Comments | lampbane: D&D PSA

lampbane

D&D PSA

Aug 14, 2007 21:57

If there are any D&D players out there, the folks over at LibraryThing could use some help sorting out/combining/separating all the different D&D works. Take a peek, fix a few things, every little bit helps. Especially if you know what you're doing.

(Because I don't.)

books, librarything, internet

Comments 6

luminifer August 15 2007, 14:34:39 UTC

you know i like to complain about these things sometimes, so i'll do it now - because i actually want to hear (what i expect to be) your disagreement and reasoning..

when librarything first came out, i saw it as a social networking and cataloging site.. and i was appalled that they could charge _anything_ for the service they were offerring... and also a little annoyed at this line in the web page:
Paid personal accounts cost $10 for a year or $25 for a lifetime. (See here for organizational accounts.) I conservatively predict the revenue will enable me to recline all day on an enormous pile of gold.

i see now that librarything is _actually_ a company - and i hear, from various sources, that it is doing very well.. which is fine - a business is allowed to be a business...

but is there anything they are offerring that justifies the cost?

lampbane August 15 2007, 15:50:17 UTC

but is there anything they are offerring that justifies the cost?

To you? Probably nothing.

To me? An excellent database program that allows me to catalog thousands of books. It's extensive, flexible, and always improving. I *enjoy* using the site because there's so much to do. That is enough to justify the cost for me. It's not even a lot of money - compared to other web services, it's disgustingly cheap. LJ is what, $25 a year?

There's no advertising, regardless of what kind of account you have.

If you're curious, a paid account, in addition to letting you catalog an unlimited number of books, also has some increased administration power (not too much, though). Basically, it's a site for OCD people.

Now that they've started offering services to libraries, Tim has spoken of lowering the cost, but the proof is in the pudding, so we'll see.

luminifer August 15 2007, 16:01:38 UTC

indeed...
i actually meant 'justifies the cost' in a more vague objective manner.. like in terms of costs for them vs benefit for you.. know what i mean?

i hadn't known he was talking about lowering the costs... the reaction to this from libraries is kind of mixed, because there's no guarantee of future costs or 'not being evil', as it were...
still, it's a lot cheaper than oclc (which i think is still nonprofit?)

what else is interesting is that if they _were_ free, would that benefit them in terms of exposure and also ocd people updating whatever data even more?
i'm not sure how that dynamic works, but we've seen it work not so well at times, right?

lampbane August 15 2007, 16:45:04 UTC

Well, when the site was first starting out, getting a paid account was a way of knowing that we were helping Tim buy equipment for the site, and support himself (and a staff). Both of these were directly related to making the site better. It was a leap of faith, true, but Tim has been very open with the users so it was easy to trust him. He's actually delivered, and he's good about introducing features people actually want ( ... )

Thread 6