It is getting really slow at Leafmarks

[[deleted user]]

I hate to be the guy who asks that dreaded question starting with "Is it just me...", but is it just me or it became really quiet at Leafmarks lately? I had only a couple of updates on my news-feed during last week and a half.

Are there any people still there? Hello???

[Lisa]

It's never been as active as here but it depends on who you have as friends there. I have a few friends who are very active there, one who is no longer here.

[Debbie's Spurts (D.A.)]

I'm still there. Hard to judge the activity versus just folk who post same reviews on multiple sites. Jacquie seems quieter but may just be busy with behind the scenes upcoming updates.

[Debbie's Spurts (D.A.)]

Did I miss September updates/blogpost on Leafmarks? Nothing since early August on home page marquee.

[carol.]

I suspect it's quieter. I only drop in one to three times a week.
I've been a bit frustrated with my feed because I've gotten a ton of reviews from one person, which I've been afraid is drowning out the rest. I used the top friend feature, but that doesn't seemed to have changed things. I do scroll back a few pages, but it doesn't seem to add many people, so I'm guessing it is an activity issue with many of my friends.

[Debbie's Spurts (D.A.)]

Whew! There is finally an October update so apparently still active.

[Brenda ╰☆╮]

I'm really guilty.

Haven't been on there since last year! I'd like to pop in again...but I have a new device and I'm sure I don't remember my password.

Maybe....

Goodreads keeps me busy enough.

[Debbie's Spurts (D.A.)]

There have been some behind the scenes changes for librarian edits last weekend -- so some activity/updates at least (changes like cleaning up bindings, adding a new edition now carries over some details [title, author, series and description], ...). Noticed, but staff hasn't put in updates, newsletter, librarian manual, change log or anything -- the what's new, past updates and coming soon portion of FAQs don't appear to have updated that text since July 2015.

[Mosca]

It's good to know that Leafmarks is still active.

[Debbie's Spurts (D.A.)]

Oh...and looks like maybe all members can now add missing book covers and new books.

At least according to what I just saw on a librarians edit page:



(And, no, I still haven't gotten over a librarian asking me to add all the missing book covers on certain of their shelves -- they had librarian status and should have been either updating their own books or helping others or fixing issues they found around Leafmarks. Nope, I hadn't added my own bookcovers or asked anyone to add for me so I actually had more missing than they did ...)

[carol.]

Well, I've asked before though I have librarian status. I'm afraid of not doing it right. There's a lot of rules about it and the FAQ weren't intuitive enough for me. I added at first because it drove me nutty to have blanks but stopped because I didn't want to leave messes for others.

[Debbie's Spurts (D.A.)]

Oh, it wasn't you asking me to add your covers.

And the bookcover request weirded me out because it wasn't asking for help with just a couple -- it was hundreds that weren't easily found on publisher sites (a lot of indie ebooks that because she bought/downloaded she could just snag a screenshot or photo of cover to use while I might have hit a dead-end f the book now only-available-at-Amazon because not allowed to use their "look inside" variation ... ).

If you have the book in hand (or on screen), nevermind most of the FAQs. Your book-in-hand is definitive data and can be used. Ditto for anything on publisher and author pages -- all is considered public retail cataloging/inventory/hobby data and fair use.

User or seller uploaded data anywhere (including goodreads, eBay, half.com, Amazon marketplace, etc.)--including bookcovers--cannot be scraped without permission from person uploading. Just because they gave that site permission to use their specific images and data does not mean they granted Leafmarks permission to use,

Retail and other book sites, again, need permission to use unless their TOS or other policies make it clear they are "open archive" or freely for public/site use. Worldcat.org is an example of an open archive we can use. Project Gutenberg is an open archive that does request just a little citation.

(mmrmancegroup.com to my knowledge is only site so far to give Leafmarks permission to use covers and other data sort of as if a publisher which they sort of are for their annual writings)

There's some clueless librarian here on goodreads going around using fictiindb.com as a source (even puts that book community's page for the book in the official URL field as if they are the book publisher) -- repeatedly both goodreads and fictiindb staff have confirmed that no such permission has been granted. I don't even have to scroll down to see the URL because they also don't know how or don't bother to steal the good bookcover images off of fictiondb and instead use the tiny thumbnails. I bet if I google goodreads site for fictiondb mentions I can see still more today --

Sorry to rant. But, I'm also an editor/librarian on fictiondb with a paid membership -- and I know for a fact that just because longstanding members of that site have slaved over adding their books (and covers) to that site before goodreads was remotely popular does not mean they want goodreads or anyone else cpscrsping their data. If they want goodreads to have their images, they'll just add them here themselves. Ditto for Leafmarks and other sites.

