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PropaGandalf @lemmy.world

Bringing the power of books to the fediverse

Hello everyone,

Books are still one of the most important sources of information we have as a human species. However, the media on which this information has been stored has changed considerably over time and with it its accessibility and influence on our society.

Nowadays you can find an enormous range of books and texts online. Most of the time, however, access to them is extremely fragmented, difficult to find, subject to a fee, incompatible with the software platform of your choice or, in the worst case, goes under with its provider over time.

To counteract this, annas-archive was founded to make the knowledge stored in the texts and books openly accessible and to preserve it for future generations. On the other hand, there are platforms such as Goodreads that aim to simplify the joy of reading and the exchange of information, as well as the review and discussion of books and texts.

Unfortunately, Goodreads is a centralized, proprietary solution that in addition also happens to be owned by Amazon. BookWyrm is a decentralized, open source alternative in the fediverse that steps in right here.

Now here's the kicker: what if we combined the power of both platforms? What if we combined the enormous book database of annas-archive with the fediverse, i.e. BookWyrm? Annas archive could benefit from reviews and discussions about the books and BookWyrm could expand its still very limited database many times over.

From my point of view, this would be the perfect combination of two already great projects. What do you think?

TL:DR What do you think about combining annas-archive with the fediverse (BookWyrm)

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29 comments

  • I have nothing against AA or Goodreads, and have never heard of BookWyrm before today, but the main thing I use Goodreads for is providing a link for a publication that has accurate info (full correct name, correct name of author, date of publishing, ISBN, etc) that does not involve an Amazon or other sales link.

    So BookWyrm could never replace Goodreads for me anyway, and then there's this:

    Write reviews or post casual commentary as you go, and control who gets to see your posts with granular privacy settings.

    From https://joinbookwyrm.com/

    It's like Facebook for book reviews. I couldn't even see a book myself because it's all locked down. And like Facebook if you have to create a private account to use it I'd never go there anyway without seeing it first, or specific interest in what it offers. (I'm one of those rare never-Facebook people you sometimes see in the wild, lol.) If I had been unable to browse Lemmy before joining, I'd never have joined.

    Facebook overcame its initial participation hump by being .edu only, very exclusive, and word of mouth. They have coasted on that word of mouth factor ever since, because now it's baked into the media and daily online life. But they couldn't do it from scratch again today. So unless you unlock BookWyrm in some way, or its exclusivity becomes a major draw in itself, I don't know how it will overcome that initial participation hurdle.

    I upvoted your post and absolutely support your goal in theory, but as someone who never joined Facebook, you could never get me to join a Facebook for book reviews, sorry.

    • Could you get into BookWyrm if it no longer required an account to view books? And if metadata was collected through AA it would likely be accurate while also running on FOSS.

      • Could you get into BookWyrm if it no longer required an account to view books?

        Oh yeah, absolutely. I used to like Goodreads and would linger on the site, but the reviews themselves started to get weird a couple few years ago and now I only go when I need a link. A Federated, open version of it (with effective but non-corporate moderation) would be great, because it would have the honest range of reviews Goodreads used to have, hopefully without corporate attempts at manipulating the content.

    • I don't see much of a difference to Goodreads. You will find most of the features you already use on bookwyr including book lists, reading goals and book info. It's up to you to decide if you want to sgare these info with everyone, just your friends or keep them for yourself. There are a lot of lists that are public too so don't worry about that.

      • There are a lot of lists that are public too so don’t worry about that.

        Cool, but if I need an account to see them then they're not really public. Maybe it's me but I did not see any link to any actual open content. If you could point me to one I'd be happy to look again.

        • If you could point me to one I’d be happy to look again.

          Try this.

          BookWyrm is designed to be a replacement for Goodreads, so it operates in a fairly similar way.

          • That IS very similar to Goodreads, and then I was able to follow a random reviewer link to more content to browse. Thank you.

            • No problem. The whole.point of it is as a federated Goodreads replacement - the data is freely available, so all Goodreads has in its favour is it's momentum and the sunk cost fallacy.

              Ever since Amazon bought Goodreads I've been waiting for something like this, although I haven't found the time to.impott my data and get properly stuck in. The main downside is I now want a BookWyrm for films,.comics, action figures, etc, etc. They'll turn up eventually I suppose.

29 comments