Bricoleur (David)'s comments
(member since Sep 17, 2007)
Bricoleur (David)'s comments from the Goodreads Feedback group.
(showing 1-20 of 52)
;)there's actually quite a few features "buried" just under the surface - sometimes not in the places you might expect and in lieu a true user manual, then asking or making suggestions is the best way to find out.
Cheers, Dave
Paul:
This capability is already present!
When you are on a book page, scroll down till you see the "Friends Reviews" box... you'll find a link there called "Recommend to Friends"; clicking it will give you the options to either email a recommendation to anyone or, through a list of your "Goodreads Friends" on the right of the screen, to selected Goodreads Friends...
I see now that refreshing the browser cycles through the different options - including, when displaying the "other books shelved" apparently randomly selecting the shelf - but this is obviously hit and miss.If it is too much to give "toggles everywhere" simply letting the user select which of the options they want displayed and then using the refresh button to display different selections for this option (eg cycling through the shelves) would do the trick for me!
That said, this feature is a nice move forward even as it sits!
What determines which option (I've seen:
People who looked at this book also reviewed;
Other books shelved as <shelf name>)
comes up? Rivka suggests that other options sometimes come up, so are you testing to see which is most popular or works best?
If so, I disagree with Rivka on the "other books" - I would prefer the "other books shelved as" option over than the "people who" option, but only if it included the ability to select which of the "shelves" the info was posted for (rather than just the most popular shelf). I would see no use for a "you recently looked at" option {my memory usually still serves me well through at least my last session :)}
Better yet, It it possible to give a "toggle" to rotate through these options?
4) could you merge the quotes from Elizabeth's Quotable Quote group into the new facility?
edit:
I just had a quick look... unfortunately there is probably too much variation in input format there to allow automating the process ...
If the Elizabeth (group moderator) thinks it wise, perhaps she could post an encouragement there for people to move the quotes they input there over to the new facility.
3)there should be a way to add your own tags if you add a quote that someone else has already input
"My Quotes" is a wonderful addition! I see that a handful of us have already discovered it and are busy adding quotes at an almost dangerous pace :)
One small problem, and secondly, a request for a future enhancement (in the some day category):
1) there doesn't appear to be a way to edit a quote entered (necessary for those hand fisted typists such as myself, sigh).
2) How about a link from the author page to relevant quotes?
I paged away to do the steps myself (to be sure I had it exactly right) then used the browser back tab to get all the way back to Brooke's entry... I'll bet I was looking at a cached version of the page when I typed mine... and in between you must have entered yours... but then again, the "Twilight Zone" does have a more interesting ring about it !
Hi Brooke:
Just after your list of shelves on your "my books" page you should see a grey link "edit shelves..."
Follow that link and you will get a list of all your shelves and you can simply use the option make exclusiveon your "partial-reads" to get the effect you want... this shelf will now behave the same way as the "to-read" and "Currently-reading" shelves.
edit:
I know Lisa's post wasn't there when I typed mine... how did she do that :)
Change it back, Please!
<edit> newly added:
Ok... now I'm confused .... it shows the <added so long ago> in the directory.... but the actual time in the thread and I can't recall if that's the way it always was... or a test of both together !
So to recast my first remark:
I like the method of showing how long its been since the post... others mileage will vary
;)
Hi Tiffany!
I checked your profile and saw your words:
The only problem is, having taken so many classes, my list of bookshelves is now cluttered. Please bear with the mess until I get it all figured out.".... well, all I can say is that the answer is MORE SHELVES !
I do like your idea of shelving books by the course you took them in... I still have a few of my university texts in my library, they were in some ways the start of my collection, but now I can't even remember what the course numbers/specific classes they might have been for.
Have you given any thought to selving by Library of Congress number as well? I've started shelving by the first two characters and descriptive name (eg. loc_bl- Religions-Mythology-Rationalism) in the hope that a few of us doing doing this (in addition to our own unique shelving of course) could lead to a great way of sharing knowledge about "where the good stuff is"!
I quickly embraced the new feature allowing creation of my own "exclusive Shelves" ... and certainly wouldn't want to go back....
But I now, increasingly, find that I long for "one view" that shows everything I have ...be it in any of the three default exclusive shelves or those of my own making.
Would it be possible to add a "show all books" view to the "my books" page?
Hi Jo....re shelf abuse
I meant it as a humorous comment... Indeed, shelving is fantastic... but I suspect very few users here on Goodreads have set up quite as many as I have. I'm gradually posting all the books in my non-fiction library and they almost always need to be shelved multiple ways. This means that I have so many shelves (perhaps 2000 or more) that the existing layout of my home page, profile, and my books page is knocked out of whack...what worked well, and looked "pretty," with dozens of shelves (as you have) is stretched to its limits with hundreds or thousands of shelves for a single user (as I have).
There is no doubt that Goodreads is much better in so many ways than a simple homegrown database, and I'd tried about a dozen other approaches before I found Goodreads -- but now wouldn't be without it.
just to support my case for long shelf names .... most of my long shelf names come from using the Library of Congress Subject names for my non-fiction books. While not needed, to as great a degree, for literature, long names are a big help in finding works in the non-fiction world.
I have entered only about 1/4 of my library into Goodreads so far (and I've only got around to adding full shelving infomation to about 1/2 of these) so by the time I'm finished each of the shelves will have multiple to "tens or hundreds" of volumes - then, I think, I will be able to justify having so many shelves :)
Thanks for the more/less link .... that will help a lot!
Otis:
I just entered a dummy string of letters (xzqw) into the search box on "add new books" with the button selector set to goodreads:
While now ,as in the past, I get the expected "no results found -sorry!" message the selector button behavior is now changed - it jumps to "amazon.ca" while it used to jump to amazon.jp as reported by Squirrel... the ninjas must have been working in the dark of night.
Thanks that's fantastic... I'll then be able to upload images easily instead where required!
As for Squirrel's problem...as I said, I'd seen it sometime ago- which is why I could describe it. As I recall it was with some relatively obscure volumes I'd picked up in my travels (UK, Australia, NZ etc so I wasn't surprised were not yet in Goodreads) but I haven't seen it occur recently.... when I get a chance I'll see if I can find a volume that I haven't already manually added that I can show you as an example.
Over to you, Otis.... Squirrel's looks like an (small but real) issue, with mine just me being a pest again ;) as I can swap back and forth if absolutely needed...
Hi Squirrel:Is this when you use the "find at" link? Or is it when you are using the find function and it fails to produce a result for your selected target?
I've noticed in the past that for some reason amazon.jp is at the top of the list of amazon sites, and if the search fails it is selected for the next search... and has to be changed back for your desired target.
Hi Bree:
I'm aware of redirect by the target based on cookies etc. But this is not the case here.
It is Goodreads that is directing us directly to amazon.ca (changing the country in our profile from Canada to the US will result in being sent to Amazon.com; changing it back to Canada will result in once again being sent to amazon.ca)
ps. great to chat to another Canadian here...even if a comparison of books shows a 0% overlap in common books!
I admit it.... I am a shelf abuser.
I have far too many... and some of their names might seem too long to some...
But could I request another 5 characters length be allowed (I think the max is currently 35 and I would like much longer - say 10- but even 5 more would be a big help).
Secondly, the "box" width used to display my bookshelves on the home page is ~26 characters.... meaning some of my shelf names run outside the pretty box (to say nothing of my list of shelves running far past the bottom of the box) and the count of my books sometimes rolls over to the next line rather than staying with the shelf name.
I know it can't be a top priority... but can it be on the someday list? Thanks for your consideration.
