Early Reviewers Redesign and Relaunch

Abigail announced the February Early Reviewers batch over here: https://www.librarything.com/topic/339403

This topic is to discuss the relaunch—the ways Early Reviewers has changed. This is our first major redesign of Early Reviewers. Here's what's changed.

Feature Changes

• The interface is more attractive, accessible and mobile ready. (It's LT2-ified!)
• Every book has a unique URL and "share" button, so publishers can post individual giveaways to social media, and members can share the books they're going for.
• Every publisher and author has a unique URL too.
• A menu at the top of the Available Now page allows you to sub-select by genre and media.
• Most of the text is now translatable, so (in theory), we can attract some non-English publishers.

Program Changes

• Members need to re-agree with our terms. You no longer need to say your "name and place" (nobody uses it). And you can put your favorite genres in.
• The Member Giveaway program has gone away. It is subsumed under Early Reviewers.
• We're restricting giveaways to no more than 30 copies. (The minimum is 5.) We have found that giveaways of 50 or more copies do not produce the best results, when it comes to reader reviews.

Rules Changes

• With Member Giveaways gone, all books you win must be reviewed. So don't request books you don't want to review.
• All books have to be either forthcoming or published in the last six months, as verified by Bowker Book Data.
• We're going to be more careful about publishers and authors who don't send books.

Publisher Changes

• Entering books is easier, with data prepopulated by Bowker Books in Print. You can still change everything, of course.
• We've revamped all the picking algorithms, to better pick users who have a track record of reviewing books.
• We're requiring more information for digital giveaways, such as format offered and delivery method.
• With Member Giveaways gone, all books are now reviewed by staff before they go live. But we are not longer trying to gatekeep who is a publisher
• Publishers and authors can now send their digital giveaways directly to winners on their LibraryThing profile pages. (This is only available if providing a download link through a third site.) We hope this will reduce links lost in email spam filters, etc.

Let us know what you think?

This was a project spearheaded by Lucy (knerd.knitter)—who also did most of the work on the Charts & Graphs rework. While I oversaw the design/UI/UX aspects of the project and Abigail (AbigailAdams26) has been heavily involved in oversight and testing.

Have you seen that there are error reports?

>3 MarthaJeanne: Yes; it's fixed now. My mistake!

Let me be the first to say I LOVE the sort options. Did I miss one for eligible country?

Sorting by country would be important.

Members Giveaway wins are showing as not reviewed even though I reviewed them. Do I need to repost the reviews?
We used to be able to limit the list to our country but now I see the entire list with some pink blocks saying "not available in your country". Will we be able to specify the country or will unavailable "pink" titles just show up at the bottom of the list?

>5 Bookmarque: >6 MarthaJeanne: >7 Taphophile13:

We do not have a country sort option, but titles unavailable in a specific member's country will automatically sort to the bottom of the list. They will still appear, but will be marked as unavailable.

>1 timspalding: I'm willing to give good reviews and bad reviews. It's difficult to call a book mediocre. Good reviews benefit the author and publisher, bad reviews warn prospective purchasers. Mediocre is just unkind. This why I sometimes skip reviewing a book that I have received. I will abide by the new rules, under protest.

Is there a way to increase the information density? I see about one book per screen (smallish monitor, not full-screen window).

>1 timspalding: I love the new format! Especially the genre information.

Oof! Those side panels take up a lot of screen space!

(maybe I should file it as a bug?) >1 timspalding: I looked at my past winnings, and I was asked to review Burning Brightly: 50 Years of Novacon. But I did review it, see https://www.librarything.com/work/27258086/reviews/209488494 , and the page shows that it was an ER review.
(btw, the two books I never received ask for a review anyway...)

>9 AmyLarchuk: I'm willing to give good reviews and bad reviews. It's difficult to call a book mediocre. Good reviews benefit the author and publisher, bad reviews warn prospective purchasers. Mediocre is just unkind. This why I sometimes skip reviewing a book that I have received. I will abide by the new rules, under protest

Well, you always had to review before. ("Had" here means that, if you don't, it may affect your ability to get future books. We don't have police.) We just made an exception for Member Giveaways. That program is going away.

The interface is more attractive

No, it's not. Each listing is ridiculously huge, so that I can see only one book at a time, probably because the cover images are so big. It's also less obvious which titles are ebooks.

Question: what effect does entering our "favorite genres" in Settings have, if any?

Another Question: does subsuming MG under the ER program mean that there will be an influx of self-published books in ER?

We are working on the "not reviewed" issue. Be assured, if not everything is matching up, we're make everything match up again soon.

>16 lilithcat: the effect is that you may select "my genres" in the list :-) (I noticed it soon after asking the same question...)

The See More ... See Less buttons doesn't work on localized sites.

Not sure how important it is after all this time, but there are two books that I never reviewed (because I never received them); I cannot seem to get the "Mark Not Received" button for those two books to do anything.

Also, I know there is a link to the Early Reviewers portion of the site at the very bottom of the Home tab - have you considered having a link on the Home tab that appears more prominently? No expectations, just a suggestion. Alternately, would it be possible to allow a group member to add an icon or link for the group to appear on their own Home tab?

This is an ongoing problem that I hope you have or will come up with a solution for. I have four previously won books listed as Not Reviewed; three of them are books that I never received from the publisher (which led to me giving up on the Early Reviewers program entirely). I do not want to see these books listed as Not Reviewed when they have been marked as Not Received, and I especially don't want them to count in the almighty algorithm that decides whether I deserve to win another book. I know you said you will try to do a better job of following up on books that don't get sent/received, but what's the plan for fixing both of these holdover issues from the previous iteration of ER?

I used to avoid member giveaways so that I didn't have to see the self published books. Now I don't seem to be able to filter them out.

>22 fhudnell:

You can't, because, as Tim said in >1 timspalding:, "we are not longer trying to gatekeep who is a publisher".

There haven't been any audiobooks offered in a few months, but when there are will it be an option in the "format" dropdown?

>24 norabelle414: yes; it is based on what is being offered.

>13 .mau.: Yes, the books I never received are also asking me for a review which is odd.

>24 norabelle414: The member offering will be asked to specify whether it is a physical of digital audiobook, and if the latter, will be required to list formats provided and delivery method, just as with ebook giveaways.

>21 rosalita: I was wondering the same thing. I don't want the algorithm to count me out because I have so many not reviewed from previous iterations of ER that were actually never received.

>no option to select country available as far as I can see.

I used to be able to go from the book list page directly to a list of what I’ve won and also a separate list of what I had requested. How do I get there now? Quite frankly I like the old design better except that it is nice to have the filters. I do like that.

>19 anglemark: Fixed.

>30 Micheller7: It's in the left sidebar — Wins & Requests

>30 Micheller7: >32 rosalita: When I click on Wins & Requests, I see only those books I won, not those I requested but didn't win.

>33 Storeetllr: Look at the top of the page where it says "Won"? It is a drop-down - you can switch to Requested instead of Won.

>33 Storeetllr: Seeing books you won is just the default view.
The first filter drop-down menu gives you an option to see Requested books.

The interface is less important to me than the books offered. The quality of offerings continues to decline.

I was looking down the list of books I've won and one that I'm sure I reviewed says it hasn't been. I clicked on the title, expecting to go to the LT work page to see if maybe there was a combination error or something that wasn't registering my review properly.

However, clicking on the title takes me to another page for the book in Early Reviewers, and it's an extra click to get to the work page. Could there be a link to the work page from the Wins and Requests page?

>9 AmyLarchuk:

Mediocre is just unkind.

I don't see why. If you say why you think a book is mediocre, tell what you saw as the positive and negatives, that is very helpful to the prospective reader.

Further to >37 tardis:, I found the review, clicked the "review" button, pasted it in, and it still says that it hasn't been reviewed. Open the Review button again - it's blank.

So I went to the Work Page, clicked "edit review," pasted in the review, and saved it. Going back to the ER record, it still isn't registering a review. Is that a bug or just an update delay?

Edited to add: the book in question is https://www.librarything.com/ner/detail/42352/The-Family-Cross-Circle-Seven-Book...

Another edit: the work page (with my review) is https://www.librarything.com/work/26566852

Also, I won a book from the January batch that isn't included in my wins. I assume that will get on the Won list at some point.

I agree with those who aren't enjoying the new format, what with the banners at the top and right side of the page taking up so much room (esp. on smaller screens like mine), though I suppose I'll get used to it eventually.

>34 AnnieMod: >35 conceptDawg: Thanks! That worked!

I haven't requested ER books in a long time (in all honesty I still have two I haven't reviewed, just can't seem to stay interested enough to actually read them...). That said, my thoughts:

As has been mentioned already, the 'information density' as someone put it seems extremely different. The book covers are much bigger than necessary and on my standard laptop I'm only seeing a single book entry per screen. That's a *lot* of scrolling, when a single entry takes up that much space.

The second most notable thing for me is that there doesn't seem to be a way to actually get to the LT book-page from an ER entry? Note that I haven't poked around ER for awhile so it's possible this changed earlier, but it seems unintuitive. On the main ER page every book entry shows a 'see more' button that you can click to give you the rest of the information available about that ER-entry, and yet clicking the title of the book takes you to... Another ER page with the exact same information (ie, there doesn't seem to be any real reason to need to go to that page, it's just the same info). On *that* page I see a rather small 'LibraryThing work page' link at the very bottom.

I'm getting a *lot* of 'oh snap!' errors when trying to navigate the ER pages, but hopefully that's just first-day traffic related?

I save in a separate file in my email account the confirmations I receive that I've been chosen to receive a book. At this time in that file there's over 390 unreceived books that I've requested over the years I've been in this group - and been told I'd receive; so I don't have a lot of confidence in the rooting out of unreviewed books. At the moment, I'm far behind on my reading - and that's a problem as well now.

I like the changes! I think switching from a tradpub/selfpub split to one where every book is reviewed for suitability is a good change (though it's probably more work on y'all's part) - it's not a split that's all that useful these days.

Will there be a way to put your participation on "pause" so you can catch up with your old reviews without being tempted to request more books? Please?? Or will the changes to the algorithm solve that problem anyway, by making sure I don't get any more until I catch up even if I cave to Abby's emails and request them?

>40 Storeetllr: I'm having the same problem - I won two books from the January batch and they aren't showing up. Is this just something we need to wait out?

I'm seeing Messages from Authors/publishers asking for reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. Doesn't seem appropriate, somehow.

I very much like the ability to filter. Let's start with that. This is a big improvement. So don't let the fact that I'm going to make suggestions in any way detract from that. But... I do have suggestions. All to do with filtering and genres.

As best I can tell, you can find books in genres you like (e.g. I just looked at the sadly-short list of history books). But there is no way to filter genres you don't like. For example, I don't read fiction. I read almost all sorts of non-fiction. (Well, except for all those car maintenance manuals. :-p And sports.)

So I'd like to filter for Fiction, or Sports, or whatever. (Yes, I can probably use the positive tag Nonfiction to get Fiction, but that's a special case.)

Second suggestion: It would be nice to be able to do and filtering. For example, of the genres, it would be most efficient for me if I could look for books with the genres I care most about, say: History Reference Science & Nature Biography & Memoir. That would let me see all my favorite genres at once, making it easier to decide which book I most want to request (given that I'm only likely to get one).

