SciFi and Fantasy Book Club discussion
All About Goodreads
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Help! How Do I [Do That Thing] on Goodreads?
GoodTimes and GoodReads with Ernest!
Yay for new threads! XD I am a monster :P
Allison wrote: "Can do! You would not need any fancy skills. Making a Zoom account is about as technical as making an email or GR account. I can show a few Zoom things, too. Or we can have an actual expert show us (Diane??)Oh you know what?? Okay, gonna, start a thread."
And here is the (Zoom) thread:
https://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/...
LOL about the Ernest YouTube channel, I’m sure he would be happy to show off his antics if you’d like to learn how to accidentally turn off your human's computer, how to properly attack important cables and disconnect the modem, and how to get nose prints on a monitor.Also, going back to our earlier conversation, it just occurred to me that Michelle might be using the app? In which case my previous instructions about linking/pinking threads/bread were probably of no help whatsoever. I don’t use the app and really don’t know much about how it works, which adds another layer of complexity to answering questions!
I do think the idea of you all doing a video Goodreads class is a great one, though! It would make it easier for people to ask/answer questions and gather the collective knowledge of all the participants.
I should add a section to the beginning: Are you on the app? Step one: Switch to the desktop version, then come back if you still can't make The Thing work.
From the sound of things, that would surely solve most problems!
Yep. I'm guilty. About the app, I mean.
BTW all of you Android app users! If you spot a general instruction/thing (anywhere in group) that won't work on the Android app, please say so! I have no idea what works and doesn't work, and no way to test. I've started (when I remember) to make sure that most mod things I post should be visible/readable on the iOS app, but I can't do the same for the Android app without knowing what the problems are.
On the (iOS) app there's a "Copy Topic URL" at the bottom of the thread, and you can paste that (without any code) into a post elsewhere to link to that thread.
Oh wow, I just tested some of the links in post #2 on the iOS app, and although links work on the iOS app, they do not point where they should XDHow confusing this thread (and life in general) must be for app users! XD
Goodreads Help, rule #1: Don't use the app!
🙋♀️ Another fast talker over here! And most digital learning at work bores me to death, especially when it involves unskippable demonstrations of how the mouse pointer slowly crawls across the screen to - one day, eventually - hover over the right symbol, and then - wait for it - there is the click!! Yay!!!! And I'm either asleep or out of my mind.
I think I'd probably love your quick and dirty explanations.
Plus we have four options for Goodreads: 1. iOS app, 2. Android app, 3. desktop, or 4. (my usual go-to) the Kindle app. So when we are clamoring at this Help Desk, maybe we should preface the question by saying which one of these we're using. I know I forget to mention it! When I have difficulties with my Kindle app, I can move over to the desktop version from the Silk browser. It's just not my normal default way to access Goodreads. Hmmm. Maybe it should be.
5. mobile :) Although I think someone said the Kindle app* is basically the same as the Android app?(And yes, I did ask people to specify which version they're using!)
* this is confusing. I mean the GR app on the Kindle, not the Kindle reading app on iOS/Android/etc. :S
edit2: Also, for me "Kindle" means the e-ink device, not something that has apps XD But yes, I am aware that there is such a thing as a Kindle tablet, it was once called a Kindle Fire maybe?
Mod
How do I find out if a book is on the group bookshelf?
First, this will work in any group:
On desktop, find the Bookshelf link in the top right corner of any page in group. You can arrange this list alphabetically (book/author) or by date. There's also a search, but it doesn't work very well, so I wouldn't bother with it, unless you're in a group that doesn't have any other way of looking at the shelves.
For books on the SFFBC bookshelf, we also have better ways of searching!
Spreadsheet of group books - It's a spreadsheet, it does whatever a spreadsheet does :)
GR account with group books - This is by far the best way to search, because you can actually use the search function and it'll return results! This is what I use when I need to check, and since I need to do this a lot, trust me, I know this is the best way :)
App users? If you friend the mod account (SFFBC), you can get to the profile easily and look at the shelves. You can't search though, at least not on the iOS app? If you know a better way to do this on the app, let me know and I'll update it here.
