Goodreads was the future of book reviews, then Amazon bought it • Hacker News Board

Re: Goodreads was the future of book reviews, then Amazon bought it

#461

Post by kbenson » Tue, Jul 04, 2023, 5:12 PM UTC

fsckboy wrote: post #315

kbenson wrote: post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> that's a better way to run markets. I'm highly skeptical that heavily restricting buying and selling of companies in general will be a better way to run a market when it seems your goal is to prevent monopolies (or put another way, ensure competition). Laser focused policies work for a short periods but tend to be worked around quickly as the thing they regulate falls out of favor in lieu of something functionally…

> I'm highly skeptical that heavily restricting buying and selling of companies in general will be a better way to run a market when it seems your goal is to prevent monopolies (or put another way, ensure competition) ah, the markets I am talking about are goods and services markets. Financial markets, they take care of themselves, and at the same time garner no sympathy from the majority who don't participate in the…

There are no "financial markets" and "goods and services markets" beyond arbitrary groupings people make to talk about sectors and types of commerce. It's all the same thing, and companies make use of various aspects of it as they see fit.

Re: Goodreads was the future of book reviews, then Amazon bought it

#462

Post by aleksiy123 » Tue, Jul 04, 2023, 5:13 PM UTC

helges wrote: post #422

MrVandemar wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't think it would be possible for someone to change their rating but that may be a feature. It should definitely be possible. Take films. I had a friend who would go see a film. On the day he saw it: "OMG THE BEST THING EVER". Next Week: "Yeah, that was a good film". A month later: "Yeah it was okay I guess". Six months later: "A bit ordinary really" In 1990 if you'd asked me to rank the Alien films, I would h…

Yeah, I think what was meant is that the Elo rating system might make it difficult to account for changes in the rating. People change their minds all the time (and it's a good thing), I agree.

Yes, this is what I meant. Changing the rating would require storing every rating and recalculating all dependent ratings which could be quite a large DAG.

While not impossible I don't think it would be particularly scalable.

Re: Goodreads was the future of book reviews, then Amazon bought it

#463

Post by bart_spoon » Tue, Jul 04, 2023, 5:38 PM UTC

fastball wrote: post #12

Eh, Goodreads has always suffered from the same problem that plagues every other review system which uses "score out of X" ranking. Humans just aren't very good at ranking things on a normal distribution, so you invariably end up with every item (books in this case) being ranked somewhere in the 3.5-4.5 range (since Goodreads is out of 5). For IMDB the rankings all hover around 8ish. When in reality the average book…

It seems like it would be easy to just normalize scores. Rather than a book’s score being the average rating they’ve received, it should be a z-score based on all ratings.

Re: Goodreads was the future of book reviews, then Amazon bought it

#464

Post by mtsr » Tue, Jul 04, 2023, 5:42 PM UTC

lcnPylGDnU4H9OF wrote: post #446

mtsr wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’ll try to explain: Clearly there are serious scenarios outside M&A where we accept terrible failures due to regulations. Why not accept some in M&A as well?

Admittedly, I read the other comment as a whataboutism. This explanation seems to help. I think one could argue that the business failure is likely to affect more people, therefore it’s a greater impact. Still, I ultimately agree with this stance (in the context of business survival, not personal); failure is an inherent risk of business.

Agreed. The number of people affected is a big difference. But I think the comparison does make clear that isn’t necessarily a principled reason not to accept a few failures as part of otherwise useful regulation.

Re: Goodreads was the future of book reviews, then Amazon bought it

#465

Post by sn9 » Tue, Jul 04, 2023, 6:14 PM UTC

Nemo_bis wrote: post #399

mcpackieh wrote: post #26

https://www.librarything.com/

You know that's Amazon too, right?

As far as I can tell, Amazon got a 40% share in LT when they bought AbeBooks.

