Wishlist Separation

Tim's mockery notwithstanding, it seems that a reasonable number of people are interested in more wishlist separation, and that more people support it than are opposed. The concept is still pretty vague, though, so I'd like to come up with some sort of outline for what wishlist separation would entail and how it could be accomplished. How exactly would wishlist separation work?

I would be in favor of:

o Having the "use for connections / recommendations" checkboxes work both ways, so that you aren't in someone else's similar libraries list on the basis of your wishlist

o Excluding wishlist books from MWYB (again, going both ways) if so chosen

o Clearly indicating wishlists on works pages (so that you do not show up as having a book that you have wishlisted; a separate "Wishlist" section revived from the dead-feature graveyard here would be nice.

I would be neutral about:

o Having Collections be a mandatory column in catalog view, so that it is always evident to other viewers of your library which titles are wishlisted.

o Indicating wishlist status via some other means on the catalog page (light shading, an indicator in the already-fixed social column, etc.)

I would be strongly opposed to:

o Allowing users to prevent others from viewing their library using "All Collections". I don't really care about seeing someone's wishlist mixed in with their library -- I'd prefer not too, in fact -- but there are enough people using dozens of small collections for arbitrary purposes (subject-based or date-based, for instance) who don't use Your Library at all that this would cripple my viewing of their libraries.

Allowing users to prevent others from viewing their library using "All Collections".

What about an option to exclude Wishlist, and only Wishlist, from All Collections?

Well, I can see how wishlist is one of all collections. But what I really don't like is that books I've put in my wishlist can still show on "Random books from BarkingMatt's library" on my profile page. No, they are not in my library - in fact I'm "religious" about keeping anything not actually on my shelves out of my "Your Library" collection.

There are probably some ideas buried in threads from when collections were being introduced.

Isn't it being in a separate collection clearly marked wishlist enough?

I think the question posed in the OP is a good one. I don't use the Wishlist collection because I don't want it to pollute my library. As far as I am concerned, a wishlist item is only a title and an author (although I can imagine that specialists might actually want extra information to be recorded extending to publisher and even 'first edition'). That info could be in a comment, though.

Pollute?

> 6: For me, mostly : yes. But I really dislike the confusion caused by "Random books from BarkingMatt's library" not referring to what I've marked as my "Your Library" collection (but to my all collections instead). Either call it "Random books from BarkingMatt's collections" or make it select works from my "Your Library".

>4 Nicole_VanK: Right, but I'm less concerned with the terminology than the effect. If there are a lot of features, like Random Books from User's Library, that are based on All Collections, then it might be easiest to exclude Wishlist from All Collections than to make exceptions for each individual feature (and of course, I'm a bit biased because I'd prefer not to have a view that shows Wishlist together with other books).

>6 Bookmarque:, 8 The polling results showed 30 people in favour of more wishlist separation and 22 opposed. I think it would be more productive to focus on what can actually be done to make those people happy than to have unresolvable debates about who's "right" regarding a very subjective issue.

How about "BarkingMatt's Catalog"? It's like some of those cases when "book" is used when it would be more appropriate to use "work"? But I think "book" is used to avoid scaring the proles.

Following on from lorax's very good list:

o Having the "use for connections / recommendations" checkboxes work both ways, so that you aren't in someone else's similar libraries list on the basis of your wishlist -
Yes. Absolutely.

o Excluding wishlist books from MWYB (again, going both ways) if so chosen -
Yes. Absolutely

o Clearly indicating wishlists on works pages (so that you do not show up as having a book that you have wishlisted; a separate "Wishlist" section revived from the dead-feature graveyard here would be nice.
Yes.

o Having Collections be a mandatory column in catalog view, so that it is always evident to other viewers of your library which titles are wishlisted.
I'm also neutral about this, leaning toward opposed, because I like the fact that people can view their library as they wish. I much prefer:

o Indicating wishlist status via some other means on the catalog page (light shading, an indicator in the already-fixed social column, etc.)
I think this would be a good idea.

o Allowing users to prevent others from viewing their library using "All Collections".
I'm ambivalent. I'd like all collections to be demoted a bit to another line, and Your Library promoted a bit. I would like to be able to prevent people from seeing my wishlist (see other suggestions below). I probably wouldn't mind that much if "All Collections" disappeared as an option, though I do use it all the time when looking at others' libraries. It does bother my sense of order to see different collections mixed up together; I'd rather see All Collections grouped by collection if I can see all collections at all.

To Lorax's suggestions I would add:
o Allowing users to prevent others from seeing their wishlists. Books so marked would not show up when others looked at "all collections," nor would collection info, tag info etc. show up publicly for books so marked. (The same could apply to books in any other collection for that matter.)
To me, this is fundamental. I don't care whether it happens via book-level granular privacy or via collection-level settings for wishlists (and I understand and accept Tim's argument that the latter is hard to do). This is long, long overdue IMO.

o Indicating wishlist status clearly on the author page, both for me and for others. This is similar to Lorax's suggestion about work pages, and for the same reason: "so that you do not show up as having a book that you have wishlisted." I'd like to see a change in the wording about how many books by x author I "have" (preferably with some disaggregation by collections at the top of the page, when I look at it) and also a change in how the numbers are calculated in the "members" section of the author page to exclude or somehow to disaggregate wishlist books.

