How can we improve the Permies Book Review Grid?

Have you taken a look at the Permies book review grid?  With over 100 permaculture and homesteading books listed, the grid is a great resource. But I think it could be better!
 
When you look at the grid, probably one of the first things you'll notice is that the books aren't listed in alphabetical order. Instead, the order of the books is determined by the number of reviews it has on Permies. Books with the most reviews are listed at the top of the grid, those with few or none are at the bottom. Scrolling down the grid, you can see that we have a lot of books that need reviews. Even so, it's easy to find a specific title or author using the search function on your device. If you're on desktop or laptop, you can use Ctrl+F to bring up a search bar on your web browser.
 
When you start exploring the book links on the grid, you'll find information about the book, where to get it, and links to related articles, videos, websites, and discussion thread on Permies. This is also where you'll find book reviews by Permies' members and staff.

How do reviewers get on the grid? By doing lots of book reviews. Top reviewers are listed on the grid because they've written the most reviews. But any Permies member can write a review. We even have a handy tutorial for how to do it - How to make a review for a review grid.
 
Have you used the book review grid? What do you like about it? What do you think could be improved? How can we make this a better resource for Permies? Feedback welcome!

Ideas for software improvement from the past:

111 add an image of the book
112 add a column showing the average acorns
113 add a column showing the number of reviews not showing up

114 I think it would be cool if the staff have a way to write to the top reviewers.  this way, if we are in touch with a publisher, staff can write to the reviewers to pass on an offer (free book for a review of the book).


I think it would be good to get a list of ideas about how to get more attention to the book review grid.  Is there some place on the site that we need a proper link?  

More negative reviews, or perhaps if all the books listed truly are brilliant as the grid suggests (there is only one review giving under 5 stars) then review some books that are not good. I don't trust any review site that only gives positive reviews.

paul wheaton wrote:Ideas for software improvement from the past:

111 add an image of the book

I can see the benefit of adding a book image, but I can't quite visualize it. Seems like it would require a different grid format. It also seems like it would make the grid larger/longer. Right now, the row for each book takes up two lines on the grid. Adding a cover image would make each row taller, which would mean more white space unless more information was added. I don't know if that's good or bad; maybe just something to consider.

There doesn't seem to be a mobile view for the grid at the moment, but I'm guessing that will be addressed if the grid is revised.

112 add a column showing the average acorns
113 add a column showing the number of reviews not showing up

I think these would be helpful. When I first found the grid, I didn't understand why only some of the reviews showed up on the grid. Knowing there's more may encourage people to explore more books.

114 I think it would be cool if the staff have a way to write to the top reviewers.  this way, if we are in touch with a publisher, staff can write to the reviewers to pass on an offer (free book for a review of the book).

I think learning about new books to review is somewhat haphazard right now. Mostly, I just happen to find the thread in the staff forum. Is there a way to have specific lists for mail outs?

I think it would be good to get a list of ideas about how to get more attention to the book review grid.  Is there some place on the site that we need a proper link?  

Having it in one of the "best" sidebars helps, but otherwise, it seems difficult to find. But those sidebars are only visible in desktop view. Definitely need to explore options here.

Skandi Rogers wrote:More negative reviews, or perhaps if all the books listed truly are brilliant as the grid suggests (there is only one review giving under 5 stars) then review some books that are not good. I don't trust any review site that only gives positive reviews.

I think one reason for this is because most people on Permies like these kinds of books. A lot of us are trying to share good resources, so we tend to only offer books we think are good ones.

Also, not all the reviews are listed on the grid. There are a number of reviews that aren't seen on the grid either because the reviewer doesn't have enough reviews, or because they didn't use the magic formula, "I give this book 5 out of 10 acorns."

For popular books, there's a lot of chatter in the threads too. So finding the reviews means having to scroll through all the posts.

What about adding an average acorn to the right side of the title? Also what about adding a "needs a review " note to the bottom of the title?
When I have used the grid find a book on a subject can be hard. Key words could help but I feel this would add a lot of text. Adding a link about the author wiki's page would be nice. Ideally, one would click on the author's name and a link to there wiki page would come up.

T Blankinship wrote: Adding a link about the author wiki's page would be nice. Ideally, one would click on the author's name and a link to there wiki page would come up.

T Blankinship, are you referring to a wiki page here on our forum or on the net?

