Goodreads has no incentive to be good • Hacker News Board

Re: Goodreads has no incentive to be good

#11

Post by soco » Fri, Jun 30, 2023, 12:31 PM UTC

code-blooded wrote: post #9

selykg wrote: post #4

Typical plug anytime Goodreads is mentioned that Storygraph is trying to do similar and being actively developed. https://thestorygraph.com I still use Goodreads because it gives me notifications of new releases, but, aside from that Storygraph does the job well.

Second this. Storygraph is great and has a ton potential. It just needs a bit more development put into it to match Goodreads minus the bad parts. I wish had the "plus" subscription tier set at $10/yr not $49/yr. I'd definitely donate that much, but $49 is a lot in majority of the world.

I only use them to keep a list of what I read with my own reviews. For Storygraph I need more taps so it's slightly behind (I tried the switch once).

Re: Goodreads has no incentive to be good

#12

Post by mandmandam » Fri, Jun 30, 2023, 12:32 PM UTC

prepend wrote: post #6

> Goodreads Cares about Engagement Not Accuracy Yes, of course. Accuracy doesn’t make money, engagement does. This is the problem with the current state of the internet. People forgot that engagement was just the path to accuracy but is much harder to measure. So people realized that they can increase engagement to make money.

> Accuracy doesn’t make money, engagement does.

Accurate information creates a better society for everyone. Angry engaged people fed bullshit create a worse society for everyone.

But yeah, the incentives are perverse, and the owner-class are willing to do whatever it takes to keep them perverse.

Re: Goodreads has no incentive to be good

#13

Post by innocenat » Fri, Jun 30, 2023, 12:32 PM UTC

selykg wrote: post #4

Typical plug anytime Goodreads is mentioned that Storygraph is trying to do similar and being actively developed. https://thestorygraph.com I still use Goodreads because it gives me notifications of new releases, but, aside from that Storygraph does the job well.

Tried Storygraph once and it lacks Japanese books so I still stick with Goodreads unfortunately.

Re: Goodreads has no incentive to be good

#14

Post by seventhson » Fri, Jun 30, 2023, 12:35 PM UTC

a_bonobo wrote: post #3

It's the same with IMDB, isn't it? Toxic subgroups and communities 1-star bombing movies that haven't even come out yet. The wikipage on review bombing doesn't even list Goodreads but has many examples from IMDB: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Review_bomb#Films,_television_... So what could Goodreads do differently? It's true that the owners do as little as possible with the site, but that also means that overall the…

Require reviews to show a substantial understanding of what the book was about? That means moderation which is always dangerous but probably better than the alternative.

Re: Goodreads has no incentive to be good

#15

Post by causality0 » Fri, Jun 30, 2023, 12:35 PM UTC

dgb23 wrote: post #5

One of the good things about sites like Goodreads is that they are a great source for long winded rants. I'm someone who likes reading a good rant or complaint. I'm not sure why that is but I find them very entertaining.

It's a nice release. The two "the worst Rob Liefeld drawings" articles are some of my favorite pieces of media ever.

Re: Goodreads has no incentive to be good

#16

Post by camjohnson26 » Fri, Jun 30, 2023, 12:37 PM UTC

Bookwyrm is a great alternative I’ve been using. It’s built on activitypub so you can follow accounts from Mastodon or kbin or whatever, and can even spin up your own server if you want.

https://joinbookwyrm.com/

Re: Goodreads has no incentive to be good

#17

Post by me_me_me » Fri, Jun 30, 2023, 12:38 PM UTC

Paul_S wrote: post #10

Goodreads is only good (eh, decent?) as a database of books you've read. All the other functionality is pointless and or broken. The recommendation system is a joke and is obviously used to promote nonsense instead of giving you personalised recommendations.

I have trouble finding new authors or good books on there to the point that I stopped trying.

I only use it for reading up reviews.

I was kinda shocked reading through their top X list and finding absolute garbage, rated 8+. I wonder if they suffer from IMDB syndrome.

Re: Goodreads has no incentive to be good

#18

Post by KingOfCoders » Fri, Jun 30, 2023, 12:40 PM UTC

Whenever I read about Goodreads I had a website called MustReadBooks in the 1990s which was rather successful - should have kept developing it :-)

Re: Goodreads has no incentive to be good

#19

Post by hospitalJail » Fri, Jun 30, 2023, 12:41 PM UTC

Paul_S wrote: post #10

Goodreads is only good (eh, decent?) as a database of books you've read. All the other functionality is pointless and or broken. The recommendation system is a joke and is obviously used to promote nonsense instead of giving you personalised recommendations.

I'm not sure why people like it so much. My aunt-in-law is high pressuring me to use it.

I have my library listing all the books I checked out. I have a pdf/epub reader that has a history of the books I read(although a new phone will probably wipe that out).

For a while, I was merely writing down my books in a dedicated notebook, but I realized that it didn't really matter, if a book was important, I remembered it. If it was bad, I forgot about it. I could have typed these into google sheets so it was sharable. I wonder if that is an acceptable option.

Re: Goodreads has no incentive to be good

#20

Post by CSMastermind » Fri, Jun 30, 2023, 12:41 PM UTC

Paul_S wrote: post #10

Goodreads is only good (eh, decent?) as a database of books you've read. All the other functionality is pointless and or broken. The recommendation system is a joke and is obviously used to promote nonsense instead of giving you personalised recommendations.

The new UI "upgrades" make it much harder to use as a database of books you've read.

I accidentally marked the wrong edition of a book as read the other day and it took me like 20 minutes to figure out how to switch the entry to the correct version.