I'm just about mentally committed to completely re
Submitted by jim on Tue, 07/25/2000 - 05:17
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I'm just about mentally committed to completely rewriting The Listology from the ground up. Fear not, the concept will remain the same, as will the basic organization. No data will be lost. But I hope to expand the features, update the navigation, and generally improve it. I expect to take my time, so I'm thinking six months at least before you see anything.
So, the sky's the limit. What features do you want? The two big concepts I'm mulling over are:
- The ability to create "favorites" - favorite lists, users, etc. From the collected favorite data, a hall of fame could be built.
- The ability to relate lists - so when viewing a list you liked (or disagreed with), you could click on "create my own version". Anyone that finds one list could also find it's children.
One more idea - being able to see the number of entries on each list when looking at a search result (OK, so I just want to compare the "Books I've read this Year lists the easy way). In other words, I would see a list of lists like:
[just making these numbers up, don't kill me if I under-report your reading]
Which brings up another idea - is there a way to seach only in the list title, not the contents? (like for "this year")?
I like it. Consider it added to the wish list. Also, enhanced searching capabilities are on my list. I plan on allowing cross-media searching, the ability to search just title, list, comments, discussions, or various combinations.
Jim, at another site I visit (which shall rename mainless), they give you a grace period in which you can alter a posted comment before it gets locked in and belongs to the ages. Would it be very difficult to introduce such a feature here?
Not sure about degree-of-difficulty, but it certainly seems worth pursuing.
A thought for you webmasters - what if I created some kind of XML interface to The Listology so you could pull in lists to your sites? I've noticed a few people that maintain "books read this year" lists here and on their home pages. I imagine, if I made lists available via XML, you could just maintain them here, and then suck them into your own site automagically so you don't have to maintain two lists. Thoughts?
A thought - create some kind of ranking system. You'd get points for creating lists, making comments, and having comments made about your lists. Also, I was thinking about adding "favorites", so you could flag your favorite list-authors and/or lists. Then, you could also get points for making other folks' favorites lists. Two problems . . . cheating (creating multiple IDs) and it making The Listology too much like a popularity contest. Still, could be fun. Your thoughts?
I have either a suggestion or a question:
When I click on "my lists" and see the list of my lists with stars by them-- I click on that list, and instead the list that everyone sees, I see the version of the list I can change and save. The only way I've found to view the comments on my lists is to do a search for the list I know has a comment, and open it that way.
a) is there an easier way?
or
b) can there be an easier way-- maybe clicking on the start to see the comment that was maid so you can reply to it?
Thanks :)
nadine, I know how Jim hates to embarrass people, so I'll answer this one for him. To see your lists as others see them you just click on the little number that comes after the list title. If that doesn't work, it's Jim who should be embarrassed, since his programming is haywire.
Thanks, bertie. I do tend to be unduly flakey sometimes, and am semi-computer illiterate.
yes, I see that I spell "Made" "maid." I really need to start using the preview function
I'm very happy that we can now know, via the stars, when a new comment has been added to our lists, but I'd also like to know when someone has replied to my comment on another list.
Me too. I'm thinking this could be handled via the "watch list" feature above. So when you're watching a list, you get mail when it changes, or when new comments are made to it. Checking that the new comment is a direct reply to your specific comment is a little harder (what about a reply to a reply?). Maybe I could also add a user preference "check here to automatically watch lists that I comment on".
listology can get really active sometimes, an email per response might be obsessive, wouldn't it? would we be able to watch a list without having to get those emails, but maybe just get a little star when the list has changed, kind of like when we see if people have replied to our own lists?
p.s. your suggestions for improvements sound great (esp. the 'make a list like this of your own), and as far as peoples suggestions to block tv and video together into "visuals", i think that could get muddy, but that's just my opinion.
thanks for being a good webmanager, jim.
Think about user preferences. Once you've logged in, how would you like to be able to customize The Listology to suit your habits?
Jim, for me, a visit to TL usually goes the following way: I click "my lists" to login and check my lists for new comments to answer, then if I have any "administering" to do I do it (or sometimes this gets left til later), then I click "search" and "what people are saying" and check out new comments in general, and from here I might go to other's lists to make comments, then I usually click "recently updated lists" - this often leads to checking out new lists rather than updated ones, so you might consider separating those two functions. I rarely use the author index nowadays, but it is, of course, a necessary feature. I remember when I first arrived at this site that I found the major links down the left side a bit misleading in their wording; e.g., "my lists" and "my profile" give the impression of a personal hompage with those links leading to info about the site's owner. You might consider changing these to something like "user's lists", although "user's profiles" wouldn't be appropriate, so I don't know what you'd do with that one.
Btw, this is bertie, who obviously didn't follow routine this time - but I did say "usually".
Please ignore my 17:36 and 17:38.
Ah, a little glitch: I named myself because I thought I was having to post anonymously, but apparently not so - but the button did say "post anonymously".
Ha! Clearly something I'll have to clean up during the rewrite.
Thanks for posting your routine. Knowing how the site is used is very helpful in trying to find new ways to make it more useful.
Testing, testing.
This would be difficult (possibly) to implement, but I'm trying to think of a way to capture some kind of list revision history. Sometimes (often) when I go to a list that has recently been updated, I can't tell what is new, if anything (or maybe the owner saved it just to clear the "new comments" star - the new site will unrelate that functionality). Maybe if I just save the current version and the previous version, I can compare the two. Hmmm....
Another idea: When you see a list you like, you could check a box to "watch" it. Then you'll get an e-mail in your inbox every time that list is updated. And the owner of a list (or anybody, for that matter), could see how many folks found his/her list interesting enough to "watch". Thoughts?
Great idea. It would be a good idea to be able to check a box in order to watch your own lists as well. I would love this feature.
yup. i like that one as well. I currently just try to look at the most recently commented lists to try to see if anything i was interested in was modified..
I know that a few of my friends have commented that they would like to be able to add television lists. If there was a television section, I would probably contribute.
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs
This is an interesting issue that has been around from the beginning. Various folks have requested various sections: television, radio, magazines, essays, or just "other" ("favorite M&M colors" for example).
I remain torn. Broadening the focus of the site might make it more interesting. Or it might spread it too thin. I have hesitated--and continue to hesitate--to add new sections for fear of detracting from the movie/book/music focus of the site.
I don't think a proliferation of categories is a good idea (television, magazines, whatever). However, I do see some possibilities:
I could rename the existing categories in a broader fashion. Perhaps "moving pictures", "the written word", and "audio" (clearly these need work, but you get the idea). So TV and movies would be lumped together.
Also, I could add an "other" category that folks could use to kick in whatever they fancy. Humerous lists, Lettermanesque Top 10 lists, etc. To keep this from detracting from the media-focus of the site, I would probably not make the "other" category searchable, but it would be browsable (so you could click on a "view all Other lists" link).
What do you think?
I support adding Television, but only because it seems to fit into the site well. The other 3 categories are art mediums, as is Television. Magazines (which can include short stories and the like but are usually factual / journalism / scandal based) and humor lists do seem quite a bit out of the scope of the site, but perhaps they could fit in.
Shalom, y'all!
L. Bangs
Maybe it's my love of parallelism (or something), but I like the categories: aural, textual, and visual.
Or you could be more strightforward and go for audio, video, print.