I thought most of the book reviews have something like this, except not a wiki page. Example with links to Website and Bio:

https://permies.com/wiki/40202/Gaia-Garden-Toby-Hemenway

Related Websites

Toby Hemenway's Website
Toby Hemenway's Bio

Seems to me this is better than a Wiki page. School me on the need for a Wiki page.

The first design question is "why do people look at book reviews"?  Some answers:
1. What books could I read next?
2. What will I learn from this book?
3. Do I really want to invest in renting/buying/reading this book?
4. Why shouldn't I buy this book?
5. What does this book look and feel like, stylistically?

Book review grid thoughts I've thunk:

The current book review format does not readily address 4 and 5.  More negative reviews are needed to address 4.
An image can help with 5.  Images visually help discriminate older or classic books from new, or professional from amateur publishing.

Some people enjoy a particular author, others like to read what is popular, or what has the highest reviews.  Simple metrics and fields with sorting and filtering features help with this.

A sampling of reviews to choose from (positive, average, and critical) helps to address items 2 and 3.  Chunking reviews could help people find a mix of opinions more quickly.  This also could help offset positivity bias.

There will naturally be a positivity bias in the current format, likely because permies are "be nice" people; the people taking the effort to write the most reviews are likely the most knowledgeable and interested in promoting permaculture.  Also, the reviews are not-anonymous.  Giving critical unsolicited or negative feedback takes maturity and some kind of (intrinsic) motivation.  It is easier for people to write a quick and short positive review, or not write a review at all, than honestly say "this book wasn't what I expected, it was just...okay.  Here's a list of things supporting my opinion."

There is a current (unintentional or intentional?) incentivization for reviewers to write a bunch of reviews so their names appear on the grid.  This promotes increased volume of books read through a kind of leader competition, but not necessarily a diversity of views.  A person who reads, say, only one permaculture book, knowing that their review (however critical or positive) will never be seen on the grid, is less likely to write out their review.  But such new book-grid reader opinions are important for collective wisdom.  Chunking could help as depicted below.  Or randomness in which reviewers are shown.

Additionally, having a series of names on the grid likely provides little value to a new potential book reader, unless the reader already knows and follows a specific person because of similar reading preferences or relatable review styles.  The emphasis of a book review grid should be on the books in their relation to others, right?  That X-axis at the top is prime real estate.

The above thoughts are mostly from a reader perspective.  They don't address any unmentioned motivations or purposes of the book review grid from the site creators.  For instance, making coin could also be a factor in the overall design.  A simple "buy here!" column with a $ link in each row would fund the evil greedy empire bent on world domination graciously benevolent and expanding cultural movement.  

Below is my recommendation.  The bold is in one row, the italics in the next.   Chunking the reviews subjectively by "High" "Average" and "Critical" would represent more variety in readership.  In these chunked columns, there would be nested rows with maybe 3-5 reviewers shown (but preferably expandable accordion-style to show many more or all reviews).  But these nested rows would initially show just a sampling of reviewers names.  I think this encourages people when they see their name on a board or grid.  The font would be smaller in these nested rows.  

Filtering and sorting are always nice features, of course. Note: Too large of a book icon (or too broad of rows) would make scrolling downward tedious, or the page slower to load, and could diminish a potential reader from finding new books quickly.  A toggle on/off button for the image field could help.  An "I read it!" button would be fun.  Even more useful would be a filter to show the books which a forum user has or hasn't read, along with books they have or haven't reviewed.  This could encourage some folks to review those books they've read, assuming some kind of motivation.  Such motivation could be something as simple as a bit of user-specific information at the top, or on the scavenger hunt page:

10 out of 127 books read!
2 out of 10 books reviewed!

But that's more advanced from a programming behind the scenes standpoint, and might not be worth the bang for the programmer's buck.

Very tiny book image	Title	Author	Average acorns	# Reviews	High (10-9)	Average (8-7)	Critical (<7)	I read it!
Image1 here	Title1	Author1	9.8	27	Name1-X acorns	Name4 – J acorns	Name7 – A acorns	113 (thumbs-up icon)
					Name2-Y acorns	Name5 – K acorns	Name8 – B acorns
					Name3-Z acorns	Name6 – L acorns	Name9 – C acorns
Image2 here	Title2	Author1	8.8	13	Name11-T acorns	Name14 – M acorns	Name17 – D acorns	50 (thumbs-up icon)
					Name12-U acorns	Name15 – N acorns	Name18 – E acorns
					Name13-V acorns	Name16 – O acorns	Name19 – F acorns

Anne Miller wrote:

T Blankinship wrote: Adding a link about the author wiki's page would be nice. Ideally, one would click on the author's name and a link to there wiki page would come up.

