Some thoughts and possible ideas

Hey, I've been using Listal for about 9 months or so now and I just really like everything that this site offers. I've been trying to figure out how to best catalog my collection of dvds, music, and games and have really enjoyed documenting all the movies and tv shows I watch. I've been trying to really figure out the ins and outs of what this site offers and I've had a couple ideas that may or may not be worth considering, but I figure I'd just throw some of them out there and see if anything stuck:

1. I asked in another thread about being able to view your lists (that would be the LIST of lists, not the individual lists, I like the dropdown you added for those!) in alphabetical order. I found a greasemonkey work around for myself to be re-directed to an alphabetical order, but it might be nice to offer the users a way to choose how their lists are presented to everyone else. Maybe a way to set up how you'd like your lists displayed to other users.

2. I've become interested in trying to keep track of how many times I've viewed a movie. I like the 'Watched' and 'Want to Watch' options, but would it be difficult to add a 'How Many Times' watched area? I've personally started using the Private Notes section to keep track of this info (along with the date that I last watched the movie) with each individual movie page, and that made me wonder how hard it would be to add something that could track this. Today I started a 'Most Watched' list for movies, so I wondered if there was any way that information I typed into the Private Notes could be 're-displayed' on that list without my manually typing it. (This might be another solution most easily fixed with greasemonkey on my part, but I think it would be a cool idea)

I think it would be fun to have an easy way of seeing how many times I've watched a movie, or even how many times a certain movie has been watched by the Listal community, just like how many people have watched any given movie.

3. I've also been trying to get all the movies and DVDs I've watched and collected rated, for easier sorting down the road. Is it difficult to make it so that when I rate a DVD, the Movie is given the same rating automatically? Or when I click 'Watched' on a DVD, that the Movie would also be given a 'Watched' status.

4. This is sort of the same as number 3, but a little different. For example, when I go in and rate a movie I've recently watched at the theater, I'd love to have a way to 'Want to Buy' the movie in DVD form, on the movie page. Obviously a brand new movie won't really be available in the DVD section, but sometimes I forget about a movie once it becomes available to purchase. I thought of it when I was updating my Star Trek information. I liked the movie, and want to purchase it when it's available, but had a hard time finding it in the DVD section. It would be cool to be on the Star Trek movie page and just click a 'Want To Buy' button. Or even add in a 'Want To Rent' button to go along with the 'Want To Buy' button for those movies you'd like to see, but won't go to in theater.

I suppose alot of this can be done manually, I just thought I'd see if any of it was possible to integrate into the great setup you already have going. I don't know, what do you guys think of these ideas? Have they been brought up before? Love the site, keep up the great work.

They all sound like good idea to me.

3. I can imagine people might want to rate a DVD with a different rating to the film (if there are different editions of the DVD then you might rate on more highly than another). So as long as there was still a way to do that I think it'd be good (I've only rated the handful of DVDs I own so it's not a feature I'd use, but I expect loads of people would).

4. Sounds very cool - I guess you'd want the DVD to appear on your wanted list when it was released. I'd expect that'd be quite difficult to program. Not sure about "want to rent" - what's wrong with using "want to watch" for that. I can't see people using "want to watch" for things they want to make sure they see at the cinema - I'd take the view that if I don't remember that I want to see it at the cinema then it probably isn't worth seeing at the cinema.

I've had a couple of ideas after reading this. It'd be cool if listal could tell me if my friends own films on my "want to watch" list so that I could borrow them rather than hire them. It'd also be cool if there was quick way to view my "want to watch" list on my phone, so I could check it whilst I'm in a video rental shop. Actually that might already be possible (I've not tried logging into listal on my phone).

Another thought is that it'd be good to be able to separate "want to read" and "want to own" with books (and possibly similar with music). It's easy with films as there's the film & DVD categories. I think that might be on Tom's to do list already though.

Here are two threads with some great ideas.

www.listal.com/groups/viewthread/9531/

www.listal.com/groups/viewthread/9942/

1) There's no way to get from a author (who wrote a book) to a movie that his book is based on.

2) On your profile in the media panels, books, movies, music etc it shows three of your favourites. Can these be random?

3) What about a status panel that the user can update. ie Escafeld is currently reading, just read, wants to read, recently watched, wants to watch, just listened to, etc etc.

4) Friends and Following: There needs to be a page where all my friends are listed and what my follow options are - that way I don't need to visit each friend's profile page and click on follow. Some kind of table matrix would be great.

5) Another idea for tags: there are those little boxes we can check and add a buch of movies to a list.. It would be nice to have the same option to tag a bunch of movies at the same time.

6) I was thinking it would be cool to "follow" a list (or maybe all the lists we voted) and be notified when that list is updated.

Grand Assault: Just a quick idea. Would it be possible, when looking at another person's list, to have a small bar at the bottom of the list which tells you:

1) How many items on that particular list that you've seen/heard/etc

2) The average rating you've given the items on that list

3) Maybe their average listal rating overall?

For example, I'm trying to carve my way through the films on this list, and I can't be bothered to keep counting through my progress. It'd be much easier is at the bottom it told me I'd seen 31/50 films from it. This would be particularly useful for Prelude's IMDb top 250 list, or other huge lists.

Point two would also give you more of a reason to look at other people's favourites lists. If I clicked on a new guys favourite films list and saw I'd average voted the list 9.0/10, then I'd know that guy would be welcomed into my inner circle!

7) Being able to change the color of individual items in a list.

8) Underneath "Create a list on this topic" you could have "Other Lists by this person"

9) And maybe some sort of block list option. So I never have to see certain lists ever again.

10) It would be nice if a search terms matches the titles of a list, that list would show up on top in different color, sort of how actors and director names, if searched for, appear ahead of movie results.

For example, if 'Tomb Raider' is searched, all Tomb Raider search results show up, but show 'Tomb Raider series' list from List-All at the very top of search results. If space is concern, show only top voted list, with text links to 'show all lists with 'tomb raider'

11) The option to search through lists is a necessity. I always hesitate when making a list as I get the gut feeling that it must've already been done by someone somewhere already. I don't want to be treading on anyone's toes! Likewise if I want to link to work done by other people, it'd be handy searching for eg 'World War' and seeing what War lists there are out there to link to from my own list.

I'd put it underneath all the search results though, as I think people will always use the search for primarily finding media items in the database.

I like alot of these additions or changes to my initial ideas. I know very very little about programming and everything that goes into a site like this, but I can tell it's all being done the right way and built correctly. Feedback like this is what makes sites great.

I would really love to be able to follow certain lists. Had many occasions where I wished I could have that option.

11) The option to search through lists is a necessity. I always hesitate when making a list as I get the gut feeling that it must've already been done by someone somewhere already. I don't want to be treading on anyone's toes! Likewise if I want to link to work done by other people, it'd be handy searching for eg 'World War' and seeing what War lists there are out there to link to from my own list.

There’s already the option to do this on the drop down menu, right below Games.

I have a couple of my own suggestions to add:

MyAnimeList does a neat layout for each entry. You can mark start and finish dates, number of times watched, and check off episodes watched (if it’s a tv show) like so:



I’d also like to see a better compatibility feature; when you’re on another user’s profile you can see the compatibility percentage, but it’d be even better if you could view the items you have in common and directly compare ratings.

Man, that priority level is looking pretty sweet... In fact, the whole thing is awesome.