[Debbie's Spurts (D.A.)]

@Carol, I doubt you could do any worse than anyone else on Leafmarks, certainly better to have some data even if not perfect or only title/author. (You should see the mess the people who became librarians just to echo their fanfiction make of it -- they even insist on forcing URLs everywhere except the would-be-clickable URL field for some weird reason) or that you would knowing steal someone else's data.

It was partly confusing at first because no librarians group or manual where staff was emailing answers to individual questions. As much as I wanted a librarian feature, email wasn't the best way to do that. I backed off months at a time myself when they were being confusing abiut series and other policies because I got frustrated having to keep re-doing same edits to new policy ...

I googled on goodreads and one or more librarians is at it again (stealing from fictiondb). A few books that still show fictiondb as official link instead of publisher Harlequin website -- First Love, Second Chance, The Substitute Guest, Only You ... I have no idea why that still goes on or why if same persons keep doing it they retain their librarian privileges. With the exception of member book cover images uploaded to fictiondb, that data is so readily available on so many open archive sites if too old to still be on Harlequin.com (and if recent enough to still be on publisher's website -- why the heck are they even looking up the data elsewhere?)

[Debbie's Spurts (D.A.)]

{€{^^@!* WTF -- now a lot of the books here using fictiondb as URL are from librarians who are actually removing publisher and author URLs to replace them with fictiondb links. Unbelievable. I don't usually post over in librarians group any more because I'm not doing librarian edits for Amazon -- but I am now because it's bad when The Pleasure Master used to have a URL of http://www.ninabangs.com/bookshelf/pl... that a librarian, an actual honest to goodness goodreads librarian, changed to 'http://www.fictiondb.com/author/nina-... -- clearly they didn't do that because they found the book on fictiondb and had trouble finding it elsewhere -- they changed the valid author/publisher website to another book site goodreads cannot scrape for data! Unreal.

(see changelog st https://www.goodreads.com/book/edits/... )

[Lisa]

Re the fictfact thing, it should be reported to GR, etc.

Librarians here have screwed up my book record big time, but GR has always been insistent on letting anyone with 50 shelved books be a librarian; they will address major librarian edits though.

[Debbie's Spurts (D.A.)]

Goodreads Librarian program isn't open to just anyone shelving 50 books -- that's just a qualification to apply to be a librarian and to do a few other things on goodreads. You can flag any invalid librarian changes to your books (helpful if you can quote the manual as to why wrong). Goodreads librarian privileges can be revoked for not following policies. Anyone here a few days with a few books can add a new book -- so not all names showing for first edits in the changelog are goodreads librarians.

Personally, it wigs me out why working links would get replaced because can only be added by another librarian. Not like someone was helpfully completing information that was missing in book record or correcting a typo--that's undoing someone else's edits which probably should be done only if you can find staff confirmation that it violated policy (on older discussion threads or clearcut wording in librarians manual) or by asking over in librarians group to confirm policy if unclear. Broken links, of course, need to be fixed.

I did post that one edition to fix over in librarans group because it annoyed me--and flagged a few of the others. I thought in 2013/2014 they ran scripts fixing but apparently not or not well.

I did find another annoying one where someone replaced publisher link with fictiondb link then someone else replaced the fictiondb link with a fantasticfiction.co.uk link (commenting strangely that couldn't use fictiondb "...because was a book site rather than an open archive" as if Fantastic Fiction ... ugh) -- cannot use the book site Fantastic Fiction either. Any member of those sites adding their data or helping maintain data on other book sites can of course do so here (if not a new book or not a librarian by requesting in librarian group) if they wish. Goodreads cannot just go data scrape all non-open archive sites, much less of user uploaded content.

[Debbie's Spurts (D.A.)]

Lisa wrote: "Librarians here have screwed up my book record big time, but GR has always been insistent on letting anyone with 50 shelved books be a librarian; they will address major librarian edits though..."

Message me your book title that's been screwed up if you'd like me to phrase or post a librarians request and/or flag the against-policy edits in the changelog. (Posting your book here can get flagged as promoting the book.).

