New "Links" feature for series and awards

TL;DR
I've added a "Links" feature for series, awards and publisher series.

You can see them on a page like this:
https://www.librarything.com/series/The+Raven+Cycle

Longer:

The links area looks like this:


Editing links looks like this:


The different types (series, awards, publisher series) have different preset link types, but you can always type "other." The links are sorted by those types, but preferring anything that lists the full series or award.

Unfinished

I rushed this out to make it into the State of the Thing. Coming soon, therefore, are:

1. Anything you guys find
2. Edit validation, so you can't enter a link without a URL or a URL twice
3. Spam flagging
4. Spam validation
5. History-of-edits
6. Helpers list
7. Helpers stats
8. Badges

The larger goal is to convert the list function on author pages to this system, which is a MUCH better system, technically. That was my original goal, actually. But this allows me to test the feature with no data.

Lastly, I can start doing checksums on links, and then pop up an alert when a full-list URL changes. That is, if the page for a series changes, it may suggest a new book has been added.

Okay, thoughts?

Nice!

However:

1. Not fully translatable
2. The ugly translate tag bug
3. You've reused the string Wording, which is used in a different context where it is translated (and has to be translated) differently.

1. What's not fully translateable?
2. Fixed. Thanks.
3. Hmmm. Changed to "link wording"

It's true that the link wording is not translateable, nor can links belong to one language or another (e.g., Wikipedia). I'm of two minds about allowing that. It could make a lot of data.

I'm glad you're paying attention to the series page. With this box added, the series description box no longer appears so insignificant and lost.

Thanks! The string "Other" in the dropdown cannot be translated, other than that it works fine now on the localised site.

Well, it's a little weird that the Submit button doesn't close the lightbox or at least print a Success message.

First thought: Great. Another place to police for spammers.

Second thought: Oooo. Time to move some stuff from the description fields.

>8 gilroy: Yeah, Tim's working on the spam prevention angle. I'm excited to be able to clean up descriptions, too!

On my personal wishlist would be a way to reconcile series/awards (the latter, especially) that have had name changes over the years. The now-Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction, for example: https://www.librarything.com/bookaward/Orange+Prize+Longlist (and that's just the Longlist page). It used to be the Orange Prize a while ago, and that's what it still is on LT.

You can now see the edits on the helpers page.

See for the recent action:
https://www.librarything.com/log_helpers.php?view=links

Here's what it looks like:

First thought: Great. Another place to police for spammers.

So, what I'm going to do is this:

1. I have a list of all domains ever used in links (about 200,000, but 95% are in the top 100 or so)
2. I'm having staff approve domains. If you link to the NYT, it goes through.
3. Links added by paid members are approved.
4. Links added by unpaid members which aren't on approved domains get put in holding. Members will have to approve them.
5. Links by spam members is removed.

Thanks! The string "Other" in the dropdown cannot be translated, other than that it works fine now on the localised site.

Fixed.

Well, it's a little weird that the Submit button doesn't close the lightbox or at least print a Success message.

It flashes what's changed. Too fast?

I'm excited to be able to clean up descriptions, too!

Yeah. Descriptions should no longer contain links.

Did you accidentally disable the whole thing just now?

Yeah, I'm not seeing a links area.

Yup. See now. Sorry.

>12 timspalding: I do think the flash is a bit too fast.

I've added a badge for it:



That's gold, because I screwed up and reversed the necessary minimums. You need 10 for bronze, 100 for silver, 500 for gold.

For now, this only covers link additions to the new system.

Phew. I thought I was really having a stupid. This could be fun and makes a lot more sense to me given the way I find, explore and obsess organize books.

Tim
I've been adding series links in html in the description area. Is there any way I can change these over en masse or is it one by one?

second question
If the only available listing is a retail site, is there any restriction in linking to same?

PS
great addition by the way

If the only available listing is a retail site, is there any restriction in linking to same?

Meh. Amazon?

Amazon, smashwords, kobo are the more likely

I'm of two minds. So often their data is crap. They may have it right, but do we trust them to always be right?

It would only be when all else fails.

Can I presume by the silence that transferring my existing links is a manual one by one project?

Yeah, I think it has to be. I could do something that FOUND all series notices with links in them.

Also, I'm going to add a disambiguation notes section.

I don't say it often enough, but thank you

Wait, I don't get this. If I enter a link to a full bibliography in my local language (for a translated series), that link becomes the link also on the English-language site. How is this supposed to work?

Hi, this is, I think, my first post. I like the addition to Series (a 1st viewing for me - I haven’t used LT to best advantage yet). However: how can there NOT be a listing for Michael Connelly’s Harry Bosch series? This is the best crime novel series going, imo. Did I miss something? How do I add it? I see how to add TO a series but not how to add a missing series. I’ll become more familiar with how things work here, but for now I’m kinda lost. Thanks.

>27 maryconnell: I found a Harry Bosch series page: http://www.librarything.com/series/Harry+Bosch

I generally get to series by navigating from a book in the series, but you can also just do a site search, as one of the categories of results is for series.