These are all listed in the "Useful links" section of Current Events, so you can easily find them anytime! :) This is also (probably?) the best way to get to a lot of these if you're on the app.
(I was originally going to post this as myself, Anna, so that's why there's a lot of "I" :D)
Mod
The search works the same way whether you're looking at your own shelves or someone else's. The search box at the top is for searching all of Goodreads' database, and the one just below it is for searching the shelves of the user whose profile you're in. You see their name on the left where it says "My Books" if you're looking at your own shelves.
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Since this question falls under the general topic "How to get GR to work for you [rather than the other way around]," I'll ask this here, and if it would be more appropriate in another thread, let me know!As time has gone along, GR has made it harder and harder for me to keep up with friends' updates and reviews. Specifically, the daily review email has gone from only sending me "top friend" reviews, to being evenly spread between top friends, friends, and my follows. Today, I got maybe three reviews from the email that I really care to read, whereas as recently as two weeks ago, that figure was several times higher.
In general, what I'm looking for is tips on how to keep up on top friends' reviews and updates via the website, since the review email is all but useless to me now.
What I know so far:
1. The simplest way to find their most recent reviews (if they're approaching their shelves conventionally) is to go to their "read" shelf.
2. As for updates: on their profile page, click on the % or page # link for any book they've made an update for, and from there "see all updates from this user."
With a large number of friends, this would be incredibly cumbersome to do every day. Set up a bookmark file for "best friends," maybe, since "read books" and "all updates" are a static link for any given user?
So... when are we going to set up that web ring.... :3
This is an area I can't help with since I don't follow anyone. But just to clarify, are you also not seeing the same amount of reviews in your feed as before, or is it just the email?
Mod
I feel like your best bet would be to tailor your goodreads feed. You can chose which friends show up in it and what you see from them.
On your feed, in the heading that says "updates", click "customize". You have a few options there. If you only want to see some of your friends in your feed, chose that and then do this:
To specify which friends show in your feed, click on "Friends" and then in the top line, where you can filter them by letter and sort them, click on "edit friends". Then you can check a "top friend" checkbox next to every friend you want to see. Click "done editing" when you're done.
Just the email. I've only ever used the feed for casual scrolling, but perhaps I'll have to consider tweaking things there if the emails continue to move in a "broken beyond repair" direction.Anna wrote: "YKK's feed management guide with pics is here! :)"
I scrolled right past that while looking through this thread for ideas, since I already knew about friends and top friends. Tut, tut. That customize feed thing is great, so thank you YKK and Ines. Paring it down to top friends and follows alone has cut out a lot of cruft from users who I took off "top friends" ages ago because their posting patterns were too noisy (no one from this group, by the way).
I’m glad you found something that works a little better Beth! It’s still not perfect, but I think it’s the best of the few options. One thing I have to really watch for with the feed is that some people’s reviews will show up repeatedly. I’m pretty sure it happens when they edit them. Somebody might post their review, then catch a mistake and edit it, then do it again, and you end up with the same review on your feed 3 times at different times throughout the day. I think it may also happen sometimes when a review gets new comments, because I've seen reviews from years ago show up on my feed with recent comments that seemed to come from non-followers.
The problem is that if you “like” one instance of it, it will show you liked it on all the repeated instances, even the ones you haven't seen yet, which can make things a little confusing when you’re scrolling down the feed. You might think you're caught up when you see a familiar review you've already liked and fail to scroll further down to see more new reviews.
My tactic is to check the feed once a day, usually while I’m eating breakfast, and keep scrolling until I’ve seen more than a couple reviews that I know for sure I read the previous day, or until I hit the point where it tells me the posts are “2 days” old, whichever comes first. I think stuff still gets missed from the feed sometimes. I remember staff posting something in the official Feedback forum, way back when that existed, saying there was an algorithm that determined what was shown and that if you have a lot of friends (“a lot” was never quantified) then you’re more likely to be missing some things.