I still know the manual and the lingo -- I voluntarily stopped being a librarian once goodreads was retailer owned. For me, volunteering for free to a community is just volunteering but retail is retail.

[Lisa]

D.A. There have been hundreds and I find more all the time, usually manually added pre-ISBN with lots of documentation that have been outright deleted or merged with other editions and the edition deleted. I occasionally find more but most of what I noticed is from a long time back, but I know it still happens. I've messaged GR but they don't seem to care. I'm a superlibrarian so I can fix things, but since Amazon I only do edits that I want for my record or that friends ask for their records. Thanks though.

[Debbie's Spurts (D.A.)]

Uh oh. Looks like bindings are growing variations like ebooks and eBooks again on Leafmarks (hopefully via data import but I'm not sure if readers can manually add even though librarians cannot add).

I found that out the hard way just editing a book to move a URL into a URL field on,y to have that blasted "cannot save because invalid binding" error message prevent me -- even though I never touched the binding field. They really need to change that error trigger to accept all capitalizations of ebook. Or force the bindings field to allCAPS or all lowercase or something.

Somehow "eBook" was in bindings again, binding droplist had a completely different order, and although the bindings manual insist we use that were removed are still removed others have been added.

*sigh* -- and they are still not answering any librarian questions from a week ago when the bindings changed (have a new newsletter out setting members can now add books but not addressing any questions). Nevermind questions in librarian group from months ago.

[Susanna - Censored by GoodReads]

It feels like LM needs more people on staff. Even just one, to update their "coming soon" page and so forth, and respond to questions.

[Debbie's Spurts (D.A.)]

I think maybe the bindings thing is possibly coming from a feed -- it's not on all books.

Unless unlike Leafmarks librarians other Leafmarks members can now manually add to the bindings when adding a book.

Wouldn't bother me so much -- I don't care if the binding says ebook, eBook or EBOOK -- except that when a librarian edits (even if not touching the bindings field) it won't let us save the book unless exactly "ebook."

Either that error checking preventing the save needs to be fixed or the bindings need to be fixed.

Punchline: for more than a year I've been whining about that exact same thing. I got my hopes up when the bindings were cleaned up and put into a droplist even though already spotted some issues with the droplist.

It's less the issues than the lack of response. And I know Jacquie cannot do it all or be available 24/7 -- but maybe at least once or twice a month ...

[Shera (Book Whispers)]

I hadn't been on leafmarks for the simple fact that it just wasn't compatible with vista. It was annoying trying to make it work.

[Eric_W]

Shera (Book Whispers) wrote: "I hadn't been on leafmarks for the simple fact that it just wasn't compatible with vista. It was annoying trying to make it work."

You might want to try a different browser. The OS is pretty much irrelevant to the way a web site functions on a computer. Are you using the latest version of Internet Explorer on Vista? I've tested Leafmarks with Chrome, Firefox and IE (recent versions) and it works just fine.

[Debbie's Spurts (D.A.)]

I think, because she's been active on Leafmarks recently, she's not in Vista any more.

[Shera (Book Whispers)]

I hate other browsers, so I didn't bother loading them.

Yeah D.A., I'm upgraded so my IE is compatible now.

[Debbie's Spurts (D.A.)]

Leafmarks is seeing more activity now -- bless the Shelfari influx with their love of nested threads and disillusionment with what Amazon has done to their former community.

[carol.]

Oh, that's good. I stopped going there because the books I was reading at the time weren't in the database or very searchable (one of them was Dune!) and I got frustrated. It's very annoying to have to add everything I'm reading, and I usually don't have time--I feel like adding content is my contribution.

Come to think of it, I haven't seen a Leafmarks update in quite a while.

[Debbie's Spurts (D.A.)]

Well, Shelfari people are importing lots more book data.

And members can now all add missing bookcovers and missing books (only have to have librarian status to edits/overwrite existing content). The feed and member shelves are ever so much improved because of that.

And staff doesn't seem to be putting out updates (except about some import issues now resolved).

They cleaned up the list of bindings and made it a preset list. Pro - did need to be cleaned up and librarians couldn't edit it if they did something like create a "paperbcak" binding so the list just kept growing with lots of typos and variations and capitalizations. Con - they removed options librarian manual still said we had to use.

