What do you want to do with Lists?

Lists have been discussed a lot in the past as something that users want, and Tim's recent bug-fixing spree has made me optimistic that he'll move on to developing much-wanted features before too long. Since Lists is pretty close to the top of the user want list, I think it would be helpful to talk about what we actually want from this feature. What do you want to do with Lists?

I want:

1. The ability to make a personal list, created by me and editable only by me, that includes title, author, personal comments, and cover picture. There should be a toggle to turn the cover pictures on and off. There should be an option to make these lists public or private. Adding a book to a personal list from the work page should be easy and quick.

2. The ability to make a communal public list that anyone can edit. So people could work together to put the 1001 Books to Read Before You Die list into LT, for example. I'm not sure exactly how mass editing for these things works out, but I know other sites do it.

3. The ability to make a ranked group list where everyone is allowed to contribute a limited number of votes. For example, there might be a Best Books Read in 2010 list where everyone is allowed to list their 10 favourites, and books are ranked based on how many people have listed each one.

4. The ability to make a ranked group list with various other conditions: everyone can vote for unlimited books; users' individual rankings affect or don't affect the total, etc.

5. Option to see what percentage of a list you've read, based on a new default "Read" collection.

6. Option to track other users' public lists?

7. Some way to have lists affiliated with groups.

Really, all that would make or break it for me is:

1. Must have option for public or private lists - both with regards to editing & viewing ability - if I can't make a private list for only my consumption the feature would be next to useless.

2. Need the ability to mark things off as read & display percentage read on each list.

Other than that, everything else is either icing or white noise. The stuff I'm not interested in wouldn't put me off the feature if it was there & the stuff I like isn't a deal-breaker.

That all sounds pretty good. What I'd like:

-- ability to make my own personal lists, not editable by anyone else.
-- ability to make personal lists private or public.
-- **ability to track reading or ownership using these lists (a checkbox feature)**
-- ability to create group/communal lists would be nice
-- ability to adopt someone else's list (giving credit to the originator, ideally)

I like the functionality of ListsOfBests, but the lists on that site are hampered by reliance on Amazon data and on what LTers would call editions rather than works.

I want lists to not happen within the next two years, or maybe ever.

I'd outlined a list proposal a while ago - I don't really want to rehash it again:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/75014

Nothing. I have no interest in lists.

I can see two kinds of lists, personal and public. Personal, like a wishlist, and public like a suggested reading list (like on Amazon). I don't think either needs to be anything other than a list of works -- each entry in the list would link to a work, not to a specific book record. The standard colored checkmarks would be great whenever viewing the list, and if showing covers then the cover of the book in my catalog, otherwise the default cover for the work.

But, for me, I'm more than happy using a collection for my wishlist, and personally have no desire for public lists, so I'd also vote "really really low priority".

For me, the private lists would also be of the 'suggested reading' kind rather than something that supplants the wishlist collection. They would just be private. I would still use the wishlist collection as I'm also happy with that (well, not happy that it's not properly divided int reatment from other collections but happy enough not to need a list instead).

I'm also not dying for lists as a feature. If we get them, nice, but certainly not highest priority.

>5 stephmo: Yeah, it's a good proposal, and worth repeating. I just think it's worth revisiting what exactly people want out of the feature almost a year later.

Stephmo's post:

Okay, I know this has been brought up before, but only vaguely. But here's the basic gist of lists.

Lists can fill in the gaps where Awards & Honors and Series simply cannot fit the bill. Want to list the Books reviewed in the Polysyllabic Spree? Maybe you were a Gillmore Girls fan and you want to read everything on Rory's bookcase. Maybe you want to read everything made into a movie. Maybe you want to read Harold Bloom's Cannon.

Or - maybe you've been following this thread on LT - the BBC Meme.

Which is really why I'm here not only to revisit lists, but to ask for some super-dooper pony functionality with lists.

