Recent Automatic Recommendations

I love the thumbnails on the Recent Automatic Recommendations (and wish the other lists offered the same feature). But what I really wish for is for two things: (1) that, in addition to the green "Add" button when you hover over a Recent Automatic Recommendation, you could also click some button to never see that title again, and (2) that the Recent Automatic Recommendations list did not include books you already have in your book list but that are just some other edition of the same book. Since both those features are missing, I generally ignore the entire Recent Automatic Recommendations list as it's too full of titles I don't care about or already own such that most of my time reviewing the list is wasted energy.

>1 tnilsson: Where are you looking at them exactly? Because on the recommendations pages such as https://www.librarything.com/recommendations , each recommendation has 2 buttons - green Add that allows you to add it and a red Dismiss that removes it from your recommendations forever (and that one will also allow you to remove the author or series completely as well once you press it).

Ah, do you mean the home module - that shows the old style recommendations? You may want to look at the new ones as well - the two systems are very different and use different algorithms.

>2 AnnieMod: But is there a way to winnow out the books already in one's library? I am trying to make the algorithm work for me by removing recommendations of books which do not interest me, but how do I encourage recommendations? Put the titles of interest on my wish list?

>4 MsMixte: You can narrow down collections used for recs and use it only for some, or turn it off for all collections and create one for recs where it will be on. You then and books you want recs based on there, in addition to where you normally have them

Edit. when you click on a collection in the dropdown, there's a setting 'include in recommendtions', which is on by deafult

>4 MsMixte: Pretty much. Both algorithms look at the books you have in your library - and which are in at least one collection that is used for recommendations (if a book is in a collection which is marked not to be used and in one where it is used for recommendations, the latter wins).

Both algorithms work differently but they use the same starting point and they cannot invent data.

Keep in mind that the old recommendations (the old system) looks for books that match books specifically (that’s why you can see why they are recommended if you go to the page with them: https://www.librarything.com/profile/MEMBERNAME/recommendations while the new system looks for recommendations based on all the books (and it is unclear what caused a specific recommendation). In addition, the new ones do not get recalculated daily but in batches - so unlike the Automatic recommendation module that shows the classic ones, you may need to wait days or longer to see new ones in the new system (depends on your usage of the site, changes in your library patterns and so on).

But if you want recommendations in a specific genre style, yes, you will need to add books to your library so LT can match against them.

PS: Removing a recommendation does not influence the algorithm - it just stops recommending you that book but similar ones will keep getting recommended for the same reason why that one got recommended. The only data that matters are the books you have in your library, in collections which are used for recommendations - and the site will just not show you the recommendations you dismissed (directly or by dismissing series and authors).

Sounds as if I need to play around with the recommendations to get more of what interests me.

Thanks to both AnnieMod and SandraArdnas for the explanations.

Normally, you shouldn't be recommended different editions of books you already have in another edition - sounds like a combination issue.

Do you have an example?

Piggybacking on this old thread, I would also like the ability to dismiss particular "Recent Automatic Recommendations" from my "Home" page. I sometimes get tired of an unpleasant recommendation staring me in the face (but not tired enough to hide the whole feature).

>10 cpg: You can dismiss those by clicking "all recommendations" at the bottom of that module to get to the classic recommendations, then finding the unpleasant recommendation and clicking "no thanks" (clicking "recommendations by date" on the right side of the page might help you find it)

>11 norabelle414:

Thanks!

Unfortunately, my knowledge of foreign languages ​​is far from sufficient to read books in a language other than German.
And for us Swiss, Standard German is already a first foreign language that we have to learn for school and everything written.
I therefore use LY almost exclusively in the German edition.

When I use the recommendations at www.LibraryThing.de, I am mainly suggested English book titles.
Suggestions from In the 6 suggestions so far, a total of 343 books have been recommended to me.
Of these, only 29 were in German, 4 of which were children's books.
49 further books had a foreign language cover, but referred to German book titles.
In addition, 34 books in other languages ​​were recommended to me.

So for me, less than 10 percent of the recommendations were of direct benefit.
If I add the German titles with foreign-language covers, about a fifth of the books are worth looking at for me.

Certainly some of the remaining 80 percent of the recommendations would also be available in German, but I wonder whether it would take too much effort to find out.

Since, as a user of a translated LT website, I mainly see foreign language titles, I hardly use this site, which is good in and of itself.
I think that other users of the translated LT websites also feel the same way.
And I hope that the developers will address this issue in the future.

(Translated from German by google translate)

One of the best ways of checking for what languages a book is available in is on the work details page. Down at the bottom non-english numbers are shown.