One other possibility seems to be on the table:
o Excluding wishlist from All Collections yet keeping it public, not private.
I'm not in favor of this. If a wishlist is public, I see no reason to exclude it from All Collections. If it's private, then yes, others should be prevented from seeing it. For public wishlists, if they need to be separated in some way, I'd prefer it were done by grouping within the All Collections view (listing all books under one collection, then all books under the next, etc. instead of the current practice of mixing books from all collections in higgledy-piggledy), rather than excluding (active and public) collections from that view.

Edited to fix rogue tag and to add another suggestion:
o Exclude wishlist items from "recent books added to my library" module on homepage, from "recently-added" RSS feed, and from recently-added widget.
I'd vote for extending this to a setting available for any collection.

I'd much rather see the work done to make anything that refers to "Books from Your Library" actually pick from the "Your Library" collection than redefine "All" to mean "All, except some".

>1 _Zoe_:

"Separation" from what? In what context?

>13 r.orrison: I'd be happier with that too, but what about the people who don't use Your Library?

>14 lilithcat: "Separation" from other books, in the context of the various features discussed above.

I think if people don't put anything in "Your Library" then "Books from Your Library" isn't going to show much.

>16 r.orrison: Makes sense.

3> {restoring context}

>>I would be strongly opposed to allowing users to prevent others from viewing their library using "All Collections".

>What about an option to exclude Wishlist, and only Wishlist, from All Collections?

That would be fine with me; I don't think I've actually seen that suggestion before, but it's a good one.

rsterling suggests:

o Exclude wishlist items from "recent books added to my library" module on homepage, from "recently-added" RSS feed, and from recently-added widget.

Yes.

As a corollary, ideally moving books from Wishlist to another collection should put them on "Recent books added to my library".

Personally, what I'd like is hierarchical collections so that I can aggregate books as I choose and, yet, still view them in a unified manner.

For example, books I've read and own into Your Library and books I've read but don't own into Read But Unowned and view them together in a superset collection of Books On Which I Have On Opinion. I could then bring Wishlist in somewhere at the top of the hierarchy so it didn't "pollute" the other lists.

What I'd settle for is Wishlist being completely divorced from any other collections (including All Collections) since these are just titles I want to look at someday...not "mine" in any real sense of the word.

What about an option to exclude Wishlist, and only Wishlist, from All Collections?

No. I have cataloged books that I've borrowed from the library, or from other family members, that I don't have in my "Your Library" and would prefer not to have showing up in "Random Books from Your Library". If you're going to allow removal of one collection from All Collections, instead of fixing things that should refer to Your Library, then you should allow removal of arbitrary collections from All Collections. Then what is it? It's just another collection, with a really misleading name.

I would prefer giving people the option to hide All Collections from other users.

21>

I would prefer giving people the option to hide All Collections from other users.

That's what I said I was strongly opposed to, that prompted _Zoe_'s intermediate suggestion; the problem with that is people using highly non-standard Collections schemes who don't use Your Library, and instead have a couple dozen subject-matter or time-related collections. Hiding All Collections makes their libraries unbrowseable.

Zoe, I've never seen you so paranoid and fearful of two little questions. Don't read into things, ok? (oh noes! another question!)

I am one of those people who would like to separate my wishlist from all the other collections so that it doesn't add to any of the memes, statistics or anything else I have. From everything you are saying here, this sounds complicated.

Is it possible just to have a checkbox next to wishlist (and maybe other, nonstandard collections that people make). The checkbox would opt in or opt out of having your wishlist show up as part of your library, etc? You could check and uncheck it at will and, in real time ;-) see it change # of authors dead/alive, male/female, recently added to library etc. etc. ETC.................

Thank you for listening....k4k

24 - I second k4k's request - which extends some of the suggestions made above - to allow us to exclude wishlist from any memes and statistics. Ideally, I'd like to see memes and statistics disaggregated by collection.

I guess, actually, I've thought about setting up a separate paid account for my wishlist so that I can keep it private and separate, while restoring my library to public and removing the inflated numbers and statistics that have come with collections. The problem with that is that you can't really work across 2 accounts seamlessly. So I think I'm coming around to the idea of having a more stark separation between wishlist (or wishlist collections in the plural) and other collections, especially your library. But I don't hold out much hope for that, because I think it won't fit well with the existing UI and structure of the catalog. I'd settle for granular privacy, where whatever I marked private was excluded from any public stats, memes, lists of books, counts, etc. Given what we have now, that seems to me to be the simplest interim solution, but then it won't help for those who want both wishlists to be separate but not private.

I don't know if this is even feasible, but what I would like to be able to do with my Wishlist collection is as follows:

"Wishlist" to me means both "books I want to own" and "books I want to read." So, I would want some ability to still be able to overlap collections - I currently use Wishlist and Read but Unowned to give my family a Christmas list, so I would like those to be public, browseable, and still counted if I put a book in more than one collection. However, I could pretty easily use a different collection overlap to accomplish this if Wishlist were completely separated from All Collections.