While I think the BBC thread is great, there are some issues. #1 being that it's a list of 100 books, so everyone that copies it potentially copies 100 lines of text, plus their explanation of how many they've read and whatever other formatting they might have done. While it looks like a conversation, my impression is that folks are probably not reading every post all that carefully. They're likely listing their own post and moving on - sorta social, but not exactly.

In a list function with full ponies, I'd love it if we could do the following:

1. Create the list and advertise it.
2. Have folks adopt the list and "work" it.
3. Let folks be able to show their progress on the list easily.
4. Let others see quite easily which books on a list are most read/currently being read/being discussed.
5. Let you have a list meme on your profile.

I know, I know - can we visualize this? Can we rip off something else and make it better - make it more LibraryThing? Why YES!

If anyone here is at ListsofBests - or has seen it - I'm suggesting ripping of parts of it and adopting the best parts and dumping the not-so-good parts.

Here's one of their sample lists - Books mentioned in Matlida. A nice, short list.

Stuff to steal:
- Creation of the list. You'll notice that there's one contributor. In some cases, there are multiple contributors who will correct titles, add titles to partially complete lists or those that like things arranged in certain orders. There are comments allowed on all lists as well - sometimes they get a little snippy like who does the BBC think they are not to put 1984 on the all-time best list - it's a crap list!, but that's about it.

- Adoption of the list. You can see all the users with one click that have adopted the list on the right-hand side. The down-side of their system is that it takes you to all of their lists that they've adopted. Some folks adopt everything. But if you find the list on their list of lists, you can see how far they were on the list. I'd prefer that you could hover over their name and see something like (47% - click to see comparison).

When I talk about working the list - when you're loogged into list of bests and you notice that you've read/watched/consumed something, you merely click on the item. From there, you can simply indicate "I have consumed this" and then you have the option to indicate the following - a date of consumption and then whether it was worth consuming or not. PONY TIME - I'd love it if we could mark books "read" for lists. And then we could be encouraged (but not required) to fill in starred ratings and/or (again, not required) reading dates. But the ability to mark a book read kind of hinges on the working the list part. This is how you decide how done with the book you are...of course, it could encourage you to write a review as well. =P

- One last thing to sort of steal from ListsofBests - view. When you view a list, you get a visual clue that shows you whether you've consumed, are consuming or haven't consumed something. It also shows if you've marked it as worth/not worth consuming. Basically, consumed items have a green background, items currently being consumed have a green background and the words "WORTH CONSUMING" and "NOT WORTH CONSUMING" appear on consumed items if you indicated either. If we could either highlight or checkmark the books we've read and display stars if we used them, that would be totally PONY. :)

If we could do the side-by-side comparisons to another person that would be even spiffier.

LibraryThing Enhancements over Lists

Most of this would be in the Memes section, but also linkable if folks wanted to share it in a thread like the BBC one.

- Sharing progress. If folks could easily grab their percentage complete, that would be awesome. Imagine the BBC thread where folks could say, I'm 22% done - and that's 22 books because I can do math!

- Site statistics available on the LIST master page. So you're looking at the list and you know you're 22% done, but how's everyone on the site that adopted the list? What if that could be calculated easily - and we knew that the top-read book on the list was Animal Farm by 77% of list adopters and that only 2% of list adopters had read Germinal? It might help for some group reads. :)

- Mini Homepage-type stuffs on lists. So one could see quickly discussions/currently reading/wishlist stuff on books that are related to that list right away. Plus, if there's a dedicated group on LT, that group should be able to add a link.

- Profile stats - these lists should be displayable under memes or right on your profile. Because they're fun.

Oh, I should mention that the existence of an Honor & Award or Series doesn't eliminate a list creation. After all, some folks may want to read all the Booker Prize winners - and show their progress on that list.

