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Goodreads Is Broken

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121–130 of 292 posts

Re: Goodreads Is Broken

#121
On a related note - what happened to the Netflix recommendation engine after they awarded the $1M prize for a 10% improvement to their already pretty good recommender? Did they just throw the whole thing out the window?

Re: Goodreads Is Broken

#122
Yeah, 100% agree. I love the idea of the service and would happily pay for something 50% as good today which is improving vs stagnating.

Re: Goodreads Is Broken

#123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the font is actually perfect and fits the theme of the site well, while still being easily readable. what makes it obnoxious, other than it not being some variation on fira mono or whatever?

IMHO it’s not readable, though you disagree on this point.

It must be somewhat hard to read, because no one has yet noticed the missing word on the front page ("get a list of suggested books to read").

But I like it.

Re: Goodreads Is Broken

#124
1) I like about 75% of the recommendations I get, which is pretty good compared to other recommendation sites I've used.

2) I love the fact that Goodreads has an old-fashioned feeling. Modernizing it would mean a front-end JS framework - making it buggy and obnoxiously slow to use on my old laptop or phone - and a lot of aesthetic features that reduce usability. Oh, and probably light-grey text on a slightly-lighter-grey background, making it a strain on my eyes. Modern internet is meant to look good, pop on a resume, and have little or no functionality or substance.

I genuinely hope the people at Goodreads ignore this article.

Re: Goodreads Is Broken

#125

> I am looking for Ronan Farrow’s ‘Catch and Kill.’ It appears, inexplicably, after two books not titled ‘Catch and Kill.’ This bothers me to no end in Google maps search results. It seems like every time I'm searching for some chain> the first two results are for stores that are hundreds of miles away and in towns that I've never visited (which Google should also know!). The one that's a couple miles away / the one…

In Google Maps, I go “Home” every second trip. Yet, when I type “Home” (or whatever the French equivalent is), the only suggestions I get are “Home depot” and “Homeware shops”. I went as far as setting a “place” labelled “fghjk”. I still get other results, despite using “Fghjk” every second trip!!! Also visible in Youtube. There’s a French guy who explained what it was to be raped by a woman, and I often refer people…

Try Google voice search; I just say "OK Google -- navigate to home".

Re: Goodreads Is Broken

#126
post #121

On a related note - what happened to the Netflix recommendation engine after they awarded the $1M prize for a 10% improvement to their already pretty good recommender? Did they just throw the whole thing out the window?

I cannot believe they have any kind of recommendation engine? I just see offered more seasons the same shows I watched, or shows with similar words in the title regardless of topic. I cannot believe they have even 10% success rate recommending movies, much less improved it by that much.

Re: Goodreads Is Broken

#127
post #121

On a related note - what happened to the Netflix recommendation engine after they awarded the $1M prize for a 10% improvement to their already pretty good recommender? Did they just throw the whole thing out the window?

I cannot believe they have any kind of recommendation engine? I just see offered more seasons the same shows I watched, or shows with similar words in the title regardless of topic. I cannot believe they have even 10% success rate recommending movies, much less improved it by that much.

I guess this is ancient history (2009), but you can read about it at: https://www.netflixprize.com/

Re: Goodreads Is Broken

#128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, just out of curiosity - does the website still work well? I just signed up with a dummy account and the images for the books are not showing up. I belive this might have something to do with AWS. (It might also be my browser settings)

It should work. Just tried and looks to work on my end. https://imgur.com/a/wU69opo Could be browser settings but feel feee to shoot us a message. Support [at] helloreads.com

It seems my VPN may be the culprit.

Re: Goodreads Is Broken

#129
post #116
post #77

> The recommendations suck, the lists suck — it’s like, 100 lists telling me to read The Handmaid’s Tale and Harry Potter. I had the same experience with GR and also Amazon.com which constantly peddles the vampire romance books when I am looking for recommendations for horror/fantasy. Both Amazon and GR strategy make sense because best-selling books sell the best, so they should recommend them to increase profits. Ho…

Searched "The Glass Beads Game" got "did you mean The Everything Classical Mythology Book: Greek and Roman Gods, Goddesses, Heroes, and Monsters from Ares to Zeus by Lesley Bolton" couldnt find Hesse in additional results. Searched Inferno, could not find Dante. Kind of strange that this site misses some super important classics (well 2 of like 5 searches I tried)

What exactly did you search? It worked when I typed that in. [1]

Edit: I see you wrote beads. I have to improve the fuzzy search. Thanks!

[1]: https://nowwhatdoiread.com/?q=The+glass+bead+game

Re: Goodreads Is Broken

#130
post #77

> The recommendations suck, the lists suck — it’s like, 100 lists telling me to read The Handmaid’s Tale and Harry Potter. I had the same experience with GR and also Amazon.com which constantly peddles the vampire romance books when I am looking for recommendations for horror/fantasy. Both Amazon and GR strategy make sense because best-selling books sell the best, so they should recommend them to increase profits. Ho…

Thanks for making this! I tried a bunch of searches and the recommendations are surprisingly good. A couple of points. All my searches selected an (in my opinion) less prominent result as the top hit and I had to click the "see other results". The searches I remember doing were "Blood Meridian" (should show Cormac McCarthy as top hit and "Waiting for the Barbarians" (J. M. Coetzee). Secondly, I'm not sure if it's sen…

Thanks! I appreciate your points.
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