Finally, since this is complicated :-), how about a way to save one's filter set?

Again, the filtering is already much improved. I just want to make it more nitpicky still. :-)

>18 .mau.:

I'm not seeing that option in the list. Perhaps it only shows if you have set favorite genres?

It would be nice to be able to sort by "country available." While those not available in a reviewer's country are at the bottom of the list, the message about not being available isn't visible until you've scrolled down past it.

Also, I just tried to indicate that I had not received the books that are on my "not reviewed" list and nothing happens when I click the "mark not received" button.

What's really goofy about the entries being so huge (maaaybe 2 per screen on my large widescreen monitor, once I scroll past the header) is that as soon as I try to zoom out/decrease the text size of my browser, the entries suddenly sort into 3 columns, which actually looks mostly decent:

100% zoom:


90% zoom:

>47 waltzmn: But there is no way to filter genres you don't like.

I would rather be able to filter out genres I don't want. For example, I don't read Fantasy but there are books included because they are listed as Fantasy, General Fiction, Mystery, Romance, Fiction and Literature (genres which I do read) so they are listed.

>51 perennialreader: I would rather be able to filter out genres I don't want. For example, I don't read Fantasy but there are books included because they are listed as Fantasy, General Fiction, Mystery, Romance, Fiction and Literature (genres which I do read) so they are listed.

If I understand you correctly, that's what I meant. I want to say "Don't show me fiction."

If that's not what you meant -- why not a mechanism to do either way? :-)

I like the new format, especially the filter and genre options.

>51 perennialreader:

Interesting point. Will discuss with Lucy and Chris tomorrow.

I like the new interface. Looks great and it's easier to read. My eyes aren't getting any better over here, so I need all the help I can get.

>1 timspalding: I won a book from the January batch. Yet, it doesn't show in my "wins" section. I do have the "win" mentioned in comments from Abigail on my wall from (I guess that's what you call it). Just curious when the win will show in the "Wins & Requests" section so that when I receive the book, I can review it.

Also, I reviewed a book from November's 2021 batch, yet it still states it needs to be reviewed and I am getting an error when I try to resubmit the review. I don't want this to affect future wins as I do review every book I get. I have been on launch teams, review teams, and even had part of a review quoted in a recent release, lol.

Are there still ‘Members Givaways’?

I love the new layout for Early Reviewers and the requests. Well done!

>57 PhilipJMac: As >1 timspalding: states: "The Member Giveaway program has gone away. It is subsumed under Early Reviewers."

So no. No more Member Giveaway - all books which anyone is giving away will now be under ER and need to follow the ER conditions for being listed as giveaways.

>46 lilithcat: I'm seeing Messages from Authors/publishers asking for reviews on Amazon and Goodreads. Doesn't seem appropriate, somehow.

Honestly, we hope you post your reviews—particularly your POSITIVE reviews—everywhere you can. If the book is great, spread it far and wide. As far as the rule goes, it is that they can ask. But they can't require or imply they require. We set the requirements.

>56 medwards429: Thanks for the note. We are doing a review of this code now.

Can you tell me more about the error you're getting, and how?

Seem a bit better.

>9 AmyLarchuk: Would you be able to say "This is what I did not like, but which might not put off someone else or might appeal to someone else" so it straddles the good review/warning review divide?

>1 timspalding: >2 conceptDawg: Thank you all for the work you've done to update Early Reviewers!

>37 tardis: >39 tardis: I also have a book I won and reviewed that says I haven't reviewed it.

I am finding the same problem others have had with missing reviews and being unable to mark unrecieved books (previously marked unreceived). I also read something that we have to again state that we agree to the rules, but I haven't seen where to do that.

>66 Wordwizardw: When you request a book for the first time, it will send you to agree with the rules.

>8 AbigailAdams26: I was going to ask about this, as well (by country). I guess I can just keep scrolling until I start to see the unavailable ones, then.

Deleted comment. I think I was reading too quickly and just got mixed up.

>35 conceptDawg: In the list of books I've Won, they only go back to Sept 2020. There should be more than that.

ETA: the Requested ones go back to 2013.

Like a few others, under "Not Reviewed", there are 2/3 that I never received. (Yes, I still need to get to the 3rd one!)

I'm clicking "Mark Not Received" (which I've done a number of times before as they are both from a few years back), but nothing is happening.

The third one I still need to get to does not have the option to mark received or not (as I've already marked it received), so is the assumption that if I don't mark it either way, that it's not received?

I find the new format unattractive and it was much easier to use when you could see the book covers and descriptions in a smaller size. Now the covers are too big and you have to keep scrolling just to read a single description. Hate it!

The new look is impressive and the sort by genre option is useful, but I wish the below are fixed:

1. The email announcing the ER now has incorrect links.

2. The filter option for country is gone and I prefer having it back.

I fcking hate the redesigned interface, I'm sorry. I know someone worked on it, but it reduces the information.

Everything you do on this site reduces the information density on each screen, and I hate it every single time. I do not want to scroll for 30 years to see a simple list. STOP DOING THIS. I'm not a cell phone.

>1 timspalding: this sounds great, how do I re-agree? Do I need to fill out a form?

>76 hawaiianmermaid701: Request a book. It sends you to check your address and to agree to the Rules. :)

>75 reconditereader:

I completely agree. Whenever a site proudly announces that they have become more "mobile-friendly", I know it's going to be horrid to use on an actual computer.

I do not understand why it seems to be impossible for websites to be designed to be "friendly" to everyone, regardless of how they access it.

I reviewed The Prince and the Prodigal on January 30th and it shows on the book page. It doesn't show that it has been reviewed on the My Early Reviewer's page. When I push on the button to "review" and copied and pasted the original review in there nothing happens. I have reviewed this.
Second, HOW do we mark the books we have not received. I had done this on the old format, but they are not showing as NOT RECEIVED on the new format. When I push the button, it does nothing. Should it be Gray? How do I know that YOU know I didn't receive the book?

Thank you

>79 sdbookhound: Right above the received/unreceived buttons there are a list of dates; if you've previously marked a book as unreceived, the date you did so is listed right above the buttons.

About the only thing I can say I wholeheartedly like about this redesign is the ditching of the "I still have not received this book" option.

>20 dbsovereign: Not sure how important it is after all this time, but there are two books that I never reviewed (because I never received them); I cannot seem to get the "Mark Not Received" button for those two books to do anything.

When I just tried this now, it appears that clicks on the "mark not received" link are sending successful updates back to the server (which I see when I reload the page and recheck the "Not Received Date") but are not updating the UI in any way so it _looks_ as though nothing has happened.

The previous UI simply updated the date-text on the screen alongside (or immediately after) sending the update to the server, which was enough to confirm that Something Happened; the new UI so far does not appear to be doing this.

>21 rosalita: This is an ongoing problem that I hope you have or will come up with a solution for. I have four previously won books listed as Not Reviewed; three of them are books that I never received from the publisher (which led to me giving up on the Early Reviewers program entirely). I do not want to see these books listed as Not Reviewed when they have been marked as Not Received, and I especially don't want them to count in the almighty algorithm that decides whether I deserve to win another book. I know you said you will try to do a better job of following up on books that don't get sent/received, but what's the plan for fixing both of these holdover issues from the previous iteration of ER?

I agree that this has been a frustrating aspect of ER so far, and that it appears unchanged in this iteration.

I have three won books that I never received, and they still appear listed as "not reviewed" and still presumably might affect my chances in the future if I don't regularly remember to visit that page and re-mark them as "not received".

Perhaps there should be some expiration period after which a "not received" book can ask for one more confirmation after which it simply archives itself and stops sore-thumbing my "won > not reviewed" list? (Could additionally depend in some way on how many others have "marked not received" the same book, etc.)

Thank you all for your feedback on received/unreceived issue, and the assignment of books. This evening I worked on a new algorithm for making sure ER books are credited, but it is not yet live; I need to run it out with Lucy tomorrow. We will also be looking at the received/unreceived issue tomorrow. Our apologies for any problems you see in this area until we get it fixed.

>42 Heather19: As has been mentioned already, the 'information density' as someone put it seems extremely different. The book covers are much bigger than necessary and on my standard laptop I'm only seeing a single book entry per screen. That's a *lot* of scrolling, when a single entry takes up that much space.

Perhaps some sort of selectable display-spacing option with different per-item layouts (tight, medium, spacious) that might allow those of us who like the large book images and vertical spacing _and_ those of us who'd like far less scrolling can all be happy? :-)

The following links from the email from you announcing your first Early Reviewers batch with the newly designed ER program repeatedly sent me to the following Error Message:
Redirect Notice
The previous page is sending you to an invalid url (http:///topic/339404).
If you do not want to visit that page, you can return to the previous page.

The links are:
Early Reviewers Redesign and Relaunch
February 2022 batch
Check out the list
Early Reviewers
Early Reviewers profile

To sum up, five of the eight links did not work and they were all links pertaining to the new design.

And I was having enough trouble before making sure that it was noted which books I did not receive but now, as some others have noted, the "I did not receive this book" does not work. I also have a book marked as not reviewed which has a review on the Library Thing site, another thing others have noted.

I, too, would like to see the books I have requested listed under the Wins and Requests tab and not just those I have won.

I appreciate all the hard work that has gone into this redesign but there seem to be a large number of bugs to be worked out and an even larger number of unhappy LibraryThing users!
____________________________________________________________________________________________
Wow! Amazing fast work on fixing those glitches! Thank you for that and all else you people who run LibraryThing do!

When you say "We do not have a country sort option, but titles unavailable in a specific member's country will automatically sort to the bottom of the list", does this mean that as soon as I start seeing "USA only" (I'm in the UK) I can stop scrolling and checking, because all the books from then on are not available to the UK?

>62 timspalding: This is what happens after I try to submit the review:

Hmmm… can't reach this page

It looks like www.librarything.com closed the connection
Try:

Checking the connection
Checking the proxy and the firewall
Running Windows Network Diagnostics
ERR_CONNECTION_CLOSED

But, yet everything else works.

>9 AmyLarchuk: >38 lilithcat: saying positive and negative points in a book is indeed really useful, since the prospective reader may have a different set of values.

>48 lilithcat: I added some genres (no supergenres nor age-based genres) and I had the new line in the drop-down menu.

>51 perennialreader: heartily agreed!

>86 ScarletBea: As far as I can tell from my browse through, that seems to be the case.

I wouldn't have thought it would be too difficult to feed the "not available in your country" alert back a bit higher up in the hierarchy and either exclude the book "card" entirely from the results or add a class to it so that the CSS could just hide it from view. There's absolutely no point in showing them to us except to make us sad and jealous. :-(

Other issues:
* I agree with other comments about the layout meaning less information fits on the screen. The 3-column layout is nice - unfortunately on my laptop screen I can't get that until it's also too small to read. A 2-column version might be nice.

* Relatedly, I use the space bar to 'page down'. Except when I do that in Chrome, the sticky header covers a couple of lines of text I haven't read yet, so I have to scroll back up a couple of lines again. It does scroll the appropriate amount in Firefox so I suspect a case of "CSS hates developers".