Try this as an idea.
List should be an optional module on your home page. List can only be created from here.
Lists are of three types, private, public and open. Public and open lists are listed on your profile, all lists are listed on your home page (if the module is selected).
Only the originator can edit private and public lists, but anyone may view a public list. Open lists can be adopted by anyone, and then appear on their profile page. Once adopted they may edit the list.
From a book page one can select add to list, which will then let you select a list to add to. Also on the book page a link to a list containing all open and public lists the book is on.
Adoption of open lists is from the page for the list, got to via either an existing adoptee's profile or the page of a book on the list.
Perhaps some method of merging open lists, after votes by adoptees of both lists. This would be for cases where, say, two 1001 books to read lists had been created.

#10

I think that lists (at least the public ones) need better visibility than the homepages of users. It needs a separate area (like Talk has) where all the public lists are shown. I have no problem with them also appearing on people's homepages.

I like the module on the book page to show all lists to which it belongs. I don't think that adding to list works from the book page.

I think I have talked a bit in the past about lists but cannot find it in a quick browse of old topics.

Anyway -

Lists should be private or public. Private lists are just visible, editable, etc by the user who created them.

Lists should be able to have comments on individual items and generally on the list itself. Each item should have some initial commentary added by the person who added that item to the list.

Public lists are visible to everyone. There should be options to make the list items commentable / not-commentable* by the public, and to let the public add items to the list.

Private lists can be made public after creation - you can create your list over a number of days before publishing it.

Lists should be able to be ordered by the list creator.

I don't do reading completion stuff but Zoe does and her ideas look OK. However I don't think that the list consumption count should be on every list (for some it wouldn't be appropriate) - so that should be an option to the list creator.

Ideas for discussion / consideration -
- Group based lists. Another status between private and public. Could affect visibility, commentability, and the ability to add items.
- List owner being able to remove items which have been added by the public.

* doesn't affect the initial comment.

No interest in lists

Moderate priority for me. I like Zoe's summary overview, and there is nothing in the ensuing discussion I'd oppose.

Addition: ability to annotate a list and / or entries on the list. For example, I'd probably use lists as a mini-curriculum, and would like to note the purpose of each title in the overall goal. If I created a Political Philosophy 101 list, I'd state the overall objective and bounds of my purpose, and add a line or two for each title, indicating why I selected it / what to read it for.

What do I want from Lists? - To have them implemented, so I stop seeing threads about them. "Lists have been discussed a lot in the past" is a bit of an understatement. ;)

Very low priority for me.

I think lists can be really useful for things that don't fit in series. For instance, someone might want to list their Penguin pockets, or a different publisher series. Or make a list for cases such as this http://www.librarything.com/series/What+is+Stephen+Harper+Reading%3F.
I don't know if I would use it as such, but I think it would be a nice addition to the site.

Add me to the group of 4, 6, 12, 15.

No interest in lists. Can already be done with Tags and Collections.

>17 gilroy: The sort of list described in my points 3 and 4 can't be done with Tags or Collections. I'm surprised that there doesn't seem to be much interest in this type of list even among people want lists in general.

Also, in the discussion about wishlist separation people seemed to be moving toward a List-based solution.

#17

No they can't.

1) I want to keep my catalogue for books that I own. I want to make lists which may include books that I don't own. If I was to remove a book from the catalogue - the list should remain unchanged.
2) The open for extension bit is not possible with Tags and Collections. How can you add a book to one of my lists for example?
3) Commentary (both by me and others) on my list
4) Zoe's reading consumption (sounds like a disease) idea.
5) Lack of visibility.

The use-cases that the pro-lists people can see just cannot be done with tags and collections. If that was the case there would be better workarounds than just forcing it into CK series or CK awards.

From Zoe's list in post 1:

1. The ability to make a personal list, created by me and editable only by me, that includes title, author, personal comments, and cover picture. There should be a toggle to turn the cover pictures on and off. There should be an option to make these lists public or private. Adding a book to a personal list from the work page should be easy and quick.


This is entirely doable with collections (other than the privacy controls), and largely redundant for that reason; besides, unless there are limits (that you can only put books in a type 1 list that are in your catalog, or that free users can only have the sum of books in their catalog + all lists under 200), it's an obvious loophole to allow free users arbitrary numbers of books. Not worth it.

