Feature Requests

[SleepingPanda]

Heh, I'm guilty of that too. Sometimes the only digital copy of a book I can find anywhere is an old mobi or pdb. So, conversion through calibre at least gets it into a modern workable file format. Even if you then have to go all flamethrower Aliens-style on the resultant book to burn out all the super useless new classes calibre likes to spawn everywhere.

I'd rather we have a crap book than no book.

I have no problems with conversions as I do agree that there should be something instead of nothing, I'd just prefer if its marked somewhere in the description or even a comment that it was converted so I know what I'm getting beforehand.

With you on conversions from PDF to anything else though. Convert it to PDF/E or to EPS. Those are about the only valid conversion types. Static and dynamic formats are just too fundamentally different.

I have successfully converted epubs to PDF, and its a nightmare. Strip all the data out of the epub into a word file, dump the formatting completely. Recreate in word, move images into place, rebuild tables. Dump word output into Acrobat, have it make the pdf from scratch. Its slow, tedious, takes most of a week for one book, but you can't tell it was ever an epub. Would have to do similar to convert a pdf into an epub. All existing formatting must go, back to raw data only, and have a WYSIWYG page editor make it to save some time, then add the css back by hand. Not remotely quick, but its the only actually effective way.

Problem is, convincing most people to do it that way is a losing battle, precisely because it is so much work. Why do that when you can just click one button, wait five minutes and get something borderline unreadable with no accessibility features? Sigh

I agree with this take. Everyone goes the easy route when it comes to conversions and in my opinion it poisons the well for all of us. There's no way to know what you're getting on Z Lib until its too late.

[Ligia]

You can create a Z-Alert for such files. When a file with a similar name or topic is uploaded, you'll receive an email.

how does one create a Z alert?

The burger menu on the website has a section called Z-Alert.

[janet_m_brien]

Suggestion:
I often do searches and would love to have a "set as default" setting, where the language and format are pre-selected for me.

[Ligia]

Suggestion:
I often do searches and would love to have a "set as default" setting, where the language and format are pre-selected for me.

You can do this. When you set search filters, a floppy disk icon appears at the end of the line on the right. Click it and the filters will be saved.

[Pilip]

I can not for the life of me find any information on how to do a search and what features are available.

Feature request 1: I think a little link underneath the search field would be in order. Or alternatively, as part of the drop-down links, or among the link group at the bottom. Just as long there is something...

I could at least figure out putting "author:" and "title:" in the search by myself.

But I fail to find a way to search for an author's name as a phrase, or words in a title as a phrase. If you as an example put author:Paul Thomas, or title:Paul Thomas, and check exact matching you are overwhelmed with hundreds and hundreds of irrelevant results, with them containing both words/names spread around anywhere in any order in the author and title fields. author:"Paul Thomas" didn't work.

Feature request 2: If it's not there already, add phrase searching for author and title.

[Vika]

I can not for the life of me find any information on how to do a search and what features are available.

Its not brilliant, but what we do have is this:



That appears every time the search field is empty.

So you can use Title: Author: ISBN: DOI: Publisher: MD5: from that alone.

Exact string matching ism't really a thing, though you can do a fulltext search for a string match.

What you can do is combine those tags.

eg

Author:Paul Thomas Publisher:Routledge

Will return anything by Paul Thomas or yes, similar names, that was explicitly only published by Routledge.

It helps greatly narrow parameters so you're not wading through all the sludge.

You're already familiar with the Exact Match option to further refine it.

We could definitely do with a list of what parameter tags are actually available though, rather than using trial and error. There doesn't appear to be one for Series: for example, which does get annoying. Its why we put the series in the title most of the time.

[Nekoko]

Perhaps we could categorize these web novels and underground publications separately instead of deleting them outright. After all, in many cases people are unable to publish openly for various reasons, which doesn’t mean the works themselves lack value

That said, I also strongly support better categorization and filtering. For example, making “category” a required field for book entries could help—right now, if you select “latest uploads,” regardless of whether it’s english, chinese or japanese, it’s almost entirely web novels, manga, and erotic photo collections!!!!!

[Vika]

Perhaps we could categorize these web novels and underground publications separately instead of deleting them outright. After all, in many cases people are unable to publish openly for various reasons, which doesn’t mean the works themselves lack value

They don't lack value, they just weren't published. Its something to speak to the devs about, however. Right now we're seeing another wave of 'archive of our own' short erotic web stories downloaded, put in a quick epub wrapper and uploaded to the site. Playing Whack-a-mole with them in moderation.

That said, I also strongly support better categorization and filtering. For example, making “category” a required field for book entries could help

Agreed. The three most important non-mandatory fields are, in order:

Language
Isbn
Category

This morning I had to fix two books whose uploader gave them Author: X. Thanks, super helpful. Last night there were two the uploader gave them:

Title: 4363456345645634
Author: 4363456345645634

Great. Thanks, also super helpful.

The point is even making the field mandatory doesn't mean the data is going to be good. A good example is I regularly see plays submitted by William Shakespeare that are clearly Category: American Poetry. ::deep sigh:: and regularly see 'English' books that look an awful lot like Polish when you crack them.

—right now, if you select “latest uploads,” regardless of whether it’s english, chinese or japanese, it’s almost entirely web novels, manga, and erotic photo collections!!!!!

Manga do belong. They frequently come with isbns, or ASINs, or other similar publisher codes.

The other two should not be there. Someone's not doing their job correctly and I do apologise for that.

[Nekoko]

Manga do belong. They frequently come with isbns, or ASINs, or other similar publisher codes.

The other two should not be there. Someone's not doing their job correctly and I do apologise for that.

Published manga should be organized by volume, but many people are currently uploading them by individual chapters instead, a properly published manga volume typically contains about 10–20 chapters

Here’s another issue: I usually review Chinese and Japanese books, but while performing moderation tasks I often come across Korean books. I don’t understand Korean at all (though I can clearly recognize that it is Korean). In such cases, should I correct its language classification or just skip it? Given the overwhelming backlog in the Chinese section, I feel I should prioritize sending it to the Korean section, but I’m unable to verify whether its content and tags are accurate.

[Vika]

Published manga should be organized by volume, but many people are currently uploading them by individual chapters instead, a properly published manga volume typically contains about 10–20 chapters

Oh. Those. Yea, they think they get more points for more uploads, so they split books by chapter for maxed points. The fragments are an absolute pain to track down and flag for deletion. If I catch the uploader in moderation that is a fantastic way to get their whole account flagged as a spammer.

That's what should always be happening. Its not, I am aware. Then its just tracking the uploads down on the site and either flagging them or reporting to the devs for a mass delete.

The worst one to date was an encyclopedia. Every. Single. Entry. Went up as a separate file. I still don't know how many there were. 20 pages alphabetically of what was already on the site, got us to the Cs. You've just got to let the frustration slide off you, or go insane.

Here’s another issue: I usually review Chinese and Japanese books, but while performing moderation tasks I often come across Korean books. I don’t understand Korean at all (though I can clearly recognize that it is Korean). In such cases, should I correct its language classification or just skip it?

Correct it. Even if you don't fix anything else, changing the language will shove it into the end of that language's moderation queue. Let the people who do understand the language, deal.

Thank you for clearing out some of the Chinese backlog. I can't read the language at all, and it is frustrating seeing books that are clearly filed particularly poorly, but not being able to fix any of it.