>1 timspalding: Love the new format!!!!

I do have a book that I reviewed (Ancient Bones) that does not show as "reviewed" and when I try to re-post review through "review" button it doesn't take; nevertheless review does appear when you go to the book in my book collection. I assume these are just bugs that need to be worked out so I will sit tight!

>1 timspalding: I have enjoyed receiving and reviewing books. I think the new format is easier for me to see and I appreciate all the hard work you folks have done.

>50 saltmanz: Ooh that second screenshot looks so much better. I'd love it if I could see 3 or even just 2 columns on my wide-screen laptop.

Any chance of having Series information as a default notification in Fiction books? A few publishers sometimes say that the book is #n of a series, but far too many just offer #6 without warning, which is unfair on the authors and the readers.

Don't like it, but that doesn't mean anything to anyone except me. Under books reviewed and not reviewed it is completely messed up. Says I haven't reviewed books that I didn't even win.

>47 waltzmn: On the Settings page you are able to enter your favorite genres which will make an option called "My Genres" appear in the Genre filter list; this way you can filter on multiple genres at once.

>70 LibraryCin: This was a bug; this should be resolved.

>97 knerd.knitter: On the Settings page you are able to enter your favorite genres which will make an option called "My Genres" appear in the Genre filter list; this way you can filter on multiple genres at once.

Thank you. I've done it, and it reduced my list quite a bit. :-)

But note that my biggest request was for a --NOT-- option (--NOT-- fiction, --NOT-- Sports and Leisure). I'm interested in almost anything factual that does not involve pointless competition :-), but (as an autistic) I find most fiction, especially character-driven fiction, deadly dull if I can read it at all. If I wanted to spend all my time being around people, I wouldn't have so many books. :-p

I'd genuinely like to be able to see everything except what I specifically want to exclude, because it might let me learn about something I wouldn't otherwise look at. Hence the --NOT-- idea.

Please don't get me wrong. I find the search commands a great improvement. I'm just making a feature request.

Also, on the topic of reviewed/not reviewed, I've got one book from five years ago showing as not reviewed -- which it isn't, because I never received it. (Too bad; it was one of the better book I won.) Just a little more data for the bug list.

LT2.0 has been widely hit or miss for me. This ER redesign has me feeling a little better about the misses. I can see how recent new features and previous redesigns have led up to this system, and at least on mobile, I like many of the changes. This is more like the series system redesign than the Talk redesign in functionality.

Example: The genre dropdown helped me notice interesting details I likely would have skipped without the new menu.

>1 timspalding: I noticed that people (publishers?) are posting books to incorrect categories. For example, there were fantasy titles in the section on History.

>85 Shookie: The following links from the email from you announcing your first Early Reviewers batch with the newly designed ER program repeatedly sent me to the following Error Message

Yes. The profile comments went out with "relative" URLs, that worked on LibraryThing but when sent as email comments, didn't know what site the links were on. That's why we sent out a second email just now.

>87 medwards429: This is what happens after I try to submit the review:

Yes, something's broken with review submission on that page. We are waiting for Chris to look at it. Our apologies for the problem.

>101 bperry1399: I noticed that people (publishers?) are posting books to incorrect categories. For example, there were fantasy titles in the section on History.

Thanks. Can you point out which you have a problem with? AbigailAdams26 reviewed them, but something may have slipped through. Alternately, there may just be a difference of opinion on what the genre entails. The publisher is ultimately in control here, so unless it's an error, we're not going to argue with them about it.

We have updated the January wins, so we believe all the past wins should now be visible on your Wins & Requests page; please let us know if things are missing. We are now looking into the Mark Received / Not Received and Review issues. Thank you for your patience.

Attention: We are current reviewing a few things. I am working on and would appreciate bug reports on the two following topics:

1. The list of books won and lost
2. The reviewed-unreviewed status of every win

So let us know if you see errors here, such as:
* A book you won, but LT isn't saying you won it
* A book you didn't win, but LT is saying you won it
* A book you reviewed, but LT doesn't know
* A book you didn't review, but LT is crediting you with the review

We hope to have all this data in apple-pie shape by afternoon, but need bug reports to work through.

* A book you reviewed, but LT doesn't know:

Survivors
David Long and Kerry Hyndman (Illustrator)
Offered by Faber & Faber USA (Publisher)
Beautifully illustrated tales of extreme survival featuring children and adults. Perfect for the young adventurer or explorer.
Format
Paper
Genres
Kids, Nonfiction
On Sale
2016-10-20
Country
USA
Win Date
2017-07-31

I did review this book last year but for some reason the review didn't show on the book's main page, so I reposted it today.

>95 reading_fox: I try to ensure that all series books are listed as such, before approving a giveaway. If one slips through, please let me know.

>101 bperry1399: As Tim mentioned, this is something that is provided by the publishers. I review for outright errors, but with genre categorizations that are debatable, I leave them alone. If you see something that looks wildly off, let me know.

>95 reading_fox: >108 AbigailAdams26: piggybacking on that comment, it should display on the giveaway itself if a book is part of a series.

>106 timspalding: My list of books won and lost seems correct. So does the reviewed/unreviewed status. However there are two (older) books that were reviewed, and show as reviewed, but the review itself isn't showing on the page - I don't know if you're interested in that.

(Also I agree with everyone who says the received/not received is currently very confusing.)

>106 timspalding:

My list of books won/lost seems to be okay now.

I reviewed the revised edition of If I can cook, you know God can, yesterday, but the review is not showing up anywhere.

Also frustrating is something not on your list, and that is the number of books that I had marked as Unreceived under the previous ER version, but are not so showing now. And the button to Mark Not Received doesn't work.

>112 lilithcat: can you give us an example of a book you've marked as received that is not marked as received any more? I believe those button should be working, although if you've already marked it as received, it will just update the timestamp.

>4 knerd.knitter: I'm still getting an error message.

>114 Well-ReadNeck: What error message are you getting and where?

>106 timspalding:
Lamarck's Revenge : How Epigenetics is Revolutionizing Our Understanding of Evolution's Past and Present by Peter Ward never showed up on my won page although I did receive and review it. Also, What's a Mother (in-Law) to Do?: 5 Essential Steps to Building a Loving Relationship with Your Son's New Wife by Jane Angelich.

Could we get an example of what constitutes as a good review versus a bad one? I love reading and have a lot of time on my hands, but I never know what would be considered acceptable to continue doing early reviews.

I know the member giveaways are gone, but this was something I actually enjoyed and did do reviews through Goodreads. Bummer it is gone, but I understand completely.

Thank you for continuing this program!

>113 knerd.knitter:

https://www.librarything.com/ner/detail/38843/Tadao-Andos-Church-of-the-Light

https://www.librarything.com/ner/detail/30814/A-Surprised-Queenhood-in-the-New-B... (Note: this book is showing in my catalogue, but that's because I borrowed it from my library.)

https://www.librarything.com/ner/detail/13382/Critical-Mass

https://www.librarything.com/ner/detail/126/How-to-Profit-From-the-Coming-Raptur...

And this one: https://www.librarything.com/ner/detail/25601/New-Orleans-Noir-The-Classics should be marked "received", but it's not (and, again, the button doesn't work)

>117 Sarah_K_17:

I never know what would be considered acceptable to continue doing early reviews.

I think the only requirement, assuming it hasn't changed with this new iteration, is that it be at least 25 words.

melannen (#44)

Where did they say they were reviewing books for suitability? All I saw was a statement that they won't be "gatekeeping" publishers. Which is a shame - legitimate small presses are publishing some great stuff, but "I'm going to release this ebook and call myself Foobar Publishers" when Foobar Publishers has no staff and publishes only books by the one author isn't the same thing at all.

There are three books on my page that I won but never received. I have marked them as not received many times, but now I cannot mark them as not received. I try to click the button and nothing happens.

It’s been six years since I won a book. I’m thinking that the system is punishing me for not submitting reviews for books that I never received.

>119 lilithcat: I think the only requirement, assuming it hasn't changed with this new iteration, is that it be at least 25 words.

And not to be total blithering nonsense. Just don't make your 25 words be the first 25 words of the Declaration of Independence! Not that we'd know, probably. :)

>120 lorax: Where did they say they were reviewing books for suitability? All I saw was a statement that they won't be "gatekeeping" publishers. Which is a shame - legitimate small presses are publishing some great stuff, but "I'm going to release this ebook and call myself Foobar Publishers" when Foobar Publishers has no staff and publishes only books by the one author isn't the same thing at all.

This is a very very thin line, and getting thinner. There are "publishers" with many titles from many authors who exercise zero editorial control. And there are single author publishers and non-publishers who release great books.

>121 BarbaraMcI: If you click the button and then refresh the page, does the time stamp for when it was marked as Not Received update? The UI is confusing because when you click the Not Received button it appears that nothing happens, but in my experience the time stamp does show the current date when I revisit the page.

>120 lorax: Under "publisher changes" : "With Member Giveaways gone, all books are now reviewed by staff before they go live. But we are not longer trying to gatekeep who is a publisher"

Admittedly I added the word "suitability" but I don't really thing that adds any information since who knows what the criteria will be. Presumably there's some if they're going to bother reviewing them.

>>"I'm going to release this ebook and call myself Foobar Publishers" when Foobar Publishers has no staff and publishes only books by the one author isn't the same thing at all.

I think that's the point. There's no point putting Foobar Publishers in a separate box from self-published/author-promoted works and there's no real easy way to draw a line between Foobar Publishers and an actual good small press. And no reason to, when the Kindle selfpub author with no publisher is probably putting out better books than Foobar anyway. So throw them all in the same box, and use a different metric than whether someone has incorporated themself or not.

Yeah, but what's the metric?

>118 lilithcat: The four you mention all have a Not Received Date indicated on your Wins & Requests page. As for the New Orleans Noir, when did you last try the button, because I thought it should be working now.

>121 BarbaraMcI: On your Wins & Requests page there is a Not Received Date for the three books that are not reviewed.

>106 timspalding: * A book you won, but LT isn't saying you won it

My January win, which wasn't there yesterday, has appeared on my list of books won. Thank you!

Also, I want to say that I love the feature that indicates whether a book is print or an ebook. Sometimes, in the past, I've forgotten when a book I asked for is an ebook and didn't check my spam filter for it. I think that may be why I didn't receive a few of the books I won. Now, that information is readily available, which makes it less likely a book will slip through the cracks. So, thank you for that!

>126 lorax: You'd have to ask Tim if they're using any criteria other than what's on the 'how it works' page.

But old with Member Giveaways I believe the only requirement was that it was a book, so presumably they are at least checking to make sure it's a book.

>117 Sarah_K_17:
Unless something has vastly changed with this 'new ER', there are no requirements on the *content* of the reviews, beyond perhaps being at least 25 words or something. Honest reviewing is always helpful, and pointing out things you like about the book and things you didn't like about it is helpful. It's also just as helpful to simply admit 'it was an okay book but nothing special' or similar. Some people include a summary of the plot in their reviews, some don't. What your review says does *not* affect your chances of winning another book, only the reviewed/unreviewed status is considered. (Again, unless something hugely changed that I haven't seen mentioned.)

