[HN Gopher] Goodreads Is Terrible for Books. Why Can't We All Qu...
___________________________________________________________________
Goodreads Is Terrible for Books. Why Can't We All Quit It?
Author : pseudolus
Score : 181 points
Date : 2023-08-31 10:05 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (thewalrus.ca)
(TXT) w3m dump (thewalrus.ca)
| AlbertCory wrote:
| As a reader and also author, I get to find out who some of the
| users are:
|
| Mention you wrote a book, and you get flooded with offers to
| review it.
|
| Goodreads really IS pretty worthless. I want to like it, but I
| just can't.
| loeg wrote:
| All this handwringing over GoodReads in recent weeks seems to
| miss the point. It's actually useful to users? People who like
| books are attracted to it, for all its ills. I don't think that
| adds up to "terrible for books."
| nicechianti wrote:
| [dead]
| reedf1 wrote:
| All I want is a book review aggregator like IMDb, metacritic or
| opencritic.
|
| Finding a way to search Goodreads for top 100 sci-fi novels with
| certain tags shouldn't be an abject navigational nightmare or, in
| some cases, completely impossible.
| ptoo wrote:
| I was hoping to do this as a project. The issue I had was
| having access to a database of all books with an ISBN, or which
| books to include.
| anirudhrx wrote:
| I just use Goodreads to keep track of what I read so I can go
| back and see some highlights from certain kindle books that I've
| semi-forgotten. I dislike their goals in terms of "books/month"
| and "books/year" - which IMO emphasizes entirely the wrong aspect
| of reading and makes a meaningless quantitative assessment!
| Reddit for recommendations works way better.
| alentred wrote:
| Not the first time I see a post here about how terrible Goodreads
| is. I, for my part have always found it doing exactly its job. I
| am not an avid reader - around one book a month - and I use it to
| manage my bookshelves, review the comments before acquiring a
| book, share my reading progress with some of my friends who also
| use it, which gives me motivation to start the next book every
| once in a while. I leave comments from time to time too, mostly
| for professional books, not fiction.
|
| I don't understand what is missing? Old-school UI? Come on, this
| is not Twitter, you are not supposed to be hooked to it 24/7. I
| spend 10-15 minutes on this website once a month, I can live with
| old-school. Ratings not realistic? This is a joke compared to
| Amazon. There are authors on the website? All the better, I can
| connect with the author (actually sounds amazing to me!). Lack of
| content moderation, although I didn't encounter any serious
| issues myself, is a problem I agree with if this is the case.
|
| Anyway, maybe the fact that there is no popular alternative
| speaks for itself. I know there are some alternatives but nothing
| as known as Goodreads as far as I can tell.
| loeg wrote:
| You've hit the nail on the head. Goodreads is pretty useful for
| readers.
| bwanab wrote:
| Totally agree. I have a list of to-read books that will last
| more than my lifetime and I keep adding to it - with stuff I
| know I want to read. What possible value would recommendations
| be for me?
|
| I have found that I learn a lot about the books I've read from
| other reader's reviews, which I tend to read after I've read a
| book and not before.
|
| The UI is adequate. Who cares?
| pavon wrote:
| Agreed, the only "social" aspect of it that I use is when
| people insist on getting me gifts I tell them books are always
| a good option and point them to my goodreads to see what I've
| already read, and get an idea of what I like.
| stuart78 wrote:
| I entirely agree, and that is how I use it as well. Really it
| is just a log of the books I've read and my progress against my
| annual challenge. I appreciate that I can see the opinions of
| others, and I ignore 100% of their recommendations.
|
| I don't want or need it to do more.
| prepend wrote:
| My issue is that they don't have good recommendations. And they
| shut down their api and don't share their data with users who
| want to calculate their own recommendations.
|
| Their UI is fine. Their ratings are as good as any other
| ratings.
|
| I would hate a "modern" Goodreads and am glad Amazon bought it
| and abandoned it rather than Meta who tried to make book
| readers live stream their reading or whatever stupid stuff
| they'd try.
| esperent wrote:
| There's other places to get recommendations. This site has
| had some great book recommendation threads. Then there's lots
| of great threads on various subreddits.
| jsbisviewtiful wrote:
| Sure, there are other places to get recommendations - but
| what is the point of Goodreads, my collected reading
| library and my ratings if I can't get recommendations from
| the site?
| NegativeLatency wrote:
| Most of my friends switched to StoryGraph and it's been quite
| good
| causi wrote:
| I discover new books by looking at the websites of publishers of
| books I already like or by word of mouth. Goodreads seems like a
| place that doesn't make anyone's life better.
| emptyfile wrote:
| [dead]
| RedditKon wrote:
| There is a great How I Built This episode about GoodReads:
| https://www.npr.org/2022/02/04/1078415544/goodreads-otis-and...
| krono wrote:
| Only use it to see if/where a book belongs to/in a series. No
| other aggregate-type website seems to provide this information in
| any usable fashion.
| _hzw wrote:
| For fiction, there's Fantastic Fiction
| (https://www.fantasticfiction.com)
| krono wrote:
| Cheers! It looks to be slightly more limited compared to
| Goodreads (e.g. no expanded series/universes, no different
| reading orders, etc.) but its the best alternative so far.
| throw310822 wrote:
| Don't get all this constant bashing of Goodreads. Not that I am
| an active user: I tried but decided that the books space is way
| too big for a working recommendation algorithm. The website's
| design is a bit old and could use some improvements, but it
| basically does the job. If anything, it feels like a relic of a
| better past, more careless, less monetised and less gamed. I
| sometimes use it to check reviews and I usually find good
| content.
| purpleflame1257 wrote:
| I get 90 percent of my reading material from the little free
| libraries and other book giveaway shelves. It makes things
| serendipitous.
| noyesno wrote:
| If anyone is looking for a better alternative, I can highly
| recommend Library Thing (https://www.librarything.com). It
| connects with various library databases around the world for
| metadata and the forum discussions can yield great
| recommendations.
|
| The only downside is that it is a bit dated in its UI.
| ianburrell wrote:
| I have both LibraryThing and Goodreads and usually use the
| latter because the integration with Kindle makes it easier to
| keep my library updated. There isn't much difference between
| them if don't use the social features of Goodreads.
| samelawrence wrote:
| I also use LibraryThing, and I switched over when GoodReads was
| acquired by Amazon. I love LibraryThing, and they do monthly
| giveaways of new books by indie authors. I try to recommend it
| to everyone I know, so thanks for plugging it in this thread.
|
| Here's my profile, if anyone wants to be book-nerd friends:
| https://www.librarything.com/profile/awesame
| bakul wrote:
| I've used LT since 2006. I like its interface which presents a
| lot of information on one page instead of lots of white space.
| And I like its features, groups, discussions etc. Though my use
| has dropped off now.
| karaterobot wrote:
| Librarything has more features, better recommendations, better
| admins, and a better community overall. It's good for books. I
| have no idea why you'd use Goodreads at this point.
|
| Edit: I just checked, and Librarything has a scavenger hunt going
| on right now to celebrate their anniversary. The founders wrote
| the clues themselves. Each clue refers to a specific page on the
| site, and if you go to that page you get a point. They do this a
| few times a year. How adorable is that? The Goodreads equivalent
| would probably be an ad for a Kindle.
| abcdaiojjdfoj wrote:
| I love Goodreads. I use it to rate and review books I've read. I
| use it to read reviews of books I have (or might want to) read.
| And I follow people who write interesting reviews.
|
| I never look at whatever Goodreads recommends. The people I
| follow usually come across interesting books I would have never
| heard of. If they review a book, and it sounds interesting, I add
| it to the top of my list of things to read. This is a giant semi-
| sorted text file. If I feel the urge to read some book, and it's
| already in my list, I will put it to the top of the text file. A
| bit like a splay tree. I don't care that my stuff is not
| perfectly categorised and systematised because reading habits are
| not like that.
|
| I pay no attention to the actual star rating of books on
| Goodreads. There are a lot of bad reviews on Goodreads. You
| usually know within 2 seconds whether a review will be worth
| reading. Sometimes I will filter books by lowest star. I often
| found the people I follow because I saw them write an
| intelligent, detailed, dissenting review of a book.