If books I only put in the Wishlist collection were separated, I would start using it to add "books I want to read someday." I'd like these books to not count in terms of connections (both ways) and similar libraries (both ways) as lorax mentioned above, as well as counts in series and other statistics as other folks mentioned. I don't really care of it counts towards my total "All collections" number of books, or if the books in my "Wishlist" collection (only, with no overlaps) was public or not.

I sort of want to be able to keep "Books read" and "books not read" separate, but then this gets confusing too because there are a lot of books that I own and haven't yet read...yeah. I'm not sure there's really an easy solution. I like Tad's hierarchical idea, though.

I am one who does not want my wishlist to pollute my actual owned books.

I don't want them added to counts or stats, to be shown anywhere unless they are identified as wishlist items. Since that didn't happen, I didn't use the wishlist function.

I did finally get a 2nd paid account and I use it for my imaginary books, hence the name imaginaryFicus.

I love it. I have even added a purchased collection so I can move books from my wishlist when I purchase them.

When I look at Connections and see that "FriedBacon added The Necronomicon," it looks like a book acquisition. I'd like it if, for wishlist books, it said instead: "FriedBacon wishlisted The Necronomicon." Ditto for the Most Recent Activity on my Profile page.

Oh, and I strongly concur with having "Random books from FriedBacon's library" actually pull from the Your Library collection, rather than All Collections.

I would like Wishlist to be just a list, not a collection, or part of my catalogue at all. When I put a book on my wishlist all I want is title and author, not a complete record, and I don't want it appearing all over the place. But it would have to be sortable, at least alphabetically. It could also be divided into sections, so that, for instance, I could have a list of books that I really want, and a list of books I'd like to find out more about.

What I'd settle for is Wishlist being completely divorced from any other collections (including All Collections) since these are just titles I want to look at someday...not "mine" in any real sense of the word.

Quoting/copying Tad rather than repeating what so many others have said. When I first joined, I excitedly went to look at another LT-ers library because we supposedly so much in common. Uh, no! She just had a huge wish list--three times as many as her actual books, as I remember it.

I don't mind the category of "Books read, but not owned" being in "all collections" because at least I have read them--and, maybe I even owned them at one time, but my wish list shouldn't be there, and neither should they show up in the connections feature--it just seems to defeat one of the major purposes of LT.

Hmm, I've used Wishlist for books we owned that were lost in a flood. I wish they would be replaced.

>30 bonniebooks: Yes, I definitely want "Read but unowned" as part of "All collections" as well. My hope is that I could still overlap collections between "Read but unowned" and "Wishlist" so that I could indicate the books that I would like to someday own as well as the books that I would like to someday read (the latter is what I currently do not keep track of with Wishlist).

Honestly I would like to be able to designate some collections as "wishlist" meaning utterly stand-alone lists that are not added into anything else. Because I have "wishlist", which are things I want to own, but I also have "interesting", which is anything that has piqued my interest.

>29 SylviaC: I understand that many users are indiscriminate about the details of books that they don't actually own, and that there has been talk of the "generic edition" so that people could wishlist a work without committing to book details.

But why keep people like me from having a more detailed wishlist item? I often want--or at least prefer--a specific edition, and noting that can be useful to me. Also, I like the fact that when I acquire a wishlisted book, all I have to do is reassign collections, and the record is then in "My library"--at least to the extent I have correctly anticipated the details of the book.

>29 SylviaC: I like the idea of having a plain list option. Maybe this could be done with the future List feature, which is near the top of the users' priority list anyway. This wouldn't prevent anyone from having a Wishlist collection in the current form, but it would provide another option for people who just want a basic list that isn't integrated with everything else.

I do really wish that wishlist items didn't show up the the 'random books from' or even 'recently added' - and that if it /does/ show up somewhere, that it says 'recently wishlisted'.

I feel like the wishlist is one of LT's strongest features for those of us who are more concerned about tracking and organizing reading than books we own (we do exist!) - it's the reason the quality of my reading has skyrocketed since I've been here. I'd love to see it a bit more powerful, because just in conversations in Talk - in the challenge threads or rec threads where people are all the time indicating that your rec is convincing by telling you they've 'wishlisted' it - you can tell that it's become a real and pretty fundamental part of being able to use LT - whether that verb means you want to read it, to buy it, to ask for it for a Christmas gift.

SO. I would really like to see wishlist get some attention as a /wishlist/, which is definitely different from your /library/. Although I don't want to see it removed from All Collections, I would like to see it separated out - and perhaps even highlighted on its own - in other ways.

Tim responded to a bug report about the connections etc. not working both ways:

Sorry. It may not be a feature, but it's a necessity. These sorts of calculations take up an enormous amount of overhead. At it's worst it's a one-million (users) by one-million (users) grid by their collection size grid.

To do them we're accessing a standard list of books in memory, and touching the disk as little as possible. That list doesn't store the information you need.

So it seems like Wishlists may not be fixable. I'm just going to hope for a List-based solution.

>37 _Zoe_: If that's the case, then having a list feature would actually solve what I would want to be able to do with the separation. I can keep the Wishlist/Read but Unowned overlap exactly the way it is, and use a list that doesn't feature in my catalog at all as a TBR.

