Feature Requests

I thought it might be nice to create a thread to consolidate the feature requests we have for Litsy.
To make it easier for the admin to sort out what we're requesting, I think we should also be sure to include whether the request is for the web interface, the App, or both.

Request - for the web interface

I'd love a page of my commonly used hashtags. Like we have here on LT with the tag list.

Request - for both web and app

If we've already provided a picture for a book we're posting about, could we have the option to select to use the same photo again? For instance if we've used a cover photo on a post and want to use it again.

I use the app on my iPad and iPhone.

I would really like Litsy to be able to rotate to landscape as I find it easier to type on my iPad (I use the on-screen keyboard) on the wide side of the screen.

Furthermore, would it be possible to 'grab' a cover image from the web, the way we can on LT, rather than only be able to pick one from our device's photo gallery?

ETA: or maybe the one we've used before, if we post about a book more than once, could automatically come up?

A couple more. I was just looking at Litsy on the web, but I think these would apply to all interfaces.

1- could the 'so-so' icon be more of a horizontal flat hand? At the moment, the icon looks more like a thumbs-down unless you look hard.

2- maybe the 'Litfluence' screen could have links to 'comments', 'books read' to navigate more easily?

I have been thinking lately about Litfluence on Litsy. It started when I looked at my number, which is relatively low even though I have been on Litsy for over 3 years. I think this is because I don't participate in the memes/quizzes or daily photo challenges or swaps.

I see (and love) other Litsy members who primarily provide wonderful reviews. Why not give more Litfluence points to actual reviews? I think reviews are far more meaningful than quiz posts about whether one type of snack is better than other. Just a thought -- and it may be an unpopular opinion :-) .

And, I know this has been brought up many times by others, but being able to zoom in and magnify photos would be great! I know we can screenshot then zoom, but that's one extra step.

I already posted my requests in https://www.librarything.com/topic/304113 so I won't repost them.

But in addition to above, I would like to add a new request for when making posts in Litsy (and I'm having brain freeze for what the technical terms are, so please forgive me and hopefully this is specific enough):

When you type @ in the message/post body a list/search is activated/ automatically pulled up, so you can find existing members by name. I'd love to have the same thing for hashtags. So, for example, when I'm making a post and type #lit (because I'm looking for LitsyAtoZ (example)) it would open drop down of potential hashtag options starting with "lit".

ETA: >6 ValerieAndBooks: I don't believe Litsy's purpose is reviews per se. If it were, then there'd be no Blurb or Quote post options. The tagline is "where books make friends" and I think a lot of those people "make friends" not just through their book reviews and blurbs, but also by those quizzes and challenges and book swaps and read-a-thons...

Your comment reminded me, though, about an article I read a couple weeks ago https://onezero.medium.com/almost-everything-about-goodreads-is-broken-662e42424... that pinpoints gaps which Litsy could fill, if it wanted to of course. :-)

>7 flying_monkeys: All I can say about that article is "Wow!" and how glad I am to be part of the LT and Litsy communities.

>7 flying_monkeys: RE: the article...
"While it is, according to a Goodreads spokesperson, possible to create a custom shelf in which books added are exclusive to that shelf only, not a single person I interviewed was aware of this. I want to know who the author interviewed. It was the first thing I figured out when I joined the site. **Not any different from LT's collections**

"Even when a book or author is accurately entered into the search bar, the correct result is often, inexplicably, at the bottom of a list following 10 irrelevant other books." I don't agree or disagree with the automagical nature of searching GR; but is this something the author complains about with Google search? Search literacy is a fairly common problem with users of any search interface. 1. "The Confession" as a book search is going to be wrong about 99.9% of the time because book title indexes drop the initial article. Anyone who has ever used a traditional library catalog (even a card catalog) would know that. 2. Adding author names to either search improves the search since the author of the article is using "both." All this to say, this is a contrived problem with GR searching, methinks. **This isn't any different from LT**

"The ability to privately shelve and annotate books on their lists was another frequent request made by Goodreads users I interviewed. Two solutions -- don't review or make your account private. **This isn't any different from LT**

"Goodreads is nearly useless for finding recommendations. I find this to be the same for LT and GR. Both tell me to read the other books in a series -- books I've read, probably; or read the most popular things of similar genres -- there's little to no nuisance. Lists are recommendations. They are just lists...just LT. Anyone can put books on a list and say "read these." Meh.

