New page: books mooched
May 24, 2009
Last night, I had dinner with my friends Tyler and Jayme and their new baby.
Tyler suggested that it would be great if:
a) it were easy to see what your recent mooches are,
b) and easy to add any of recently mooched books back into your inventory for re-giving.
The existing “history” page lists books you’ve given away, and then on later pages shows books you’ve mooched. It’s unwieldy, with too much information on it, and not something anyone is likely to check frequently.
It was only a few hours work to adapt the existing history page to be a concise “books mooched” page, and so I’ve gone ahead and done Tyler’s suggestion.
Here is what has changed…
On the main BookMooch menu, the label that used to say “books received:” now says “books mooched:”
and it links to this new page:
you’ll also find a link to this new page from the “your account” menu page:
I’ve also included a “details” page if you want to see book covers and some other info about the book that was mooched.
Clicking the “give” button leads you to an “are you sure?” page which explains what you’re about to do, so you don’t get yourself into trouble by exploratory clicking.
One thing I need to work on, is the “details” link for mooched books seems to usually give a blank page. That’s not good! I’ll fix that shortly.
Thanks Tyler, for the great idea!
-john
BookMooch Blog 
Yay! Thank you so much. So much faster than wading through all those books that I’ve given away.
Cool update — this is a LOT easier than clicking back through so many pages of history to get to books received. Thanks!
Awesome, John! Thanks for implementing it.
As long as you’re giving away ponies, how about adding links directly to this list from the “Add” and “Inventory” pages? To me, those feel like the most obvious places to make books available. And it would be easy to add a “Recently Mooched” button next to “Import Book List”.
A great improvement, thanks John. One thing – when I checked my “Mooched” page, it lists books that were cancelled and/or rejected in with the ones that I actually received. Is there some way of weeding out books from Mooches that didn’t go through?
Wonderful, John! A permanent link to a separate page of mooched books has been in the wishlist for a long time. Thanks, much appreciated!
Hi, hi, A small gripe, please not a big deal, but I can’t seem to be fast enough to get any books I wanted. Can’t there be some kind of priority given to folks who have sent books ( 7 for me) and have not received any in a long time? It does not seem fair that it is a race all the time. Thanks for hearing me, and regardless, I’ll keep trying to ‘play’.
Kevin O 🙂
There are people who have given far, far more than 7 books, some people give far more than that in one day. I don’t see how BM could give priority like that personally. The whole thing about BM is that it’s NOT FIFO like more other sites.
I hope that didn’t sound wrong but since I think it may have, let me add to it. I didn’t mean to come off as 7 books isn’t a lot to send. What I meant to get across was that there are SO many people, all sending different amounts and the amounts change daily. How ever could BM keep up with that? Then you have to take into account the books that are lost- do they count? What about books that were never sent? How could anyone know in time to give priority to someone?
Sorry if that first comment sounded wrong.
When I hear the “I’m not fast enough to get any books” comment from people I just shake my head. Basically, that must mean that you are only going after best-sellers and the most recent popular books.
There are thousands of books available on Bookmooch. Use your imagination.
Another thing you can do is browse your local bookstore and look for books that are not quite so new. When you find some you like, write them down, then look for them in bookmooch. Or browse Amazon and use the “recommendations” feature.
Or simply browse Bookmooch and mooch books that are already available.
I have found lots of books to mooch, but I do know how frustrating it can be to miss out on books by not being quick enough. Is there any way to give priority to those who have been waiting longest?
Excellent enhancement. Thanks.
I had thought that a similar idea had been requested by many members for quite some time…to have a link to our mooched history page directly rather than having to go through all of our books sent first to reach the books that we have requested. I’m glad that your friends were able to get their request idea to you. Maybe you were not aware that many of us had wanted this. Most of us have been bookmarking the history page of our books requested so that we are able to get to them without going through all of the books sent pages first.
Personally, I don’t feel that the “give” button will valuable to me as so very often the book that I have received is not the actual book that was listed (was not listed under the proper isbn by the original giver, resulting in receiving improper edition or binding). I would definitely not rely on that button to re-list a book that I have received and would still need to actually have it in my hand and enter the correct isbn and check to make sure that it matches the listing as I want to make sure that the receiver knows exactly what book that I am giving.
Would you share your friend’s bookmooch id so that we might funnel our wishes through them? LOL
Anyway, glad to see things always improving.
For the record, I like to see everything there, including cancellations and rejections. I find it very useful for a variety of reasons.
I’m getting a blank page when clicking on details of ANY transaction in my history or anyone else’s history pages, requested or mooched. The detail link of any of these have always worked before!
Fantastic John, I love this. So much easier than having to re-enter mooched books into the inventory and so much more compact! I also like it that all the transaction history is still there in the books received section.