So it seems like Wishlists may not be fixable. I'm just going to hope for a List-based solution.
Hmm. I think I'm moving toward that preference too. As long as lists have a private option. :)

37> What thread was that? I'd like to comment on it.

40> This one, from this morning: http://www.librarything.com/topic/98297 (or I guess yesterday morning?) In response to a post of Zoe's from a few weeks ago.

#37 somehow it seems as if decreasing collection size (by isolating wishlist) would make that job easier, rather than harder, but hey I'm not a programmer.

I too would very much like an isolated wishlist. But I very much like the functionality of 'Add book to wishlist' and wouldn't want it to be made more inconvenient by adding to catalogue and then transferring to list and the removing from catalogue or anything remotely as horrible as that.

>42 reading_fox: Yeah, I think I made that point (about decreasing collection size) in the bug report thread, but no response.

I'm hoping that Lists will have a nice UI that makes it easy to add something from the work page to a list with a single click (eta: okay, maybe two).

I'd settle for exempting it from Recently Added including the RSS feed as a minimum but really just want it to be exempted automatically from everything concerning interaction & connections and treated more like a pure list.

2>

I would be strongly opposed to
"Having Collections be a mandatory column in catalog view, so that it is always evident to other viewers of your library which titles are wishlisted."

4>
I agree with "But what I really don't like is that books I've put in my wishlist can still show on "Random books from BarkingMatt's library" on my profile page."

Wishlist book should not appear on profile as a random book from library.

28>
I fully agree with 28. Which was:
"When I look at Connections and see that "FriedBacon added The Necronomicon," it looks like a book acquisition. I'd like it if, for wishlist books, it said instead: "FriedBacon wishlisted The Necronomicon." Ditto for the Most Recent Activity on my Profile page.

Oh, and I strongly concur with having "Random books from FriedBacon's library" actually pull from the Your Library collection, rather than All Collections."

29>
"wishlist all I want is title and author,"

I want more than just a title and author.

The wishlist function is very useful, because I'm scatterbrained, very forgetful, have way too many things on my mind and I'm interested in a VERY wide variety of subjects.

But the wishlist is also a constant source of confusion and sometimes frustration to me. I'm happy and proud of the books I physically own, and I'm not happy that merely wishlisted books add to the total of "my" books. It skewes the picture.

Bug Report inserted: When I browse bookselling websites I usually start with a certain book I'm looking for and end up with 50 that I'm interested in. Where do I keep track of them? On my LT wishlist. And when I add a list of accumulated "want-to-have"s by means of the import feature it always seems to add them all to both, the wishlist (which I actually checked) and also to "Your Library", and I have to go through and manually take them all out again to restrict them to the wishlist.

That said, what I want and what I've got on my shelves are two completely different things in the physical world, but not in the world of taste and interests. So, what I would like to own because I'm interested in it adds to who I am and therefore is important for others to see when looking at common interests. Wishlisted items are in this sense also important to recommendations made by others and/or the system, because if I've got it already wishlisted you don't need to recommend it anymore, I've already stated that I want it...

So, in essence I think it would be great if wishlists could be seen by others and used for recommendation purposes, but should be disregarded when calculating the total books for a person's library.

A lot of these suggestions would make problems for me. I don't use wishlist much, but all four books in there are ones I have read - one I actually own, but all four are ones I want to buy. The one is falling apart, and the others I really want copies of my own. I don't want them - just because of wishlist status - not to show up in various places.

I suppose if I had to I could create a 'to buy' collection to avoid these things and disable wishlist.

But please, please think about those with smaller screens, as well as the present problems with partial printouts, and DO NOT make the required parts of catalogue views even wider. I would already love to have one view without the whole final column.

So, in essence I think it would be great if wishlists could be seen by others and used for recommendation purposes, but should be disregarded when calculating the total books for a person's library.

Your Library is supposed to represent the total books in your library. The All Collections number just says how many books you have in all your collections.

I prefer the version in 24. A checkbox that would exclude books in whatever collection I please.

> 48: Not necessarily true. A book can be in "your library" and in "wishlist".

Any way, features like statistics an "random books from (...) library" use "all collections" - not "your library".

50> What's not true? It's true that the total of all the collections won't add up to the total of All Collections, but I never said it did.

Ack, sorry. I somehow misread you.

I don't use the Wishlist feature because it alters my stats (book counts, etc.).

I'm also a little disappointed when I look at collections larger than mine and learn that they are booksellers, libraries, or books people don't actually own but ones that they have a passing acquaintance with.

James Keeline

#36 Arrin99 above, pretty much states my feelings on the matter.

I LOVE the wishlist, but hate when I see things say Majkia added : XXX when all I wanted to do was put it in the wishlist so that in the future I can consider whether I want to actually purchase or read it. Sometimes when I investigate a book, I decide it is definitely not for me!

but that's just it, the language doesn't say you bought it, read it, used it for wallpaper or anything, it just says you ADDED it. We all know that's how the site works so I don't know what the harm is. If you want to see how or under what circumstances it was added, go to the person's page & find out. Otherwise it's just an item that got cataloged.

