9 IMPORTANT suggestions for the bettering of Listal:

I have been brainstorming and I have come up with 9 important must have changes for Listal.


1)
NUMBER ONE REASON I go to listal is to list all of my stuff.
This being said, I think the My Stuff tab should be the first tab up top. Not the third.

2)
Rate instead of vote.
This goes for Reviews and Pictures. I have seen some really bad reviews/pictures out there and instead of ignoring them and voting for a different one, I would like to vote it down or rate it bad.

3)
A overall rating for a custom list.
I have a lot of items in a custom list and I would like to be able to see what all the ratings add up to.

4)
The ability to arrange the Overview pages to my liking.
I love arranging My Profile and arranging the Overview pages on my movies/books/games etc pages would be like Heaven.

5)
A place to write down notes. (something like this notepad widget)
On the Overview pages in the movies/music/books etc categories. That way we can write down random notes about our stuff.

6)
The ability to minimize or maximize the menus (on the left side in the Overview) for the movies/books/games etc. The My Movies, Friends and Explore menus.

7)
Rate seasons of a TV show.
Usually the first and second seasons of a TV show are better than the 3rd and 4th. I think rating the season instead of overall TV show would better Listal.

8)
(I know this has been brought up before, but I think it is a good idea)
People who mark books are read and don't own the book, their authors don't appear on the Overview book page. And I think the authors should be there.

9)
Merge DVDs with Movies.
Here's the solution:

--------------------------------
Overview

Watched
Owned
-Fullscreen
-Widescreen
-Special Edition
Unrated
Top Rated
Bottom Rated

Want to see
Want to buy
Have to see
Not Interested

My reviews
My actors
My directors
My tags

Similar users
Recommended
Add
--------------------------------

I don't mean to come off as pushy, but these would really really help Listal.

I am now stepping of my soap box. :)

I definitly agree on points 3, 4, 6 and 9!

I agree that 9 is a must have. The rest would be nice to have for me - except 1 as moving the tabs around it'd probably just confuse me for a few days.

I think Tom's High priority suggestions in the "Planned Features" thread are all a good plan too. The Medium priority one that I'd most like to see is Seperate editions into 1 item but still allow people to choose which edition they own, combined editions will share social data and reviews/ratings. Some maybe done automatically.. Could this be combined with point 9 above?

Another thing I'd like would be a Discography/Bibliography/Filmography section for bands/authors/actors/actresses which could be manually edited. I think this would make it much easier to find items associated with a person.

I'd LOVE to see the DVD/Movies sections merged, although issues with 'primary image' might be tricky to resolve. I think it would be easier to just add internal cross-links between a movie, all its sequels, prequels, remakes, as well as all DVD versions.

another top priority is making items a lot more user-editable, mostly the cast list, but also add perhaps 'country of origin', 'language', 'rating' and some hard-coded primary tags, all of which can be used to filter out and/or search for items a lot easier. Example, find all german movies that are comedies, and filter out all R and X rated ones.

another priority is cleaning up tag boxes, at least minimizing some of the huge tag boxes we're seeing with a simple ...more... link that expands it to full size.

lower priorities, but still nice things to see, would be to add 'writer' to movies, which will link it to 'authors' from books section, as so many movies are based on novels, and even if it only links it to a screenwriter, such as Charlie Kaufman, his person page would show 0 books but it would now also show all movies he's associated with, so even if he's not a true book author, we can easily see all movies he's written. I think it may help get more movie buffs interested in books, and also show people that love a certain book if the author's works have been turned into movies. It would create a very strong 'synergy' between those two sections the same way that actors link up to both movies & tv shows right now, and make the overall feel of listal a lot more interconnected rather than a bunch of seperate sections.

and zabdiel, i like the discography/bibiliography/filmography idea, but i'm a bit confused. Doesn't it already do that? I mean, if a person is linked to an album or movie, it should show up, correct? and if it doesnt, it means that either the cast list is messed up (such as Keanu Reeves missing from BOTH Matrix trilogies) or its an obscure movie that isnt in Listal's database yet.

Prelude76 - great suggestions! I'd like to see links to sequels, remakes etc.

Hard coded tags also seem like a great plan - maybe add a year range to a search could be good too.

Maybe having some kind of tag suggestions would be good? And linking related words into one tag - so I tag a movie as werewolves and you tag is as warewolf listal knows we mean the same thing.

I love the links to writers idea!

discography/bibiliography/filmography

I probably didn't make myself clear here. I think it works for films. However it doesn't work so well for music and books which is what I'm more interested in. At the moment you get a list of 6 items - presumably the 6 most popular? In some cases this includes multiple versions of the same album/book. You can then click "View All Items" and you get everything that that band have released in order of how many people own them. What I'd like is to be able to get a list of everything a band have released in chronological order, and also be able to filter that but "Albums" or "Singles". Similarly with Authors. Check out Tolkien to see what I mean.

So I guess what I want is a combination of combined editions and your better searches suggestion :)

Yesssss for rating seasons of TV. That's a must.

Really good ideas, Manling...

Another thing I'd like to see is the ability to edit music, games & books... not just the moviesand tv stuff... :o

I don't agree with number 7 because then that means we'll have to remember what every season is like and some of us don't have much of a memory. If that happens I'd probably stop rating T.V shows all together.

I think 3,4 and 9 are great ideas though.

And Prelude I love that linking to writers idea. I have a tendency to read the book if I've watched a movie based on one so I really dig that idea.