I totally have zero idea what the librarian audiobook binding/edition policies currently are. And the same week bindings changed (four months ago?) Imstarted a thread asking that I keep bumping and adding examples to with no answers.

No answers while staff clearly has been answering other threads, including mine.

The no answers and no updates is still worrisome for me -- I'm really hoping some awesome updates are underway keeping staff busy. I've been losing hope of that though -- until the Shelfari influx at least added activity and did get staff to not ignore the site and the members at least long enough to handle import issues and spot answer some threads. I can tell in librarians requests and discussions that some librarians who were lagging for same reason I was have been re-energized, too.

[lethe]

D.A.—has a headache from new design here wrote: "The no answers and no updates is still worrisome for me"

Yes, I really hope Jacquie isn't the only staff member. It would be sad if she up and left without anybody else having staff privileges.

[Eric_W]

D.A.—has a headache from new design here wrote: "Leafmarks is seeing more activity now -- bless the Shelfari influx with their love of nested threads and disillusionment with what Amazon has done to their former community."

I'm on both Goodreads (obviously) and Leafmarks and it's been my observation that the amount of activity an individual member perceives is directly proportional to the amount of activity s/he creates and engages in on any particular site. I've always found it a bit amusing that so much discussion about Leafmarks occurs on Goodreads, which may say much about the relative merits of both sites.

[Debbie's Spurts (D.A.)]

Well goodreads groups are more active, partly because of more features (like, hullo, book discussion features) and more site members.

And this forum is watched by people trying or thinking of trying Leafmarks or with a stalled account there waiting to see what's going on--and people answer here. Some of the threads on Leafmarks haven't been responded to in a year.

I do review on Leafmarks. I participate daily on Leafmarks. I do daily librarian edits. I have groups there. Leafmarks shelves are better. The book cataloging features are better (including re-reads). You can backup your book data (like goodreads and unlike booklikes and other sites don't let you export/backup). Leafmarks privacy and content controls are better. Their site performance is better and better maintained.
The closing of Shelfari gives Leafmarks an opportunity to reinvigorate and really grow because many of them won't like goodreads or be leery of another Amazon owned book community. Leafmarks challenges** are better except no group ones and currently the buddy ones are "race to win" oddities, Leafmarks rich text versus plain text mechanics and nesting threads are better.

Partly what is meant by activity dropping is staff activity. Yes, I know, everyone has a life and no one can be on hand 24/7 seven days a week. But we used to get monthly newsletters, see Jacquie and Emily posting to feed, have a home page marquee detailing what's going on, the FAQ sections on what's new and coming soon haven't been updated since July 2015, ... stuff happens and we're not entitled to the personal details; but, a comment that these are busy times so we might see less staff activity or even a true or false comment that they are working hard behind the scenes on something exciting so might be less active. Month after month after month ...

When I say less active, I am positive of that. I check constantly for staff activity in posts, threads and other update areas before starting next batch of librarian edits that could be impacted. I set my feed to "everyone" where I see all the non-group activity (barring privacy and content settings not showing some activity). Not "everyone" because nosey or necessarily interested, but "everyone" because I've been religiously doing librarian edits [where I can spot missing book-covers for books currently clearly in use (recently Leafmarks did change policies to allow readers to upload, but not overwrite, book-covers themselves so not sure I'll keep scanning feed so constantly).] I'm not sure how much I count it as being active with familiar faces who just automatically echo their same reviews to various sites.

I do know that new sites are always more responsive to us readers where of course staff will,be less a five than used to be. A now fixed bug on the Shelfari imports actually saw staff activity after months of silence (well, they did put out a November newsletter).

I'm still really pulling for Leafmarks because I like the features they do have (many actually some of the most requested and most ignored by goodreads no matter how often gramazon touts some new potentially beneficial to commercial interests upgrade/change as one of the most requested feature).

Leafmarks now allows members to do so (only librarians can edit). That was one issue that discouraged several lot of my friends from joining or staying was the annoyance of their data importing with missing book-covers--covers and books missing meant constant requests to librarians or becoming librarian (the data imported actually with way more covers and books this the mass move to booklikes in 2013 imports did). I think some of them forget what it was like when goodreads and booklikes were new -- all the books, covers and content that make goodreads such a major player didn't magically appear or import from data feeds, members uploaded and maintained gobs of user content to grow it,

Leafmarks book database is shaping up to be better (obviously not as large as goodreads and not getting Amazon data feed). Generally have a policy if letting readers track whatever they want to read (including magazines, fan fiction and single issue manga comic books but no longer the non-Asian ones like Marvel and DC put out similar to subscription magazines )*.

