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Show HN: I built a modern Goodreads alternative

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Re: Show HN: I built a modern Goodreads alternative

#201

Post by kqr »

magicalhippo wrote: post #12

> 10-star rating system (More nuance than 5 stars) Does one really get anything meaningful out of saying this was a 6-star book vs a 7-star book? Personally I think 4 levels is sufficient. Either it's rather bad, not bad but not good, good but not great or it's great. Anything beyond that will have to be written in words.

I think one of the most robust rating systems I've worked with is based on comparisons, i.e. "did you like this more or less than X". This is more computationally intensive, but it can be made to work even with intransitive and unreliable judgments.

Re: Show HN: I built a modern Goodreads alternative

#202

Post by kqr »

What are your plans for the longevity of this? How are you ensuring there are enough funds and time to go around for maintenance? What are your contingency plans for when you realise there is indeed not enough funds and time to maintain it? These are questions I'd like answered before I commit!

I love the initiative but my experience tells me these things tend to die out after 2–5 years, and I'd hate to lose my reading history then.

Re: Show HN: I built a modern Goodreads alternative

#203

Post by hiAndrewQuinn »

dghlsakjg wrote: post #181
hiAndrewQuinn wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've seen the latter two, but they are most certainly very rewatchable. I saw Schindler's List again with my wife about a year ago and enjoyed it just as thoroughly as the first time. >I also gain a lot from a rewatchable piece of content, but you might be shorting yourself by always watching things designed to tickle the dopamine receptors. Now this I just do not understand. Things designed to be good on primarily t…

Ahh. I think we are coming from different feelings about rewatchability. If you asked me to rate movies as to their artistic merit, their excellence as films, I would say that those all fall into “instant classic” territory. However, I would not want to rewatch them in the same way that I might want to rewatch a Coen brothers film, for example.

I agree! I think this is one reason why Rewatchability is an imperfect, though positive, signal - many people mean it in the sense you mean it, and would therefore mark them as not very rewatchable.

That's fine by me, of course. The more signals I have, the better my decision can be made on what to watch next on average.

Re: Show HN: I built a modern Goodreads alternative

#204

Post by stared »

magicalhippo wrote: post #12

> 10-star rating system (More nuance than 5 stars) Does one really get anything meaningful out of saying this was a 6-star book vs a 7-star book? Personally I think 4 levels is sufficient. Either it's rather bad, not bad but not good, good but not great or it's great. Anything beyond that will have to be written in words.

To me, even 5-star system is broken by design, with a pressure to rate everything 4 and 5, especially if these are known to be classic books.

I rarely give 1 or 2 - in vast majority of cases it means I stop reading them, out of respect for my time.

What is nice, but underused (since most platforms want us to be excited, because of sales and adverts) is some kind of slider with mean at 0, for expected quality.

Even better, tags to choose from "awesome", "insightful", "well-researched", "funny", "cringe", "inaccurate" etc. I mean, there are tags, but I mean ones explicitly displayed next to rating.

Re: Show HN: I built a modern Goodreads alternative

#205

Post by stared »

For me, a killer feature would be easy JSON or Markdown export/sync, so I can use it in Obsidian.

Also - I am a bit afraid that it either falls into obscurity or gets sold to Amazon. Any ideas why it wouldn't happen? In particular - if it is not open source, then there needs to be some monetization mechanics - which one do you favour?

Re: Show HN: I built a modern Goodreads alternative

#206

Post by vasanthk1125 »

stared wrote: post #205

For me, a killer feature would be easy JSON or Markdown export/sync, so I can use it in Obsidian. Also - I am a bit afraid that it either falls into obscurity or gets sold to Amazon. Any ideas why it wouldn't happen? In particular - if it is not open source, then there needs to be some monetization mechanics - which one do you favour?

We'll have subscriptions for extra features like Letterboxd does. All basic features though is free forever.

Re: Show HN: I built a modern Goodreads alternative

#208

Post by sentimentscan »

vasanthk1125 wrote: post #113
sentimentscan wrote: post #59

I dream of a good recommendation system because Goodreads is completely terrible. I just want to know two things: which books are similar and which books I would like, beyond typical recommendations. Something akin to what platforms like VOD, YouTube, and Netflix offer. For me, this is the most important killer feature.

We’ll definitely have this at some point. A good recommendation system needs a solid base of user data, so it’s only possible once we have a larger user base. I really wanted to have this for the launch since it seemed so important for a book tracking platform but we didn't have the data to train models to make recommendations.

I mean, not really you don't need user data; I was doing something related with LLM (simply asking it) and planning to use vector databases for various tasks, like semantic search, similarity matching, clustering, and topic modeling. Later pivoted to doing something for podcasts (analysing transcripts).

Re: Show HN: I built a modern Goodreads alternative

#209

Post by dimava »

BeetleB wrote: post #114
magicalhippo wrote: post #12

> 10-star rating system (More nuance than 5 stars) Does one really get anything meaningful out of saying this was a 6-star book vs a 7-star book? Personally I think 4 levels is sufficient. Either it's rather bad, not bad but not good, good but not great or it's great. Anything beyond that will have to be written in words.

> Does one really get anything meaningful out of saying this was a 6-star book vs a 7-star book? I rate for myself, and not others. And for over 20 years I've used a 10 point system. 10 = Easily amongst my favorite 9 = Awesome, but not in all time favorites 8 = Really liked it, and would recommend 7 = Liked it, was worth my time, but not so much that I would happily recommend to others 6 = Liked it, but wasn't worth…

The thing is, 10 means "I'm a fan" It doesn't tell anything about if I've liked it or even if I've watched it

Re: Show HN: I built a modern Goodreads alternative

#210

Post by latexr »

d1sxeyes wrote: post #197
stevage wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I informally often use a -1 to 2 scale. Bad, fine, good, great. The difference between 1 and 2 on a 5 point scale is not useful.

This is a great scale to use when you’ve got a group of people because it’s easy to teach without needing to do calibration: -1 is bad, not meeting expectations, 0 is “not good, but meets expectations”, 1 is “good, better than expectations” and 2 is outstanding. It’s hard to come up with a nice visual for it though, you just have to use the numbers themselves (or rather ugly emojis)

> It’s hard to come up with a nice visual for it though

Suggestion off the top of my head: down arrow / thumb down; circle / horizontal dash; up arrow / thumb up; star / heart.

The circle / horizontal dash could be ambiguous in isolation but should be clear in context.

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