.

ETA: actually I have 9 books in my Wishlist Collection and 36 in Read but UnOwned, but I have those collections inactivated so you don't see that on my Profile - I tried them out when collections went live and didn't find them useful without differentiating checks so I hid them (so they are only a subset of the books that would go in those collections).

PS. My next Pony (or is it a Unicorn?) after Purple Checkmarks is implemented is a "contained-in/included-in" relationship functionality...but I promise to wait at least "two weeks" after purple checks are introduced to agitate for this ...

Reading the rest of the posts after my rebuttal of >138 timspalding: - a Four Color scheme would also be great (fantastic/ wonderful/ awesome/ do-I-need-a-thesaurus-?) - I vote yes (whatever order everyone wants is fine with me - I will adapt my collections accordingly).

Back in June when we talked about it:
http://www.librarything.com/topic/66496#1341772
I thought that more than 3 colors would be too "cluttery" but we had been talking about having overlapping checkmarks. So if there is going to be a hierarchy of checkmarking then I think 4 will work ok as long as the colors are easily distinguishable - for instance if I only have one work in a series in my catalogue I would want to be able to tell blue from grey (or purple) without having something to compare it against.

OMG! WTF! I still have these posts on my brain and am off doing something else and I do this-and-that and LT is telling me I own Man Plus by Frederik Pohl (apparently I share this book with someone{s}). If you had asked me 5 minutes ago if owned this book (or heard of it) I would have said "Well, I know the author but..." - so, turns out that it is there, right on the shelf, who knew? (apparently "Not Me" but I have LT so ...) But, what-the-hell, apparently I OWN the damn thing (seriously, I am looking at an honest-to-Dog actually copy RIGHT NOW!)

Tim, sweetie, darling, honey...(deja vu I think I said the same thing to Chris around "Collections" time...) - #1. Some of us are seriously brain-dead - please institute different colored checks so that we can maintain some semblance of sanity. OR> #2. Apparently, I, personally (me, PortiaLong) am unable to remember if I have A.) heard of B.) read OR C.) purchased - any number of works. I and (I suspect) my compatriots, beseech thee : ***OH, Tim the most highest of LT-ing - please, we implore thee - aid us in differentiating our involvement in the works whichest (....is that a word?!?..). we have proclaimed our involvement be it by "reading" or "owning" or "lusting after" (Seriously folks, I mean "lusting" in the drooling not "icky" sense here - get your minds in the "licit" arena)...Tim, we need help - you might not keep us from owning 4 copies of A Wrinkle in Time (one for the Sci-Fi, one for the YA, one for the Newbery, and one for "Portia's Picks") - but you can at least help us avoid purchasing another ***physical copy ***

(Post edited one month later for typo - much OCD around here, ya think?)

Portia, cupcake, I think you win. 40-2 is pretty good. And Chris has forbid me to work on the project I'm working on, because he need to do something to it. So, I'll take a swing at it now. We'll see if it swings back.

T

'Ray! Four colors is even better, and I love the current (as of Msg 148 at 15:11) order. It will be immensely useful to me in series and author lists (What? I have that one? Oh, no, it's blue...). Thanks a million, Tim (and thanks for expressing it so Tim could get behind it, Portia!).

Nice job Portia !

Thanks Tim.

Oh, good! I just spent a couple of hours cleaning up my collections in hopes this would happen! Looking forward to multicolored check marks...

Tim, you misunderstood me. My reaction that I did NOT want something was labeled >72 AnnaClaire: - ie refered to the post that wanted both 'your books' and 'read not owned' in the green checks. To me that is the most important divide, and I would have changed my use of collections to get that divide.

Order doesn't matter to me, as I have tried to keep my collections divided cleanly.

Okay, should be done. If there are any bugs, well, they won't get me where I am—in bed.

Woo hoo!

Just changed it again. Some caching made it not work.

See http://www.librarything.com/topic/81814

It took a lot less time than I thought. But I had to skip an important part--the mouse-over. The way the images are usually shown—CSS bullet-image substitution—would require a huge amount of rework if I wanted to show mouse-overs.

