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Goodreads has no incentive to be good

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Re: Goodreads has no incentive to be good

#231

Post by hospitalJail »

BaseballPhysics wrote: post #202
epiccoleman wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I'm off all drugs, I can quit social media whenever I want(I'm only back because of LLMs), I quit video games, I made my evenings productive instead of hedonistic. Good god, how scary. Thanks for the warning!

Not sure if you're serious or sarcastic, but I completely agree. Productivity hacking culture needs to die a painful death. Life is about so much more than just maximizing output...

I'm a Stoic.

Anyway, getting off all drugs has been great, mostly due to the hedonic treadmill/tolerance.

Similar with video games. Games are fun today, but if I play them for a few weeks, they become work.

I get way more excitement out of achieving a new 3D print design or finishing a coding feature. Not to mention, reading non-fiction is pretty great, mind blowing stuff if you find the right book, as previously mentioned.

I somewhat blame Disney, I get all excited for some hedonism, and they release a crappy starwars episode. I'm more disappointed than if I worked all night.

Re: Goodreads has no incentive to be good

#232

Post by hospitalJail »

classified wrote: post #201
veave wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Meanwhile Power of Habit was more like a pop-science book with the goal of teaching you brain science and apply it. I'd pay 50k-100k for that book, it has been revolutionary. I'm off all drugs, I can quit social media whenever I want(I'm only back because of LLMs), I quit video games, I made my evenings productive instead of hedonistic. Is it that good?

> I made my evenings productive instead of hedonistic. My condolences.

As a Stoic, this accomplishes my goals and makes me happier than when I'm grinding video games.

Re: Goodreads has no incentive to be good

#233

Post by ddingus »

kjs3 wrote: post #215
mhermher wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me, it's more of a database to keep track of books I want to read in the future . I can't read everything immediately after reading a recommendation or seeing it mentioned somewhere. Mostly I use goodreads to organize this list. It ends up getting into the "read" list after, but that part isn't as important. And when I am approaching an empty stack of books to read, I go on there and try to pop from the top of th…

it's more of a database to keep track of books I want to read in the future. I use a notepad.

I do that for a lot of things. Paper has no downtime, is robust, etc...

When it comes to longer term basic information, bitmaps and text are where it's at!

I can always convert my paper to a bitmap, and often from that to text if I want to. And authoring simple text basically works on every computer going back to the Apple //e I started on, which sits on my workbench to this day. (it's there to play various games people still write for it!)

Re: Goodreads has no incentive to be good

#234

Post by qingcharles »

hinkley wrote: post #154
larperdoodle wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But you don't just track books you've read, you also track books you want to read, which is much harder to remember. I also tag them to indicate if I already own them and in what format (physical, epub, audio). Saves me from purchasing duplicates when I'm at the used book store.

> you also track books you want to read https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tsundoku I know exactly what books I want to read.

Wow. I didn't know there was a word for this. This is why I only use ebooks now because physical books would just pile up.

10 years in jail got my reading list down considerably though. Managed to read over 800 books, though the one book that I really, really wanted to read[*] I only obtained just before my release and never finished: In Search of Lost Time by Proust.

[*] Based on a comment by a character in Murakami's 1Q84 that the only time you will have enough spare time to read Proust is if you end up in prison.

Re: Goodreads has no incentive to be good

#237

Post by [deleted] »

squirtlebonflow wrote: post #196
pklausler wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's a free idea for you budding entrepreneurs: allow the user of a review site to apply their own custom weights to reviewers. If you discover a reviewer with good taste, weight their reviews more highly. And also be able to incorporate their weightings of other reviewers into your own -- if A thinks highly of B, then that raises your default weighting of B.

This is a decent idea, but not sure how it could work. I'm no mathematician, but it seems like you're dealing with an extremely large set of infinite fractions, that might take some time to compute. For example, if I leave a 5 star review and there is one other review, 1 star, it would be 3 stars if we had the same weight. But if someone votes me 76% "taste score", and THEY have 50% weight, and I voted THEM 37% "tast…

[deleted]

Re: Goodreads has no incentive to be good

#238

Post by saargrin »

myth_drannon wrote: post #29
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.

There are two recommendations systems in Goodreads. One is the official, I agree it is completely broken. The other is "Readers also enjoyed" section on each book page and this one is very good.

its not very good in my experience, within a few "next" clicks you're completely off the path of whatever you were looking for

Re: Goodreads has no incentive to be good

#239

Post by cafard »

Bellend wrote: post #219
cafard wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use a Google Sheet for the neighborhood book club list. It is handy for reference--did we read X , and if so, who picked it? The group has been going for something like 18 years, after which even the very good and the very bad can be forgotten.

Would you consider sharing the sheet? I am always looking for books!

I sent it to your Gmail address.
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