>61 timspalding:
Where do you think the line falls between 'asking' for reviews off-site and 'implying they require' them? Some of the wording on the author-messages do seem to straddle that line, for example:
"I'd like to celebrate the journey ahead by offering you a chance to get a Free Paperback Copy of Beyond the Pale in exchange for an honest review on Amazon, Goodreads, et al."

>106 timspalding: timspalding wrote asking for bug reports on:

1. The list of books won and lost
2. The reviewed-unreviewed status of every win

I can't say I remember every book won, but every book I'm shown as having won is one I won. (Urf. Glad I don't have to say that aloud.)

However, there is a book I won and did not receive:
Isaac the Alchemist: Secrets of Isaac Newton, Reveal'd
by Mary Losure
January 2017 batch
I did not receive this book, and it lists with a "Not Received" date of 2022-02-08 (I pushed the "Mark Not Received" button today to try to get it off my list!). But it's still in there asking me to review it, or mark it received. Seems pretty clear I'm not going to receive it after five years. :-)

It also shows up in my "not reviewed" list.

What is odd is that this isn't the only book I never received, although I think it's the most recent.

The unreviewed count, at least, is correct: "You have won 69 books. You have 0 books left to review." I have reviewed every book I've received, even the (many) I've regretted requesting. :-)

So it looks as if the system won't count my un-received book against me, but it's cluttering up the list. I'd call it a low-priority bug.

I received and posted a review of "Double Take” by Elizabeth Breck in January of this year. When reviewing the revised “books received” page, however, I found my review was not listed. Also, the “mark received” and “mark not received” options were not available for that book. I checked and the review is still accessible when I access that book by going through “your books.” I reposted the review through the “books received” window and hopefully it will show up now.

All of the other entries for me, going back to the beginning, were correct.

>106 timspalding:

Grilled Cheese and Goblins: Adventures of a Supernatural Food Inspector is marked as "not received" with date yesterday, while Memory's Exile is correctly marked as "not received" with date today.

Burning Brightly: 50 Years of Novacon is marked as not reviewed. I even tried to re-enter my review from the winnings' page, but nothing happened.

>132 waltzmn: where can I find the unreviewed count?

>123 timspalding:

This is a very very thin line, and getting thinner. There are "publishers" with many titles from many authors who exercise zero editorial control. And there are single author publishers and non-publishers who release great books.

There are so many edge cases. I can think of one longstanding academic publisher with a name like a character from a famous Baum book that at least sometimes exercised "zero editorial control." While not an ER book, it is one of the times when I wrote a review to reveal its shortcomings.

I agree that with print-on-demand and eBooks it is possible for anyone to be published and indeed be a publisher. But painting all small presses with the same brush of negativity is equally risky. We worked really hard on the works released via Lulu PoD under our 24 Palmer Street Press imprint. These were extensively edited, annotated, and introduced and period illustrations were selected to bring out some of the first book editions of an author of interest to me and some other collectors. In the periodicals of the field they had some favorable reviews. I have not offered them as ER books. Because they are distributed through Lulu and not Amazon, I did not get and ISBN for them nor would they be found in Bowker's Forthcoming Books (which has its own language and geographical limitations for a site that is trying to be international).

For 2010 we reprinted the first five Tom Swift stories in a special format that emulated a rare premium item for Keds athletic shoes in 1932. Only the first two books were so issued but we used it for all five of the 1910 stories to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the series for the convention we hosted in July 2010. We pulled texts from Gutenberg and found them to be filled with OCR and typgraphical errors that took a couple dozen hours by two people working with the texts and vintage copies to repair.

Some publishers are fly-by-night outfits which grab any text and "publish" them to make a buck. Some exist only to publish the work of a single author.

So often I wish I could better filter out the PoD reprints in eBay and used book database listings. So much sand for each fleck of gold found.

James

>127 knerd.knitter:

New Orleans Noir is now showing as received, but when I tried the button earlier today, it didn't work. Maybe a delay in showing up? Or something got fixed in the interim?

I see the Not Received Date Now, but it's not obvious, particularly in conjunction with the much larger "Mark Received"/"Mark Not Received" boxes. Is there some way "Not Received" box could show as clicked?

(Curiously, How to Profit From the Coming Rapture and Tadao Ando's Church of Light are showing a "Not Received" date of today, even though I marked them "Not Received" quite a while ago.) And a number of books are showing both "Received" and "Not Received" dates. For instance, The Dark Library shows that I received it and didn't receive it on 2020-12-02.

Thieves of Book Row is showing as "Not Received", but also as "Reviewed" (which is correct; I both received and reviewed it).

>104 timspalding: And that is what kills genre for me. I object to a historical novel set in WWII being marked as fantasy just because a character has a prophetic dream part way through the text. It's a pure marketing ploy and the reason I find genres pretty well meaningless.

If there was only a single genre selection available (perhaps with a relevant sub-genre), that would be useful, but when marketing throws genres at the book, I'm immediately put off.

>106 timspalding:
I won Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea in the November giveaway-it is showing that I did not receive it or have a review for it (the review is posted in the book info)

>135 .mau.: .mau. wrote:

132 waltzmn: where can I find the unreviewed count?

I just go to the Home screen and to Books; it's right at the top. If it's in the Early Reviewers section, I haven't found it, even though it would certainly be helpful to have it there. :-)

>80 amanda4242: AHH! Thank you! I had not seen those dates. Trying to take everything in and still missing the obvious.

Mostly, I like the new interface, especially the algorithm updates. One issue I've found: previously, when I was selected for a book but didn't receive it, I had the option to click "not received" and my account would update to reflect that I never got the book, so not reviewing it didn't count against me. Now, I still see the "not received" box to click, but when I click it, nothing happens. Will there be a way to insure that my algorithm ranking doesn't drop due to not reviewing books I never received? Thank you!

>92 Garp83: I have the same situation and experience for one of my most recent books.

>37 tardis: I would also like there to be a click-through of the actual WORK of the book. Why would I click the ER link of a book and be taken to same exact thing I am looking at, the ER link of the book? From the old ER page, we could click to the work to get more details. As of now, I have to "Search LibraryThing" for the book I am looking at. Please include a WORKS link to each book, thank you so much!

>117 Sarah_K_17: Member Giveaways isn't gone! It's now part of Early Reviewers.

>144 tim_mo:

I agree. I avoided using a full site search by clicking the author name, which brought me to a ER author page, where there was a link to the LT author page, where I was able to see the work listed, and click that link. Having the "LibraryThing work page" link at the book listing like the "LibraryThing author page" is for the author would be a signal improvement.

>144 tim_mo: >146 paradoxosalpha: there is a LibraryThing work page link on the detail page for the giveaway, e.g., https://www.librarything.com/ner/detail/44071/Sugar-and-Salt-A-Novel

Have you found it? I can’t locate it either.

I have one book that is not showing that I reviewed it. It is a review I just posted at the end of January. When I tried to copy and paste it using the "review" button, I was unable to do so.

https://www.librarything.com/work/27245807/book/211932908

A few things we're working on:

1. Making sure all data is in. Mostly, we're good, but keep the reports coming.
2. I am working on getting the bird mark in the right places elsewhere.
3. Chris is going to change the Winners page to remove a lot of the extraneous information (e.g., summaries of books you've read) so the density will be higher.
4. Chris is working to improve data density slightly, with some tweaks. The covers will stay the same size—they are of a size where you can browse the books BY COVER. This is our choice of design.
5. Lucy is working on the mark-received/unreceived logic.
6. Chris is working on moving some of the mark received/unreceived UI around, to make it clearer.
7. We're going to add some sort of link to the LT work.

>140 waltzmn: Thanks! I never looked at it... (and I am still uncredited for my review of Burning Brightly: 50 Years of Novacon, alas)

>59 AnnieMod: This saddens me. True, Member Giveaway had gotten pretty spare, and I had visions of working through boxes of duplicates-and-done-withs, to offer one at a time to deserving (i.e., LT member) homes; no reviews needed, just a place where they'd be appreciated. But I procrastinated, unaware that MG's days were numbered. Now the closest thing to Member Giveaways I'm ever gonna get is either James Clarke's The Juried Heart, a slim "Vous et Nul Autre" volume of law-related verse that I somehow wound up with maybe a half-dozen extra copies of, and trade paperbacks of Matthew Pearl's The Dante Club, but only if I go buy 2-3 more than I currently have. Used bookstores are only interested in so much, and the local Friends of the Library have been on hiatus since 2019 (originally due to a pre-COVID construction closure). The next-best alternative may be Little Free Libraries in the area, or maybe BookCrossing. Or is there an LT thread about members who have books to share with other members who'd be glad to get them?

Glad I read all these comments -- I never knew I could mark a book as not received! Out of three books I've one, I never received one and I lost the other two to a disk crash before I could read them.

I think I'm going to like the ability to filter the displays, but I'll decide for sure after a couple months. I'm not fond of eBooks (I don't have a tablet, phone is too small, computers are too non-portable for reading -- even laptops are a nuisance) but will occasionally put up with one. I definitely have my preferred genres but didn't really check the whole list, yet, to see how well I can select what I want.

I do agree that there is a lot of scrolling to be done and, as someone else commented, it does seem that every time a website is made more "mobile friendly" that translates to "real computer hostile". I have 30+ years in the IT field but I do NOT consider my phone to be a substitute for a computer.

Just noticed that on the ER "Wins & Requests" page, my review of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe and Alexander Selkirk is not showing, though it does appear on the work page.

Bigger problem: If I click on "go to work page" from the ER listing, I get this: https://www.librarything.com/work/27263959 and if I click on the "Book Information" link from that listing, Firefox says Warning: Potential Security Risk Ahead Firefox detected a potential security threat and did not continue to www.nimblebooks.com. If you visit this site, attackers could try to steal information like your passwords, emails, or credit card details. Ack! This does not happen if I go to the work from my catalogue or via a site search.

>154 lilithcat: That work needed to be combined with the real work. That's done now.

>112 lilithcat: I see your review.

>156 MarthaJeanne:

That's probably because I re-did it a few minutes ago!

>1 timspalding: At first it was a bit confusing as I hate change, but now it's okay.

>106 timspalding:
My unreceived books have been updated with yesterday's date. Thank you.

My last book received and reviewed still says I haven't reviewed it. Sisters in Art

>86 ScarletBea: I'm in Canada. This was my assumption, so that's what I did when I looked through the list yesterday.

>98 knerd.knitter: Much better! Thank you!

>99 waltzmn: But note that my biggest request was for a --NOT-- option

I'd like to vote for this option, as well. I read more than I don't read when it comes to fiction/nonfiction, genres, etc.

>111 melannen: However there are two (older) books that were reviewed, and show as reviewed, but the review itself isn't showing on the page - I don't know if you're interested in that.

I just noticed this on my list, as well. I wasn't sure if I was going to mention it here, but I'll piggyback on your mention. :-) Maybe it's not a big deal.

>32 rosalita: I do not see any left sidebar. Please provide more info or picture. Thanks.

Finally found it hidden under “Available Now”. That makes no sense to me. Then instead of a simple list and month and year it has the book summary followed by my review (for the ones I’ve won and reviewed). Can’t we please have a simple list and then expand if we want to see more? Please consider this.

