Reviews - possible to improve?

[Bubbles]

Is there any way of making the reviewing process easier? It took me several minutes to work out how to submit a review, and by then I was starting to forget what I wanted to write!

Also, is there any way of submitting a review of a book that isn't in your library database? Could I write a review while the book is still fresh in my mind, and then the team add the book to the database afterwards?

Thanks.

 

[murphyz]

I had this problem too. I just finished writing a review for my book forum yesterday and popped over to maybe submit it here, but once at the library you have to look for the book, then submit a suggestion if it's not there, then wait for it to appear and write the review and it all seems to take too long.

Perhaps there could be an option where you submit a book to the library and write the review at the same time, and then it proceeds to the admin to make sure the review is okay, and then you guys publish it. Minimal waiting and fuss for the reviewer.

Mxx

 

[Darren]

Good points, I'll have a word with the software developers and see what can be done.

If you want to write a review for a book not already in the library, drop me an email with all the details and the review and I'll add it. Make sure to include your username so I can give the review the proper credit.

The long term goal of the library is for it to become the imdb for books, but it needs more people to submit titles and authors

Thanks.

Darren.

 

[murphyz]

Sounds like a good idea to have the imdb of books, as that's a very useful and very indepth site, good luck with it - all things book related must be good and encouraged.

I'm not sure how the imdb got to the state it is at today, other than a hell of a lot of hard work. Do you have a timescale for when you want this to happen?
Only I think most people would use places such as Amazon to look for books and authors. I think the internet needs something of this calibre, and better than what we have already, and it would be fabulous to do, and probably quite easy if marketed right.

How active are you making this? Pipe dream, or are you working to make this a reality?

As I say, it's a great idea.

Mxx

 

[Darren]

The Internet Book Database

I would like to make it a reality. The only problem I have is the time involved. I run The Book Forum as a hobby.

IMDB is owned by Amazon, so they have the funds to hire professional developers to write the site and the database. Our own “library” is a generic software package (similar to these forums) called Censura. It’s very powerful and can be customised in many, many ways.

I think our library has several advantages over Amazon, which I agree is a great resource.

Amazon list all versions/editions of a title, so trying to find an author’s bibliography can be frustrating. We list each title once, and then add additional information to that title.

Author Info – Amazon has little info on the authors themselves. We can host a photo of the author and give a detailed bio about them.

Ratings – although we only have an “overall opinion” at the moment, there is an option to have more ratings for each category. Different categories can have different ratings.

Comparisons – the software can compare books and authors with similar authors and titles from the same category etc.

Attachments – Each title can have attachments such as first chapters and other information attached to them.

Browsing – a problem I find with some online book sites. I wanted something similar to a virtual bookshop, where I could choose a category and then browse through all the titles in that category. This is something our library does.

Reviews – Our reviews can be longer than Amazon’s 1000 word limit, and we don’t want ownership of the review (as Amazon does).

Forums – Links to these forums for each title.

At the end of the day, Amazon is a bookshop and has commercial interests. The aim of our library would be to list every book ever written. Not a small task, I know, but not impossible.

To make the project work, I need other people to volunteer to help though. As well as submitting books and authors and writing reviews, it needs people to make suggestions about the types of information to store about the books and authors. Each book can have custom information attached to it, things like Original title, Original language, Type (novel, short story etc) Etc…

If anyone wants to drop me an email with some suggestions or add to this thread, I’d really appreciate it.

The domain www.TheInternetBookDatabase.com is registered to us.

Thanks.

Darren.

 

[murphyz]

It does indeed look like a very nice database running behind the scenes, more so than it appeared at first glance. I had a quick prod around it last night and like some of the features that are there, and I assume the design itself is highly customisable?

I notice it would take a while to manually input the name of hundreds of authors and was wondering if you are able to import many names at once and have them automatically parse into the correct locations with a default page saying something such as 'there is no info on this author at present' - so you can get a bulk of information in there all at the same time for people to add to? I added The Wasp Factory last night and it was some process to go through it all.

Is it possible for you to gain access to exisitng databases to automatically query the book and receive information. (or perhaps import a list of books into something existing such as the collectorz.com book database, do the lookups, and then import the information received here into your own database).

I feel this would be a much quicker way than getting your users to input books whenever they have a spare ten minutes.

Or hire some local youths to do it all for you

Mxx

 

[murphyz]

After submitting a new book, a new author and two reviews, it seems that the library works as such:

New Review. Write review and it posts automatically, without being screened by admin.

New Book. Submission goes to admin who add the book to the author. 2 days or so to process.

New Author. Same as with New Book.

Therefore, to submit a review for a book not in the system you must submit author, wait 2 days, submit book, wait 2 days, review book.