I don't know that a minority stake in a company counts as "that's Amazon" in any meaningful sense.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibraryThing#Ownership

Re: Goodreads was the future of book reviews, then Amazon bought it

#466

Post by CamperBob2 » Tue, Jul 04, 2023, 6:29 PM UTC

grujicd wrote: post #412

CamperBob2 wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The important thing is to actually read the reviews. A five-star place that's located 2 blocks away from a railroad crossing that's active all night won't yield a five-star experience, but the host can hardly be expected to mention that. The last AirBnB I rented was a five-star house where the host had installed one of those Nest smoke detectors with the motion-sensing night light directly above the bed. He still got…

Why 5 if your sleep was miserable (I assume)? Host has full control over that and should be held responsible if made a poor choice which affects guests. You're polite to host, but not polite to future guests.

It was easy enough to fix by taping a washcloth loosely over the sensor, and obviously my opinion regarding it being a terrible idea isn't universally shared, or he wouldn't have installed it there in the first place. So I didn't feel good about dropping a score near 100% to one near 80% just for that one thing.

There was also a massive foam rubber pad on the mattress that made the first night a rough one... but again, some people who are wrong prefer those, and again, it was easy enough to remove. Or at least, it would've been if my partner hadn't already been asleep on it when I came to bed. The resulting tossing and turning was what made the motion-sensing night light a problem.

Basically I didn't want to go full Karen on the landlord because everything else about the house was comfortable and thoughtful. I felt that a four-star rating would have been projecting a combination of my personal preferences and comically-bad luck on his other potential renters.

Re: Goodreads was the future of book reviews, then Amazon bought it

#467

Post by CatWChainsaw » Tue, Jul 04, 2023, 6:43 PM UTC

HeavyStorm wrote: post #445

Nobody finding it strange that wp is slamming Amazon?

Not really. Although I live in the DC area and subscribe to the Post, and every article that has so much of a whiff of conflict of interest includes a parenthentical aside that Bezos owns the Post. We're used to it.

This isn't likely to do financial damage such that Bezos would care, and both Bezos and WaPo "win" if WaPo looks "impartial" enough to criticize Bezos - WaPo gets to show that off for journalistic credibility and Bezos gets to show off that the media org he owns is totally willing to speak truth to power, which makes him One Of The Good Billionaires.

Re: Goodreads was the future of book reviews, then Amazon bought it

#468

Post by CatWChainsaw » Tue, Jul 04, 2023, 6:45 PM UTC

JohnFen wrote: post #70

CaptainZapp wrote: post #7

> By joining Amazon, Goodreads has accelerated their mission to delight customers with the help of Amazon’s resources and technology. Seriously, reading the diarrhea vomited out by corporate PR shills nowadays seriously makes my teeth hurt. Do those people actually believe the bullshit they're spouting to the general public?

> Do those people actually believe the bullshit they're spouting to the general public? I don't know. but I do know that the best marketers I've worked with all had one trait in common: they believed their own bullshit. One told me outright that the first thing he has to do when taking on a new account is to convince himself that the story he needs to tell is true because that stops him from having to lie.

That's remarkably honest of him.

Re: Goodreads was the future of book reviews, then Amazon bought it

#469

Post by CatWChainsaw » Tue, Jul 04, 2023, 6:48 PM UTC

CaptainZapp wrote: post #7

> By joining Amazon, Goodreads has accelerated their mission to delight customers with the help of Amazon’s resources and technology. Seriously, reading the diarrhea vomited out by corporate PR shills nowadays seriously makes my teeth hurt. Do those people actually believe the bullshit they're spouting to the general public?

On one hand I hate it, but on the other hand since I use the presence of even a single buzzword as a snake-oil alarm, I'm willing to ignore a few false positives in exchange for remarkably less technological bullshit in my life.

Compare that to astroturfing. Bill Hick's opinion is very relevant for them especially.

Re: Goodreads was the future of book reviews, then Amazon bought it

#470

Post by SoftTalker » Tue, Jul 04, 2023, 8:11 PM UTC

mynonameaccount wrote: post #292

SoftTalker wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weirdly I've rarely bought a book based on reviews on the selling site. I don't go to Amazon and browse for books, reading reviews. I go to Amazon when I've already determined from other sources which book(s) I want to buy. Maybe I'm in the minority.

Weirdly, I ONLY even look at books are best sellers. If I had to wade through books randomly, I'd rather not read a book at all.

I'm just saying I don't really rely on Amazon for reviews. I know what books I want, based on recommendations from people I trust, or sites like this one. I presume that any review on a seller's site is fake.