T Blankinship, are you referring to a wiki page here on our forum or on the net?

I thought most of the book reviews have something like this, except not a wiki page. Example with links to Website and Bio:

https://permies.com/wiki/40202/Gaia-Garden-Toby-Hemenway

Related Websites

Toby Hemenway's Website
Toby Hemenway's Bio

Seems to me this is better than a Wiki page. School me on the need for a Wiki page.

A wiki page on the forum just like the one you posted for Toby Hemenway.

I think we need to keep in mind the purpose of Permies.com and how the book grid fits into that. From the About Us page:

Welcome to permies! Permies is a place for gentle souls to discuss permaculture and homesteading, all the time. It is a community, as well as a forum that is rich with wealth of information and assistance.

Paul sometimes speaks of infecting minds with permaculture and world domination of permaculture. Permies.com is here to work toward those goals. Books are a part of that, because most of the people visiting Permies have questions and are looking for information on how to do something. Because of that, I don't think we want to imitate a site like Goodreads, or the way book seller reviews are set up. To me, our goal is to help people find the information they need to accomplish their goals. Yes, that does include both the positive and negative aspects of the book but not for the sake of making sure the book has a "realistic" ranking.

When I read a book review, I'm not looking for a "balance" of reviews; I'm usually looking for two things:
1 - Does this book have information I need?
2 - How well will it help me work toward my goals?

Hopefully, I can find a couple of reviews that answer these questions, no matter how they ranked the book.

Given the nature of Permies, I'm going to guess that I'm not alone in this. So, I think our focus for the review grid should be helping people find books that will help them toward their personal permaculture and homesteading goals. I realize some folks don't trust 5-star or 10-acorn reviews, but many 1- or 2-star/acorn reviews seem to be pretty prejudiced as well. After all, reviews are just opinions. Knowing how to write a good review is something that takes some skill, as does knowing how to read a review. Maybe we need a how-to for writing a useful book review.

T Blankinship wrote: Adding a link about the author wiki's page would be nice. Ideally, one would click on the author's name and a link to there wiki page would come up.

Anne said, "Seems to me this is better than a Wiki page. School me on the need for a Wiki page.

T Blankinship said, "A wiki page on the forum just like the one you posted for Toby Hemenway.

I like that idea.  Thanks for suggesting that!  I hope to see the ones you create soon.

Though you did not explain why there is a need for one when there is already a "Bio" and the author has a website.  Isn't that redundant?

And a lot of work?  Who is going to make the Wiki pages?

Leigh wrote:I think we need to keep in mind the purpose of Permies.com and how the book grid fits into that. From the About Us page:

Welcome to permies! Permies is a place for gentle souls to discuss permaculture and homesteading, all the time. It is a community, as well as a forum that is rich with wealth of information and assistance.

I feel that the "About Us" page is just one description of Permies.com and not the sole purpose.  Another focus of this forum is to make a profit.  Even more:  to maximize profit.  At least, so I've discovered.  Direct Amazon affiliate links on the book review grid (or to the Digital Market forums) seem like low hanging fruit to reduce the need for workie jobs.  

When I read a book review, I'm not looking for a "balance" of reviews; I'm usually looking for two things:
1 - Does this book have information I need?
2 - How well will it help me work toward my goals?

When I shop around online or in a digital library I like looking for the top-starred reviews, the moderate reviews, and the worst.  A histogram of "stars" given is always helpful for me to judge popularity of a book.  But with the current book grid setup, I can't see which books actually have critical reviews, or the general distribution of acorns.

To me, our goal is to help people find the information they need to accomplish their goals.

This begs the most important question: What is the information that people need, or what are looking for, when they come to the book grid?

Some analysis of customers/forum users is needed here:  What are you looking for, and how can the format better serve you?  Perhaps a poll is needed?