The main reason why I refrained from creating a Wishlist on LT so far is that the books in it would be "mixed up" with the "real" ones on my library: I *don't* want them showed on my homepage (in the Recently Added section), on the Random Books from My Library box, and I *don't* want them to affect my stats (as they're really not *my* books -- yet). Also, for some books I'd like to read, like classic works, for me the edition is often not relevant, and I'd random choose one from the search results, so I don't want "fake" covers and editions mixed up with the others. I'm pretty "religious" about keeping anything not actually on my shelves out of my "Your Library" collection too (see message no. 4)!

Also, I'd like to be able to use separate tags for them, for example indicating where I can find that certain book, or other details that are relevant for me only: these too shouldn't affect the stats for tags. Otherwise, as my wishlist is reeeeeaaally long, I would have hundreds of tags like "city library", or "can't find it", or "to buy" (examples) that would overshadow/outnumber the *real* (I use this term for lack of a better one), useful, significant ones.
I could use private comments, but tags are more practical, I think.

If the wishlist separation were introduced, this would be a great improvement for LibraryThing IMO.

Out of what stats, in particular?

Well, I add all books that are of interest to me, as well as all books that I read, and my kid's books, and so forth. Even though I hate the stats pollution. Because it's more important for me to have all that information aggregated. But I would really, really love to be able to keep all kinds of collections out of my stats. Or just have stats be collections-aware, and let us set a "default collection" for public viewing.

For the stats issue, here's a separate thread about implementing an include-in-statistics collections option. The request is also doing very well in the polls, so I think there's a decent chance of seeing it implemented eventually.

@57:

I'm thinking of entry date, top tags, all the authors related stats (male/female, dead/alive...), author gallery, book covers, publication date, for example.

@58:
"... Or just have stats be collections-aware"

Good idea

Oh gotcha. I'm so stats-ignorant 'cause I never look at them myself.

It just bugs me that there's no way for people glancing at my page to know whether I added the book because of some real relationship with it - I bought it or I read it or I started reading it - or because it caught my passing fancy and I'll consider it at some future time.

In order to find that information, I have to go into the actual catalog. I can't glance at the profile, or at the list there of 'shared books'. In fact, more than once I've commented to someone on books we have in common only to be told that they've wishlisted rather than read them, because I didn't think about the fact that 'books in common' shows /all/ books in any collection.

It's silly that I should have to dig into the catalog to determine whether the person's relationship with the book is a casual passing fancy or something more significant!

53.>>> Books people don't actually own but ones that they have a passing acquaintance with add something to who they are. Wishlist items, Read but unowned, etc...

Now, booksellers and libraries... those belong under organizations so we should be able to tell the accounts are not individuals. For myself, I tend not to look at accounts owned by organizations, unless I need to communicate with a publisher...

For all:

That said, while I consider wishlist items to be part of who I am, I do wish for some separation of the wishlist from my main catalog. Books in my wishlist are not primarily books I own or even books I once owned but no longer possess. They are not even primarily books I intend to buy. For the largest part, books in my LT wishlist are those which have attracted my attention in one way or another and which I am considering, but ultimately might decide against purchasing. When, if I decide not to purchase or acquire a book on my wishlist it gets deleted from my catalog. When, if I do acquire a wishlist book, it gets removed from the wishlist collection and added to the appropriate other collection(s).

Yes I, or even all of us who wish for some wishlist separation, could have a separate account just for wishlist items and make it private; however I want to manage everything under one account, because of the occasional acquired items that get moved from wishlist to other collections. When the entire catalog is under one account, moving a book from wishlist to an appropriate collection is as easy as moving a physical book from one shelf to another; very little needs to be changed.

If I were to use a separate account then I would have to re-catalog the book I deleted from wishlist. In some cases, re-cataloging would mean doing the entire entry by copy/paste or, if I used export/import, there would inevitably be errors to correct... and time consumed moving books from one account to another; time that I can't afford to spend.

29>
"wishlist all I want is title and author,"

45>
"I want more than just a title and author."

Me too, at least some of the time. For instance, I'm collecting the Aubrey-Maturin set put out by the Folio Society. When I add one or more of these books to my wishlist, I do not mean that I want the book by just any publisher. It HAS to be a Folio Society volume to match the rest of my set. A random paperback won't fulfill a wishlist item like that.

@63

"Yes I, or even all of us who wish for some wishlist separation, could have a separate account just for wishlist items and make it private; however I want to manage everything under one account, ..."

And, I add, you can only add up to 200 books for free: my wishlist has more than 200 books, and honestly I don't want to pay for another lifetime account! (nor create multiple separate accounts!) :-)

One thing about wishlist separation as well, is that it is included for zeitgeist numbers. Someone could add a couple thousand books into their wishlist collection and suddenly be one of the top 50 biggest libraries. That's disappointing for those of us who are prideful about actually owning a gazillion books. ;)
Also, my general feelings about the subject are largely congruent with that of rsterling in message 12.

66: I agree. I would have a huge wishlist here, but I don't want it to skew the statistics and dwarf the number of books I have actually read. Right now I just keep it to the non-kindle books.

