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Bookwyrm – A federated social network for reading books

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Re: Bookwyrm – A federated social network for reading books

#181

Post by mekarpeles »

rg111 wrote: post #166
https443 wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, I just realized Open Library covers like 80% of Goodreads as well: read/to-read lists, ratings, yearly reading goals. Seems like https://openlibrary.org itself would be a fine Goodreads alternative if you don't want to set up your own Bookwyrm instance.

I have been using the Open Library app for almost a year now. I am very satisfied with it. After GR removed the ability to add books manually by users and added stringent rules for them to be added to consideration by "librarians", I stopped using GR. I read a lot of obscure books that often don't have ISBN or an webpage (!). I can't track them or add them! It was so unfair. So, I moved to OpenLibrary and have been u…

That's awesome. May I ask, for pre-ISBN books, do you typically look up books by title? What do you do with books when you find them? What is your primary use case / reason? Is it as a reference library (of things to read)? Keeping track of reading?

Re: Bookwyrm – A federated social network for reading books

#182

Post by the_third_wave »

sanderjd wrote: post #146
the_third_wave wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Federation can help if you run the software yourself since your identity and your "content" are tied to your instance just like they are with email. As long as you keep it running and make sure the software is up to date with current federation standards you're more or less safe from all those hazards. If the developers of Bookwyrm grow out of their anti-capitalist phase and sell it to Amazon, get that family and rea…

This makes some sense, but couldn't this also be achieved with a centralized but open source product?

No, that would make it possible to create alternative instances to use if and when the main instance goes belly-up. Those alternative instances would start afresh, without the user base and lacking any content created by them. If there were more than one alternative instance the two would not communicate unless they employed some sort of federation - ActivityPub or something similar - or some mirroring scheme.

Re: Bookwyrm – A federated social network for reading books

#183

Post by bovermyer »

Daegalus wrote: post #160
bovermyer wrote: post #154

For me, this is too much effort. Instead I have a page on my site that tracks my books read. https://www.benovermyer.com/kb/books/

On a bit of a side note. I have been thinking of rebuilding my blog/site from the ground up to be simpler, cleaner, and have more info. Your site just gave me a ton of inspiration on how to make it better and how to make use of it better. Especially since I am trying to go the more POSSE/IndieWeb route. I was even considering making a historical section where I unearth old projects and sites I built. I recently found…

Thanks!

Also... I never thought of fetching my old sites from the web archive and resurrecting them on my current site... that's a great idea.

Re: Bookwyrm – A federated social network for reading books

#185

Post by sanderjd »

the_third_wave wrote: post #179
sanderjd wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think people fall back to SMTP when a chat product goes away, I think they find a new centralized proprietary chat product. SMTP survives in its federated form because of path dependency. And people didn't start using email because it was federated, they started using it because it was an entirely new capability to most people. The federation was how its creators managed to implement such a thing at that peri…

> I don't think people fall back to SMTP when a chat product goes away, I think they find a new centralized proprietary chat product. ...after they told their "friends" (i.e. other users of the failed app) via email about that hot new app that is totally going to be the place to be. That is what I mean with "SMTP abides", it is there and will be there while the centralised proprietary churn comes and goes. SMTP is ea…

> ...after they told their "friends" (i.e. other users of the failed app) via email about that hot new app that is totally going to be the place to be.

There may have been a time when people spread the "hot new app" via email, but it ended decades ago at the latest, when Facebook came out. But I dunno, even before that, I heard about this kind of thing on AIM or one of the many other ones that already existed at that time.

But you don't have to convince me that email is great! Or that federation in general is architecturally satisfying. I'm right there with you and most other tech enthusiast.

But that's all beside the point being made here. The point is that federation is not why email was successful, or why it persists. It was just an implementation detail of a capability that was fundamentally novel to most people when they first came across it.

But that novelty is not the case for "Twitter - but decentralized!" or "Goodreads - but decentralized!".

Re: Bookwyrm – A federated social network for reading books

#186

Post by Daegalus »

bovermyer wrote: post #183
Daegalus wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On a bit of a side note. I have been thinking of rebuilding my blog/site from the ground up to be simpler, cleaner, and have more info. Your site just gave me a ton of inspiration on how to make it better and how to make use of it better. Especially since I am trying to go the more POSSE/IndieWeb route. I was even considering making a historical section where I unearth old projects and sites I built. I recently found…

Thanks! Also... I never thought of fetching my old sites from the web archive and resurrecting them on my current site... that's a great idea.

Ya, it happened accidentally. I was planning to play the Warhammer Online private server, and I used to build addons for it. I went digging for those as they were never in source control. Found them in a website, then saw a blog link I didn't remember until I found it on wayback. Then I just started digging and found others I vaguely remembered.

I figured extracting them as much as possible and just making it like a museum to my past self. Images are all gone but layout and text is there.

Re: Bookwyrm – A federated social network for reading books

#188

Post by bluepod4 »

masukomi wrote: post #90
bavarianbob wrote: post #76

I can't be the only one with a burgeoning appetite for an experience that is solely focused on the individual. I don't care about being social in this domain and that opinion often feels like a contrarian one. I want to track my books, my thoughts on those books, and my upcoming queue. There's a handful of services that provide a wonderful curation of books to read (mostly human-curated) and as such, my queue is neve…

This is a fediverse app. there are no algorithmic recommendations. > There's a handful of services that provide a wonderful curation of books to read (mostly human-curated) and as such, my queue is never empty. I feel like you didn't even _look_ at what you were commenting on. This is LITERALLY that. Think Goodreads but without the BS influence from its Amazon overlords trying to sell you something or people mass-dun…

> mass-dunking on a book that hasn't come out because they disagree with the author's politics

Sometimes this is a positive depending on the particular politics (i.e. nazis).

Re: Bookwyrm – A federated social network for reading books

#190

Post by rg111 »

mekarpeles wrote: post #181
rg111 wrote: post #166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have been using the Open Library app for almost a year now. I am very satisfied with it. After GR removed the ability to add books manually by users and added stringent rules for them to be added to consideration by "librarians", I stopped using GR. I read a lot of obscure books that often don't have ISBN or an webpage (!). I can't track them or add them! It was so unfair. So, I moved to OpenLibrary and have been u…

That's awesome. May I ask, for pre-ISBN books, do you typically look up books by title? What do you do with books when you find them? What is your primary use case / reason? Is it as a reference library (of things to read)? Keeping track of reading?

Yes, by title. And I often find out about them from friends, colleagues, and acquaintances. I also find out about a great deal of books from other books, either mentioned or cited/referred to.

I read some books cover to cover, and some are kept as references. Books are mainly on Math, Philosophy, and History. There are other topics, too.

I read in 4 languages and GR is very Anglo-centric. That's another issue.

I wanted to track my to-read and read for every book that I found.

I cannot do that with GR anymore.

(I am unsure to whether you are asking about my use case about the sites or the books. So I answered both.)

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