| mmanfrin wrote:
| Because of the kindle integration. That's it. It's too
| frictionless that when you finish a book on kindle, you press 1
| button to rate it and it updates the book on your shelves to
| read, adds your rating, and then will set the next book you start
| as 'currently reading'.
|
| IMO this is an insurmountable moat for any service that would try
| to challenge it.
| Jemaclus wrote:
| This is 100% the correct answer. I've spent a lot of time
| brainstorming ways to take on Goodreads, and this is the moat
| that I can never seem to cross.
| cameronfraser wrote:
| wow out of all the comments only one person actually answered
| the question
| jowea wrote:
| Is Kindle that dominant among book readers?
| xoxxala wrote:
| Yes. Kindle is around 65% the ebook reader market in the
| US. Nook is about 25%. Apple and Kobo make up the rest.
| Kobo is more popular in Canada and in other international
| territories.
|
| https://booksliced.com/books/the-exact-ebook-market-
| shares-o...
|
| The Goodreads integration into Kindle cannot be overstated.
| bwb wrote:
| Ya, it is a big barrier.
|
| But, you just have to approach it from different angles.
| Don't attempt to compete with Goodreads, but rather build
| something better that works in a new way around people's
| desires around books.
|
| Goodreads is just a review database, easy to innovate
| around that barrier.
| jowea wrote:
| Fair enough, but that is just ebooks. Isn't goodreads
| also useful for dead tree readers? Although I guess the
| bibliophiles on goodreads are more likely to have an
| ebook reader.
| Finbarr wrote:
| It took a little finagling but ChatGPT is actually a very good
| interface to Goodreads:
| https://chat.openai.com/share/b460a929-4e70-4bfd-bd12-e61e78...
| indigo0086 wrote:
| All of these sites are basically "aggregators" for individual
| content that can be submitted by official sources or users.
|
| RSS.
|
| Instead of bespoke walled gardens that require some centralized
| control and teams, why not a standard to aggregate content and
| just put it in place on an html site.
| CSMastermind wrote:
| I use Goodreads almost every day and it's a great way to keep
| track of what I've read, how I liked it, and my notes about it.
|
| Occasionally it's interesting to see what my friends are reading.
|
| That's it.
|
| I certainly have complaints about the site but I think the
| author's hyperbole here is a bit much.
|
| And as for the ratings and reviews which the author seems hyper
| focused on - I've generally observed the opposite, ratings on
| pretty much everything are suspiciously high. I'd be willing to
| bet that 90% of the books on the platform have a rating above 3 /
| 5.
| SamBam wrote:
| Yes, but inflation simply means you re-set expectations. I
| admit that, if I'm looking for a new book and I see that it's
| rating average is under about 3.8, I start to wonder what's
| wrong with it.
|
| Of course, I like plenty of books with a lower average rating,
| but that does give me my first impression.
|
| (It reminds me of when I was requesting a house on Airbnb and
| the owner writes "what's with the 4.9/5 rating you have?
| There's got to be a story about that." It turned out anything
| below a 5 set off his red flags.)
| winrid wrote:
| I quite like it for finding books in the same series. For
| example, this finds all the ringworld[0] books, but the other
| site mentioned in this thread does not [1].
|
| EDIT, but looks like LibraryThing, also mentioned here, does![2]
|
| [0] https://www.goodreads.com/search?q=ringworld&qid=DjSO9UZu2o
|
| [1] https://www.worldswithoutend.com/searchwwe.asp?st=ringworld
|
| [2] https://www.librarything.com/nseries/703/Ringworld
| crossroadsguy wrote:
| For me this is the only place where I can find all the books I
| read -- that includes a lot of Hindi and Urdu and also English
| books published in India. GoodReads have them all! Other places?
| Of course not.
|
| So I just use it to track and the yearly reading challenge. I
| like seeing that achievement :)
|
| There's ZERO other activity from me on GoodReads. By no means
| it's a social network for me.
| adamzochowski wrote:
| For fantasy and sci fi there is nothing better than : Worlds
| Without End https://www.worldswithoutend.com/
|
| The site tracks multiple literary awards:
| https://www.worldswithoutend.com/books.asp
|
| The site tracks books by nominations and awards:
| https://www.worldswithoutend.com/lists_top_noms.asp
|
| The site tracks top book recommendations by literary critics:
| https://www.worldswithoutend.com/lists.asp
|
| And finally, most read books.
| https://www.worldswithoutend.com/lists_top_reads.asp (I hate that
| most sites don't allow me to sort not by rating, but by votes
| cast, or by review count)
| sgslo wrote:
| Are there any recommendation engines like this that also allow
| filtering by books included in Kindle Unlimited?
| bwb wrote:
| Amazon makes that semi illegal per their TOS is my read
| there. We can't even show their ratings of a product or else
| they stomp us.
| sontek wrote:
| https://www.booksloth.com/ is a goodreads alternative that
| doesn't suck
| matthewtse wrote:
| I've always felt one of the main points of books was to read
| something just for yourself, and detox from anything
| online+social. So Goodreads always seemed to cheapen whatever
| book I read.
| yanis_t wrote:
| I built myself https://www.candlapp.com/ which runs the fifth
| year already. Specifically because as a book worm, I have an urge
| to track what I read and plan, follow favorite authors, etc., but
| have zero interest in social stuff.
| Scarblac wrote:
| It's fine, it has all the books I read and it tracks my to read
| list.
|
| Why do people care about any social functions on it?
| sevenseventen wrote:
| It's used for sea-lion ideological attacks against authors and
| works, a specific outcome of the general review-spam issue.
|
| The data is terrible and badly governed. There was a recent
| thread here, I believe, about an author who couldn't get AI-
| written books out of her name because they simply won't correct
| their data.
| loeg wrote:
| > There was a recent thread here, I believe, about an author
| who couldn't get AI-written books out of her name because
| they simply won't correct their data.
|
| Worse, those books were being sold on Amazon!
|
| https://janefriedman.com/i-would-rather-see-my-books-
| pirated...
| Ruthalas wrote:
| What is a sea-lion attack in this context? I haven't heard
| that one before, and it's not the easiest to search.
| soderfoo wrote:
| Had to look it up as well:
|
| _' Sealioning' is a form of trolling meant to exhaust the
| other debate participant with no intention of real
| discourse._ [0]
|
| [0] https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/sealioning-
| internet...
| rg111 wrote:
| It has gotten more closed in its approach. I cannot download my
| own data anymore.
|
| And the UI was always bloated and clunky.
| manicennui wrote:
| People are probably looking for a good place to discuss books
| they've read.
| sigzero wrote:
| Agreed. I use it in the same way and it allows discovery of
| "similar" books. I love it for that. I comment occasionally on
| the author's I follow. For example, Boris does a lot of reading
| and review of horror genre books, so I comment on his reviews
| letting him know if his review helped me to get the book in
| question or not. That way he knows "someone" is reading his
| reviews. That's about the extent.
| elric wrote:
| I haven't a clue. I like Goodreads. I can read reviews, get
| notified when my favourite authors publish new work, and keep
| track of what I'm reading.
| willtemperley wrote:
| At least Goodreads allows me to read a word or two of content
| before:
|
| 1. Asking me to sign up for the Walrus newsletter. Does anyone
| actually do this? 2. Asking me to donate - despite being
| conspicuously ad-supported.
|
| Unimpressed with the walrus.ca.
| davidmurdoch wrote:
| [flagged]
| ioddly wrote:
| I only use it as a light tracker of what I've read, but I'm
| moving to Obsidian for this purpose. The main thing it does for
| me is be a relatively good way to search up metadata about a book
| (author, year published, etc). Is there something more open?
| (Looked at LibraryThings, but its API does not seem to be
| available currently).
| macjohnmcc wrote:
| I only use it to track what I am reading and my progress. I don't
| use it for recommendations from others or to see what the authors
| I read are doing. Maybe as a social network around books it sucks
| but as a way for me to track my reading it's fine.
