4 ms·

My problem with Goodreads isn't the recommendations engine. The recommendations are fine. I'm actually skeptical that any ML recommendation engine is going to r

My problem with Goodreads isn't the recommendations engine. The recommendations are fine. I'm actually skeptical that any ML recommendation engine is going to recommend better books than my friends will. The only thing I expect from a recommendation engine is discovery, by which I mean finding new things that neither I nor my friends have read that look interesting. Whether they're good is another story altogether... My problem with Goodreads is actually the site performance. It's one of the most abysmally slow sites I've ever had the displeasure of using. Loading from page to page takes so long, I wonder if they're running on 486 machines in the background. It's unfathomable to me how something that has such a monopoly on the domain can have such terrible performance. It's so bad, that I often don't even bother going to Goodreads except when my TBR pile empties out, and then I spend as little time as I can (which is a long time because it's OH MY GOD SO SLOW) so I won't have to visit it again for a while. I wish it was open source, or something, so I could contribute to improve response times...

BelleOfTheBall 6y ago
My most hated part of Goodreads is that if you type something in search and try to click the middle mouse button to open the resulting, highlighted book in the new window... it just copies the page you're already on. It's a site for discovering books, why do I have to open the landing page 5 times if I want to open 5 books? It's so counterintuitive to me.
- captn3m0 6y ago
  It isn't just me!
WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
Discovery engines are pretty easy if you just use clustering unless you allow transitivity (book in two clusters can be used to suggest a book in either cluster)
- watwut 6y ago
  If it is so easy, why most of them sucks?
  - WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
    That's the point... if you allow transtivity, you get discovery but your recommendations start sucking.
    - watwut 6y ago
      But my recommemdations sucks pretty much everywhere.
      - simias 6y ago
        Spotify pretty reliably finds me one or two interesting tracks in my discover weekly. That still leaves dozens of tracks I don't particularly care for (although I generally don't actively dislike them) but I still think it's a decent result. I guess the obvious problem is that for books the equation is different. If you get recommended 20 books and after reading them you only ended up really liking 3 of them, then you'll feel like you've wasted a lot of time reading books you don't care for. Meanwhile if you listen to 20 audio tracks in the worst case scenario you'll have wasted an hour, and you can do that in the background while you do something else.
        heavyset_go 6y ago
        I've found that Last.fm's recommendations are infinitely better than Spotify's. I feel like Spotify's recommendations have too much influence from their partners and sponsors.
        bufferoverflow 6y ago
        2 interesting tracks out of a 100+, that's not a great result. I'm sure if you listen to 100 random tracks, you will like a couple.
asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago
I'm glad the recommendations work for you, but I agree with the blog post author and echo their experience. I think Goodreads recommendations are awful. All of the other recommendation engines I use regularly (Facebook, Twitter, Amazon shopping, Amazon Prime, Google, targeted web ads, Netflix, Steam) work significantly better than Goodreads does.
kobe_bryant 6y ago
god yes, I just google author name or book goodreads to avoid using their search
little_hills 6y ago
> It's unfathomable to me how something that has such a monopoly on the domain can have such terrible performance. You’ve answered your own question there, the keyword being ‘monopoly’. If there is no competition pushing them to improve performance or site design, it’ll inevitably fall by the wayside until they get around to it or more accurately until somebody can convince a manager/business that they should spend time working on it, which, without using ‘look how much better the competition is’ that’s gonna be a hard sell. I’m looking at this with broad strokes though, but as a best guess I’d say that’s pretty close.
- kerryoco 6y ago
  I don't think there's anything monopolistic about Goodreads .. we just convince ourselves of it. But as we can see here, people would be highly willing to try out some competition. It's a lot harder than people give it credit it for as well, I imagine. "why don't they get a recommendation engine already" ... that's the secret sauce of companies like Amazon and Netflix who have a financial interest in every successful recommendation. Goodreads doesn't have a profit model in place afaik to support honing the engine to that degree
onlyrealcuzzo 6y ago
Really? GoodReads reviews have devolved to complete garbage. The first few pages of reviews are always from the same people trying to be GoodReads famous. Everyone gives everything 5-star reviews because they get more likes for positive reviews. The user reviews mean nothing. I'd like to have a way to see what people actually think about books. But on GoodReads that's almost impossible to find. I'm surprised there isn't a rotten tomatoes for books. I've considered starting it myself, but I don't see much money to be made from it. Maybe that's why...
- Zanni 6y ago
  Interesting point about reviewers skewing positive for popularity. My big issue with most recommendation engines is that they're biased towards false positives rather than false negatives. The other way would lead to fewer, more focused recommendations. In particular, I'd like to see an engine take a reviewer's dislikes into account more. If someone likes (switching to film for an accessible example) Cinderella, The Little Mermaid and Mulan, their opinion on Brave isn't going to carry much information as they're pretty indiscriminate about Disney films. But if they love Mulan, dislike Little Mermaid and hate Cinderella, their opinion on Brave is more likely to line up with my own.
  - b0rsuk 6y ago
    The "smile or die" mentality propagated by sites like FB, where you only have likes but no dislikes, is throwing half the information away. I think it stems from a misguided desire to avoid adversity.
    - bbarnett 6y ago
      Or possibly, it stems from becoming "super reviewers", and then being paid to review works for compensation? Or the thought that such things, if not happening, may happen? Just like on Amazon and other sites?
  - prepend 6y ago
    I would think that the challenge is to find good recommenders rather than specific recommendations. If I can find similar tastes, maybe a little bit different, then that will result in good recommendations. So I would want to find people who both like similar things but also dislike similar things. It will be interesting to find people my similarity and see which are best at finding books I like.

