Will you like will you like it?

So, does anyone use the "Will you like it?" feature on work pages? Example:



I find it fun and not inaccurate, but opinions clearly vary, and space is at a premium. What do you think? Do you use it? Is it accurate? Is it a fun treat, or a dumb waste of space?

I do use it from time to time. I've found it more accurate than not, and I am entertained by it.

I use it sometimes and it’s fun.

I never noticed it before. And it doesn’t interest me. The couple I just checked were inaccurate, too.

I use it occasionally and find it mildly accurate but not very helpful.

I use it sometimes, it’s fun and fairly accurate, and I have used it to help me decide whether to add a title to my TBR when I’m on the fence.

I don't use it. Checking books that I've recently read, it's not terribly accurate.

I find it entertaining, but I am not entirely sure how much stock I put in it. I'd be sad to see it go, though.

I wasn’t aware it existed so won’t be bothered if it goes away. I never trust that kind of thing as I’ve never found them accurate (I take most people’s recommendations with a grain of salt, too).

I like it and would be sad to see it go, but it's not a feature I can't live without.

I use it occasionally, but it's only moderately accurate.

Never seen it before. Checking some recently added books, apparently I won't like them - confidence very low. What's the algorithm based on?

I've consulted it occasionally. It's fun, but I don't find it very reliable.

I use it when canvassing for new books to read, but usually the answer is that I will like it, with a low confidence. So maybe not that useful.

I use it sometimes, and it's more reliable than not. I wouldn't be bothered if it went, though.

It tends to be fairly accurate when there is other information to help make a decision - ie when you don't need it. When that other information is missing it is very hit or miss. Maybe more miss.

I have looked at it quite a bit, but only 'used' it if it agreed with what I already thought. If it disagreed with my personal opinion I just ignored it.

I hadn't used it until now. So I checked about twenty books as a sample -- and it didn't give me an opinion on any of them. Roughly half the books I checked had the message "There are too few copies to analyze whether you will like it." That's in a quite random sample; I would expect that to be about the rate for my whole library. But, to repeat, even the ones that didn't have that message didn't produce a rating.

Unless there is a setting to turn it on, it's pretty useless for someone with a library as obscure as mine. Which doesn't surprise me much. :-)

//Correction to my original post: I see that I have to click on it to get the recommendation -- though I still have that 50% "too few copies" problem. Which makes it not very useful, because my library is getting more obscure by the day. :-) Based on the results that I did get, though, I can make an observation: I value a book based on three criteria: subject matter, quality of the writing, and level of scholarship such as footnotes and bibliography; a good book requires all three. Example: James IV by Norman MacDougall: Good subject, excellent scholarship, reads like a lump of lead. I am forced to slog through it, but once I'm done, I will happily never look at it again. Yet the algorithm expects I will love it. Based on my revisited sample, the "Will You Like It" algorithm appears to be good at subject matter, no good at level of scholarship, no good at quality of writing. Not sure what can be done about that, but the subject of a book is the easiest thing to learn about; the problem is to determine level of scholarship and quality of writing. The algorthim is only telling me the part I already know. So I guess my revised opinion is that it's a fun toy but not to be trusted. I kinda like it even so, but only as a toy, not as an actual recommendation engine.//

I was aware of the feature but have not used it. Looking at a few recent purchases it is reasonably accurate but I really won’t miss it if it goes.

I use it quite often. I don't really trust it, though.

I've not used it in ... years. I found it funny, fun, and inaccurate.
No real loss if it goes away

It's always nice to have a suggestion, so that you can do the complete opposite.

It doesn’t really give enough information to use it as a basis for a decision. If it said “you won’t like this, because we know you have a prejudice against books by people who put their academic qualifications on the front cover,” or “you’ll love this, it’s full of juicy sex-scenes,” it would be disturbingly intrusive, but a source of useful advice.

As it is, we don’t know whether it’s telling us we will or won’t like something on reasonable grounds, or just because of stray stuff in our libraries we haven’t looked at since we were teenagers.

I like the idea of it, but in practice I haven't used it really at all.

Come to think of it, I haven't used it in such a long time I can't even find the feature now.

I used to use it occasionally but it was never accurate except in the most obvious cases, so I haven't used it in years.

I'll join the it's fun, but not useful group.

I won't miss it. In my recollection of the incidental use I made of it years ago the feature was fairly inaccurate and/or useless ("too few copies"), and I haven't bothered with it since.

The terminology it uses seems odd to me: With "very high confidence", you "probably will like" this book.

