Two new features: Location search and archiving comments
Location search. The search page now allows you to search the locations users have entered on their profiles. As with everything else, providing your location is totally voluntary, but many users have entered on. It is also unstructured, rather than a zip code or something like that. For that reason, you may find it necessary to search once for "Massachusetts" and again for "MA." Here are the results for my home-away-from-hometown, Boston—39 users!
This feature is fun now. It will be more fun when I get forums, and users can swap bookstore suggestions, etc.
Archiving comments. I don't know about you, but I have a million comments.* So I added an "archive comments" link, so you don't need to delete a comment to get it off the page. There a link to view your archived comments.
I'm weighing revamping the profile page, to put the comments on a separate page. A even bigger revamp would be to provide LT users with an ersatz reading blog. Reviews could—at your discretion—appear, as could independent blog entries. I'm not sure if this would be on the main profile page or not. Probably not. Reactions?
* I beg pardon for still working my way through these and the emails occasioned by the crash. I find it physically impossible to answer comments for more than a few hours at a stretch.
This feature is fun now. It will be more fun when I get forums, and users can swap bookstore suggestions, etc.
Archiving comments. I don't know about you, but I have a million comments.* So I added an "archive comments" link, so you don't need to delete a comment to get it off the page. There a link to view your archived comments.
I'm weighing revamping the profile page, to put the comments on a separate page. A even bigger revamp would be to provide LT users with an ersatz reading blog. Reviews could—at your discretion—appear, as could independent blog entries. I'm not sure if this would be on the main profile page or not. Probably not. Reactions?
* I beg pardon for still working my way through these and the emails occasioned by the crash. I find it physically impossible to answer comments for more than a few hours at a stretch.
posted by Tim at 1:23 AM
8 Comments:
Just not on the main profile page, and let us have an option to hide it, if we like.
I love the idea of having a reading blog, but I still think the focus at librarything should be about books, not personalities (which that sort of thing might or might not turn into).
Hide the comments, you mean? There is a feature now to hide them (it's termed "disallow comments," which is the sort of dumb term I come up with at 3 in the morning).
I agree that the focus needs to be books, but that reading blogs could enhance that. The danger is, of course, that it turns into nothing more than a "sorter," rather than the topic. Most chat rooms are "sorters." Go into the "20-something singles" room and people are flirting and talking about sex with 20-somethings. But go into most "books and literature" and people are... flirting and talking about sex, this time with the sort of people who might be (but aren't) talking about books and literature.
There is a feature now to hide them (it's termed "disallow comments," which is the sort of dumb term I come up with at 3 in the morning).
Not a "dumb" term so much as it is an unclear term. I had assumed that it meant "don't allow people to make comments", not "let people make comments but hide them".
So perhaps it should read "show comments/hide comments", rather than "allow/disallow".
I would like a "book location" field as well. My books are spread over two places (home/university).
Also, a price field would be interesting both for keeping record of my purchases and for insurance purposes.
To be honest, unlike the commenters above, I can't see the need for a special 'location' field when simply tagging books with where they are works perfectly for me.
Given the many different ways that people classify the location of their books (by house? room? bookcase? shelf?) it may not be easy to get a 'one location field suits all' answer.
At any rate, if you were to introduce such a field somewhere down the line, I hope you also implement some way to automatically convert 'location' tags into the 'location' field, rather than putting users like me into the position where we'll have to enter all the data *again* if we want to take advantage of the new field.
I'm pretty sceptical on the location field, I must say. Tags are the answer, man.
The price field idea is very good, and something I'd like to do. I've discussed it before on the blog. The trick is that Amazon supplies my pricing info, and they have strict rules about refreshing and not caching that data for long. I might be able to pull *used* prices from someone else, like Abe books.
Tim
Would it be possible to enter your own price? Because most of my books come from offline shops (and most of my books aren't available through Amazon).
I think prices are like dates. You need more than one field. I personally buy most of my books used and I collect many while I'm traveling overseas. That means I never pay the Amazon price and I pay in all kinds of currencies.
My last 6 months worth of purchases were in Mexican pesos but sometime in the next week I'll start buying stuff with Guatemalan quetzals!
Post a Comment
<< Home