Mark Completed Books

[Argent he/him]

Inspired by a random Muse, I had an idea that could potentially make some threads less spoiler-y. I am thinking of a setting / selection screen somewhere in the profile, where users can select which of Brandon's books they have read. Their selection would appear in a small box, either around the avatar or in the signature somewhere. I envision this as an array of thumbnails, where each thumbnail is the respective book cover. I think it will be more aesthetically pleasing if all of the book covers were displayed at all times (let's say in the signature, because it's more spacious in there), but the ones the particular user hasn't read would be grayed out. Alternatively, you could make it so only the thumbs for the books marked as read would show up.

There are additional enhancements to this feature that could make it a little more intuitive to somebody who takes only a brief a look at it. Thumbnails tend to be terribly hard to see, especially if you try to fit a big piece of art in them. Here are some of my solutions to this.

• Adding a mouseover tooltip (with very little delay, say 1 second) to every thumb. The tooltip will obviously contain the respective book's title.
• Cropping the book covers down to something unique and easy to see on such a small scale.
  • A similar solution, but one that may look a little better when downsized to a thumbnail, would be to replace the whole idea of book covers being the core of the thumbs. Instead I would use a symbol specific to the series at hand (e.g. one of the metals' "names" for Mistborn, or the Windrunners' sigil for the Stormlight Archive), overlayed by a more brighly colored roman numeral to indicate the book number.

  [*]A spoiler-like tag that shows and hides the list of books is yet another, although not so elegant, solution. Its only real benefit is the fact that it would allow for more detailed and clear images for each book, since the thumbnails wouldn't eat up space and bandwith by default.

That's all my sleep-deprived mind was able to come up with at this hour. I could whip up some Photoshop mockups if there is interest. Also, there is a poll, just so we can have a basic idea about how the community feels about something like this.

[KChan she/her]

It's an interesting idea, but unfortunately it would take way more coding than we can dedicate to it at the moment. If you want images of the books you've read in our signature, the best thing to do would be to photoshop a signature image with the books you've read and put it in your sig yourself.

I'm not sure how it would make anything less spoilery, though. Seeing what books other people have read doesn't really make a difference when posting in threads where spoilers are allowed.

[Argent he/him]

I think you misunderstand me - at least partially. I could make me a signature, but since I've read all of the books, that would be effectively telling "you can't spoil anything for me." Moreover, the idea was to have this thing for everyone - but I think you got that.

On the spoilers though. Imagine going to a new thread made by somebody who has just finished, say The Hero of Ages. The user asks a question that deals with the Cosmere, the user clearly knows about the concept of the Cosmere, but you can't be certain just how many of the books he or she has read. Of course, you could ask and hold your response until they answer. Or you could look at their signature and hope it's up to date.

But yea, I assumed it would be a little time-consuming. No biggie.

[Shivertongue he/him]

I think you misunderstand me - at least partially. I could make me a signature, but since I've read all of the books, that would be effectively telling "you can't spoil anything for me." Moreover, the idea was to have this thing for everyone - but I think you got that.

On the spoilers though. Imagine going to a new thread made by somebody who has just finished, say The Hero of Ages. The user asks a question that deals with the Cosmere, the user clearly knows about the concept of the Cosmere, but you can't be certain just how many of the books he or she has read. Of course, you could ask and hold your response until they answer. Or you could look at their signature and hope it's up to date.

But yea, I assumed it would be a little time-consuming. No biggie.

Not only time-consuming, but essentially pointless. People know that they risk running into spoilers around here, and the coding to prevent it would be insanely complex and, in the end, not worth it. The best way to avoid any spoilers, if it matters to people, would be to avoid any theory threads and any sections on books that you haven't read. That's far easier, and doesn't make us have to do a lot of work that is essentially avoidable.

Also, that's what spoiler tags are for.

[Triumvirate he/him]

I recognize the amount of work (and as a lazy procrastinator, can't say that I blame anyone for avoiding it), but I do think it would be cool. Then again, nothing's stopping me from doing this myself (aside from myself, that is).

If you did this, I would seriously consider incorporating something for the Annotations as well. Those seem to have a lot of pertinent information on them (and this from one who has read only a few of them).

But again, lots of work. Still, cool idea.

[KChan she/her]

If someone wants the books they've read visible in his or her signature, nothing's stopping that person from putting them there themself. The fact of the matter is, it's just not practical to tiptoe around potential spoilers based on someone's signature, and it's sort of selfish to expect an entire thread's discussion to grind to a halt around someone who hasn't read one particular book. Especially since if someone is asking a question about the Cosmere, as in the example above, this would go into General Theories by default, where there is an explicit spoiler warning right there in the board description.

Add that to the fact that it would take a lot of coding and occupy a lot of signature space, and it's just simpler and more efficient to use spoiler tags if you're that concerned about ruining things for other people.

[Kelek he/him]

Another idea here... It looks like the awards column is unused for most. Why not put up small pics for those. you could send an admin an email and get the book covers thrown in there. Might go back to coding being difficult, but it might also be easeir.

Another thought. Make completed books a signature thing similar to Espoused theories...

I am doing this now. I like the second idea. It is easily self managed and no worries for admins.

Edited December 18, 2011 by Kelek

[KChan she/her]

Another thought. Make completed books a signature thing similar to Espoused theories...

I am doing this now. I like the second idea. It is easily self managed and no worries for admins.

Which is exactly why I suggested it. I probably won't be doing it myself, but if you want the books you've read to show up in your signature, go right ahead. ^^ This is easily the best way to do it.

(As a side note, about awards, that would take up way too much space, they wouldn't all appear anyways, and the idea of giving every member on the forum - even just the 130 or so who are active per day - the appropriate "awards" sort of gives me a headache. ^^; )