Yeah, there would be some drawbacks to depending primarily on the feed. I like seeing people's updates because they're often immediate snap responses to things they're seeing in a book, that I might not get from a more considered format like a review. But if a friend in SFFBC (for example) posts an update, and a number of my other friends-in-SFFBC comment on and/or like it, I'll see the same little piece of content several times as I scroll along.
That was one reason I set my feed to only show book updates and reviews, to prevent all the duplication and noise from the likes. Sometimes I caught interesting reviews from people I didn't follow that way, but it wasn't worth all that extra noise.
Working with the Group Book Spreadsheet in Google Docs – **VERY BASIC**Every now and then we have discussions about using spreadsheets to keep track of stats. One suggestion is to start with the Google Docs spreadsheet that the mods maintain because it already has all our group books listed. Not everybody has much (or any) experience with spreadsheets, so they may have no idea what to do with that. Even if they’re interested in learning, it can be hard for us to explain it in writing. I’m not sure this was the best way to go about it, but I tried making a video tutorial. See below for the link, it’s about 20 minutes long. I tried to keep it under control, but I probably spoke way too fast!
I didn’t do anything very complex. It’s just a starting point to help people understand some basic formulas, aimed more toward people with little to no spreadsheet experience. If you work with spreadsheets a lot, especially if you use them professionally, you probably won’t get anything out of this. I did the demo in Google Docs because I thought that would be more accessible, but the process in Excel would be very similar. To do the things I demonstrated in Google Docs, you’d need to sign up for an account if you don’t have one already. It’s free, and you don’t need to download or install anything, it just works in the web browser.
For reference, the main topics covered are:
* Finding the spreadsheet and making your own copy to work with.
* Freezing the column headings.
* Adding and using filters.
* General guidance on finding and using functions to write formulas. (If those words sound scary, trust me, this is really easy!)
* The SUM function.
* The COUNT function.
* Some basic math (subtracting one number from another).
* The COUNTA function.
You can’t see or hear him, and I didn’t say anything in the video, but Ernest made a slight appearance. A little after time stamp 15:05, when I was getting ready to type the “Exclude” column heading, he rammed his head into the hand I was using to operate the mouse and knocked it out of position. So there was a brief moment where I was frantically trying to figure out what happened to my mouse cursor. :)
I set the video up as “Unlisted” so I think you have to have the this link to access it. I was afraid the YouTube algorithm would recommend it to random people who don't even use Goodreads and would have no use for it whatsoever! Here’s the link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPmMFD...
YKK, you're the best! ^_^ I'll add this to the list, thank you!
OK so I watched it, and I want to add one thing, which YKK of course will know, but maybe a beginner wouldn't.Starting at the 17:45 mark, to exclude the header row from the COUNTA, here's the formula from the video:
=COUNTA(I:I)-1
To me it makes more sense to do it this way:
=COUNTA(I2:I)
This means it'll start counting from row 2 of column I instead of the first row. This way if you add a row to the top later, for whatever reason, you won't have to edit the formula. In this case either way works exactly the same, but this way is usually safer in general imho.
Also in general anytime you're doing a cell range reference (A1:B5, B2:F50, etc.) if you leave out the second number (A1:B, B2:F), it just means to go to the very end of the column. And the same is true for the first number (top), but as there is almost always a header of some sort, I feel that it's better to specify the starting row.
--
YKK, I wish I had an ounce of your clarity! This video is amazing, and you are magnificent and helpful and kind and thank you again! ^_^
edit: typo
YouKneek is the genius of the group. Or maybe that's Ernest 😺
lol I just noticed there's a men's underwear ad on the starting page XD (In the video, not on my browser, thanks to seventeen million ad blockers.)
Oh that’s awesome Anna, thanks! Believe it or not, I’ve never thought to try using a column-only reference on only one side of the range. Probably because I don’t normally use COUNTA in that context. Your explanation makes great sense and I agree that’s a way better way to do it!And LOL about the men’s underwear, I never even saw it, neither when I was recording it nor when I reviewed the video afterwards. I’ve never used ad blockers because for some reason I find it super easy to mentally block them out.