I'm putting in another vote for increasing the information density on the page. The thing I like about librarything above any other book site is that it remains clean and information dense and relatively untouched by the excesses of graphic and white space web design. I understand that I'm in the minority here but it's just frustrating to scroll and search more to get the same amount of information.

The last two books I received aren't properly registering as reviewed. They are In Madison's Cave and Anax I'd already brought up the issue with the former (There are other reviews of that book in a similar situation, probably related to the fact that there were uncombined works for a while) The latter had previously been correctly registered as reviewed and now isn't.

>1 timspalding: This is great, Abigail. I especially like this bit: "Publishers and authors can now send their digital giveaways directly to winners on their LibraryThing profile pages. (This is only available if providing a download link through a third site.) We hope this will reduce links lost in email spam filters, etc."

Can that be done retrospectively i.e. for the January batch?

>150 timspalding: Still having an issue with reviewing my November 2021 Batch win of "The Lady of Galway Manor". Still getting the same old error.

My page looks good. The reviews were all marked and the one I got still had the pre-update not-received date on it. I clicked the not-received button again to update the date. Nothing showed at the start but it was updated appropriately when I refreshed the page.

Also to note, I do enjoy the look of the new interface, and the quick genre reference under each book description. Each info block is large, yes, but since my eyes are no longer what they once were, I really don't mind the size, and my mouse has a scroll wheel so I don't mind the trade.

How do remove myself from the Early Readers? I went to my ER profile and was only able to delete my mailing address and name. I can't remove my email address and I don't see an *unsubscribe* or however it is I am supposed to go about it. Please advise me.
Thanks you

>167 medwards429:

Your views are interesting, but none of them have anything to do with "what would be considered acceptable to continue doing early reviews".

What counts as an ER review has changed slightly. Here is the current rule.

"A LTER review must be posted to LibraryThing, must be at least 25 words, and must be a recognizable review, not a summary, nonsense, etc. Reviews may not include a URL."

Source: https://www.librarything.com/ner/rules

In addition, the regular rules for LibraryThing must be followed: no stealing copyrighted material or targeting another member.

That appears to be all for a good review according to the ER terms. Any further standards are up to the individual.

edited to add formatting and for nitpicking

Another, possibly useless, vote for more information density on all parts of the ER page. The batches and the won/lost pages. OMG the SCROLLING IS INSANE. I just want a quick, cohesive view of what I have, what I don't and what I may have missed in terms of reviewing.

The key is to remember WHY a user is going to that page. To get something done. Not to scroll through endless pictures and buttons.

When I'm looking for my next pick, I want to see author, title, cover and the genre info is helpful. I want to scroll a little, scan a lot and then decide when I want to see more. Right now I see everything all at once and it's annoying.

When I'm looking to see what I've won or lost, that's what's most important. Not a huge cover image or even my own review. Just a recognizable list to see if I've got to review something or whether I didn't win a book that I might want to, you know, purchase.

Sorry if this is coming off as rude, but honestly, I think a lot of the usability in the site is being lost. I like the new approach to flexibility and code that has a robust underpinning for future development, but the needs of the users are being ignored in the name of a uniformity of look no matter what the page is actually for.

And for what it's worth, I'd love a NOT button for sub-genres. Like NOT seeing certain reviews on the now basically unreadable Reviews from others with your books page. Sometimes it's much easier and narrower to define what you don't want to see than what you do. But again, not holding my breath.

I see several have posted this and I just wanted to add to the list that I'm experiencing the same thing where a book does not show as reviewed.

I started at the Wins page and clicked the Review button there. Put in my review and clicked Save. Nothing happened and my review disappeared. I then went to the work page and reviewed it from there. My review shows on the work page but the book still shows as Not Reviewed on my Wins page.

>173 Bookmarque: We are reworking the Wins page to remove much of the content you already know (e.g., the summary). Give us the day to do it.

>172 aspirit:

Reviews may not include a URL."

Ha. So all those people who say, “read the rest of my review on {URL to blog}” can’t do that anymore, at least on ER reviews.

>175 timspalding: Ok, cool. Thanks Tim. I really don't want to be cantankerous about all changes, I'm not, but sometimes I'm like 'what are they thinking?'.

>150 timspalding: I still have Burning Brightly: 50 Years of Novacon marked as "to be reviewed". But the worst thing is that even if I try to review it, nothing happens. I am not even sure if I can delete the review and write it again...

>175 timspalding: thanks so much to being receptive to these requests.

>182 medwards429: Yikes, jessibud2 only wants to unsubscribe from Early Reviews, not delete their LT account!

(I myself was wondering the same thing, actually. I haven't used ER in years, and figured it was time to finally get out. I'm almost positive the old page had a way to do it, but I couldn't find one on the new page...)

>185 medwards429: The deactivate button on the ER settings page was not visible this morning, but was fixed by Lucy.

>186 AbigailAdams26: Thanks for letting me know. I still don't know the odds and ends of this site after all the time I've been here. I'm just here to read and review, lol. I don't pay attention to much of the technical stuff (deleting accounts, deactivating things).

>188 medwards429: LT was described to me as being akin to a vast sea, when I first started. There is always something more to discover, even when you spend all day on the site!

>189 AbigailAdams26: As long as I don't need dive equipment, fins, and a wetsuit ... I'm all in :) but, it is definitely interesting. Thanks fo all you do! I definitely appreciate it.

>181 medwards429:

If by saying “what would be considered acceptable to continue to do early reviews” you’re looking for a way to constantly “win” books every month

That's not what I'm looking for. It's what the person who posted the query wanted to know.

My issue has been resolved!

>193 Shookie:

I'm seeing your review: https://www.librarything.com/work/27242584/reviews/212424959

We just pushed a large number of changes.

Right now your reviewed-markers are somewhat off. We are working on it. Don't panic.

>147 knerd.knitter: Very nice, thank you!

>50 saltmanz: The second screen should be the default when not on a small screen... I only see it when I go to 50% on my browser - anything higher and it thinks that 1 column is more appropriate. Which is just crazy on a laptop screen.

Maybe the determination when to switch to it needs a bit of a nudge?

We have released an update to the new Early Reviewers pages.
• We have worked to make the list more streamlined and compact than before.
• You can now review a book directly from ER using the "Review" button.
• The individual share buttons for the services have been removed (those weren't supposed to be on that screen anyway).
• The Share button now works correctly for every book.
• The buttons to mark an item received or not received now work correctly.
• There is now a Country filter at the top of the list so that you can limit the list.
• There is now a link to the LT workpage within the extra information area.
• Many data infidelities were corrected.

>196 timspalding: Too late, I panicked! Some of my previously-reviewed books now don't seem to be in my catalogue at all, much less reviewed!

I put one back before I saw this, but I'll hold off on doing any others and see what happens in the next while.

Three of my ER wins are showing as not reviewed even though the Review Date is there. It may have something to do with the LibraryThing Work Page for those titles going to \No Title\
https://www.librarything.com/work/27165315
https://www.librarything.com/work/27162485
https://www.librarything.com/work/27164072.

>201 Taphophile13:

Yes. Don't panic. See >196 timspalding:

I'll take yours as good cases for the fix, though.

>203 timspalding: Thanks, no panic here. Just letting you know what I see. Hope it helps you pin down whatever is going on.

Most of mine have reverted and are fine, I think. Haven't looked at them all, yet.

The one that is NOT fixed is because the link to the work is wrong.

Title is Lessons in Enchantment https://www.librarything.com/ner/detail/39472/Lessons-in-Enchantment
Librarything Work Link goes to https://www.librarything.com/work/24761249 but should go to https://www.librarything.com/work/24298236

>199 conceptDawg: Nice! Thank you!

There is one book that tells me I didn't review it. (I have.) The book is called Irina's Story by Jim Williams

I clicked the work link and it takes me to this page:
https://www.librarything.com/work/27162926

with "No title" and no information. I added it to the workbench, then looked for the actual book, found two of it (one is where my review is located), and combined them all. I assume this will just take a bit of time to update?

Reviews may not include a URL.

I think I'd like to raise an objection to that.

Many of my reviews include links to relevant material, other recommended reading, further information about the book or author, items of interest.

Some examples:

My review of Wolf Hall contains a couple of suggestions for further reading: https://www.librarything.com/work/9209435/reviews/64573454

My review of The Anatomy of a Moment: Thirty-Five Minutes in History and Imagination has a link to a video of the events the book is about: https://www.librarything.com/work/8201082/reviews/71201016

I'm sure I'm not the only one who does this, and I think it would be a shame to lose some of this information.

>208 lilithcat: I fully agree. I think the idea is to stop people from writing 25 words and then posting the actual review elsewhere. But it will effectively also reduce the quality of some reviews.

>208 lilithcat:

Unfortunately, no. We're going to enforce this. One of the stipulations of ER is that the publisher and author get to use the review—but not edit it. I have never met a site that wanted links going out like that. It's bad in itself, but it's riskier than it's bad. That blog you link to may be a porn site in two years. That's too much risk. Sorry.

>210 timspalding:

I see. But what about linking to a work or author page here on LT?

>199 conceptDawg: my list is now ok. Thanks!

>210 timspalding: will this be also enforced for links within LT?

>210 timspalding: Does this affect old reviews? I just skimmed back and maybe 10 of my existing ER reviews have links in them.

>215 Stevil2001:

It applies to reviews posted after we went live. So not old reviews, but it will apply to new reviews added to old books.

So...going forward what will happen to a review that is basically a link?

conceptDag (#199):

We have worked to make the list more streamlined and compact than before.

Are you sure that change got pushed? It looks exactly the same (i.e. one title per screen on a mid-sized monitor) to me.

Yup, me too - view looks identical. I'd love a two or three column view, but without making the font to small for these 50+ year old eyes.

>216 timspalding: Thanks for the clarification!

>198 AnnieMod: Yeah, it looks like it actually got worse with the last update: I would get 3 columns at 90% zoom before. Now I have to zoom out to 67% to get the 3-column layout!

>199 conceptDawg:

We have worked to make the list more streamlined and compact than before.

Not much difference. I'm seeing a couple of lines of the next book (title, author, "offered by"), maybe 1/5 of the cover, if that. No real improvement.

>216 timspalding:

Tim, could you clarify two things?

1. Does this apply to ALL reviews, or just ER reviews?

2. What about links to other pages on LibraryThing (such as work or author pages)?

>181 medwards429: many of my reviews are less than 25 words but are not an example of "I liked it, you will too" simplicity.

I'll try to pad them, I guess.

>224 fuzzi: The LTER reviews had always had the 25 words minimum requirement. Outside of ER? "No." can be as good of a review as 100 pages explaining why the book is bad technically.

>223 lilithcat: Just ER reviews.

Count me as another user who is very concerned about the loss of information density as LT2 rolls out. In particular, I'm dreading what will happen to my catalog pages, if the other pages that have been redesigned are any indication (e.g., Talk, Charts and Graphs, and now Early Reviewers).

>226 timspalding:

And Question 2?

Enforcing the reviews...

