Helper badges?

UPDATE: Read update at end of this message.

I'm posting this on "Recommended Site Improvements" not "New Features" because there's very little I consider settled here.



I've brought live "Helper badges" on member profiles. This example is from my friend Anirvan. You can also check out my badges (I think I have all but one!).

I've written up a Wiki page with details on the badges, including what they are and when they're refreshed.

"LibraryThing Royalty"

So, I want to talk about the badges. First, I want to talk about the problem of cliqueishness or "LibraryThing Royalty." I'm worried that members will see them as indication that somebody is a "better member." This is a big fear of mine.

To reduce that, I've done a few things, like putting them on the right-bottom of the profile screen. In general, they will appear "below the fold" on members' pages. Of course, if you don't have any badges, they don't show at all.

As it stands, they don't cover usage (eg., talk posts) but things you did to improve the system. I think this helps tamp down the "better member" issue.

How can we reduce it further? Drop the graphics? Drop the numbers? Show only X by default with a link for more? Put them on a secondary page from the profile? Allow members to opt out?

Lastly, I want users to be able to give out their own awards—which the recipient would have to accept. This replicates the "Barnstars" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Barnstars) approach of Wikipedia. Indeed, that was my first model of how this should work, but I chucked it seeing that LT had so much data about how members had contributed, and indeed was already showing it on the Helpers page, and elsewhere (http://www.librarything.com/zeitgeist/combiners).

PS: I've missed a few helper categories, like tag combinations and cover-contributions (which I can only half do).

UPDATE: I've reduced Helpers Badges to a line of badge icons, which link to the user's Profile > Statistics > Helper Badges page. You can see what it looked like before by adding &full=1 to the profile URL, eg., http://www.librarything.com/profile/timspalding&full=1

1. Option to hide

2. Show only the categories that apply (i.e. do not show "empty" badges)

Some of the numbers are wrong (e.g., it says I have uploaded 90 author pictures while I have really uploaded over 3500). I don't really see why they're necessary, but they're not offensive either. I don't really care either way.

How can we reduce it further?
If you want to reduce it futher (without ditching them altogether?), perhaps either
1) remove them from the profile and put them under "statistics" or
2) remove all the text and make each "badge" a slightly different design that people can click on to get more information (e.g., the work combiners one could lead to a page with the list of the top 500 work combiners, etc.)

> do not show "empty" badges

Oh, no. It never does. Besides, almost nobody has the "Author Neverers" badge

BTW: I should say that under the current numbers

Badges given out: 12,302
Users with a badge: 4,995
Users with gold badge: 529
Users with silver: 1,187
Users with bronze: 4755
Users with a venue-combination badge: 10

Some of the numbers are wrong (e.g., it says I have uploaded 90 author pictures while I have really uploaded over 3500).

Thanks. I fixed it. I was counting venue pictures, not author pictures.

make each "badge" a slightly different design

I think we might need a helper group just for that. Besides, I want to keep them small. How does one express some of these concepts in a small image—or any image?

remove them from the profile and put them under "statistics"

We could retain them as just a row of images on the profile—maybe down at the bottom—linking to the stats page.

All with the different color stars:
The work combiner could be a book cover, the author picture could be the empty shadow face you all use, author combination can be two people (sort of like you use here but maybe a different color to make it different), author neverers would be something like that maybe with a x, picture flaggers could be a flag, etc. There are several small graphics that can convey the idea.

#4

Well, I don't know why it's showing the CK category for me when I don't remember adding anything to it.

#1

I'm worried that members will see them as indication that somebody is a "better member." This is a big fear of mine.

I think you are rightly worried. This is a great way to reduce grownups to their inner five-year-old selves. I don't see why you're doing it at all, to tell the truth...

Annnnd. If it must be there, can I NOT see CK on top? CK annoys me. I do not like it, I do not want to give anything to it, and I don't want to be reminded of that either.

OTOH, I'll let you slap a blinking, neon "CK-HATER" on my profile if you'll let us see the shared books lists on profile pages ALPHA BY AUTHOR. :)

Well, I don't know why it's showing the CK category for me when I don't remember adding anything to it.

These aren't yours? http://www.librarything.com/commonknowledge/changelog.php?user=130554

I don't see why you're doing it at all, to tell the truth...

Basically because many members like see their position on the helpers page—presumably to motivate themselves and feel some congratulation for all the work they've accomplished.

These aren't yours?

Uh, no.

I may have done some combining on some of the titles--is it possible that's the source of the mixup? At any rate, some poor souls are missing those points in their report card.

I like the idea of adding "Covers Uploaded" as a "medal event"!

heh ...

 

I love having badges. I'm happy with the visibility as it is.

I can't see the difference between a gold star and a bronze star, so that could use some work.

I spend more time adding cover images than anything else, so I'd like to see that recognized.

Nice little surprise today! Subtle, in line with the site and easy enough to obtain that anyone can have a badge on their first day on the site if they were so inclined!

>6 christiguc: Awesome customization ideas. I have zero graphics skills, so I'm always impressed.

As far as the "better members" go - meh, that comes up, but in my experience where things like stars, karma, badges, awards and a bajillion other little things next to your name or on your profile are supposed to identify you as "something" goes - it cuts both ways.

The second someone says, "look, I have a super-supreme gold badge in uploading pictures of squirrels to LT, so I know what I'm talking about!" 10 people will be there to say, "oh, I'm sorry we have lives."

We do get badges for uploading photos of squirrels, right?

I don't like badges. Just not my cup of tea at all and puts me off LT activity.

v

I'll have to show these to my husband. He was rather amused at the thought that I might be a 'power user' of any website.

After than I really don't care whether they are around or not.

>13 vaneska:

Explain more?

Are these visible for private libraries? (Should they be?) I kind of agree that they should be optional, or perhaps just icons on the profile page. Then fuller details could be on the stats page.

What about translators? (oh, I see it)

It does remind me of scouts and brownie points a bit too much though. That's why perhaps just icons would be better; people can click on them if they're curious. Or better yet, off the profile page and onto stats.

WILL HELP WITH CK FOR ALPHA BY AUTHOR

At this point, I'll try anything.

I don't know about this. It makes it look as though I don't have a life.

;-))

I like them.

> Are these visible for private libraries?

No, but actually a private library can be seen on helper pages. Non-anonymous help is necessary for fighting spam and etc.

That's why perhaps just icons would be better

How about text but no icons?

Yep, the more I look at them (on other people's profiles, since mine doesn't seem to have them, I guess because my library's private), the less I like them. Concerns: 1) they do seem like displays of merit, and to signify - on the profile - an evaluation or ranking of members and types of activity; 2) they take up too much space; 3) they're just too much information, especially to be on the profile: do I want people to know how many local venues I've added? Not really. I certainly don't want it on the profile pages. Perhaps buried in my stats, for those who really wanted to know and could be bothered to look for the information. But lots of my activity on the site collated, displayed, and, as it were, bragged about on my profile? No. Either just icons, or off the profile, and/or optional.

PS, I know some of this is moot now, since mine aren't visible at all while I'm private, but I don't anticipate being private always, and I don't like the slow creep towards publicizing my activity in potted form (recent books added, which I'd disabled before I went private, now this). I didn't come to LT to compare myself with others, or to display what I'm up to on the site to others: just to catalog my books, and then decide how much more I want to engage (and I do engage) and how much more I want to reveal/display about myself - but I like those things to be *choices*, and I like the default for profile information to be minimal. (I.e. you don't force me to reveal my location, you don't publish a direct link to my all talk posts. I like that. Please don't move away from that ethos towards something else.)

15: What rsterling said about scouts and brownie points - you couldn't have paid me to be part of that as a child. It just takes the LT thing into realms that don't interest me and I find offputting. I don't like to wear a badge in any walk of life and I don't want to be seen to be earning plaudits doing stuff for LT as such. All I'm doing is sorting out my catalogue and its connections.

ETA: I also agree with 22, especially point 1).

v

A "hide" option is crucial. I assume that those who like them, like them precisely to show them off, so sticking them in the stats would be pointless.

>23 vaneska:

Would an opt-out for members be enough, or does it bother you more deeply?

Note: I never want to add opt-outs, or suggest that they're possible, up-front because I think it warps people's views. That is, people will feel weird objecting to something when they can opt out. But if it introduces a bad tone to LT, then it's an issue, whether or not you can opt out.

Oh an opt-out is absolutely fine - I just didn't think of suggesting that since I know you find them (understandably) cumbersome.

v

Also, rsterling in the p.s. edit to #22 expressed things better than I ever could.

v

Tim: there are some CK entries under my name that aren't mine, too - I may have put the series tag on The 5th Horseman, but definitely didn't do the other seven entries; nor did I do the "Re-Reading the Canon" series things.

Well, I'll certainly opt out if it goes forward (whenever I'm not private). But I am concerned about the tone: that it will introduce a kind of competitiveness and judgements of worth, importance, levels of contribution. It's one thing to have that on the helpers log or the zeitgeist. It's another to put it on the profile.
(21> As for private member's contributions being in the helpers logs and zeitgeist areas (i.e. non-anonymous help), I know that and am fine with it. I don't have any problem with being accountable for the contributions I make. I do have a problem with displaying them as a prominent component of my personality on this site (which is what it does to put this stuff on the profile, I feel).

I'll probably opt out (but only after Jerry has seen them). It seems somehow ostentatious. That is now why I combine, or add CK (That one has got to be wildly inflated from combining, anyway.)

I think the badges are pretty cool. Since I am an avid player on Pogo.com, perhaps that's why they appeal to me so much, lol. Also, since I do contribute to CK pretty regularly, it's nice to see the acknowledgment. Not like it's necessary or expected, but nice just the same. Definitely include the hide option for those LTers who have problems with this feature, for whatever reasons.

>25 timspalding: Well, it was nice while it lasted.

/sigh

Thanks for the thought, Tim. Might as well pull the plug, the idea of opting-out for something like badges - which are just a freaking extension of zeitgeist - is going to send an even WORSE message to new users.

Hi, we offer badges, but our user base is so mean that you'll find yourself attacked and/or defending yourself for having such a badge. So, we're going to let you protect yourself from the psychopaths that troll our site by letting you opt-out of the badge program!

Yeah, it doesn't make sense. Better to let them die the same day they lived.

Those who object to them, how about if they go onto a stats page—off your main profile page?

Note: Ultimately, I want members to decide what goes on their profile page—a la home page—in which case they could decide whether to include them.

Short and sweet - I like the badges! (And thank goodness for the FamFamFam "Silk" icon set ;-) ).

32: you've lost me.

something like badges - which are just a freaking extension of zeitgeist
Yes, which is why I think something like this actually fits much better on the stats page than the profile. While I find them icky on the profile, on the stats page I'd probably just have a "meh" reaction, i.e. might not like them but wouldn't care much.

I don't see why you're doing it at all, to tell the truth.

Was my first thought too.

which are just a freaking extension of zeitgeist

I don't look at that either.

go onto a stats page

Sounds good to me.

#33

It would make more sense to ask those who WANT them if they'd still want them off the profile page.

I don't mind if they go on the stats page.

>35 rsterling: I'm annoyed at the general tone and comments implying that the badges are liked by

- the incredibly immature
- childish adults
- those who will try to prove their LT superiority with badges
- claiming that it's a way to be mean
- likening it to grade-school activities

My point is that Zeitgeist has been on the site for a very long time - without the same amount of vitriol and could demonstrate the same supposed fear of "superiority" and childish behavior.

At this point, it no longer matters, we might as well kill the badges. When individuals are threatening to not contribute to the site over icons and fears of being belittled on the site over them - and it makes them feel as if everyone will be reduced to grade-schoolers, well, it's not worth having the program, is it?

It's frustrating to me that people think so little of the users on this site and can't see that it's the same information that's always been there - that's what I meant by the "extension of zeitgeist."

shrug... I thought they were kind of cool... what stephmo said in #32

(edited to put back the shrug which got striped out because I used the wrong kind of brackets...)

Keep the comments coming. (And don't get into an argument with each other, please. It just makes people twitchy and gets us off topic.)

I think the badges are cute.
But if so many are against it, there should be an opt-out...

A slightly different point, although I understand the concerns some here have about the badges even existing...

If we are to have them, I would like to think that they are there, in part, to encourage others to help in constructive ways. Not to try to out-compete someone, but just to be curious and say "what's that badge about? Oh, I could do some of that too."

I can't recall exactly how I found out about combining and CK, but I know I sort of stumbled across it. The badges are another way of stumbling across things, but they need links of some sort to make that happen - to wiki pages about what they mean and how to do it, rather than to more stuff about the individual with the badge.

I'm worried that members will see them as indication that somebody is a "better member." This is a big fear of mine. (Tim)

This is a great way to reduce grownups to their inner five-year-old selves. I don't see why you're doing it at all, to tell the truth... (LolaWalser)

(Sorry I don't know how to do italics in these messages) I missed the above the first time around but it hits the nail on the head. Of course moving things to statistics is far better than having them on the profile but still, to me, it is all so unnecessary.

v

#41

(And don't get into an argument with each other, please. It just makes people twitchy and gets us off topic.)

Do you mean arguments such as calling those one disagrees with "psychopaths" and "trolls" and saying they'd go around "attacking" people? Luckily such garbage sinks to the bottom in the civlised waters of LT.

Personally, I like the badges. It seems like a few people here are projecting and being pretty judgemental about why others would like the badges and THAT is kind of turning me off, honestly. It's just a nice little piece of recognition for effort that's been put in. I don't think there's anything wrong with some positive reinforcement, though I can definitely see how some people may use it as something to boast about. I don't believe most users will look at them that way, however.

The stats are a little confusing to me, though, but that's only because I'm puzzling how I've lost credit for about 200 CK entries in the past month. *scritches head* It's never my intention to make entries for credit, but it does make me wonder why my numbers are going down.

As for the badges on the profile, I think that they do belong there and not in statistics. Statistics, to me, is more about your library and the works therein. In a tertiary way, they also reflect a small contribution to the site. However, the profile seems to fit better for badges, as your profile is about the user and things like badges are awarded or earned, if you will, by the user by adding specific information to help the site and, by extension, other users rather than adding tags which may or may not make sense to anyone else or reviews.

*edited to add that last pesky paragraph.

I honestly can't believe that grown-ups...adults would actually be concerned about someone being a better member. Are you serious?

I can understand not wanting it on your profile page, but because someone might feel some type of way about the number of your contributions compared to theirs...totally laughable and ridiculous!

The only problem I do see, and this is for those super competitive adults and/or immature folks out there, is that some people would contribute meaningless, incorrect, or incomplete information just to boost their numbers.

I do like the suggestion made by 43, there should be a link to help new users understand the full meaning behind the badges.

I've lost credit for about 200 CK entries in the past month

See http://www.librarything.com/topic/50060. We're now not counting every line in a multi-line entry, but we are counting edits that were subsequently edited by someone else.

>43 kevinashley:

Agreed. It might be hard for some of them. But it can be done generally. I meant to link to the wiki page anyway.

I could take or leave this feature. I don't need the recognition, but I'm not offended by having it offered. I would be most interested if the badges linked to some explanation of what these helpful operations are, why they are important and how one does them. (Is there something like this in the wiki?). In other words, if they encourage others to find out how to contribute to LT.

Let's try to keep more than one idea in our heads, shall we? People have mentioned a variety of reasons for not wanting badges on their profiles: for example, juvenility, ostentation, "potted" presentation of self, cuteness...

But this is the most important thing: all the complaints refer to what would happen to one's own profile. I don't give a damn why, if and how anyone else wants to present this data on their own profiles. On the collective Zeitgeist page it's practically invisible; on personal profiles it's a definite statement about the person. I don't care about the statement about you, I care about the statement about me.

