Ebook placeholders on the SE website

[Alex Cabal]

Mike Colagrosso has just completed a big enhancement to the SE website:
Placeholder ebooks entries for books that are in our wanted list, or
part of a series/collection.

Hendrik Kaiber has also helped immensely by compiling the data we need
to fill out these placeholder books.

For example, see our Tarzan collection:
https://standardebooks.org/collections/tarzan

Or a search for Tarzan: https://standardebooks.org/ebooks?query=tarzan

Placeholder books appear in search results, collection listings, and
author listings. I hope this will help people see what items are missing
form our collection, and maybe inspire them to work on them to submit to
the corpus.

Thanks Mike and Hendrik!

[Vince]

Awesomeness, thank you yet again, Mike!

Looking at Tarzan specifically, the text on No. 10 says that it can be sponsored, but doesn’t say anything about working on it. Per your comment below (… maybe inspire them to work on them…), maybe a line of text for the “Wanted” ones saying that?

That Tarzan had a “Wanted” banner on it, but the one in the Martian series that is PD (No. 6) doesn’t. Since we’ve gone to the trouble of adding them to the database, don’t we want anything that’s PD to have the banner? Otherwise the user has to click on each one to see whether it’s PD.

For the ones that are PD, do we want to indicate the difficulty, especially for first-time productions? (Maybe a “First-timer” banner?)

Is there eventually going to be a way to search for just wanted books?

[Brendan Fattig]

Ditto everything Vince said. (Great work!)


On mobile the placeholder boxes are overflowing.

[Hendrik Kaiber]

For some reason I can't send messages in the other thread, so I'll send here.

 

> 2 - In the case of a translation of a translation, do I list all
> translators, if I can identify them?

Not sure what you mean. Translation of a translation?

A while ago I was looking for a title to work on and checked A Voyage to Abyssinia. PG has it as being translated by Dr. Samuel Johnson from the French. This got my attention, since I though it was a Portuguese book. Wikipedia claims that the work was in fact first published in Portuguese (as Itinerário) in the 17th century. A manuscript was then translated to French (as Voyage historique d'Abissinie) by Joachim le Grand in 1728, and then to English by Johnson.

Johnson's translation is actually from a translated work, not the original.

This is not a common situation, so I am not sure how to properly credit the translators.

-Hendrik

[Alex Cabal]

Yes, Mike is working on that now.

On 12/13/24 1:18 PM, Brendan Fattig wrote:
> Ditto everything Vince said. (Great work!)
>
>
> On mobile the placeholder boxes are overflowing.
>
>
>

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[Elizabeth Miller-Boldt]

Beautiful work! Thanks Mike and Hendrik!

[Alex Cabal]

Good idea. Better wanted list integration is on the horizon, right now
it's mostly a stub integration.

We don't necessarily want every single placeholder to be "wanted"
because that's what the actual "wanted" list is for.

Since the wanted list acts as a gateway for a lot of our producers and
first-timers, it should be curated to items that the editors actually
think is interesting. (With perhaps some leeway for suitable
first-production books.)

Additionally we may include placeholders for works very far in the
future (like the end of the tarzan series). Those placeholders are meant
to mostly be informational for someone interested in the series, not
necessarily "wanted" yet.

[Stephen Kifer]

Looks great, but that particular example raises the question of how to address in progress works?  I'm making my way through #6 as a first project* but is just skipped over in this view:  https://standardebooks.org/collections/tarzan and missing from the other also.

- Stephen

*I've had less time than expected to have last month to work on it, but I have made to the proof-reading stage and am about 1/3 way through

[Alex Cabal]

The wanted list integration is still a stub, we'll improve it in the
coming weeks. Yours is missing because it was commented out in the
wanted list, I'll restore it now.

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[Vince]

I know this is v1, so just brainstorming…

We don't necessarily want every single placeholder to be "wanted" because that's what the actual "wanted" list is for.

I didn’t say “every single placeholder,” I said every available (PD) placeholder. The rest of Tarzan, e.g., that are not PD yet, can’t be worked, so naturally wouldn’t get banners. (I would argue they should be visually different as well; again, don’t make users click on them only to find out they can’t be worked on.)

Not having a wanted tag on Martian No. 6 but having a placeholder means … what? That we don’t want it? If we don’t want it, why do we have a placeholder for it? I understand what you’re saying, but in the old world, we only had wanted; now we have a lot of books only some of which are “wanted,” which makes the others (again, available to be worked others) look like step-children. Maybe a different word than “wanted.” (“Interesting”?)

And (again, I know it’s v1), why have a separated wanted/interesting list at all? If we have tagged the interesting ones, and can search them (with the difficulty level), it solves the problem of having a separate list.