Perhaps it would be discovered that the books should be categorized, or tagged somehow in the grid?  Maybe a majority of people come to the review grid looking for something on water conservation, and wish that they could filter which books cover that topic.  Others are looking for seed saving, others natural building.  A title alone may not be sufficient for this search.  Someone seeing "Gaia's Garden" wouldn't know what it is about based on solely off of the title.  Right now, the key data present with only a glance at the the grid is overall popularity, and general favorability among the most well-read reader-reviewers.

I would like to see clear instructions on how to add a new book.  They may exist, but I haven’t found them.

One other general design thought to the question "How can we improve the Permies Book Review Grid?"

Often, when people hear the word "improve" or "improvements" they immediately think about adding something new.  Adults especially have a bias towards adding features.  But it is just as valid for an improvement in a design to be taking away something.  

Removing something which is unnecessary, burdensome, complex, or costly is still considered an improvement.


Edit to add:

I would like to see clear instructions on how to add a new book.  They may exist, but I haven’t found them.

Here's a starter link for the process...
"How to Make a Review for a Review Grid"

John F Dean wrote:I would like to see clear instructions on how to add a new book.  They may exist, but I haven’t found them.

This is a step by step guide.  

https://permies.com/t/20750/Book-DVD-Summary

If you would like help I would be glad to offer my assistance.

John, the link I posted is for "How to do a Summary"

George posted the link for "How to do a Review"

Here is an example of the Summary with the review:

https://permies.com/wiki/100765/USDA-Complete-Guide-Home-Canning#830717

Anne Miller wrote:

T Blankinship wrote: Adding a link about the author wiki's page would be nice. Ideally, one would click on the author's name and a link to there wiki page would come up.

Anne said, "Seems to me this is better than a Wiki page. School me on the need for a Wiki page.

T Blankinship said, "A wiki page on the forum just like the one you posted for Toby Hemenway.

I like that idea.  Thanks for suggesting that!  I hope to see the ones you create soon.
Though you did not explain why there is a need for one when there is already a "Bio" and the author has a website.  Isn't that redundant?
And a lot of work?  Who is going to make the Wiki pages?

George Yacus wrote:

Leigh wrote:
Perhaps it would be discovered that the books should be categorized, or tagged somehow in the grid?  Maybe a majority of people come to the review grid looking for something on water conservation, and wish that they could filter which books cover that topic.  Others are looking for seed saving, others natural building.  A title alone may not be sufficient for this search.  Someone seeing "Gaia's Garden" wouldn't know what it is about based on solely off of the title.  Right now, the key data present with only a glance at the the grid is overall popularity, and general favorability among the most well-read reader-reviewers.

Anne Miller
Your right it is redundant. The book links are full of information.

George Yacus
What about a lettering system by topic. Something like: UP Urban Permaculture, A autobiography, WL woodlands, RMH rocket mass heater, FG forest garden, W water etc. So a book like "Gaia's Garden" may have UP, W, FG.

paul wheaton wrote:I think it would be good to get a list of ideas about how to get more attention to the book review grid.  Is there some place on the site that we need a proper link?

I'd really like to explore this more. You all have come up with some good suggestions about improving the book review grid itself, but how can we improve awareness here on Permies? How can we make people more aware of the grid? How can we make it easier to find? Suggestions?

Move the sub-forum titled "books" from the parent forum "global resources" into the forum "education".  That way "books" is only two clicks from the fun permies.com home page.

To me, the best way to improve the Book Review Guide is to get more people interested in doing book reviews.

But not new books.  When I look at the grid, there is a need for more reviews on the books that are already there.

When I scan the page it is a long list though at some point it looks like a lot of books with no reviews.

The empty looking grid starts with this book and continues with many more:

https://permies.com/wiki/139403/perennial-vegetables/Growing-Perennial-Foods-Acadia-Tucker

How can we get people reviewing the books already on the grid?

I did a quick count there are 82 books with no reviews that are on the grid. I did not check each book to see if there was a review on the book's page. I did click on a random book (here is the link: https://permies.com/wiki/100765/USDA-Complete-Guide-Home-Canning) only one review.  May be the issue is in finding the book. I tried to find "The Hands-On Home by Erica Strauss" the other day on Amazon and it was either out of stock or $50.00 and up. I did find the book at my library and I hope to read it in the next few days.  

I forgot that there was a permies book review grid. Although it seems I have contributed to book reviewing here in the past. (It seems I reviewed two books five years ago or so.)