I for one like them. Personally think they should go in the stats page.

Personally, I don't mean to make judgments about why I think others like the badges. I'm trying to explain my own reaction, i.e. why I don't like them. I don't care about having the recognition, but whether I have it or not I don't want it on my profile. I also don't want my profile to say how many local bookstores I've added, or how many CK facts I've added. Those interested in that information can go to my stats page (for the information that's there), or search for my name on the helper's log.

50: On the collective Zeitgeist page it's practically invisible; on personal profiles it's a definite statement about the person. I don't care about the statement about you, I care about the statement about me.
Precisely.

Can I ask a silly question?

(small quiet voice)
Why can't I see my helper badges?

Is it because my library is private?
If that's the reason, I'm fine...

Did I do something that would have taken my helper badge away from me??

But, I don't remember doing anything really really bad...
And I don't remember saying anything really really nasty...

Maybe that's the reason!!
I don't remember!!

But I am just a little curious....

>53 skittles: I think it's because you're private (see rsterling's comments)

Well, I like the badges. I think it's nice to recognize the people who do a lot for LT.

But on the other hand, all of that information was already available on the zeitgeist page. So is this a necessary added feature? I'm not sure.

If we are to have them, I would like to think that they are there, in part, to encourage others to help in constructive ways. Not to try to out-compete someone, but just to be curious and say "what's that badge about? Oh, I could do some of that too."

The only problem I do see, and this is for those super competitive adults and/or immature folks out there, is that some people would contribute meaningless, incorrect, or incomplete information just to boost their numbers.

That's why I don't think there should be text of any sort on the profile, and certainly not the total number contributed. An icon would get peoples' interest, and the site is such that a new member can get an icon the same day as joining! If the numbers stats aren't on the profile, it shouldn't lead to ultra-competitiveness or cliqueishness. There just should be a way to click through so that the interested user can find out what each badge stands for.

53: It is because your library is private; see message 21. (I was wondering the same thing.)

I have two points about the contributions of people with private libraries. The first point has to do with a sentiment I've come across in Talk (the widespreadness of which is unknown to me) that people with private libraries get something out of the site without putting anything back in. This should be irrelevant. LT is a service, and while it welcomes and encourages efforts by members to improve the site, signing up does not entail a promise to volunteer (or to socialise, for that matter).

The second point is that there are private members who contribute as much in terms of what is here considered badge-worthy activity as some of the more vocal public members. I suspect some of these people would not want to be seen with a badge (comparisons with naked, unidentified, bespectacled corpses come to mind), but wouldn't it make sense to allow private members to see our own badges, the way we can see our own statistics?

Thanks for all of the replies...

I'm glad that the reason I cannot see my own badges are because my library is private...

not because I've done something "wrong"...

except keep my library private.

and anyone who thinks that I don't "contribute" to LT needs to look at the LT helper page for my user name...

I'm just so selfish!! (yes, that is sarcasm!!)

First, can anyone address the issue of member-to-member badges?

As I mentioned, this is a standard Wikipedia thing—making up badges and then giving them to people. Does this make anti-badgers happier? Angrier?

Second, if this goes, I'm thinking this will go to a new subtab under statistics, "Helpers."

PS: I can make them open to private members when they look at themselves.

Well I like them. It made me laugh (in a good way) when I saw them on my Profile. I think the link to instructions on a wiki page is a good idea. I suppose if people are going to be so upset about this, then an opt-out would be good.

PS: I can make them open to private members when they look at themselves.

Your phrasing really helps our reputation for narcissism. *goes off to gaze into the Tag Mirror*

(edited for spelling)

59: As I mentioned, this is a standard Wikipedia thing—making up badges and then giving them to people. Does this make anti-badgers happier? Angrier?
No idea. First I've ever heard of it. (I don't add to Wikipedia.)

59: I don't quite get it—what is the function of a member-to-member badge? I.e., why would someone give you one? Because I sort of like the helper badges—I don't know why it's so bad to give recognition to people who actually have helped make LT a better site—but it sounds like member-to-member ones would just be kind of a cutesy popularity contest we could all do without.

The idea of member-to-member badges intrigues me. Do you see this as a free-form tribute?
"Cordial and helpful to first-time Talk posters"?
"Bucked me up when I was down"?
"I envy your collection of lumberjack erotica"?
"In the 'Name That Book' group, can always name that book"?

Or do you envision something more structured?

Well, for example, all the various other projects LT members engage in—the banned books, open shelves classification, legacy libraries, spam-killing, etc. (But I hear where you're coming from. LT culture isn't Wikipedia culture, and this might be one place.)

>64 jjlong:

Non-structured.

What does Wikipedia have to do with anything?

What's a member-to-member badge?

#63

I don't know why it's so bad to give recognition to people who actually have helped make LT a better site

Wrong tack! This is not bad--we're discussing if we want it shown elsewhere (specifically, the profile pages) besides the Zeitgeist.

Wikipedia Member to Member badges:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Personal_user_awards

Summary:

Members decide on the Badges - Barnstars for wikipedia - design them and come up with criteria. You have user to user barnstars like

"The Pokéstar" - may be awarded to those who contribute to Pokémon related articles.

"The Bright Idea Award" - for editors that make commendable proposals and suggestions.

These are user-awarded because the Wikipedia folks can't know everything - they depend on users to recognize other users good work.

They also have little badges that are cute - cookies, brownies, milk, beers, etc.

Edited - tried to grab the pics, didn't work.

I can't help but giggle, I'm sorry but I just can't help it. I don't understand the problem here, why people get so touchy about this stuff.

If you like it, great, use it! If you don't like it, opt-out. If you don't care, then what's the big deal? But to go off and say irrelevent stuff about new members possibly finding it off-putting *because* they can opt-out if they don't want to see it? That makes no sense at all to me.

I just don't understand how giving people options translates, to some people, into "omg LTers are mean so lets give newbies a way to protect themselves". I mean seriously, how does one make that jump?

Anyways. I think the badges are cool. Do I care one way or the other? No. But they look nice.

UPDATE: I've reduced Helpers Badges to a line of badge icons, which link to the user's Profile > Statistics > Helper Badges page. You can see what it looked like before by adding &full=1 to the profile URL, eg., http://www.librarything.com/profile/timspalding&full=1

Re: Member-to-member badges:

I'll have to start making these, so as to have them handy when this becomes serious:

"Can Always Think of a Good Reason to Award Someone a Badge"
"Best Badge Designer"
"Gracefully Refrained from Bugging me with their Badges"

First, can anyone address the issue of member-to-member badges?

Since you asked: I don't see it as a very LT-thing for basically the same reasons nperrin explains so well. But, again, they don't offend me. :) If you decide to not have member-to-member badges, you may want to consider having other badges that LT awards to members who enter X number of books in legacy libraries or assist in other "Member Projects" or "Standing Groups". If the topics get outside of those two other areas, it could get a bit ridiculous or cutesy. That's my opinion, but I don't really have a horse in this race.

> 69 Okay. Nice. Quite discreet.

> 65 Non-structured works for me. I can think of 4 people I'd hand 'em out to, right now, for legacy library tagging help, Talk cordiality, etc.

Plus it's got an anarchic, party-like feel to it.

I like the badges, though it's hard to tell the difference between the bronze and Gold. If you move most of the stuff to a 'helpers' stats page is there going to be anything left on the profile page to link to it for those who want to know more? Personally I think the profile is a perfectly fine place to have the badges, at least the icons, you can even have the names as tool tips or something to reduce the size and add links to the helpers stats.

As far as the user badge program I both like it and worry, if it used responsibly I think it will be a great addition to the social aspect of the site but we'd want to try to have some checks and balances to prevent extreme abuse. I also expect the greatest number of user to user badges would be going from/to people active in talk, I'm not saying this is good or bad but it should be expected.

ETA: was a little long in writing my comment, Tim changed it while I was writing this one...

Here's the set:


Here's with an alternate bronze:

with the silver in between the bronze and gold they are obviously different but I don't see any difference between the first set on the second on my monitor.

I just looked on the new format of the badges on my profile and I have to say with them lined up next to each other like that it is easier to see the differences than when they were vertical.

I thought this was a fun idea at first, but after all the negative comments, I'd be just as happy if the whole thing went away. Do people spend all their time checking other people's profiles to make sure no one else is getting a bigger cookie, for pete's sake?

As for member-to-member awards, count me right out. I've seen how that plays out in other places, not least my workplace. If you think badges lead to competition and dissatisfaction, you ain't seen nothing yet.

WILL HELP WITH CK FOR ALPHA BY AUTHOR (#17)

I seem to have already acquired a gold here, though mostly for editing existing information for consistency. But I'll...
....1. keep at it for Alpha by Author
....2. go hunt some more for Collections

I don't really care one way or another. The helper page was good enough for me to see that I've made a contribution to LT. (I don't care if anyone else ever looks at it.)

I don't think that I would ever make a member-to-member badge, so I don't see that as an interesting option. It seems too personal to me.

The plain badges are just fine on the profile page. It never occurred to me that some people have a 'better member' attitude than others, but that just shows how naive I am. I'm certain that we have all types of personalities here, but more of the 'helpers' are going to be people who like things to be in order, and or as complete as possible.

What you want to do with LT is your thing Tim, but I applaud your willingness to ask for comments and discussion.

I imagine some members are very proud of the contributions they have made in an effort to make LT a better place, and some of those members would enjoy seeing their badges displayed.

I can see the colors of the badges just fine.

What's the threshold for getting a badge in a particular area?

>80 rsterling:

See the wiki page. It has all the badges and the thresholds (bronze, silver, gold) for each.

80> Tim posted a link to a wiki page which details the levels:http://www.librarything.com/wiki/index.php/Helper_badges

I like the badges. A lot. I liked the original display better, too, but I can live with the minimalist design. I'm disappointed so many people have problems with this because I find it a neat touch rewarding (in some cases) hours of work. It's not as if it's attached to every Talk message you ever post; it's a tiny little icon in one corner of your profile. I don't even check other people's profiles that often. I just don't see the big deal.

My two cents (and I don't think you should decide what to do based on this discussion after just a few hours, lots of folks don't log in every 4 hours or even every day):

"Better Members" ? what, we don't want to recognize people? it doesn't make anyone better. It does perhaps recognize folks as having contributed more. To tell the truth, if it weren't for helper zeitgeist or badges or something like it, I probably would only contribute on things that are in my library. I like seeing my numbers go up. I'm not so altruistic to just do the effort for absolutely nothing. It has to help me, even if just a minor way. Either that's recognition of some sort, or it makes my personal catalog better. I'm not in it to make Tim's content more complete just for the sake of completeness. It's effin' nice to see my name near the top of a list. I'm shallow.

--> 24

I assume that those who like them, like them precisely to show them off

I disagree. I like the badges. I think they are a nice way for LT to say thanks to individuals who contribute to this site in a variety of ways.

81, Ah, sorry, I overlooked that.

Well, I like them too. I was pleasantly surprised to see that I had any. :-)

If people are so bent out of shape about them being on the profile, then I'm fine with moving them to the statistics page.

I don't think it's shallow to want to get something that makes you feel good about your contributions. I like the little badges and would like to see them for uncombiners, legacy libraries, etc. I think they would encourage me to carry through on some things I've been meaning to do here.

The bronze and gold are hard to tell apart when they aren't together. I kind of wish they were ruby, emerald, sapphire, but that's just me.

The thing that surprised me was that they were proposed for the profile page and not the home page. I would have looked on the home page for my own badges.

I didn't realise there was such a thing as 'Helper Badges' and now I have badges ... it's like Christmas! Now I'm never going to get any work done because I have something else to collect ... aaarrrgggh! ;)

For me the issue is not about whether or not the badges as a whole are a good thing, but about the fact that my profile page is where people see how I present my library to others. I really don't want the badges there at all.

If they were on the statistics page where people had to look for them, no problem, I might even look at them now and again myself. On the home page, I probably wouldn't even notice them, because I only rarely look at my home page longer than needed to get through it to somewhere else, and have most of it turned off anyway.

I have my profile page listed on my card so that people I meet can see my library and maybe arrange for a book borrowing exchange. (If they also decide to join LT, so much the better.) I want the point of that to be the books, not my other activities here.

"Badges? We ain't got no badges. We don't need no badges. I don't have to show you any stinking badges"*

I've always wanted to use that line 'in context'. Thanks.

Who'd have thought that these tiny little things would cause such a controversy! I can understand why some would not want to see/have them. I also understand why others might enjoy having them.

Now, personally, I could care less either way, except if I'm looking for some expertise in some squirrelly detail -- take Combiner (please), for instance. I added a book a short while ago, and there were 2 other owners (one was private). After I uploaded a cover image, added tags and entered the LCCN, I saved it, and suddenly, I was the sole owner. The title is the same, the author is the same, yet mine is somehow ~different~.

So, if there were Badges visible on Profile Pages, I could search for a Combiner's badge, and ask that person to enlighten me as to what is going on. As it is, I've got (SWAG) maybe 180 or more singlets that I'd like to clean up, but I don't pretend to know how.

A badge could be a useful thing. It could also be an annoyance.

* A line spat out by Alfonso Bedoya in the movie Treasure of the Sierra Madre

I didn't realise that something so simple could be something so controversial (although I spend a lot of time on Talk so I guess I should have learnt by now ...)

I like the badges, I don't think they're divisive or elitist and certainly for me they have nothing to do with getting 'more than someone else'. I just like them because they're a fun little reward for the bits I do and it gives me something to aim for as I procrastinate by fiddling on LT. I rarely look at stats and don't often look at the logs because I tend to forget where they are (I never find access to CK stats and other areas that intuitive with the current design but that's another thread's worth). They're fun! Stop raining on fun everyone! Not everything has to be so deadly serious. ;)

As for MarthaJeanne's point about not wanting them on her profile page, why couldn't Tim just make it an option to show them or not like with the 'Most Recent Activity' box? Then it would be possible to decide whether or not you wanted them showing.

Tee hee WholeHouse, like the quote! I posted at the same time and it looks like we may share some neurons .... I didn't copy, honest! ;))

Just for context on Message #92, I'm anal, I like to collect every single coin on platform games because they're there to be collected, darn it! Badges massage my OCD.

I think #91 has a point about the usefulness of badges to see who might offer you some advice ....

>91 WholeHouseLibrary:: Of course you could also ask for help at the Combiners group "Please Fix This Book" thread : http://www.librarything.com/topic/48755

It is, by the way, some bug that sometimes separates books when editing info (other than title/author - in which case there would be good reason for such separation). Bug Collectors thread http://www.librarything.com/topic/49445

> 93 "it looks like we may share some neurons"

My sincerest condolences to you, klarusu.

> 94
Oh sure! Like you expect me to remember that!! {:>)
Really, though, Thanks.

For member-to-member:

Maybe consider a place where a member can be nominated for a badge but it isn't actually awarded until seconded by another member?

As for the site awarded badges I'm another who doesn't really understand the protests against this addition. I'm mildly in favor as long as it's at the bottom of the page and remains fairly subtle.

Thanks, Tim... I've can now see my helper badges!!!

My ego is now appeased.

I agree with 92 and 96.

It seems strange that nobody has mentioned what I would think the strongest reason for having badges: they allow users to see if you really do know what you are talking about when you offer assistance or suggestions. Were I a new user, I would find this type of information an indication of how much weight I should give to comments on different aspects of LT. Maybe if there is a newer user here, they could comment?

Re: Badge design

I can see the difference just fine, but for those who can't, maybe if you changed the ribbon colors as well as the "medal" colors (i.e. to blue=gold, red=silver, white=bronze, although that's probably being US-centric)?

First things first - Alpha by Author, please.

I quite like the idea of the badges. The subtlety of the current presentation (a row of medals at bottom right of profile page, as I type) is nice and muted.

