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BookWyrm is a federated Goodreads replacement

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Re: BookWyrm is a federated Goodreads replacement

#41

Post by jan_Inkepa »

tpoacher wrote: post #38

What exactly is wrong with Goodreads? I keep hearing a lot of hate about it, but the reasons seem never expanded on. I use Goodreads to maintain a public bookshelf of books I have read or want to read. It's also nice that I can check what my friends are reading. Occasionally it's nice to read other people's views on a book. I typically tend not to agree, but it's nice that these exist. That's it. Isn't that what Good…

It does feel a bit neglected/dead (except for the fact that people still use it a bunch) - the changes come rarely. In some sense this is nice! It's a stable piece of software that does what it should do.

One thing I find lacking is that it seems to mostly be used by english-speakers. So the one case where I'd be curious to use the social networking features, for non-English-lanuage literature, it falls flat. There's no equivalent to it that I know of for the German-language world (that people actually use), which is irksome, because I'd actually use the social networking features there (whereas for English literature I know what I like and don't care what other people read, I don't know German literature as well).

But not becoming terrible is a nice side-effect of this...it's not even a managed decline, it's just pottering along okay! But it is odd. I wonder what their high-level strategy as a business is.

Re: BookWyrm is a federated Goodreads replacement

#42

Post by tigroferoce »

pharmakom wrote: post #22
rektide wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

federated means your bookgroup could set up their own instance & everyone could either post their book reviewws there, or you could aggregate your own reviews into that instance. it's the freedom to start new communities, while still being able to participate worldwide. it means that there's a protocol there, at the heart, for having multiple parties cooperating. it means anyone is free to build their own server or c…

I agree with everything you’ve said, but most users will never want to host their own instance. It might even be an anti feature, since it sounds like a bunch of work! This is not a benefit that most people are going to care about - at least in the way you have explained it.

I think it’s a different view. Technical-savvy people who know how the web was conceived and thought like decentralization because it promises freedom. In my (limited) experience users just want ease of use and nice UX, and just don’t take into account the long term implications of their choices. I’m afraid, like someone said earlier, that decentralization solves a problem mainstream don’t have and don’t want to have.

Re: BookWyrm is a federated Goodreads replacement

#43

Post by input_sh »

counternotions wrote: post #12

Very excited to see a decentralized alternative to Amazon-owned Goodreads & LibraryThing, the latter which I recently learned is 40%-owned by Amazon through a subsidiary AbeBooks. I'm not too familiar with the fediverse model. I noticed that registration is closed on the primary instance bookwyrm.social.[1] Is the ideal use case of bookwyrm for each user to host their own instance? Like this one: https://book.dansmon…

> As a user, I wouldn't want to sign up on someone's hobbyist bookwyrm instance only for them to shut it down later and lose all my data.

Mastodon goes around this problem by only linking to servers that adhere to their covenant[0], which includes sane stuff like daily backups, >1 person with access to the server, minimum of 3 months notice before shutdown, and moderation.

So, any community you see here[1] promises to give you a notice. I'm assuming other software will eventually reach the number of servers where something similar makes sense to implement.

[0] https://joinmastodon.org/covenant

[1] https://joinmastodon.org/communities

Re: BookWyrm is a federated Goodreads replacement

#44

Post by input_sh »

tpoacher wrote: post #38

What exactly is wrong with Goodreads? I keep hearing a lot of hate about it, but the reasons seem never expanded on. I use Goodreads to maintain a public bookshelf of books I have read or want to read. It's also nice that I can check what my friends are reading. Occasionally it's nice to read other people's views on a book. I typically tend not to agree, but it's nice that these exist. That's it. Isn't that what Good…

- It sucks at recommending books. You may stumble upon some book in the home feed, but its recommendation is as good as if it didn't exist.

- Lists suck. For example, it never anticipates even something as simple as abandoning a book (though you can create that).