As to creating a series, there may be an easier way, but I have done it by just adding the series to the common knowledge for a book in the series. See the box at the top of the common knowledge in this book, for example: http://www.librarything.com/work/84315. There's a similar box for publisher series further down.

Wait, I don't get this. If I enter a link to a full bibliography in my local language (for a translated series), that link becomes the link also on the English-language site. How is this supposed to work?

As with author links, links have no language settings whatsoever.

I'm trying to avoid what happened with CK--something I'm working to reverse (see https://www.librarything.com/topic/297309). I don't want different pools of links on different sites because, actually, you end up with mostly the same links, but no language has them all. We could, however, do this:

1. Specify which Wikipedia something is. I can pick that up from the URL and I think I'll do it (e.g., Wikipedia (Hungarian)).
2. Make a box for the language of the page/site linked to. So it would say "(in German)" by the link. Meh.
3. Allow link text to be translated by language.

I'm not particularly excited about any of this, however, except perhaps #1.

Is there a way for Wikipedia links to automatically change between sites? Like, if I link to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Award on the English LT, could LT automatically replace that with a link to https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hugo_Award on the German LT?

>30 Stevil2001:

Yes and no. It could do it "blind"—linking to the same thing, but on DE. That would works sometimes. Or it could use the internal language linkages, having processed the data. But this gets very complex very fast, with diminishing returns.

I've added a language menu, and the words "Link text should be in the language of the website."

Like this:



Links not in your current language are marked with the language, like this.

I've been playing with this a lot lately. I like it. Not happy that when you google a series or character, Goodreads always comes up first.

I've been approaching it as I want to have info about a series. Do I need to read them in order? What's the general tone of the books in terms of violence and/or cruelty, are the books introspective or literary, that kind of thing. Links to movies or TV. I assume this is ok, too? lol I've gone ahead and done it either way.

Oh and the challenge of coming up with a really short series description is kind of fun. I've gotten better at it.

>32 timspalding: just a quick nitpick. I hope that doesn't mean you're going to change all my nice, neat entries from "Wikipedia (FR)" to the above. I might add that when there are multiple Wikipedia pages, I always add "Wikipedia (EN)" rather than your example above. It seems more polite.

Okay, I'll be quiet now.

>34 Lyndatrue:

I found only two non-English Wikipedia links so far--one added by me.

But when I go back and do the other links, I'm going to need to decide how to do this.

sub.

Going to play with this some more later. I already added a few non-English links before I saw the language field pop up, so for now I'll hold off on adding non-English pages (wiki and publisher) until the language issue is settled and no further changes will force me to re-do work (and remember what I added in the first place!).

The language is settled.

I've added the ability to flag links, on the edit page for every link:


Any flagging at all makes a link go away, except on the edit screen, where you can see it.

The flagging shows up on the helpers log:



Link to helper log: https://www.librarything.com/log_helpers.php?view=links&span=3

>1 timspalding: I've added a "Links" feature for series, awards and publisher series.

I'd like to see a similar functionality as a new "Links" style for the "Your books" list view.

For cataloged books, a user could add links to Wikipedia articles for the work and the author, to reviews, to the text online, to the particular edition’s publisher, to scholarly articles etc.

And, internal links to LT records could be added - an omnibus could have links to records the user created for its constituent works or to their LT work pages, links to series pages, to various lists, to duplicate copies etc. The constituent records added by the user could have links back to the user's editions that contain them.

Some of this is available as CK data, but with this approach everything is together in a concise format, visible as part of the book's catalog entry. This visibility, in context, will encourage the creation and use of such links.

I accomplish much the same thing by putting links in the comment field, but having this functionality available as a supported feature would make such links usable by many more users.

Interesting question:
Author webpage has all the series listed as a continuous running list. Would the same link be used for each of the author's series?

Example: http://www.davidweber.net/books

>41 gilroy: I think so, yes.

Problem.

I split the author Tim Bryant and added author homepage links to each page. But it carries over to the other.

So Tim Bryant - 1 should be
https://www.timbryantbooks.com/

and Tim Bryant -2 should be
http://pineapplehillsc.com/

But editing one edits both.

>43 2wonderY: Interesting. I'm going to test something real quick. Good catch, either way. I'm just curious whether this affects only newly-split authors, or all.

>43 2wonderY: Confirmed. I'll get Tim's attention on this.

To reproduce:

- Go to a split author page, like https://www.librarything.com/author/bryanttim-1
- Add a new link (new link system, not old)
- Now go to another split from the same author name: https://www.librarything.com/author/bryanttim-2
- The same link will appear on that page.

Dang. I guess I just need to not add links to split authors till this is fixed.

Same issue with Jo Robinson, which is not recently split.

Thanks. I'll get on this soon.

Okay, fixed. It works like it used to work now, and you'll see about 30k links back on split authors.

Some background, if it interests: Links are assigned in a way I didn't anticipate or remember. Most stuff here is assigned to the authorname-plus-split. So, for example, "kingstephen-1." Author links, however, are assigned to splits only if they are over 1! So, everything on the first Stephen King is assigned to stephenking, but things assigned to the second Stephen King are assigned to stephenking-2. It's actually a nice trick, to avoid having to move links around as authors as split and reassigned--everything you add to the author just goes to the first one when you split. But I had forgotten the kludge.

