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Winners of the $10k ISBN visualization bounty

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Re: Winners of the $10k ISBN visualization bounty

#51

Post by glenstein »

franciscop wrote: post #46

I'm curious why there's no clear "Spanish" in these ISBN visualizations; there's 2 slots for English, one for France, Germany, Japan, Soviet Union, China, etc. but no big one for Spain. Do we really have so few books in Spanish? Or is this a predominantly English distribution? I say this as someone who grew up in Spanish libraries and book shops, surrounded and immersed in Spanish books, so it feels a bit strange to…

>I'm curious why there's no clear "Spanish" in these ISBN visualizations

I had the exact same question, and I do have a completely unsupported theory. There's one large block that appears to be Argentina, or possibly Peru, although their titles are on the fringes of the large block. The block is otherwise unlabled, no name sitting at the center of the block like you see with the other major ones. I would be slightly surprised if it were entirely argentina, but it would make a lot of sense if that block were Spanish.

Re: Winners of the $10k ISBN visualization bounty

#52

Post by svdr »

tokai wrote: post #37
ivolimmen wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems that editing is not possible due to the negative point I gathered; which is weird as I just reported that I can not watch it. People seem to view everything though a political lens now. But thank you for your information; I saw the post.

No you were down voted because you claimed something false.

It it false but I would not blame the parent; the ISP blocked page is unclear and suggests the block is linked to Russia.

Re: Winners of the $10k ISBN visualization bounty

#53

Post by WillAdams »

mistrial9 wrote: post #50
WillAdams wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not a political stance, but one of basic questions of authorship and what compensation authors should receive and what control they should have over their work. See arguments by Alexander Pope in Pope _V._ Curll.

when China decided to wholesale ignore Western copyright in the digital age, completely.. the equation changed IMHO.

Yes, but dealing with that politically would be made easier by having the moral high ground.

Re: Winners of the $10k ISBN visualization bounty

#54

Post by pphysch »

bawolff wrote: post #10

I feel like visualizations of large datasets which are viewer-directed (i.e. they want you to "explore" the data instead of trying to tell you something specific about it or communicate a narrative) are often "pretty" but never particularly enlightening. I feel like that holds true for these in particular.

That's my issue with attempts to 3D-ify viz. Unless you are actually modeling a 3D volume, like medical imaging or CAD, the added "forced exploration" of 3D simply hides insights.

Re: Winners of the $10k ISBN visualization bounty

#56

Post by mannyv »

WillAdams wrote: post #53
mistrial9 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

when China decided to wholesale ignore Western copyright in the digital age, completely.. the equation changed IMHO.

Yes, but dealing with that politically would be made easier by having the moral high ground.

Not really, because it depends on the basis of morality. In fact, this 'morality' problem is shown in the existence of libraries in the US.

Is a book a collective good? Or property? In the US the answer is 'both' in an awkward way. But the US does know that having books behind a paywall is not in society's best interest.

And in reality 99% of the books will never be read, which makes their 'value' as property suspect.

Re: Winners of the $10k ISBN visualization bounty

#58

Post by gknoy »

highcountess wrote: post #26
c-fe wrote: post #24

Im slightly surprised mine won 3rd place, I believe they liked my simplicity and visualisation. Hosted at https://isbnviz.pages.dev But honestly, I find both of these better: - https://bwv-1011.github.io/isbn-viewer/ - https://anna.candyland.page/map-sample.html in particular the one from bwv is technically similar but just all around better than mine, it is what I would want mine to be

I’m glad you said that, because I was also surprised by the fact that the bwv-1011 only made it to honorable mention even though its technical focus was on visualizing the rarity of books, which ostensibly was the primary objective of the whole effort.

I really like that your page talks about _why_ a Hilbert curve is good. I don't remember ever learning about those before, and now hopefully if I'm ever trying to visualize 1D data, I might remember that :)

Re: Winners of the $10k ISBN visualization bounty

#59

Post by ksynwa »

kaladin-jasnah wrote: post #18
vessenes wrote: post #5

Public request: anybody here who hates Anna’s and wants to make a principled complaint about it? I love it and the idea of it so much, but I imagine some feel differently and I’d like to hear your best takedown shot.

Their download wait time is upsetting to me because I'm impatient and cheap (else you have to pay). At least they have the libgen links now. I don't hate Anna's Archive though.

The "external links" section is the only thing making the website usable for non-subscribers.

Re: Winners of the $10k ISBN visualization bounty

#60

Post by zozbot234 »

WillAdams wrote: post #33
bawolff wrote: post #10

I feel like visualizations of large datasets which are viewer-directed (i.e. they want you to "explore" the data instead of trying to tell you something specific about it or communicate a narrative) are often "pretty" but never particularly enlightening. I feel like that holds true for these in particular.

The thing is, ISBNs map to: - publisher - assigned title - (roughly) order of publication That's all that they communicate --- there is no hierarchy here to aid in discovery or to organize the content (and further complicating things, the same text may appear multiple times in a different binding --- a differentiation which is immaterial to an e-book). The elephant in the room of course is the matter that "Anna's Arc…

> This would be far more interesting if it were based on an hierarchical system such as LoC, and instead afforded an interface for accessing legitimately available books

Isn't this exactly what Open Library does?

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