5 ms·

What exactly is wrong with Goodreads? I keep hearing a lot of hate about it, but the reasons seem never expanded on. I use Goodreads to maintain a public books

What exactly is wrong with Goodreads? I keep hearing a lot of hate about it, but the reasons seem never expanded on. I use Goodreads to maintain a public bookshelf of books I have read or want to read. It's also nice that I can check what my friends are reading. Occasionally it's nice to read other people's views on a book. I typically tend not to agree, but it's nice that these exist. That's it. Isn't that what Goodreads is about? Seems like a nice website and perfectly suited for what it does. Am I missing something?

matsemann 5y ago
Lots of discussions over the years about it here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20904549 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20904549 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24454221 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24454221 For me it works ok. But that's because I like you only use it to track. But if the other stuff worked better I might have used that too. A better recommendation system. Not insane loading times would maybe make me browse more etc. So much untapped potential here.
jan_Inkepa 5y ago
It does feel a bit neglected/dead (except for the fact that people still use it a bunch) - the changes come rarely. In some sense this is nice! It's a stable piece of software that does what it should do. One thing I find lacking is that it seems to mostly be used by english-speakers. So the one case where I'd be curious to use the social networking features, for non-English-lanuage literature, it falls flat. There's no equivalent to it that I know of for the German-language world (that people actually use), which is irksome, because I'd actually use the social networking features there (whereas for English literature I know what I like and don't care what other people read, I don't know German literature as well). But not becoming terrible is a nice side-effect of this...it's not even a managed decline, it's just pottering along okay! But it is odd. I wonder what their high-level strategy as a business is.
- denisw 5y ago
  In the German-speaking world, LovelyBooks [1] is quite popular. It seems to be strongly focused on fiction, though. [1]: https://www.lovelybooks.de/ https://www.lovelybooks.de/
input_sh 5y ago
- It sucks at recommending books. You may stumble upon some book in the home feed, but its recommendation is as good as if it didn't exist. - Lists suck. For example, it never anticipates even something as simple as abandoning a book (though you can create that). - There's like a whole industry of faking ratings and nobody cares about it enough to do anything about it. - It's owned by Amazon, but Amazon basically didn't touch it since the acquisition almost a decade ago. Well, they did so recently to kill the API access, which was its #1 selling point to me. I liked using it by not visiting their ugly design ever, but that's not a possibility anymore.
- ainzzorl 5y ago
  > Amazon basically didn't touch it since the acquisition almost a decade ago. This is what I love about it. When something works for me (and Goodreads does), I don't want it to change.
  - input_sh 5y ago
    It's not a good thing when there are glaring issues that remain unfixed, like books receiving 1 star reviews while they're still being written.
    - Brybry 5y ago
      Personally, as a Goodreads user I don't care about the review ratings. I'm there for: a) making a list of things I want to read b) finding more books by authors (including upcoming) to add to that list c) release dates for books on that list (and sorting that list by date) d) seeing what other people are reading All of those tasks were time consuming before Goodreads and I'm extremely happy that some let's-refactor-our-website-for-whatever-reason push hasn't broken my use case. 1 and 5 star ratings for unreleased books are dumb but humans are really bad at 5 star rating systems anyway. I find there's far more value in the number of ratings, but in the end books are often about personal taste.
- dewey 5y ago
  > It's owned by Amazon, but Amazon basically didn't touch it since the acquisition almost a decade ago. This is a good thing. In the recent year they updated the design in subtle ways to make it nicer to use and less rough around the edges too which was a nice surprise.
varjag 5y ago
Yeah. It's poised to become Amazon's Google Reader, but just as with Reader there's nothing truly wrong with it aside from lack of maintenance.
mrmuagi 5y ago
You get spammed with hundreds of fake profiles trying to add you is the biggest disappointment I've seen myself firsthand (obvious phishing links included). There is a lot of botted activity.

matsemann 5y ago

Lots of discussions over the years about it here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20904549 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20904549 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24454221 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24454221 For me it works ok. But that's because I like you only use it to track. But if the other stuff worked better I might have used that too. A better recommendation system. Not insane loading times would maybe make me browse more etc. So much untapped potential here.

jan_Inkepa 5y ago

It does feel a bit neglected/dead (except for the fact that people still use it a bunch) - the changes come rarely. In some sense this is nice! It's a stable piece of software that does what it should do. One thing I find lacking is that it seems to mostly be used by english-speakers. So the one case where I'd be curious to use the social networking features, for non-English-lanuage literature, it falls flat. There's no equivalent to it that I know of for the German-language world (that people actually use), which is irksome, because I'd actually use the social networking features there (whereas for English literature I know what I like and don't care what other people read, I don't know German literature as well). But not becoming terrible is a nice side-effect of this...it's not even a managed decline, it's just pottering along okay! But it is odd. I wonder what their high-level strategy as a business is.

denisw 5y ago
In the German-speaking world, LovelyBooks [1] is quite popular. It seems to be strongly focused on fiction, though. [1]: https://www.lovelybooks.de/ https://www.lovelybooks.de/

input_sh 5y ago

- It sucks at recommending books. You may stumble upon some book in the home feed, but its recommendation is as good as if it didn't exist. - Lists suck. For example, it never anticipates even something as simple as abandoning a book (though you can create that). - There's like a whole industry of faking ratings and nobody cares about it enough to do anything about it. - It's owned by Amazon, but Amazon basically didn't touch it since the acquisition almost a decade ago. Well, they did so recently to kill the API access, which was its #1 selling point to me. I liked using it by not visiting their ugly design ever, but that's not a possibility anymore.

ainzzorl 5y ago
> Amazon basically didn't touch it since the acquisition almost a decade ago. This is what I love about it. When something works for me (and Goodreads does), I don't want it to change.
- input_sh 5y ago
  It's not a good thing when there are glaring issues that remain unfixed, like books receiving 1 star reviews while they're still being written.
  - Brybry 5y ago
    Personally, as a Goodreads user I don't care about the review ratings. I'm there for: a) making a list of things I want to read b) finding more books by authors (including upcoming) to add to that list c) release dates for books on that list (and sorting that list by date) d) seeing what other people are reading All of those tasks were time consuming before Goodreads and I'm extremely happy that some let's-refactor-our-website-for-whatever-reason push hasn't broken my use case. 1 and 5 star ratings for unreleased books are dumb but humans are really bad at 5 star rating systems anyway. I find there's far more value in the number of ratings, but in the end books are often about personal taste.
dewey 5y ago
> It's owned by Amazon, but Amazon basically didn't touch it since the acquisition almost a decade ago. This is a good thing. In the recent year they updated the design in subtle ways to make it nicer to use and less rough around the edges too which was a nice surprise.

varjag 5y ago

Yeah. It's poised to become Amazon's Google Reader, but just as with Reader there's nothing truly wrong with it aside from lack of maintenance.

mrmuagi 5y ago

You get spammed with hundreds of fake profiles trying to add you is the biggest disappointment I've seen myself firsthand (obvious phishing links included). There is a lot of botted activity.