2. The ability to make a communal public list that anyone can edit. So people could work together to put the 1001 Books to Read Before You Die list into LT, for example. I'm not sure exactly how mass editing for these things works out, but I know other sites do it.

Yes; this would seem to be simply implemented using the existing Series functionality, just creating a parallel structure for lists, and would hopefully get rid of some of the non-series series (and non-award Awards in CK, for that matter.)

3. The ability to make a ranked group list where everyone is allowed to contribute a limited number of votes. For example, there might be a Best Books Read in 2010 list where everyone is allowed to list their 10 favourites, and books are ranked based on how many people have listed each one.

4. The ability to make a ranked group list with various other conditions: everyone can vote for unlimited books; users' individual rankings affect or don't affect the total, etc.

Neat ideas, but probably difficult to implement.

5. Option to see what percentage of a list you've read, based on a new default "Read" collection.

They can't add a new default collection at this late date, but maybe allowing it to be based on a user-specified collection, so that people interested in this could create a "Read" collection?


6. Option to track other users' public lists?


Bookmark them?


7. Some way to have lists affiliated with groups.


Good idea, presumably relating back to #3 and 4.

Really I think private lists are a bad idea, because of the loopholes (unless they have the "it must be in your catalog" restriction, or limit them to paid users), but the others sound fine.

I can't do what I want to do with lists through collections without bastardising my use of collections (I'm doing that now to a degree because we don't have lists but I'd rather have a dedicated list function than have to disrupt my collections further). That said, my interest in lists as a feature mostly comes from the fact that I'm sure that I remember Tim saying it would be something he could knock out over a weekend. I would reassess this if it turned into some kind of huge development issue because there are many things I want more.

I don't think Lists open a loophole on the 200 book limit for free accounts because they would just be title and author (and notes). You wouldn't have all the extra fields or the ability to sort it any way you want. Lists are just too limited to be an adequate replacement for the catalog.

ETA: OK, there are other features to lists besides title, author, and notes that people have requested, but those features, allowing anybody to edit it, or being able to vote on it's members, do not help to make Lists more desirable for cataloging books.

22>

True, though I still think the loophole would be exploited if present.

I think it's a moot point, as I think the default position should be to assume Tim realizes all this and would enforce whatever limits he felt was right. Just seems to distract from discussion.

Some other threads:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/75014

and included in

http://www.librarything.com/topic/80706
http://www.librarything.com/topic/79663

>20 lorax: As you may be aware, I'm not happy with the way Collections were handled and am not willing to use them for my wishlist, for one. The whole point of my #1 is that we could have a basic list of books that aren't part of our catalogue for whatever reason. As jjwilson points out, the "loophole" shouldn't be a concern because a list wouldn't have the same data capacity as a catalogue. We might as well forbid Talk out of concern that someone could make a big touchstoned list of their books to get around the 200-book limit.

Neat ideas, but probably difficult to implement.

Well, GR has managed to have some version of that for years now....

They can't add a new default collection at this late date

I don't see why not. I think it would actually be more complicated to base Read status off of user-selected collections, given the recent comments about how it's not technically feasible for MWYB to take into account checkboxes both ways, etc. Uniformity seems much easier. From the perspective of Lists it doesn't make much difference to me how it's done anyway, but I think a Read collection could be used for other interesting features too.

>22 jjwilson61: I do think Lists should have a cover toggle as well, because that would make them more interesting to browse, but I still don't think that would make them a viable substitute for a catalogue.

I see no reason for lists nor would I ever use them.
This is just a huge pony

>27 rbott: I don't think a hugely popular feature request counts as a "pony" just because you personally don't care about it.