Awesome! I have been wanting this for a long time! Even better would be a search option that just searched within our books mooched & received. Since I have mooched & given away so many it still takes some time to go through. Of course I could use Ctrl F to find what I am looking for but I still have to go page by page since their isn’t a show all button. Great improvement though! I love that you always are improving on the site & listen to members suggestions, it is what makes BM so great! 🙂 Thanks again John for all your hard work!
Uff! This is a wonderful wonderful feature.
Many thanks! This is definitely one of the most needed BM improvements. Only – could it be possible to add a ‘Search books mooched’ box, like it’s done on WL and inventory pages, just in case we need to find some particular book, then we wouldn’t have to go through all of the mooched books manually.
And speaking about improvements, I’d really like to see the ‘Search wishlist: [this wishlist]’ and ‘Search this inventory’ search boxes and buttons moved to the top of WL and Inventory pages respectively, as I use those search boxes very frequently, and it just would be much more simple and convenient to have them right up there instead of having to go to the very bottom of the WL or Inventory page. I’m interested in what other BM members think about this.
Tis shiny. Thanks!
One thing – it would be nice to be able to smooch people points without having to add them as friends first. 🙂
Tria, you don’t have to add someone as a friend to give them a smooch.
Just go to said persons page and click ‘smooch’.
This is a great feature. I’m mooching books for a library and I’m finding that (because BMers have been soooo generous with gifted points – thank you all) I sometimes go back and mooch second copies or other books by the same author. The new feature makes this process much easier!
This is something that has been much wanted – but more in just being able to separate our ‘given’ and ‘mooched’ lists without needing to trawl through the ‘given’ first. I don’t find this as helpful as being able to go directly to my ‘mooched’ pages with all the details I saw before – having to then click on details with all that extra information is not my ideal.
Whilst I hate to criticise a site I really love – the simple change of separating the two lists with a simple click on the headings would have served me much better. And this IS a much wanted, simple (I thought)change – IMHO.
Hey, thanks for adding this. I’m pretty much considering mooching back every book I get, so this is very usefull!
One tip: I would add in the books mooched page something (icon, button) that indicates you’ve already put the book on your inventory. Had to check twice!
Good mooching everyone!
-Sherecita
This is great John! Thanks to Tyler for giving us a good suggestion feature! 🙂
Woot! Thank you so much for making this change! I re-mooch nearly everything I mooch so this is fantastic.
Thanks again for making BookMooch so wonderful!
Jon
Fantastic idea! thanks! This site just gets better and better.
Thank you for this improvement. Just one question: how is it possible that in the list of mooched books several books are now reported as “never received it”, while I have in fact never reported that I didn’t receive a book? I was very lucky, and until now I have received all the books I have requested. Is this a bug in the system do you think?
Mariah, numerous people have in fact mentioned this before. Why Tyler is being given credit for bringing it to the forefront I’m not sure but I know that I, as well as you and many, many other members, have been posting and asking about this for a long, long time now.
I’m happy it’s done but it very much was not Tyler’s idea! LOL
You can get to Tyler’s page, if you actually do want to that is, by clicking on his name in that first sentence. John included a link that is his first name.
Eva Marie,
Thanks, friend! I did not notice that there was a link! How funny! I was really just kidding about to him through Tyler, but maybe we actually should try it!
The secret to my success? Having dinner with John personally. 🙂
brusselsbook – depending on what country you’re dealing with in a certain transaction, the book(s) will be marked lost after a certain amount of time if you haven’t marked it as received. It’s important to mark them received as soon as you can after actually getting the book because a lot of people log on every day, sometimes numerous times in a day, and as soon as the waiting period for a “lost” book is up they’ll mark it as such. For out of your country transactions it’s four months now and three months (I think) for in country transactions.
You can do the same thing and mark a book lost after the time period is up and you can also mark a book that you’ve sent as ‘received forced’. If you click the ‘reminder’ button on your pending page on that transaction that sends a reminder to the moocher. If they don’t mark it recieved for six weeks and neither of you mark it as lost, a link/button for ‘received-forced’ will pop up and you can then click it. It works well for people that suddenly leave BM without any word to anyone about their pending transactions.
Please correct me if I’m wrong anyone.
Thank you, thank you, thank you John!
Love it, thanks John!
I agree; lots of people have been asking for this for a long time. So happy that it’s in place now — thank you!
All I have to say is — YIPEEEEE!
Over-all, a definite improvement. Unfortunately the link to “details” is still not working. Just getting a blank page. I need to change the feedback on one of my mooches that was rejected.
Oh, pity the poor system designer who has conflicting customer requirements to resolve! I’m new but this mooch list and link to inventory sound like a good idea. By the way, re: an earlier comment here, am I right to smooch to a user id via the Charity page? That’s what I’ve been doing.