Could this be added to works as well? Older books could have a Gutenberg link, some books have their own Wikipedia page, and often authors will have a page on their site or even a dedicated site for a book (often promotional, but for computer programming books the site will typically have examples and errata).

You could probably automatically filter out things like Amazon affiliate links, and allow flagging of any links whose only purpose is to sell the book.

As an example: Automate the Boring Stuff with Python has the website https://automatetheboringstuff.com/ which has a section of additional content including file downloads, tutorials, APIs, and links to related sites (and yes sales links, but that's clearly not the only purpose of the site).

>48 timspalding: Thanks.

>49 r.orrison: I'd also like to see a formal place to add links to online editions. I've been putting links in the book description box.

>49 r.orrison:

Yes. Coming soon. But I want to get rid of the quick-links section--or radically pare it down.

Question. A Spanish writer uses wordpress.com, an English language site, but his posting are in Spanish. Do I set that as English language?

>52 2wonderY: Actually, Wordpress.com will try to detect the language you are using (by IP number I guess) and use that language in the GUI. For me, everything is in Swedish. For you, it would be in English, even if we looked at the same site.

>53 anglemark: I didn't realize that. Thanks for pointing it out.

>52 2wonderY:

Spanish.

So, ideally, I think we'll want to move toward being able to properly show inter-series relationships, like subseries (Discworld comes readily to mind), but I also see an opportunity here in the new links feature in the meantime. For example, I've tidied up the Red Rising Series a bit: https://www.librarything.com/series/Red%20Rising. I've included the two subseries pages in the links section. What do you think?

>56 lorannen: Isn't that handled by the related series box?

>57 jjwilson61: The trouble I've found with the related series section is that there is no way to distinguish between what's actually related and what's there because the author wrote a short story that was included in an anthology with stories by a bunch of other series writers. Take a look at the World of the Marrok series for example: only six of the thirty listed are actually related, and the rest are there because Briggs had short stories included in anthologies with stories by the authors of the other series.

It would be nice if there was a way to remove the series that aren't related and to explain the relationship between the ones that are.

Anthologies shouldn't be included in a series listing, unless the whole anthology is part of the series. The short story that's contained in the anthology is part of the series, but if the anthology includes other works that aren't part of the series, then it isn't part of the series.

(If the short story that's part of the series isn't cataloged on its own, what do you do? I'd say, if you really want it listed in the series, add it as a work.)

>59 r.orrison: I agree with you; others do not, which is why we have unrelated series in the related series section.

One argument for including anthologies containing short stories is that it's useful for readers who are new to a series, or still reading it, who mightn't otherwise know about the short story. It can also be useful for readers of anthologies, who may be wondering which series a particular story was part of.

LT is my go-to for series information, as I've found it more consistently comprehensive than other sources. I'd rather have more information than less.

>61 Herenya: But those stories are already indicated as a part of the series individually. Listing all anthologies that contain them makes series pages for many fantasy series a complete mess. With two prequel stories, each of which appears in 4-5 anthologies, you need to scroll down to come to the first book in the series. If people insist on designating them as a part of the series, at the very least it should be organized so that endless anthologies appear at the bottom so that looking at the series page actually gives you an idea of books included.

Case in point, just look at the ASOIAF series page. It's unreadable https://www.librarything.com/series/A+Song+of+Ice+and+Fire

>61 Herenya: I see your point, but if a story has been catalogued separately, the contained in/contains information filled in, and added to its series, do we still need to include an anthology full of irrelevant stories? I think this is an argument for linking the contained in feature with series in some way.

ETA: >62 SandraArdnas: Egad! It looks like some of the stories are listed at least three times!

>62 SandraArdnas:: and >63 amanda4242:: I agree that if stories are already listed individually (and connected to any relevant anthologies via contained in) then anthologies themselves don't need to be on the series page. And in those cases that it's preferable that they're not not making the series page messy. I was just thinking that an anthology is more likely to have been added to LT than a short story.

I like the idea of any anthologies being listed at the bottom (I have the impression that that's often where they are put) but more than that, I'd like to see all the "Part X of Y" books listed at the end.

>62 SandraArdnas:, >63 amanda4242:
Anthologies that contain the prequel stories are listed, but for some reason not the prequel stories themselves, which have all been catalogued here on LT. Instead they are off in their own sub-series. Sigh.

Perhaps we should have a new category for anthologies?

Found an oddity (possible bug?) with empty series pages. For example: http://www.librarything.com/series/TimSpalding.

Looking at the links section, it's showing links from most (if not all) other series pages. I'm still poking around to see if there are any it's missing.

This came out of my looking into something else that's not a bug here: https://www.librarything.com/topic/298457.

>62 SandraArdnas:

Also the other side of the equation the actual anthology doesn't look good either https://www.librarything.com/work/4002366

It just seems so messy, especially when most of the individual stories seem to be in LT and be properly linked via work-to-work relationships

>67 lorannen:

Fixed.