
Show HN: Find recommendations from good people - gits1225
http://abyjames.com/projects/recommendations/
======
tw1010
I always find that recommendation websites suffer in the long-term because the
incentive to just keep adding more stuff (to keep the site not seem stagnant,
thus make people come back) is greater than the incentive to strictly filter
only super high quality things. How is this site going to tackle that problem?

~~~
Kagerjay
I dont use any single recommendation source anymore for this reason. Its
always a combination od youtube, amazon recommendations and reviews, reddit,
and stackexchange sites.

~~~
lolptdr
Great idea. Crowdsourcing is good but averaging out crowdsources of
crowdsources is a better way to understand the general sentiment of the
population.

~~~
setr
I think the problem is that you don’t actually want the general sentiment of
the population: it most likely leads to things you’ll accept, but not actually
want (ie movies you’re lukewarm on).

I think what recsys really should be trying to target is finding the group
most similar to your tastes, and then picking based on the _outliers_ of that
group. The goal being to find something within your tastes, but far enough
from your normal to be _interesting_

Recommending based on _star personalities_ preferences, is I think, a way of
approaching this idea: why would you want to know what the average item is?
You want the best one.

~~~
gits1225
This.

I'll be sourcing recommendations from the silent majority of experts as well
([https://prog21.dadgum.com/143.html](https://prog21.dadgum.com/143.html)).

Reference:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17784551](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17784551).

~~~
dennis_jeeves
There is one area that I can think of, where the recommendation of _some_
'experts' can very useful: medicine. It is extremely difficult to find a
competent physician. Medicine as is generally practiced is often about drastic
procedures like surgery, pills etc. which worsens the overall condition of the
patient and often results in huge bills. There are various contributing
factors, some of which are not in the physician's control - but the end result
is always the same - a really bad deal for the patient. 'Silent'
recommendations can often lead to some renegade physicians who are great at
treating people but may be at odds with the physician's board. All what I said
hold true for dentists also: the truly good ones are very few.

~~~
gits1225
Medicine is a tricky area (it is close to religion in this aspect).

~~~
dennis_jeeves
Well, agreed...

------
amadeuspagel
A few ideas:

\- Link the name to a list with all the recommendations by that person, use
the date for a link to the place where the recommendation was made (using the
date for a permalink is convention).

\- Link tags.

\- Show everyone who recommended something and sort by how many people
recommended it. (For instance The Pragmatic Programmer is recommended by Joel
Spolsky, Steve Yegge and Jeff Atwood.)

\- Use Amazon Affiliate links to make money.

~~~
gits1225
Thanks for the feedback. I'm building one useful feature a time.

No to amazon affiliates.

~~~
mynewtb
> No to amazon affiliates.

Thanks you! This shows character and actual, proper altruistic intentions.

Before reading this, I was not even going to click the link.

~~~
sanderjd
Personally, I prefer not to use any project that has no way to make money.
Life is expensive and time consuming. Projects require at least a little time
and money. If that isn't reimbursed in any way, the rest of life will nearly
always take precedent at some point. Affiliate links seem like a good way to
solve this. I don't see where the conflict of interest lies.

~~~
gits1225
I want myself and others to contribute because of the desire to contribute. I
don't want to bring affiliates into the equation lest it brings the _wrong_
incentives (however glimmering it may be).

There are other ways to make money.

~~~
sanderjd
I'm honestly curious how you envision that affiliate links might create the
wrong incentives. There are other ways to make money, but the ones I can think
of seem much worse. Advertising sucks and clearly has more wrong incentive
problems. Donations are less predictable and disconnected from the usefulness
of the site. It seems to me that getting a small cut of "hey this book does
look useful, I think I'll buy it!" is as well-aligned as it gets. But I'm
interested in your thoughts on this!

~~~
gits1225
Ads don't suck. Bad ads suck. I love good ads.

I used to _wait_ for ads to appear on my Garena client back in the days when I
played DOTA because they were so cool (and useful).

If I know my audience, I don't have to compromise privacy to show useful ads
clean and neat either (watertight curation is applied here as well).

Good ads are relevant.

On amazon affiliates:

The iron rule of nature is: You get what you reward for. If you want ants to
come, you put sugar on the floor — Charlie Munger

I don't want to reward the wrong type of behavior.

~~~
sanderjd
I don't get your point about affiliate links _at all_. What better ad is there
than a link to a recommended book itself? I'd much rather see you get a small
portion of the purchase price of a book you recommended to me than look at
your ads, curated or not.

But it's your site! I hope you do find success with the ad strategy, your site
seems useful, and I hope it remains worth your time.

~~~
gits1225
This comment puts it well:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17789161](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17789161).

