1. It seems one can't see people's interesting libraries and friends on their profiles anymore. Is this a bug?
2. The order of modules has changed. Can we set our preferred order?
1. This is a bug. Mike is working on it. We've got half the team on at 10pm right now, trying to make everything copacetic.
2. The order of profile modules is not currently changeable. I'm happy to hear about why you don't like the current order, especially once it all starts
displaying again. But the site needs to look a certain way, not every way. Doing the latter erodes our ability to design a coherent UI, and to improve or even repair existing code effectively.
Message modifié par son auteur, Fév 8, 2010, 10:07pm.
OK, so, if you're not wedded to the changes in the order, would it be possible to have it as before, and the additions below the old stuff? (If most agree it's less discombobulating, of course.) So far the only addition I see is "Groups you share"--any reason why that couldn't go last? And, any special reason "Random Books" is now above Member Connections?
Concerning "Groups...", it seems to me, if you're active in or follow a group, you probably already know other people who are active in it, so it's not really very newsworthy.
The point of a user interface is not only to please people who are used to the old user interface. The point is to design a good experience for everyone.
The order, when you are on other members' profiles, is now:
1. Connections actions
2. Books you share
3. Groups you share
4. Random books from X's books
5. Members with X's books
6. RSS feeds, etc.
The justification is as follows:
1. Has to be first. It promotes connection and anyway actions come first in LT's navigational grammar.
2. The most immediate win—showing you what all this social-cataloging is all about
3. Enhancing member participating in groups, and therefore with each other. We have never shown shared groups before, and I think we should have. Thinking about what demonstrates and promotes member-to-member connection, not past UIs, it screams out to be shown.
4. Random books are a win. They're not the first thing you should see, but having them there helps a user get a sense for someone—especially after they've established a connection in sections 2-3.
5. Other's member connections are interesting, but this is a second-order activity. Member connections aren't interesting in and of themselves. They're only interesting when you've already concluded the member is interesting. Therefore, it's more important to demonstrate whether the member is interesting—largely whether he or she connects to you—in the other sections, than to front the ways they connect to others.
Obviously, if you are a long-time user, and you know many users, then the connection no longer needs to be demonstrated, and this section is more useful. But we have to design for the site generally, not just for people who are already using it at a higher level. I'd add that "Members with your books" is the least-understood part of the profile. When you move a step past that to "member with someone else's books," I think you lose 90% of people.
6. Down at the bottom because it's something you might grab, but you don't need to see every time.
4.3> If you're trying to promote participation in new groups showing shared groups doesn't really do it, since the member is already a member of that group. What would be more useful is to show the groups that other member has joined that you haven't joined.
I love it that the RSI thread is ignored while the real discussion takes place in Bug Collectors.
Enhancing member participating in groups, and therefore with each other. We have never shown shared groups before, and I think we should have. Thinking about what demonstrates and promotes member-to-member connection, not past UIs, it screams out to be shown.
I agree with jjwilson that advertising the groups we're already in does nothing to enhance group participation. There's already a much more useful section of the profile that shows all of the user's groups, anyway. This gives you a much better understanding of the user than the small set of groups you happen to share. Especially if you're concerned about people who aren't already active in groups.
Random books are a win. They're not the first thing you should see, but having them there helps a user get a sense for someone—especially after they've established a connection in sections 2-3
If you want to help us get a sense for someone, you should be displaying a mini tag mirror. A set of six random books is way too limited to be of any real use.
Why is "Members Connections" second-order activity compared to "Groups you share"?
I don't understand that thing about "enhancing member participating in groups"--not why it would be necessary to enhance it, nor how you mean to achieve it by placing this module up front. People who like groups are already in them. If, looking at someone's profile, I see a group in their group list (on the left) that I didn't know existed or something, that might be interesting--but groups we share? How is that interesting? As I said, either I care about the group and have some idea of that person's activity in it, or either I (or they) don't care about the group, and it means nothing. I'm a member of several dozen groups I never looked at since joining, and am simply too lazy to go and un-join.
Therefore, it's more important to demonstrate whether the member is interesting—largely whether he or she connects to you
Well, maybe it's just that I'm the oddball here, because I find interesting (have added to my interesting libraries) a ton of people completely or largely different than me. Is this perspective so damn rare? I'm genuinely curious, I hope others chime in. Sure, it's nice to come across those I overlap with a lot, less lonely in the cold cold universe and all that, but it's really even more interesting to come across those I overlap with just a little, or a completely new species.