In summary:

1. The “future” placeholders should be visually different, maybe even with text/banner that says “not yet PD” to make it clear they can’t be worked, without having to click on them.
2. We may want a different word than “wanted” now we’re showing “non-wanted but available to be worked-on” placeholders. We want all of them, but some of them are … interesting, or editors choice, or whatever other word/phrase we choose.
3. Ability to search on “wanted” and difficulty.
4. A visual way to identify things being worked on, so others don’t propose them while they’re in-progress.

But let all the ideas/suggestions not take away from the achievement. Kudos again, Mike!

[David at Standard Ebooks]

Great work, indeed. Looks great. One minor quibble: if you look up the works of a particular author, such as Dorothy Sayers, the books are shown in release order, newest first. This means the books aren’t shown in series order, which is a bit odd when we’re also listing works to come, that is, not yet in PD, which are listed in series and chronological order.

David / Melbourne, Australia 

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[Vince]

It does when viewing the collection (Lord Peter Wimsey), but not when just viewing, e.g., the results of a “Sayers” search.

That’s the way the normal search results have always worked. Searching for “Sayers” isn’t really searching (just) for the author; it’s searching for any instance of “Sayers” in any of the fields that the search searches (see, e.g., a search for “Doyle”). Sorting the entire results of any search by publication date is probably not what we want?

[David at Standard Ebooks]

No, but by release date oldest->newest would make more sense. I thought there was an option to order any search that way, but there isn't, you can only change to a different type of search. Am I mis-remembering? And if I'm not, wouldn't it be useful to have reverse-order sorting for all types of search, eg Reading Ease hard->easy, Length long->short ?

David / Melbourne, Australia 

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[Vince]

I personally don’t think by release date makes more sense, as it’s almost never going to be what I want. (Nor do I remember it ever doing so, but I’m old and memory is the second thing to go.) But I’m just one user. :)

More generally, while I agree being able to sort the search might be useful, it would also further complicate an already busy UI, and I don’t know how often a search is going to return enough results to make sorting them worth it.

I thought today that the ability to search collections (or see collections) would be useful on the main UI rather than just as a link at the bottom of the page (which I didn’t know existed until I went looking for a way to see collections), but it has the same problem—how to incorporate into the current UI without further complicating it.

[Alex Cabal]

"Wanted" means the editors think the book has some kind of merit that
prioritizes its addition to the corpus.

Placeholders that appear in series are, at the minimum, just
informational entries showing you that we are aware that there are other
books in that series, and sometimes to demonstrate to the user that an
entry may not be PD for many years.

But just because there exist other books in a series for which we have
some entries, does not mean the editors have judged the merits of those
books.

(Some series, like Burroughs or mysteries, may be on the wanted list
because they are good first productions - we have always added obvious
good first productions largely regardless of merit because it can be
hard finding good ones.)

On 12/13/24 4:06 PM, Vince wrote:
> I know this is v1, so just brainstorming…
>
>> We don't necessarily want every single placeholder to be "wanted"
>> because that's what the actual "wanted" list is for.
>

> I didn’t say “every single placeholder,” I said every /available /(PD)

> placeholder. The rest of Tarzan, e.g., that are not PD yet, can’t be
> worked, so naturally wouldn’t get banners. (I would argue they should be
> visually different as well; again, don’t make users click on them only
> to find out they can’t be worked on.)
>
> Not having a wanted tag on Martian No. 6 but having a placeholder means
> … what? That we don’t want it? If we don’t want it, why do we have a
> placeholder for it? I understand what you’re saying, but in the old
> world, we only had wanted; now we have a lot of books only some of which

> are “wanted,” which makes the others (again, /available to be
> worked/ others) look like step-children. Maybe a different word than

> “wanted.” (“Interesting”?)
>
> And (again, I know it’s v1), why have a separated wanted/interesting
> list at all? If we have tagged the interesting ones, and can search them
> (with the difficulty level), it solves the problem of having a separate
> list.
>
> In summary:
>

> 1. The “future” placeholders should be visually different, maybe even

> with text/banner that says “not yet PD” to make it clear they can’t

> be worked, /without/ having to click on them.
> 2. We may want a different word than “wanted” now we’re showing

> “non-wanted but available to be worked-on” placeholders. We want all
> of them, but some of them are … interesting, or editors choice, or
> whatever other word/phrase we choose.

> 3. Ability to search on “wanted” and difficulty.
> 4. A visual way to identify things being worked on, so others don’t

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[Alex Cabal]

Clicking on an author name shows books in release date order, this has
always been the case.

Clicking on a collection shows books in series order.

