Tabulated review threads sorted by average score

[JeBuS]

The "interesting differences" may be due to goodreads' star system description being different from the usual ratings here.

1: Did not like it
2: It was ok
3: Liked it
4: Really liked it
5: It was amazing

Going just by the descriptions, I would think that ratings would tend to be higher on average at goodreads.

 

[Sho]

I think i should add some visualizations maybe that indicate on a per-cell basis what a score's relative position within the column is regardless of sorting mode. So either a "(rank/total)", or a background color in a range from green to red or something. Then you could make comparisons like "oh on TrekBBS this is one of the best-liked books but Goodreads just thinks it's middle of the pack" that you can't easily do at a glance based on just score because of the different scoring behavior and caps to the range.

 

[Christopher]

Ok, here we go, Goodreads scores are in: http://www.eikehein.com/stuff/trekbbs/review_threads/

Interesting differences.

The Goodreads crowd seems to have a lower opinion of my work than folks elsewhere, at least judging from the few samples available. They rate Only Superhuman pretty low too (as do Amazon.com reviewers), even though it's got a much higher ranking on Barnes & Noble and (for the audiobook) GraphicAudio's site. Which just goes to show how little faith one can place in such rankings.

Still, I wish more older Trek novels could be added to your list. Only my three most recent ones are counted there so far, for some reason.

I think i should add some visualizations maybe that indicate on a per-cell basis what a score's relative position within the column is regardless of sorting mode. So either a "(rank/total)", or a background color in a range from green to red or something. Then you could make comparisons like "oh on TrekBBS this is one of the best-liked books but Goodreads just thinks it's middle of the pack" that you can't easily do at a glance based on just score because of the different scoring behavior and caps to the range.

You've already got a toggle that can sort the TrekBBS scores either ascending or descending -- why not just add the same toggle to the Goodreads column, so that viewers have the option to sort by its scores?

 

[Defcon]

Although it is listed as N/A, Vanguard: What Judgments come has an entry on goodreads:

Vanguard: What Judgments come: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11139928-what-judgments-come?from_search=true

Maybe it wasn't found because Judgments is typed differently in the TrekBBS thread title?

ETA:

Still, I wish more older Trek novels could be added to your list. Only my three most recent ones are counted there so far, for some reason.

Apparently only those three have threads with polls here on the TrekBBS.

You've already got a toggle that can sort the TrekBBS scores either ascending or descending -- why not just add the same toggle to the Goodreads column, so that viewers have the option to sort by its scores?

That is already there, just click on Goodreads.

 

[Sho]

You've already got a toggle that can sort the TrekBBS scores either ascending or descending -- why not just add the same toggle to the Goodreads column, so that viewers have the option to sort by its scores?

You can actually already click of all of the column headers and sort ascending/descending . The presence of the indicator doubles as "this is the active sort column".

What I meant is that if, say, the highest score on Goodreads was a 3 (of 5) and the highest score on TrekBBS was 4 (of 5), you can't really compare books just based on two having a 3 - in this example on Goodreads it means it's top of the line compared to the others, but on TrekBBS it means there are books that are even better liked. So some additional info is needed so you can get a feel for what a 3 means for a book's standing in context of the full set of books. With just one score column you can get this just from position in the list, but with multiple score columns, you can't see it for both at the same time.

Although it is listed as N/A, Vanguard: What Judgments come has an entry on goodreads:

Vanguard: What Judgments come: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11139928-what-judgments-come?from_search=true

Maybe it wasn't found because Judgments is typed differently in the TrekBBS thread title?

Yep: The code ends up searching Goodreads for "Star Trek What Judgements Come Ward Dilmore" in this case, and that doesn't turn up any search results. Goodreads isn't very lenient when it comes to spelling errors.

I could either add an "exceptions list" with some predefined mappings we know need special handling, or I can petition the mods to just fix the typo.

 

[Defcon]

Yep: The code ends up searching Goodreads for "Star Trek What Judgements Come Ward Dilmore" in this case, and that doesn't turn up any search results. Goodreads isn't very lenient when it comes to spelling errors.

Seems to be common for book shelfing websites. With Shelfari, Amazon's version of Goodreads, it is pretty much the same. Maybe with them being sites dealing with books they just assume that their users are able to spell.