MWYBs--you had the old order up for at least three years. I don't understand why it was necessary to rearrange it. Those who don't get or like the MWYB aren't going to understand or like it better now, and the rest of us have to, ugh, scroll, and scroll, and scroll.
Anyway, I should certainly like to hear others on this topic. Could we have a poll? About where to put "Groups you share", and MWYB.
1> LolaWalser, it should be fixed now...? -Mike
I think I'll go make an illegal poll right now....
I love it that the RSI thread is ignored while the real discussion takes place in Bug Collectors.
Which thread? I'm not ignoring any threads here. I responded to a comment.
If you want to help us get a sense for someone, you should be displaying a mini tag mirror. A set of six random books is way too limited to be of any real use.
Oh, people would FREAK! Tags they didn't agree to? Please, don't even think about it.
I think a set of random books is a good conversation starter, and a good, if weird, insight into someone.
Sure, it's nice to come across those I overlap with a lot, less lonely in the cold cold universe and all that, but it's really even more interesting to come across those I overlap with just a little, or a completely new species.
Right, but something struck your eye. Fronting the ways a member connects to others comes after you determine they're interesting to you.
I like "Groups you share", and I think it follows logically after "Books you share", and they should both be near the top. My links with the person whose profile I'm visiting should be easily visible.
Oh, people would FREAK! Tags they didn't agree to? Please, don't even think about it.
So it comes up blank if the Tag Mirror is disabled. It's silly to let individual users veto a useful feature for the whole site, though it happens far too often.
Also, here's the Groups You Share
poll.
Don't know if it is relevant to these changes, but in the left hand section of both my and other people's profiles in the Groups section the is the code for an em dash instead of the dash just before the Show All Groups link. Hadn't noticed it before.
eta: and the bottom of the page seems abrupt - doesn't have the normal 'footer' info like debug test, help/faqs etc.
Message modifié par son auteur, Fév 8, 2010, 11:56pm.
Em dash is intentional. :)
Em, why?
14> the footer is there (or at least it is when I look at a profile) it's just not being pushed down below the right hand boxes. For example, when I look at Tim's profile the footer is directly underneath the comments section. Or are we talking about a different page?
Mike's going to work on it tomorrow. He's going home now. 12:30. Pregnant wife. Life.
Me, I'm just gettin' started!
Wow, that's some cabbage patch you have at the LT headquarters. :)
You have no idea!
Has Felius even been to LTHQ? They're expecting twins! I'm only a member and I'm getting fat too!
Invite to Group is BROKEN. It leaves an array, rather than the intended message.
In IE8 on XP3 anyway.
Babies and bugs! Babies and bugs! I hope we get to see a group picture of the LT generation one day, preferably before they are all grown up!
On the bug front: MIKE-as-lorax at #8--other people's Member Connections are still invisible. To me at least.
Invite to Group is BROKEN
Working on now. (Morning!)
Invite to Group is BROKEN. It leaves an array, rather than the intended message.
Fixed. Thanks.
I am having trouble with my profile comments. On my profile page, I can't see anything below my "most recent activity" books.
When I go to someone else's profile, I can leave a comment but afterwards, can't see it.
I had a new message alert but can't read the new message.
Message modifié par son auteur, Fév 9, 2010, 11:21am.
Have you got rid of the edit connections page? That cannot be intentional?
v
I haven't touched anything but will go take a look.
There's an "allow comments" box that is checked. I'm not sure what else to check.
Message modifié par son auteur, Fév 9, 2010, 11:30am.
I can confirm the issue in Message 26. I can only scroll part way down my (and others) profile page. On my page, I can only get as far as my helper badges / part way into my comments (first three show). On lillithcat's page, I can get as far as "Block this member" / just at the very first line of her first comment. On lindapanzo's profle page I can get to the bottom of the leave comment box (the post button and make private box also show).
But then I am living in the dark ages with IE6 (not even sure if LT still supports IE6).
28: Sorry, I wasn't addressing you but Tim.
v
Okay, I see. In my year on LT, I've never had a "bug" before.
I did see a box about emailing comments so I've checked that and can at least see them, I suppose.
>26, 29
Good. Someone reported this by comment to me, but without browser. It's some sort of missed tag that's showing up wrong in a Browser—apparently IE6. I'll take a look.
Have you got rid of the edit connections page? That cannot be intentional?It is. See
http://www.librarything.com/topic/84387Message modifié par son auteur, Fév 9, 2010, 11:38am.