I actually laughed while watching the video, because I do this exact COUNTA of Y and N in my own reading spreadsheet :D Yes there could be fancy checkboxes or other bells and whistles, but I love a messy nested IF/COUNTIF/COUNTA formula monster :P
LOL, I love messy nested formulas too. And I have NO patience or skill at fancy visual stuff. I really wanted to include COUNTIF, because that’s a big one for more useful stats, but I felt like it didn’t really fit the “beginner” audience I was aiming for. Plus the video was already getting longer than I'd originally intended. I thought if any beginners made it that far they would be too worn out to focus on something more complicated. Maybe someday I (or somebody else who is less worn out!) can do a separate shorter video to demonstrate some of the conditional formulas.
I think it was just right, but I hope people will ask if they need more! :) (Or less?)
And Michelle, sorry, I missed answering your post, but I had wanted to say that if there is any genius in this household then it’s *definitely* Ernest! ;)
Next time add a clip of Ernest sitting at the keyboard (at, not on!) so we'll know who is actually doing the instructing!
LOL, good idea Anna, he should probably get some sort of visibility for all his hard work.
YouKneeK, you're a (inter)national treasure!
Mod
The group challenge trackers ask you to enter a shelf name.
Create a new shelf for the challenge, and enter the shelf name exactly when you join the challenge. It's best to copy it from the shelf list, as Goodreads formats the shelf names, so it might not be exactly what you think it is.
Add all eligible books to the challenge shelf as you mark them read. You can also add all the books you plan to read for the challenge in advance, they won't be counted before you mark them read.
All books on that shelf with a read date during the challenge period will count towards the challenge.
Relevant Goodreads Help articles:
How do I create custom shelves
How do I add books to my Reading Challenge? (for the general yearly challenge)
Hi, Anna! I just read a book by Brian K. Fuller, but GR is showing the book listing under Brian Fuller. I believe these are two different authors. I've read Brian K's books before, and they're not showing under Brian Fuller's page; only this latest series is. Here's the book, showing "K" in his name: The Bone Wolf King: Book 1 of the Doan Series. Do you know how I should go about notifying someone at GR about this?
I'm not Anna, but I've had success in going here and posting problems with books:https://www.goodreads.com/group/show/220
It's the Goodreads Librarians Group
CBR, they took care of this in less than 30 minutes! Thank you for your help.
Newby here. Just finished and published my first book. It is in the Fantasy genre but I think it would be considered Fantasy Humor or Fantasy Satire. Is there a place or method on goodreads to locate possible reviewers?Thanks!
Mod
How do I add a recommendation to a review? Like not recommending them to specific friends, but like when I see reviews and under the username it says something like "recommends this book to people who like fantasy" or "recommends this book to twelve-year-old boys" or stuff like that. It seems like a cute feature but I can't figure out how to do it!
Hi Jessi, I haven’t paid too much attention to that before, although I was vaguely aware of having noticed it. I poked around a little and found it on the review page, below the parts where you enter your review text and select your start and finish dates. Below are some screen shots – I put this text in just to test it, then took my snarky comment back out afterward. :)Images in the spoiler tags, or you can use the links above them if you’re on the app and can’t open the spoiler tags.
You fill it in here:
Direct link: https://i.imgur.com/5LSJiUd.png
(view spoiler)
Then it shows up on your review here:
Direct link: https://imgur.com/W9wsFnl
(view spoiler)
Hi, is there a guideline for doing book reviews on the site anywhere or are the reviews an informal fill-your-boots kind of thing, cheers Shaun
SciFi and Fantasy Book Club
Books mentioned in this topic
Come, My Beloved (other topics)The Bone Wolf King (other topics)
Authors mentioned in this topic
Brian K. Fuller (other topics)Brian Fuller (other topics)
Oh you know what?? Okay, gonna, start a thread.