New section for drama?

[Scott]

I have added genre forums for historical fiction and drama. I have decided to forgo paranormal romance for now since there is already a romance section.

[Ryan]

Yey! That's awesome! Thanks!

Is there any way to change all of the plays in my shelves from "other fiction" to "drama"? I'd be very willing to do this myself if there were any way. If not, never mind ... I probably should've just waited until drama was added

[gali]

Great! Thank you.

[Ryan]

Also, just to let you know that "drama" doesn't appear as a genre in which to classify books. "Classics" also isn't there, but the former is probably less contentious than the latter when it comes to actually classifying . Just a heads up.

Sorry to be a fuss

[Scott]

I have added Historical Fiction and Drama to the drop-down selections for genre on Bookshelves.

I am undecided about Classics there. I am thinking maybe it would be better to add an 'original publication date' to Bookshelves. Then one could filter by both release year and genre. This would also make it not only easy to find classics as opposed to non-classics, but to find very newly released books.

That could be a really useful feature.

I know even when I look for new releases on Amazon I run into the problem that Amazon considers new editions of classics to be new releases. There is no way as far as I know to sort by original publication date of the original work, which I would find very useful (especially personally since my favorite reading topic is philosophy but of course that is a field with many commonly re-translated or re-published works).

-- 30 Jan 2015 12:44 pm --

Actually, it is even worse than I described on Amazon. It's not just new editions of the book, but new formats. So when I sort by published date on the Kindle books store, it sorts by the time it was released on Kindle, not when the actual book was published.

[Ryan]

That's a great idea, Scott. This would also solve the issue one encounters when trying to add older books that have only recently been published for the first time, such as much older texts by women which I add rather frequently. These wouldn't be considered "classics", but their publication date would position them alongside similar books of the period, which for me is useful.

It does mean, however, that somebody (or a group) should be responsible for making sure all the metadata is correct. Moderators are more than capable, of course, but I feel that a more specified body is desirable. I'm sure many experienced users would be willing to do this. Bookshelves is only going to get bigger and I think there might be more room for helping hands in the nearer future. What do you think?

I hope I'm not being presumptuous

[Scott]

Currently, the only moderators we have are global moderators. I certainly think it would be helpful to have specific moderators for the Bookshelves app. These members would be able to override member-submitted data (e.g. change the genre of a book). I think it will be helpful if all members can propose changes and then there could be a moderator control panel that lets the Bookshelves moderators verify the proposed changes. The task I need to work on is coming up with a way to do that with minimal work for members and moderators alike--by which I mean that the process is automated as much as possible. Basically, I'm envisioning a control panel with which the moderator can see the current information and the proposed new information alongside the rest of the book's information and cover and then click either approve or disapprove, with the resulting changes happening automatically. I already have that with marking books as duplicates of other books.

We could probably be very liberal in letting members become Bookshelves moderators since it is a fairly straightforward process. When it comes to deleting members posts on the forums as spam and such it can get kind of tough. But I don't see as much room for abuse in deciding whether a book should be listed as published in 1975 or 1976.

-- 30 Jan 2015 03:13 pm --

And it's not presumptuous at all. I very much appreciate the feedback and suggestions.

[ALynnPowers]

Bookshelf moderators would be a good idea! Ease up some of the load to the other moderators.
Can I nominate someone for the positions

(Not me, I'm not a bookshelf person)

[Scott]

You can nominate someone, sure.

[Ryan]

I have added Historical Fiction and Drama to the drop-down selections for genre on Bookshelves.

Hey, Scott. Would it be possible to add poetry too? At least then I can add the anthologies I have without having to classify them as "other fiction"

[Scott]

Would it be appropriate to include Poetry with Drama much like Crime, Thrillers, Horror and Mystery are all put together? I can change the description from Drama to Drama and Poetry Books

[Ryan]

Would it be appropriate to include Poetry with Drama much like Crime, Thrillers, Horror and Mystery are all put together? I can change the description from Drama to Drama and Poetry Books

There is often an overlap between the two -- in Renaissance drama, for example -- so I think Drama and Poetry would therefore work. Thanks for this and everything so far. You're a wizard!

-- 08 Feb 2015, 18:42 --

@Scott Hi, sorry to be a pain, but "Poetry and Drama" doesn't actually appear on the list of allocatable genres. It still stays "Drama/plays" but a few books are indeed listed as "Poetry and Drama". I just wondered whether you could explain what was happening with that?

[Scott]

@ryanj1 I assume you mean the dropdown box on Bookshelves. I have just now fixed that to say "Drama and Poetry". Thank you for pointing it out!

[Ryan]

@ryanj1 I assume you mean the dropdown box on Bookshelves. I have just now fixed that to say "Drama and Poetry". Thank you for pointing it out!

Hi, Scott. Yes, that's what I meant ... sorry for being unclear. Thanks!

[Gravy]

@Scott

I just wanted to ask if, at some point, biographies could be split off from the non-fiction section.
I don't know about other members but I really enjoy memoirs, and would love to have biographies/autobiographies/memoirs as a seperate "genre", especially on bookshelves.

Also...I forgot to @ you on the "bookshelves" thread, forgive me for repeating myself but I'm curious...

I was wondering if we would ever have individual display preferences for bookshelves, like we have for the forums? Mainly, because I would love to have the option to view one shelf at a time, kind of like the way the 'trash' shelf is hidden unless clicked on.

It seems, to me at least, that the more books on a page, the slower it loads, and I thought that might help.

Thanks!