BelleOfTheBall 6y ago

My most hated part of Goodreads is that if you type something in search and try to click the middle mouse button to open the resulting, highlighted book in the new window... it just copies the page you're already on. It's a site for discovering books, why do I have to open the landing page 5 times if I want to open 5 books? It's so counterintuitive to me.

captn3m0 6y ago
It isn't just me!

WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago

Discovery engines are pretty easy if you just use clustering unless you allow transitivity (book in two clusters can be used to suggest a book in either cluster)

watwut 6y ago
If it is so easy, why most of them sucks?
- WrtCdEvrydy 6y ago
  That's the point... if you allow transtivity, you get discovery but your recommendations start sucking.
  - watwut 6y ago
    But my recommemdations sucks pretty much everywhere.
    - simias 6y ago
      Spotify pretty reliably finds me one or two interesting tracks in my discover weekly. That still leaves dozens of tracks I don't particularly care for (although I generally don't actively dislike them) but I still think it's a decent result. I guess the obvious problem is that for books the equation is different. If you get recommended 20 books and after reading them you only ended up really liking 3 of them, then you'll feel like you've wasted a lot of time reading books you don't care for. Meanwhile if you listen to 20 audio tracks in the worst case scenario you'll have wasted an hour, and you can do that in the background while you do something else.
      - heavyset_go 6y ago
        I've found that Last.fm's recommendations are infinitely better than Spotify's. I feel like Spotify's recommendations have too much influence from their partners and sponsors.
      - bufferoverflow 6y ago
        2 interesting tracks out of a 100+, that's not a great result. I'm sure if you listen to 100 random tracks, you will like a couple.

asdfasgasdgasdg 6y ago

I'm glad the recommendations work for you, but I agree with the blog post author and echo their experience. I think Goodreads recommendations are awful. All of the other recommendation engines I use regularly (Facebook, Twitter, Amazon shopping, Amazon Prime, Google, targeted web ads, Netflix, Steam) work significantly better than Goodreads does.

kobe_bryant 6y ago

god yes, I just google author name or book goodreads to avoid using their search

little_hills 6y ago

> It's unfathomable to me how something that has such a monopoly on the domain can have such terrible performance. You’ve answered your own question there, the keyword being ‘monopoly’. If there is no competition pushing them to improve performance or site design, it’ll inevitably fall by the wayside until they get around to it or more accurately until somebody can convince a manager/business that they should spend time working on it, which, without using ‘look how much better the competition is’ that’s gonna be a hard sell. I’m looking at this with broad strokes though, but as a best guess I’d say that’s pretty close.

kerryoco 6y ago
I don't think there's anything monopolistic about Goodreads .. we just convince ourselves of it. But as we can see here, people would be highly willing to try out some competition. It's a lot harder than people give it credit it for as well, I imagine. "why don't they get a recommendation engine already" ... that's the secret sauce of companies like Amazon and Netflix who have a financial interest in every successful recommendation. Goodreads doesn't have a profit model in place afaik to support honing the engine to that degree

onlyrealcuzzo 6y ago

Really? GoodReads reviews have devolved to complete garbage. The first few pages of reviews are always from the same people trying to be GoodReads famous. Everyone gives everything 5-star reviews because they get more likes for positive reviews. The user reviews mean nothing. I'd like to have a way to see what people actually think about books. But on GoodReads that's almost impossible to find. I'm surprised there isn't a rotten tomatoes for books. I've considered starting it myself, but I don't see much money to be made from it. Maybe that's why...

Zanni 6y ago
Interesting point about reviewers skewing positive for popularity. My big issue with most recommendation engines is that they're biased towards false positives rather than false negatives. The other way would lead to fewer, more focused recommendations. In particular, I'd like to see an engine take a reviewer's dislikes into account more. If someone likes (switching to film for an accessible example) Cinderella, The Little Mermaid and Mulan, their opinion on Brave isn't going to carry much information as they're pretty indiscriminate about Disney films. But if they love Mulan, dislike Little Mermaid and hate Cinderella, their opinion on Brave is more likely to line up with my own.
- b0rsuk 6y ago
  The "smile or die" mentality propagated by sites like FB, where you only have likes but no dislikes, is throwing half the information away. I think it stems from a misguided desire to avoid adversity.
  - bbarnett 6y ago
    Or possibly, it stems from becoming "super reviewers", and then being paid to review works for compensation? Or the thought that such things, if not happening, may happen? Just like on Amazon and other sites?
- prepend 6y ago
  I would think that the challenge is to find good recommenders rather than specific recommendations. If I can find similar tastes, maybe a little bit different, then that will result in good recommendations. So I would want to find people who both like similar things but also dislike similar things. It will be interesting to find people my similarity and see which are best at finding books I like.