65.> I would not create multiple separate accounts... but neither do I feel it's necessary to create another paid lifetime account, for the little bit of use I might get from it. Right now, my wishlist is something over 150, but still fairly far from 200, so a free account would work for me - for awhile - if I wanted the hassle. I've added some, deleted some, and acquired some of the books from my wishlist lately; and there are more I want to add when I have a minute or three... so the number changes on a fairly rapid basis. I could never guess when it may go over 200.

67.> I have catalogued only the Kindle books I've actually read with a very few exceptions. I mean to read those soon. The reason I catalogued those few unread Kindle books is that they are part of a series and I want to be able to read that series in the proper order. LT lets me track series books, unlike the Kindle, where it's not always obvious which book is part of a series or where in that series the book belongs.

I'm not about to catalog all 700-plus titles on my Kindle at one time, however, as I read them, I probably will add them to my catalog at some point, so that I can post my reviews here. That said, I did catalog all 1,000-plus physical books in my possession, most of them in bulk, and disreagarding whether I had read them or not, so the number of books I've actually read is dwarfed by the number of books I own. Also, many of the books I've read, I do not own. Anyone can see which books I've read by looking at my LT Reviews collection, as I write reviews of everything I read - or, most of it anyhow. I often do not write reviews of books I never finish reading. Hmmm... maybe I need a DNF collection too... or maybe not. If I don't write a review, I often delete the book from my catalogue.

I've felt ambivalent about my wishlist collection because it artificially inflates the numbers in my catalog in a drastic way (I think I may be one of those people who >66 EmScape: is thinking about). But the thing is, that collection reflects a certain aspect of my relationship with books--my hunter/gatherer approach to authors, perhaps, and my whimsical tendency to create reading lists for stuff I get interested in. So I think it "belongs" in my LT "portrait in books," so to speak.

I assuaged my conflicted feelings by writing explanations of the different collections on my profile page, but I would like to be able to not include wishlist books in, say, the total number of books I actually physically have, and not include them in the "books you share" links with other LT catalogs. Because in truth, I don't share some of those books with other members. I just might some time in the future.

70.>Some members are using the "Your Library" collection to exhibit the number of books they physically own. I see you've done that too... Well, Wishlist, Read but Unowned, etc are normally left out of the "Your Library collection but unfortunately those books do get included in all collections. I think there's a "use for connections" setting that you can put on each collection. If you used that setting for your wishlist it might help with what you're looking to accomplish.

>71 1dragones: Some members are using the "Your Library" collection to exhibit the number of books they physically own.

Yes, that's what I do. But it still looks like I have a larger library than I actually do in some public statistics. That doesn't sit right with me.

True, the stats use all collections rather than just the Your Library collection. IMHO it's not correct to do that, but oh, well...

Agreed. It's obvious that those books do need to get listed in "All Collections". Where else could the LT system put them? But for that reason I would like to be able to set LT so that things like statistics and "Random books from BarkingMatt's library" look at the "Your Library" collection instead.

Not a deal breaker for me though.

I would also really like to be able to exclude certain collections from the "recent activity" box, RSS feeds, and statistics. When private books is finished, that might help for the public side (recent activity, RSS), but I'd also really like to be able to disaggregated my stats and memes for my own uses.

In the past few months (in 2015), there have been a couple of people who have reached the top 25 because they have Wishlists of more than 10,000 items. Their Wishlist numbers far exceed their "your library" count. I approve of Wishlists, (I have currently around 70 items on mine) but do not think they should count under Zeitgeist. Likewise, read but not owned should not count in Zeitgeist.

And a recent addition to the top 25 includes someone who lists for sale and sold as categories. I am not sure what to do about those. Clearly, for a commercial account they are legitimate. For a private account, not unreasonable. But this person lists thousands in each category, so it seems like that account is a non-personal library.

If you haven't figured it out yet, I do obsess over the zeitgeist numbers... I have actually reached higher in the Top 50 than I ever expected. (So why should I complain... obsession, of course!) When I first began entering my books into LT, I expected that I might make the top 50. That was when you only needed about 10K books to hit the top 50. By the time I had entered that many (We had more than 10K, just never realized how many we did have), the Top 50 required a larger number, but I still had quite a few books more to enter, and over time, I have moved higher up. I'm actually at a point where I think of thinning the shelves, so I expect to move down the list anyway. But that will probably be a slow process.

Of course the problem could also be solved by not publishing the top 50/top 5000 lists ... 8^)

>76 hyades: Why should having an unread book on the shelf count for more than having a read book no longer on the shelf?

Possibly private accounts should not be included in Zeitgeist because noone can see what those libraries include.

>76 hyades: Likewise, read but not owned should not count in Zeitgeist.

If zeitgeist is a measure of our personal book milieu, our real exposure and connection to books, then I would think the books we've read should certainly count.

I don't like wishlist being included in my stats, since they are books I have minimal "real" connection to, but I've become resigned to the fact that they will be.

LT isn't a competition; if you want to complain about Zeitgeist purity, you'd need to crack down on short stories and all other non-book stuff as well, and Tim is very eagerly going in the direction of encouraging non-book stuff (not short stories, though, just movies and music) so that's a tough sell.

>79 lorax:
(not short stories, though, just movies and music)

Though, one would assume that a one-off non-collection edition of a short story would, of necessity, have to be fair game.