I'm going to be watching memory requirements and so forth. I think we're good.

The change seems to have produced some weirdness for the "see more" arrows in Firefox. I'll ask Chris about it tomorrow, as I know that's been a vexed issue.

This works beautifully.

Thanks, Tim! Sleep well!

Wonderful - thanks Tim

lots more to add to the wish-list!

This is FicusFan, testing my wishlist and RBUO books.

Thank You Tim. I also must report that when I go to the series page for each book, the check marks are still green for my wishlist. I don't have a RBUO series book to test if their checks will show up the new color or not.

Found a glitch; I have two books wishlisted from author Scott Mebus; one shows with a purple checkmark (yay!), the other one has a green checkmark.

>209 PhaedraB:

Might have something to do with the fact that one of those books is in Your Library:
http://www.librarything.com/catalog/PhaedraB&deepsearch=mebus

This is the one that is in Your Library and Packed: http://www.librarything.com/work/8246226/book/54738424

Observations:

Books on author pages have correct colored check marks. Books on Series Pages have all green check marks. Books on "other library" pages have all green check marks.

On the author page: Madeleine L'Engle
http://www.librarything.com/author/lenglemadeleine

It shows the books I have with Green checks & the books I have in Subset with a grey check. I have the Time Quartet which has the first four "Wrinkle" books in it.

When I go to the Time Quintet Series page
http://www.librarything.com/series/The Time Quintet

All books have Green checks.

On a Series page where I have wishlisted books, they all show green, where there should be a purple check... The author page for that series shows purple & grey & green where they belong.

I also checked a friend's library & the copies of the Time Quintet that we share are all green checks when three should have grey checks.

edited to add: yes, private libraries can see what books we share with public libraries...

Yay! Not having the hover is a bit of a bummer, but just the different colors will still help a lot. I'll try to do a bit of testing myself today as time permits. I already did a little and see different color checkmarks, but I didn't extensively go in and make sure the right colors were appearing for the right collections.

Very cool.

I'm also seeing colored checkmarks on author pages and green checkmarks on series (CK) pages.

Author pages are still a great start. *bounce*

#213: I'm bouncing, too!!

Just spotted my first purple checkmark, wasn't expecting it AT ALL! Wow, I'm impressed :)

Excellent! I'm a fairly new user to LT and I'm already seeing this as a nice change. I, too, have the problem of duplicate books due to the inability to remember if I actually bought them or just contemplated it multiple times.

I did notice a bug, though. When I'm looking at a series collection (example: http://www.librarything.com/series/The%20Goon%20%289%29 )
and click on the checkmarks (green or purple) they don't take me to the page for the book but instead return a totally empty page (no html tags or anything).

The link for a book appears to be e.g.
http://www.librarything.com/work/powelleric/book/55124495
instead of
http://www.librarything.com/work/189440

>216 brightcopy:

Just click on the title instead :) I think we had the same problem even with the green ones only but...

Fixed. Thanks.

Any chance of changing the language at the top of the author page, which currently says "You have X books by...". Could it say something more neutral, like "You have cataloged X books by..." or something else? I've seen a number of new members complain, "LT says I own this book when I don't," and it grates on me too when I see it. Even better would be some kind of disaggregation like Collectorator suggests: "You have X books in Your Library, and X in other collections."

Would it be better if it were neutral or if it gave you the whole bloody thing:

You have: Your library (2), Wish List (1)

etc.

I have a slight preference for the whole bloody thing.

Another suggestion - and merely that: could there be a key somewhere for what the colors mean, and/or an explanation on mouse-over? Those of us who've been following the thread will know, but others are going to stumble across this on the site and might wonder.

WBT would be nice, especially on pages of authors with more books than actually show before you click to show them all. But I can see how it might get messy for people with many collections. Maybe

You have: Your library (2), Wish List (1), Read but unowned (4), Other (0)

>220 timspalding:
Whole bloody thing will be just perfect. :) But just a change in language will be good enough.