Perhaps the simplest way to improve the grid is to remind people it exists more often? Seeing this thread listed in the "interesting threads you might have missed" e-mail brought me here today.

I've been quite busy providing reviews for fiction books recently on other sites (and my blog) - a lot of them I write in exchange for free digital copies of the books. So being able to get a hold of a book for no money is important for me. I will probably read 100 books this year. I'll have maybe bought twenty. If a book isn't available at my library or for free (or very cheap) digital download, I'm probably not going to read it because I can only afford so many and I'm saving up to buy hard copies of those I know I like and will enjoy again, these days. (My second-hand shop source for books is in serious decline.)

I would be interested in reviewing some of the books that are already on the grid, I could make it a sort of challenge for myself to read and review one every other month or so (working around pre-existent review commitments) - perhaps the book forum people here need a "review X number of listed books in 2022" type friendly challenge?

The grid is getting big enough that breaking it up into categories would be helpful. We're not equally interested in every topic all the time, and being able to look for books on what we happen to be interested in at that time would be helpful.

T Blankinship wrote:I did a quick count there are 82 books with no reviews that are on the grid. I did not check each book to see if there was a review on the book's page. I did click on a random book (here is the link: https://permies.com/wiki/100765/USDA-Complete-Guide-Home-Canning) only one review.  May be the issue is in finding the book. I tried to find "The Hands-On Home by Erica Strauss" the other day on Amazon and it was either out of stock or $50.00 and up. I did find the book at my library and I hope to read it in the next few days.  

I don't know for sure though some of those books may have been for book promotions that didn't happen.

It would be really nice if the folks who won books during the promotions would post a review.

I would love for other people to review the USDA Complete Home Canning book that you used as an example.  Especially because they do not have to buy a book.  There is a link to the guide for free: https://nchfp.uga.edu/publications/publications_usda.html

Would you be willing to do a review?

Roger Long said, "The grid is getting big enough that breaking it up into categories would be helpful. We're not equally interested in every topic all the time, and being able to look for books on what we happen to be interested in at that time would be helpful.

Roger, I like this idea!

I think even just a thumbnail pic - even better, a clickable one - would be a tremendous help. I often don't know/ can't think of the title of a book, but might recognize the cover. That also gives someone the chance to see it, then buy it, if they find it, while out & about.

I started out thinking about this by figuring what could be added. The average column is a great idea. And just more columns...why the limit of 24?

But then I started thinking about it a little deeper. I went to grad school for educational research and I'm thinking back about tabular data. These book reviews aren't really that. Or, at least, the way it's currently formatted isn't. Each row is supposed to be an "observation" and each column is an attribute that every observation has. But when most of the table is NULL values, a table isn't really the right presentation. So maybe rejiggering the presentation datastructure to something entirely fresh, or redesigning what the columns represent would make it a lot more useful, I think. What if it looked like this instead:

book name (linking to review thread)	author(s)	average rating	A semicolon-delimited list of all the reviewers and their ratings (each of which is a link to their review)
Rainwater Harvesting for Drylands and Beyond, vols 1 & 2	Brad Lancaster	9.67	Michael Newby 10; Richard Gorny 10; Rebecca Norman 9;
Breed Your Own Vegetable Varieties	Carol Deppe	9.25	D. Logan 9.5; Neil Layton 9
The Permaculture City	Toby Hemenway	10	Dave Burton 10; Rachel Lindsay 10;

When you structure the table like this, each book actually has data for every column and you end with no NULL values, which means no wasted whitespace, and the information everyone needs is easier to access. The only "cost" is losing columns of by-reviewer information. If there's value in being able to look at all the reviews a particular author has contributed, then maybe the table I've outlined above could be followed with a table reporting on reviewers instead of authors. And maybe this design isn't the perfect design. Maybe a column with a count of the reviews would be useful. Or some other thing. But I think this is the right general approach to presenting these data.

That's a very clear and thoughtful layout, Christopher, top notch!

T Blankinship wrote:What about a lettering system by topic. Something like: UP Urban Permaculture, A autobiography, WL woodlands, RMH rocket mass heater, FG forest garden, W water etc. So a book like "Gaia's Garden" may have UP, W, FG.

I really like T's idea, too.  Perhaps a column could use those bumper stickers icons!