My reviews do include a short summary (in addition to what I thought of the book). That's because I post it in so many different places, primarily in groups where people may not already know what the book is about, it's just so much faster to copy/paste everywhere than to edit it for posting some places, but not others.

Will my reviews not count if I have both the summary and what I thought of the book? Thanks.

>229 LibraryCin: The only requirements from LT for LTER reviews are:
- At least 25 words
- No links
- Recognizable review, not a summary, nonsense, etc. (thanks >231 norabelle414:)

Anything else above is people sharing their own "rules" for reviews.

>230 AnnieMod: It does now say "A LTER review must be posted to LibraryThing, must be at least 25 words, and must be a recognizable review, not a summary, nonsense, etc. Reviews may not include a URL."

My interpretation of that is that it can include a summary but can't be only a summary.

>231 norabelle414: True (updated above). Still having a summary as part of the review is still ok.

>231 norabelle414:

Regarding reviews:

My interpretation of that is that it can include a summary but can't be only a summary.

I might suggest that this be moved to another thread, since it isn't much help to the coders. :-) But since we're here....

I'd like to suggest that what is important about a review is that it tells the reader what the reader of the book would need to know. If the book is Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone, what the reader needs to know is probably nothing :-p. That review is only for the author of the review. (And I still wish LibraryThing would have some sort of flag for private reviews that aren't much use because they're only a sentence or two about a book that has been reviewed dozens or hundreds of times.)

On the other hand, take a book that I just reviewed: Lydia Sherman: American Borgia. Mine is the only review anywhere that I can find. So my review describes who Lydia Sherman was, describes the book, and then discusses strengths and weaknesses. I would desperately have liked such a review before I bought the book.

At least there are descriptions of the Sherman book, because it's recent. Consider instead J. Franklin Jameson's Dictionary of United States History. It's from around 1890. Even if you find it on a used book site, it won't have a description. Which is too bad, because it's an interesting perspective on our history. So I reviewed it in that light.

Not many LibraryThing reviews meet the standards I use -- except for Early Reviewers, I generally only review books with few or no reviews, and I operate on the assumption that any review I write should meet the standards that a journal would expect of its reviewers, but should also explain the book for a layperson (for perhaps the most extreme example, see my review of Hamlet: The First Quarto: Volume 12). I do reviews that way because, as someone who is always looking for incredibly obscure books on almost-equally-obscure topics, the handful of such reviews I find here are very valuable.

So if we're writing guidelines, those guidelines should probably take into account the popularity of the work -- or lack thereof -- and the amount of information available about it.

We might well want to distinguish between review of fiction and non-fiction. A summary and description is probably more important in the case of the latter.

>233 waltzmn: I'm not debating what may or may not be helpful in a review of a book. I'm just interpreting what is required for an LTER review that is acceptable to LT, according to the terms on the page. I think any other discussion here is just going to confuse people further.

JacobHolt (#227):

Yeah, we've been promised that data won't actually go away, but our ability to actually see a useful amount of data at a time? No such promises, and present trends are not encouraging.

>234 norabelle414:

I'm not debating what may or may not be helpful in a review of a book. I'm just interpreting what is required for an LTER review that is acceptable to LT, according to the terms on the page. I think any other discussion here is just going to confuse people further.

Note that I said that the discussion should go elsewhere. And I'm not sure why people are having such trouble understanding simple rules. My one point would be that one should not treat the minimum acceptable review as the ideal review.

>236 waltzmn: If you thought the discussion should go elsewhere then why did you post it here?

>228 lilithcat: 2. What about links to other pages on LibraryThing (such as work or author pages)?

No links.

>237 norabelle414:

If you thought the discussion should go elsewhere then why did you post it here?

Because this is where the discussion is currently happening! If I start a new thread, the people who need to see it -- the ones who administer the review system -- may not see it, and the people here may not see it either.

There is is relevance to the topic: Why are people trying so hard to get away with the minimum possible review? For their own books, obviously, they can write whatever they want. But for ER, where they have been given something, 25 words is a pretty minimal response. I wouldn't ask for a book where I couldn't give a real review!

>225 AnnieMod: I recall that I had a book that was not counted as reviewed because it was about 22 words.

My reviews are not summaries, but what I liked/didn't like, including suggestions for who might appreciate the book, and NO SPOILERS.

I avoid reviews of unread books due to so many people ruining the plot for me.

The ER rules are understood. I will endeavor to comply.

>238 medwards429: thanks, I'll go reread your post, which I did appreciate.

It will not provide a summary of the book.

“Don’t write a plot summary. The author knows what their book is about, and so do the readers because this information is immediately available in the description of the book.

Absolute rot. I want to know what the book is about as well as what the reviewer thought about it, and I don't want to have to go traipsing off to other places to find that information. And, frankly, I don't know how it is possible to talk about "how a book flows" or "What did {I} like" or "didn't like" without some discussion of the plot.

As far as the author knowing what her book is about, so what? I'm not writing a review for the author. I'm writing it for other readers.

>244 medwards429: "The author knows what their book is about"

Uhm... the author is not the audience for a review so what the author knows and does not know is irrelevant. Other readers are the audience.

>244 medwards429: "because this information is immediately available in the description of the book"

Description is not a summary... and even for descriptions, they are not as available as you think they are.
In Amazon? Maybe - if the book has one and it is not the usual publisher mess. In Goodreads or here or other sites that combine catalogs with reviews? Maybe - if the book is popular enough to have one. On a blog? Nope, it won't be there.

If anything, new books are prone to not having very good descriptions and there is a HUGE difference between "publisher tells you what the book is about" aka the description and "reader tells you what the book is about" aka a summary quite often. One of them is a marketing tool. The other one is a reader's opinion of what the book really is. Summaries (and partial summaries) have their place as part of a review - they are not reviews but saying that they should never be in a review is just wrong on so many levels.

>246 AnnieMod:

If anything, new books are prone to not having very good descriptions and there is a HUGE difference between "publisher tells you what the book is about" aka the description and "reader tells you what the book is about" aka a summary quite often. One of them is a marketing tool. The other one is a reader's opinion of what the book really is. Summaries (and partial summaries) have their place as part of a review - they are not reviews but saying that they should never be in a review is just wrong on so many levels.

To be clear in advance: I agree with this.

But I would also argue that there is a lot of need for nuance here -- for a new book that has a publisher description, you probably don't need to write your own summary unless the publisher description is false. But, as you say, a lot of publisher descriptions are false. I've been horribly disappointed by a great many books marketed as non-fiction that are actually fiction (random example: The Mystery of Beautiful Nell Cropsey: A Nonfiction Novel. To me that title should mean it's non-fiction -- but it's fiction based on a true story. Worse example: Captain Kean's Secret, which, as my review shows, is not merely fiction but an almost-certain fake.)

So a summary of an ER book is useful in cases where the description is problematic.

But a summary can be vital for an old book that doesn't have a good description. Background can also be vital for a non-fiction book that isn't well-known. So what goes into a review depends a lot upon the book.

I think the problem here is that people are confusing review guidelines with review types. Except for special cases like ER reviews, LT allows just about anything in a review. Which is probably good, but I wish that there were some way to make it clear just what a review is for. (E.g. a scholarly review, an overview, personal observations, or notes for one's own use.) This might also argue for private reviews.

Bear in mind that different readers want different things from a review. I have no interest in reading long discussions of details. I look at the shorter reviews to get a feel for whether or not I will enjoy reading the book. There is a difference between what can be expected of a book blogger and a reader from a site like LT. They also will provide buzz for different potential readers.

BTW you can't count on back copy to be accurate. I just read a book that somehow forgot to mention that it was a murder mystery. In such cases I think some summary is called for.

>247 medwards429:

I think that plot summary notation applies to places like retail sites

This is not a retail site, though, so what those places want is pretty much irrelevant.

>249 waltzmn: Oh yes, there are nuances :) But still summary is not a description and vice versa and descriptions are a marketing tool - so the publisher will mention only what they want to (and downplay or downright forget to mention parts that are not relevant to their target audience or that will alienate their target audience). Or they stress out a minor part of the book (because that's what sells). I am not talking about blatantly wrong but just... targeted descriptions. :) And where should the reviewer look for what the publisher had said? The back cover/flaps? The publisher site? Unless these are copied from each other, these can vary a LOT.

Noone is talking about summarizing the complete work, twists and murderer (if any) being all spelled out. But a partial summary is useful and makes it easier to talk about the book itself.

Ultimately, reviews are for other people - people who plan to read the book, what to see if they want to read the book or had read the book and want to see if someone else saw something else in the book. Publishers, authors and so on... if you are writing a review for them in mind, you are not really writing a review - you are doing marketing copy. Or something similar. If you don't want others to read them, there is the private comments field.

>248 medwards429: When we all are talking about summaries, we are not talking about no blurb or back copy” pasting. We are talking about reviewer-written summaries...

When you are on a launch team and do reviews for publicity teams, you are on the marketing side. Those have different rules. Readers, like anyone in LT and everyone in the LTER program, are just readers. The publisher can use a review if they want to but the reviews are not for the publisher, neither someone needs to care what the publisher really wants to see in the reviews - they get what people think, not what they want their marketing team to enforce.

I think that this is why your opinions seem to clash a bit with so many people here - you are looking at reviews from the marketing side; everyone else here looks at them from the readers' side. :)

>257 medwards429: Except that the rules of LTER do not forbid the summary to be part of the review - they just forbid summary as being the complete review.

>260 medwards429: I think that's the really relevant part of this whole discussion! It makes sense to ask reviews not to contain copy-pasted copy from the publisher, and it makes sense to ask for them to not contain *only* a plot summary. (This is a pretty big problem sometimes; I help run a 'review a book' webpage for teenagers and it is really hard sometimes to get ones that are not just plot summaries and actually contain a review.)

But - especially on LT, where a good summary existing elsewhere on the page is really, really not guaranteed - it can be an important aspect of a review. In fact a fair number of my LTER reviews have started "Based on the publisher's information, I expected this book to be {thing described by publisher}. In fact, it was {short summary}. If what you're looking for is {thing described by publisher}, look elsewhere. If what you're looking for is {thing I summarized}, then {here are my opinions}".

Also, seeing different people's summaries in their reviews gives a much better picture of the actual book than one publisher-approved marketing copy. So I would hope we're *allowed* to include summaries in ER reviews, even if they're not counted in the 25 words.

>257 medwards429:

Even here on LETR it stated no plot summary.

You are misreading that. There is nothing that says you cannot include a summary. But the review cannot be solely a summary.

>243 medwards429: I don't think that 25 words for a review is too much. I believe a review should be an honest expression of what the reader thinks and feels. When I read reviews I skip the long-winded dissertations, and look for concise reviews to help me decide if I want to read a particular book.

I've done over 1300 reviews on LT...some were long reviews, some short. I am not thrilled that I have to artificially pad a review because it doesn't contain the proscribed minimum verbiage, but I try to comply since it is stated within the rules.

>231 norabelle414: My interpretation of that is that it can include a summary but can't be only a summary.

Thank you! That's what I was trying to get at.

>266 LibraryCin: Technically we should wait for someone from LT to confirm - just because people can read things weirdly as demonstrated above by one of the thread participants.