I could go on, but why bother? IMHO, LT and GR are the same tool just a different color. I've never understood the "ew GR" attitude from the LT users. Overall, the end comment from the author -- "Overall, though, the Goodreads users I chatted with were frustrated by the ugly design and poor functionality of the site...' -- has been my experience. I don't bother with the groups or reviewing; but I do feel I find more "want to reads" through GR.

>9 lesmel: I didn't share this article for its opinions on Goodreads.

(My biggest (technical) issue with GR is its crappy app (pretty useless for more than browsing -- shows spoilers, can't reply to a specific comment in Groups, can't tag a book in a comment) and its ever-declining programming on the web. But I'm not gonna get into that here.)

I think, like any app or website or online service, there are pros and cons to GR, LT and Litsy. And I think like any successful company the key is to decide what you want to do better than the "other guys" and deliver the heck out of that thing(s). That's why I think Litsy was a smart move for LT, and I'm excited to see how they grow it in coming years.

I shared the article here, in the Litsy group, because the article points out feature/service gaps that an app, like Litsy, could fill; namely, a bona fide community for readers AND authors who love to read -- one that blends the ability to browse, track to-read and read books, get recommendations, share to other socials, AND interact with book friends -- all from within a functional, modern design.

If they jammed that much into an app, I'd stop using it. It would be too overwhelming.

>11 gilroy: hence the "functional design" I mentioned :-) if designed properly UI/UX would be such that one would not feel overwhelmed.

a bona fide community for readers AND authors who love to read -- one that blends the ability to browse, track to-read and read books, get recommendations, share to other socials, AND interact with book friends

And, for the record, Litsy already does 3 of the 5 above. :-)

>12 flying_monkeys: Not to be pedantic but there's 7 and it does four. And that's enough. Try to do any more and it becomes overly cluttered, even with a properly designed UI. I refuse to get near FB's app because it is too cluttered and overwhelming. Look how much it does.

>10 flying_monkeys: What I like most about Litsy is that it's quick and I can share random thoughts and quotes at the exact time I have them (well, almost at the exact time...maybe a few moments later). To go into more detail, I revert back to LT. I've found lots of authors as members of Litsy. i tend not to friend them, but others love to do so. I think it's a really fun community and very different from LT.

While i'm here, one feature I found missing is an option for PAUSED. This is for books that I've started, stopped, and won't finish for a while. I'll come back to them some day. They're neither READ nor TO READ nor BAILED. They're simply PAUSED. That happens to me often enough when I try to read too many books simultaneously. :D

>4 humouress: I'd like to second this one:

Furthermore, would it be possible to 'grab' a cover image from the web, the way we can on LT, rather than only be able to pick one from our device's photo gallery?

>6 ValerieAndBooks: And I'd also like to second this one:

I see (and love) other Litsy members who primarily provide wonderful reviews. Why not give more Litfluence points to actual reviews? I think reviews are far more meaningful than quiz posts about whether one type of snack is better than other. Just a thought -- and it may be an unpopular opinion :-) .

Maybe what I'm about to request goes here?

On the website, is it possible for "trending books" to above "trending hashtags"?

Feature request: the option to hide all books' current rating/ranking icon.

When I look up a book I'm interested in, I don't want it spoiled by conscious or unconscious bias. I just added a book to my TBR that has a 33% rating, and while I know logically that I may be one of those in the minority who enjoyed it, the stat still lingers in the back of my mind. I want to go into books as open-minded as I do meeting a new person.

Having the option to toggle that rating icon off or on as needed can help readers and discourage group think.

>18 CampbellTaraL: You're right! I tend to avoid reading books that have a low rating, although sometimes it's a case of "you'll either love or hate this book".

Feature request: Is it possible to get the search function to recognise ISBNs whether they have dashes in them or not?

I often copy ISBNs from Overdrive books into the search bar but then I have to delete the dashes before Litsy comes up with a list of possible books. On the other hand, if I’m reading a physical book or on my Kindle, I type in the ISBN without dashes.

Every time I post something on Litsy I’m exhorted to ‘add an image, it makes it more fun’. a) In that case, could you please make it possible to search the web for images (or even a Litsy catalogue for book covers) rather than me having to take a photo on my device and uploading it? b) Don’t all the pictures just take up server space?

>21 humouress: I totally love the picture-taking process and the creativity that goes with it. However, I do understand that, for others, the picture-taking may not be that much fun at all.

>22 SqueakyChu: I did notice you put text and all kinds of interesting things on your photos. It’s not that it’s not fun; I suppose I’m just not technically creative that way.

It would be nice to have more options though.