~~~
sanderjd
You have the same incentive to prioritize ads over recommendations. If I trust
you to keep ads clearly separated, I also trust you to keep recommendations
undiluted.

~~~
gits1225
> You have the same incentive to prioritize ads over recommendations.

No.

> If I trust you to keep ads clearly separated, I also trust you to keep
> recommendations undiluted.

True. I am the one curator at the moment. I'll open this so that others can
curate / recommend. I require that dilution of intention doesn't happen then.
DNA is important.

------
forapurpose
I truly hope it works out well for you. My personal response:

* I don't know what is meant by "good" people; I'd choose a different term.

* My impression is recommendations from "famous" people, which don't interest me personally. Famous people aren't necessarily smart and unless a topic is in their specific domain, they have no more to contribute that the average person. (Personally, I find the idolization of famous people as 'smarter than thou' to be disturbing and unhealthy; they are no better than gits1225 and I'd like to see their recommendations too.)

* I would be very interested in seriously thought out recommendations by experts in their domains. For example, for a desk chair, I'd be interested in an anonymous chair designer's recommendation. For a history book, I'd be interested in an historian's recommendation. I'm not any more interested in a famous coder's recommendation for a chair or a history book than I am in any other coder's recommendation. (To be fair, some of the famous people are experts making recommendations in their domains.)

~~~
gits1225
All valid points which I too am pondering on but don't have clear answers.

I checked your profile but couldn't find an email to contact you. I'd love to
discuss details once I have written down my thoughts.

~~~
kaybe
Maybe there would be a chance these experts would answer an email, some of
them at least.. the problem would be, of course, to identify them.

~~~
gits1225
I agree. The hack I'm using is PeopleRank (check my comment above).

------
gits1225
Thanks for checking my project. Glad HNers loved it. I had a great day.

Thanks to Alexander and Michiel for pointing me to Knuth's and Keith's
recommendations.

I'm signing off for today. I'll reply to new comments (if any) tomorrow.

Have a great day : )

------
midnightmonster
I suggest adding zebra striping to the list. It's hard to follow some of the
short titles over to the names.

~~~
gits1225
I see. Hmm. Thanks for the feedback.

------
chrxr
Great idea. Could you make the links to Amazon referrals so you can make some
cash at the same time? [https://affiliate-
program.amazon.com/help/node/topic/2021023...](https://affiliate-
program.amazon.com/help/node/topic/202102380)

~~~
gits1225
I appreciate the tip and I did consider it, but chose not to.

~~~
wanderr
In that case maybe make them smile.amazon.com links so some proceeds go to
charity?

~~~
gits1225
That is a lovely idea. Let me sit on the suggestion.

------
JCharante
I'm not exactly sure how it'd be implemented with the current design, but I'd
think it'd be useful to have a query in the URL so you could link
[http://abyjames.com/projects/recommendations?query=Books](http://abyjames.com/projects/recommendations?query=Books)
to just show books, rather than pointing someone to
[http://abyjames.com/projects/recommendations](http://abyjames.com/projects/recommendations)
and asking them to type in "Books".

~~~
gits1225
Yea. I built the basic idea. I'll be building features one by one. Thanks for
the feedback.

------
Jugurtha
\- Someone compiled a list called "Andreessen's Favorite Books":
[https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mmEKySwi0iYjWx_DoigL...](https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1mmEKySwi0iYjWx_DoigL4y7_NflsT0bB0ZnibBFqSVs/edit#gid=0)

\- I compiled a list (see comment on video) from a trailer video for John
Doerr's "Measure What Matters":
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aW5gdRRn_U](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8aW5gdRRn_U)

~~~
gits1225
I was going to add Andreessen's recommendations this week. This helps!

Thanks for pulling the book recommendations. I'll add 'em this week as well.

------
Semaphor
Might I suggest not using the urls for search? Searching for "Software" gives
you a ton of Joel Spolsky recommendations because of his website URL ;)

~~~
gits1225
Yea. This is a wart. I'll be fixing it.

------
davebryand
Love this idea. I've thought about doing something similar, but as a graph, so
we could see books that many people have recommended in common.

~~~
gits1225
I'm working on it. Would love to get feedback once I build the feature. I
checked your profile but couldn't find an email to contact you.

~~~
davebryand
Awesome, thanks! dave@davebryand.com

~~~
gits1225
Email saved. Thanks.

Hack: You can search for a book (The Mythical Man-Month) and see who all
recommended it.

------
eric24234
Thanks so much for implementing this idea. Very nice idea. Whenever i want to
watch a movie its hard to find whats best with imdb or google search because
its so generalized. But if a movie is liked by John Carmack, Michael Nielsen,
Steve Yegee or Elon Musk then the chance of me liking is really great.

~~~
gits1225
That's the idea. Glad you liked it : )

------
louisswiss
Nice!

I have a request though - could you make it more obvious that clicking on the
name of the recommender takes you to their review/the context of why they
recommended the item?

That wasn't obvious to me at all, but it's often really useful to understand
_why_ the person recommended the item in the first place, and what you should
expect to get out of it...

Thanks!