>267 AnnieMod: Yes, you are correct.

It does seem that multiple people are interpreting the statement to mean a summary can be included but it's not to be the entire review. My hope is that this is the correct interpretation.

>250 MarthaJeanne:

I once read a novel where the back copy seemed to have the opposite idea from the author about who were the heroes and who the villains of the story.

>269 medwards429: For nonER books, there is no word count minimum.
"Good book" is an acceptable, if not very useful review. For an ER book it would count as not reviewed.

It has been agreed that "No" is an acceptable review on LibraryThing.

There are plenty of reviews that are mainly to remind the member about the book, and not to help others. As long as it is opinion, it still counts as a review.

>274 medwards429: I think it's annoying that you've been taking the thread off topic to provide unwanted opinions about reviews in what looks like a fervent attempt to convince others how you're better than most LibraryThing members.

When was the last time you wrote about the new features? This is a long thread that should be split into a continuation if more space is needed about the actual topic-- but not for off-topic criticism of readers who leave short reviews (acceptable by the standards of this site).

The 25-word minimum for Early Reviewers isn't new. Neither are arguments about the definitions of "real" or "useful" reviews, which are and will no doubt continue to be subject to an array of opinions. Can the repetitive prolixity please be moved to a more appropriate page?

>271 MarthaJeanne:

"Good book" is an acceptable, if not very useful review. For an ER book it would count as not reviewed.

Note that what I say in response to this is less in response to your comment than to what came before -- and it leads into something approaching a feature request.

It's worth noting that we already have a perfectly good mechanism for saying "good book"/"bad book," and it's the star rating system. If you want to engage in pure black-and-white thinking, and simplify it down to just good/bad, it's possible to give four or two stars, or five or one, as may be. Or you can say good/indifferent/bad, with a 4/3/2 or 5/3/1 rating. Thus "good book" adds nothing to our information that a star rating does not -- and the star rating is subject to statistical examinations which are much harder to apply to two-word reviews.

Furthermore, for a random person to say something is a "good book" conveys no information unless one knows something about that person's taste. I would in general bet that if someone rates a book a "good book" and says nothing more, then I would think it a bad book, but that's just me. :-)

Which point leads me to my feature requests, one of which I've made before, the other of which I just thought of.

The first feature request is, again, that we have some way to filter reviews. A review of "good book" may be useful to the reviewer, but to me, it is a waste of time -- an anti-feature: I have to discard all those useless reviews to see any real reviews.

The problem is that LibraryThing has reviews that the person write for personal use ("I like this book") and reviews that are written for others ("This is a book you should like"). These are completely different functions, but they go in the same Reviews field. Either we need a way to classify reviews based on their function -- or we need a way to filter reviews ("don't show me any reviews less than 50 words"; "Show me only Early Reviewers Reviews"). Or both, of course. :-)

Idea #2: If I am to make any use at all of the hypothetical "good book" review, I need to know if that person's tastes are anything like mine. In particular, how does this person rate the books that we share? If you and I have say, thirty books which both of us have rated, then we can take a correlation coefficient of those ratings. If that correlation coefficient were high (say 0.8 -- correlation coefficients range from -1 to 1), then I can probably trust your judgment. If the correlation coefficient were low (say -0.7), then I can trust your judgment in reverse: if you say "good book," then I will think it a bad book, and vice versa. If our correlation coefficient is in the middle (-0.2 or +0.15, say), then your taste and mine have nothing to do with each other, and your recommendation is no help to me either way.

It would theoretically be possible to do a "most similar taste" rating for each person on LibraryThing, just as there are "Members with Your Books"; it would also be possible to list one's compatibility with another person's taste for any member whose catalog one visits.

I think this feature would be a tremendous addition to the review system. Even better than getting people to write reviews that actually say something. :-)

>277 waltzmn:

it leads into something approaching a feature request.

That doesn't just approach a feature request; it is one. How about putting it in the RSI group? I have some thoughts about it, but I don't want to lead this discussion down another garden path!

>278 lilithcat:

That doesn't just approach a feature request; it is one. How about putting it in the RSI group?

Valid point, but I'm not sure what group you mean by "RSI." Something about site improvements? If you can tell me where to find the group, I'll move this over.

FWIW, my suggestions might not be the "right" site improvements. I'm just sick and tired of useless reviews. Someone else might well have a better idea.

>279 waltzmn:

Yes, sorry, the Recommend Site Improvements Group: https://www.librarything.com/ngroups/559/Recommend-Site-Improvements

As a long time Early Reviewers user, I welcome the overhaul. Just reading this post makes me happy. I have reviewed every book that I received and I actually got freaked out if a book didn't come because I was afraid this would count against me. I also wondered if getting the book from the library would look suspicious since I would add it to "My Library" once it was read. I'm a fifteener as a reference point. Anyway, I'm going to look at this post again and the new batch and see what is what.

>281 jeshakespeare:

I also wondered if getting the book from the library would look suspicious

I once won a book that never arrived. I marked it as "unreceived", but got it from another source and reviewed it. Yet the site labels my review "This review was written for LibraryThing Early Reviewers". https://www.librarything.com/work/13442968/reviews/98632860

>282 lilithcat: Yep. Always had worked like that (which is annoying).

The covers in the ER module on the homepage are suddenly ginormous. Intentional?

I just went through my list of wins and reviews and a significant number of my reviews from 2015 - 4 books - are missing. Not sure what is up with that. I know that I wrote those reviews and will try to see if I have a copy of the reviews in my computer somewhere but don't think that the system losing the reviews that I wrote should count against me if I can't find the reviews that I wrote in 2015 to repost them.

>285 Familyhistorian: Do you still have the books listed in your account? Were they maybe deleted and then readded later (if they are there?) The reviews are deleted if you ever delete the books (and yes, that means they count as non-reviewed).

>283 AnnieMod: really annoying indeed.

I have an ER section on my home page and the images are TOO BIG. Hate the new ER look. Is there any way to convince you folks that not everyone using is their phone for LT. These changes on your desk pc are off-putting. (The nicest thing I can say). I'm doing less on LT with each change, and it will finally come down to simply using it as a catalog for my books.

amanda4242 (#284):

Believe it or not, that display (while indeed ginormous) shows far ore information than the actual ER page! Which many people have complained about, and the issue persists, so I have to assume it is indeed intentional.

As others have noted, this does not bode well, at all, for the inevitable LT2-ification of the catalog page. Hopefully they'll let us keep the list view there.

>285 Familyhistorian: Please provide a list of the books whose reviews are missing.

>116 Taphophile13: I do not see a record of you having won either of those books, and I don't even see that you requested the second book.

Note that book reviews are recalculating, so you may notice some books you have reviewed are not marked as such in ER. This should finish in 30 minutes.

The covers in the ER module on the homepage are suddenly ginormous. Intentional?

No. We are working on it.

timspalding (#293):

Is the ginormousness on the ER page itself intentional and unchangeable, though? Frankly it makes the page nearly useless for me. I want to be able to skim through and see if anything looks interesting, not be forced to scroll for an eternity.

>294 lorax:

So, most of the size is determined by the size of the cover. I wanted to have the cover large enough that it could be examined and assessed on its own terms, with the title, author and (usually) and second-tier information legible. That is, I wanted the cover to be large enough that you could look down the covers, without looking at the metadata to the right. When you don't know a book, covers give you a lot of information about it. You can tell the genre from a cover, even without the words. And you get a quick sense of whether the book is—for want of another word—professional or not.

This is different from some other contexts on LibraryThing where the cover is more of a visual prompt. For example, the covers in your catalog aren't there for you to assess them; they're a quick visual clue to a book you already know.

Beyond that, we could save a bit by moving the copies and requests to the right, and the "Request" button. But I think they look good there. The copies and requests is, together with the cover, the most important information you need when deciding whether to press the request botton. Then the button is right there. There's a simplicity to the arrangement I like.

As for being useless and not skimable, let me say that it is highly scrollable. The various bits of information are all in the same place within each book's little box, so you don't need to spend a lot of mental energy parsing it out. Scrolling is a lot faster and easier than navigating. In 2005 people navigated here and there a lot on the web—click click click. Today, people scroll more and navigate less. I have mixed feelings about so many web pages being ten feet long. But here at least, with standard information in a long line, I think that scrolling works. And if you don't want to scroll through everything, we have some filters, like genre, to use instead.

Ultimately, though, De gustibus. There are people here who say it's too large, but others like it, and consider it quite an improvement. I don't feel bad about the reaction, or the design.

>295 timspalding:

wanted the cover to be large enough that you could look down the covers, without looking at the metadata to the right.

But you can't "look down the covers"; you can only see one at a time. Like lorax, I like to get a quick overview of what's on offer, and I can no longer do that.

I usually hate redesigns that put less information on the page, but I think I like this - the old ER page had so much info it made quick scanning a bit overwhelming, and the filters are great. However the cover size doesn't seem to scale with the page, so people with smaller monitors are going to have a lot more trouble.

That said, a lot of library catalogs have a show covers/don't show covers toggle that fits a lot more results on a page (also very useful for printing). Could you implement one for ER for people who just want to look at the text or have a more compressed view? (Covers do give a lot of info, but sometimes it's misleading info, and some people would rather not just by it. :P )

Add me to people who would find exclude genre filters a lot more useful than show only filters.

Also, I had it set to show only paper books, and when I went to request one, it made me go in and reconfirm my information first since it had been awhile, and at some point in that process, it cleared the filters and set it back to show everything. At least, after the book was requested, it was showing all, and I don't think I deliberately did anything that would cause that. Can't get the popup back to duplicate it, though.

Other people are talking about sort options, but I don't see any. It seems to sort by number of requests, most first? That seems like a recipe for frustration if people come to the page and only see the stuff they have the worst odds of getting! It's also going to mean the books that are already getting a lot of requests will keep getting more than their share, as people are less likely to go all the way down. I would prefer either a range of sort options (one of which is 'fewest requests per copy') or literally any other default sort (even if it's the reverse of this one.)

One thing I don't quite get. Yes, depending on screen size, you now get 1-2 books on the page at once. But the old method wasn't THAT much better! You didn't get 5 or even 4. I think 2-3 was more typical. Much of that was just tiny text. LibraryThing is moving away from using typefaces smaller than everywhere else online. We're still very much on the small end.

Other people are talking about sort options, but I don't see any. It seems to sort by number of requests, most first? That seems like a recipe for frustration if people come to the page and only see the stuff they have the worst odds of getting! It's also going to mean the books that are already getting a lot of requests will keep getting more than their share, as people are less likely to go all the way down. I would prefer either a range of sort options (one of which is 'fewest requests per copy') or literally any other default sort (even if it's the reverse of this one.)

I think a few factors come into play first. Yes, fronting the most popular stuff means fronting the stuff you have the lowest chance of getting. But it's popular for a reason--people want it. Fronting it makes ER look good. If the list started off with car-repair manuals or whatever, that would be worse.

Also, frankly, sorting is one way we get the best publishers to participate. I think they would be annoyed to be pushed down just because they were popular.

Add me to people who would find exclude genre filters a lot more useful than show only filters.

Yes. I think we'll have to implement that.