Not saying that I've seen such a thing, but one of my best friends is taking creative writing classes -- and short stories are more book-like than movies or music are.

As far as non-book items, does your local library count audio and video items among their content? Do they include perhaps single page letters from someone to someone else in their special collections? I happen to know that one of the top 25 has a number of items like that. At first, I thought that they should not count, but then I thought of special collections in the libraries of the world, and I think they should count. I have no entries like that so I am impartial about it.

Should a comic book be excluded because it's "not really a book?" There are LT users with thousands of comics. Personally, I do not object to counting them (note: I have a very small number of items that I consider comic books -- and I have a few books that are almost comic books, with alternating pages of text and illustration). I have not entered The Little Golden Books we have, but I don't object to others doing so, and having those count.

I don't have a problem with items that are, as it were, at hand (even if only electronically). It's more the items that aren't "at hand" that I don't think should count in Zeitgeist in the same count as "at hand" objects. A separate count for such phantom objects could be very informative and even amusing. Maybe publishers would be interested in the information.

Read but not owned is similar to Wishlist as far as I am concerned. A great idea for those who want it. (I could not begin to hope to do a read, but not owned list that was comprehensive.)

LT isn't a competition? I have a bridge to sell you.... (and read comment 66)

And if the LT community does not want to count private accounts in Zeitgeist, fine. Make it so. See if I really care then.

The easiest action is for me to simply stop looking at Zeitgeist, which I probably will do.

>80 AnnaClaire:

Oh, yeah, they're fair game (unless of course you actually want to add them to be able to list the contents of one of your anthologies); they just aren't explicitly being encouraged and their addition being made easier the way music and movies are.

And you certainly don't need to tell me that they're more book-like than moves and music! I've been beating that drum for years.

Some people may choose to view the Zeitgeist as a competition, but that's not the purpose of LT.

Personally I think a book I borrowed from the library last month is much more legitimate for me to add than all the crap I read in high school (much of which is in boxes in the basement, since my parents wanted it out of the house and I haven't gotten around to taking it to Goodwill yet, so it's even physically in my possession.) Or my son's books; lots of people use their own account to track their little kids' books.

More on why things not at hand should not count the same as at hand. I think a very legitimate category to be tallied and kept track of would be "stolen/lost/borrowed but not returned" items. I am thinking mostly of actual libraries here, but it could work for anyone.

Should they count as "at hand?" The optimist in us might say yes, but I would say no. Such items are more like Wishlist items than anything. So a separate counting. And that sort of thing, taken throughout LT could provide information of interest, like which books are most commonly reported as lost or stolen. Of course, individuals or individual libraries might not like to advertise such a list. So they should be able to set it as "private" and not shown to the public. But it would still be informative to have the collective but unattributed information available. Just as knowing what books are most commonly found in Wishlists would be informative.

Let me make it clear that I have no problem with the concept of a "metalibrary" which includes the books, audio or videos you've borrowed from the public library or ones you wish to read, hear or see. I just think that there should be separate totals for them. And I think tracking them separately provides new information which can be helpful to librarians, publishers, etc. But I also think one should be able to set any individual item or collection of items to private. Of course, if you really want something kept private, don't put it online.

I did not embrace LT as a competition. I had a real need to keep track of books that I had. Because, you see, some of them were not "at hand" for me. I was working in Hawaii, with mostly my technical books present, while most of my other books were in California. I ended up buying duplicates because I could not remember that I already had a copy at home. Since then, I have moved back and the library is again whole. But one of the functions LT serves for me is to help prevent buying duplicates.

LT is about making connections with books and with people who have/like books. As such, while people who catalog every book they ever read or might like to read, those mega lists have little connection to me. If I want to "meet" and exchange ideas with people who find ways to live with more than 5,000 books, it is not helpful to have to wade through school and church library listings, bookseller inventory, and someone who has added every title in Project Gutenberg to their "catalog." Looking at the profiles of the non-private libraries illustrates how people use the system and it doesn't always line up with their account classification.

I don't ever expect to be persuasive in this topic. The reader non-owners of books are too vocal and influential. However, when there is a label such as "top 50 personal libraries" then it should have some meaning for that list tabulation. The "personal" aspect should not include school and church libraries or bookseller inventory.

As soon as "top" is included, there will be people who make mental comparisons. No, all of LT is NOT a competition. However, a list like this practically invites those who are more competitive to consider it. Some will even "game the system" by adding listings with no real connection to the items just to see their user ID at the top (or near it) on a list. It's like the people who are obsessed with writing "first post" in a discussion thread for a news article. It is not what motivates me and some sites have creative ways to shun those who participate in such a game.

The list doesn't update very frequently in my experience. While I looked at it for a while and starred this topic months ago, I don't check this list anymore except in the idlest of curiosity.

I do agree that the "wishlist" collection has no place in contributing to this ranking.

James

>85 Keeline: I don't think it's useful to assume that everyone with the mega-libraries made all those entries in a competitive spirit. Let's allow them their own agendas. Maybe it's OCD. Maybe it's a hobby. I'm not going to judge why someone does something when all I know is the result, not the process.

