Newest Recommendations

We've added a page that shows your newest batch of personal recommendations, as below:



The new recommendations page shows your most recent recommendations--defined as the ones you haven't seen yet, or, if you've seen them, the ones you hadn't seen yet but now have!

For good or ill, new recommendations tend to drop in LARGE numbers. As on other pages, we weight for quality. But "new" recommendations may not—within the larger context of recommendations—be the best. Indeed "new" recommendations tend to enter rather "down the list" in terms of our confidence. The reaction to recommendations overall was nearly universally positive. I'm interested what people think here, because, well, what's newly calculated is not necessarily always the best.

As you can see, we've also reorganized the left nav on the recommendations page. Here's a close-up:



If you've dismissed any recommendations, you'll see the bottom line there, "Dismissed." You can change your mind there, or run your eyes pleasantly over what you despise.

New recommendations are part of the new notifications system.



See https://www.librarything.com/topic/348567

How long does a recommendation stay in the "Newest" list?

I have 1,148 of them :) Which is... a lot. I understand big numbers are expected but... when will these become not the "newest"? :)

PS: Dismissing a recommendation did not change the number.

I have none.

>2 AnnieMod: How long does a recommendation stay in the "Newest" list?

*The notification will be marked "read" as soon as you visit the page.
*The badge number will disappear after two hours.
*The recommendations will remain the newest batch until the next time it's calculated.
*You can look at recommendations generated on specific days on the "Date" menu. This may not be the same as "newest" because recs are made twice before you look at them, they are both "new to you" and therefore "newest."

>3 paradoxosalpha:

Yeah, not everyone will. But you'll get them in time.

>4 timspalding: How often do you calculate recommendations? Or how often do you plan to going forward? Daily? Weekly?

>6 AnnieMod:

It's a complex math. Basically, it's based on how much your catalog has changed since last time, how long it's been, and how much you use the site. So if your catalog changes constantly, it will regenerate them every few days. Thus someone entering a large library over several days, they may see if change several times. If your library is largely static, but you use the site a lot, it may go a week or several between redos. If your library is static and you don't use the site, new recommendations will be generated every few months.

>7 timspalding: I see. Thanks!

Out of curiosity - does it look at absolute numbers or at relative ones? So if I have a catalog of 3K books and add 5 per week, is that considered a big change? Or is 5 new books in 50 books catalog going to be considered big while the 5 in 3K is considered small.

I will wait and see how my newest are changing I guess.

>8 AnnieMod: It's based on absolute numbers. It might be better if it were partially relative, but the elegant and simple "fingerprint" we use is based on absolutes.

Ah, nice. >4 timspalding: Badge number? Do you mean Batch number? Or have I misunderstood something?

A simple question. The Genres displayed currently in my recommendations are:

Anthropology
Art & Design
Biography & Memoir
Business
Economics
Fantasy
Food & Cooking
General Fiction
General Nonfiction
Graphic Novels & Comics
Historical Fiction
History
Horror
Mystery
Philosophy
Poetry
Religion & Spirituality
Romance
Science & Nature
Science Fiction
Sociology
Suspense & Thriller
Technology
Travel
Children's Books
Kids
Teen
Young Adult

Comparing to the Genres listed in my json export, these are missing.

Christian Fiction
Comics
Fiction
Health & Wellness
Home & Garden
Hunting and Fishing
LGBTQ+
Literature Studies and Criticism
Music
Nonfiction
Picture Books
Politics, Government, Law and Public Policy
Reference
Sports and Leisure
Tween

I don't mind that and some of the genres are probably just batched together. I just want to know if it is intended. And if I can turn the listed genres on or off somewhere? (Or maybe there is just a cut-off if there's too few books in my catalogue? I have two books in LGBTQ+ which would make it too hard to give recommendations?)

>9 timspalding: I actually prefer absolutes - unless I get around to cataloging my full physical library, my increments now are just the books I read - which are relatively small numbers compared to the library itself due to its size. And if I do catalog all my books, the relative numbers once that is done and I am back to "newly read from the library" and newly arrived will collapse again.

That is probably true for everyone with a big or fully cataloged library so I would rather stay with absolutes...

Thanks again!

I'm just more and more amazed at the new recommendations. They nail my taste in books down so well I couldn't described it better myself.

You can turn Genres on and off in Settings https://www.librarything.com/settings/genres

>13 Aquila: Yes, but I have them all turned on. Including Nonfiction which is rather large.

Now I have 6,924. Seems like too many to be useful.

Mine says: You have 65,519 new recommendations. :-) I haven't looked at all of them yet :-)

Hmm, I like this one:
https://www.librarything.com/work/8527823

"Dummy title" but a lot of tags.

They look more haphazard than my previous review of the new recommendations. I'm not sure what about my catalog suggests I need a dozen recommendations for old Doc Savage books, but that's a miss.

>16 bnielsen: Are you sure it's not 65,536 new recommendations? ;)

These don't seem quite as spookily accurate as the first batch of new recs, but pretty good still.

It might be cool if there was a little number next too each indicating where it'd slot in on the "all time" recs list. I mean, if my best new rec is, in the judgment of the algorithm, is the third or three hundredth best ever is going to make a bit of difference to how eager I am to explore it.

>18 anglemark: Yes, I would have noticed it if it was a round number :-)

My #1 recommendation is for this work: https://www.librarything.com/work/20071952, which does not exist. The rest of the recommendations seem great but seeing this one first does not inspire confidence.

My #1 recommendation is for this work: https://www.librarything.com/work/20071952, which does not exist.

Ah, thanks. I'll exclude future releases.

Is it possible to limit the number of new recommendations? There are too many for this to be a useful feature. The signal is being completely drowned in an ocean of noise.

Or, better yet, let me decide when to allow new recommendations to be suggested, and how many.

>23 lemontwist:
Totally agree. I turned it off already because I have no interest in paging through hundreds of new recommendations every time I come to LT. If I could limit it to a "top 10" or some such I might look at them, but not the way it is showing up right now.

Given that recommendations are sorted by estimated quality, you can see fewer simply by using a smaller screen.

I'm overwhelmed by the amount only if I don't go genre by genre, so I check 1 or 2 genres at a time. It's not like there's a daily new batch, or even weekly.

>27 Taliesien: I thought disabling them is supposed to only affect work/book pages, but still be accessible in site-wide situations such as recs, ER and such. If not, perhaps it's a good RSI

I'm sorry if this has been mentioned before; I haven't been keeping up with all the threads/posts about this feature.

On my recommendations page, I see that it's possible to add the book to your catalog, or dismiss the recommendation. Does adding a recommended book to your catalog--either from the Recommendations page or Add Books--remove it from the list of Recommendations?

>30 lauralkeet: LibaryThing should only recommend books not in your catalogue, so yes, it ought to disappear from the list of Recommendations. (I don't know if that happens immediately, or if there's some kind of lag.)