Announcing Bookshelves - Free Web App at Online Book Club!

[Gravy]

I'm not sure what you mean by complete works. I'm guess you mean when a book is published that combines multiple works together. Can you give me a few examples?

I mean things like 'The Complete Works of Shakespeare' (Or Poe, or HG Wells...whatever), as opposed to each individual work.

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@Graverobber I have made it so you can enter 0 as the sort order and that will erase the sort order for that book and put it back to the default. I will now work on creating a button to reset the sort order for all your books with the choice to just do it to one shelf or to all your shelves.

Works great!
Now I don't have to feel like an idiot
You rock!
Thank you!

[Scott]

Update: I have integrated Bookshelves with some of the profile fields on the forums. "Favorite Book" and "Favorite Author" will now be automatically set when you make a book your favorite on Bookshelves (i.e. bump to the top of your 4 out of 4 shelf) or whenever you either add a book to your currently reading shelf or if you bump a book to the top of your currently reading shelf. These options will no longer be found in the User Control Panel on the forums.

The book title's will also link to the book's shelf in your profile.

For members of the review team with a published review, this will also cause their reviewer page to be updated. This is cool too because sometimes the information on those pages could become stale since they only used to be updated whenever a new review was published by that reviewer.

In the future, I would like to provide this feature also for 'favorite author', which could also allow a member to set multiple favorite authors to perhaps appear in a section on their shelves. Maybe on the sidebar area under the genre counts?

[gali]

Update: I have integrated Bookshelves with some of the profile fields on the forums. "Favorite Book" and "Favorite Author" will now be automatically set when you make a book your favorite on Bookshelves (i.e. bump to the top of your 4 out of 4 shelf) or whenever you either add a book to your currently reading shelf or if you bump a book to the top of your currently reading shelf. These options will no longer be found in the User Control Panel on the forums.

The book title's will also link to the book's shelf in your profile.

For members of the review team with a published review, this will also cause their reviewer page to be updated. This is cool too because sometimes the information on those pages could become stale since they only used to be updated whenever a new review was published by that reviewer.

In the future, I would like to provide this feature also for 'favorite author', which could also allow a member to set multiple favorite authors to perhaps appear in a section on their shelves. Maybe on the sidebar area under the genre counts?

Great idea about adding automatically the "currently reading" book. I love it!

[Ryan]

Another great addition!

One thing, though: there is currently no way to report errors regarding genre. Could this be added?

-- 28 Mar 2015, 09:43 --

Same with publication date.

I also wonder whether moderators having to confirm each others' changes is very necessary. For the past couple of days I've been able to tidy up author pages (check out Rick Riordan -- it was a mess before!) and it was so easy because I could confirm the changes myself. If moderators are carefully selected, one wouldn't have to worry about them making silly errors or evilly changing information for a giggle. I just think it makes the process much more efficient and gives moderators the necessary amount of autonomy to fix errors when they see them, instead of relying on other moderators to confirm the changes

[Scott]

Another great addition!

One thing, though: there is currently no way to report errors regarding genre. Could this be added?

-- 28 Mar 2015, 09:43 --

Same with publication date.

I also wonder whether moderators having to confirm each others' changes is very necessary. For the past couple of days I've been able to tidy up author pages (check out Rick Riordan -- it was a mess before!) and it was so easy because I could confirm the changes myself. If moderators are carefully selected, one wouldn't have to worry about them making silly errors or evilly changing information for a giggle. I just think it makes the process much more efficient and gives moderators the necessary amount of autonomy to fix errors when they see them, instead of relying on other moderators to confirm the changes

At this time, I do not think it is necessary that moderators confirm each other's reports. However, with more moderators and more volume I do think it would become a good safety guard. The concern is that an incorrect moderator action is going to be a lot more troublesome to fix than an initial mistake. At some point, I think it will be preferable to require that two people agree with a certain decision before permanently marking a certain spelling of a book's title as incorrect and another as incorrect, as everyone makes mistakes.

I have added options to the report form for members to report the genre as incorrect or to report the release date as incorrect. I have added options to the MCP for Bookshelves moderators to replace the genre or release date information. It should work but I am not fully happy with how it came out. As it is now, it could be difficult for moderators to navigate between viewing the book, fixing the book and closing the report.

I think in the near future I'd like to adjust it so that when reporting the genre/date as incorrect the member also proposes the correct genre/date, and then the moderators just approve or disapprove that proposed correction.

[Ryan]

All very good. Much appreciated

[gali]

Another great addition!

One thing, though: there is currently no way to report errors regarding genre. Could this be added?

-- 28 Mar 2015, 09:43 --

Same with publication date.

