What are some kinds of lists you make? I've covered myriad bases here, but there are definitely more:
Identification/membership/category lists - big one, includes everything from bird types, language families, car models, philosophers, …)
invitation lists - events, projects
rubrics - lists of criteria to determine who can be nominated to win a prize, or the qualities needed for a machine part
todo lists
music playlists
supply & shopping lists (for a given goal, general stock-up, or fun!)
@slowenough I basically never make any lists in your first category (identification/membership/category) - just something that I never do (closest might be literal memberships for an event - but that’s more a invite list) as well I basically never do any lists of “rubrics” - another type of list that just never comes up for me.
I have endless todo lists and the other big category that you don’t include at all is inventory or completed lists - as well as lists for stuff I want to engage with
@Rycaut I had a point for "reports" but that's not quite the right word, as there are reports that are not in list form. That line of thinking lead to adding favorite & recommendation lists.
Ah, maybe "logs" for lists such as "what I read last year" ?
Also, I'll add bucket lists next timer I edit it. 🤣
@slowenough logs is pretty close to how I think about things - but I do tend to mix up my "to be read" and my "read" lists into one document that is evolving - shifting stuff around (I also sometimes break things down between what I actually already own - and in what format - vs stuff I want to remember the next time I'm shopping/in a bookstore/pre-ordering other books etc.
For me I also tend to track such stuff over time - often having one list per year but moving stuff forward to the new yr
@Rycaut Great real-world example of how complex & intertwingled even 'simple' lists can get! You're maintaining and working through, is it a progress list?, for the year. Others might maintain 4 lists:
Books I have read
Books I would like to read
Books I own
Books wishlist, shopping list
People want to organize as they like. (And then the dev inquiry is how much back end data can be available interoperably, while still having front ends that can match any given user's idiom, ui prefs, etc.?)
@slowenough eh indeed. And books I own is a very different beast (I’m a collector I have some 2000+ physical books and a massive digital collection across ebooks and audiobooks.
In both digitally and in physical form as a collector for some works I care about the precise details of which edition of a book I have (and for physical books again not for all whether my copy is signed, inscribed to me, includes all the pieces/dist jacket etc)
Data for which is easy for modern books w/isbn sometimes
@slowenough but for the many works in my collection that either have older isbn numbers (which often no longer work for lookups in current databases) or are far older and don’t have any isbn numbers just figuring out which edition a work is isn’t always trivial (the oldest books in my collection predate the USA having been printed in the 1600’s)
However that’s only relevant for a formal catalogue / inventory of my collection for a simple list fewer details typically suffice
John Abbe (aka Slow)
Shannon Clark