New Author Recommendations

Last night we released a new and improved system for generating author recommendations—my first real project at LibraryThing!

Author recommendations live under the “You may also like” section of an author’s page and on the dedicated “similar authors” page.

Here are some examples:
* https://www.librarything.com/author/dahlroald#similarauthors
* https://www.librarything.com/author/lordeaudre#similarauthors
* https://www.librarything.com/author/spiegelmanart#similarauthors
* https://www.librarything.com/author/jacksonshirley-1#similarauthors
* https://www.librarything.com/author/christieagatha#similarauthors

The old system was based on all the works held by members who had a given author. It never really worked, and was slow to regenerate. The new system is based more closely on authors' works, and the works they recommend. This has focused things down a lot. So, for example, Roald Dahl no longer recommends Charles Dickens and Stephen King. (Both were massively over-recommended before.) The new algorithm also takes the average reading age of authors into account, so Dahl no longer recommends Mary Pope Osborne, who writes for slightly younger children, in the top 5.

The new system is not perfect, but it is better. We hope you like it.

Thanks for this.

I just crawled through some of my favorite authors to see what was recommended. Since I am an old and aggressive reader, I didn't learn about any authors new to me, but the feature seems to be working well.

>3 paradoxosalpha:

This is one thing I'd like to tweak. It should recommend some standard answers, because they build trust, but it should be more solidly angled "down" the popularity curve, so you find authors you don't already know about.

>4 timspalding:

Well, I don't know that my anecdotal experience is really an indictment on that count. As I said/implied, I've been actively pursuing obscure authors for decades. My own favorites are often on the recondite side, and the recommendations I've seen aren't necessarily super popular, but they are pretty accurate.

Fun: the new system picks up that Margaret Drabble’s “most popular” work is the The Oxford companion to English literature, so the predictable (and fairly indiscriminate) assortment of mid-20th-century British woman writers in her list is now spiced up by a few unlikely characters such as Ebenezer Cobham Brewer who have also edited popular reference books. Disappointingly, they are way down the list, so it can’t quite be called a bug. But it does make you scratch your head for a moment…

Otherwise the authors I tried all had fairly unexciting lists. There seems to be a strong nationality bias — Canadian writers get other Canadian writers high on their recommendation lists, Australians get Australians, Austrians get Austrians, British women get British women, and so on. And anyone who features on college reading lists or lived before about 1950 gets the whole canon of classics in that particular language/culture. But that’s probably a fair representation of the way most of us choose our reading, rather than a flaw in the algorithm.

I'm not seeing this on all authors, I assume because there's not enough information/too few works for some?

>7 lilithcat:

We'll set the limits lower, but it's only good if there's a fair amount of data.

>8 timspalding:

That's what I figured.

Why do some authors have an empty recommendations panel but others have none at all?

https://se.librarything.com/author/wejpolsenwerner
https://www.librarything.com/author/pertoftpetra

>10 anglemark: Why do some authors have an empty recommendations panel but others have none at all?

One of those authors has associated authors, which is why the section is present.

>11 knerd.knitter: Ah. Thanks!