| snats wrote:
| I stopped using Goodreads recently and started using an open
| source alternative to track my book reads[1].
|
| I was only using it to keep track of what I was reading so it
| made sense for me to just use this app instead.
|
| [1] https://github.com/mateusz-bak/openreads-android
| lapcat wrote:
| I started tracking my own book, movie, and TV reviews in text
| files. No third party involved.
| irrational wrote:
| I read a ton of books, but I've never used Goodreads. What is it
| about Goodreads that makes people want to use it? If you can
| identify why you want to use it, then you might have identified
| why you can't quit it. For me, it is like smoking. I never
| started smoking, so I don't need to quit it and feel no desire to
| start (or start again for those who did quit in the past and are
| tempted to start again).
| ozarker wrote:
| Goodreads scratches an itch in my stupid monkey brain by
| tracking everything I've read. I gain some satisfaction/sense
| of accomplishment looking back at stuff I've read. I should
| probably find a better way to track my reading
| bogwog wrote:
| How about a bookshelf?
| jzb wrote:
| Low-value answer. I'm in my 50s, I've lost track of how
| many times I've moved and culled books. (About to do that
| again, cull anyway...) There's also ebooks, library books,
| etc.
|
| After, oh, ten years, I'm likely to forget whether I even
| read a book or not. And unlikely to have a physical copy
| unless I really liked it. So "bookshelf" is a pretty flip
| and un-useful answer.
| otachack wrote:
| I'm not sure if this helps but I started a blog and while
| I don't create many posts I do have a section for "What
| I've read" and simply post the book title + author under
| a certain year and that's it. It's been useful and
| gratifying to see it build. It also serves as a reference
| when I'm forgetting a book, helping me kick start the
| memories of it.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| I do most of my reading via library books, either physical
| or digital - a bookshelf wouldn't help me there, nor would
| it help me organize books by multiple categories, or
| remember what I rated them as, or let me easily leave and
| search notes about them.
|
| I don't use GoodReads' social aspect at all, but I do use
| it as a book database, and will continue to do so until
| they remove the ability to exfiltrate my data.
| giraffe_lady wrote:
| This sounds jokey but it's a serious question: what would
| you lose by not doing any of that?
|
| I read a lot, and used to use goodreads for this, and now
| I don't use anything for this. I have a messy little
| notebook where I write down books I want to read so I
| don't forget they exist.
|
| I inconsistently cross them off as I read them, and all
| together it's enough to usually remember what I read and
| often remember how I felt about it. It turns out my
| reading life isn't improved by any more than this.
|
| I like keeping a journal as I read and find that
| valuable. But goodreads isn't well suited for that and I
| never look back through it anyway. Writing it is useful,
| indexing it isn't.
|
| IDK my reading isn't your reading but you might be
| surprised how little of the goodreads feature set is
| actually valuable if you stop using it.
| 6gvONxR4sf7o wrote:
| Some tangible things I'd lose:
|
| - I read a lot and so friends not-infrequently come do me
| for recommendations. Having rated a big chunk of the
| things I've read, I can sort by rating and scroll for
| things they'd like. Often I go "holy shit I forgot all
| about that one, but it's perfect for Bob."
|
| - I'm always looking for the next thing to read, and it's
| really nice to be able to quickly scroll through my
| (long) 'want to read' list for something that piques my
| interest for the mood I'm in.
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _what would you lose by not doing any of that?_
|
| Not much, all things considered. But I have a pretty bad
| memory, and it can be hard to remember which books by an
| author I've read, and which ones I haven't.
|
| I guess I could just store all this in a spreadsheet, or
| email myself reviews, but this is convenient enough that
| I don't do that.
| bstpierre wrote:
| Two main things I use it for:
|
| 1. Keeping track of where I am in a series. Goodreads has
| a handy feature where you can see the list of books in a
| given series. I maintain a reading list with (way too
| many) different series and it has my next book in each
| one.
|
| 2. Remembering which books I've read. (Kind of related to
| #1.) More than once I've gotten more than a few pages
| into a book and realized, "hey I'm pretty sure I read
| this before".
|
| Either of these would work in a notebook or spreadsheet
| but that would require changing my workflow (and
| "importing" a long list of books).
| sleepydog wrote:
| My library's (Brooklyn Public Library) website shows me
| all the books I've checked out and even lets me keep
| public and private reading lists. No place for me to
| write reviews though, last time I checked. Since I almost
| exclusively get my books first through this library, then
| buy the books I really really liked, the checkout history
| functions as a good enough database for me.
|
| It would be awesome if it were federated with other
| libraries somehow, since I also use the NYPL.
| compiler-guy wrote:
| The library fines end up being too high.
| eblanshey wrote:
| Obsidian has a book search plugin that people use to create a
| library of notes: https://github.com/anpigon/obsidian-book-
| search-plugin
|
| I recently came across it in a youtube video but haven't used
| it myself.
|
| Edit: video I came across:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7PFFJlyiv28
| AB1908 wrote:
| I remember that the Google books API didn't return page or
| word counts. That was the only thing missing so that I
| could create a book database of things I want to read
| ordered by size/length/reading time.
| bemmu wrote:
| That, and I also get value out of tracking books I might want
| to read.
|
| Whenever a book references another book I may want to read
| later, or there is a HN comment recommending a book which
| sounds interesting, I'll add it to my "to-read" list. Then
| when I finish my current book, I can sort this list by
| average rating to decide where to go next.
| n4r9 wrote:
| I use it purely for the Groups. In particular, one group called
| "The Evolution of Sci Fi" which I've been a member of for some
| years now. They have a monthly read which I rarely have time to
| acquire and get through, but have sometimes read recently
| enough to contribute. Plus various interesting discussions
| about sci fi past and present.
| draxil wrote:
| I had no idea the site had groups!
| n4r9 wrote:
| The UI is especially bad for browsing and discovering
| Groups. However it's almost the only aspect I interact
| with. I've set up email digest notifications for new
| messages so that I can instantly click through to active
| discussions.
| shortrounddev2 wrote:
| It's performative, like all social media. It's about signaling
| to your social network that you are an intellectual
| throwawa14223 wrote:
| Goodreads lets me get a list of books I've read, share
| recommendations with my retired father, and once in a blue moon
| it makes a good recommendation to me. My biggest issue with
| books is discoverability. That being said, I must report two or
| three spammers a day.
| Fluorescence wrote:
| I've used it but I forget it exists. I wish smoking was like
| that! I'm not sure what the addictive element is meant to be.
|
| The reviews are poor enough to just be a waste of time I regret
| looking at. I mostly read non-fiction history, science, health,
| politics and something I have only noticed recently is that so
| many Amazon and GR reviews are just political takes - using the
| review section to advance or attack some position instead of
| actually discussing the book. Pretty tiresome.
| throw1234651234 wrote:
| I think I remember every single book I have read that's worth
| reading, and that list is in the hundreds. Not because my
| memory is so good, but how do you forget if you actually
| thoroughly enjoyed it / got something out of it?
|
| edit: I don't have a goodreads acct and don't fully remember
| what it is, but I think the value there is finding people who
| like books you like, especially less famous ones, and then
| finding what else is on their list.
| PartiallyTyped wrote:
| I have a modest library, and I used to use it to track things I
| want to read, but that has been replaced by the "save for
| later" button in amazon's store.
| gjulianm wrote:
| I use it (sparingly) for tracking which books I've read/want to
| read, getting recommendations and seeing what people say about
| certain books as (partial) information to check if they're
| worth the time
| w0m wrote:
| > What is it about Goodreads that makes people want to use it?
|
| I dive deep into a number of long-running series.
| Cosmere/Sanderverse, Star Wars, Dresden Files as examples. Once
| you step away from a series/topic for a bit, it's hard to walk
| back and see "What did I read? What's next?" - especially when
| you're doing it via (multiple) libraries.
|
| GoodReads is the best I've found for tracking so far. I also
| have a private-notebook for some series - but goodreads is just
| _easier_. If you feel negative value in a feature (following
| authors /communities seems like line noise?) - just don't use
| That feature. I have ~300 books on my 'Read' shelf - That's
| valuable information moving forward I use when deciding What's
| Next.