Authors may have books in a series and others not in a series. Authors
who don't have any series don't have any other sequence to order by.
Therefore in my opinion sort by release date makes the most sense in the
general case.

On 12/13/24 6:21 PM, David at Standard Ebooks wrote:
> No, but by release date oldest->newest would make more sense. I thought
> there was an option to order any search that way, but there isn't, you

> can only change to a different *type* of search. Am I mis-remembering?

> And if I'm not, wouldn't it be useful to have reverse-order sorting for
> all types of search, eg Reading Ease hard->easy, Length long->short ?
>
> David / Melbourne, Australia
> On 14 Dec 2024 at 9:43 AM +1100, Vince <vr_se...@letterboxes.org>, wrote:
>> It does when viewing the collection (Lord Peter Wimsey), but not when
>> just viewing, e.g., the results of a “Sayers” search.
>> That’s the way the normal search results have always worked. Searching

>> for “Sayers” isn’t /really/ searching (just) for the author; it’s

>> searching for any instance of “Sayers” in any of the fields that the
>> search searches (see, e.g., a search for “Doyle”). Sorting the entire
>> results of any search by publication date is probably not what we want?
>>
>>> On Dec 13, 2024, at 4:08 PM, David at Standard Ebooks
>>> <standar...@thegriggs.org> wrote:
>>>
>>> Great work, indeed. Looks great. One minor quibble: if you look up
>>> the works of a particular author, such as Dorothy Sayers, the books
>>> are shown in release order, newest first. This means the books aren’t
>>> shown in series order, which is a bit odd when we’re also listing

>>> works to come, that is, not yet in PD, which /are/ listed in series

>>> and chronological order.
>>
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[David]

First off, this is just brilliant, so another vote of thanks to Mike and Henrik!

And to chip in with a couple thoughts/observations:

1. I see Vince's point about the un-bannered place-holders. As users grow familiar with the interface, it will become obvious that these are PD titles without an SE edition, and not on our wanted list. :) Perhaps they could have a simple "US PD" banner, though, which would at least make that a little more clear? (And they wouldn't look so ... naked!) Just a though (and I'm still on my first coffee of the day).

2. Clicking through on some series I'm familiar with, I ran across an "edge case"(?) in the Gryce series. I guess the series information has come from Wikipedia? The tricky one is #7 which is a "novella", around 17K words as a rough estimate. So it wouldn't get its own entry, but go into a "shorts" collection (it looks like there are plenty).

I expect we just ignore cases like this, and deal with them as they show up? In any case, super work, and a great development!

David / Fife, UK

[Lukas Bystricky]

I'd like to echo the compliments from everyone else. I think it looks great, and is a really useful addition.

I also agree with Vince and David that having some books marked as "wanted" next to others not marked with anything implies (to me) that the ones without markings are not wanted. Maybe better tags would be "requested" for books on lists or requested by Patrons, "beginner" for books we know are suitable for first productions, and then a "US-PD" tag for everything else?

[Weijia Cheng]

Thank you to Mike and Hendrik for the great work!

One minor issue I noticed, which I don't think has been flagged yet, is that the placeholder covers don't scale down for a smaller page. For example, on my laptop:

It is especially obvious on a phone:

[Alex Cabal]

On 12/14/24 3:32 AM, David wrote:
> 2. Clicking through on some series I'm familiar with, I ran across an
> "edge case"(?) in the Gryce series

> <https://standardebooks.org/collections/mr-gryce>. I guess the series

> information has come from Wikipedia

> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Katharine_Green#Selected_works>? The

> tricky one is #7 which is a "novella", around 17K words

> <https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32439> as a rough estimate. So it

> wouldn't get its own entry, but go into a "shorts" collection (it looks
> like there are plenty).

Thanks, this should be fixed now. This is just a first pass at ingesting
all this info so let me know if there are any errors.

[Alex Cabal]

Yes, Mike is working on this now

On 12/14/24 11:36 AM, Weijia Cheng wrote:
> Thank you to Mike and Hendrik for the great work!
>
> One minor issue I noticed, which I don't think has been flagged yet, is
> that the placeholder covers don't scale down for a smaller page. For
> example, on my laptop:
>

> Screenshot from 2024-12-14 12-33-33.png
>
> It is especially obvious on a phone:
>