I like the way we can click on a book name and see all the comments posted under that book. I’d like to see the same for authors so I can see what else they’ve written and what people think about those books. And also see what other books might be in the same series, please.

>24 humouress: I like that idea!

I would like to see the "mute hashtag" functionality carry over the mobile apps. Currently, the only place to both mute hashtags and have the muted hashtags not show in my feed is via the website. Which is kind of pointless because I'm mostly using my phone or iPad to check Litsy.

I suppose I could just unfollow the folks who do a lot of hashtag challenges that I'm not interested in but then of course I'd miss their content I do care about.

>26 rosalita: Strange, I seem to recall that muting hashtags via the website would also mute them on mobile. A couple of posts with the hashtag might get through if another hashtag was used on the post first, but it did seem to cut down on the extra posts by a lot. I haven't had the need to try it lately, though.

>27 rabbitprincess: My expectation was that after muting a hashtag the posts with that tag would disappear from my feed, but maybe it's not retroactive in that way? I'll have to pay attention going forward — you might be right.

I would still like to be able to mute hashtags from within the app, though.

>28 rosalita: You may need to refresh the feed after muting.

Yes, that would be handy.

>29 rabbitprincess: OK, I can confirm that muted hashtags are still showing up both on the website and in the iOS app. I added the #WondrousWednesday hashtag to my muted list yesterday. I have a post in my feed in both places using that hashtag that was posted just 7 hours ago, so long after I muted it.

I think it's time for me to sign out of Litsy for another few years until/unless the bugs get worked out, or there's some indication of active development. It has so much promise but I'm finding it more frustrating than enjoyable right now.

Litsy is great, and I'm loving it. I've not been on there for long, but here are some suggestions/issues:

* It would be nice to be able to edit/amend book details, where the description is out of date, cover lacking, links to places for sale are incomplete, etc. This is especially important for authors using Litsy. Could this be solved if the titles were linked to/populated by LT?
* Regarding author use, it would be good to have an informal FAQ or guide for good practice - to avoid author spamming, etc.
* I don't know what happened to the blue tick for authors, but actually I think it's nice if there isn't one - we're all just readers, aren't we? I guess it may create a problem with fake profiles.
* It's currently quite cumbersome to be able to reply to comments. It would be good to simply be able to click in the notification, and have an option to reply.
* Under litfluence, I see there is a stat for "books added". It would be great to be able to click on this to see which books and by whom (at the moment, you have to scroll through the posts to find which one is responsible).
* I think it's great that posts are simply released chronologically, and there is no horrid algorithm ranking popularity or frequency of posting. Don't ever change this! :)

I'll post more things if they occur to me, but it really is great. Thank you!

Gareth.

>31 Gareth.Southwell: Informal FAQ for author promotion on Litsy and Librarything is quite simply one line:

Don't Do It.

>32 gilroy: Well, LT has specific places for authors to announce their books, giveaways, etc, so I presume that's OK. No?

As for Litsy, I asked members on there what the protocol was for such things, and the general opinion seemed to be that some promotion is fine, as long as the author/member is there primarily to interact and share.

>33 Gareth.Southwell: You asked for basic and informal, not the full details. That's basic and informal.
Do we have specific places that you can place an advertisement? Sure. But you can get kicked out of even there for being overly aggressive with advertising.

The important thing for both is that you are here as a reader and human being FIRST. Not as someone hawking your wares. Interact, show your preferences of reading material. Make friends. Keep sales pitches to the absolute minimum.

>34 gilroy: Well, we agree that pushing self-promotion is not wanted, and in my original post I specifically mentioned not spamming, and the fact that we're "all just readers". However, as a statement of policy, "don't do it" is not "basic and informal", it's simply not true - certainly as far as LT goes. There are various places where an author can make announcements and share information (e.g. Hobnob with authors) - I've used them.

>36 gilroy: You're arguing semantics

>36 gilroy: Let's not fall out - I came here and to Litsy to get away from Goodreads/social media toxicity! I just meant that "don't do it" is not the same as "sure, a little won't hurt, but don't be an asshole". Which I shall endeavour to do (NOT to be, I mean!).

Anyway, go in peace my friend. :)

>3 humouress: I would love to see this too.

In a similar way that we can tap on a book name to see all the posts for that book, could we see all the books by an author by tapping on their name? Though I suppose that would be more of a list of their books.

And maybe some way to see all the books in a series? (I’m currently making my way through a group read of the Belgariad and the Malloreon.

It'd be great to have Mastodon added to the Also On list which seems static, it has Orkut and Myspace but not some of the more recent developments in social platforms.