However, I'm not sure why we need the gold/silver/bronze grading. My suggestion would be to add something to the 'Membership' slot on the profile page, which, for me, currently has only the LTER bird. Why not have a 'Community of Helpers' badge there, which links to the stats page? You could also have a 'Legacy Library Contributor' membership.

As for the member-to-member badges ... I spent a couple of years on Wikipedia, and they were quite useful there to contrast with the vicious back-biting that went on in certain areas. However, LT is a much saner environment: thanks can be expressed by comment (private or public), and people receiving thanks can choose to delete those comments, or leave the public ones on show.

Another possibility to consider is whether member-to-member badges should be anonymous, or if a user must be attached to them. It seems obvious from the brisk discussion above that there will be some people who will use them a lot, and others who will just ignore the feature. You could probably come up with a number of increasing complex ways of implementing the feature. Here's one ...

Allow someone to nominate a person for a badge, and then use the flagging/thumbs up feature, as on reviews. When someone gets (say) ten thumbs, the badge is awarded.

(I'm just throwing this into the melting pot - personally, I'd vote against member-to-member badges.)

It would be nice to include the Legacy Library contributors, but there is no way to track them, since they're always logged in as the subject. (Complete aside: I'm always intrigued by how well LThing tolerates multiple users sharing the same login at the same time.) Each legacy library tends to have a shepherd, though, who knows who the contributors are. Perhaps they could be recorded when Jeremy pronounces the "complete" benediction.

I don't see much difference between gold and bronze on my monitor. I like the idea of different ribbon colors - I think it would help. If red/white/blue is too US/UK/France-centric (to name a few), keep one of them green!

About reasons to display them - if I needed help with (say) combining, the badges wouldn't be much good with finding it - they aren't searchable. I don't think anyone would just look at random member's profiles until they found one who had a gold combiner badge; just not practical. sarahemmm's point about vetting a single known member's credentials is much more cogent.

I've just had time to read the threads above properly and, although I totally disagree with the detractors and think 'storm in a teacup' might apply, the fact that there are some people who don't like it would lead me to suggest that it might be a fair compromise solution to have them as something that appears on the Homepage rather than profile? Certainly for me, while I love them, I don't need to show them on my profile. I wouldn't look very often if they were buried in stats somewhere so I love the fact we have an easy little summary and that they're little medals (I'm shallow), why not pop them into the homepage somewhere, then that massages everyone's collecting tendencies and bypasses any 'LibraryThing Royalty' issues ....

I don't like the idea of member to member badges. Those will turn into a popularity contest - often leaving out those who contribute small, but nevertheless important, information to LT.

It's like the "star" program at my work - which I also hated and still do hate.

it might be a fair compromise solution to have them as something that appears on the Homepage rather than profile

Not if you want it to function as a sort of credentials like suggested in 99 and 104 - you don't get to see other people's "homepage" here (as far as I'm aware).

It seems like the update (from message 69) is a decent compromise. I still don't actively like the badges, but I'm moving more towards "I don't care/doesn't bother me" with just the icons, sans text, with details moved to stats. My main concerns were about 1) being able to control what's displayed to others on my profile (and, while being grateful for recognition of contributions, not being interested in having that displayed publicly) and 2) not wanting increasingly detailed information about my activity on LT to be provided as default in potted form on my profile. I'm not 100% happy with the current solution, but I'm pretty close to apathy now. I'd still be interested in the possibility of making the display on the profile optional, but if it doesn't happen, fine. I'm also sympathetic to calls for this to be on the homepage rather than the profile -- the question really is who is the intended audience of these badges of recognition: the member herself, or the wider LT community? But again, I don't care very strongly. I'm surprised people here think the negative or ambivalent reaction was particularly heated; it seemed like most of the heat was coming from people who actively liked it.

I can see my own badges now, even while private, for which, thanks. I was curious whether I had any, even if I'm not interested in displaying that info to others. I don't really mind the detailed info (numbers etc.) being on the stats page, for those who want to look for it.

PS on the idea that badges signify "credentials": I'm not sure they are good for this. What about people who consistently post helpful messages in talk and actually know quite a bit about LT, but happen not to contribute much or at all to CK, or combining, or adding pics, or Local. Why assume that people with no badges know less, or people with badges know more? My own judgments about the knowledgeableness of members tends to be based on, in declining order of importance: 1) the quality of advice they give; 2) their previous comments on talk (whether I've seen them giving advice before, and how that advice was); and 3) the length of time they've been on LT.

#107, I guess it depends what function Tim had in mind for badges. I'm not sure that using them as 'credentials' is a particularly good idea, as rsterling said, many people just don't add to CK or Combine and just because someone Combines, it doesn't signify that the advice they give is necessarily more valid.

The way I see it either:

(a) Badges are like a personal reward/milestone for those of us that like to fiddle behind the scenes - in which case, why not put them on the Homepage

(b) Badges are a public symbol of your contribution, in which case put them on the Profile and deal with the competitive or elitist implications, but I didn't get the impression that that was exactly where the idea was coming from (but that could be me) - in which case, why not just give people the option to show or not. Either way, I don't think it's going to descend into a 'My badges are bigger than your badges scenario' but I do take on board the fact that it could put newer members off trying to chip into that side of things. It could seem a bit clique-like. Combining is a bit like that now to the un-initiated even though anyone can do it (although I'm sure it's unintentional on the part of the members that do, the fact that it can seem so means that there's the potential for badges to seem so too....)

or

(c) Badges are a means of 'judging' how experienced someone is (which just wouldn't work in my mind and I really don't think that was the original idea)

So for me it comes down to (a) or (b).

>106 SqueakyChu:--I am not too fond of the member-member badges either.

I do like the new format without the text. I didn't have a problem with the text showing, but it could become problematic if I had a considerable amount of badges (as shown on Tim's sample page).

I must 'fess up to not really understanding the member-to-member badges idea ... possibly missed an explanation above ... that said, I don't really get the value of these either. Does sound a bit like a popularity contest...

SqueakyChu, you have a 'star' program at work? That sounds awful!

If having a gold combiners badge is considered to mean being an expert, I'm even more against having them on my profile. I have a gold work combiner badge. I do a fair amount of simple combining, sometimes even helping on requests, but the minute anything starts to get complicated, I'm off to the combiners group to get help from the real experts.

I agree with klarusu about 'not really understanding the member-to-member badges idea'. I would hope that if any such thing is instituted it would be like friending - a private message, and the recipiant has to accept it before it shows in public anywhere.

So, it sounds to me like the anti-badge people have been mostly mollified by the change in message 69—which reduced the text to simple icons and a separate "Helper Badges" stats pages. I think that's how it will stay. I may change the display to badge icons with a numeral next to them, indicating how many there are.

I am also happy to add a checkbox that removes them from your profile all together. I'll try to get to it later tonight. (Before then I have a TON of legal nonsense to plough through.) Ultimately, I think the profile needs the same flexibility as the home page—so you can present yourself exactly as you want.

I'm not convinced I should go ahead with member-to-member badges. First, I always planned to let this sit for a while—I have a lot more important stuff to do. (This was a little cream-puff feature.) Second, I'm not convinced members want it.

Incidentally, I want to raise the possibility that some of the very few limits on combining or group flagging might be tied to medals, rather than—as now—paid status. If someone has combined 500 times without being thrown off the site, I trust them to combine books with thousands of copies.

This however, is likely to raise some hackles, and since I won't be getting to do anything like this soon, I don't want people to pick up the steak knives yet. You'll get a chance to weigh in for real when I get around to it.

113: indicating how many there are
Do you mean how many badges or how many contributions?

#104: If you want to know the name of an "expert" the best place to look would be the helpers zeitgeist page.

http://www.librarything.com/zeitgeist/combiners

Then you can see how much "work" someone may have done.... and judge accordingly.

#112: MarthaJeanne, IMHO, you are doing an extremely good job in the combiners group.... always helpful & ready to dig in.... if there were member to member badges, I'd nominate you for one!!

Well, thank you. But part of that may be because I know my limits. I've had to learn simple combining, just because of the type of library I have. I have enough real singletons. If I didn't try to combine every book I enter, my library would be half singletons. And where's the fun in that?

>114 rsterling:

Badges. So (gold) 1 (silver) 5 (bronze (4)

Move over, Légion d'honneur.

Well it certainly is unobtrusive for those who don't like them. I just noticed them late today. Don't care much one way or another.

I would like to see a currently reading box, like the recent activity box on the profile though. :)

I would like... {BEAT}...

ALPHA BY AUTHOR!!!1!

--> 111

They got rid of the "star" program and now have a "spirit" program. Needless to say, I'm not thrilled. I can't be programmed to have spirit. :(

I rather like the idea adding of more colours to the stars: emerald, ruby, diamond, sapphire, etc. I think having many different colours will make the stars less conspicuous. Everyone knows what a gold medal/star is, but if someone has many colours of stars it will just look like a random decoration.

Rainbow stars!!!

You can see the full famfam silk set here:

http://www.famfamfam.com/lab/icons/silk/previews/index_abc.png

(See under "awards.")

It has three colors as well as the three metals. They looked bad on the green background, but I could use them.

And yes, there's a very fetching rainbow :)

I like tux ;)

Tim: you've got all badges, but one. OK. But why haven't you managed to get all badges gold? It would have been easy for you to cheat, wouldn't it? (I would have done it.)

Alas, LibraryThing doesn't have a "God" mode in which my gun kills zombies and combines books in one blast.

We totally need that. Get on it!

BLAM!

iddqd

Had to Google that.

>132 timspalding:
Really? Post 131 actually means something?

I never knew I was helping to a degree the deserved an award! I think the badges are fine, and they might help newer users learn new ways to contribute to the site. I scanned some of the earlier complaints, and it always suprises me that people assume the worst about their fellow LTers. People seem to be concerned that the stars will be used to judge people, or be treated as collectibles. I know I'm not going to judge anyone's worth by their star power, and I see no reason to think less of the LT community at large. And if people want to put out time and effort to improve the site only to win more badges, who cares? The site will still have more information. Seems like a win-win situation.

people assume the worst about their fellow LTers. People seem to be concerned that the stars will be used to judge people, or be treated as collectibles.

I don't think that's entirely fair. Tim himself raised a question about whether these would be perceived "as an indication that somebody is a "'better member,'" and so it's only to be expected that people would respond and speculate on that point. But the bulk of the detractions and hesitations - including most of my own - had little to do, from what I've read, with people making assumptions about how others would use these badges, but were rather about a discomfort with having them attached to one's own profile. I'm not sure how all of the "complaints" ended up tarred with this particular brush.

I like the badges! They were a delightful surprise. I love this site, take a lot of time to contribute and it's nice to be recognized for it. Although I won't be disappointed if they disappear, I find them a gracious gesture.
Thank you!

Count me among those that are elated and honored by these badges of merit.

I have on several occasions surveyed the doings of the combiners and sundry other contributors and marvelled at their largely unsung and mostly unheralded contributions to this site. Amazing to me, too, was that the bulk of these thankless tasks consisted chiefly of cleaning up behind others.

Imagine, if you will, an Open House, an Exhibition Opening or just some giant Cocktail Party with an open bar. Word of mouth goes North and South and ere long we have a large and untidy throng. All are made to feel at home, but many have homes that we would rather not see. Bottom line: things are spilled, dropped, misplaced and knocked askew.

Now imagine that within this hubub of all-too-human humanity exists a silent minority that habitually keeps this habitat habitable. Not the invisible hired help, but the even more rarely seen invisible un-hired help.

"Oho!", a few of you might say to yourselves, "I've seen them!", whilst envisioning some "hostess from hell" trailing every guest with a spray bottle and sponge in hand or some semi-creepy fellow who in utter obliviousness to his surroundings and surrounders surrenders to his impulse to straighten the pictures on the wall and precisely rearrange the knick-knacks (pardon me) on the shelf. Well, these "Monks" have, I think, more in common with the medieval variety for whom, as Carlyle famously observed, "work is prayer".

Until now, I thought that this work and these workers didn't have a prayer of receiving even a small portion of the recognition it and they deserved. These medals go quite a ways in undoing this injustice.

I also like sashes and ceremonial swords.

Come on people. Do you really care if someone thinks they are better than you? What they want to believe sitting in their libraries in front of the computer really doesn't affect you at all. Anyone who is foolish enough to jump on the site and start bragging about how many stars they have is sure to get howled down by the mob very quickly.

It's nice to get a little recognition for your efforts. That's all.

Keep it unostentatious. Leave it on the profile with the option to hide it if you want.

Oh, and I noticed too that not all of Tim's stars were gold, I don't think he's doing enough around here! :))

> 125

Tim, Make sure you never give that World_Delete to anyone. That would, like, ~so~ mess up my day!

I used to have a 'signature file' (at where I worked) that read, "I'd love to change the World, but they won't let me have the source code."
I haven't thought of that in a long time, but the World_Edit 'badge' triggered the memory.

Actually, most of those against having them on profile pages don't care if other people have them on THEIR profiles, we just aren't comfortable with them on ours.

---------

Maybe if Tim did less other things around here he'd have time to get a full set of gold stars. (But I hope he won't. The site would be in terrible shape!)

#127, 128, 140: No, I meant: why not cheating in the code in writing something like:

if (member==timspalding)
{
Helper_Badge=gold
Common_Knowledge_Badge=gold
Work_Combination_Badge=gold
etc.
}

Easy, eh?

PS: I've missed a few helper categories, like tag combinations and cover-contributions (which I can only half do).

What exactly is the problem with counting cover contributions?

Hate, hate, hate, the idea of limiting certain combining & group flagging rights to 'badge reached' mooted in #113 (*sharpens steak knife with fast, automatic knife sharpener and looks ferociously in the direction of Tim...*). On the one hand it was mentioned above that the aim was not to 'LibraryThing Royalty', and on the other hand, that's exactly what you're doing! I would never reach the 500 mark on Combining because I just don't have the time and I'm a sucker for CK when I do (sorry LolaWalser ;)) ) but that certainly doesn't mean that I'm inept or lack an understanding of what I should and should not combine. Neither, if I find something amiss, should I have to go cap-in-hand to the Combiners! group to get someone to do it for me. I can manage that myself. As for Group Flagging, unless you're going to start awarding badges for Talk Activity or Spam Hunting Posts (which I don't think is really practical) then there's not really any basis for saying that one member is more qualified to flag than another. Boo! Boo! Boo!

(Sorry if I sound grouchy, two days of infection by evil stomach virus from the little bundles of infection that are my daughter's nursery class will do that to you!)

>143 klarusu: Hee hee! A badge for Talk Activity?


You could give the teeth gold, silver or bronze "grills" for each level. ;)

For my vote: I like the contribution badges; I'm skeptical on member-to-member badges; and I'd be completely in favor of a "you must be this O/C to combine any Tolkien work" badge.

>142 karakus:

We don't have data for who originally contributed many covers. We know who's using them, not who added them.

>143 klarusu:

Does anyone know what the system is now? I can't remember, but I think I put in a safeguard that you had to be a paid member if you combined two works each of which was over 1,000 or something like that. Ideally, I'd like a full-on wikipedia system where even combining every one of LTs 6 million works into a single work would be reversible in an instant. In reality, I'm okay with some people being unable to do terrible, terrible damage.

I'm no longer quite so grouchy (but give me credit for dedication to the cause and piping up whilst nauseous! ;) ) It's probably not a situation that would crop up too often under genuine circumstances ... that said, you'd better give LolaWalser her SORT BY ALPHA or she may wreak terrible harm from inside the system ;)

Joking apart, I still think that Group flagging would be a difficult thing to limit. After all, there are people who don't update the data infrastructure in any way, but who do frequent the spam threads and are active in talk. Why prevent them from flagging? You're never going to get a perfect system to stop people flagging spuriously. More problematic (and hopelessly off topic) is that it's impossible to flag spam groups with no posts in them (which has covered most of them recently ...)

