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A harassment campaign on Goodreads

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270 points ilamont | 1 comments | 06 Jan 20 20:20 UTC | HN request time: 0.46s | source
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jasonpbecker ◴[06 Jan 20 21:19 UTC] No.21973446[source]▶
Goodreads is desperately in need of a strong competitor.
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bryanrasmussen ◴[06 Jan 20 21:21 UTC] No.21973472[source]▶
Aside from the spoofing issues what are the main drawbacks and benefits of GoodReads from your perspective - what's the worst of times, what's the best of times?
replies(6): >>21973507 #>>21973634 #>>21973710 #>>21973915 #>>21973926 #>>21974301 #
xioxox ◴[06 Jan 20 22:03 UTC] No.21973926[source]▶
The ratings are useless - any author with a devoted following gets endless 5 star reviews and YA books are stuffed with 5 star reviews. The website is clunky beyond belief and never seems to get improvements. The recommendation engine is terrible. The search facilities are weak and inconsistent. It could be so much better, but it never improves.
replies(2): >>21974337 #>>21974522 #
occamsrazorwit ◴[06 Jan 20 23:05 UTC] No.21974522[source]▶
How would you fix the ratings issue? That's a common issue with ratings systems in general (that they reflect popularity instead of quality).
replies(2): >>21976489 #>>21978782 #
1. xioxox ◴[07 Jan 20 10:48 UTC] No.21978782[source]▶
Yes - it's a difficult problem. It must be possible to build a better statistical model of each rater, in order to weight their opinions. A first step would be to normalise the rating distribution of each person (e.g. by average and standard deviation). I wouldn't use a rating for a particular book, unless the rater had some minimum number of ratings, or a book had very few ratings.