I want to be able to make lists. I want these features for the lists:

- (1) private, publicly viewable, publicly editable
- (2) title for the list and comment (description) for the list. Tags/keywords would also be nice but are not essential.
- (3) Add / display Title, Author, Year, Cover, comments fields for the individual list items. LT to offer selection/matching/searching for work/edition matching.
- (4) thumbing feature for publicly viewable/publicly editable lists.
- (5) ability to "star" or "favorite" various lists.
- (6) checkmarks/collection awareness on the lists. (Although this would be *most* useful if I could pick out my own checkmarks / colors.)
- (7) a home page module for "Lists" that would include "your lists", "hot lists", "recently added public lists", and "(new or random) lists from your connections".
- (8) "lists as memes" -- I don't mind the idea of being able to select a "list" and have it display statistics or checkmarks or something related to your collection on the list. It's not essential to me but I could see it could be fun. If it existed I would also want in the home page module above a section for this -- named, perhaps, "your adopted lists" or "your list memes".

As to other comments --
* "Lists" are not series, tags, or collections.
* It sounds so boring just to say they fill a gap, although it's true; but they have a *lot* more potential than that. And it's fun -- lists are one of the things that OCD cataloger-type folks like to do. It would be a great way to inject more FUN into LT, and we can always use more fun. (-;
* > 20 lorax on group-editable lists: Yes; this would seem to be simply implemented using the existing Series functionality, just creating a parallel structure for lists, and would hopefully get rid of some of the non-series series (and non-award Awards in CK, for that matter.) Yikes, this is so not a simple way to do lists or awards. You have to call up each individual book and add the list in the exact same way. Much, much easier to have a "list" page, and add the items to that.
* This is a rhetorical question to all the folks who are saying, "blech, not interested" -- why are you even bothering? Presumably you voted "no" on the lists polling. This is a thread about brainstorming / discussing desirable lists features. It sort of feels to me that all the "no, no, I hate them" is an attempt to derail the discussion into a "lists, yes or no?" argument.

This is a rhetorical question to all the folks who are saying, "blech, not interested" -- why are you even bothering? Presumably you voted "no" on the lists polling. This is a thread about brainstorming / discussing desirable lists features. It sort of feels to me that all the "no, no, I hate them" is an attempt to derail the discussion into a "lists, yes or no?" argument.

You say it's rhetorical, but I'll answer anyway. If the only people commenting on the thread were people who wanted lists, it would give a very lopsided view of the importance of lists to the community as a whole.

Yes, Lists was number 8 on Zoe's list, but the first 6 are all individually huge, and all had significantly more support. How about we have a big discussion thread about each of those, before we start discussing lists?

29> (rhetorical question)

I think part of it is due to the fact that Lists wind up getting talked about in a LOT of threads, either as the main subject or as a big tangent. And I say that even though I'm in favor of Lists.

>30 r.orrison: I think the difference is that there's not much to say about most of those improvements; it's clear what people want just from the poll questions.

And of course, I don't expect Tim to work in perfectly descending order down the list. Ideally I'd like to have up-to-date discussions about all of the potentially ambiguous top 50 items, so that if Tim does decide to work on something he'll be able to see what exactly people want from it.

Or should there just be a thread for every item? If someone else wants to start them.... I tried adding a link to this thread and it does unfairly highlight it, so I took it out. Maybe I'll make a separate page of links.

I don't have a great personal appetite for lists, but I have noticed that there are some "series" that really don't qualify as series by the LT definition, and are still very useful "lists," e.g. book-length biographies of a single subject. It would be good to have a way to create these that doesn't clutter the CK data and still make them available for users to share.

Not interested in lists, but if the majority of users wants lists..... OK by me.

I'm one of the 'not interested in lists' crowd, but if LT implements them, can we please have a good system for getting rid of the series that aren't series (that drives me nuts!)

I am very much for lists as a vehicle for offering reading lists (ie public/open lists as described above). A large percentage of Talk threads would readily and usefully be subsumed into such lists and would then be more easily located by interested users.

I have to say I'm with ZOE on this. I was truly disappointed in how collections were implemented. I wound up deciding that, because Tim refused to allow list which were completely separate from my library/books, I would not even bother using collections. They cannot do what I want.

Lists wouldn't solve all of the uses I had for collections, but they would cover most.

