This Is Not The Michael You're Looking For's comments (member since Feb 19, 2008)

This Is Not The Michael You're Looking For's comments from the Goodreads Feedback group.

Very cool. Very very cool, in fact. However, because I can never be satisfied, a few suggestions :-)

1. Currently selected shelves are marked by "-" and unselected shelves are marked as "+". I guess the logic is that you are clicking on a plus to add a shelf to the selected list and clicking on a minus to remove a shelf from the selected list, but my first instinct was that clicking was more of a toggle and the symbols should represent the current status, therefore it felt very backwards for all of the selected shelves to be "-" and the unselected to be "+".

2. Now you need negatives. Show all "shelf X" which are also NOT "shelf Y". In this case, your symbology would be something more along the lines of +/0/-

3. You can currently choose multiple exclusive shelves. Since it is impossible to have a book on multiple exclusive shelves this seems to be a bit unnecessary. Perhaps too tricky to implement, but if you add an exclusive shelf you might consider automatically subtract any other exclusive shelves which were already chosen.

Regardless, a great addition.

I vote for narrator as well.

I hate this idea. Personally, I wish nominees weren't even listed. It clutters it up as it is and in some cases there could be dozens of "nominees"

Well, yes, I saw the same unlinked books on both pages. Doing a search brought them onto the same page so I could combine, but I had to have multiple pages open and scan back and forth between them to know which ones to search for in order to do the combine. Sometimes this is always the case, but if they'd been alphabetical the unlinked books with the same title would at least have been adjacent.

The only problem I see with this idea is I'd like to be able to associate a story with multiple books if it appears in multiple books. Otherwise, do we start getting multiple "editions" of short stories just the way we have multiple editions of books. (Of course, there are short stories which get re-edited by authors before publication, so maybe one would argue this should be exactly what we have).

For authors with more than 500 (?) books, the combine page is split into multiple pages. Apparently, however, the alphabetical sorting of the books takes place after splitting the books into multiple pages.

Go to the combine page of Arthur Conan Doyle. This page appears to be in alphabetical order (starts with A goes through Z, then some foreign characters). Click on the link for page 2 (at the bottom). This page starts over with "A" again, although the entries on this page are also in alphabetical order.

If all of the books were taken as a whole and alphabetized, page 1 should be intermixed within page 2. Presumably the sort should be prior to the split.

I'd love a "Not Interested" marker which hid or otherwise marked the book as "viewed" in some way. Would make it way easier to use.

MICHAEL, I spent a little time fooling around with awards this weekend. Looking good.

One minor nitpick: you fixed the issue where the counts now specify number of books rather than number of winners, but the drop-down list for sorting still refers to winners, rather than books.

Another feature to consider for the future: An Awards section on the author page, much like the book list (undoubtedly to be addressed something like ...goodreads.com/author/award/... ) where one can find a list of all of the book awards an author has won.

There's certainly no rush on this, but if it can be done it's an obvious extension of the system.

John, that is not considered vandalization, but rather an effort to keep the database clean. In this specific case, you may quite possibly be correct in that this item should be considered book-like and returned to its original state, but this was an honest mistake and not a form of vandalism.

Unfortunately, ISBN's are not restricted to books; sellers and distributors use them to catalog anything that might appear in a bookstore, including bookmarks, cardboard display pieces, posters, calendars, t-shirts, stuffed animals, stickers, DVDs, CDs, VHS tapes, software, giftwrap, etc. It is an unfortunate an extremely irritating reality of the way the ISBN system is used.

You should count yourself lucky: the only reason the entry wasn't deleted completely (which would be preferred for legitimate non-books) is that anything with an ISBN automatically reloads from Amazon and can never be permanently deleted unless it is removed from the Amazon database.

I meant to comment on this as well. I sort of like the java popup with the instructions for entering book information (I think it makes the instructions more obvious for novice users), but as mentioned, there is this problem where the popups sometimes get stuck and won't go away. The Authors one seems to be the worst, it happens quite frequently, but there may be others which do it as well.

Works nice. Thanks.

The awards list is working much better than before and appears to be much more stable. A few more comments, however.

1. On the front page of the awards, you can do things like sort by "most winners" and it lists the number of winners after each award. Except, these counts don't represent the winners, they represent both winners and nominees. Perhaps another word should be used.

2. Because each awards page is split between winners and nominees, the multiple paging (much appreciated, by the way) system can have some slightly odd behavior. For example, if you go to the second page of the Nebula awards and scroll down to the bottom of the winners list (middle of the page), you'll see that the page controls claim that there are only two pages. But if you scroll past the "runners up" list, all the way to the bottom of the page, it says there is a third page. This is because there are way more nominees than winners (something which would be true for every award in which nominees are actually listed in full!).

3. Furthermore, if you go to the third page of the nebula awards (following the link under the runners up section), at the top of the page under the winners section it says "we don't have a record of anyone winning this award yet" which is incorrect and a consequence of the page structure.

Rather than having both winners and nominees on every page (which has always seemed rather odd), why not list all winners first, followed by the nominees? Or even split them into separate pages: a winners list and a nominees list (perhaps a link at the top which allows one to toggle back and forth?)

Must just be one of those things the brain didn't absorb. I went looking for an edit link and somehow I could only find the link to the award.

Er...ok, maybe I'm crazy (or more likely blind), but I would swear that link didn't used to be there.

Never mind.

It's actually a slightly more serious issue than just being able to see the full list. One cannot edit an award attached to a book if it doesn't show up on the award page...trying to edit the award from the book page takes you to the award page (where edits can be made), but if the book is outside the first 30 the award for that book is essentially uneditable.

It's been a commonly requested feature and is hopefully on the to do list.

I'm still getting only the first 30 listed.

The John W. Campbell Memorial Award disappeared while I was cleaning up the books on it. I tried to recreate it, but I've now discovered that all of the books which had that award are now inaccessible (e.g., Rendezvous with Rama)

I really like the Category field, but for larger awards a sort or filter by category will definitely be necessary.

Some of the awards merge fine, others cause errors. For example, I cannot merge "Bram Stoker Award" with "Bram Stoker Awards"