Help understanding recommendations

When I click on why a certain book is recommended, I will often see a reference to another book I have reviewed. What's surprising is that my rating has no bearing on what is being recommended to me. For example, I might have given book A a 5 star rating and book B a 2 star rating, yet both are used in the selection of recommended books. Shouldn't the algorithm work to find books that correlate to the books I give high ratings and inversely correlate to those I give low ratings? I find this to be the worst feature of LT.

Ratings are not used for recommendations.

Thanks. Do you know what is the basis for recommendations? I hope it's not just the fact that I've read or reviewed a book because that would be a very illogical premise for recommending a book for me.

>3 lowellisaacs: It's based on what books you have in your catalog, in any collection that has "include in recommendations" checked in the Collection Manager.

It's not illogical to think you'd be interested in a book that is closely related to a book you've reviewed unfavorably. There was something that attracted your attention to that book in the first place, to the point where you read and reviewed it. Maybe the related book is the one you were hoping the reviewed book would be.

I find all recommendation systems to be pointless. They either recommend something I already have or something that I have absolutely no interest in.

>4 norabelle414: - and also I think, based on what other people who have catalogues "similar" to yours have. Then Tim applies all sorts of weightings and adjustments, so that Harry Potter isn't the top recommendation for every book on the site etc.

>6 rgurskey: - I find LTs not terrible, especially if you turn off books by the same author. Generally LT won't recommend books you already have in your catalogue - although if you haven't catalogued them it can't know that, and show's it is working correctly.

>7 reading_fox: There are two cases where LT does show books you have cataloged.

1) In cases where your book isn't properly combined.
2) In cases where the works are part of 'work relationships'.

The first is a sign that combining needs doing. The second is a long standing RSI.

But as you say, in a way this shows that recommendations are working correctly.

My biggest problem, and the reason I tend not to look at them, is that they throw up lots of older books that I don't have access to.

>8 MarthaJeanne: My biggest problem, and the reason I tend not to look at them, is that they throw up lots of older books that I don't have access to.

Those are just the sort of recommendations that I want. I will get current books pushed at me by public library or amazon, but LT becomes a way to identify older, less available books. These I pursue either of two ways:

- They go on my wishlist and enter a state of semi-passive search alertness for my used book shopping.
- I request them via inter-library loan.

>7 reading_fox:

LT does recommend books I already have because of the lack of a working belongs/belongs in feature. I have lots of Ace double books in which LT will recommend 1/2 of the book.

>10 rgurskey: - that certainly shows its working well then!

(I have a collection "unowned books that I own in omnibii" to get around this, they're not 'In my library' and it does mess up the total book count (already pretty spurious with wishlist et al) but helps with the recs. ANd useful for reading reviews etc).

>11 reading_fox: I had to go to your profile to make sure it wasn't actually spelled omnibii. Phew.

I catch omnibuses ;-)

>13 abbottthomas: What do you do with them when you catch them?

>14 jjwilson61: Bury them in the backyard...

>14 jjwilson61: Drive them!

>13 abbottthomas: - going to Clapham?

>17 reading_fox: Indeed, with all the other normal, boring, commonsensical people.

>17 reading_fox: only when the underground is not running and I have to get to Victoria from Kew.

TPBM knows another way!! Taxi doesn't count!

The recommendations are famous around the web, and they are really very accurate. Books which are leaders when I think about books to read appeared in top positions. For example, The Charterhouse of Parma in the first place, and indeed this is a book I've always tried to read and twice stopped after about 80 pages. There are many such titles in the first 100.

Something is wrong. My recommendations are all famous old novels. This can't be the real result as I have included many travel books, history books, biographies. I'd like to know my real recommendations.

>21 asurbanipal: It’s always been like that: numerically large clusters of books in our libraries, especially if they are from relatively well-defined categories like “19th-century classics”, or “old detective stories”, tend to outweigh small groups of books that you happen to be very interested in, unless those are things that cluster in other people’s libraries as well. Which can be frustrating, because the books that come at the top of the list are usually books we already know about but don’t have in our libraries for a good reason.

>21 asurbanipal: Create a collection just for recommendations, add the books you want to inspire recommendations to it, and disable recommendations for all other collections.

My recommendations are in chaos here and on a Polish book cataloging site. My reading has become a threat to someone, the matter is political. To the New World Order, I suppose.
I was on the right track to reading all major novels, but novels don't seem to be the problem. Rather history, biographies, travel books. Finally, I would see our planet in all its aspects, I would rise very high. This is forbidden.
Members with your books: weighted. Yesterday, this feature worked perfectly, today it's in chaos. Someone is following me from Poland, this is supposed to be politics. Showing off one's power in Poland, extending to the US.
I'm stalked in a way, wherever I go, physically or on the Internet. This is probably to mirror the persecution of anti-communist activists in Communist Poland. But that wasn't so crude. This is more like in Russia nowadays, actions against pro-Western opposition figures.
Notice that the Polonization of the service has happened today. Polonization is an anti-Western movement popular in Poland now.

>24 asurbanipal: I suspect what you are fearing is technically impossible, unless you think that the software developers here have joined up with Putin and the Polish government to deny you access to recommendations for good books.

>24 asurbanipal:
If you personally are being stalked by specific people on the internet, you might wish to consider strategies for maintaining greater anonymity (choosing different user names on every website you participate in; adopting stricter privacy settings).

If you are suddenly getting many nationalistic recommendations or users who share your books, I doubt this is connected with you specifically (it would be too much work to create multiple libraries to match your profile for the sole purpose of spamming one person with propaganda).

Language effects in the recommendations are not unusual. If you have a lot of Polish-language books that aren't available in other languages, your library is likely to have significant overlap with the libraries of other Polish-speakers. If these Polish-speakers have nationalistic books in their libraries, then you will get recommendations for this type of book.

As noted above, you can use the "collections" feature to adjust which books your recommendations are based on (or exclude certain books from recommendations).

You seem to have most books not in an active collection. I wonder if this has affected your reconendations.

This is the state after my experiments.
This is not so very important. More of a gadget.
Recent Automatic Recommendations, these work OK.