~~~
gits1225
I made it obvious. Let me know if this is clear:
[http://abyjames.com/projects/recommendations/](http://abyjames.com/projects/recommendations/).

~~~
louisswiss
Thanks! Much better, but you might want to display it a bit differently to
avoid having the word `source` repeated constantly...

My suggestion would be to replace `source` (apart from the title) with some
kind of icon for example.

Good luck!

~~~
gits1225
Hmm. Yea. Thanks for the feedback.

------
sampl
Love this, cheers!

For some reason, the design of this is very sweetly nostalgic to me--reminds
me of the web from 10y ago (in a good way!).

Web fonts and accessibility concerns with small font size have made good ol
13px Helvetica with blue links on white bg rare.

~~~
gits1225
The design is deliberate. I love the old web too : )

------
nyokodo
One suggestion: \- Order by column (especially by date for tech).

~~~
gits1225
Thanks for the feedback. It is on my to build list. Bumped it up : )

------
kamek
Love the site. I see the "Recommendation" header center-aligned, while all
other headers are left-aligned. It looks odd to me, was this intentional?

~~~
gits1225
It is. Left aligning that header makes it look weirder. This _looks_ better
(IMO).

------
bhelkey
When I searched for 'Software', all of Joel Spolsky's recommendations showed
up because the word 'Software' is in his source URL.

~~~
gits1225
Yea. This is a wart. I'll be fixing it.

------
groby_b
One tiny suggestion (well, medium-sized :)

Often, these recommendations come with a reason _why_ this is a good book. You
might want to include them, if possible.

~~~
gits1225
It is (but I see it is not obvious). Click on the person's name.

I changed the header name from person to source. Does that make it obvious?

~~~
groby_b
Somewhat more. Maybe change it to "Source article" so people know there's
actual text behind that?

Clicking on a name, I'd expect either a bio, or a list of things they
recommended. It didn't occur to me it might be the original recommendation.
(But then, it might just be lack of coffee :)

Either way, thank you for building this and collecting the data!

~~~
gits1225
I made it obvious. Let me know if this is clear:
[http://abyjames.com/projects/recommendations/](http://abyjames.com/projects/recommendations/).

~~~
groby_b
Awesome, thank you!

------
voicedYoda
This is a great start!

How do you account for duplicates? i.e. Seveneves

The idea (posted elsewhere in this forum) of linking them to smile.amazon.com
might be a great suggestion.

~~~
gits1225
That is a feature (in my book). Search for The Mythical Man-Month tells me
that the book is recommended by Marc Benioff, Joel Spolsky and Jeff Atwood.
That is valuable information for me and tells me that I should read the book
as soon as possible : )

I agree on smile.amazon.com.

~~~
loco5niner
> That is a feature

Agreed

------
kikowi
I miss filter by category (I have tons of books on TODO list already and I
wanted to quickly check everything beside books).

~~~
gits1225
You can search in tags (example: Philosophy, Book), but it doesn't do what you
are looking for.

Thanks for the feedback. I'll look into it.

~~~
fermienrico
Also put a drop down menu because I don’t know if my query in the search box
is going to exist.

------
aaavl2821
really cool, i especially like the product (ie non-book) recommendations.
having a curated list of products isnt something i'd seen before, while there
are plenty of reading lists. your book list is really great but for me i was
most pleasantly surprised seeing the non-books

~~~
gits1225
Glad you found it useful : )

------
ethor
Great idea! How do you collect data?

~~~
gits1225
This data is from my bookmarks.

------
mrleinad
First thought was to search for Billy G, but it seems you haven't included him
yet.

~~~
gits1225
These recommendations are from people I follow, and I'll be gradually adding
people one recommendation a time.

I couldn't find relevant information on Google for Billy G. Do you mind
sharing his profile?

~~~
mrleinad
It's Bill Gates

~~~
gits1225
Ah! I follow his book recommendations and I'll be adding them this month.

------
mikestaub
This is a great idea. I recommend using ArangoDB ( graph database ) to store
the data. You can then support interesting features very easily.

------
stcredzero
Is there a way that the PageRank algorithm could be applied here?

~~~
gits1225
I'm gonna use a different hack: PeopleRank. Example: If Paul Graham recommends
a person, then I'll add all their recommendations.

It is 1 or 0 : )

~~~
stcredzero
You get one of those two scores for scalability.

------
mrfusion
Really cool. How long did this take to build?

~~~
gits1225
1 night to build. 1 week to curate content.

------
lo2y
Great. I've been working on something similar but in Arabic. Thank you for
this list.

~~~
amine42
Care to share your work?

------
ai_ia
Nice, here goes my weekend.

~~~
gits1225
I recommend Norvig's recommendations : )

------
jasonb05
Thanks, very useful!

~~~
gits1225
You are welcome : )

------
samirm
not enough fiction recommendations :)

~~~
gits1225
Haha. True. That should change once I add recommendations from people from
different backgrounds. Maria Popova is not going to recommend The Mythical
Man-Month : )

