Hello all,
2 months ago, I launched a revival version of previous u/goodreads-bot. If this is a surprise to you, please check the announcement and how-to (see my bio / urls not allowed).
From the bottom of my heart I would like to thank all the people who used it and provided constructive feedback, and in particular the mods, u/jefrye and u/novel-opinions.
I have been continuously updating and improving it since then, including:
✔️ Fixing summaries in foreign languages
✔️ Upgrading the database to > 300.000 books
✔️ Upgrading the recommendations engine (which now uses machine learning)
✔️ Improving overall formatting (in particular for old.reddit)
✔️ Providing a link directly to Goodreads Search when the bot does not find the requested book
✔️ Decreasing the ability to accept typos in author name, because paradoxically it led to many wrong results
✔️ Improving the result when a Series is requested => returns the 1st book of the Series instead
Time for the Christmas surprises!
🎅 The bot now also accepts double parentheses, easier to type on most keyboards (like Mac).
=> So {{Harry Potter by JK Rowling}} will work, and ((The Old Man and the sea by Hemingway)) will work too!
🎅 The bot now works on… several subreddits! I actually tested it on sub *booksuggestions* but the comments were auto-removed because of url links in footer. I now should contact mods from other subs to deal with this, but technically, this is all done.
Now, I am asking you:
❔ If you had a magic wand, what would you like the bot to do?
I know I should “somehow” add the most recent books in database but this is really harder said than done, because I must rely on external databases or build my own. Be aware this is a top priority though.
Besides that, I have a few ideas….
❔ I am considering adding !commands to the bot.
For example, typing !summarize would get all books recommended in a given thread 24 hours after original post, then list them all in a recap comment. Or !recommend would only return let’s say 10 books recommended along another one. Etc.
What commands would you find useful?
Finally, some stats: currently the bot is summoned \~40 times a day, while previous bot was summoned \~300 times a day just before it died one year ago. Indeed, many people still don’t know because everyday I get comments like “wow the bot is back” 2 months after 😅😂 so please don’t hesitate to upvote this post to give it some visibility.
Thank you, and enjoy your Christmas break all,
Goodreads-rebot
by goodreads-rebot