>30 cpg: There's basically two axes:

1. Will you like the book?
2. How confident are we?

In theory, we could plot it on a x-y grid, but it seemed fussy.

>31 timspalding: In theory, we could plot it on a x-y grid, but it seemed fussy.

I don't think there is any problem with the terminology; "confidence" is an easy concept, and so is the scale of how well one likes the book. The only question is, is the result accurate? If it isn't, it's just another horoscope. :-p

And it does seem as if a lot of people find the results inaccurate. The flip side being that we probably remember errors better than we remember places where the prediction is accurate.

Perhaps this calls for an actual experiment: Pick some people and have them examine, one at a time, their results for (say) their last forty books, and see what the correlation is.

Of course, in my case, the correlation is with "not enough copies." :-)

Much more useful is the LibraryThing Recommendations module. I use that all the time.

>33 2wonderY: Much more useful is the LibraryThing Recommendations module. I use that all the time.

You obviously don't get an average of about 135 recommendations per week, about 90% of them based on books you don't like much. :-)

I think I've used it a few times, but only for a laugh. I trust my own judgment and take risks with books that are edge cases. If it disappears, I won't miss it.

>34 waltzmn: I’m referring the the one on the work page.

>31 timspalding:

Yes, but saying "probably" instead of "a little" conflates the two axes.

The pretty diagram is very confusing because the arrow always seems to be at half or lower, even when the result is "probably will like The Grand Sophy (prediction confidence: very high)".

>1 timspalding: I have never used it before this day, but I am charmed and delighted by it now that I'm paying attention.

Mine shows as a plain gray bar until you click the "Will you like it?" link, which I didn't realize until now I needed to do, so I've spent the past however many years thinking it just didn't ever have enough data for the books I was looking at....

>36 2wonderY: I’m referring the the one on the work page.

OK. That one isn't very good for me either. But, again, that's because I have a strange library and, seemingly, strange standards. (E.g. I don't think one should recommend a nineteenth century history book to someone who is reading an eighteenth century history book.)

>40 melannen: Mine shows as a plain gray bar until you click the "Will you like it?" link, which I didn't realize until now I needed to do, so I've spent the past however many years thinking it just didn't ever have enough data for the books I was looking at....

This was my problem too. But I still have about 50% of my books that it doesn't have data for. :-)

The curiosity is that, if it doesn't have enough data, it tells you that, but if it doesn't, it shows nothing. That's weird enough to approach the status of bug: Either hide it every time or show it every time.

>32 waltzmn: I went back through some of my most recently read books, and ... it's not good. It really feels like a caricature of me versus a tight genre. I've got a lot of 70s sci-fi, so I will love Bloodhype (actual opinion, 3, 3.5 stars.) I don't have as much modern sci-fi, so I will probably like The Atrocity Archives (actual opinion, 4,4.5 stars.) Caught Dead in Philadelphia is 80s mystery, so love, and Glory in Death may be mystery & sci-fi, but it's also romance so probably like (despite the fact I have 3 reads recorded for it and for most of the 50 book series). It's worse for my dip into Japanese manga, which got "probably won't like" or flat "won't like", for a bunch of books I tended to find fun. Doctor Galaxy got a "will love", despite the fact it's probably my most disliked book of the year on my read list. (I don't tend to finish books that aren't fun, so not completely damning, but a portrayal of humanity that I find implausible that lets the bad guys win is not fun.)

>42 waltzmn: I still have a few with no data, but way more than I was expecting.

It is very weird, though. I understand if they don't want to take time to do the calculation if most people don't need the data, but the "Will you like it?" link definitely parses for me as "click for more info on the feature" not "click to make the feature load in". Even changing it to something more button-like would help a lot.

I just pulled up a book from my library that I gave 5*'s to and this is what I got:

LibraryThing thinks you probably will like The Invention of Nature: Alexander von Humboldt's New World (prediction confidence: very high)

Probably so.

I've never seen it, but that's probably because it's been years since I've done anything in my LT catalog. And that's not going to change anytime soon, either.

It entertains me. Is often accurate; sometimes amusingly & wildly inaccurate.

ETA: Wow! I just tested 10 of my top-rated recent reads & the algorithm predicted some form of liking for all of them. One book I rated 4.5 stars, the algorithm predicted I’d love — I didn’t even know that was a category! My respect for that little bar has grown.

I use it frequently , almost always. Some the time it is very accurate, sometimes not. But mainly I do find it is accurate. I like it. I would miss it.

>34 waltzmn: I feel the same way about recommendations. I rarely look at that.

Just for the record: I used this every single time. I mourn its untimely demise.