| prepend wrote:
| I use it for tracking lists.
|
| It's easier than keeping my own cloud doc and looking up titles
| and authors.
|
| That's it. I like a list of all books I've read and if I liked
| them. And I like a list of books I want to read.
|
| I'm happy that I can see what my friends read, but that's not a
| determining factor of using the site. And way less since no one
| I know uses facebook any more.
| brigadier132 wrote:
| I don't use it at all. Social media is terrible, why can't we
| quit it? I include HN in there.
|
| The two big social media apps I use are HN and Youtube. (Reddit
| used to be up there but a lot less now because I don't get
| recommended anything good. They really upped their reliance on
| the "algorithm" so after I clicked a "drama" link once my
| recommendations got destroyed with trash.)
|
| HN is mostly high value content but still it's not the most
| effective use of my time. Youtube is either very high value
| content or very low value content. No in between. Sometimes I
| find myself getting recommended garbage and I click into it and
| get mind trapped for a few minutes but catch myself and get
| myself out of it. I don't want to have to navigate these
| "dopamine traps" every time I want to watch an interesting
| lecture or video on a topic I actually care about.
|
| edit: I even click in on my name to check if I've gotten any
| upvotes or responses. I understand it's all worthless but I still
| click in a semi autonomous way.
| voisin wrote:
| > HN is mostly high value content but still it's not the most
| effective use of my time.
|
| Wonder how we could make it more effective. I'd love a keyword
| filter. Or an algorithm I can train myself to teach it what I
| like and don't like. ChatGPT summaries of the comments to
| filter the wheat from the chaff would be helpful too.
| listenallyall wrote:
| HN works well because the top stories are same the top
| stories for everyone. Having the #1 story be unique and
| algorithm-driven for every user would be detrimental to the
| site and the sense of community.
| voisin wrote:
| In what sense would it be detrimental? If the top news for
| the day is a new Google product, and I don't care about
| Google, why would it be detrimental to anyone if I didn't
| see that?
|
| I think you are conflating externally driven, top down
| algorithms, with users expressing their own preferences
| over what they see.
| listenallyall wrote:
| I disagree, HN is like a broadsheet newspaper, it
| encourages a sense of discovery and often learning that
| things you didn't initially have an interest in, can be
| interesting or perhaps a parallel to something with which
| you are engaged.
|
| Further, no personal preferences means the site isn't
| _expected_ to be tailored to you specifically, this
| promotes a certain sense of deference where people are
| exposed to lots of ideas, concepts, industries,
| experiences and viewpoints -- nobody is an "expert" here
| and on any particular day, there may be multiple things
| for you to weigh in on, or none, and that's ok. Along
| with fair, objective moderation, the discussions here are
| mostly well-behaved, non-partisan and civil, which all
| the sites you can personally customize fail to achieve.
| esperent wrote:
| I've been thinking of this for a while - something like an
| advanced keyword filter that would work across most webpages,
| using a smaller LLM maybe?
|
| Personally I'd love to put in the names of some American cult
| of personality figures - Musk, Trump, the Kardashians etc.
|
| Ideally it would filter out all posts and comment trees on HN
| or reddit that are about these people and a handful of other
| topics. Even if it only worked on those two sites it would be
| a huge improvement to the internet for me.
| throw1234651234 wrote:
| Someone explained magazines to me a decade ago as discovering
| stuff you don't know you don't know about. That's the value of
| HN.
|
| I also find that keeping up with the news on the regular basis
| is a waste of time and it's mostly regurgitations of the same,
| but when I tried cutting it completely, I find that in a couple
| of months I am completely out of the loop and it takes quite
| some time to catch up.
|
| This is not a useful example, but it's a funny one. I was out
| of the country and away from tech for 3 months and when I
| opened my door on returning to the US, the delivery guy was a
| teenager, and says "Man, you have so many good Pokemon in your
| yard!". I had NO idea what he was talking about and said "Oh,
| cool". Found out Pokemon Go was a thing a few weeks later.
| DwnVoteHoneyPot wrote:
| At least reading the headlines of news is important for
| chatting in social situations.
| bavell wrote:
| Perhaps in the sense that now you're misinformed together,
| rather than being uninformed.
| throwaway71271 wrote:
| I actually block all social media besides youtube on my pi-
| hole, and I unblock it manually for 5 minutes when I want to
| consume some hn/twitter.
| shortrounddev2 wrote:
| re: Reddit
|
| A lot of the main subs you see on the homepage are not
| explicitly political subs, but they end up having almost
| nothing but political content (/r/whitepeopletwitter,
| /r/facepalm, /r/therewasanattempt) and Reddit seems to ignore
| me when I block subreddits. So, even though I WAS a reddit
| addict for 10 years, they changed the formula and now I'm just
| not hooked anymore. Thanks Reddit!
| brigadier132 wrote:
| The one I got recommended once (despite not being subscribed)
| was AITA. Which is cheap (and I'm certain 99% fake) reality
| tv content. I clicked it once and now that's it, that's all I
| get.
| kodt wrote:
| Yeah, it is really terrible. Any sub with user submitted
| drama stories were terrible. Many are fake or ragebait, or
| at the least extremely one sided accounts meant to garner
| sympathy. You click on one and it starts feeding you more.
| The comment sections are really terrible in those subs as
| well, there is no reasoned discussion going on.
| wing-_-nuts wrote:
| use reddit enhancement suite in conjunction with old reddit,
| and 'filter' subs you don't wish to see from r/all.
|
| Reddit is so much nicer with all of the toxic crap filtered
| out.
| shortrounddev2 wrote:
| I'm happier not using it at all
| ddq wrote:
| As someone who did this for years, it's like methadone or a
| nicotine patch. Harm reduction, but you really are better
| off quitting. There really is nothing of value left on
| r/all, and outside of some small niche or highly moderated
| exceptions, almost nothing of value left on the site.
| BizarreByte wrote:
| Reddit and the subs themselves may not be explicitly
| political, but the site leans incredibly heavily to one side
| and seemingly can not shut up about politics for even a
| moment. I honestly think it might be one of the most toxic,
| worst for your mental health social media sites that exists.
| quaintdev wrote:
| I have added RSS feeds of limited channels to my miniflux
| instance and I browse youtube from there.
| manuelmoreale wrote:
| That is the most sane way to consume YouTube content. I'm
| doing the same on reeder. I have all the channels I care
| about in a folder and that's it. Only thing that bothers me
| is that the RSS feed has both videos and shorts mixed
| together and I really dislike shorts.
| masfuerte wrote:
| You don't have to visit the youtube website. People recommend
| videos here and I sometimes use a search engine to find them.
| To watch them I use youtube-dl or VLC. It's marginally less
| convenient but I avoid a world of nonsense.
| FreshStart wrote:
| Addon: Whitelisted because found up voted on HN
| rfmc wrote:
| can you link it? The only relevant searches are related to
| adblock whitelisting.
| Roark66 wrote:
| I don't include HN in the same "social media" as
| twitter/facebook/Instagram. Over there most people use their
| real identities and it seems they take everything very personal
| as a result. Here people are just nicknames in a comment
| section. Points aren't even shown next to the nickname so
| people are more or less equal in comments. Personally I don't
| have "friends/followers" on this site nor I seek them (which
| seems the main drive on sites like facebook/Instagram/twitter).
|
| Does HN meet the definition of "social media"? Yes it does, but
| is it the same kind of social media as these others? I don't
| think so. I don't see many negatives of sites like HN. Even
| Reddit could be a nice experience if certain things were
| tweaked there (atrocious user interface, showing up/down votes
| next to posts, showing account age, probably a better algorithm
| etc)
| Kiro wrote:
| Nothing gives me more anxiety than HN so I personally think
| it's much worse.
| dingnuts wrote:
| >I don't include HN in the same "social media" as
| twitter/facebook/Instagram
|
| I don't either -- HN is the same category as Reddit which is
| much worse to me.
