LibriVox Forum

Listeners sometimes want to thank readers for their recordings, but in the past this has been difficult unless the listener was a registered user on the forum and knew how to post messages/send PMs.

We've now made this a little easier by creating a general 'thank you' email address for these messages. You'll find a link to this on every LibriVox website page in the sidebar, under "LibriVox Links," or go to this LibriVox wiki page.

The Thank you emails are monitored by admins and are posted in this forum as well as passed on to individual readers via PM.

Hopefully this way, more listeners can get their thanks through, and more readers will receive them!

(BTW, as a forum user you can of course just send your thanks to readers directly via PM or post here yourself, but please remember that LibriVox forum policy does not allow unasked-for negative criticism to specific recordings).

Gesine wrote: We've now made this a little easier by creating a general 'thank you' email address for these messages. You'll find a link to this on every LibriVox website page in the sidebar, under "LibriVox Links," or go to this LibriVox wiki page.

Great idea, Gesine! Just noticed when I looked that the link has not yet been set up on this page.

Nice catch, Kaffen, thanks - looking into that.

Hi Gesine, This is a great idea; we all like to get fan mail . And now, I have a question; how do we return a thank you to a non Librivoxer who has thanked us for a reading? It seems like it would be the friendly thing to do.

Since you just sent me a link to a letter I received, I am appending my thank you back to Kevin W. hoping you'll be kind enough to forward it to him. Maybe with encouragement, some of our fan mail writers will join Librivox and start volunteering too!.

Hello Kevin, Many thanks for your kind words about ”The Story of a Common Soldier.” It was a fun book to read. I chanced upon Stillwell by accident one day, just surfing the Gutenberg website. I saw that he came from Illinois, the state in the U.S. where my husband and I now live, and this one fact intrigued me to read a few pages of his memoir. Once I started I was hooked. I knew virtually nothing about Civil War soldiering before I began reading the book. Being retired too, I have found that reading (and listening-- and proof listening to Librivox books in progress too!) is a rewarding (and inexpensive) hobby. Best wishes, Sue

Sue Anderson wrote:Hi Gesine, This is a great idea; we all like to get fan mail . And now, I have a question; how do we return a thank you to a non Librivoxer who has thanked us for a reading? It seems like it would be the friendly thing to do.

Since you just sent me a link to a letter I received, I am appending my thank you back to Kevin W. hoping you'll be kind enough to forward it to him. Maybe with encouragement, some of our fan mail writers will join Librivox and start volunteering too!

Hi Sue

Glad you like the new feature. I've had lots of positive feedback from readers about the notification PMs - I think most of them wouldn't have seen the feedback, had it not been for those.

I've just updated the thank you wiki page where the process is explained. I put a note there to say that, while we never publish thankers last names or email addresses, we will privately pass on the thankers' email address to the thankee if s/he wants to respond, esp. if there are questions (if the thankers do no want this, they have to say so in their email). Obviously, email addresses thus passed on to readers should not be passed on to third parties, or used for any purpose other than respond to the thank you message.

Thankers all receive a quick note back from the admin on 'thank you email duty' to thank them for their message, and to answer any questions.

But, as I've just told one reader: in most cases, there is certainly no expectation of a reply, and it's perfectly okay just to sit back, and enjoy having the thank yous trickling (or pouring, in some cases) in!

Hope this clarifies the issue. (Sue, if you'd still like to send the message to Kevin, please drop me a PM and I'll forward his email address).

Hi Gesine, Thanks for explaining how it all works. It's sometimes hard to believe people are actually downloading books and listening to them, so this feature is a real motivator to turn on the microphone! Sue

Sue Anderson wrote:Hi Gesine, Thanks for explaining how it all works. It's sometimes hard to believe people are actually downloading books and listening to them, so this feature is a real motivator to turn on the microphone! Sue

Yes, funny how that can work. I've recently started recording again, after a long (and largely unexplainable) hiatus.

Kaffen wrote:

Gesine wrote: We've now made this a little easier by creating a general 'thank you' email address for these messages. You'll find a link to this on every LibriVox website page in the sidebar, under "LibriVox Links," or go to this LibriVox wiki page.

Great idea, Gesine! Just noticed when I looked that the link has not yet been set up on this page.

Now done. Thanks again.

Gesine wrote:(BTW, as a forum user you can of course just send your thanks to readers directly via PM or post here yourself, but please remember that LibriVox forum policy does not allow unasked-for negative criticism to specific recordings).

Well, I want to thank Gesine herself.

I am finishing The Riddle of the Sands. I was delighted to find that you were the reader for the entire book. I've heard you on several other Libribox downloads, so we must have like preferences. I wish you would devote yourself to entire books. It is jarring to switch readers mid-stream and especially jarring to switch from Gesine.

I think it would be really helpful if on a person's catalog page, the "Forum Name" was a link to the person's profile on the forum. Then you can click on the link, click on PM and you are thanking them quickly.

Nice idea in theory but we don't encourage people to send PMs to our readers - not everyone is as nice as you probably are - there are some real weirdos out there and we would not want readers blocking PM access - we do need it for some things.

Anne

Also, a profile page is only visible if you are logged into the forum, so for anyone not logged in, the link would only go to the forum login page.

Ruth

RuthieG wrote:Also, a profile page is only visible if you are logged into the forum, so for anyone not logged in, the link would only go to the forum login page.

Ruth

Good to know and a great idea for returning feedback and thanks