- There's like a whole industry of faking ratings and nobody cares about it enough to do anything about it.

- It's owned by Amazon, but Amazon basically didn't touch it since the acquisition almost a decade ago.

Well, they did so recently to kill the API access, which was its #1 selling point to me. I liked using it by not visiting their ugly design ever, but that's not a possibility anymore.

Re: BookWyrm is a federated Goodreads replacement

#45

Post by streamofdigits »

at first sight very promising: an online application that is catering to specialized interests (hence very specific data / internal business logic) yet able to be both decentralized (multiple instances) and integrating via activitypub with other (social media type) platforms in the fediverse

the moment the open source community realises that open source is not just about freeing up things conjured up in proprietary context but opens entirely new universes will be a tipping point of sorts...

Re: BookWyrm is a federated Goodreads replacement

#46

Post by pharmakom »

tigroferoce wrote: post #42
pharmakom wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with everything you’ve said, but most users will never want to host their own instance. It might even be an anti feature, since it sounds like a bunch of work! This is not a benefit that most people are going to care about - at least in the way you have explained it.

I think it’s a different view. Technical-savvy people who know how the web was conceived and thought like decentralization because it promises freedom. In my (limited) experience users just want ease of use and nice UX, and just don’t take into account the long term implications of their choices. I’m afraid, like someone said earlier, that decentralization solves a problem mainstream don’t have and don’t want to have…

I think the mainstream does care about decentralisation, but only in so far as it affects the final experience. Censorship on major social networks is a great example. People absolutely do care, but starting their own Reddit (for instance) is far outside of their abilities. Where would you even begin?

They also don’t care about how it is implemented, just so long as it works. Sometime I feel like the HN crowd cares more about what language a product was written in than how well it serves their needs!

What is required is a platform which combines the UX of a centralised service with the ability to easily spin up new instances, is open-source, security audited, etc. etc.

Re: BookWyrm is a federated Goodreads replacement

#47

Post by Aeolun »

dictatorsunion wrote: post #18

As an avid Goodreads user, Id say 80-90% of active GR users are female teenagers. Id suggest promoting on booktwitter or booktok instead if you want more traction. There’s also StoryGraph in the running with the same if not more features and a pretty strong network effect already, but still miles away from GR. GR is the laggiest platform I have ever used, and the tech updates are minimal at best, but people still use…

> Id say 80-90% of active GR users are female teenagers.

This explains a lot about the lists I see being popular on there.

Re: BookWyrm is a federated Goodreads replacement

#48

Post by Krasnol »

matthberg wrote: post #17
counternotions wrote: post #12

Very excited to see a decentralized alternative to Amazon-owned Goodreads & LibraryThing, the latter which I recently learned is 40%-owned by Amazon through a subsidiary AbeBooks. I'm not too familiar with the fediverse model. I noticed that registration is closed on the primary instance bookwyrm.social.[1] Is the ideal use case of bookwyrm for each user to host their own instance? Like this one: https://book.dansmon…

That info is out of date, bookwyrm.social is in open registration now. A more accurate list of instances is available here: https://joinbookwyrm.com/instances/ . I signed up on bookwyrm.social (here: https://bookwyrm.social ), though it took a notably long time to receive the email confirmation message.

The whole instance is quite slow now.

Email took something around 20min for me.

Re: BookWyrm is a federated Goodreads replacement

#50

Post by varjag »

tpoacher wrote: post #38

What exactly is wrong with Goodreads? I keep hearing a lot of hate about it, but the reasons seem never expanded on. I use Goodreads to maintain a public bookshelf of books I have read or want to read. It's also nice that I can check what my friends are reading. Occasionally it's nice to read other people's views on a book. I typically tend not to agree, but it's nice that these exist. That's it. Isn't that what Good…

Yeah. It's poised to become Amazon's Google Reader, but just as with Reader there's nothing truly wrong with it aside from lack of maintenance.
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