Cheryl, you can smooch a user straight from their profile page – there is a smooch button over on the right hand side. Charity is handy if you want to transfer more than one point at a time.
SO MOOCH BETTER!
I know this idea had been thrown around previously…but am grateful to Tyler for re-bringing it up:)
Ducks! Just ducks, John! Thanks so much!
Elizabeth
The only drawback I can see is that the list makes no distinction between books I’ve Mooched (65) and books I’ve actually received (35). Roughly 30 books were Mooches I cancelled, usually because the owner never responded or contacted me for months and I either gave up trying or obtained the book from someone else. So the stats make me look like I receive more books than I give when in fact I just get a lot of non responses.
In these circumstances, might it be possible for me to inadvertently ‘give’ a book I didn’t actually own, because I had never received it?
Great new feature! Thanks for all of you efforts.
I very much needed this, thanks a bunch for putting it in. 🙂 It will save me quite a bit of time over the long run when putting a book that I mooched back up after reading it. 🙂
Yay! This will make it so much easier, particularly when re-listing BM journals. Thanks John!
AWESOME!!! I’ve been wanting this for so long! I’d taken to bookmarking my history page that started my mooched books, but it was a pain. Thank you!
Thanks so much for hearing our cries. this is an enhancement that will be greatly used by me. Appreciate the time and effort you put into tweeking
changes we ask for.
One concern/question, can anyone and everyone see what books I have mooched, or only private for myself?
Deborah, anyone can see them. That has always been a feature of BookMooch, it’s not just the new views. The only thing not shown is mailing addresses.
thats something i like..
i can see who actually is participating
John, thanks for the change, this is really cool. Glad to know that it turned out to be just a few hours work, also. I hope that some of the other much-requested changes turn out to be similarly straightforward – like restoring the visibility of reserved/own-country books when mooching (the dreaded “sorry, but none of the people who have this book are willing to send it to you”), or preventing wishlist emails for reserved books. It’s always great to see improvements being rolled out.
Fantastic! This is great. Thanks, John!
The new feature is definitely awesome.
What would even make the experience more user friendly is to provide a separate page that would allow me to quickly access the list of books that is being sent to me for follow up/crediting. It’s somewhat frustrating to have to scroll down between the books that are requested, books that are delayed for sending, books that will be sent to me, and delayed books that will be sent to me. I hope I am being clear here 🙂
Another suggestion is to have a listing of new books that has been added, rather than continually browse the inventory with keyword search and seeing no new additions. This is not to encourage reservations, just first come, first serve.
Thanks for the great job, and for the website!
Awesome site, I go through books like an sds drill.
As a BookMooch Angel and a HUGE FAN I salute you! Terrific improvement…now when I receive books for my overseas Angel moochers, I can easily put the book into my inventory and reserve it for them. Thanks so much for all the hard work – and especially for giving readers such an amazing community!
The “details” pages for ALL history transactions still doesn’t work. Any idea when that will be fixed?
HI
NICE UPDATES APPRECIATED
MAY I SUGGEST THE DATE MY BOOK WAS MAILED BE
SHOWN
THANKS
LEO
John,
Love the new page! Any change we can get a “all” button next to the “next page” button?
That would be extremely cool. 🙂
Thanks again for all your hard work.
A suggestion: I think it would be helpful if I could break down my wishlist into categorys.
thanks John makes things sooooo much easier. Great job on the site too. since joining I have really caught up with my reading whilst being able to give away books I did not want anymore.
Thanks for the very much-needed upgrade, John. I am with the others about needing something to help us look up books we have mooched in the BM mooched/received pages more easily. “Trawling” is certainly a good word for what we have to do when we look for something in our given/received history page. Give us an ALL BUTTON or something so we can at least search with our computer FIND function. When we have had hundreds of transactions it takes forever to find something specific when we have to load it page-by-page. I have taken to searching my back emails for info because it’s easier than trying to find something in BM mooched/received. ;o)
One tiny thing, when I click on the books mooched tab in my account section it just takes me back to the homepage and doesn’t seem to be working.
Cool new page… I really like the ease of seeing what I’ve ‘mooched’!!!
Good job!
Excellent!
Great update, thank you so much. If I can add my two cents, it would be great someday if you could tweak the wishlist page a bit too. It is really unwieldy and time consuming to keep clicking over and over to remove things once you’ve gotten the book you wanted (because I will often wishlist 15 different versions of the same book since I don’t care which one I get so long as I get one). It would be nice if perhaps you could have boxes, or something, next to each title that you could just click to select multiple copies and do a mass delete. Or maybe be able to highlight multiple titles with Tabs and delete all at once. I think I would be more diligent about updating my wish list if it wasn’t so awkward. Anyway, that is my idea, no clue if it is realistic or not. Keep up the good work, I love Bookmooch, it is hands down the friendliest bookswapping site I’ve ever joined.