ExVivre, I so want those teeth! Tee Hee!

It's impossible to flag spam groups with no posts in them

Really? Try the group page. You can flag for deletion.

148> That stopped functioning weeks ago...

Really, Tim. If there's no topics posted, there's no flag option.

Damn. Okay. I'll look at it.

Thanks! *puts the hijacked thread back where it should be*

I've been looking into the reports of CK edits being misattributed as reported in message 8 of this thread.

Does anybody besides LolaWalser have the issues of misattributed CK edits? If so then I'll move the conversation to a new thread so that we can discuss it further.

153> I think I've had it happen to me before (getting "credit" for someone else's entry). I believe it may have been a result of combining. Not sure if it stayed misattributed or not.

Dumbass question, but how do we check?

Well, combining shouldn't change anything with CK attributions...so that would be worth knowing too.

You can check by using the CK search box to search for your username (it's the last option in the pull-down menu). It'll show all of your edits to CK.

Thanks ... and no, nothing amiss.

>153 conceptDawg:

Yes, I just aquired one today. I have apparently added an awards and honors item. The book in question was one that I combined today; however, I did not touch the CK fields.

http://www.librarything.com/work/6635517

>153 conceptDawg: http://www.librarything.com/topic/50258

Thanks. Chris is convinced it's correct, but we'll see.

I haven't read through the entire thread, but to answer the OP, I think they're cool. I didn't realize I'd done so many CK entries.

I think we're pretty much all grownups here, so I don't think it would be any more divisive than any other zeitgeist type info. I generally enjoy all types of stats. In this case, it's interesting to see what I value on LT enough to put my time into - if it showed covers uploaded, it would really show where I spend my time :)

153/156> CD: The misattributed CK I mentioned in this thread:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/49244

which were briefly addressed in this thread:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/49478

seemed to be related to combining - if I combined a work with a work that had CK already entered it seems that I got credited when the info moved over to the new work.

Will check and see if they still show as mine...

DEFINATELY have a few that are attributed to me that I COULD NOT have done -
For instance the "description" for this work
http://www.librarything.com/work/628667
shows under my username in the CK search
however, it is written in a language I don't own - so, therefore, NOT MINE.
(not that I remember doing any combining on that work either - just that I absolutely did not write the description.)

On the other hand - reviewing my CK additions has reminded me of some projects I have the skills to finish now so -- away to combining I go!

Are you one of those people who writes CK when actually dreaming?

Chris?

As someone who contributes to the site a lot and never expected anything in return except for the satisfaction of a job well done and the hope that someone else out there who feels the same way will contribute to the site in a way that is useful to me... I like the badges.

They're definitely better than staring at the Zeitgeist page and slowly watching the numbers go up. Once the badge hits the gold star, then it really stops being about HOW MANY changes/additions you've made. And that can only be a good thing for the site.

I'm not big on the idea of member-to-member badges, though, mostly for the same reason others are against it - the potential to turn into a popularity contest.

However, I think one member-to-member badge that would be a good idea is a badge for users who are helpful and kind to other users, especially new users. As we've had problems with perceived rudeness (especially in the Combiners group), I think rewarding the more diplomatic people would be a nice thing to do.

EDIT:

Also, the fact that there are only 10 people with a venue combination badge? Cracks me up. Because I'm a nerd.

That's true. We could ahve some set niceness badges that any member can give.

You could make use of some of the other symbols on that page, like a typewriter. Why limit yourselves to stars?

153> I've added to the bug collectors thread that PaulFoley started.

>156 conceptDawg:: You can check by using the CK search box to search for your username (it's the last option in the pull-down menu). It'll show all of your edits to CK.

Stupid of me, no doubt, but on what page do I find that?

Re. #165: "a badge for users who are helpful and kind to other users, especially new users"

I'd DEMAND that if there was a "helpful and kind" badge that we'd also be able to get a "snarky and sarcastic" badge ... the latter I would at least be in the running for!

heh ...

 

#169 BarkingMat, click on the link to Common Knowledge at the very bottom of this page and the search box is the top right, select username from the dropdown to the right of the box.

(See how I can say that with authority now that conceptDawg explained it to me!)

>171 klarusu:: Thank you.

Well, I must confirm that there's an awful lot there I can't take credit for. About some of it I'm in doubt. But I'm absolutely sure I never listed characters in Italian for The Naked Ape - I sort of remember combining an Italian edition though. Also I never listed a gazillion characters for The Silmarillion, or places and characters for the Harry Potter books.

Why wouldn't some of the long-standing challenge groups be allowed to develop badges? I don't belong to any of them, but who said they all had to be helper-helper? Couldn't you have the 50-challenge or 888-groups, dewey challenges, etc?

Just something that wouldn't be a "popularity" contest...

Oooo, challenge badges, now that would be super-fun!

I like the idea of challenge badges for those people who persevere to complete dificult challenges.

Most of mine I think I really did, but there are a few things recently that must be the result of combining - everything for 'The Very Fine Clock' for example. I seem to have done some combining on that author, although I don't remember it. I know I combined 'Death in Venice' but I didn't do the CK, and certainly not in Italian. 'Dragons in the Waters' must also be from combining.

There is also a problem on April 6th. I may have to edit my entries a few times, but even I can't do eleven within a minute. AND on Nov 11th, 5:28 pm I am listed as saying that a nonexistant author is female.

> a nonexistant author is female

If a tree falls in the forest, does it have a gender?

One hand is clapping at that one. The other is reminding me that most plants have both male and female parts to them, and do exist.

I have to remember at work - all the time - "Employee and volunteer behavior focuses on what management measures" - so these things become really important

From what I have lived through, I have found that giving data, and showing comparison against the group at large is a far better way to do things, than giving "badges" or "medals"

Consider: "Combined 5 authors; in top 4.41% of all LibraryThing users doing this" or alternatively "in top 27.53% of those who have combined 1 or more author"

Show people the raw data, forget the badges, is my vote. I can just see folks working to get that gold badge by inputting poorly-thought-through data, and then stopping as soon as they hit the gold level.

As far as user-supplied badges - I don't like the idea at all. I hate "rewarding the popular" - because popularity is already its own reward. It reminds me of music and movie awards shows 'voted by the fans'. I can see some person working hard to provide value to a small # of users feeling bad because "popular" users in large groups get recognition...

For increasing legibility, couldn't we have the badges on a light green background (that of the profile page) or on a white background? The silver star on a grey background is especially hard to see.

I think the badge idea is nice, because so many people do so much for the quality of the data - enriching my experience of Librarything. And I like looking at my own and buffing them off once in a while:-)
However, like PBJ, I am concerned with people making 'bad' input in order to get the badges - this being my first thought when I read about the badge idea probably says something unflattering about my level of trust in other people;-)

Sorry - I got a touch bored around >56 christiguc: so this may have been said already. I think the badge idea is OK, am happy to have them, am not particularly concerned to see other peoples, would lose no sleep at all if they disappeared. What if they were on the Home page? The no-badgers could then choose not to display them. The pro-badgers could bask in their glory without being accused of showing off.

Am I the only member to see this as the equivalent of arguing about the number of angels that could stand on the head of a pin?

Stand? They don't stand! They sit. And I'm leaving this site and forswearing pants if the powers that be here don't acknowledge this.

Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa. I just thought that you could get more on if you made them stand ..... or even hover.

Oh, well, back to the abbey - time for vespers.

Tim. I hate to break it to you, dear, but you ARE the powers that be. Please put your pants back on.

Are they English pants or American pants? Believe me, the linguistic subtlety is very important on this one!

They're on—my head!

Do British people go Commando, or do I have to go Gurkha or SAS?

In either case, Liam is liable to be an only child.

>183 timspalding: Actually, Tim, they dance.

187: must be British, then?

164 tim

I found a few CK I really did not contribute an example:

catalog Jun 6th, 6:39 pm
work Een huis voor meneer Biswas
ontwarringsbericht: Una Casa Para El Senor Biswas
spa
profile catalog FAMeulstee
(I have never been on the spanish site)

catalog Jun 6th, 6:39 pm
work Een huis voor meneer Biswas
prijzen en eretitels Time's All-Time 100 Novels selection
eng
profile catalog FAMeulstee

catalog Jun 6th, 6:39 pm
work Een huis voor meneer Biswas
prijzen en eretitels The Modern Library's 100 Best Novels (The Board's List, 72) (The Board's List ∙ 72)
eng
profile catalog FAMeulstee

We own this book and I probably combined it.

I'm looking into the CK attribution mashes. It's beginning to look like we once had a bug with the way that CK was handled but that bug has since been fixed. But I'm still going through old CK logs to track down exactly what might have been going on.

To elaborate a little, it looks like sometimes when you made an edit it took other edits on the same page (or on other languages' pages for that work/author) and either resubmitted them in your name or claimed them. That's probably right, but not certainly.

that is what it seems to be Tim.
There are some others (mostly works by Karl May) from a later date, those have German as the language and I only use the Dutch and the English version of LT.

#130: Nice. I was going to file a bug report about all the zombies disappearing from the site, but now I know why. Oh, and I like the badges.

>100 fyrefly98: Strangely, the ribbon colours (blue/red/white) are indeed US-centric. In Canada a blue ribbon indicates a second-place finish and a red ribbon is first.

Now to comment on the badges:

I didn't know they were there until I saw them on the Statistics page. They are nice and subtle on the Profile. I am pleased and surprised to see that I have done so many CK entries.

I am also somewhat puzzled and slightly uncomfortable. CK and combining I understand, but.... The "helper badge for any contribution to LT", what the heck is that for? Can't recall doing exactly 395 of it!!

As a contributor of many covers, I would mildly appreciate recognition of the hours of work involved in scanning, photgraphing, and editing the images. You didn't start counting until recently? No problem, "covers contributed since (date)" works for me. The changes LT recently made to cover display have me itching to go back and upload higher-quality images anyway. After I finish cataloguing the rest of my library of course. As if.

(edited to change bracket type and remove spurious touchstone -- lol)

>I98 If you add together the numbers of each other badge category you will get - nearly - to the number of 'any contribution': an encouragement for those who have done a fair bit but not achieved any of the other badges yet, I suppose.

I posted a message about how I liked the badges when I first noticed them, saying that they would be an encouragement to members making contributions.

I was immediately given the "royalty" argument in return.

So, I like the badges, and I pushed ahead in one category to get another one, but I understand the issue about the appearance of bragging rights, too. New members may well wonder how they would ever reach hundreds or thousands of entries, which some members already have.

Muumi: Yes, contributing cover images is a chore, especially when scanning and editing a book cover rather than downloading an image from elsewhere on the web. Keep up the good work.

Venue photos are also a chore, since there is traveling about to do before moving the photos to the computer and editing them.

For some of the other badges, I do not quite understand what is being done, but cheers for those who are correcting or adding information to the huge shared database we have here at LT.

I tip my hat to those who contribute to LT.

If badges motivate more contributions, I vote for more badges.

I tip my hat to those who contribute and don't give a hoot about badges.

I don't think more or less of either group of LT users.

Keep up the good work.

> 145, 198
If uploading of covers is not recorded so far, I think it's high time to start it. After all, a lot of effort goes into scanning and processing.

As mentined before, "covers uploaded after ..." should be ok. There is no reason to perpetuate the initial non-recording.

Also, when works that exist only as a single copy in LT and have a user uploaded cover, the upload could be reasonably attributed to the owner of that book.

I'm rather miffed that uploading of covers has NOT been recorded up to this point ... I've put in quite a lot of effort to make sure that at least the books in the most recent 30% of my library have scans of their actual covers (I was working backwards through the shelves and only made it so far at this point, but I've scanned all newly-added books for at least the past couple of years!).

I find it very odd that this data was not being kept, especially given the issue of "inappropriate covers" mentioned elsewhere.

 

It started being recorded when they kept high-quality covers, aka months before now.

>203 BTRIPP: and 204

Though my disappointment has not quite risen to the level of miffed-ness, I can relate to Mr. Tripp's sad realization of love's labor lost.

I, myself, have uploaded hundreds of lovely cover images and many of these can be seen in the libraries of "LibraryThing Royalty". My only reward (-other than pure and unadulterated altruism) was in knowing that these illustrious personages either did not own a scanner or did not own copies of these books as well-preserved as my own.

That a proper tally of this work is now being kept, is of some consolation. I shall be cover-contributing with renewed enthusiasm and gusto.

Quite the kerfluffle...

does this have something to do with the "best users" mentioned here?:

"Message 4: timspalding
I want to tattoo the details on my bicep!

Note, not 99% will care. Fewer, but some of our best users.
Message edited by its author, Nov 26, 2008, 4:37pm."

http://www.librarything.com/topic/50534#905047

It does make it easier to identify who the best users are.
Member to member badges too?

Very interesting. Then those badge receivers will then be "popular users" I imagine, not best, but popular.

This could be interesting~carry on.....*wanders off to make tea*

>206 mckait:
This topic was started 4 days before the post you quoted.

>206 mckait:, I don't think they're related. Tim put up the helper badges and started this thread 4 days before that thread. But, you've renewed my interest in what the heck Tim was talking about in that thread. I await his announcement with bated breath.

So ... means that there is no way in the world that they could have any sort of relation to each other then #207? (btw... you do have a way with words, fleela)

yes..DOB I am curious as well.. and suspect that despite the serious time differences, they may have some relation to one another. If not, and I am wrong, so be it.. I thought for a second there that I was allowed to ponder as I liked~

eta

"Oh, we got a good one coming! It took serious effort and we had no idea if it would work. All the other efforts didn't. But it does, it does—it DOES!

I just made a hundred smiley faces on Chris's chat session!

Give us a few days to nail it down, and spread it out to all users."

makes me think that what was mentioned in the thread I quoted had been in the works for a while.. days maybe? longer?

* ponders creating a badge...*

>209 mckait:
It means it's improbable, not impossible.

>209 mckait:

Looking more at the thread you quoted:

"It IS performance related.
It IS a cool technique.
It IS geeky and 99% of you won't care about the details.
Those same 99% are CERTAINLY going to be happy about the results."

It certainly seems like it has nothing to do with this. That thread was started four days after this one, and I don't see how helper badges are performance related or involve a cool technique.

I hope it's something like author disambiguation (forever optimistic!), but puzzling over what was mentioned on that thread doesn't seem to have any relevance here. (I'm with fleela--it's not relevant unless anyone wants to try to create dissent by pulling a Tim quote about "best users" out of context and putting it here into the helper badges thread where Tim expressly said he didn't want to create the impression of "LibraryThing royalty"). Let's not try to be divisive! :)

How is it divisive to wonder if one post has to do with another?

Goddess know I don't care one way or another...some people look for trouble..

212>

Author disambiguation isn't performance-related or particularly geeky, and Tim is on record as saying it's a post-Collections project.

>202 karakus:: Point well taken. I have 501 unique-to-LT works (oops, 499 now -- I investigated 20 that seemed unlikely "singletons" and combined two), and nearly all of them have custom covers (I have only 26 books in my LT library which don't) so it would seem fairly clear that 475 of my 2927 "member-uploaded-cover-chosen-by-me" books are my own scans. (edit: very occasionally Amazon will contribute the correct cover for a unique book. Very occasionally.)

And I would like the category to be recognized, partly because I'd like to know who else has taken on this project. I've met one other obsessive cover-scanner through LT and we have a lot in common!

No "performance" is site performance, not user/member "performance."

Quite frankly, some (but not all) of the performance improvement has evaporated under heavy load. Part of the site is now running faster, but not all. It did force us to do some serious benchmarking, and we have some improvements we hope to roll out soon.