Leafmarks promised updates have had me salivating since before site launched to the public. But, after waiting so long for them -- in conjunction with Jacquie's not being very active -- not sure will ever get the promised series tracking module that made me chance Leafmarks in the first place.

I need more group and challenge features before I'll do a lot of those, but I religiously check the two help desk groups for the site and for librarians (and librarian requests except when there are issues when I'm not sure what to do and staff aren't answering).

Because I check those two groups constantly, I know exactly how often staff is handling any of that (Jacquie still stays on top of the big bugs and has never rolled out a problematic upgrade -- but not exactly responding to a lot of the posts the same couple of weeks or even always responding that a bug got fixed I'd that there was a bug. Yes, I know goodreads seldom acknowledges a bug but she used to always respond.).

(I do have to back off on bulk librarian edits when policy questions go unanswered or get confusing where we're all just undoing each other's work -- like the still months later unanswered bloody dang simple question about how audiobooks are done now that the binding/format droplist changed to add unexplained new options and remove options that used to be policy. I asked at start up if self-publishing authors publishing under their own name should set publisher field to "Self-published" or their name -- pro of just saying some variation on" Self-Published" because on Leafmsrks that isn't a text field, it's a droplist that if you add a publisher it adds everywhere on the droplist / con being all the goodreads data importing would be using author name and so would the sites we could use to get data. Staff said use author name or whatever data did pull,in withiut worrying about it. More than a year later, on a thread, staff snapped at me that only "Self-Published" went in publisher field when author publishes under own name or has stuck distributor Amazon Dig-blah-blah in that field. Did they make that change in the manual? No. Was there ever a thread or a comment in the feedback or the librarians group stating policy had changed? No. Did they put it in a newsletter, the marquee, the FAQs, an update to newsfeed from their account or any other publicly (or,at least librarian) visible communication? Not that I could find--and I looked, Did they answer someone's email about it--no clue but some Leafmarks friends have said don't bother with the threads or even the contact form anymore and just email Jacquie. And, yes,mthat dies mean confusing librarian threads with nine oerson sepwearing Jacquie emailed them "yes" and anothe that she emailed them "no"...)

*A very recent staff post that suddenly about faced and said "no" to regular comics confused me. I think their recently posted comment meant that policy was now meant to exclude single issue non-Asian comic books unless translations/reissues of Asian comic books, I asked specifically if the manga ones were still allowed -- but haven't heard back from staff while my flood sure is still seeing lots of manga activity... ).

**and the community genre ones are fairly useless on a site without a genre feature, field or calculation. Leafmarks said months ago no longer active -- although don't say that on the challenge itself -- because being revamped and that they wouldn't be adding requested books even though they weren't removing the option to add or notifying people putting in add book requests).

[Debbie's Spurts (D.A.)]

Ixan wrote: "D.A. Everywhere you comment it's TL;DR. Are you like this in real life? This comment is more than 20 paragraphs long. You might get through to more people with your points if you self-edited. I don..."

In real life, I edit everything non-personal. Online, if it's personal, I'm ether trying to relay anything I feel may help someone, relay the thought processes/examples beyond simple yes/no/like/agree/disagree or I don't feel like bothering laboring extra minutes on any site that's just for a hobby, leisure or fun activity.

ETA: with goodreads new "visual design change" I don't stay on long enough to re-frame or edit to be more concisely lately -- particulalry if it's late night and I'm just on briefly and frustrated. Just for you, I'll combine some single sentence paragraphs so it's not so many paragraphs. I honestly thiught the one sentence paragraphs were nicely listed and easier to read and had no idea fewer paragraphs were preferred over a bullet style. "Everywhere" indeed -- like even all of my comments in this group are tl;dr ...

[Debbie's Spurts (D.A.)]

Update: and again Leafmarks is allowing comic books in single issues. Manual even got an update basically to say treat like subscription magazines (i.e., classification = periodical).

An odd back and forth reversal. Admittedly original policy was a brief decision to let readers track whatever reading they wanted to track short of daily/weekly news that would always get outdated and overwhelm the site (which idea I liked except they did need a few "how" to enter into database questions answered ...).