Some updates
Some quick updates:
- The site has been slow, and today there were some server glitches. Can you hear the hamster wheel squeeking?
- A new, much better server is coming tomorrow, or possibly Tuesday. I think it will be a significant improvement. Whether it is or not, the new setup is much more flexible and expandible.
- I spent the day working out how to disambiguate editions. They'll be big changes in that area soon.
posted by Tim at 7:46 PM
27 Comments:
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for the disambiguate editions: maybe http://www.oclc.org/research/researchworks/xisbn/default.htm (xisbn) is handy?
Thanks. Yes, I've looked at it.
LibraryThing *may* use that initially, but the innovative element will be user control. That'll be useful for non-ISBN books.
Anyway, LibraryThing will be providing external access to this data, like OCLC does.
yiipppeeee! edition disambiguation: my favorite ten syllables in a row.
Wait, that's NINE syllables, unless you pronounce edition with three, which would be cute. Or are you eliding one and counting the "yipee."
I need to come up with a sexier way of putting the concept. Disambiguation is like embiggen—people just don't believe it's a word (although it's perfectly cromulent).
"Work" vs. "book" is also bunk. It's taking a very slight and sporadic difference in meaning and turning it into a sharp distinction. And it's boring.
Nominations accepted.
We need to juice it up somehow. Give it marketing appeal. I think sexy is hard. "Book coupling" is too British. "Borgy" sounds like a Hugarian composer. The scientific/musical connotations of "book fusion" attract. But I think the answer is to go for the "extreme" angle: Book-mashing!
I've always liked the word munging... bring on the book-munger!
"Book coupling" is too British.
Hey! Some of us LibraryThingers ARE British...
And we pronounce 'edition' with three syllables. What are you crazy Americans doing, saying 'e-di-ti-on'?
Anyway, thank you for all the new features lately, and yes, it's slow but it's still great. :D
Isn't book coupling how you end up with pamphlets?
Why not ignore the verb problem and go with something like "title variations" or "edition variations"?
Also disambiguate sounds a bit one-way when a lot of the work will be to "ambiguate" works which are really the same but are currently treated as though they are different.
Am I missing something, or has the Zeitgeist not updated in a couple of days?
I've been checking, in my obsessive/compusive way, for my 38th review (which went up on Friday evening) to be "credited" in the "250 most prolific reviewers" list, but that has been stuck at 37 ... which means that it's been at least 3 nights without an update!
What's up with that?
another note on updating (or not): the book count on the top of my catalog page is higher than the count on my profile page.
Sorry to hear about the growing pains -- I love the service.
FWIW, it seems like when the database server is being shut down, etc, the queries are echoed out to the user, eg:
SELECT COUNT(1) As numbooks FROM addstack AS a1 WHERE a1.books_userid = 'user' AND ( a1.books_public or a1.books_userid = 'user')Server shutdown in progress
This may not be a good thing...
I haven't been able to view anyone's catalog but my own today. Is that because of your server work, or is something else wicked going on?
Why invent "munge" when perfectly good "merge" exists? But a propos, as Mozart used to write when he changed the subject, how many "mongers" can you think of? Ironmonger, warmonger, ...
Excellent well; you are a fishmonger.
Tim,
I expect you are somewhat snowed under at the moment but when you have time could you take a look at search by tag for me?
If I search by tag I seem to be getting duplicates back when there are no duplicates in my library. For example if I search my library for the tag "signed" I get Ramsey Campbell's _The Overnight_ back 4 times. I know I only have 1 copy and that there is only 1 copy in my librarything library (confirmed by searching for "Campbell").
Is it possible to get ISO-formatted dates? The way dates work now is really confusing, especially since you don't display leading zeros.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601
I'd prefer to have a general option that affects display of all dates on librarything.com.
Tags: Yes, a bunch of tags got duplicated rather stupidly. I will get rid of them when I transfer servers.
Dates: ISO dates are unfriendly to most people. I think the site should show you dates based upon a preference, toggling between US dates and those used by the "others." (Yes, I'm joking. I already got called on this issue.
Speed: Yes. I feel your pain. I am working on it.
Blog: I love the blog idea. I thought of it before, but it's nice to hear the idea validated. I don't think it'll happen soon, but I'd consider it way down the road. Maybe there's some way to make the profile page more blogish, by fronting reading lists and reviews, when a user wants it.
Drupal. Hmm...
"SELECT COUNT(1) As numbooks FROM addstack AS a1 WHERE a1.books_userid = 'user' AND ( a1.books_public or a1.books_userid = 'user')"
This sounds a really funny query. Firstly the same thing is tested twice and secondly in the variants I know, the preferred way to get count() is count(*).
That query is true if books_userid = 'user' irrespective of the value of books_public. On the other hand, if books_userid <> 'user' it doesn't matter what the value of books_public is. And shouldn't there be a value to compare against?
I.e. if I understand correctly what the idea is, just change that to
a1.books_useris = 'user' or a1.books_public = 'something'
OR's tend to be bad, because they force the query optimizer to run queries multiple times. For instance, "a = '1' or a = '2' makes it to search the table twice. It's actually often quicker to use UNION, because the query analyzer can then optimize the query more efficiently.
I had a weird thing happen also. I entered in a book by Robert Kennedy but it's linked to some Christian fantasy series. Odd.
Dates: speaking as a Belgian, dates in the form of day/month/year that don't have leading zeros are extremely confusing. They look very alien to me.
Can't you implement several display types for dates, so that a user could set his preferred date display somewhere, and have LibraryThing reflect his preference everywhere on the site?
What I'm saying is, if you can implement two types of dates, why not implement more?
nevermind. My problem cleared up this evening.
Why don't accented letters work reliably? For example, ë or é often (though not always) show up as garbled text...
I'd like to second (or use whatever iteration is called for) the request of anonymous for alternate date settings.
My own preference is for the delightfully unambiguous yyyy-mm-dd. Anyone seeing it tends to expect the day to come last, since the logical progression downward from the largest date element (the year) to the smallest (the day). Thus, even a newcomer to the format will correctly interpret 2006-02-04 as February 4, 2006 rather than March 2...
P.S. Or even April 2...
I need some sleep :-P
Over a year ago...I registered here and suddenly had a senior
moment and never returned. Well, tonight I came across my ID and password...and opened the door.
What a wonderfull site you have
made. Just testing, I entered an ISBN to see how the system worked. All I can say is "Perfect"
I shall return.
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