|
| >Over there most people use their real identities and it
| seems they take everything very personal as a result. Here
| people are just nicknames in a comment section
|
| There are plenty of people taking things personally here, all
| the time, and if you stick around you'll notice that a good
| number of them either use their real names as a handle or
| have it in their profile. And there are "celebrities" here
| just like there are on Reddit, except here it's usually tied
| to some high-ranking position at a company. For instance, the
| CEO of Matrix has many comments under the username Arathorn
| in almost every single post about Matrix.
|
| >I don't see many negatives of sites like HN
|
| Tree-style nearly-endless commentary combined with an
| algorithmic ranking of "top" stories that may have a big
| payoff if I just press refresh one more time turns out to be
| way, way more addictive than "traditional" social media, at
| least for me. Twitter never hooked me, and I kicked Facebook
| a decade ago, but even after forcing myself to use a privacy
| frontend for Reddit and never, ever logging in, I'm still
| addicted. I spend hours a day scrolling, and resolve to quit,
| and then go back.
|
| I do the same thing here. It's so bad that I consider HN and
| Reddit to be as addictive as video poker.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| There isn't any clear definition out there of what "social
| media" is I'm aware of, but I'd say the basic criteria
| include some combination of:
|
| - User-submitted content
|
| - Individualized experience based on algorithmic curation,
| follows/subscriptions, or both
|
| - Ability to directly interact with other users, whether
| publishing to some kind of profile or "wall" of theirs or
| sending direct messages
|
| - Users have some kind of durable persona (at minimum a
| human-readable, memorable account name, but usually a
| multimedia profile of some sort)
|
| Hacker News mostly has none of these things. A very small
| proportion of top-level content is user-created and there is
| algorithmic curation, but not individualized. This is really
| more of a newspaper without writers or editors. The stories
| come from other platforms instead and every reader's letter
| gets published automatically.
|
| Reddit isn't social media, either. It's a discussion board.
| There has to be _something_ that made MySpace and Facebook
| different from phpBB and Usenet or why 'd we come up with a
| new word at all? People seem to be using "social media" as a
| general derogatory name for any potentially addictive, high-
| noise, low-signal time sink that encourages mindless
| consumption of undifferentiated "content" and creates bad
| incentives to creators of such content to abandon truth and
| artistic integrity in favor of flashy gimmicks and trend
| surfing.
|
| But that describes virtually all of pop culture.
| satysin wrote:
| I don't include HN as 'social media' either mostly because it
| doesn't constantly ping me when I get a reply. I have to
| check manually. It also don't change much so checking it once
| or twice a day for ten minutes isn't a big deal.
|
| I feel if we include things like HN as social media then we
| need to include Newsgroups/BBS, Forums of the late 90s, etc.
| and literally every site online where a person can post a
| comment.
|
| Perhaps _technically_ they are all social media but to me
| when someone says 'social media' I think of the never ending
| feed of content that is manipulated to keep you coming back
| like a drug along with notifications about every "like" or
| comment or retweet (or whatever we call them now), etc.
| marktangotango wrote:
| Agreed. Discovery is a big problem with youtube. There seems to
| be a pattern. Like I've been researching hardware designs for
| real time image processing lately. Over time the same search
| terms reveal more and more relevant links. Overall youtube
| search is completely useless.
|
| And one wrong click and you're inundated with garbage. Same for
| all social media really. At least hn doesn't have a per user
| "feed" (yet).
|
| One thing I've noticed about goodreads is there are two
| distinct types of users. One type gives thoughtful reviews that
| are all text. The other type give shallow vapid reviews replete
| with emojis and memes and usually end with "didn't finish the
| book".
| epolanski wrote:
| They also completely broken the search functionality. If I
| look for a topic I get 10 videos the algorithm decides are
| relevant and after that I only get random stuff.
|
| So many times I remember to have seen a video about something
| and I just can't find it even with the right keywords. If I'm
| lucky I find it on...bing search filtered by videos.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| Youtube recommendations are really good if you exercise self-
| control over what you watch, conscious of your view history
| shaping your recommendations. Never click on any video that
| uses a clickbait thumbnail or title, even if it seems
| relevant to your interests. The algo will pick up that you
| enjoy clickbait slop and give you more of that. Ideally,
| don't even use an account in the first place; use a browser
| cookie with no account, and delete that browser cookie to
| start over if your recommendations ever stray too far from
| your desires. Seed the recommendation system by searching for
| specific videos that are relevant to your interests. And
| again, never click on crap, even out of momentary curiosity.
|
| Learn to recognize signals for slop. Slick well-produced
| video channels with multiple people working for them will
| tend to become slop even if they don't start that way; having
| a cameraman/producer/editor on payroll pressures a channel to
| perform well to pay for those people, so such channels will
| tend to pump out shallow content to keep revenue steady if
| not growing. As soon as a one-man channel hires a cameraman,
| that's usually a good time to tap out. Particularly if the
| host is chummy friends with the cameraman; the pressure to
| perform by compromising quality will be greater when the
| channel creator is paying his friends to help. This is why I
| had to stop watching NileBlue; as soon as he got a chummy
| cameraman his video quality took a steep nose dive with
| sensational gimmicks taking precedence over substance.
| Given_47 wrote:
| > Learn to recognize signals for slop. Slick well-produced
| video channels with multiple people working for them will
| tend to become slop
|
| Right. I really wish there was some "average joe" filter.
| The noise/signal ratio would surely still be high, but a
| hell of a lot more manageable than the inauthentic and
| affiliate nonsense that gets gamed for the algorithm.
|
| Obviously anecdotal but my favorite review videos all r
| ones by someone recording off their laptop, all with a
| noticeable noise floor. It's unfortunate that the very well
| produced vids seem to be negatively correlated with quality
| of substance, so I'll keep sticking with my annoying noise
| floor videos
| godshatter wrote:
| I've gone so far as to only go to YT with a browser that
| clears everything on close. I don't log in to YT, all I do is
| keep a local file that I use as my home page where I keep the
| link to the video tab of content creators I enjoy.
|
| When you go in "fresh", the world is your oyster for
| approximately three videos, maybe four, then the algorithm
| has completely made it useless. So, I either go through a
| link to a creator and see what they've been up to lately or I
| go to a fresh YT homepage and search for what I'm looking
| for. The first search is probably still heavily curated, but
| it seems to give me more interesting options. When I find a
| video I like, I go to the creators page and add the link to
| my home page.
|
| I don't log in mainly for privacy reasons, but it also causes
| me to only be able to search my particular bubble, pretty
| much. Going in from the outside gives me much better results,
| at least before I've watched too many videos in a chain. I'm
| a patron on patreon for a few my favorite creators, which I
| generally swap around every now and then for those who have
| Patreon accounts. I don't think I've ever bought anything
| from a creator's sponsor. It weirds me out that randos on the
| internet are now expected to be commercial shills and
| personal brand curators as well as video creators.
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| I consider the fact that people use it like TV to be a
| problem. YouTube (at least the way I perceived and used it)
| was a thing where your friends tipped you off for what to
| watch or look for or you needed a visual demonstration or
| explanation from a "real person" where it would otherwise
| be much harder to get up to speed by yourself. And it was a
| lot more of a bona fide social experience because of that
| (you were not NOT going to totally reminisce with your
| buddy that told you about it later), just not within the
| confines of the direct interface/site itself.
| antondd wrote:
| I've had a similar problem with YouTube. What helped me was
| a) disabling the history; b) heavily curating my
| subscriptions. I only try to consume content that comes from
| either my specific searches (e.g. "how to change oil in a
| motorcycle") or from the channels I follow. You still get
| occasionally sucked into "recommended" videos, but it is much
| better than having to rely on the front page of my account
| feeding all kinds of garbage.
| tux1968 wrote:
| Using the "Not Interested", and "Don't recommend this
| channel" options on recommendations you don't like does
| seem to help a fair bit too.
| teddyh wrote:
| I strongly recommend RYS: <https://lawrencehook.com/rys/>
| siboehm wrote:
| You can achieve close to the same thing using uBlock
| element zapper, without installing extra plugins. I use
| the same trick for SO ('Hot Network Questions'
| darkpattern) and other sites.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| I tried to navigate youtube search by simply sorting by view
| count, since I figure that's at least moderately more
| difficult to game, and not subject to the algorithim.
