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Goodreads Is Broken

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Re: Goodreads Is Broken

#131

Post by qrv3w »

archi42 wrote: post #90
qrv3w wrote: 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…

Neat. Just a small note: On the "Best Of" page, the year selection is too narrow for my system (Chrome on Windows 10, WQHD). The two boxes only contains "20 " (twenty and some empty space); clicking/hovering one reveals those "up/down numerical selector arrows". You probably want to make them a little bit wider?

Yep, thanks!

Re: Goodreads Is Broken

#132

Post by qrv3w »

Shoop wrote: post #95
qrv3w wrote: 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…

Looks like you've got a small typo on your about page: > Even though there is an AI behind this website, recommendations should like they are hand-picked and hand-written. Missing the word "feel"

Thanks for catching that.

Re: Goodreads Is Broken

#133

Post by heroprotagonist »

mmanfrin wrote: post #6

I read quite a bit and generally like Goodreads for what it is, but I agree that it's essentially not grown at all in 12 years. There are parts that are broken, there are features that are lacking, and it frustrates me to no end. Many, many times I've thought of how I'd build a competitor, but it is pointless because Goodread's moat is too big: the integrations with the kindle go a very long way towards cultivating e…

Honestly, I have been feeling that the integration with Kindle, and Amazon in general, is what killed it for me. They took an audience of bibliophiles (and their ratings) and expanded it to the mass market users, encouraging them to star and comment on what they just read.

What I'd really like is more access to the data and filtering mechanisms to try to build recommendations for myself.

Example: Find the highest rated books that I haven't read in the Fantasy category, as rated by an audience of people who have rated at least 7 out of 10 books from a list I provide with a score of 4 or higher, and who have never rated a Twilight book with a 3 or higher.

And if that doesn't work, maybe I tweak it a bit. Build a score threshold for excluding reviews from people based on other criteria about things I don't like. The point is that the data would help make the decisions..

Of course, that won't happen because of privacy concerns. With all the data locked up it means only Amazon can do it, and they're failing at it.

Re: Goodreads Is Broken

#134

Post by cameronbrown »

alexis_fr wrote: post #86
philsnow wrote: post #74

> 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…

I've noticed YouTube's been propping up mainstream media for sensitive subjects. Some of these MSM videos have hundreds of views where those with millions from independent creators are buried on page four.

I think this is to combat fake news but we all know CNN and Fox News all make stuff up from time to time to fit an agenda so they're hardly much better.

Re: Goodreads Is Broken

#135

Post by ernesth »

I have been using Goodreads for years. I remember when Amazon turned off API access to goodreads and how all books lost their covers and most of their data. And the shocking turn of event of Amazon taking control of Goodreads. And I am pretty happy that it hasn't evolved that much from the website it used to be.

Concerning custom shelves exclusive from read/want-to-read etc. I do have created such shelves. Not for "Did not finish" list but to have 2 kinds of want to read: books on my wishlist and books I own but have not yet read.

Features goodreads has that most competitors lack: I can have two different editions of the same book. I can store more than one date I read a book. I can export most of my data in csv.

Re: Goodreads Is Broken

#136

Post by blondin »

mmanfrin wrote: post #6

I read quite a bit and generally like Goodreads for what it is, but I agree that it's essentially not grown at all in 12 years. There are parts that are broken, there are features that are lacking, and it frustrates me to no end. Many, many times I've thought of how I'd build a competitor, but it is pointless because Goodread's moat is too big: the integrations with the kindle go a very long way towards cultivating e…

oh it's like youtube then? broken but way too big to wake a competitor.

Re: Goodreads Is Broken

#137

Post by blondin »

jwr wrote: post #14

I wonder if people posting on Medium realize that for many of us the articles are inaccessible ("Sign up for a free Medium account, and you’ll get one more story in your member preview this month"). It seems that people missed the change in Medium's business model and still think that it's a site for posting publicly accessible articles.

same. Guido is currently writing a series on PEG parsers. but medium won't let me read a single one of these posts. i don't even know what the reasons are. can't be that i reached my free reading quota this fast...

Re: Goodreads Is Broken

#138

Post by inimino »

ztarven wrote: post #113
inapis wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I face this problem with Netflix, Spotify and Youtube too. These algorithmic recommendations just need one improper dataset to throw everything out of the window. For weeks, my spotify is overloaded with instrumental songs. Youtube keeps on repeating the same stuff. Netflix believes that the only thing I watch is science fiction. I'm dying for human curation.

I absolutely agree, algorithms are terrible for recommendations. On the media database[0] my wife and I are building we're experimenting with community upvotes for suggestions. Our userbase is small so the results are inconclusive right now but hopefully time will tell if this method works. [0] https://rate.house

There's no reason algorithms have to be terrible, after all, most of what we do is expressible algorithmically when we give recommendations (similar interests, right level for the reader, not too advanced or too introductory, something they can use or that leads to other insights, etc.) It's just that the algorithms are generally so bad because they are optimizing for the wrong things and not any of these things that actually make for good recommendations.

Re: Goodreads Is Broken

#139

Post by Insanity »

from the article:

"What Goodreads is good for is keeping your own list of books you want to read or have read this year. It’s a list-making app."

That's pretty much all I want from it, so it works great for me. The recommendations are often (but not always) good enough. I usually don't read based on recommendations from GR but occassionaly something good does come out.

Websites don't need to keep adding features, it's fine to look the same 12 years down the road. I think this website (HN) is a pretty good example of that.

Re: Goodreads Is Broken

#140

Post by dageshi »

qrv3w wrote: 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…

Reddit scifi/fantasy subs are pretty good for recommendations.
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