 

[Sho]

Yeah . I'm actually happy they're strict, because I think it's better to fall through to n/a than risk showing a score for the wrong book. Fortunately they seem to be really good at associating books with the franchise, so by including "Star Trek" in the search terms I seem to reliably get the right book even when there are others with the same title (e.g. there's multiple books named "Distant Early Warning").

 

[Christopher]

You can actually already click of all of the column headers and sort ascending/descending . The presence of the indicator doubles as "this is the active sort column".

That's a little confusing, since I couldn't tell it was possible to toggle the other columns without the symbol being there. Maybe you could set it so that the arrow indicator is grayed out on inactive columns instead of invisible?

 

[Sho]

That's a little confusing, since I couldn't tell it was possible to toggle the other columns without the symbol being there. Maybe you could set it so that the arrow indicator is grayed out on inactive columns instead of invisible?

Will do, but note that it's fairly common in UIs to hide the indicator on unsorted columns to reduce visual noise. Windows Explorer, Mac OS X Finder or KDE Dolphin to name a few common file managers as examples.

 

[Sho]

OK, done: The headers of unsorted columns now display a subdued indeterminate sorting indicator.

 

[Christopher]

^Thanks.

Interesting... My three listed books are all grouped together in the TrekBBS rankings, but Watching the Clock is well above the others on the Goodreads ranking.

 

[Defcon]

Seeing Christopher mentioning that only three of his novels are in the listing made me realize that we never really got the "classic review threads" going to fill up the table, as we planned in the beginning.

I think I will look through some of my old review and choose a book to start a review thread about, probably one of Christopher's older books.

 

[Sho]

Aye, sounds good . I have the Vanguard set to complete as well, but no time for it right now (and this weekend there's another The Fall entry to post already).

Also, I've gotten in touch with our esteemed mod trampledamage and we've got a typo fix for What Judg(e)ments Come in the works, then the Goodreads scores will be complete.

 

[Defcon]

I've posted a review thread for Ex Machina.

 

[Thrawn]

Hah, Sho, thanks for including this. Really interesting differences. Especially interesting to me is Voyager - the BBS (correctly) prefers Children of the Storm to all the rest, but at Goodreads, Children is third out of the VOY novels, beat by Eternal Tide and Unworthy. Weird.

 

[JD]

The thing I find weird is that a lot of the higher rated books have lower ratings on Goodreads, but at the same time a lot of the lower rating books have higher scores on Goodreads. For example, Seize the Fire, the lowest rated book on the BBS has a 2.66 on the BBS and a 3.52 on Goodreads, while the BBS's highest rated book, Reap the Whirlwind has a 4.73 on the BBS, and a 4.14 on Goodreads.

 

[JeBuS]

JD, as I pointed out, goodreads star rating system has descriptions that don't quite match those here. There's really only one rating that a person might think was "bad" and that would be 1-star. On the flip side, when the goodreads audience has a larger selection of written works to compare against, how many of them are truly "amazing" works of art? The BBS is more likely to rate something "Outstanding" because a novel might be outstanding for a Trek novel. But hardly any of the Trek novels I've come across would compare to the great works of literary art in the wider world that goodreads has in comparison. (Not that they must in order to be enjoyable, but hopefully you see my point.)

 

[Defcon]

I think I will try to post "classic review threads" on a regular basis, rotating through the series.

So what does the hive mind think would be a good rhythm to post them? Weekly? Every two weeks? Monthly?

 

[Sho]

I think weekly might be just a tad too fast if we want to give threads enough time to dwell on the first page to garner a respectable amount of votes. Every two weeks, perhaps?

 

[Defcon]

^Yeah, seems reasonable.

Anyway, I had a little fun with the numbers in the table (taken around 10:30pm CET) and basically just ranked them according to their rating for both sources.

The biggest differences are:

Revelation and Dust (Difference: 45 positions)
Goodreads #1
TrekBBS #46

In Tempests Wake (Difference: 34 positions)
Goodreads #19
TrekBBS #53

Blind Man's Bluff (Difference: 32 positions)
Goodreads #23
TrekBBS #55

About half of the books fall within a difference of 5 places, with only one having the exact same rank in both lists (Devil's Bargain; 57th in both lists).