I often click the bar out of curiosity, I don't think it ever has influenced my reading or acquisitions.

It was a fun toy, but I wasn't even persuaded of its accuracy.

>1 timspalding: I use this regularly and am very disappointed to see it gone. I found it particularly helpful with judging books with few ratings.

I found it helpful when choosing between a small selection of books, especially when I'm looking outside of my reading comfort zone.

>50 philantrop:

Me too! Most of the time the predications were correct for me.

I will look into adding it back. It's going to be a little time, as there's a lot in front of it.

>56 timspalding: thanks Tim!

>56 timspalding:
Thanks for your consideration.

Thanks!
I am looking forward to the features return as well

We just had a meeting about this and, YES, the feature will return. We want to think it through and make it better so it won't be returning immediately. But it will return.

It may become THE NEEDLE! https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2024/11/05/us/elections/results-president-fo...

oh dear.

I always wondered what went into it — does merely owning a book (perhaps one I used for reference, or haven't read at all) go into the algorithm that determines whether I'll like it? Are collections which are excluded from being used for recommendations, counted towards this feature? Do I need to have ratings for my books to determine if I'll like it? Are tags any part of the equation (ie, you own a lot of/rated 5 stars on/whatever the metric is other books with this tag, so that makes us think you will like this one)?

timspalding (#61):

If there's anything that could drive me away at this point, retraumatizing me like that might be it. A needle, okay. That fake jitter/motion for the sake of drama? Absolutely not.

Maybe I'm the rare one who didn't care for this feature and found it useless. I'm also not sad to see it gone if it frees up compute cycles for other things.

I used it quite often and am unhappy that it was removed. I found it to be quite accurate and helpful.

I don't know what algorithm LT uses, of course, but there are pretty good mathematical rules for this sort of thing. If you have a library that is similar to a lot of others' (that is, if you have tastes that are shared with a fairly high number of people), then the calculation should have high accuracy. If you have an unusual library (or you don't like the books you own! :-), it won't be good for much.

I suspect that LT could make a broad statistic that would give a good idea of how accurate the guesses are, just by looking at the overall nature of one's library. Actually, that is the statistic I'd really like. :-)

I'm really sad that this is gone! I actually rely on it a lot: I have found that it is not always correct about what I will like, but every time I read a book that LT says I will NOT like, I regret reading it.

Just adding that I'm sad it's gone - hopefully it'll return in some form. It was always a good starting point for a book I didn't know much about and it was actually pretty accurate more often that not.

I used it all the time and am really sad that it's gone :(

As >60 conceptDawg: posted, it will return! We can't always make promises but this is real.

I'm sad it's gone, too, and glad it'll be back!

Yay! I can't say I used it often, but it did come in handy once in a while.

I've used LibraryThing for a long time, but have found for my daily tracking other sites have more features I use. However, I come back to LT to use the "Will You Like It?". It might not be super accurate, but it gives me a good sniff test on books I don't know much about. Without this feature, I don't know how often I'll be here.

Please bring it back. And soon.

Every time I start and finish a book, I check the "Will You Like It?". It's sometimes accurate and sometimes not (it seems to have a prejudice that I will not like a book the more popular it is and vice-versa...which is sometimes true and sometimes not!). But I always find it fun to compare the prediction with the ultimate result.

>71 kristilabrie: When is it coming back?????

>76 Pawla: It is coming back very soon. As a matter of fact the display and UI side of things is ready to go. But, since we're updating the feature we've decided to work on making the ranking algorithm more accurate. So hopefully we have something for release early next week.

>77 conceptDawg:

No guarantees on the algorithm getting better. My feel is that this is a joke feature, but I think people take it seriously. This makes me want to improve it, but I'm worried I can't. Also, I'm worried people will confuse this joke feature with our much better recs feature overall.

two weeks.

>78 timspalding: If you want people to understand it's a joke feature, maybe it needs a different wording/ description?

And it might improve a little if you could use the stars I gave the book when I read it. It's a bit strange if LT tells me I'm going to LOVE a book that I've already read and given 1 star, or vv. (Of course that wouldn't help for books I haven't read yet.)

>80 Ennas:

I feel like using your own data on the book is kinda cheating.

I have found this feature useful. It's probably less unreliable for me than the new recommendations system, which can't seem to distinguish books I'd like from books I'd despise, provided they are in the same genre.

Hint: if you had a field "has footnotes/endnotes" for science and history books, maybe even all non-fiction, having this set to false pretty well guarantees I'll regard the book as a waste of my time. And with fiction, a huge swathe of fail books could be avoided if there was information on average number of pages between context switches, and total number of viewpoint characters. (I want to follow a small number of characters, not hop around like a jack rabbit.)