>85 Keeline: As far as I'm concerned it's more useful and interesting to me to be connected to people who have read the same books as I have whether or not they actually have the book.

In some ways, it's LT's insistence on *not* marking reading status that effectively eliminates any consistent way to see ownership status as well. Everything would be a lot clearer if the default collections were "Owned" and "Read", rather than "Your Library" and "Read But Unowned".

>88 _Zoe_: That would, however, favor fiction-heavy libraries. Many people with large non-fiction libraries use them primarily for reference; the bulk of them may never be read cover to cover.

I don't see that as helping. Books could certainly be both owned and read. It seems better to use a tag to indicate a book's status as "read." And just what does "read" mean? A friend is given to tossing away books after reaching a certain level of dissatisfaction. To me, not finishing it means it is not read, but his feelings may be that "read enough" or "read too much" equal my "read."

I also agree with Phaedra because the majority of my library is non-fiction. I have indeed purchased many that will never be read from cover to cover, but which contain arguments or material of interest.

>89 PhaedraB: I don't really understand this objection at all. How does "Read But Unowned" not have this same problem? And why is it a problem to provide a way to track information that some users care about more than others? "Owned" would still be more meaningful than "Your Library" regardless of what other collections are available.

>90 hyades: A book can belong to multiple collections.

You're the one who said I have no problem with the concept of a "metalibrary" which includes the books, audio or videos you've borrowed from the public library or ones you wish to read, hear or see. I just think that there should be separate totals for them.

But those "separate totals" should exist only for only the specific information that you're personally interested in? Nope.

It's precisely by refusing to give people a standard way to track the information that they consider important that you end up with everything merged into one category, blurring the information that you consider important.

>89 PhaedraB:, >90 hyades:

I strongly agree regarding the different status of non-fiction. I've sometimes contemplated creating a collection called "Significantly read in" to comprehend books "read enough" or "usefully started." As it is, those tend to sit in my "to read" collection.

For me, "Your library" means "(currently) owned" and nothing else.

"It's precisely by refusing to give people a standard way to track the information that they consider important that you end up with everything merged into one category, blurring the information that you consider important."

Care to provide substantiation for that rather broad statement?

In 90, I agreed with Phaedra on the difference of status of non-fiction. But an example for fiction books also occurs. Anthologies of stories or short novels. I might buy an anthology principally to read stories by just one or a few authors. The entire anthology may never be completely read, so I don't count it as read (but that's just me).

Bottom line, we have a wide variety of things that people consider important or significant.

Maybe Tim can provide some data about usage. I'd be interested in knowing what percentage of users who have catalogued books do not use the Your Library collection, for example.

Tim has said repeatedly that defaults make a difference and that people tend not to change defaults. I don't think it's a big leap from there to say that if the defaults don't capture many distinctions, then those distinctions will tend to be lost.

I'm working through my library because my late husband was an author, and his library may qualify as a Legacy Library. Most of his books are cataloged with mine at this time, and I haven't deleted the thousand or so I've gotten rid of, so I guess I have "fake" statistics anyway.

I also track what library books I've read, so I don't check them out again, or maybe because I want to review them. Another fake-out.

I use Your Library for books I physically have, but hundreds of those are in my husband's account, so I'm shorting my account anyway. And when I finally get his/our books (as opposed to mine alone) moved to his account, my count will plummet.

I have Kindle books cataloged, but do I really have them? It's not like I can take them down from the shelf and loan them to someone.

And another friend of mine has books to the ceiling, but doesn't enter them into LT until he has read and reviewed them.

Rules have to be general. People have different needs and use LT for different things.

>97 PhaedraB: LT doesn't have cataloguing "rules". It has tools. Some of them can be specific because not everyone has to use every option.

>98 _Zoe_: So change rules to tools.

Point is (again) that people use tools in the way that suits them. If that messes up other people's ability to compare other libraries with their own, that's not a bug.

>99 PhaedraB: I agree that the current system isn't a bug.

But I don't think that's an argument against adding additional options that would provide additional information—even if those additional options are more valuable to some than to others. No one would lose anything with the addition of default "Owned" and "Read" collections; everyone would still be free to use LT however they wanted.

I'm not sure I understand the need for more default collections (no matter the use). One of the earliest things I did, before I'd even found my way around LT more than just a tiny bit, was create a new collection, entitled "Antique" since many of my books fall into that category. I quit adding them, though, since LT is determined that a copy of Pilgrim's Progress from 1891 ought to be combined with all its cousins. I should add that this was one I grabbed out of memory, since I'm actually fine with that particular combination. I doubt I'll ever add my particular two-volume set of Josephus, though. I haven't seen that particular one on LT, even though there are several it would probably be combined with.

Heck, if it was up to me, I'd get rid of the default collection called "Favorites" (which I used a tiny bit when I was first cataloging, and have been too lazy since to take those books back out...not that it matters).

As soon as collections were introduced I inactivated all the default collections and made my own. Then the colored checkmarks came along and I changed my whole scheme to fit back into the defaults in order to take advantage of them. If my pony of customizable checkmarks were ever a reality then the only time I would use the default collections would be when they came with some sort of special functionality (like the way the Currently Reading collection lists the books on your profile page.)