Thanks Tim~ that is what I was thinking when I put the two posts together..
that it was member performance...

I am sorry that it fell apart though.. I like it when you dance

:)

Well I ended up here from the wiki page after I noticed my badges so if this is the wrong page or has already been answered I apologise but I couldn't read through 200+posts of people griping at each other.
What exactly does the helper badge mean? Can you give some examples 'cos the wiki page doesn't really explain it very well? Somebody back up there was talking about their numbers being wrong but how exactly do I see a list of the CK facts I have added 'cos when I click on the numbers I just get the wiki page?

>218 Sodapop:

You can see the number CK you are credited with for each badge under: Your Profile --> Statistics --> Helper Badges.

You can see your total number of "CK facts" on: Your Homepage --> Your Zeitgeist

If you click on CK facts there (or on the "Common Knowlege" link on the bootom of most pages) it will take you to the Common Knowledge page located here:
http://www.librarything.com/commonknowledge/

At the top right corner of that page there is a search window if you enter your username and select "username" at the very bottom of the drop-down menu you can see which exact CK you are credited with.

Hope this is helpful.

First impression of badges: military

Perhaps it's just because I am not from the USA.

Couldn't they be a little more witty? I rather like 144 ExVivre's chattering teeth, for example. But as I haven't any suggestions myself I suppose I should just hold my tongue (have you ever tried that?).

Slippery little devil, isn't it?

#219. Thank you.

Bug report:

If the badges are supposed to be automated, I found a bug.

I added two author pictures to one author listing to test the system and didn't receive any badges. If they are supposed to be human-generated, no problem. I was just doing it for testing purposes.

>223 vintage_books:
Badges won't be generated instantaneously.

Also, there are minimum thresholds, which are specified on the wiki page. I think for author images it is 5 for the bronze.

>233 rreis: I believe the badges are updated nightly.

>225 rsterling:: rsterling

Thanks for clarifying that information. When I read it, I understood it was an automated process, so I was testing it for bug purposes.

I didn't understand the thresholds numbers and what they meant; not to drag this out, but maybe an explanation is necessary as well as the fact that this process isn't automated.

Cheers

vintage_bboks

Yeah, I didn't get/notice that the first time I looked at the wiki page either. I asked about it upthread. I agree, I think there could be a bit more explanation on that page that there are thresholds and that that's what those numbers in parentheses mean, esp. for those who just glance at the page quickly. Anyone can edit the wiki page, so any takers? Where would that best information go?

...and the process *is* automated, it just isn't instantaneous.

The algorithmic award committee needs time to confer on the merits of the candidates.

Will there be an algorithmic award court of appeal for those who feel that the committee has seriously underestimated their meritoriousness?

No, but now and then the algorithm will probably break!

After much thought I decided that I am against badges and favour merit cookies. Preferably made by some lovely old granny somewhere and packed and delivered at my door step.

>232 timspalding: But can it be fixed with Brie?

or chocolate dipped pretzels might be nice...

you could have a whole hierarchy taking into account the level of merit and personal tastes of the user! 60% of the CPU power of LT would be dedicated to this! automatic ordering and delivery of rewards would be the biggest selling point! people from all over the world would be addicted to their rewards, striving endlessly for the most pure data so the highest delicatessen would be on their doorstep, still hot and right from the oven. Ahhhhhhhhhh

One would also think the algorithm should be able to predict your preferred variety of Merit Cookies from what you have in your library.

But you will have to review at least one book in order to be eligible for a shipment of merit cookies.

Just to add one more comment to the gabfest:

Can anyone tell the difference between bronze and gold? Call me krazy, but I can't. Should I have my eyes checked or my computer screen recalibrated? k4k

239> Yes; easily

#239> k4k: I see a little difference, but only if I'm looking for the differences... at a glance, no I can't tell the difference.

and I like my 5 little badges, very much, thank you!!

I hate this badge system.

Why?

Because I don't have any. :(

I even contributed 3 library pics and 1 B&N pic (way back in March) and still no recognition.

Life is cruel.

join the combiners group & we'll put you to work getting some badges!!

I don't want to sound churlish, more a tad confused. I haven't been a member long, so forgive me if it's obvious! but if you have a private library and write reviews and do other contributing stuff, how does this benefit the LT "community" if no one but yourself can see it? So, that's fine if you're doing it for your own benefit, but I don't get the awards thing if it isn't - well - of benefit to the LT community. Have I missed something?

>244 MarieWG:
The things you get badges for help everyone, whether or not your library is private. Contributions to common knowledge, work on the combining system (books and authors), author and venue pictures, etc., are all visible to everyone.

#244: speaking as someone who has a private library AND who "contributes" to the LT community... (in some way or another... whether or not in a good way)

more than 95% of the work I do has NOTHING to do with the individual works in my library!!!

I 'work' because I enjoy it...

I keep my library private not for selfish reasons, but for privacy & security reasons... well justified reasons!!

246>

I certainly respect your desire for privacy, but I'll admit to being curious -- what privacy and security concerns does having your library be private solve that simply having it be anonymous wouldn't? The intersection of books in my library is narrow enough that anyone who knows me personally could probably say "Hey, I bet that's so-and-so's library" -- but nobody who is searching on my name, or who knows me only from work, could identify my library as being mine. For me, that's protection enough (well, that and keeping a handful of books off LT.) I'm not criticizing your decision, of course, I'm just curious!

#242
Megacoupe, there are threshholds for getting the badges. For pictures, you have to put in 10 before you get a badge - so go get your camera!! :-)

Here's the wiki page with the list; the numbers in parentheses after each one are the threshholds for bronze/silver/gold.
http://www.librarything.com/wiki/index.php/Helper_badges

Suggestion: on the page showing the badges you've earned (that you get to after clicking on the badges), could it also show the badges you haven't yet earned and how you're doing towards them?

Isn't that info in Your Zeitgeist on your home page?

#247: Please see post #35 on

http://www.librarything.com/topic/45069

for my explanation there...

Thank you, I've learned a lot!
When the aliens arrive, do you think they will be as diverse in their philosophies and behaviours as we are? Probably....unless they're cloned of course...
But we humans are gorgeously diverse and unique, and sometimes I miss the colour of others because I'm presuming it's similar to my own.

242>

It is easy enough to add Common Knowledge to book or author pages. Just take any book you have, and check out the author on Wikipedia or with the publisher.

Photos of local bookstores or libraries are a bit more trouble. Author pictures often require communicating with publishers, so they are more effort, too, but don't require leaving home.

I've skimmed this rather lengthy thread so excuse me if I repeat something already said or mention something already taken care of.

I understand why you want the 'badges'. I don't believe it would contribute to cliquishness, but yes, the royalty thing is a distinct possibility. Couldn't you just have a virtual awards banquet once a year and dispense your awards that way? Or just list it in the zeitgeist and those that feel they need the recognition can go there and check it out?

I would like to be able to 'opt out' of having these on my profile page. And, ideally, I'd like it to say somewhere that I have opted out.

As a long time scout, scout leader, and mother of three grown children, there's a lot of things I could say here, but I don't have the time or energy:-) It would be naive to think that adults are somehow 'above' measuring themselves against each other - it's human nature.

As far as member-to-member badges, I assume you mean those to reward those things that are not technically measurable, things that are just as important on the social end of LT as all the covers, combining and reviewing is on the technical end. Hospitality, helpfulness, wonderful contributions to a conversation, a great recommendation...etc. Sort of the equivalent of the BookMooch 'smooch'? There have often been times when I would have liked a vehicle like that but a simple thank you is usually enough, is it not? (And I have been known to thank a few with a book:-). I don't know, I'm really not all that comfortable with all this scorekeeping. Perhaps, I'm more right-brained.

Maybe the medal-style badges should be transmogrified into chocolate-chip cookie-style badges
The type of chocolate chip (white, milk or plain) could correspond to the metal (bronze, silver or gold)
The only difficulty would be in getting agreement on the relative value of the chocolate chip types...

>255 Donogh: C'mon - plain 70%+ cocoa solids must be the Gold standard, shurely?

> 256 97% cocoa? or is that platinum?

>256 abbottthomas:
I know, I know; but there are a lot of irrational people out there where chocolate is concerned. *duck*
I mean, white chocolate isn't even technically chocolate!

Not to mention, some people are allergic to it (I, thank something-or-other, ain't one of 'em).

White chocolate isn't real chocolate, and it is disgusting. No White chocolate for me please.

What about Green, Purple, and Orange for colors, and just pick something fun and funky for the form of the badge.

I think the current badge colors are good, except the bronze should be a bit darker to distinguish it from the gold badge.

I'd like to second #198-215 asking for a "covers contributed since (whenever)" badge. Filling in blank squares and upgrading blurry images is its own reward, of course, but it would be nice to get a Medal of Recognition & Warm Fuzzies the same as for adding other data.

Yep, I'm with you on the covers one. It's effort that is worth rewarding methinks.

Here, here!

Hey, if nothing else, it would let me know how many covers I've added since (whenever). Interesting data.

If you have your options set to have My Zeitgeist showing on your Home Page, one of the stats is "custom covers". They do add up!

>266 MarieWG: - Keep in mind that stat is misleading. It isn't the number of times that you've uploaded a cover necessarily. It's the number of times that you've chosen to use a custom cover instead of the Amazon-provided cover.

I admit that the first time I saw that number I thought, "wow, I know I've scanned a few covers, but it can't be THAT many!" and then Tim gave an explanation somewhere. I was relived to see I wasn't scanning in my sleep. :)

Oh! Thank you!

264: Hear! Hear!

How about a "mouse-over" option.. when you move your mouse over a certain badge it will open a larger box/window to show a more detailed picture of that badge... Check out Netflix mouse-overs on their website. Same principal....

I would like to add my local library and bookstore to connections but I cannot find where to add them. Please add the following

St. Louis County Library - Grand Glaize Branch
1010 Meramec Station Road
Manchester, MO 63021
(636) 225-6454

Borders Bookstore
15355-A Manchester Road
Ballwin, MO 63011
636.230.2992

Thank you

271> Venues and events are added through LibraryThing Local: http://www.librarything.com/local

Make sure you do a zip cod search first so you don't duplicate any existing book or library venues....

A zip cod search? Are fish delivering the mail now? :)

no, they are looking for zippily fast cod fishes!!

271>

Add them yourself! Adding venues to Local isn't hard -- you've done the hardest bit, finding the addresses and phone numbers -- and it's awfully rude to demand other people to do it for you.

(They wouldn't show up on Connections at any rate, of course. That's for members, not venues.)

276> I pointed them to LT Local, here and through a profile comment, they've added the venues. :)

Uhm... Question-clarification.

# Venue Photos for help adding photos to bookstores, libraries and *authors*. (10/50/100)

How it this different from "Author Pictures"?

Ah. I got it. Okay. I changed it to "and other venues." It's just a typo. Author pictures have a different badge.

*blushing*.... by bad!! code..code.. zip code.....

Quick question.... How does one translate books on LT?? and get credit for it? Just curious!!

You don't translate books, you translate the site's text.

It's about helping with the translation of the site itself - for the various other language versions.

Take a look at, for instance, Librarything.de (instead of .com). There's also .fr...and I know perfectly well there are lots more but that's all that's coming to mind. OK, looking at the "Language: English (others)" selector in the upper right if you're not logged in - Albanian, Basque, Danish and lots more. Most of them are (xx).librarything.com, actually - al.librarything.com, baq.librarything.com (Basque needs a lot of help! All the yellow lines still need translating) and so on. If you speak any language other than English, that's a field that's still pretty open (since the majority of LTers are Americans and monolingual, which is not causative but a very high correlation). (and yes, I'm American and pretty much monolingual.)

Perhaps the reason that Tim says there are only 10 venue-combination badges is because whoever does the venue-combinations has not done it recently. I have asked for some combinations, and seen other requests, but it doesn't seem to happen very frequently.

I like the helper badges, and don't think that users will view them "competitively." They're discreet, and really just indicators that one has helped -- not that one is a "better member."

If it's a legitimate concern (based on user feedback), I think that allowing members to opt out of helper badge display is the way to handle it.

p.s. I have uploaded many covers, so would actually enjoy it if you kept count and gave a badge for that!

Just a quick thank you for all those who wrote about my language translation questions...... informative and helpful....

As far as venue combinations... The LT employees work on those at the end of the month... They do tend to pile up in the que..... It just takes time and patients in waiting for final combination results.... Quicktip... I tend to credit the lower store number with the combination request... because they were the first ones to enter the venue information.

I have to echo carport's sentiment (#286)... Having just looked into the helper badges, it does seem just a little silly that there is one for users who have added author pictures, but there isn't one for users who have added book covers*. All in all, I think the badges are a great idea.

*As of now, I've added exactly zero, so... It's not like I'm fishing for another badge here!

As far as venue combinations... The LT employees work on those at the end of the month... They do tend to pile up in the que..... It just takes time and patients (sic) in waiting for final combination results....

Not this past month. I have one from early December, and it is still waiting.

>289 FicusFan:

I have several pending, from last month and this month.

Perhaps it will happen by February.

Yes I do agree about the cover uploads being valuable and worth badges. I am always grateful to find someone else has already uploaded the cover for my book and that I don't need to do it! Especially when entering a load of books.

While several of you are die hard fans of librarything.com the badges are serving to get other members who only keep track of collections to add information. The first time I added information I did it out of a desire to get information about an author event out to anyone who might be interested. That was a fluke. I had little interest in adding to ck etc... While I do not care if I 'earn' badges the badges serve as a reminder to me that my contributions can help the community. I've since added more content in the past month then I added in the past 10 months. The badge served as a reminder that librarything works not only as a catalog tool but as a resource that is dependent on its members.

Thank you Mrs. Stansbury, truly every little bit does help.

I was once a pretty active contributor to the CK stuff (author and book data). Then I got a private message: "Now that you got your gold badge, would you mind explaining why you..." I didn't even know what badges were, and now some prick is using them to send me a nasty message? Anonymity turns mice into lions. Love it.

294> That sounds about as tasteless as someone PM'ing you, demanding that you fix something in your library because it's messing up "their" data.

Please don't let someone's tacky comment deter you from helping out, especially if you used to enjoy it.

294 > someone was upset that you were adding more CK after you did a gold badge's worth? i really don't understand that. it's not a competition -- how does it affect them?

296 > I read it as a snotty way of saying "Why don't you follow the CK conventions"

#297: and the CK "conventions" are .... what? instead of 'do no harm' (the combiners 'rule') the CK convention is 'do no good'?

but, seriously, what ARE the CK conventions??

>298 skittles:

CK info/conventions on the Wiki

298> Thanks for lumping me in with a jerk. I wasn't condoning the other user.

#300: that wasn't intended... I'm sorry I offended.

301 > I'll live, glad to know it wasn't intended as I took it.

I don't really like the idea of helpers badges. It smacks of school prefects and goody-goodies - just the sort of image that puts so many people off books. But if you are going to have it, make it clearer how you get them. eg: uploading 100 book covers (or 1,000); At the moment it is working in a somewhat cliquey manner.

Jen

#303: if you are going to have it, make it clearer how you get them. eg: uploading 100 book covers (or 1,000); At the moment it is working in a somewhat cliquey manner

What is wrong with the explanation on the wikipage?

It clearly states that you get a bronze star for so many contributions, a silver star for so many, and a gold star for so many contributions within a field. And it is linked to from the badge detailinfo.
The rules for what constitutes a contribution to CK are a bit tricky I admit, and I am not sure where they are documented other than talk.

#303 - I will say that I have been dismayed to see people saying things like, "I'm glad of X because it helps my CK statistics". I don't recall seeing such statements before the advent of badges.

People like them, though, so my attitude about other people's attitude is really irrelevant.

