New display types

I've added 2 new display types and set the default to 3 column.

Comments welcome!

Perfect!

...but perhaps you could remove the "Stats"... it's just a needless String because "Watched" and "Want to" is self-explanatory

I like the 2 column view, but the 3 column view is too crowded. I'd remove the 'date added' and 'stats: watched/want to watch' from the 2 column view, maybe even director. you add tags and 3 column view is way too busy.

And i'm not sure how to feel about the changes to the menu yet. It seems a bit odd to have 'RATED' listed so prominently, which only shows movie's i've rated, and the full list 'Watched' is buried using 'show more'. perhaps have 2 categories only, 'Watched' and 'Want to Watch', and below that, add a few links like 'Sort by Rating', 'Sort by Release', 'Sort Alphabetically'. Unless you plan on adding a lot more views and lists, and store them all uner 'Show More'. Just saying its odd to have 'Show More' and then it opens up just one more link.

Show more will also show not interested and 'on loan' (in books etc..) but I can add more in there.

I want to shift the focus onto ratings as listing something as watched doesn't really tell anyone much. Ratings are essential for 2 parts of the site calculating similarity and generating automated recommendations. They are also essential for recommending movies to people who visit your profiles.

I have seen people listing 400 movies with no ratings this basically gives people no idea what kind of movies they like!

I have actually considered (and almost did for this release) removing the watched option or read option and only allow people to rate.

"I have actually considered (and almost did for this release) removing the watched option or read option and only allow people to rate."

For the whole site??? Sorry, but I think that would be pointless and would disapoint a lot of people. This is called "listal" not "Rate-all", which really gives the impression of being a place where people can list things being the main function. People may just use the site for their personal lists of what they have watched/read without rating and that should be their choice if thats what they are looking to do. Removing the categories just seems more than a little wrong to me.

"People may just use the site for their personal lists of what they have watched/read without rating"

I understand this but this is supposed to be a social site where you can share the things you like with friends and other people. If you don't rate items other people can't really tell what you liked, the only thing you can really tell is the types of books they like to read.

Someone rating 100 items contributes far more to the site than someone marking 1000 items as read.

The clarify I mean removing the read option and only allowing to mark as Owned or wanted, so you have books I owned, books I want and books I've rated.

for the books, that makes sense, replacing 'read' with 'rated'. How about for movies and DVDs though?

Books have 3 categories now; Read, Owned, or Wanted, so making 'Read' forced to be rated makes sense. But for movies and dvds, you only have 2 categories; Owned/Wanted for DVDs, and Watched/Want to Watch for movies. But it is possible to 'own' a dvd, and not have watched it yet. And for some of us (such as myself) that use 'Movies' section for my 'owned' movie list, it gets more confusing, as I list all movies i own under 'watched', but there's a few I technically didnt watch yet, so I didnt rate them yet.

I understand the desire to push the social aspect of the site and I agree with it, but I think there's other ways to get people to rate movies than forcing them to rate before they can be added to their list. maybe give them pop-up reminders, or have an area on their profile page that gives a random movie from their list and ask them to rate them. or modify the neat 'rate-a-movie' feature into alternating between a new movie, and showing a movie that is unrated from their own list. or better yet, make a prominent line on their movie overview page that says: 'You haven't rated all your movies yet! click here to rate them', make the link start up a 'rate-a-movie' that ONLY displays unrrated movies from their list, and the message goes away if you have all your movies rated.

bug: on the 2 or 3 column view, the delete function no longer works. One the other original list views, they still work as intended. (checkbox item, then choose 'delete' at bottom of page)

People use sites for different purposes, I bet half the people on here use it purely for keeping lists of their collections and aren't interested in any of the social aspects. If you start removing features to force us to use the site a specific way, you'll alienate a lot of your users.

Well it's fine if people want to do that but I want to push the social aspects more and attract people who enjoy these aspects. The problem is the number of people who just want to list collections is fairly limited but the number of people who are interested in generally watching, playing, discovering and talking about movies, music, games etc.. is much higher. That's one of the reasons why I am pushing this area and is much more exciting and interesting for me to develop.

As a collections site, it has sadly never really taken off, so I am taking a new direction and have been for a while now, if you look at the homepage (logged out) there isn't any mention of collection management any more and hasn't been for months.

I just want to see the site used more, it's quite disheartening to have put all this effort into the development of the site and really have it used by a small number of people.

I understand the desire to push the social aspect of the site and I agree with it, but I think there's other ways to get people to rate movies

I agree with a lot of these points and will think about implementing these ideas.

Though it's not just about getting more ratings, it was also about simplifying the site as well

well, I agree that pushing the social aspect is the way to go, for the site's success and growth. In fact, if you compare other sites that deal with movie ratings, reviews, recommendations, there are two big ones out there that are significantly more popular than listal, but listal much better features such as editing movies, adding your own pictures, descriptions, videos, and listal also deals with several media collections, not just movies. heck, even general layout and load times are much better on listal. so what makes those two others sites so much more popular? it has to be because those sites are 100% social, rather than list-keeping.

so I totally see why Tom is pushing social aspect more, and I agree with it.

Yep most of the recent successes on the web have been more about the social features, thanks for the support.

"Yep most of the recent successes on the web have been more about the social features, thanks for the support."

That said, the social features of the site don't seem to be used that often. The one thing I'm meaning most is the forum. One of the reasons this thread probably doesn't have much input is because of the exclusion of the Development section from the updated topics menu, and people just aren't using the forums in general that often. Maybe before implementing big changes you should ask people what they actually want and expect from this site. A personal message to all members perhaps? Just to make sure that any big changes don't actually lose participation in the site. ;)

how do I keep track of what I'm reading/watching right now

The current system doesn't allow for that either, that's one of the reasons why I added the custom list to allow people to create lists for anything the system didn't allow.

Just to make sure that any big changes don't actually lose participation in the site.

I also have to consider potential new people joining as well, it's a balance. I have put off any changes for a long time to not annoy people.

I really like the new 3 column view, but total items per page could use a few more options. at 3 column view, max is 30 per page to have it show up nicely (10 rows of 3). there is no higher number than 30 that is divisble by 3. Maybe add '60' and '90' as well?