|
| But it turns out that for more general search terms youtube
| will simply not show lots of high view count videos, and
| which ones specifically can change with each search. (It does
| always does show a large amount of music videos, Indian
| media, disturbingly repetitive gaming/meme stuff, children's
| videos, etc...)
|
| So even a ranked list of which video has the most views
| apparently is algorithmic to some extent.
| Fluorescence wrote:
| > view count ... not subject to the algorithim
|
| That would seem like a way to deliberately cream off the
| most algorithmically pushed videos!
|
| I wonder what might be a good anti-algorithm indicator -
| maybe a mismatch between two metrics that normally
| correlate with highly pushed content. View count over time
| might be interesting. Big spikes might be bad sign
| indicating external push. Playlist inclusion might be good
| to pick up on some human curation. Some measurement of link
| sharing on other social sites might be helpful... like what
| google used to do. Sigh.
| MichaelZuo wrote:
| Well that's of course the case but I meant it in the
| sense of algorithms used to pick what shows up on my
| screen as opposed to others entering the same search
| query.
|
| Ideally there would be such a facility to allow for the
| removal of at least one layer of algorithmic suggestions.
|
| PageRank for videos is a neat idea though, maybe call it
| VideoRank?
| pmarreck wrote:
| ML-powered discovery based on shared activity, I believe,
| without significant randomness mixed in, tends to get trapped
| inside local maxima.
|
| I am reminded of Pandora stations that eventually loop and
| play the same 15 songs over and over again. Same problem
| today in other systems, though.
| Roark66 wrote:
| >Agreed. Discovery is a big problem with youtube.
|
| As well as with their parent Google. Did you know the minus
| sign is meaningless in the search now? Man, Google search is
| so useless now I'd actually pay a monthly fee (up to $10) for
| them to give me a bloody regex based search.
| alwaysbeconsing wrote:
| Kagi does not have regex but it does have some basic
| booleans, wildcard, and most important, exact word
| searching that actually has an effect:
| https://help.kagi.com/kagi/features/search-
| operators.html#se...
|
| (Not affiliated with them except as a very happy customer.)
| jezzamon wrote:
| I was surprised to hear that the minus was meaningless, but
| turns out that no, it does still work
| asaddhamani wrote:
| You might like Kagi in that case. I've not really used
| them, but they have a lot of customisation options and they
| charge for their product.
| [deleted]
| Obscurity4340 wrote:
| Please pay Kagi then, it would be a better world online and
| offline if we started rewarding the good-faith actors for
| once. That you're already willing to cough up for it is
| encouraging, just take that last step. Their browser is
| sick too (Orion) if you're of the Apple persuasion.
| imachine1980_ wrote:
| >Discovery is a big problem with youtube
|
| youtube is for long-shot the best discovery(maybe tiktok) is
| not uncommon now that you get high quality videos for channel
| whith sigle video and dont show trash content from known
| creators,the new problem is maybe that the high quality
| content require high quality teams means more money and more
| pressure to monetize but youtube video quality is leagues
| ahead from what it was 10 years ago, now you have science,
| philosophy, history content than produce consistent research
| by various people content, such as Asianometry.
|
| use instagram reel or twitter and most content is trash, the
| latter rquiring you to follow the correct people, thats
| virality. discovery is hard that why you use more netlfix
| than hbomax, tiktok than instagram
| __loam wrote:
| HN is high value content surrounded by delusional and
| unempathetic tech bros.
| sieabahlpark wrote:
| [dead]
| vlunkr wrote:
| > Social media is terrible, why can't we quit it?
|
| Is it though? Don't you think maybe the billion of social media
| users around the world are getting some value out of it? It's a
| pretty shallow take.
| alwaysbeconsing wrote:
| I do agree that "social media is uniformly bad" is too broad
| a stroke. That said, humans aren't exactly the best at
| discriminating something that feels good from being unhealthy
| or at least unproductive.
| vlunkr wrote:
| Yeah I agree. It's easy to list some negatives of social
| media (doomscrolling, bullying, building unrealistic
| expectations for your life), but the simple ability to
| connect many people all over the world is pretty hard to
| argue against. Social media companies push shallow, easy to
| digest content, but that doesn't mean that there aren't
| thousands of meaningful interactions happening every day.
| dspillett wrote:
| _> edit: I even click in on my name to check if I 've gotten
| any upvotes or responses. I understand it's all worthless_
|
| I don't much care for the upvotes (nor the occasional down) but
| the responses are not always worthless. In fact a count of
| responses (in total or since last visit) would be more useful
| to me in the top right of the page where the vote count
| currently sits.
|
| Someone might be correcting or refining what I've said in a way
| the I'll find useful, or someone could be asking for clarity on
| what I've said which, assuming I have time to respond back,
| might be useful to others too, or might highlight that I'm not
| as sure as I thought I was originally which again may help my
| understanding.
|
| This isn't true elsewhere of course, HN is one of the few
| places online, other than private groups, where responses have
| a reasonable chance of being useful.
| malfist wrote:
| I agree, in addition, it's recommendation engine has rapidly
| devolved into "suggest only the most popular books in this
| genre" type recommendations.
|
| Say, if I want to read grimdark fantasy novels, and I've
| already read all of Joe Abercrombie and Mark Larwence books and
| didn't like Glenn Cook, good luck getting anything else out of
| the algorithms. There's no discovery, just regurgitation of
| whatever has been blessed by the masses.
|
| And that's when things aren't manipulated. Take any popular
| category and it's all gamified. Someone is manipulating the
| most recent book to the top of the "best of all times" list,
| even recent self published crap gets into the top
| recommendations for popular categories. It's all manipulated
| garbage and Amazon doesn't seem to have any interest in
| changing it since it gets them sells or Kindle Unlimited
| subscriptions for that self publisher.
|
| I've fallen back on critics and awards to curate my read lists.
| It's not as specific, but looking back on what I've enjoyed
| reading most recently, almost all of them have been awarded a
| hugo award. So now I just go through the award winner lists and
| pick something that looks interesting. I recently discovered
| the Imperial Radch series this way and really enjoyed it.
| matthewmcg wrote:
| Anyone else miss sites carefully edited by a small team like
| longform.org?
| MailNerd wrote:
| I'm using Goodreads to check the ratings for books, and it has
| better signal for that than Amazon (where the minimum book rating
| seems to be 4.4)
| rendang wrote:
| I am an occasional user of the site and basically get value out
| of it two ways
|
| 1) check if any FB friends/acquaintances have read the same books
| that I have 2) use the ratings to rank-order the books of a
| particular author. E.g., if I know I want to read another Balzac
| or Mishima novel, I check the ratings to see which one I might
| try next
| ak_111 wrote:
| It's fascinating how many simple-idea websites are dominated by
| user-hostile dark-pattern infested players: Linkedin for
| professional networking, glassdoor for job reviews and goodread
| for book reviews.
| criley2 wrote:
| I mean, just add "...except it's profitable" to the end of all
| of your simple-ideas and you'll probably end up in the same
| place they did. There's not a lot of profit in simple ideas
| executed cleanly.
| ak_111 wrote:
| Why not? If you have simple idea that organically has lots of
| demand I would imagine executing cleanly is an advantage.
|
| There are plenty of examples: craiglist for classified ads,
| plentyoffish for dating (or at least used to), gandi for
| domain registration, github (as opposed to sourceforge which
| was filled with dark patterns)...
| lapcat wrote:
| It's a cliche, but it's true: if you're not the customer,
| you're the product.
| mcpackieh wrote:
| > _It is, in fact, possible to have a decent time on Goodreads.
| [...] I still use the site daily_
|
| Why can't _you_ quit it? Because you lack self-control to act on
| your convictions and desires. Worry less about why other people
| "can't quit" it, because other people may not even want to quit
| it in the first place. Worry more about why _you_ lack the self-
| control to act on _your_ stated desire to quit it.