Yes, I've got the problem and I have IE6.
Now that I've added the email feature (where the comments are sent to my email), it doesn't seem as urgent.
Working on it. It takes forever to fire up an IE6 virtual machine...
Just dashing in here to report same problem (unable to view bottom of profile screen), same version of IE. Thanks for working on it...
32: Oh I get it. I'm not convinced it's the logical a step you think it is (any illusions I ever had about you being logical were demolished for good by your assertion about the inefficiency of adding books to LT via ISBN) but I'm not going to make a fuss about it - it makes it difficult to look at connections overall and adjust them from that point of view, rather than in a micro view, per individual.
v
#36 - I understand that some of these changes upset some people more than others, but there is really no need to be rude.
#32, Tim, I didn't realize it but our other pc has IE8 and my profile page "look" is fine on that one.
I can see the comments there so it is an IE6 thing.
IE6 bug, where stuff was cut off
Fixed.
And THAT is why Google has dropped IE6 support. There was nothing wrong with my use of position: relative. And it was a royal pain to find. Grumble Grumble.
I apologize if this is the wrong place for this report. I have never reported a bug and am not even sure this is one.
As of this morning when I am on my Profile page I only get about ten lines of the first comment iposted on profile, and I am not allowed to scroll down any lower than that.
When I look at other people's profiles, there are NO comments there at all, even users who I know have very full comments.
And when I went to a Mac machine within our huge educational institution, everything is OK. My profile continues to scroll down as always in the past.
And I am told by our local techie that the version of Explorer we are using is 7.
IE6 bug, where stuff was cut off
Fixed.
Not for me. :(
IE6 bug, where stuff was cut off
Fixed.
Not for me either.
Seeing that other people reported what seemed to be the same bug, and Tim said "fixed" I restarted by machine, and it is indeed fixed on mine. So 42, and 43 you might try restarting your machine.
Didn't restart, but profiles okay now.
Perhaps a ctrl-refresh (ctrl-F5 usually) will do the trick?
Thanks, jjwilson61. Ctrl-F5 did the trick. I thought logging off of LT and logging back on would help but it didn't.
Thanks, Tim, for being so responsive and fixing this so quickly.
Yes, everyone who's having an IE problem, just hit refresh a few times on the page, preferably with control-F%. Then tell me if anything is still broken.
The picture on my profile page is not the one I had uploaded. My homepage picture is okay.
This may be out of place and it may not be of use. If not please let me know where to take it and I'll post it there. I post here because I wonder if the two problems are not related.
It seems that over the last several, oh, maybe four or five days, I have been having an issue with the font size in both my profile and on the talk forums. All the boilerplate seems okay, but the client entered stuff looks like it is using some old windows default font-size. Like a Pica 12 when an Elite 10 is what's wanted. It's like the Windows default font for a slow monitor. This problem seems to come and go. I'm having it currently.
When you say "client entered," do you mean just forms—entering comments and such?
Profile pages should look good on IE6 now. Wow. That took a lot of effort! :)
Thanks, Tim!
You are a hero!
Fixed a number of things but still have a number of things to fix. Some stuff I can't brag about because I was just making the system un-broken but the enumerable bits are:
1) Notifications don't go out right away. They go out 2-3 minutes from when you initiate the friend/interesting library connection. This way if, for example, you add me as a friend, remove me, then add me to your interesting library all within a minute I won't get 2 notifications, etc
2) Connections lists now appear in alphabetical order on the profile page. Made a note to circle back and make this happen everywhere (3:30AM here or I'd do it now).
3) Moved authors above connections lists.
4) Friends/Interesting libraries now visible when viewing someone else's profile.
5) Under member connections you can see now see your own private connections. (There at least 1 clean and 1 dirty joke in there but I'll resist).
More to come tomorrow...
-Mike
Why the size of the text of your profile comments is smaller? It used to be a bit bigger yesterday (and any day before this) - and it is not my browser because the size of everything else is as it used to be
Yeah, it's smaller. Complaint?
Harder to read and I write and receive a lot of messages :) Prefer the old size but guess I can get used to these...
>57
More like "fine print." And I haven't hit middle age yet.
In "Groups you share," can people see this for private members' profiles? To check, could someone who's in the Board for Extreme Thing group, or Graduate Students, or I See Dead People's Books group have a look at my profile and see if you can see that I share those groups?