>82 ArlieS: Hint: if you had a field "has footnotes/endnotes" for science and history books, maybe even all non-fiction, having this set to false pretty well guarantees I'll regard the book as a waste of my time.

Hear, hear.

Also a field for an index. If a non-fiction book has neither, what's the point?

This might perhaps be included in Common Knowledge. And if we're adding a bunch of switches anyway, maybe one for Bibliography?

I Like it

I don't like that it is not there anymore

Everybody doesn't have to like it

If they don't like it don't use it

For those of us who do like it, we would like you to put

I Like it

back

It's coming back. I'm trying to make it better.

>85 timspalding: Interesting! How so??

Better algorithm.

I never took it very seriously. If it gave an answer that went against my gut feeling, I went with the gut.

But if trying to decide which book to borrow at the library, it gave a quick first approximation that I found useful.

Yeah it was more like the LT version of the Magic Eight Ball.

Huh. I always thought it was a visual representation of the likelihood that similar libraries would have the work catalogued, like the old/original recommendations algo. And that's why it didn't always work for new or very obscure books, and a nearly universally panned book could still get a high positive score, if it was added by a lot of very similar libraries.

Huh. I always thought it was a visual representation of the likelihood that similar libraries would have the work catalogued, like the old/original recommendations algo. And that's why it didn't always work for new or very obscure books, and a nearly universally panned book could still get a high positive score, if it was added by a lot of very similar libraries.

Yeah. That's how it worked.

>91 timspalding: whew ! some of the discussion had me scratching my head, wondering if I was thinking of an entirely different feature all this time.

>1 timspalding: I used it to sift through reading recommendations and choose which order to read books in. I no longer see it however and miss it. If its disappearance is not just an artifact of my particular operating system/browser set up I'd suggest a separate tab or link for those of us who *do* like it. Those who don't are welcome to the glorious space on their screen that its absence will give them.

>93 robrambusch:

It'll be back soon.

Great - thanks.

I could also use some help on other recommendations, so if you have the inclination MovieThing and WineThing would come in handy as well. ;-)

Seconding WineThing! Maybe a CocktailThing?

CheeseThing. And for the swamp lovers...

>97 MrAndrew: OkefenokeeThing?

>94 timspalding: Any timeline on this? Thanks.

>99 waitingtoderail: two weeks

>100 NorthernStar: lol

I'll pile on here ... I'm missing the little "will you like it?" bar, too! Thanks for working on its return.

I am another one also looking forward to it coming back. I've been using that feature for years with great accuracy and often recommended the site to others for that reason. (Member since 2008)

I apparently never posted in this thread. FWIW I liked the feature and hope for its speedy return.

I check each day hoping this feature will return.

FYI: This is still in the development pipeline. It has not been abandoned.

Another month has gone by--it must be a long pipeline. :-) I'll keep checking back.

I miss it so much. I didn't realize how much I used it until it wasn't there any more.

It is, in fact, a very long pipeline. Just my list of current major projects is about two pages long. But we're making progress. The issue is that re-enabling this one is really based on a bigger project that Tim and Chris C are working on, so I'm not much help on it.

But it is still on the docket.

>1 timspalding: Yes! It is THE reason I'm still on LibraryThing! I have enough books that it's incredibly accurate for me! I'd love a different color scheme for it, but it's the most accurate tool for finding new books that I've run into. I spend hours looking for it over the past couple months--trying to show it to various friends--before finally reaching out to support.

Perhaps though it out to be re-named - "Should you own it" is a better reflection of what it does - compare a specific book against other libraries similar to yours. If many of them have it, it will recommend 'yes' to you, with no consideration of whether it was 'liked' by any of them.

>111 reading_fox: My "library" includes many books I've never owned, in a collection of their own, and I'm probably not unusual in using LibraryThing to record library books I've borrowed.

>111 reading_fox: No, it compares what we have entered, whether or not we own it. I use(d) this most often at the library to help decide whether or not to borrow a book. If you want a rename, then 'Should you read this?' 'Read' covers both library borrowing and purchasing, and also reflects more accurately what the entries in the other libraries indicate. I suspect that very few LT members only list books they own.

And most of us mostly enter books we thought we'd like, so I am happy with the original name.

>111 reading_fox:, >112 ArlieS:

Yes. "Should you own it?" is not more accurate. The feature compares a specific book against other catalogs similar to yours. And of course I also deliberately catalog books I don't like.