Only by reading this thread will the user realise that you can submit all at once via email to you.

Is there any way you would consider the additions are automatic, or are you attempting to maintain that the right books go into the right locations? This is understandable, but somewhat restricting.

Is there any help that members can provide to ease the process? I personally am online about 13+ hours on most weekdays, and weekends depends on circumstance - would be happy to speed up or ease the process if you have any ways for me to help, and I'm sure other members would too.

Mxx

 

[murphyz]

Sorry, me again.

Another suggestion for the book review is to have an additional menu you need to fill in stating something such as:

'this review contains spoiler information'
'this review does not contain spoilers'

as accidentally reading a spoiler is one of the most frustrating things ever, especially if it gives away the twist (just ask Martin, he had an issue with this lately) or someone who dies (see HP5 review in the library).

Mxx

 

[Martin]

Do not get me started on that twist-thing again!!

But murphyz is right, though. I would love to help in anyway possible. I'm not online as often and as long as murphyz, but when I am online, I'd love to help. You'd just have to explain it to me, because I'm not as computer-literate as I'd like to be.

Just say the word, and I'm there. Oh, and I'll be sure to add some authors, books, and maybe even a review or two (although I'm not very good at that) at some point in the future.

Cheers, Martin

 

[Darren]

Thanks for all the help and suggestions. I'm going to re-vamp the library layout a bit over the coming weeks. Something similar to the main homepage with boxes of information, maybe include some of the news articles too. There's a new version of the software coming soon with some bug fixes and new features.

I'll also make a note about spoilers in reviews on the review submission page.

At the moment, there isn't an "editor" control panel for the software, but this is supposed to be coming soon. As for mass inputing of titles, the software can search and import directly from amzon.com and amazon.co.uk so there's some scope there. Problem with amazon is that they list everything so it's very easy to import duplicates and map the wrong book to the wrong author.

For inputting data, I think it'll be best to tackle one stage at a time. First collect as many authors as possible. Then it's easier for people to submit books, as at least the author is already in there. There's a small bug in the software in that an author won't show in the "browse by author" list unless they have a title in the database. This'll be corrected in the next version.

Thanks again, and keep the ideas coming. You can either post here or email/pm me via the forums.

Darren.

 

[lies]

Well, I'm excited to read about your ibdb plans... I guess now all us members have to do is add all the authors and books in our libraries; I'd think that'd be a good starting point, no?

 

[Darren]

Originally posted by lies
I guess now all us members have to do is add all the authors and books in our libraries; I'd think that'd be a good starting point, no?

Yes, that would be great if people would do this.

Authors are in the format LASTNAME, FIRSTNAME.

 

[murphyz]

Can I give you a .txt with the information in SURNAME, FIRSTNAME, TITLE format to do a bulk upload? Or perhaps a .csv file or something?

I'm just putting my books into the collectorz.com database and there's way too many to input into this site manually.

Mxx

 

[Darren]

Originally posted by murphyz
Can I give you a .txt with the information in SURNAME, FIRSTNAME, TITLE format to do a bulk upload? Or perhaps a .csv file or something?

I'm just putting my books into the collectorz.com database and there's way too many to input into this site manually.

Mxx

Sure, that would be OK. Send it to me via email.

Darren.

 

[murphyz]

Shall do once it's all in the database and I figure out how to do it properly with their system.

Do you have a list (either.txt or.csv) of the current ones you have in the library so I can strip out any duplicates....or does this not matter?

Mxx

 

[Gryphon]

I would be willing to help to whatever extent I can. I'm not quite sure how it all works yet (I'm very new to the Book Forum and also something of a techie moron).

To start, I could provide a list of authors and/or titles for the database. Do I just e-mail or PM the list to you?

 

[Darren]

You can email me the list the address is admin @ thebookforum.com (without the spaces - the spam bots will pick it up if not)

Don't worry about duplicates. I'll strip them out.

Thanks.

Darren.

 

[lies]

Originally posted by murphyz
Can I give you a .txt with the information in SURNAME, FIRSTNAME, TITLE format to do a bulk upload?

Is it that simple? I wouldn't mind typing the titles and authors of my books out, but I'm not really up for inserting them all manually, so if I could give you a text-file in that format, that would be good.

 

[lies]

And another thing I've been wanting to ask about the IBDb. Will it do as IMDb does and keep the original, foreign titles of the books as (main) entry, or will it be the English titles all the way?

 

[Darren]

Originally posted by lies
And another thing I've been wanting to ask about the IBDb. Will it do as IMDb does and keep the original, foreign titles of the books as (main) entry, or will it be the English titles all the way?

The title of the book will be the original title.