>298 timspalding: I think there's a disproportionate difference in human perception between 1-2 and 3-4. In particular if you're only seeing 1-2, scanning by scrolling is actually a lot harder because you don't get the visual cues of the item before and item after to help orient yourself on the list (not to mention the subconscious visual reminder that it is in fact a list, and you aren't at the beginning or end of it yet, and that you haven't accidentally skipped anything). On this monitor as I scroll I can see one full entry and half each of the one above and below, which is enough to keep me aware of my place in the list as I scroll, although three full entries would be better.

On my phone I only ever see one cover at a time, which is often unavoidable on a tiny screen, but I do find confusing enough that I usually make a note that it's a website I'll need to use on the computer. If my main computer monitor was also small enough that I only saw one entry at a time as I scroll I would probably give up.

(Let me add another complaint: on the phone view I often see no part of a cover at all, because there are four (!) overlay bars at the top of the screen that take up over a third of it - the main LT bar, the 'Available Now' dropdown, the filters, and the February batch information. That's all good things to have, and I know hiding menus also isn't great, but that's a lot of a tiny screen to lose - if we could reduce it to two, or make some of them hideable, or have some disappear on scroll up, that would help a lot. If I scroll to see either the whole cover or the whole description, the 'request' button is off the screen!)

I agree fronting popular titles makes ER look good in some ways! But it also means people just browsing by the page will see disproportionately long odds of winning everything. And it means those few books that float to the top early on will get a disproportionate number of additional requests, given the well-known tendency for most people not to read to the end of things, which means the sort of people who don't read the whole list are also very likely to never ever get a requested book, and drop out of the program.

All the car manuals and self-published crankery at the top would look bad, I agree. But at least some "Ooh, I actually have a chance of winning this one!" at the top would also look good.

At the very least it would be nice to have an option to sort by something other than popularity. (Number of copies or reverse popularity would help people who wanted to increase their odds; title would help someone coming back to the list find things they were looking for again.)

>298 timspalding: LibraryThing is moving away from using typefaces smaller than everywhere else online. We're still very much on the small end.

Font sizes across the internet have increased so much as to make the text useless. To read what's on most websites outside of LT, I use browser tools that not only strip out ads but reformat the text on each page. Without those tools, I would have given up on reading news, despite the importance of keeping up with what's happening in the world.

LT is a book cataloguing site. Most of here probably like to read. Ridiculously large font and images that take up an entire screen do not make reading easier for all of us.

>300 aspirit: I 100 percent agree with this. Most of the internet seems unfriendly to words, and I would be sad to see LibraryThing emulate that large-font, less-content approach.

>300 aspirit:, >301 JacobHolt: +1!!!!

>302 ScarletBea: >301 JacobHolt: >300 aspirit: Agreed!

>300 aspirit: >301 JacobHolt: >302 ScarletBea: Agreed!!!

What, LT not follow the rest of the web down the hole to post-literacy? What are you people thinking? /s

>299 melannen: And just as a comparison, on That Other Website's homepage feed I can see either three covers, or two covers and parts of one or two others, and there's a huge difference in ease of navigability between that and only seeing one cover at a time. It's still not particularly info-dense but it actually feels like a scroll and not a tiny glimpse into something huge like peering out the window of a bathysphere at part of a whale.

timspalding (#295):

I almost didn't bother to respond, because you clearly have your mind made up. I can no longer compare the old and new versions of ER, but perception does matter. Being able to see 3-4 titles at once, versus LESS THAN ONE - yes, I see an entire cover, but most of the description is hidden under "see more" - matters. (I currently see about 1 and a third covers, and half of one description.) That's a long way to scroll to see what might look interesting. I probably won't bother. I *can't*, as you put it, "look down the covers", because it takes 3-4 times longer than it used to. Especially if anything looks interesting enough to expand the description.

What I will say, though, is that being able to keep my catalog list view as it is, with non-ginormous covers, is perhaps the single deal-breaker for me. If LT goes to the same "nobody wants those nasty old words anyway" approach to the catalog that you're taking elsewhere, well, it's had a better run than most sites.

>1 timspalding: Hi,
I really like the new Early Review program. It makes it easier for readers to find books offered by authors and publishers instead of having to check a tab for each.

The only way I can find to review a book I've won is to search for the book, add it to my personal list, then review it. People might be more apt to review books if there was a link on the Wins & Requests page that took them directly to a review form.

>308 RubyMosher:

People might be more apt to review books if there was a link on the Wins & Requests page that took them directly to a review form.

There is.

If you haven't reviewed a book you've won, there's a big "Review" link under the cover image that takes you to the form.

>308 RubyMosher: I'm not sure what you mean by adding to your "personal list" — you do have to add the book to your LibraryThing catalog before you can review it. But once you've done that, you'll see a Review link on the Early Reviewers Wins & Requests page that you can click to open the review interface.

I wonder if Chris et al are viewing these new pages on giant vertically-oriented developer monitors, versus the crummy little (24") work-from-home screen I'm using. (The big old monitor is not compatible with my new laptop, alas). I can easily see the new layout looking good if my monitor were twice the size and rotated 90 degrees.

I don't understand the emphasis on cover images for books that are not released yet. I'm not going to recognize any of them because they're not out yet, and in some cases that might not even be the final cover art. Sure, the cover has the title and author on it, and sometimes I can guess what the genre might be based on the cover art, but it's much easier and more reliable to just look at the title and author and genres in regular text so there's no guessing involved.

Never having done ER, I don't have a bone in this, but I note that on my 24" office monitor, it doesn't seem to be the cover size that drives the overall height of each entry, but the text (even with "See More" unclicked). So using smaller cover images wouldn't help, in the sense of getting more entries onto the screen, unless the textual information was also compactified.

FWIW, I see two-and-a-bit covers on this screen.

When I look at the ER options now I see big covers, okay. I like pictures.

But in order to read the description I NOW have to click on "see more", not just scan the text.

Personally, I don't like it, as it makes it more difficult for me to check out the content of the ER selections. What is in the book is more important to me than seeing pretty covers.

>311 lorax: What kind of filthy animal uses a vertical screen?! Not this one. I use a stadium jumbotron as my main screen.

No, I have three screens that I test on for various reasons. I have two "high resolution" monitors—one big and the other is the laptop screen, so smallish—and one older, low resolution monitor. Suffice to say that everything gets tested on all of these.

So, I've found that if I stretch my window almost as wide as it will go, which means longer lines of text than I'm comfortable reading (though I know reading makes me old-fashioned even here now), it fits two books side-by-side, which is actually scannable.

(If I stretch it all the way, it goes to 3 books per row but the "request" boxes are hidden.)

>316 lorax: Ah, yes. I have a fix for that coming out later today. And another bonus feature that I think people will like.

We pushed out an update to ER last night. With the update we tried to compress the data as much as possible so that we could get another entry on most screens. Obviously this is going to be slightly different for every person based on screen size, font selection, zoom level, etc. ("screen size" should be read as "browser window size or device browser size, depending on context, but that gets wordy....so "screen size" is what we're going to use)

• We've moved the copies/requests and the Request button to the right side of the content so that we could compress the vertical layout. Now, most entries are mostly limited by the cover size (which we'd like to keep big for reasons that Tim spelled out in previous posts).
• We've changed the batch banner so that it scrolls with the page, giving us more content area while you scroll. I also changed the font to make it easier to read.
• The 'see more' button is now a link and takes up less vertical room within the center stack.
• We've removed, moved, or combined items within the data list on each book item.
• Covers get slightly smaller on very small screen sizes.
• There is a modified grid option for very large screen sizes. You'll see two columns. (> 1500px wide, I think)
• There have been some fixes to various filter modes and how they react to each other.

• I have even bigger changes coming later today/tonight.

>318 conceptDawg: A little better now. Could you make the right panel with the ER logo collapsible or move that info to the top and get rid of it all together? Once you're past the little bit of information at the top of the panel it's all empty space that could surely be put to better use.

>318 conceptDawg:

Mildly better. I'm seeing 2 covers rather than one, but I do wish I could see more information about the books.

>319 amanda4242: No.

Couple observations on the new look on my 10" tablet:

In portrait mode, the numbers thingies extends slightly outside the screen.

In landscape mode only, when I click See More the See Less link covers a bit of the last line of text.

(Firefox on Android)

>322 AndreasJ: Yep. Fixing those already. Just need to finish up some other stuff before those fixes can go out.

This is better - I won't say "much" better, but I know it's what we're going to get, and thank you. Carefully setting my window size now means I can see four per screen again, and I can always scale it back when switching tabs.

I will say that I'm amused that Tim is going full-on for the "Judge a book by its cover! Why would anyone want anything else!" approach here, but I will admit that while it's never enough to indicate that I would like something, the genre / subject matter cues are usually reliable enough to indicate that I definitely wouldn't.

(Headless blond woman with pink cake? Definite no. Ice cream cones and fiction? Also a no. No slight on anyone for whom these genre flags are a yes - they're just not for me. Now that I can actually see the books, let's see if there are any maybes in the bunch!)

>324 lorax:

Ice cream cones and fiction? Also a no.

I might make an exception for eating an ice cream cone while reading fiction.

>325 timspalding:

The covers only look that relatively small if you've got a pretty wide screen or browser window, mind. It's probably not a bad guess that on average, somebody using a narrower broswer window is more of a text and less of an image sort than someone using a wider one.

(Oh, and I'm getting rather tired of being told I've "found an arrow". I wasn't looking for one, and presumably don't need being told it more than once for the same page even if I were.)

timspalding (#325):

If I'd seen three covers to begin with, I'd have rolled my eyes as I do every time LT sacrifices information for flash, and moved on. Initially, I saw one.

Here's what I see, now:



Black boxes are effectively blank space. I do notice that I see a lot more whitespace at the top than you do, since you don't have the "February 2022 Batch:" portion. The total whitespace is easily half the screen, but that's neither here nor there.

Red boxes are covers.

Blue boxes are non-cover information. I will admit that I was contrasting cover with text description, rather than with the metadata - contrasting textual vs visual ways of learning about the book - while you seem to only be looking at the actual fraction of the page taken up by covers.

>328 lorax: Most of the top box goes away when you scroll up. Here's how much was taken up that way before.

I've just noticed that when I click on "See More", the word or words directly above "See Less" are faded.

>330 lilithcat: Thanks. Already mentioned twice. And there is a fix on the way.

>325 timspalding: Okay, I have to admit that’s funny!

Continued at https://www.librarything.com/topic/339835

>326 lilithcat:

There is the Arnold Lobel book called Ice-Cream Cone Coot and Other Rare Birds as an example combining ice cream cones and fiction.

James

Jus so I can find this again.

>1 timspalding: looks great! but how can i change my member giveaways number? it states that i had 191/203, which is incorrect. there were only two books that were still listed as member giveaways that were never published. everything else was reviewed.

>291 knerd.knitter: Lamarck was a second win for that month. I no longer have the message telling me that I had won that title. No idea what happened with the second book. I received it in place of the title I did win which finally showed up many months later.

>337 Taphophile13: I'm not sure what to tell you, because the database does not show a record of you winning either of those books. I can tell you they won't count against you, since there is no record of the wins in the database.