Where WBT means Wishlist, Your Library, Read but not Owned, Others (same as the check marks distinction)

#201
Love it. I was checking my new recommendation for some books I'd added on Friday when I saw them. I wasn't even expecting them. I would hug Tim if it wouldn't be weird cause I didn't know him or he might not like being hugged at all and there is the whole in another state thing. Thanks so much! It's hugely helpful to me.

Edit: I don't care if we don't get mouse-over for grey checks. For me, they show for To Read, Currently Reading, and the husband's books. Since my To Read and Currently Reading are less than 50 books, I tend to know which collection a given book must be in.

220: Whole thing would be nice. :)

Mouseover for grey checks would be better, for me.

>209 PhaedraB:

Thanks, Annie! Both should have been Wishlist only, and are now properly collected.

edited for typo

>221 rsterling: Another suggestion - and merely that: could there be a key somewhere for what the colors mean,...

I just added a short section for this to the Collections Wiki:
http://www.librarything.com/wiki/index.php/Collections#Colored_Checkmarks

improvements welcome - perhaps someone with more tech savvy could drum up some images for it - justjim? atlargeintheworld?

Tim!

Thank you, thank you, thank you!

I'm sorry if I got a little over-the-top in my posting last night (honestly, that third bottle of Monster Ale from the Brooklyn Brewery must have done me in - I barely remember writing that last post).

On the other hand it was very worth the hangover because: 1.) Tim called me "cupcake" and 2.) I LOVE my new Pony! (I'd kiss you Tim but your wife might get mad and, well, you're in a different state.)

I saw that you had decided to go ahead with this when I logged on this morning just before I left to go paint at the new house. I believe I squealed and clapped repeatedly. (My spouse now thinks I am certifiably insane.) I spent the whole day smiling and thinking about coming home and playing with my shiny new pony.

I'm sorry if I got a little over-the-top in my posting last night ...

Baying for "Tim's head on a stick by sun-up" was a bit much, I thought.

I thought it was the drooling part, myself.

Congrats on another great feature! Love it already!

For my part, the most useful thing would be to distinguish between books read and books I have in my library in the series statistic.

Nice. I especially like that four colours suffice.

I would find a "To Read" checkmark vastly more useful than "Read but Unowned." (as I tend to keep those books out of "Your Library.") I think everything else would do fine the way I have my LT catalog configured.

I was AFK all weekend, so I wasn't able to contribute to this fine discussion.

232: But, see, everyone uses this stuff differently. I don't use either To read or Read but Unowned (although since the checkmarks arrived I've started using the later to add stuff I've read that think is in the house somewhere...).

>232 aethercowboy:.

It's true. I never use Wishlists, but I'm super glad that Tim added this capability.

I figure, though, that "To Read" is one of those collections whose intent is unambiguous. I specified my requirements on the thread announcing the feature.

Use the checkmarks any way you need to.

I don't use read but unowned, so I decided to track my incoming BM & PBS books that way. I couldn't see them when I looked by author or series, so this works for me.

Since you don't use Wishlist, then keep the book in your library, but also put it in wishlist & you get a nice purple checkmark by books you have to read!!!

>235 skittles:.

It would be ideal, if I had no intentions of using wishlist ever. Not the case. I do have future plans to use Wishlist as a wishlist.

I didn't use "read but unowned" since I track those two pieces of data separately in their own collections. But now I've adapted it because, hey, why not.

I yearn for customizable though. Whee!

Colors for one axis and patterns for another!

As for multiple collections: Personally I favor a slowly shifting lavalamp effect for items that are simultaneously in my "wishlist" (because I want a first edition or the fancy hardcover edition) and my "Your library" (because I own the crappy paperback).

238 > Can't you just see the visual effect? waaay better than blinking. i'm sure some CSS whiz could do it. {grin}

I love the whole concept, I just hate gray - it's so blah!

If we are in a world of color monitors, why can't we have another color besides, green, blue, and purple? If there are 256 colors in our monitors, can't we have tan, brown, or pink, or orange, or red, or plum?

241>

The grey makes sense to me. The other colors represent specific collections. A colorless (grey) checkmark therefore represents no specific collection.