This may be deliberate and not a bug, if it's happening, but if so it's not consistent with other parts of the profile. Personally, I don't actually care that much if people know what groups I'm in, but it does seem like the behavior should be consistent across different parts of the profile. The way it's been working for private accounts is that "groups" is hidden from the profile, although you can see the private member's name on the group page under members.
>60
I can see you're in BETA.
Thanks for checking, legallypuzzled.
Ok, so that means that private members' groups are not private in this little module, which is not how it works with the other groups part of the profile. Personally, I don't care one way or the other, and I've no idea how likely it is that you'd get any uproar from any other private members used to the way it worked before, but it seems like it ought to be consistent, no?
I think Private means private library so I think it shouldn't hide your groups anywhere. Just my 2 cents.
ETA: And I also see that your in Los Angeles Loves LibraryThing and Philosophy of Science in addition to the BETA group.
Message modifié par son auteur, Fév 10, 2010, 11:24pm.
I was looking at other people's profiles and admiring the nice new little icons, when it occurred to me to check my own profile. I was quite disappointed not to see the nice new icons on my profile.
I was about to post about it when I realized that I had no need to add myself to my friends, or even to my list of interesting libraries - so I therefore had no need for nice new icons on my profile.
I'm really glad I didn't post the complaint. You guys would have really thought I was crazy. Whew. Dodged a bullet there, huh?
The 2nd column in the "Add to" box is squished compared to the first. Since "private watch list" is about as long as "interesting libraries," maybe the 2 columns should be equal width.
#65 Mary there's quite a technical psychological term for people who add themselves to their own friends' list. OTOH, if you don't think that your own library is interesting.... ? ;)
Message modifié par son auteur, Fév 11, 2010, 4:31am.
:-D
66>
Fixed CSS mixup. Columns should be the same width now.
-Mike
Message modifié par son auteur, Fév 11, 2010, 11:53am.
Excellent, Mike. I wouldn't have thought of pointing this one out. And it was bugging me (no pun intended).
However, I noticed that the Groups list has "&mdashshow all groups" rather than an actual em-dash.
—gah!
Don't yah hate when stuff breaks just 'cause you were "in the neighborhood"? Code is a b*tch. I don't miss programming at all (especially since it was COBOL and such for me) 8-P
Looks fixed. Tim did you get it? littleshell, can you confirm either way?
-Mike
Oh COBOL... please kill me!
#71 and yet at #15 it was intentional?
70-75>
Ah, I was confused. I thought littleshell was saying that the
html entity code was appearing on the page. -Mike
Message modifié par son auteur, Fév 11, 2010, 7:27pm.
Oh COBOL... please kill me!
Don't knock it till you've tried it.
#75 it was! Now the actual dash is showing not the code but it probably needs a space after it now. Also you might want to make the phrase after it uniform for both groups (currently "-show all groups") and tags (currently "- see all tags").
Mike - please see my posts on the other thread - my edit connections box is broken.
v
jjwilson61, do you stay up at night getting excited about writing COBOL? Does anyone? -Mike
vaneska, looking...
@74
justjim I thought Tim meant that — was intentional rather than -. I think he misunderstood that it was the *code* showing...
@73, 75
ltmike I am still seeing the code &mdash. (I keep misreading it as mash.) It only seems to show when there are several lines of Group names, as in justjim's profile. My profile just lists all my groups.
@15, 71
Tim is that code intended or the actual emdash??
ETA I think I'll stop "helping" now.
Message modifié par son auteur, Fév 11, 2010, 9:24pm.
I posted this on the other thread, but I think it got missed:
In the "Member Connections" box, why is "Interesting library" singular while "Friends," "LibraryThing authors," etc. are plural? Shouldn't it be "Interesting libraries"? Having it singular feels wrong to me. (Maybe it's always been like this, and I'm just now noticing it.)
81> littleshell
Got it. Missing semi-colon on our side... seems only IE cares. Thanks for catching it. -Mike
Message modifié par son auteur, Fév 11, 2010, 9:55pm.
79> My first programming job was a student job at the Registrar's Office at UCI around 1980. We used COBOL and it was find for its purpose. In fact it was really easy to churn out various kinds of reports. It wasn't really suited for string parsing or heavy calculations but it was great at reading and writing fixed layout records to disk or tape files. I've seen some pretty awful COBOL but I've also seen dreadful Fortran and C. Remember, you can write spaghetti code in any language.
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