|
| I don't use Goodreads, I use LibraryThing. What you are
| experiencing is a 'you problem', not a 'we problem'. I guess you
| are trying to frame it as a 'we problem' to make yourself feel
| better about your lack of self control. Stop doing this, this is
| a mental crutch to shield your ego from acknowledging the you
| problem. Framing it as a 'we problem' prevents you from fixing
| the problem you have with yourself.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| I read a fair amount. Always have. I have never felt the urge to
| track it.
| elzbardico wrote:
| I am an avid reader. Never found goodreads interesting. I don't
| want to transform reading books in a gamified, cheap experience
| that all too easily can devolve into status seeking.
| snarf21 wrote:
| I dumped it even pre Amazon purchase .. The killer feature I
| _still_ want is to see highly rated books I haven 't read from
| people who highly rate books I rate also rate high ..
| Recommendations are far too often it is always just
| genre/author/popularity recs .. Honestly, I'd be happy with a
| SQL interface where I could do my own searching :)
| hotnfresh wrote:
| Yuuuup. A lot of people have a very different idea of "good"
| than I do, and then there's the tendency to rate anything
| that wasn't terrible a 5 (on everything with ratings, not
| just good reads). The ratings distribution gets smashed
| against the top of the range, making it almost useless.
|
| Like... lots of OK books that plenty of people enjoy are a 3,
| even judged only against their peers. That's fine. I want the
| actual 5s, though. I've got too much to read as it is, if I'm
| going to add something to the list I don't want to factor in
| the ratings from someone who rated the worst Harry Potter
| book a 4 or 5.
| padolsey wrote:
| I had the exact same feeling several years ago so I made a
| graph-based app that does that! ablf.io/?q &
| ablf.io/goodreads (the latter lets you upload your existing
| goodreads lib if u want)
| CoBE10 wrote:
| I always wanted a book site similar to what RateYourMusic has for
| music and film. Librarything has always been better imo.
| camillomiller wrote:
| For the same reason we can't quit Instagram (or TikTok), despite
| it being abundantly clear that it's extremely detrimental to our
| mental health.
| freedomben wrote:
| Meta comment that is probably borderline HN guidelines, but I
| think different because I'm honestly looking for information
| rather than just bitching.
|
| I can't stand when websites pop up those near full-screen things
| like that asking me to subscribe or put my email in or something.
| I haven't even finished the article! I couldn't because you
| blocked it. I could click the X and finish reading, but lately I
| won't, I just hit Ctrl+W.
|
| Has anybody seen the data behind those? Do they actually work?
| Given how often I see them used and how nearly every marketing
| site on the planet includes them (and generally marketing is a
| very data-driven field), I would think they must be effective,
| but it's just so counter-intuitive to me that interrupting
| somebody's flow would make them more likely to subscribe to you.
| olives wrote:
| Goodreads is functionality and user-experience wise not amazing,
| but I think for a majority of the population it "works just
| fine". As someone who reads almost everyday, I end up using it
| roughly once a week to post updates or add to my to-read list.
| Given this frequency, I'm willing to overlook a lot of the poor
| UX.
| say_it_as_it_is wrote:
| Is this book actually a good book or is it recommended because it
| was written by someone of a group that people want to promote?
| eterevsky wrote:
| Why quit Goodreads completely if you can just use the good parts
| of it? I use it to:
|
| - manage my "read" and "to-read" books,
|
| - glance through a couple of top reviews for the book that I'm
| intending to read
|
| Goodreads is super useful for these features. I don't know how
| many times I saw a mention of a book, added it to my to-read list
| only to finally read it years later.
|
| What I don't do on Goodread:
|
| - look at the average score (it's meaningless),
|
| - engage too much with social features.
| isykt wrote:
| Goodreads was acquired and is kept on life support to funnel
| traffic to Amazon and keep competition for online book reviews
| from impacting the Amazon sales. It's not clear that anyone even
| works on the site anymore, it's a zombie.
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| This sentence in the article made me laugh. "The awfulness of
| the user experience is surprising, given Amazon's purchase of
| Goodreads in 2013." No, no, it's not a surprise at all. Both
| Amazon's general track record with acquisitions and then their
| specific reasons for buying Goodreads.
| Kaibeezy wrote:
| "Goodreads was the future of book reviews. Then Amazon bought
| it." Washington Post, 01 July 2023.
| https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2023/07/01/amazon-...
|
| _The site is built on outdated technological infrastructure,
| which made the cost of overhauling and updating it a challenge
| that was ultimately not worth it for the e-commerce giant,
| according to former employees who spoke on the condition of
| anonymity to discuss sensitive matters. Meanwhile, limited
| manual content moderation and a lack of protective features
| allow users to engage in targeted harassment known as "review
| bombing" -- behavior that has resulted in the cancellation of
| books and their authors._
|
| ... _Former employees said Amazon seemed happy to mine
| Goodreads for its user-generated data and otherwise let it limp
| along with limited resources. In Amazon's more than 20-year
| history, the company has made dozens of acquisitions, and it is
| not unusual for it to try to cheaply acquire properties in
| markets that it wants to dominate, only to let them languish._
| ...
|
| _Goodreads "hasn't been all that well maintained, or updated,
| or kept up with what you would expect from social communities
| or apps in 2023," said Jane Friedman, a publishing industry
| consultant. "It does feel like Amazon bought it and then
| abandoned it."_
| xhkkffbf wrote:
| I quit it long ago. It has the worst aspects of social media
| crossed with the worst aspects of gossipy wine clubs.
| martingoodson wrote:
| The deeper problem here is that review sites don't work well for
| things as personal as books. I've read many books based on
| excellent reviews in amazon, and hated many of them. Most people
| don't have the same taste as me. Likewise many people hate the
| books I love, and give one star reviews to them.
|
| What's the solution to this?
| rg111 wrote:
| Having a good circle of friends or being part of a serious book
| club. You form personal connections with people of similar
| taste. You get goos recommendations from such people.
|
| There are books mentioned inside books and movies that you
| like. Try those.
|
| Search for a book in particular topic, append reddit. Go to
| reddit thread, and try books that appear in many comments are
| the most upvoted.
|
| Search "books" on HN. You will get ~10 years worth of reading
| in about ~30 mins browsing.
|
| You must have people that you look up to- professionally, among
| relatives, etc. There must be some people that are bookish?
| Take recommendations from them.
|
| You must have a niche area of interest? Follow forums/groups of
| that group. What books come up more often? Read those.
|
| There are a lot of such advice that I can continue with.
| Probably a whole blog post. But, that's for another time.
|
| All advices above are practised by me. None are theoretical.
| seneca wrote:
| The social side of Goodreads isn't for readers. It's for people
| who want to be seen to be reading. It's the kind of people who
| badly want to be seen as intelligent, and well-read. Read the
| reviews of books. They're terribly pretentious, and packed with
| the same kind of faux-insite Quora is. I'd be embarrassed to be a
| regular user.
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| The people you're describing do exist. But you deciding they're
| the typical case says more about you than it does about them.
|
| Many people love reading and cataloging their books and
| connecting with a few friends online, all earnestly.
| seneca wrote:
| Sure, that's entirely fair. I was trying to delineate tool
| usage from social usage with my first sentence, but maybe I
| failed to do that. I appreciate the feedback.
| marktangotango wrote:
| The social side of Hacker News isn't for hackers. It's for
| people who want to be seen to be hackers. It's the kind of
| people who badly want to be seen as intelligent, and well-
| informed. Read the posts here. They're terribly pretentious,
| and packed with the same kind of faux-insite Quora is. I'd be
| embarrassed to be a regular user.
| henry2023 wrote:
| And we don't even read the articles. A LOT of comments (this
| one for example) are made only with the submission title as
| context.
| [deleted]
| ZacnyLos wrote:
| Bookwyrm -- fediverse alternative: https://joinbookwyrm.com/
| robobro wrote:
| this is awesome! As soon as I saw this thread pop up, I
| thought, "this could be a fediverse app..."
|
| It speaks to the value of fediverse that so many services are
| becoming fedi-ized. Not just Twitter, Instagram, Youtube,
| blogs, 4chan, reddit, but even GoodReads.
|
| Thank you for sharing this link!