I also wonder whether moderators having to confirm each others' changes is very necessary. For the past couple of days I've been able to tidy up author pages (check out Rick Riordan -- it was a mess before!) and it was so easy because I could confirm the changes myself. If moderators are carefully selected, one wouldn't have to worry about them making silly errors or evilly changing information for a giggle. I just think it makes the process much more efficient and gives moderators the necessary amount of autonomy to fix errors when they see them, instead of relying on other moderators to confirm the changes

At this time, I do not think it is necessary that moderators confirm each other's reports. However, with more moderators and more volume I do think it would become a good safety guard. The concern is that an incorrect moderator action is going to be a lot more troublesome to fix than an initial mistake. At some point, I think it will be preferable to require that two people agree with a certain decision before permanently marking a certain spelling of a book's title as incorrect and another as incorrect, as everyone makes mistakes.

I have added options to the report form for members to report the genre as incorrect or to report the release date as incorrect. I have added options to the MCP for Bookshelves moderators to replace the genre or release date information. It should work but I am not fully happy with how it came out. As it is now, it could be difficult for moderators to navigate between viewing the book, fixing the book and closing the report.

I think in the near future I'd like to adjust it so that when reporting the genre/date as incorrect the member also proposes the correct genre/date, and then the moderators just approve or disapprove that proposed correction.

I use the report option myself to fix incorrect books as some members just report the books without giving the correct version of them. You are right about wanting some safeguards from errors when there are more Bookshelves moderators though. Thank you for the additions and for your work.

[jadestar31]

Hi Scott,
I'm not sure whether this feature has already been requested, but I'll just ask anyway.

I was wondering if it would be possible to have an import from .csv or .xls feature. I ask because this would give the option of importing by title, author, and (optionally) isbn as well.

I was issued a board warning for adding books that already existed, but all I did was use the Mass Add feature and my Goodreads exported .csv file to get the titles and authors. I think the feature above (especially if we're using ISBN instead of title and author) would cut down on these kinds of problems.

Just an idea, thanks for considering it!

[Scott]

@jadestar31

I appreciate the suggestions.

Regarding the duplicates, it should really not be much an issue. The software automatically prevents duplicates by matching books together. Duplicates are thus only created when a new spelling of a book is used. It's really the incorrect spelling or formatting that creates the duplicate.

The problem that lead to you submitting the Harry Potter books again was that the series name was put in the title field instead of the subtitle field. Using the mass adder, that would mean that there was not a colon used to separate the title from the would-be subtitle. This is why the software failed to add the Harry Potter books to your shelves and instead created a whole set of new Harry-Potter-like books with really long titles and no subtitle. To fix this issue, I have just now made a slight change that will prohibit books with parenthesis in the title from being added using the mass-adder. That way if a similar situation occurred one could have added the semicolon delimiter to the title/subtitle combination so it could parsed. The downside is that if there is book title that should have parenthesis it will not be able to be added using the mass-adder.

[Gravy]

I applied to join the bookshelf moderators, but thought posting here might expedite the process.
Anyway...I'm willing to try to help
Don't know how much good I'll be
Hey! Willingness is something, right?

[Ryan]

Hi, Scott. (Sorry to jump in, Gravy!)

I've recently noticed that there are several new members who add their own authored books to the system and place them either on their 4* shelf or "currently reading" shelf (I think), which means that they will be displayed in the respective fields. I just wanted to bring this to your attention as I wasn't sure whether it's technically against the rules or not. I know you're very stringent regarding self-advertising and this might be a more inconspicuous way of doing that.

[Scott]

I applied to join the bookshelf moderators, but thought posting here might expedite the process.
Anyway...I'm willing to try to help
Don't know how much good I'll be
Hey! Willingness is something, right?

Okay, great. I have approved your membership. I'm not sure what this should mean about the title Grandmaster of Bookshelves. I do not know if ryanj1 minds sharing it as previously he was the only special moderator for Bookshelves.

-- 19 Apr 2015 09:33 pm --

Hi, Scott. (Sorry to jump in, Gravy!)

I've recently noticed that there are several new members who add their own authored books to the system and place them either on their 4* shelf or "currently reading" shelf (I think), which means that they will be displayed in the respective fields. I just wanted to bring this to your attention as I wasn't sure whether it's technically against the rules or not. I know you're very stringent regarding self-advertising and this might be a more inconspicuous way of doing that.

I greatly appreciate your feedback.

For now, I think it is fine.

In the future, the best solution might be to integrate the role of being an author for a book and a member of the site into Bookshelves. In that sense, authors could have a 'books I've written shelf' for their own books.

[Ryan]

I applied to join the bookshelf moderators, but thought posting here might expedite the process.
Anyway...I'm willing to try to help
Don't know how much good I'll be
Hey! Willingness is something, right?

Okay, great. I have approved your membership. I'm not sure what this should mean about the title Grandmaster of Bookshelves. I do not know if ryanj1 minds sharing it as previously he was the only special moderator for Bookshelves.

It is with great reluctance that I share the title, but I am happy that there will be others around to help

[gali]

Congratulations Graverobber

[bookowlie]

Congrats Gravy! What about Gravymaster of Bookshelves? You and Ryan will be a great team.