61–70 of 205 posts
It’s still early goings, but I’d love feedback - I’m dogfooding it with interesting results. Send me a note: hareesh.ganesan+longtweets@gmail.com
Howdy, Mek here -- I run https://openlibrary.org over at the non-profit Internet Archive (the folks that bring you the Wayback Machine). Open Library is an free, online California Library with millions of digital books to read and borrow. It's additionally an open catalog of millions of books which you may track like goodreads. Best part? If it's not to your liking, the whole project is open source! https://github.co…
1. Export: https://www.goodreads.com/review/import
2. Import: https://openlibrary.org/account/import
I am a Goodreads employee. this is a burner account. i could be fired for posting. we love Goodreads and we know it is bad today. we are working to fix it. there are very few of us. we are trying. we are making big changes soon.
> i could be fired for posting. Yikes, that's rather dramatic! Especially since all you've said is "we're working to fix it. changes soon." That's a pretty harmless statement, I would think. What gives you the idea that such statements put your employment at risk?
This implies support for Goodreads at Amazon is very thin. It could be read as a critical statement (even though it's pretty clear to everyone that the site very clearly stagnated since the acquisition, focusing almost exclusively on Kindle integration).
Amazon management is famously militaristic in attitude and would likely take action against a low-level employee criticizing the company in public
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> i could be fired for posting. Yikes, that's rather dramatic! Especially since all you've said is "we're working to fix it. changes soon." That's a pretty harmless statement, I would think. What gives you the idea that such statements put your employment at risk?
It might be the general fear present in some Amazon corp offices? (PIP stories, etc.)
I don't know about this. Is it documented, or have you "heard it through the grapevine," so-to-speak?
I am a Goodreads employee. this is a burner account. i could be fired for posting. we love Goodreads and we know it is bad today. we are working to fix it. there are very few of us. we are trying. we are making big changes soon.
Can we have half stars or quarter stars? I read a lot of books, and choosing full-star 1 to 5 makes the ratings pretty useless for people who read a lot. My internal rankings are: 1 hated it/was offended/didn't finish 2 disliked it/likely didn't finish 3 finished but it was a struggle 4 finished/enjoyed/had some issues 5 finished fast/really enjoyed/may or may not have still had issues. If I look back at the 30 to 50…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> i could be fired for posting. Yikes, that's rather dramatic! Especially since all you've said is "we're working to fix it. changes soon." That's a pretty harmless statement, I would think. What gives you the idea that such statements put your employment at risk?
> there are very few of us. we are trying This implies support for Goodreads at Amazon is very thin. It could be read as a critical statement (even though it's pretty clear to everyone that the site very clearly stagnated since the acquisition, focusing almost exclusively on Kindle integration). Amazon management is famously militaristic in attitude and would likely take action against a low-level employee criticizin…
Although I know that Amazon is hiring intelligence operatives[0] to bust unions, this aspect (militaristic middle management) is news to me. Where can I learn more?
0. https://www.theverge.com/2020/9/1/21417401/amazon-job-listin...
The thing I hate about goodreads is there are two search fields one to search books you’ve read and one to search every book.
I’ve wanted to search books I’ve read like 5 times in my life but for some reason I always end up using the only search books I’ve read search bar and I get no results. Just make it a checkbox or return two lists or something.
My problem with Goodreads isn't the recommendations engine. The recommendations are fine. I'm actually skeptical that any ML recommendation engine is going to recommend better books than my friends will. The only thing I expect from a recommendation engine is discovery , by which I mean finding new things that neither I nor my friends have read that look interesting. Whether they're good is another story altogether..…
Discovery engines are pretty easy if you just use clustering unless you allow transitivity (book in two clusters can be used to suggest a book in either cluster)
I am a Goodreads employee. this is a burner account. i could be fired for posting. we love Goodreads and we know it is bad today. we are working to fix it. there are very few of us. we are trying. we are making big changes soon.