Right now, I have settled for opening other accounts to cover my lists/collections needs. This is a clumsy/awkward way for me to handle the problem as it requires that I log in and out to get to my separate lists/collections. The result of this being that I forget to add things to the other accounts regularly and therefore I forget and lose information I wanted to collect.

I'm not complaining. I get my money's worth out of my main account. Tim doesn't owe me anything. However, I would love to see lists as a new function and I would definitely use it in many ways that tags and collections cannot cover.

Nothing.

Hey, I got a good idea.

How about we let Tim know what tweeks we want to see to collections, get that feature FIXED, then discuss the new lists function?

Lists is a small pony in the corner who's flanks looked raw and flayed open because everyone keeps talking about something that is not happening quickly enough for them. We have stallions standing bright and shiny... and half put together that need work first.

>40 gilroy: The issues with Collections aren't going to be fixed. See, for example, this recent bug post, and endless old discussions about the general philosophy of separate wishlists.

I've gathered data about member priorities. We know where Lists stand in the big picture, and they're pretty high up there. It's the people who keep claiming Lists are a small pony because they don't personally care about them who are deliberately distorting the situation.

Note, for example, that Lists are polling above any Collections improvement. So much for your great idea.

Right. Collections aren't Lists, and they shouldn't be "improved" to make them Lists.

#40 Collections aren't broken. They don't need to be 'fixed'. They may not do what everyone wants but they're spot on fort needs & exactly what I wanted/expected.

Certainly I am perfectly happy with Collections as is. Per my post 37 above, I see Lists as rather a different animal. Or do they need to be a herd?

#41> Wasn't there a comment about after collections being released, they'd make it so certain collections didn't effect recommendations?

That is the primary fix I want.

45>

Yeah, and there were also comments that the author-role system would be extended to books entered before it was introduced, and that author splitting would be extended so that different authors with the same name would get their own pages. "Soon" here means about the same thing as "two weeks", if not longer.

45> That feature has been part of Collections since the start. Just edit your collections and uncheck the Use For Recommendations box.

46> Tim never promised that authors getting their own page would be soon. He said that author splitting was a fairly easy first step he could take in that direction, but full author separation will be a major task.

48>

Ah, you're right, I misremembered the wording. It (on the page of any split author) actually says "in the near future", not "soon".

49> I think you forgot your sarcasticon.

Really? That was silly of him to put up that wording.

51>

No sillier than promising collections in "two weeks" for a year and a half. :)

#47> Actually, the check box is available, but the feature doesn't work properly. (I'm still seeing books in my recommendations based on a collection I said don't use.)

> 53: Are you sure you have also kept them separate from all collections you do want recommendations for? Including disabling recommendations on "Your Library"?

Asking since this seems to work just fine for me.

I think the way it works is mostly just a bit confusing. It's not immediately clear whether the checkbox means 'don't ever use any books that appear in this collection' (regardless of where else they appear) or 'don't use books that appear in this collection unless they also appear in a collection I'm using'.

The latter is the way it actually works, but I can see why people get confused. The way most people use collections to manage recommendations is to actually uncheck /all/ collections save one, which they use for recs - often a special 'recommendations' collection.

I admit I find this to be rather clunky.

Right, the way it works is very counter-intuitive and more than that, the only way to make it really work is to arrange your collections in a way that is itself counter-intuitive and a pain.

And as discussed on that linked Bug thread, unchecking the 'Use for connections' box, only works one way. ALl your wishlists etc connect to everyone else. Which seems like a fundamental design flaw to me, but Tim assures us this isn't so. I find collections 'broken' but I'm not sure that lists would help.

I've made a new thread about Collections, since the topic seems to be coming up everywhere right now.

One other thing I'd love to see on Lists: filters by group. So, just say there's a list called "Best Books I Read in 2010". Anyone who's interested can contribute. Then we could filter it to see the best books according to the 75 Book Challenge group, according to Le Salon Litteraire, etc.

Also: I'd like to see usernames attached to contributions.