Goodreads has no incentive to be good • Hacker News Board

Re: Goodreads has no incentive to be good

#241

Post by heap_perms » Sun, Jul 02, 2023, 3:55 PM UTC

hospitalJail wrote: post #22

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.

Good point. I was so frustrated at how bad the book Atomic Habits was, (in comparison to Power of Habit). It felt like some 20 year old was explaining how to life a good life with all the experience 20 year olds have. Lots of idealistic ways to organize things. Lots of mental gymnastics to supposedly make you more productive. I did like the 'improve yourself 1% a day', but I did that with a spin bike and quickly got…

> It felt like some 20 year old was explaining how to life a good life with all the experience 20 year olds have.

That hits the nail on the head. I cannot comprehend how this book is so popular. It literally covered in dozens of cute little platitudes like "take little steps". It does not contain a single paragraph of original thought. It's just so... naively simplistic, so _obivous_.

Re: Goodreads has no incentive to be good

#242

Post by rerx » Mon, Jul 03, 2023, 1:15 PM UTC

jan_Inkepa wrote: post #134

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.

They have further hamstrung it recently by having it that non-moderators (or some euphemism for someone with such rights) can no longer add new books. I regularly read weird stuff not in their system and adding this extra barrier is disastrous. I still use it...well, can I say I still use it if the last time I tried to add a book I couldn't? ... I just checked back - that was a month ago, and I even made a forum post…

At least they integrated more automation so that many titles from Amazon's catalogs appear on Goodreads quite soon without manual work. So a lot of the recent stuff in the main languages at least often doesn't need to be added manually anymore.

It's crazy how much Goodreads relies on unpaid "librarian" contributions to keep their data in check. One problem with allowing the general population to add titles to the database is that the chance of getting malformed entries that will require manual fix ups (from these volunteers) later on is pretty high.

> I just checked back - that was a month ago, and I even made a forum post about the book that it be added, but nope, book's not there...it seems nobody has even looked at the post.

Volunteer librarians + zero dev support means that, if you really want to see the addition, you should bump your post daily or so until by chance it catches the eye of somebody...

Re: Goodreads has no incentive to be good

#243

Post by Cthulhu_ » Tue, Jul 04, 2023, 6:49 AM UTC

Paul_S wrote: post #230

hinkley wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I never understood that concept. What is wrong with having your own library? I have about 200 books on my shelves I haven't read and any time I want to I can find something interesting. It's s luxury but not anything I'm embarrassed about. Makes more sense than keeping the books I've already read on my bookshelves.

Nothing wrong with it as long as you have the space; anything else is more of a logistics challenge. I like owning books, sure they take up a lot of space and it's not likely I'll read or re-read them any time soon, but I think it's important to have it.

But also, more and more, having the physical space and safety to own a 'static' collection like books is becoming a luxury and a privilege.

Re: Goodreads has no incentive to be good

#244

Post by Cthulhu_ » Tue, Jul 04, 2023, 6:52 AM UTC

matricaria wrote: post #156

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.

> Goodreads is only good (eh, decent?) as a database of books you've read. All the other functionality is pointless and or broken. Why would you need a service to keep track on what you read? I have a text file with a list of book and some notes about every book. Works perfectly for me.

I mean it's convenient to have quick links to extra resources and the like, but... those are a single search query away anyway, so a text file is fine.

I really should start a notes file or spreadsheet to log my collections of things; I'm at a risk to accidentally buy doubles of e.g. video games now with all the cross platform releases and promotions. Play them though? Nah, I got a backlog and I prefer my 10 year old comfort games.

Re: Goodreads has no incentive to be good

#245

Post by twosdai » Fri, Jul 07, 2023, 8:38 AM UTC

gwill wrote: post #98

twosdai wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google maps is basically the only app as I see it which is still amazing. Besides the whole tracking your entire location thing, but you can mitigate that.

i hate how they worked ads into directions. i know some people find it easy to hear "turn left at the mcdonald's" but i've been fine at estimating distance and don't need to hear the name of a chain.

You know it's funny that I never noticed this, I always turn off the voice directions since I found them annoying.

But yeah that's an annoying experience if you use voice directions, and in some instances I could see it as really degrading the directions app, since "taking a left at the intersection" may be more clear than "turn left at the kfc"