In fact they are modestly displayed and probably the only people who will care about the badges are the hardcore users who cared about the statistics prior to the badges.

I was in the top 50 for CK and work combinations long before the badges were introduced, but the badges introduced me to other areas of the site where I could contribute. Like so many other features of the site, you're free to ignore them if you're not interested.

I hadn't actually noticed their existance until it was recently pointed out to me. I rather like them, but am not much concerned one way or another if other folk have more than I do. Many people have more books than I do, as well. :-)

I agree with Rowntree. I have gotten badges because I am neurotic and mildly compulsive, not because I am seeking badges. I often forget they are there. The joy is in procrastinating doing my real work, going to sleep etc.

k4k

I'm glad of X because it helps my CK statistics

I've seen this in only the most joking of ways when trying to make light of yet another clean up need. After all, when trying to clean up New York City (again), or someone needing to explode and re-combine works that have been mis-combined (again), or finding that there's just messy work in CK (recent thread) that's not connecting, what are you going to do if you can't make light of it?

Really, do you think anyone with the Gold Badge is really that excited for the CK statistic? Cleaning up always takes a lot longer than starting fresh. I can assure you no one is really cleaning up because they want to boost CK for real. Heck, if you want to boost your badge stats, there are about 100 ways to do it that don't involve cleaning up a thing...

But I can promise you every time I've ever seen it, it's just folks trying to find the "good" in an otherwise bad situation. And, frankly, it beats being negative about the whole thing.

But, yeah, when I got my whopping extra 5 combination "credits" after exploding and re-combining the mess that had happened to Berlin - which took nearly an hour - boy was I living high on the stats hog!

303> "At the moment it is working in a somewhat cliquey manner."

Our new slogan: "It's a helper thing; you wouldn't understand." ;-)

>303 mumoftheanimals: You can get a bronze CK badge in less than 5 minutes - just add 10 Canonical Titles to books in your library.

Even quicker? Go to Profile - > Memes and see how many of your authors are missing male/female classification. If you know, filll in 10 of those...

Boom! You're in the clique.

Yeah, it's totally complicated like that. :)

#307 What is wrong with the explanation on the wikipage?

Ha! Ha! I didn't understand it. I didn't until 311 gave a clearer explanation (thanks for that). Looked again and it clicked. So I suppose what's wrong is the page isw not clear enough but I take back the cliquey remark.

311: you've created a monster...

All part of the master plan, all part of the master plan...muahahahaha.

Serioulsy, OCD loves company!

:)

MALOFROY!

That is awesome. :)

#316 - Oh I haven't laughed so much for ages! that is so ME! I adore it!

>311 stephmo:

"... see how many of your authors are missing male/female classification. If you know, filll in 10 of those..."

And even if you don't know, just fill in something anyway ... after all, you have a 50-50 chance of being correct. The good thing about this strategy is that it creates a potential cleanup opportunity for other LTers that follow in your wake. Always remember, badges beget badges. Like all manifestations of trickle-down theory, it's a win-win situation for everybody! :)

Arrggghhhh - not funny! (said with a smile, really). But seriously, entering bad data is a major hot button throughout LT. Don't get fried too badly...(in the ensuing set of flames).

I'd recommend having at least a strong hint before filling in gender!

I've changed one of mine when filling in birth date because someone apparently looked at the name and decided that it 's usually male so...However it that case the assumption was wrong. Most of us have similar stories.

316> I adore it. Just the other day, I had to explain to Spousal Unit why I like it better when the spice rack is in alphabetical order.

Just, uh, one, uh, little thing ... should be "as it should be"

**not ocd**not ocd**not ocd**not ocd**nuh uh not me

#316: Thank YOU!!

I think that I will join the hoards that want that shirt/motto.

Hordes ... hordes ...

**not ocd**not ocd**not ocd**not ocd**

Badges are cool. I'm adding another vote for the 'Cover Uploaderers Since ...' badge.

324> But...but...how else would it be arranged? and how would you find your spices if it wasn't alphabetical?

**not ocd** - just the daughter of two English teachers (which has nothing to do with spices, more related to staffordcastle's comment). (and why is wanting people to use the correct words and not homonyms considered obsessive behavior nowadays?) (wry smile here, not mad, just...why?) (and waaaay too many parentheses))))):).

#326: You are RIGHT!! I was WRONG!!!

I got hoarding mixed up... since I hoard books... really really hoard them!!

*not ocd**not ocd**not ocd**not ocd**not ocd**not ocd*

For what it's worth, I think we have a good compromise. Badges are there, and people can get some satisfaction from them. I think they encourage people somewhat, and make them feel "remembered" for their work. At the same time, they are very discrete, just a small row of tiny images at the bottom right of the profile page. I don't think a new user is likely to see them for days, or weeks. And I don't think there's been much in the way of badge-based cliqueishness, and what there's been took place before badges too--the ownership and pride people get from helping cuts both ways.

Yes, very discreet. (Sorry, sorry, pedantry showing through again) Of course, they are discrete as well.

How's about giving us the option to make them flash?

;-)

Mea culpa!

>333 abbottthomas:

"How's about giving us the option to make them flash?"

Sheesh, don't ya think that's a bit much; perhaps a little over the top? Isn't it enough that you'll start receiving "shooting badges" once you've done, say, 10,000 combinations and become an official LT "PowerCombiner"? Some people are never satisfied! :(

Still waiting on my cookies.

Wohoooo sugar rush! *Runs off to fill in more C.K. facts*
What d'ya mean "Am I sure George Elliot is male?" "Of course he's male, his name's George" DUH.

"His" name is Mary Anne Evans - George Eliot is a pen name.

;-)

I'm fairly certain Sodapop knew that!!

Edit war!!!

;)

j/k

>339 Sodapop: "*Runs off to fill in more C.K. facts*"

Bravo! That's the spirit. BTW, Iphis, Tiresias, Orlando, Myra Breckinridge, Roberta Muldoon and all the rest of the gang down the pub really appreciate all the selfless time and effort you spend spreading the word on LT. :)

>340 staffordcastle: "'His' name is Mary Anne Evans"

Sshhh ... not everybody understands that that's just a malicious rumor spread around by his ex-wife Evelyn Waugh! She never could get over George's easy-going hedonistic "eat, drink and be Mary" approach to life.

heeheehee

Always happy to help :-) (as long as there's a badge or a medal to be had).

*wanders by*

I'd like to be yet another person to encourage a Helper Badge for posted covers.

Thanks for reading.

Vintage_books

Although I think it's been mentioned before, a stat for author links added would be cool. Since I've been working on "Dead or Alive?" I've added a ton of them, and I'm sure other folks have, too.

Thanks for being a reader :-)

>346 vintage_books: & 347

Hey Tim, how about awarding a badge for the LT members that make the best suggestions for new badges?

* Rule42 goes back to the thankless and unrecognized task of uploading book cover images. *

348:

I posted my message because Helper Badges for covers have been discussed for months, but still are not available.

Yeah, they really don't mean anything, but considering I usually let someone else know about one of the 1000 or so uploaded cover that I posted that they can use from my library 1/3 times I upload, I'd like to see this Badge applied.

Yes what is so hard about awarding a badge for scanning in and uploading a cover image? It's much simpler to decide if J.K. Rowling is male or female or to open the phone book and list a few local bookshops... come on LT Guys, why is this one a sticking point? I personally really appreciate if someone has already uploaded a quality copy of just the right cover I need so I don't have to. Are you afraid you'll be overbalanced by the influx of covers uploaded to earn those valuable, heirloom, note-it-on-your-CV badges?

Regarding badges that are not currently available:

Perhaps they aren't increasing the number of badges available because they are working on collections & feel that finishing that project might take more precedence.

Right on, skittles!

Although I may make suggestions, I am well aware, too, that what seems simple to us may be a pain in the posterior to code for reasons invisible to us non-initiates, uh, non-coders.

Putting my 2 cents in is for me at the level of comment/suggestion, not request/demand. There is more than enough on the site to amuse me already!

I just discovered these on my profile today, and think they're a great idea. I'm also happy that I earned two of them without even trying (without even knowing they existed!).

edit-fixed typo

Can you link me to where it says specifically how a member can help out? I wouldn't mind, but ... I've looked through this page and your wiki and it refers to the badges and the help, but never links me to where exactly a person volunteers. Unless I am just missing it. But if I am, maybe other people are, too. *smiles*

>356 Clanky:
You "help out" by doing things that benefit others. So stuff at the work/author level rather than simply changes your own catalog.
E.g. if you add some Common Knowledge you are helping out. The very act encompasses the "volunteering".
All these things are logged "under the covers" by LT and badges are awarded depending on how much you've helped.

#356 - ALl the places where you can help have easily editable fields, with either pencil icon, a green sidebar, or some instructions.

For example each and every work page has the Common Knowledge fields on it awaiting your detailed attention. Fill in a few fields to get your first badge.

Just want to say "thanks" for posting a new badge for my efforts, and a small comment that I really can't tell the visual difference between a Bronze badge and a Gold badge on my screen.

Perhaps something special for Gold Badges should be considered in the future (thicker border, larger badge or something)

vintage_books

359: i thought i was the only one. almost impossible to tell the difference between a bronze and a gold.

If you go to your statistics page, and look on the left, you will find Helper Badges, and that provides details. For example, vintagebooks:

Helper for contributions to any area of LibraryThing (164)

Common Knowledge for contributions to Common Knowledge (145)

Author Pictures for help giving authors photographs and pictures (12)

I was very pleasantly surprised to discover that helper badges existed -- especially since they were mine! -- and I'm all for them.

I'd like to add my vote for badges for LegacyLibrarians. I think my contributions there are far more deserving of acknowledgement than, e.g., anything I've added to Common Knowledge. I realise we're effectively anonymous when we contribute but, as already noted, the People in Charge know who's helping.

I could do without the member-to-member badges. As long as Tim et al are receptive to member feedback (about what badges there should be etc.), I think the official badges should be enough.

Just another vote for giving badges when covers are uploaded.

Yes, again. Still for the covers. Covers should be acknowledged anyway somewhere, if not in a badge, like hovering over w/ a mouse will reveal the username of whomever donated it.

364:

I'm not against a number-of-uploaded-covers badge.

But I'm uneasy about mouseover credits or anything like that.

The most important reason is that members with private accounts can and do upload covers just like members with public accounts, and a universal "reveal" feature would make the contents of their libraries less than private.

A number of uploads badge is fine with me, whatever people like.

>365 235711:
Not that I think a "reveal" feature is necessary but if it were implemented I imagine that Tim, et al. would have it just display "private member" in that case - like it shows on the Members with this Book section.

Anytime there has been a bug that revealed info about a private member - my experience has been that it was quashed right pronto. Your concerns are certainly valid but, having been raised, I think would certainly be addressed before such a feature were released.

You are right.

</watchdog mode>

What's the proverb? - "Be ever vigilant, but never suspicious."

(I was going to use "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty.." - but since privacy and not liberty was the value at stake, I couldn't quite make it fit.)

Eternal vigilants are the lice of privacy.

Of course, on the private library issue. It never occured to me. However, if I want to find the source of an image, there is no way to do that, which could be helpful.

helpful? how? I get images for books I own & books I don't own... you don't have the right to know if I own the book or not, or where I got the image. Why should I help you? Because you "need" to know the source?

Sorry for the attitude, but just because a person wants something, or wants to know something, doesn't mean they have a right to that information.

If you "really" need the information, start a thread on "Source of images needed"... If I see a book title posted there that I had uploaded an image, I might let you know... but I didn't keep track of which images I uploaded. but I would probably recognize my book title & I would check to see if I uploaded it by looking at my book.

A persons 'need to know' does not trump my 'rights'.

I think benjclark meant to say, "I hadn't thought about private libraries, but of course I agree they should stay private; however, as PortiaLong said, the system could deal with those exceptions, and it would still be very useful to be able to find the source of most uploaded covers (i.e. those uploaded by public users)."

Right?

>370 benjclark:
I'm still not clear on why it would be helpful to know who uploaded an image when it wasn't yourself? What does that get you?

Just curious!

(I hope benjclark won't be annoyed by my posting again; the following is not an attempt at ventriloquism)

One use I can imagine is for finding someone who may own or know (but perhaps only wants - wishlists!) a particular edition of a book one would like to ask a question about. (One could do that in Book Talk, of course, but the other person might not see it there.)

But I've mentioned elsewhere that I can also imagine that some people, even those with public accounts, may not like this at all - others being able to know by a glance at the cover page that they own a rare and valuable edition of Alice in Wonderland, or whatever it is. (Not that the information isn't already public; but it isn't publicised.)

374>

Uploading a cover doesn't necessarily imply ownership of that edition, however. The uploader may have owned it in the past, or have it on a wishlist, or may simply find that cover attractive.

>374 235711:
Moreover, the book record itself would convey that info, even if it lacked the cover. And often, several editions share a cover design; for instance, hardcover & paperback editions quite often have the same or very similar designs.

375: I did say "may own or know (but perhaps only wants - wishlists!)". But it does make this usage less efficient.

376: As do the points you raise. There's been talk about adding a database layer between works and individual copies. That would take care of finding people with a certain edition listed (not necessarily owned! I know!) much better, provided that users' names were listed at the edition level.

All right then, I retract my hypothesis about the usefulness of making uploaders' usernames available. But perhaps benjclark can enlighten us?

> 377

I could go through my library and take photographs of all of my books--but that would take me a long, long time! It's just pleasant to be able to look at the member uploaded covers and find one which matches my book's cover.

So, perhaps it's because I would like to send a 'thank you' to the member who saved me the trouble and time of uploading?

#371, Skittles, I think I might like you!

#379: I doubt it. We only have 48 books in common. Considering the sizes of our libraries, that is a very small percentage.

And clearly people with differing literary tastes can never like each other.

I like the idea of some recognition of cover uploading, as it is rather time-consuming. It would be simple enough to say "private library" in lieu of a user name when relevant.

Of course it would be most useful, and I imagine completely noncontroversial, to at least make it plain, from within an account, which covers were upload by the user of that account. It would be nice to have a place where you could see all the covers you have upload in one place as well.

Sometimes the time and trouble actually taken are minimal. Example: New editions of the Penguin Classics often use the same ISBNs as previous ones, so that over time their Amazon covers are replaced, and I find that a cover on LT no longer matches that of the book on my shelf. So I google the ISBN or the title, find a picture of the old cover, and perform the operation called "grab by URL". I would consider it unnecessary for someone to thank me for this. (Someone will now raise an objection about how thanks and necessity are and are not related, and I will depart with a headache.)

Of course there are also uploads which do involve a significant amount of the aforementioned elements. Still, while you may wish to thank me, I may not wish to be thanked.

Part of the problem for quit a while LT didn't keep track of who uploaded a cover. I have uploaded over 1000 covers and I know most of them where before the change. (Not to mention, it was before they kept the full size pictures to I am tempted to do them again, if I EVER have time...)

I know tag combination is down, but are there plans to add badges for that? I know it's one thing I used to work really hard on. Just a question, I'm quite all right if it's not added. I've been a big combiner on LT since I joined - way before there were any badges : )

Really? I'm of the opinion that there should be very little tag combining, basically only when a tag is an obvious misspelling of another (and the misspelling can in no way be interpreted as something else).

That's true, but when you really look at tags, they really can be combined. Say there's a series, but 10 different people have 10 different tags for the exact same series. Obviously, you would need to make sure there wasn't a conflict (like the tag could mean something else) but otherwise, why should there be 10 tags for the same series? When you combine them, everyone's original tags are kept the same.....they just link to a combined tag page. I think tag combination helps clean up really messy tags so they're not an eyesore if you're looking at the tags for certain books. There are lots of tags that shouldn't be combined, but if you look closely you can definitely find tags that wouldn't be hurt by being combined.