> thumbnail.jpeg
>
> On Saturday, December 14, 2024 at 5:25:38 AM UTC-5 lukasby...@gmail.com
> wrote:
>
> I'd like to echo the compliments from everyone else. I think it
> looks great, and is a really useful addition.
>
> I also agree with Vince and David that having some books marked as
> "wanted" next to others not marked with anything implies (to me)
> that the ones without markings are not wanted. Maybe better tags
> would be "requested" for books on lists or requested by Patrons,
> "beginner" for books we know are suitable for first productions, and
> then a "US-PD" tag for everything else?
> On Saturday, December 14, 2024 at 10:32:40 AM UTC+1 David wrote:
>
> First off, this is just brilliant, so another vote of thanks to
> Mike and Henrik!
>
> And to chip in with a couple thoughts/observations:
>
> 1. I see Vince's point about the un-bannered place-holders. As
> users grow familiar with the interface, it will become obvious
> that these are PD titles without an SE edition, and not on our
> wanted list. :) Perhaps they could have a simple "US PD" banner,
> though, which would at least make that a little more clear? (And
> they wouldn't look so ... naked!) Just a though (and I'm still
> on my first coffee of the day).
>
> 2. Clicking through on some series I'm familiar with, I ran
> across an "edge case"(?) in the Gryce series

> <https://standardebooks.org/collections/mr-gryce>. I guess the

> series information has come from Wikipedia

> <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anna_Katharine_Green#Selected_works>? The tricky one is #7 which is a "novella", around 17K words <https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/32439> as a rough estimate. So it wouldn't get its own entry, but go into a "shorts" collection (it looks like there are plenty).

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[Emma Sweeney]

This looks amazing! Thank you to Mike and Hendrik for all the hard work!

May I make a small suggestion?

Under Agatha Christie, many books are labeled "NOT P.D. YET," and it's unclear which books would be produced sooner rather than later. It looks like the list is not ordered by release dates but by series numberings: (1) The Seven Dials Mystery, PD year 2025, series #2 Superintendent Battle; (2) Cards on the Table, 2032, #15 Poirot and #3 Superintendent Battle; (3) Towards Zero, 2040, #4 Superintendent Battle; (5) Black Coffee, 2026, #7 Poirot; so on and so forth. I don't know if this is a bug or a feature, but I thought I would point this out. This may be due to Christi's multiple series. It complicates things more that, for Public Domain Day 2026, we will be adding the Miss Marple series.

After New Year's, Black Coffee will be up for Public Domain Day 2026. What if we used a "P.D. DAY [YEAR]" banner for books that will be added for upcoming PD Days? The banner could generate excitement for people waiting for additions to popular series like Poirot, Tarzan, etc. This could clear up some confusion about what books will be released when an author has multiple series and occasionally multiple releases.

Emma

[Alex Cabal]

On 12/14/24 10:21 PM, Emma Sweeney wrote:
> This looks amazing! Thank you to Mike and Hendrik for all the hard work!
>
> May I make a small suggestion?
>
> Under Agatha Christie

> <https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/agatha-christie>, many books are

> labeled "NOT P.D. YET," and it's unclear which books would be produced
> sooner rather than later. It looks like the list is not ordered by
> release dates but by series numberings: (1) The Seven Dials Mystery, PD
> year 2025, series #2 Superintendent Battle; (2) Cards on the Table,
> 2032, #15 Poirot and #3 Superintendent Battle; (3) Towards Zero, 2040,
> #4 Superintendent Battle; (5) Black Coffee, 2026, #7 Poirot; so on and
> so forth. I don't know if this is a bug or a feature, but I thought I
> would point this out. This may be due to Christi's multiple series. It
> complicates things more that, for Public Domain Day 2026, we will be
> adding the Miss Marple series.

Everyone wants a different sort order to series! :)


> After New Year's, /Black Coffee
> <https://standardebooks.org/ebooks/agatha-christie/black-coffee>/will be

> up for Public Domain Day 2026. What if we used a "P.D. DAY [YEAR]"
> banner for books that will be added for upcoming PD Days? The banner
> could generate excitement for people waiting for additions to popular
> series like Poirot, Tarzan, etc. This could clear up some confusion
> about what books will be released when an author has multiple series and
> occasionally multiple releases.

I like the idea but I don't think the causal reader will know what "PD
Day" is. We're already currently stretching it by assuming they know
what "PD" means to begin with. "Not Yet PD" at least has the "not yet"
front and center which tells the casual reader "you can't have this yet
(for some reason)"

[Emma Sweeney]

How about a simpler tag like "COMING [YEAR]"? Including a release year will build excitement as the date approaches, unlike the vague "not yet."

Emma

[Alex Cabal]

But if we don't actually end up producing it, is it really "coming" in that year?

[Emma Sweeney]

It looks like most of the placeholder books would be considered top tier entries for Public Domain Day. Would they really not be produced?

Emma

[Alex Cabal]

We have items on the wanted list that have sat for years. And just because we have a placeholder doesn't even mean it's "wanted" per se, as I discussed earlier in this thread. But it would still have a PD date!