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Goodreads Is Broken

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Re: Goodreads Is Broken

#171

Post by JHer »

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…

Entering "1984" yields "books similar to 1984 by Michael Dean". Entering "Nineteen Eighty-Four" gives me "Book picks similar to Nineteen Eighty-Four by Matthew Dunster". When I search for "Nineteen Eighty-Four: A Novel", the site responds with "Book picks similar to Beer in the Snooker Club by Waguih Ghali". I'm sure Dean, Dunster, and Ghali are terrific writers but what happened to George Orwell?

Re: Goodreads Is Broken

#172

Post by PKop »

akudha wrote: post #63
vertoc wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This seems like a fun side project idea honestly - can I ask what’s most broken and which great features are missing? I took a quick look and there is a official Goodreads API that you can use to pull titles from people’s accounts (once they authorize your app). Yes, Amazon could shut it down but eh, might be worth the risk

It is worth a try, but where does one get all the book cover images, ISBN etc in bulk? I remember someone making open source version of IMDB (can't remember the link now), I think I saw it on Patreon. Would be nice to make something similar for books. One feature I'd love as a user (specifically for non-fiction books) - given a book, show me all books referenced in that book (in the chapter, footnotes etc). I've foun…

Perhaps this:

https://www.themoviedb.org/?language=en-US

Re: Goodreads Is Broken

#173

Post by bobcostas55 »

xioxox wrote: post #7

Yes - Goodreads is pretty awful when it could be so much better. The searching is awful, the comment UI is grim and the suggested books lists are poor. The most useful tool I've found for finding new authors is this: https://www.literature-map.com/ I only use it for keeping track of what I've read and to look up negative reviews to see whether a book is likely to be one I won't like. The scoring system is almost usel…

I like literature-map, but I wish it contained more obscure names. The recs are good, but none of them are new to me...

Re: Goodreads Is Broken

#174

Post by CydeWeys »

StavrosK wrote: post #168
CydeWeys wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only read DRM-free books, and I just use a 5-year-old Kindle Paperwhite. You can use Calibre to convert ePub to mobi, and then view it just fine on Kindles. You can also get a used Kindle Paperwhite for pretty darn cheap. I wouldn't recommend going to earlier Kindle generations prior to the Paperwhite, because they didn't have backlights which makes reading in low light conditions (like bed) a lot less pleasurable.

I already have a Paperwhite and it's quite good, but the plastic degraded and is now sticky, the CPU is slow and doing anything takes a while, and it doesn't have the very handy buttons earlier versions used to have. I was wondering if there was anything available nowadays that was much better, basically...

Oh, hrm, I have no idea. My Paperwhite is in a better condition than yours and it's good enough for me.

I really wouldn't mind having physical next/prev page buttons, though. Having to touch or swipe the screen is kind of annoying. I feel like that's a step back in UI from previous gen devices.

Re: Goodreads Is Broken

#175

Post by abeyer »

bobcostas55 wrote: post #167

If you're looking for recs, check out librarything. In general it's worse than goodreads on almost all dimensions, but their recommendations algorithms are great. You can import your goodreads list, so it's no big ordeal.

I actually always thought librarything was strictly better than good reads as a list building/management tool. It has suffered from a similar lack of improvements recently, and I was never impressed with their "social" features, but personally wouldn't agree on the "all dimensions" part.

Re: Goodreads Is Broken

#176

Post by wwwhizz »

frosted-flakes wrote: post #152
ancarda wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'd be nice to have an "I've already seen this" button that will mark an episode/season/show as watched so it doesn't keep coming back up. Netflix really wants me to watch Breaking Bad, but I've already seen it. I liked it; give me more like that, but not exactly that

You can do this with YouTube. Just click "Not interested" in the three-dots menu, and click the "Tell us why" link that appears.

After which it will still recommend it to you.

Re: Goodreads Is Broken

#177

Post by officemonkey »

The recommendation system is broken, however the social networking features can surmount it.

For example, my Goodreads "friends" are people who like the books I like. There's no social obligation. FFS, I unfriended my sister. My high-school friend who only reads YA fiction: he was unfriended years ago.

My favorite goodreads friends are a half-dozen people I've never even met, but I agree with their reviews. When they give a book 5 stars, I check it out.

That's the key to Goodreads. If Amazon can't figure out how to make better recommendations, they should look long and hard at how the social graph beats the star-ratings.

Re: Goodreads Is Broken

#178

Post by xbkingx »

inapis wrote: post #94
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…

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 call it "collapsing into the mean" - all recommendation engines (as the currently exist) will eventually corral you into the most vanilla, mass marketed set of recommendations and then fail miserably when any conflicting data is presented. We've effectively turned the web into cable TV circa 1990 - a finite set of junk food level entertainment sources that we voted for because they were "eh, good enough" and easy to find.

With as many YouTube videos that I've watched since 2005, you'd think they might recommend a video with less than 1000 views once in a while. I've found 1 new channel in the last 6 months and used the "Not Interested" option more times than I can count. And the rules are unclear. I don't want tech reviews from 5 years ago, but if I hit Not Interested, does that influence the channel, topic, age, keyword, etc recommendation frequency? I don't mind old DIY or woodworking videos, I'm subscribed to the channel, and watched the recommended video 5 years ago. (Of the current 12 YT Recommended videos, 2 are labelled Watched and only 2 are less than a year old.)

I think part of it stems from the lack of user organization features. Offer too many and you scare away users, while the people with vested interests dump money and time in to wash out any negative opinion (see Amazon reviews). Offer too few and you get poor recommendations during on-boarding/startup.

Re: Goodreads Is Broken

#179

Post by Marsymars »

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…

> And, frankly, the kindle is the only platform that matters, it likely has 95%+ of the ereader market.

I have trouble finding up-to-date sources, but Googling has some out-of-date data indicating Kindle in the mid-80s for American marketshare and mid-50s for global marketshare.

Personally, I've found Kindle and Kobo ereaders to be broadly equivalent from a hardware perspective. Kindle has better integration with the Amazon ecosystem, while Kobo has better support for DRM-free formats and better integration with local libraries. Ebooks that Amazon and Kobo offer also seem to be broadly equivalent in selection and price. (And Kobo will pricematch Amazon, or anyone else.) Largest different I've noticed are audiobooks that are exclusive to one or the other, with Audible having more of those, but also being more expensive than Kobo's audiobook service.

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