Someone also told me it helps Tag Watch work better because if there are different, but similar tags for the same thing and they aren't combined, you may never see them in Tag Watch if you use the other term.

Re the comment about combining tags for series. My caveat to that is that the name of a main character if tagged should not always be combined with the series tag name. There's many cases where the series name is different. If I'm tagging by main character name and by series name, it's not fun to see them combined and be unable to separate them.

I've never combined a main character with a series name.....that isn't the same tag at all. I'm talking about a series like "A Series of Unfortunate Events". people have that series tagged 100 different ways, and I don't really see the harm in combining them all. http://www.librarything.com/tag/series+of+unfortunate+events . Maybe it seems obvious to combine those, I don't know. Another example I have would be the tag "fairy tales retold" http://www.librarything.com/tag/fairy+tales+retold . if you go to the page you'll see that quite a few tags have been combined into it, but I don't think it messes with the tag's integrity to be combined. I'm guessing that people mean the same thing by "retold fairy tale" and "retelling fairy tales", right?

>389 HollyMS:
That's why I said as a caveat. I wasn't saying don't do it, but was listing something that I think is important to be aware of if doing it.
And it's something I've come across when others (I do not know who) in the past were combining series names. That's why I mentioned it.

Re the 2nd tag link. Looking at that, I personally don't support the mass combining of singular and plural that others seem to do. So I personally wouldn't combine those tags.

Probably the discussion of which tags should or should not be combined is a bit off topic on this thread about helper badges in general.

Perhaps we can move this particular discussion over to the combiners group? That way others who have an interest in how tags are combined or not combined can give their opinions. I'm just one member.

I wasn't watching and this got crazy fast. Yes, I was thinking more in line of 372 and 374. I was only thinking this could be a useful tool for bibliographic purposes. I happen to own XYZ edition, would like to compare to the one user ABC listed seen since ABC photographed it. Would take a lot less time than messaging every one who has listed that they have a particular edition. Especially since many users are ignorant or apathetic of edition information. If my request annoys them, they can ignore me. I certainly don't feel entitled to any information about someone else's books! Good gracious! Only looking for routes to shorten the paths of curiosity in my own mind. Time is limited!

Okay. This thread was about Helper Badges...

392: It's possible to do that, but you have to go back to the author page, find their name in the list of members, and then click the link. Tedious.

Click on the number beside a member name to see the books the member has by the author in their library, then if more detail is needed on a particular book, click on the book detail card.

392: are there any badges associated with work on series?

Every series entry is a Common Knowledge entry, so work on series counts towards the Common Knowledge badge.

Another vote for a Cover Uploader Badge.

Covers are next on my plate, now that profile pictures are out, although right now I'm helping Casey get data into a site-search feature.

I think the most common request for cover pictures is not more of them, not different kinds, not a cool gallery -- but keeping track of which ones you have uploaded, as opposed to just using other member uploaded ones.

Will this be possible with the new system?

(I realize there probably will be no data for previously uploaded covers. That's ok.)

What rorrison said in 401.

Just a thought,

Is it/'would it be possible' to "only" keep the "best" image (of a book cover) when there is a selection of "many" identical images with only different resolutions/clarity. I realise it would be subjective BUT...

I suppose I am saying, Could we delete duplicate, lesser images?

Edited to add, perhaps by a voting system?

I think people using them might get upset.

Would they be upset if they got a clearer/sharper image, which then became the default?

And I am talking about "identical" images.

Not at that, but at having their image(s) disappearing and having to find out if there is a newer / better one available. For users with thousands of books that would be a big task.

Sorry, didn't think thru the logistics.

No problem. I would love some system that tells you if / when member uploaded pictures for your books become available.

>408 Nicole_VanK:

Yeah, that will be nice.

I suspect you want a system which tells you about:

a) Covers (of a book you have) which have been updated by a member.
I mean resolution/clarity here.
b) Book covers (which at the moment you have from AMAZON) which have an alternate source. ie, a members upload.
c) A new book cover (for your ISBN, and which has no cover) has been discovered.

etc. etc.

I'm guessing that this "pony" is NOT on Tim's list.

Yours, Guido

Yeah, something like that*. No I'm not expecting any neighing soon. ;-)

* p.s.: but I agree with AnnieMod below, that a simpler version would do me just fine.

>410 guido47:

Actually just a "New cover is added to a work that you have" would be more than enough for me (then of course we have the combinations that are a separate can if worms). :) And I want to pony ping please.

Seriously - I know it is not going to happen. Not soon anyway.

Yes, I would favour a way of getting rid of poor quality covers. If we could merge covers, and vote for which one was best, only the higher quality one would show. People who have previously manually selected or uploaded a poorer quality one, would keep that image, of course.

Ideally, we would also be able to see a page which listed (a) All books where other users said an identical cover was better; (b) All books where I have an Amazon cover, but other users said an identical cover was available; (c) All books where I have no cover but covers are available. Of course, I'd like to be able to select covers with just one click from this page.

I've now realised that's almost exactly what guido47 suggested. Great minds....

Just realized that my posts have had very little to do with the initial topic, but after 400 messages it's almost impossible to stay "On Topic".

Perhaps there could be (ie. Tim et. al) an automatic split in any thread after,
say, 150 messages? No, this isn't even on my wish list.

An idle thought anyway.

My dear #413 (markbarns)

When you "POMS" beat us at cricket I will accept your "great Minds..." accolade.

Wait. I think/suspect/worry that YOU did do this recently.

My God, accepting KUDOS from you lot...

Thanks, Guido.

Don't forget that some people *want* to see their torn and stained covers in LT because it matches what's in their libraries.

Personally I'm annoyed when there are a gazillion different images of the same cover on the cover page and would love to be able to collapse it to just show the ones that are really different.

>416 jjwilson61: I go along with your first sentence. I've got a fairly extensive collection of old Penguins which are in various states of repair. My scanned covers give a full picture of what I have - I wouldn't want a series of pristine covers.

Having said that, I also share your irritation at loads of truly identical copies displayed on the cover page. Perhaps poor quality or duplicated images could be made to fall off the display without disappearing from the original scanner's book page.

The covers that drive me crazy are the Amazon 'Search Inside' versions.

403>

This has been suggested before, and I'm a bit leery of the idea, just because people's ideas of "identical" may differ -- is having the same image, but the title in a different color, the "same"? What about having little badges on the cover indicating award-winning status? To me these are major differences (as in, keep using Amazon rather than using a user-uploaded cover until I can upload my own differences) but I can certainly imagine many people thinking anything with vaguely the same cover art counts as the "same" and marking one as a duplicate.

Will this be possible with the new system?

Yes.

Would they be upset if they got a clearer/sharper image, which then became the default?

Identical is in the eye of the beholder. Some members want their dings, their scratches.

The covers that drive me crazy are the Amazon 'Search Inside' versions.

I think we can make those flaggable. Flagabiltiy will also be available under this.

419> Yeah, that would be an issue for me. I'm pretty anal about wanting my cover image to be the exact same one as my novel, though not with tears and scratches, etc. If the nearest cover looks just like mine, except for missing the text under the title "A superb masterpiece! -- Stephen King", I'll set my cover to be something like the blank hot pink one and set the book in my "to scan" pile.

There's probably a medication for it...

420>

The covers that drive me crazy are the Amazon 'Search Inside' versions.

I think we can make those flaggable. Flagabiltiy will also be available under this.

What about things that aren't pictures of the book in question? Not TOS violations, not anything I'd want to prevent the uploader from using -- I'm sure they have their reasons -- but just not something that anyone else would find useful? (I'm thinking of things like the user-uploaded cover here. Nothing wrong with it, but I can't see the need to have it shared, either.

Edited to add: The user who uploaded that "cover image" is using it for a whole bunch of books (http://www.librarything.com/catalog/MsMixte&tag=Tama) which makes me think it might be her version of a "default" cover. Isn't there a way for users to just upload a personal default cover once?

#422 - Edited to say: That is just plain odd.

I think it would be perfectly reasonable to make images that aren't of the cover of the book in question flaggable. It's better than trying to come up with some category of book covers that can be used by individual members but not shared.

It definitely makes sense to have non-cover covers flaggable. I mean, you can flag reviews that aren't actually reviews, so why not covers that aren't really covers?

>422 lorax:

I think we'll handle that in two ways. First, the new image system will allow people to mark things as ancillary images—spine shots, front page, fanciful recreations, etc. What remains will be covers, or they will be flaggable.

These non-covers will be snag-able—you'll be able to use them as your cover, if you really really want to. But they will never be picked by the system as the best cover for a given book.

>422 lorax: Isn't there a way for users to just upload a personal default cover once?

I don't believe there currently is although I know we have discussed it - I feel bad about uploading my default ebook cover a zillion times but none of the defaults said "ebook" to me (I use different defaults to mean different things - for instance, if a wishlist book has a cover, I read one with that cover, but if I haven't read it and want to it has a purple default cover - or will once I'm done reorganizing it).

>426 timspalding: These non-covers will be snag-able—you'll be able to use them as your cover, if you really really want to.

So I will be able to "snag" my ebook default cover and use it on other books or I can only snag a cover that is already being used on that book?

I'll try to make it do everything.

Tim, it's Friday night. Go have a beer or something...

I'm about to get into a car, so I can drive down to Boston to spend tomorrow working on LTFL with Abby.

But I'll have a cheeseburger on the way.

I hope it's a big one.

Don't worry Tim - I'll take care of the beer-drinking for you...(Troeg's Nugget Nectar - bet you can't find that in Boston - best. beer. evah.)

Do you EVER stop working, Tim? Wow.

I'm convinced that he does NOT. I think LT is his addiction the way that it is mine....

(Would be nice to make a living doing your addiction - I would wish this on everyone...)

>434 PortiaLong: Psssssssh. He hasn't even cataloged his entire library yet*, that is... Unless he's rolling with a sockpuppet (long ago, I suspected one, but no longer). The man may own us all in terms of dedication to his job/LT maintenance, but, like the best of dealers, he's been careful enough not to get himself addicted to the sweet, sweet stuff his crew is dealing.

*Note to Tim: Don't get any ideas! The last thing we'd want is for you to get distracted. WORK! WORK! WORK!**

**Then have a brew, and spend some time with the fam! We may have a mean game face, but we're bibliophiles, not slave-drivers here.

> 422:

Yes, Tama is my way of letting me know that I need to get a cover uploaded for those particular books. Those books are tagged 'Tama'.

I would like the ability to delete Tama as I add the correct cover, but I am unable to do so. I didn't realise that until I started adding the correct covers!

>413 markbarnes::
I think merging covers is a good idea myself.

>433 Heather19:

Hey, I just slept more than 12 hours. So, yeah, I take a break :)

> He hasn't even cataloged his entire library yet

I know, I know. On the plus side, they're finally (mostly) out of boxes, and I'm moving the last 1/3 up from my parents' slowly—heading back to Portland with another few boxes today.

#438 - Make sure you don't use Amazon covers when you add them. ;o)

>436 MsMixte: I would like the ability to delete Tama as I add the correct cover, but I am unable to do so. I didn't realise that until I started adding the correct covers!

I think you can delete the picture as long as no one else has used it - Go to "Change cover" on one that has Tama - There should be a line

To change your book's cover, select a cover image below or upload your own cover image.

This book uses a custom cover (remove it).

Click the "remove it" link and the picture goes away and it changes to a regular default cover, then add the correct cover.

Yes, that's the pony I'm looking for too... with some qualifications

a & b) I want a clear, sharp, properly cropped, member-uploaded cover for my books, but the cover needs to be a reasonable match for the real cover of my book... not necessarily including my dings and scratches... an idealized version is fine with me. By properly cropped, I mean a cover with no excess white space around the image like the Amazon covers often have. Or, worse yet, a scanned and member-uploaded cover that shows the scanner bed on two or three sides because the member didn't crop the image at all...

c) nice additon to the above, but not expected anytime soon.

> 440:

I have done that, but I would like to delete my Tama cover from the database permanently.

For instance, my copy of Dressed for the Photographer now has a proper cover, but Tama still shows as a 'popular cover'!

>442 MsMixte: - that's odd. For my covers that I have uploaded if I use the remove link it looks like it disappears completely.

But in my other account - my default is still showing in popular covers...I wonder...

Sorry, no answer.

436> No help now - since you've uploaded Tama already - but I used an LT default cover, the square red one (and tagged it _red). It's not a cover I'd ever actually have, so it made a great marker for 'need to scan this ASAP'.

What prize do I get for having just read 444 entries? (I'm in serious trouble with the way my library gets shifted. . . need one of you to help me!)

Gets shifted?

Yes, it isn't in the format that it had had, and that I want. I tried to fix it, but made it worse. I want cover picture, authors in alphabetical order, book title, tags, reviews in that order please. This is the way it had been, I truly do not know how it gets shifted (for want of a better word) but this has happened several times.

>447 Esta1923:

It sounds as though your default style has been reset, which does happen every now and again. Have you tried each of the five styles A, B, C, D and E? I usually leave my setting on B, but a few days ago it reverted to A, so I had to choose B again to get it how I wanted it. Otherwise, you have to use the style setting tool, which is the gearwheel just to the right of the E.

If you use the style setting tool mentioned in 448 and set your preferred style in the A slot, you won't have to worry about your settings being shifted. You can play around in the other slots without messing up your preferred settings.

Tim changed the default styles a few weeks ago, which may have caused this confusion.

449-450: True. But apart from this the library sort also reverts periodically in the same way as the work page customisation (but less frequently, I think).

v

I checked your library, Esta - the 'suggested style' comes out just the way you want it to show, so it probably is that LT forgot which style you wanted to use. It looks like your suggested style is A (maybe you accidentally clicked a different letter?), so try going to Style A and see if it looks right.

Some jiggling did get it to style A . . . the order of the columns horizontally is fine. But I'd had (and do want) alphabetically by author's last name (after the few orphans that have no author).

Clicking on any column header will sort by that column. Click again to sort in the other direction.

(ETA: I don't reccomend the above method because clicking on a second column causes a sub-sort based on the previous column you sorted on. It gets very confusing.)

The little button to the right of the 'gear' button, the one that has an up and a down arrow on it, will open a sort box where you can select to sort on two columns. (Be aware that if you sort by Entry Date first, any sub-sort will not work. This is because Entry Date is actually a date-time field precise to a fraction of a second.)

(ETA again! Be aware that the sort column(s) applies to all of your views. You can't have one view sorted one way and another view sorted another way. Which is a shame.)

Thank you all. . . and several more folks. I am all done with trying and will ask staff to fix. (I discarded a plea for a flashmob to come/get ALL my books (including those I've missed...) up and in order. Esta

To me it's not clear now to get a badge how do you?

456> Help with things on LT. Enter stuff (correct information) into CK. Combine books correctly, and split ones that have become incorrectly combined. Add venues to LT Local. Translate bits of LT into other languages, on the appropriate sites. And various other things. Here's a Wiki page that lists what you can do and how much you have to do to get a badge.

Personally I find it more fun to do the stuff and see if I get a badge, but if you really want some badges I suppose you can do stuff just to get it. But make sure you're actually being helpful - don't make bad combinations or similarly mess things up (be sure you know what you're doing, basically).

I have 18 published reviews according to my profile, but I don't see a badge for the reviews.

I see Work-Spam flagging and Work-Spam Voting as badges, so I am going to look into those activities. Seeing the activities makes me want to know about them, perhaps earn a badge, but being helpful and knowing LT well is my real objective.

458 > the reviews you've written on books do no count toward the 'published review' badge. That counts reviews that were published in magazines and newspapers that you have entered into common knowledge.

I think I understand that, but could you provide an example?

