new_user's comments

new_user's comments from the Goodreads Feedback group.

Note: new_user is no longer a member of this group.

I'm also seeing the same thing as Sandi... and it makes that tab somewhat useless. I'm surprised more people haven't noticed (or maybe I just missed the thread). Do people actually go to each group page for new topics?

Thanks! :)

That would be nice. :)

No problem. Still going on intermittently though.

Kinda like this?




I think they're just testing some new code, or images.

Editted, so it doesn't take up the whole page.

That would be one long list... LOL.

First, Mike, thanks for starting this thread. There is a lot of good input here and this thread brings attention to some of the improvements that can be made to the shelving system at GoodReads so that users can get greater use out of all the wonderful features offered here.

Otis established shelves in the place of tags, and for organizing one's books, they're useful. However, another significant draw for users to join a book community is to find recommendations for more reading! :) As we know from the continuing requests for a recommendations engine, finding users of similar tastes, etc.

While the groups, friends, and reviews at GR are helpful, users tend to add to their reading lists in bulk! In my experience, a database of thousands of books invites that kind of greed, LOL. ;)

In this respect, however, tags are more useful than the shelves at GR for the following reasons, which some others might mentioned before:

1. Limitation on No. of Shelves
a. Currently, users cannot make as many shelves (in essence, identifiers to other members, e.g. "werewolf myths") as they want or they run the risk of cluttering their profiles and slowing the shelving process (i.e. when adding a book).

2. Limitation on Identifying Books
a. Right now, this system seems really weak. When I'm at a book's page, first and foremost in the "popular shelves" panel on the right, I see "read," "to-read," "currently-reading" and perhaps the most general information on genre, e.g. "fiction." I do not see the cool shelves that others have mentioned, e.g. "smart heroine" or "american indian" and so on, since shelves populated by only one person are not on the first page. So standardization is not the request here.

b. I do see popular personal shelves, like "to-buy" and "2008-reads," which are not as useful to other members (especially given the fact that there's a publication date on the same page).

c. I cannot tag books that are not my shelves, so that even if I want to identify a book for other people, I can't, unless I add the book and then delete it. Considering how many librarians there are on GR, I cannot believe that no one would be interested in better cataloguing.

One possible solution for the first problem might be to include a shelf cloud on book pages, so that all shelves show and perhaps enlarge popular shelves (?). Here, the advantage of tags is that users tag a book's entry in the database rather than the instance of that book on their shelves, so you would see less personal entries. I'm not sure how to incorporate this into our existing shelves except to ask users to hide personal shelves from the "popular shelves" section (this would have to be an option first, of course). :?

Another might be to incorporate Ajax for creating shelves and adding shelves, so that we're likely to see fewer instances of "parnormal fiction" and more truly unique shelves. This would also help users to avoid creating duplicate shelves, e.g. two "recycling" shelves. This way, regardless of the number of a user's shelves, the adding process is quick. Another, along similar lines, might be to "combine" similar shelves as we do different editions (only on the book pages), although I imagine this will be a less popular solution.

For books not on our shelves that we'd like to tag, "hidden" shelves might be useful, particularly if we could strike these books from our book counts. (Someone mentioned that no one would use a function that shares a name with an already existing function, but wouldn't it be possible to slap a new name, "tags," to coding that would in effect be hidden shelves?) That way, I could create as many unique, descriptive shelves for that book as I wanted without weighing down my profile, etc. Some books have no shelves, reviews, or even a description, LOL.

Subshelves is, again, nice for individual users but not really useful for the question here: ways in which (the masses of) member data can be useful to other members. I think many users here would like it if other members could also enjoy their hard shelving work. ;) (coughyeahyoulibrarianscough) And if not, they can always opt not to use the "tag" or "hidden shelf" option.

((On a side note, it's a little presumptuous to say that this or that is not what GR is "meant for." I think we'll let the founders decide that, and this is just a guess, but I think the founders want users to look to GR for as many of their book-related needs as they can humanly manage. This is a business. Ideally, they would want to be a one-stop shop. Why relegate GR to "just reviews" when they can provide more anyhow? LOL. I don't think everyone shares such a view.))

I'm not deciding the priority any improvements may take; these are just my suggestions.

I agree with Luann. "Discussion groups" is too long as a heading (especially compared to the other headings). At the same time, "discussion" is somewhat generic and sterile/uninviting. It doesn't really reflect the fun, personal character of the groups, and the other headings are all more personal ("my books," "friends," etc.)

I think "discuss" (or another verb, "talk," etc.) is user-oriented, i.e. user taking action, and fits nicely with the other tabs like "explore." Just my two cents.

It would be nice if the function for ordering shelves worked with the search function too. If there's a particular TBR book that I would like to order as #1, it would be nice to be able to do this by searching for it and then choosing "edit" and "reorder shelf" (or just "reorder" if the edit view is maintained while searching) instead of clicking "edit" and "reorder" on the first page of the shelf and browsing through each page.

Well, I can see your point, Ken-ichi. Groups is a little vague.

I would say tags aren't really useful, as groups will be harder to categorize than literature, especially the random ones, and generally, only one subject's needed to describe a group's purpose.

Since naming's the problem, maybe naming's the solution. Perhaps instead of "groups," we can use "discuss" or "discussion" as a navigational heading. That might interest more people. Or perhaps a separate group category (or subcategory) might be labeled "book clubs" before "books and literature," etc. Or the "groups" or "explore" pages might bring attention to "popular book clubs," etc.

I also agree that it would be nice to see the Feedback group separated from the rest, since it's a pretty busy group and consistently front and center when I'm not always interested, LOL.

That's pretty much what I use my "friends" for. So that I can pour through their shelves at my leisure (rather than peruse a few hundred books immediately) and expect to get book recommendations/advice in the future. I don't know any of them in real life, and our discussions, when we have them, usually remain about books. That's the case with many people; they don't talk much with their listed "friends" (how can they with so many?) and most people will "friend" you provided you have similar tastes (i.e. books on your shelves). I don't use GR to collect "buddies."

*shrug* Whichever method suits you.

Not to sound rude, but I don't think GoodReads is responsible for the fact you can't bookmark a page, Earl. It's as easy as that if you want to "remember" a person, or you can just add them as a friend like everyone else. That's the point of friends on GR, sharing recommendations (hence, "book community"). Meanwhile, GR is working on making it easier for users with similar tastes to connect.

And on a side note, I'm not sure what you were searching, but if you search "people" you're bound to have different results often since that's constantly changing (new users, etc.) There's not much that can be done if you're relying on that.

Hm, not bad. I thought the fonts were changing too, no?

I have to agree. If updates were hidden, they would probably never be seen, spoilers or not. At the same time, I don't like to read spoilers either. Maybe some updates could have a "spoiler" option that allows users to hide updates, like in the reviews? I think the updates are short enough for this to work.

Sherri, one of my groups also divides the discussion into a spoiler and non-spoiler topic, but it's not really a satisfactory solution at all. So I'm definitely for spoiler tags.

I don't know if anyone else has had this problem, but when I choose "friends" from the navigation tabs and browse to "books my friends have to swap" and then "edit which books you have to swap," I can only update the first page of books that appears.

If I browse to page 2, for example, and mark a book there as swappable, I get a "Books updated" message in red, but the book doesn't update. It's not a big deal, but it's nice to have when I'm updating several books at once, rather than editing my review for each individual book to say "I have a copy to sell/swap."

Thanks for the ignore feature, really appreciate that.

Hey, very cool, Ken-ichi, this is much more organized. :)

Isis, those are great suggestions. I second those. :)

Excellent idea. :) Best way to find the next book to read.