The question is: "Does this look like a book that belongs in your catalog?" but "Will you like it?" is a passable shorthand, and the subjective element of it allows me to read it as, "Will I like to be familiar with the contents of this book?" rather than "Should I acquire it?" or "Should I read it?"

Mea culpa, yes lazy shorthand here too. "Should you catalogue it" is a better reflection of LT use.

>109 conceptDawg: Thanks conceptDawg, I'll keep checking back.

Just adding my voice to the "Thanks for everything you do, and not-so-patiently waiting to see this feature back" chorus.

Any updates! I MISS this SOOO MUCH!!!

Yes, agreed! Miss this so much too

I MISS THIS Feature!! Will it ever come back?????? I used it all the time. :( :( :(

>85 timspalding: SOOOOOOOON I hope! It was AWESOME in my humble opinion!!!

It's been months and months now, how hard is it to put this back!!

Please let us know about time lines and updates! It sounds like this will eventually return at least.

>123 LaPhenix: yes please!

What happened to this? I see from the comments that it is supposed to come back - eventually.

I use it to get a idea about how a new author or book might fit.

I miss it.

I've been reminding the developers about this, it's still on the long list but not forgotten. Thanks for your extended patience on this.

>127 kristilabrie: Any chance a dedicated Table of Contents field ( https://www.librarything.com/topic/332959 ) or Icons to Indicate Unowned Works Contained in Owned Works ( https://www.librarything.com/topic/349171 ) are on that long, long list?

>127 kristilabrie: It's just confusing because it already existed?

>128 jasbro: I don't know that the developers have discussed a TOC field, or the other issue, I'm afraid. (Most are now out for the holidays, so it might be worth bringing this up in a couple of months?)

Any updates?

>131 beehappy: would appreciate this as well!

Does it work off LT data only or does it use ratings from other sites?

I would find it useful if the results also showed

Amazon : Number of reviews
Amazon: Star rating
Goodreads: Ditto
Possibly some price info

I would stop using it if they used data from other places. If I wanted Amazon or Goodreads I would go there.

Not that either are likely to allow their data to be used.

How does one use that feature? I've never seen that feature before

>139 louisisaloafofbreb:
It was shut down a little over a year ago. >94 timspalding: has said he'd bring it back after people lamented its loss.

>139 louisisaloafofbreb: It's been gone for a little over a year now. It's supposed to come back, but no one knows when yet.

>139 louisisaloafofbreb: It was a sliding scale graphic on each work page that proposed to guesstimate how well (or poorly) you, as an LT Member, would like that particular work. I don't recall the exact wording, but it was basically very much, favorable, neutral, unfavorable, or not at all, coupled with a secondary guesstimate for the degree of confidence in its rating. I also don't know the particular algorithms or details that went into its calculations, but it seemed to be a sort of proto-AI-numbers-crunching based on (among other things?) works you had cataloged and, more particularly, works for which that you had expressed a preference (or not) of your own. I occasionally looked at it but didn't put much stock in the predictions, probably because I never gave ratings to enough works in our catalog for the data that function drew on. (We have a few ... ) Still, I'd be interested to have it return and to occasionally check its assessment against my own sense of some works.

At the risk of repetition, I'm personally FAR more interested to get a dedicated Table of Contents field ( https://www.librarything.com/topic/332959 ) or Icons to Indicate Unowned Works Contained in Owned Works ( https://www.librarything.com/topic/349171 )

>142 jasbro: ohhhhh- okay

>142 jasbro:
I'm pretty sure that it was never ratings-based, and that like other LT recommendation engines, it was driven by just what was in your catalog.

>144 paradoxosalpha: Yeah, that's what I recall, too. The "will you like it" was always a bit misleading on that part, especially since it was one of the earliest features and Tim has always held that ratings are less meaningful than if you've catalogued the book at all.

Not to mention that a lot of people don't rate.

It was never infallible, but it gave a first idea as to whether the book I had just picked up might be right for me. I miss it every time I go to the library.

It's been a year since Tim Spaulding said it would "be about a year..." Are we any closer to getting it back?

About a year is only slightly shorter than two weeks.

>94 timspalding: "It'll be back soon." This is dated March 11, 2025. It is now Aril 28, 2026. Are we any closer to getting this back or is it never coming back?

Hey now! Take a number - waiting on dark mode 5 years now.

>150 Bookmarque: But did dark mode ever exist on LibraryThing? Surely restoring something recently broken ought to be easier than creating something new. (And yes, I know it was broken intentionally. That doesn't make me feel better about its continuing absence.)