| sinistersnare wrote:
| I have been using Bookwyrm for my personal reading list. Would
| recommend! Easy to set up.
|
| I hear there are some issues with its licensing. They seem to
| use some sort of 'anti-capitalist' license which is non-OSI.
| But I think that its ok, we need to start experimenting again,
| and clearly the OSI model isn't working.
| Ruthalas wrote:
| Do you recommend the instance you are on? I am looking to
| join, but the English speaking instance list was smallish,
| and I was having trouble choosing.
| sinistersnare wrote:
| I am using https://bookwyrm.social (my username is 'davis'
| on it)
|
| to be honest, I have not tried hard to use any of the
| social features. But hopefully soon I will try them and
| have more to say. But for now, all I need is the list of
| books I want to read, a way to track my progress, and also
| some light organization. This works great, and it's guilt-
| free compared to Goodreads!
| Ruthalas wrote:
| Thank you!
|
| I am especially excited that they have an import feature.
| dade_ wrote:
| same reason people don't quit LinkedIn. It's a self updated list
| of books, just like LinkedIn is a self updating Rolodex of
| people.
|
| They are very reliable for these core functions, and quite
| unreliable for any other. when someone figures out how to disrupt
| them, Microsoft/Amazon will crush them or buy them.
|
| This is why we have regulations against monopolies, but there are
| far bigger fish to fry these days.
| bwb wrote:
| For me, I don't love Goodreads and I don't use it, but I was very
| excited for it during the initial few years. I don't think Amazon
| knows what they are doing with it beyond controlling real estate
| and data.
|
| Why did I get excited about Goodreads?
|
| I want to know what people are reading and what they love and
| why.
|
| I love hearing that from my friends, and I want that on a wider
| level from humans. I love knowing what someone else loved to read
| and why, it helps me explore books and ideas and this weird
| world.
|
| (its why I started shepherd.com)
| apgwoz wrote:
| Has anyone tried https://thestorygraph.com/ as an alternative? I
| don't read enough to want something like this, but I remember
| hearing about the story of this in the CoRecursive Podcast
| (https://corecursive.com/the-story-graph-with-nadia-odunayo/)
| NelsonMinar wrote:
| It's pretty good, I think it's the most credible competitor to
| GoodReads. But it suffers from the usual social network
| problem; you go where your friends are.
| bwb wrote:
| Check our hardcover.app too, cool project in addition to
| story graph
| nestorD wrote:
| I use it and I am happy with it!
|
| The interface is good, the plots provided are useful, I like
| their transparency on upcoming features, and the fact that the
| premium version is not needed and mostly a way to support them
| financially.
|
| On the minus side, their search engine and recommendation
| system could be improved and it does not seem to be able to
| sort the books I want to read by most recommended.
| NoMoreNicksLeft wrote:
| Last night, I was trying to figure out what the art was on a
| paperback book cover from the 70s (Destroyer #2, Death Check).
| Only have bad, low-res scans of it. Good Reads was the only site
| that had anything like substantive summaries of it (more than
| one, mixed in with reviews). Eventually figured out that it was
| supposed to be a chess piece (the villain plays chess, from the
| summaries).
|
| Where else was I supposed to go?
|
| Same thing with Google. I really _want_ to quit it, but when you
| plug the keywords into DDG and it doesn 't seem to have a fucking
| clue what you're searching for, what's your next move?
| 8s2ngy wrote:
| I have seen many people mention using goodreads, and other web
| apps to track their reading list. I don't understand using a
| webapp for this simple use-case. I have always used a simple org
| file, with the author's name as the first-level heading, and the
| books I have read from them as second-level headings below it. Am
| i missing something here? Why do people want to use an online-
| only service for this simple thing?
| skydhash wrote:
| When I discovered Goodreads, I wasn't a proponent of plain text
| yet. And it was great for discovering books and authors. I
| barely used the social aspect, treating it as a database of
| books instead.
| stolenmerch wrote:
| Because I read a lot of books with various editions, alternate
| covers, etc. I want to track that metadata and if I'm going to
| just go copy/paste it from Goodreads anyway, I might as well
| just log it there then periodically export that list.
| SamBam wrote:
| Because it can be nice to read reviews to decide what to read
| next.
| bscphil wrote:
| This argument is puzzling in that I really struggled to
| understand what it is that the author thinks is so terrible about
| Goodreads. If the conclusion of the argument is supposed to be
| that we (Goodreads users) should all feel the desire to quit it,
| then presumably the problems with the platform will be applicable
| to all users, not just a handful.
|
| On the one hand, she complains that Goodreads is not just a space
| for readers, it's also a space for authors. On the other hand,
| she takes the perspective of authors (and is one herself), and
| complains that Goodreads hasn't done enough to stop review
| bombing. It's somehow _both_ a problem that authors and readers
| can interact on the site (as pointed up by the fact that she
| received a thank you from an author for her early positive
| review), and that the site doesn 't focus enough on the author
| experience. Even if the problem is supposed to be that the site
| is unfocused, not really prioritizing any one's needs in
| particular, that's not likely to cause a typical user to want to
| leave unless the problems become much more concrete than that.
| And it's _really_ not clear that a typical user would be upset
| about interacting with an author on the platform, or attending a
| Q /A session, etc.
|
| While I readily admit that Goodreads has a bunch of issues
| (amateur reviewers taking themselves much too seriously,
| interface problems), I'm not sure _my_ complaints are even
| salient for this author. To me, in fact, statements like the
| following suggests that her problems with the site might be more
| personal:
|
| > My to-read list ballooned alarmingly, not from titles I felt
| drawn to out of genuine desire but ones the algorithm pushed on
| me. The thrill of discovery, too, felt compromised: every time my
| feed told me a friend had added a book that I'd found first, I
| felt a frisson of annoyance. Have some imagination.
|
| > I use it to get a rough and ready sense of how a book might be
| selling based on the number of ratings and the speed at which
| they accrue. I use it to drop five stars on upcoming books by
| friends, giving their work a tiny boost in a landscape where a
| book can live or die based on hype.
|
| As a Goodreads user, I find it perfectly passable at what it does
| - allow users to catalogue books they _have_ read and books they
| _want to_ read, find potential new books to read, and view a feed
| of books read by their friends. Unlike the author, I 'm glad
| Amazon has more or less abandoned it. It's not a perfect site, or
| even a great one (their recent UI update made it so that adding a
| "read date" to a book you've just finished now takes 10 steps
| instead of 2), but the flaws are minor enough that I'm not
| strongly compelled to look for an alternative. I suspect this
| experience is generalizable enough that this is why "we" can't
| quit it.
| azangru wrote:
| Odd. I find book reviews there, with the rating, quite a decent
| indicator of whether I might enjoy a particular book.
| izietto wrote:
| I have more problems with this article that doesn't let me select
| text than with Goodreads
| ConfusedDog wrote:
| I got a few friends invited me on Goodreads to read books
| together, but it never really worked out besides knowing what
| books they are reading or interested. Everyone's reading habit
| and interest are different. On one hand it's good to know what
| your friends' interests are, and may read those books so you have
| a common topic to discuss during gathering. On the other hand, it
| also creates a psychological procrastination something similar to
| hoarding a whole bunch of books and never actually reading them.
| cm2012 wrote:
| Power users do keep the internet running but they complain so
| much. I guess they believe idealistically in the projects so it
| hurts them when it's not as good as it could be.
| [deleted]
| dwighttk wrote:
| Eh goodreads is fine... just ignore all the advertising and track
| your reading and your friends' reading (if you want)
| pavel_lishin wrote:
| > _The awfulness of the user experience is surprising, given
| Amazon's purchase of Goodreads in 2013._
|
| I see the author doesn't use Amazon very much. The instant
| checkout flow is a mathematically frictionless surface; literally
| every other interface is somewhere between a bannister full of
| splinters or landing in a copse of pines without a parachute.
| User3456335 wrote:
| I only use it in these ways: - keeping track of which books I
| read - seeing what my friends are reading - reading reviews
|
| It's perfect for that.
|
| I think if you're trying to use it for getting recommendations
| you're going to be disappointed.
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