Of course, this only works if the various language editions have been properly combined. It might also help you see the books available in German if canonical titles had been added on the German site. If you, yourself don't do combining, entering original title in CK for the translations you read would make it much easier for those of us who do.

I combined a few of your German language editions with the main works.

--

Man kann oft feststellen ob ein Buch auf Deutsch erhältlich ist auf die 'Work details' Seite. Ganz unten stehen Nummern für die Sprachen die das Computer kennt.

Natürlich funktioniert das nur wenn die Bücher richtig kombiniert sind. Wenn die Bücher ein 'Canonical title' haben auf das Deutsche site wird die Erkennung leichter. Wenn Sie selber nicht kombinieren, ist es eine grosse Hilfe wenn Sie das original Titel in CK eingeben.

Ich have ein Paar von Ihren deutsch-sprachigen Büchern mit den Hauptwerken kombiniert.

Ich hoffe das ist verständlich. Lesen und reden sind leichter als schreiben.

Dear >14 MarthaJeanne:

Thanks for your answer. I knew how to determine whether there were editions of a work in other languages. I am grateful for the suggestion that “the situation” will improve if all combinable works are also combined. I should probably put more effort into it. Unfortunately my bibliographic knowledge is too limited to be of any real help.

However, I suspect that most LT users, like me, view recommendations as an overview. It's not just the author and title that play a role. The book covers are very important.
In the German-speaking cultural area, and this will hardly be different in other languages, the cover design often provides information about the genre, the publisher and other information about whether a book title is suitable for you or not.
So it's first about an overview and only secondarily about obtaining information.
If you use recommendations like I do, you can see that foreign language users can hardly benefit from the feature.
The question therefore arises as to how much effort the developers are willing to put into the regionalization of Lt. Of course, this also means that English-speaking users are willing to forgo the programmers' time, which would otherwise benefit them.
I have long been interested in how the proportion of (exclusively) other-language users compares to the English-speaking community?
Is it even possible to determine whether users use LT exclusively in one language or not? And what about reading? There are certainly more users like me who are able to use the English-language parts of LT, such as forums, groups, etc., but only consume the media in their native language.

Is this information available anywhere in LT? This is not just about users, authors, publishers, etc., but also about the linguistic distribution of the works and book titles.

Am I alone with these comments and questions? Or are they also of interest and important to other users?

(Translated with google translator)

>15 birder4106: I doubt you're alone, but I also doubt that LT software has ways to accommodate your wishes. Currently, it has no idea whether a cover is of an English edition or something else. While it can determine you log into .de site only, it would probably need an edition layer, which it doesn't have, to truly recommend only books in German.

The original title is available with the copyright information in almost every modern book. That means that no special knowledge is needed to enter the original title, and in most cases to go on to combine.I have no idea how many LT members primarily use LT for reading in a non-English language. I am more involved with many like myself who use .com, but read in multiple languages.

If I am the first to enter a German translation, I always do my best to combine it. Same if I land in an uncombined work.

Recommendations usually aren't helpful to me, so I usually ignore them. No point in knowing that a great weaving book was published in the US 10 years ago, as it is long since out of print, and not available in Austrian libraries. My experience is that I am not interested in most of the recommendations, and can't get most of the rest. Somehow I manage to find at least as many books that I want to read as I will ever get to.

>17 MarthaJeanne: Somehow I manage to find at least as many books that I want to read as I will ever get to.

I could almost certainly read for the rest of my life at my current rate without ever discovering another book. But I find discovery fun in its own right.

>18 paradoxosalpha: There is the new books table at the bookstore. There are the tables of marked down books at other bookstores. There is the bestseller area at the library, and also the new book displays in various departments there. Then, there are the personal topics of many of my LT friends. The recent 5 best books topic found me two I had to read. One rather uninspiring book I read (off the bookstore's new book table) pointed me to a few I have enjoyed much more. BBC just highlighted a book I HAVE to get. One of my favourite authors has just brought out the third book in her latest trilogy. ... I'll even admit to checking out the Amazon recommendations on needlework books. If Amazon recommends it I know I could get it.

And all that without looking through the shelves and stacks of books here in the house. OK, its an advantage to live in a major city with a good library system, even if much of what is available is in my second language.

I'm adding this here rather than starting a new thread since it seems fairly minor.

When I hover over each book recommendation, I get a pop-up (or drop-down?) with the book title, author and synopsis (if available). For the top row (right now, at least), this box is above the book thumbnail and therefore the top half disappears behind the tabs above it, so the information is mostly hidden. I don't remember it doing that before.