I agree - quicker entry. It is fairly good at the moment - but it needs to be brilliant if people are going to add hundreds of books

Quicker entry is the main reason I want a decent discography without duplicates. I want to be able to put in an artist, get a list of all their albums and go click, click, click to add the ones I have.

For about the fifteenth time, actually merging DVDs and Movies is NOT a sensible idea. Sports titles, Music titles, TV titles and suchlike wouldn't fit into such a system. Cross-linking items would work, however.

Most of the other ideas sound nice at varying levels though :)

To be honest in general don't see some of these as important

1)
NUMBER ONE REASON I go to listal is to list all of my stuff.
This being said, I think the My Stuff tab should be the first tab up top. Not the third.

Fair enough

2)
Rate instead of vote.
This goes for Reviews and Pictures. I have seen some really bad reviews/pictures out there and instead of ignoring them and voting for a different one, I would like to vote it down or rate it bad.

I prefer voting as it's positive only, good stuff is rewarded bad stuff is ignored. In some cases people upload bad stuff just to get a negative response (low rating etc)

3)
A overall rating for a custom list.
I have a lot of items in a custom list and I would like to be able to see what all the ratings add up to.

Would be interesting but not exactly important ;)

4)
The ability to arrange the Overview pages to my liking.
I love arranging My Profile and arranging the Overview pages on my movies/books/games etc pages would be like Heaven.

This is ok until i decided to redesign/rearrange or add new features to the overview page. I already have this problem with the profile pages.

5)
A place to write down notes. (something like this notepad widget)
On the Overview pages in the movies/music/books etc categories. That way we can write down random notes about our stuff.

Can't see this as being important

6)
The ability to minimize or maximize the menus (on the left side in the Overview) for the movies/books/games etc. The My Movies, Friends and Explore menus.

I am actually gonig to remove 'my stuff' if your in the explore area and remove 'explore' where your in your own area.

7)
Rate seasons of a TV show.
Usually the first and second seasons of a TV show are better than the 3rd and 4th. I think rating the season instead of overall TV show would better Listal.

This would be nice (episodes as well) but I think with the relativly low number of people rating it would be hard to get good results. The other thing is I don't like adding specific features just for one section, maybe in the future.

8)
(I know this has been brought up before, but I think it is a good idea)
People who mark books are read and don't own the book, their authors don't appear on the Overview book page. And I think the authors should be there.

Yes I will change this to read books only or maybe even rated books only

9)
Merge DVDs with Movies.
Here's the solution:

Would actually create more confusion I think, the two sections serve different purposes, movies you like and dislike vs moves you own. Still may eventually share ratings and reviews between the two though.

Well, I actually put 'important' just to get your attention ^_^

4)
The ability to arrange the Overview pages to my liking.
I love arranging My Profile and arranging the Overview pages on my movies/books/games etc pages would be like Heaven.

This is ok until i decided to redesign/rearrange or add new features to the overview page. I already have this problem with the profile pages.

Instead of Listal looking like myspace with the profile pages, can we get the Facebook or the Last.fm look?

7)
Rate seasons of a TV show.
Usually the first and second seasons of a TV show are better than the 3rd and 4th. I think rating the season instead of overall TV show would better Listal.

This would be nice (episodes as well) but I think with the relativly low number of people rating it would be hard to get good results. The other thing is I don't like adding specific features just for one section, maybe in the future.

Well, you could have both.
An Overall rating and a Season/Episode rating.
I'm fairly sure I won't remember all the episodes or Seasons of TV shows I watched when I was a kid, so an Overall rating would be best. But with TV shows I am currently watching, the ability to rate individual Episodes or Seasons would be awesome!

9)
Merge DVDs with Movies.
Here's the solution:

Would actually create more confusion I think, the two sections serve different purposes, movies you like and dislike vs moves you own. Still may eventually share ratings and reviews between the two though.

Can we at least get the 'Want to buy' in the DVD section and 'Have to see' in the Movie section?

Please! :)

Instead of Listal looking like myspace with the profile pages, can we get the Facebook or the Last.fm look?

The decision to allow customization has already been made I can't really change this now. I wouldn't really say it's like myspace though as flash/widgets are not currently allowed and customization is restricted. I think people enjoy customizing but at the same time some people don't want to see messy profiles, it's a trade off. I'm not really happy with the default style choices though and it would be nice to get some better box styles there.

Can we at least get the 'Want to buy' in the DVD section and 'Have to see' in the Movie section?

I'm a bit confused by this. There is already 'Want to buy' in the DVD section called wanted and 'Have to see' is already in movies called 'Want to see'

The two most important things I'm really hoping to see soon is

1: user-editable cast list. the way I envision it is you click on 'edit cast', it brings up ENTIRE cast list from IMDB, not just the truncated version we get now, and then beside each actor is a checkbox to make them be displayed or not (because let's face it, some of the cast lists have a no-name extra listed near the top, because of alphabetical order). If we could also have drag'n'drop to re-arrange their order, or better yet to also display the person that actor portrayed, that would be the motherload for me. I'd be in heaven. :)

2. I see the reasoning why movies & dvd need to be kept seperate, but I'd love to see user-editable cross-reference links, so we can go in, and add a cross-link to a book the movie is based on, a link to all dvd versions, and link to any sequels, remakes, or prequels. That would add SO much to the 'explore' aspect of listal.