Look at one of the Harry Potter novels:

http://www.librarything.com/work/3577382

You'll see a section labeled Member Reviews and another section labeled Published Reviews.

Gotta admit that I don;t see the point of copying and pasting Published Reviews. I would think that those copied Published Reviews are a copyright violation.

461: Fair use.

... is a legal concept which may or may not apply. :462

IIRC, the idea was to put in a snippet of the review and link to the full review.

464:Could you please provide an example of this?

Different question: When do the counts for helper badges get updated? I don't see any changes, but I have been adding venue photos and doing information updates.

Any badge concerning images are currently broken. That's a pair of tickets on the subject already.

In theory badges get updated every night and from what I;ve seen, it usually happens.. I've noticed those notices about them may be a day or two behind on occasion. One of my badges (I think it was the spam flagging one.) got updated and I received the new badge for it but I didn;t see a notice for it for like 2 days later.

edit: Found them:

http://www.librarything.com/topic/99624

http://www.librarything.com/topic/99412

I still want a badge for uploading covers. The other things that I have "earned" badges for were not nearly as onerous. (scan, edit, change size, upload - repeat ad nauseam...)

Although when you have Tama Kitty in the mix, I can see how it might be difficult to evaluate badge eligibility without case-by-case human involvement. But I'd far rather allow a badge for the cat than not issue badges for covers at all.

I still want a badge for uploading covers.

You deserve one, as do other cover-scanners. People who enter a few hundred "Male or Female" entries for CK get badges for much less work. (Not that that's not valuable too, just that I agree it's a lot easier.)

Oops, Lorax, I meant to say, "I want there to BE a badge for uploading covers". Even if I don't get one because I uploaded them too early or because the early ones were too small or stored at too low a resolution to be high quality images (this may or may not be the case; they look fine to me; happily, the later ones seem to be high quality) or some other reason. I want it to be a recognized endeavor because it is in my opinion a substantial contribution to LT, part of what makes the site attractive. It's a labour of love, obviously, but the badge is in the nature of a "thank you" - and I'd feel pleased if someone got thanked!

470>

No, I understood completely. There should be a badge for it.

As someone who doesn't have easy access to a scanner, I am dependent on other LT members for cover images that I can't find elsewhere on the 'net. I'd like it if there were a little badge incentive for those who do add scans. Even if some of the uploads are just "grabbed" (like the ones that I contribute), that's not any less effort that adding a little CK cribbed from Wikipedia.

Actually, I've never really understood _why_ there is no badge for uploading covers... is there a reason for it? Some sort of technical problem which would make registering/counting the uploads hard? I'd totally understand that, it's just that I really don't _know_ :)

I've tagged my scannings with "MyScan" and so far the number shows 659 (most of them are I think marked 'high quality') -- and that's not counting the covers I've just "grabbed" from bookstore-pages etc., those I don't count. Yeah, it is like muumi said in msg 470, a "labour of love", as I just want my books to have the 'perfect' cover (and coming from a smallish language area, the Finnish covers really aren't here "automatically" that often...). However, it would be nice maybe some day to have a badge, just as a nice gesture. Compared to inputting original publishing dates (which is fairly easy), scanning and uploading takes a bit more work...

I don't think the system currently keeps track of who uploaded what. It could be changed so that it did, but without knowing which ones you uploaded, it can't count them, and can't award badges. I would guess that if/when it is implemented, it won't be able to go back and give credit for covers already uploaded, only for new ones. I'd still like to see it, even with that limitation.

^Oh yeah, I don't mind that the (possible-maybe-in-the-future) Cover Badge won't acknowledge "previously uploaded covers", that is only natural and what I've expected :) Of course any new badge will start counting only when it is implemented, I think that's how they always work.
Not having a badge for them won't slow my uploading them, I sort of like scanning and searching and grabbing :D

Me neither - a badge would be nice, but I'd do it anyway. I'm tagging mine too.

I believe I remember Tim saying that it was because he gives badges for things that are mostly done to help the site, and his feeling is that cover uploading is done to make your own library look better. That puts cover uploading in the same category as adding books to your library or writing reviews which also don't get badges.

As a site user I feel helped by nice, high quality uploaded covers which save me the trouble of firing up my scanner. Am I alone?

477> he gives badges for things that are mostly done to help the site, and his feeling is that cover uploading is done to make your own library look better

I don't think that really holds up. There are two categories of covers: Member-uploaded and Amazon.

Amazon covers are a major roadblock to doing LT mobile projects. Plus, if you use Amazon covers, they get changed out from under you if Amazon decides to change them (and I think their license prevents you from avoiding that).

And member-uploaded covers add a LOT to the site, as many of my books only have the right cover because some member uploaded it.

If I had to use only Amazon covers (or covers I scan in) only, LT's value to me would be significantly diminished.

Moreover, lots of the things I have badges for were done to help my own catalog! I'd say it's a pretty fine line here.

>479 brightcopy: I think it really does help the site, as you say - at the most basic level, it helps it not look like Amazon and that alone is a big advantage in my eyes.

And like Abbotthomas, I'm enjoying all the covers others have added to Library Thing. Compared to two or three years ago, when I had to scan virtually every book I added, entering books is much more pleasant now.

Tim has said, somewhere (in the post about the new image system, maybe?) that he does want to create a helper badge for covers. I'm pretty sure I saw that (now I'm wondering if I'm making it up...). Maybe it's waiting until the new image system is fully rolled out? It's still not in several places. Or he just forgot about it, or there's some technical reason for no badge...gee, this is a _helpful_ post, innit?

1) Given my experience with author pictures (entirely negative), I don't upload covers.

2) That said, I highly value the work of those who do.

3) As I value such work, I suspect that many--and I mean MANY--other users do, as well.

4) If regular uploaders would benefit from a modicum of affirmation, I don't see why LT would refuse to find a way to provide it.

These people are your people, Tim. They don't require an immediate or retroactive solution. But... If you can practically find a way to show them some respect/love, DO IT. For the sake of all of us.

>478 abbottthomas:: no, you're not alone :) Even though I don't mind doing the scanning or "grabbing" myself, it is always VERY nice to have the cover (preferably in high quality) there ready, scanned or grabbed by some other LTer :)

I think that uploading covers is just another way to do something nice for one's own library WHILE being helpful to other users as well. I combine books (most often) so that my own library data would be correct but at the same time those combinations "do good" to other people's data as well. The same for original publishing dates etc. It's all a perfect balance between give and take :)

>483 BGP:

See, this is where a feature like badges can go negative. It resembles the debate elsewhere about reviews—aren't people who review a lot helping the site? Why doesn't LT value them? Etc. etc. The absence of a badge doesn't mean LibraryThing hates you.

I'm not against adding cover badges, but in general badges are designed to be a minor feature, given out for overtly altruistic actions. Covers are on the edge, I think. One might argue some parts of CK are on the edge too. All things being equal, I think we can put covers on the side of badges. But the larger point is that by having them on the other side we aren't dissing people who upload covers.

Tim, I'm not worried about people being "dissed" regardless. I think having a little incentive for covers would be good, precisely because I don't upload them these days, and I'd always like to see more and better covers available in LT. So my sentiment supporting this idea comes precisely as a beneficiary of the altruism, not as someone craving praise for my own contributions. It looks like others in this thread share my perspective.

ETA: Deleted msg 486 was an accidental duplicate of this one.

485> Short version: asking for a badge may mean you can't have one.

483>

1) Covers have never needed the copyright info that has caused author pictures to be deleted in the past, and

2) Tim has switched to a different paradigm for author pictures and they are no longer removed unless the copyright owner requests it.

Back to Uploading Image Covers, this very lengthy thread covers (ha ha) several distinct concerns:

1) The Source: Scanned or Hotlinked?

Submitting photos is definitely a labor of love for a number of us (and an obsession for others), and both contributes to the site AND takes a significant effort to accomplish. No one denies this. It sounds, however, like it may be a technical challenge? My follow-on question would be how does the system track all the other 'helper contributions'? Is each user linked to each submission (behind the scenes) in the database? Presuming this is the case, does the technical issue with uploaded covers hinge on HOW the files are stored and then linked to the user?

Hotlinking is a nonissue for me personally. OK, so the photo has to be sussed out online, but it's easier than looking up author data on Wikipedia (you can't past a single link to cover each of the bio data fields in the CK). I think at the least uploaded covers should be recognized and rewarded. I'm actually somewhat surprised that it still hasn't happened.

2) Acknowledging the submitter?

Not important at best. If some users wanted to showcase their submissions, then adding a checkbox option to the user profile to 'show my uploaded covers' in the Member Gallery might be a more viable option.

3) Combining similar images?

Another hot topic - are you satisfied using a similar cover, or must it show all your 'dings and scratches'? There is no answer that will appease everyone, but I think that by combining options, we can reach a workable solution.

I propose that we allow very similar images to be 'combined', much like the titles and tags combination process, and that the bundle of images be represented on the 'change cover' page by perhaps the most used one. In conjunction with that one image, there could be a link or option to 'expand variations', allowing the more finicky user to select a better image or one more representative of their specific volume than the one suggested/presented on the change cover page.

Thoughts? Concerns? Problems? Disagreements?

Re. #491: "must it show all your 'dings and scratches'?"

Whuh?

Am I the only one out here who spends lots of time (sometimes hours) photo-editing OUT the "dings and scratches" from the scanned covers of my books???

I mean, if I didn't care how the image looked, I'd just use Amazon's crappy image with the "copyrighted material" text on it!

I, obviously, want to have the cover of my copy representing my entry, but I want it to be the best possible image.

 

I share your opinion, BTRIPP. Please note that I am referencing an earlier post in this thread (and subsequent posts). This is a valid concern for some members.

Well, I'm a 'dings and scratches' man - previous owners' signatures and coffee rings if present. I like high quality scans and I'm going to have to do a lot again now that more pixels are allowed but I like to show things as they are on my shelves. Wouldn't fight about it though - unless my scans were combined away from 'my library'.

I can go either way, if I'm selected a cover from those uploaded by others, I want the most accurate cover in the best condition, if I'm scanning mine, then I upload as is.

I need my dings and scratches!

Seriously, tho, I actually do take the time to scan/upload my own cover even if there is a "correct" cover available... Not all the time, but if my cover has tears or stickers or something. I *like* my book's uniqueness and I would NOT want my cover "combined" with covers that don't have those unique features.

Whoa, I did not anticipate reigniting the firestorm! ;)

When I suggested image combining, I did not mean 'overwriting' or 'deleting'--just bundling them into a group of like or similar covers (represented by one of them) to avoid overcrowding the suggested cover alternatives in the 'change cover' page.

Each individual scan would still be available to be selected (I like your sigs and coffee rings, too!) by a 'expand variations' link from the 'change cover' page.

The goal here would be to maximize utility and efficiency without sacrificing individual preference.

497> I think that's a cool idea. So you could turn this:



into this:

>498 brightcopy:, That's exactly right, brightcopy, your mockup looks great! It's better than I envisioned it, thank you!!!

>499 Collectorator:, Thanks for clarifying, collectorator, I was unsure how it worked on LT, but wanted to differentiate between members scanning and uploading and just providing a link to remote copy. 'Hotlinking' was probably the wrong word to use?

> 498

I love it. I love it a whole heaping lot.

Thank you, by the way, for all the mock-ups you do. I find them very useful.

>502 Collectorator:

You're absolutely right on both counts. The source is relatively unimportant; I was still thinking about from the aspect of the rewards thing. Is the code on the 'change cover' page unable to differentiate which input field is used? If someone wants to download and re-upload just for a reward point, that's their own silly business.

Overall, I want a streamlined interface that works smoothly, gets me where I want to go, and looks good getting there.

Not asking for too much, am I? ;)

personally, "I don't need no stinkin' points!"

and I have uploaded a fair share of covers... and they get used even if no one knows I do it!!

I don't care!

Even if you do care! and that's YOUR choice.

Your opinion is noted.

I often download a cover - either an Amazon or a member-uploaded one - and clean it up to my satisfaction, then re-upload it. I'm putting in some effort, but it's not nearly as good as proper scanned cover...but sometimes I don't have the book available to scan, and this is better than nothing. I'll also use a member-uploaded cover if there's one that suits my pickiness, of course, but if not I'll often do the download-upload thing.

And I fall on the side of "make it look perfect" rather than keep the scratches and dings. I do want it to match my cover (with flags, blurbs, text color, banners...) but I want it to match the ideal version of my cover.

I don't really care about helper badges. Some way to see what covers I've uploaded, though - that I would love. Some of my early ones I know I want to redo but I have no idea which ones.

If a lot of people are going to be uploading covers, yeah, I think the compression would be good - IF LT can figure out what covers are similar. That's one of those things that's extremely easy for a person and extremely hard for a computer. It's obvious to anyone's eye that the three glasses of milk are the 'same' cover - but to a computer, if one is 120x160 and another is 500x800, the differences are enormous. It's not something I've worked on, and there may be a standard algorithm for comparing images, but I don't know of it. Personally, I have a lot more books that have no or very few covers than ones with dozens, so it's not a focus for me.

Thanks #498! Spot on.
Couldn't find an example but sometimes there are only 2 designs with many,
many versions differing only in the clarity and resolution.
WRT. Browney Points, perhaps a "uploaded" by member... IN small type under each image? I also "don't want no 'stinkin points" :-)

505> I think editfish was suggesting that LT implement a way for users to combine similar covers, not have the system do it automatically.

True - rereading the actual post does help. And yeah, that would be much easier than trying to do it through programming. Still not a focus for me, but could definitely be helpful.

Do I get a badge for reading every single post, in all their gory details, to this point (of a dormant topic, no less)?

Not that it has really "helped" anyone, but....

-Justin ;-)

How about the "Why the heck did I do that for? I want my two hours back" badge. ;)

By the way, remove the www from your url. The "unreconstructedsouthron" bit takes the place of it. To use both is incorrect and all major search engines and 30% of the net can't follow such a link. I'd give examples normally but I'm on a locked down terminal and can't reach google from here.

Thanks (on the "www" thing).

- Justin :-)

Not a problem.

I can't find if this has been discussed before so excuse me for asking: Is there a way to add images (as is done in posts) to the 'Comments' field in the book page of the catalogue? Thanks.

Hoy boy, I just went back to the original post.

For people who "don't care about" or who say "Badges are trivia",
there sure is a lot of talk about 'nuffin.

I, myself, personally, speaking about my own beliefs, believe that...

"Badges and gongs" are good. AHEM, AHEM.
And that Dinosaurs are...

On rethinking my above post (and the Dinosaur facts are still facts)

I wonder if this debate about "gongs" is part of the "Splitter vs. Lumper" debate.

Thus in history, when you look at the chest of a USA general or a Soviet Marshal,
Their chest is dripping with medals and orders (possibly even the "sharp shooter" badge
they had won as a recruit). Whilst, when you look at a British Field Marshals chest, why it looks almost naked.

There were fellows who had served 5 years in WWII who ended up with 3 ribbons.

So Tim and group, do we reward every single activity or just a broad sweep?

Guido.

PS. Of course I want this broad sweep to recognize "every little activity I have done"
but NO more!

Well, Tim was quiet on target with this concern:

So, I want to talk about the badges. First, I want to talk about the problem of cliqueishness or "LibraryThing Royalty." I'm worried that members will see them as indication that somebody is a "better member." This is a big fear of mine.

I've already had a member tell me I should shut up because I don't have as many badges as her. Some people really let it go to their head.

Yeah...but she's the one out of step with LT culture (I hope, anyway! I've never seen this). Unless we, collectively, start believing that number of badges relates to importance, it won't harm LT.

Badges for cover uploading are here! How nice! Thank you for my silver cover badge.

I wonder which date was the baseline for counting cover numbers?