Recommendations pulled from thin air?

I clicked on the "why?" link for a few recommendations, only to see

Why? (close why) Recommendation based on:

...with no list of books below it. Is this a bug? The current version of "Just Because"? Something else?

Example: I chose to see recommendations filtered by my "Impressionism" tag. The first three books recommended came up with a basis, as did the seventh and eighth. But the other half of the books recommended here did not.

True, I could see most of them fitting in. But I really would have liked to know how the heck The curse of caste, or, The slave bride : a rediscovered African American novel and Villa Air-Bel : World War II, escape, and a house in Marseille made it to the list.

Today's example:

Filter by AnnaClaire's books tagged: woman suffrage {32 recommendations}

...

13. The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan
1352 copies. 8 reviews. Average rating 3.79.
No thanks! | Why? (close why) Recommendation based on:

...

15. The ballot box battle by Emily Arnold McCully
23 copies. 1 reviews. Average rating 4.
No thanks! | Why? (close why) Recommendation based on:

...

19. The solitude of self : thinking about Elizabeth Cady Stanton by Vivian Gornick
22 copies.
No thanks! | Why? (close why) Recommendation based on:

...

22. In our time : memoir of a revolution by Susan Brownmiller
103 copies. 1 reviews. Average rating 4.
No thanks! | Why? (close why) Recommendation based on:
23. Intimate Matters: A History of Sexuality in America by John D'Emilio
185 copies. Average rating 3.83.
No thanks! | Why? (close why) Recommendation based on:
24. Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass by Frederick Douglass
1716 copies. 16 reviews. Average rating 3.93.
No thanks! | Why? (close why) Recommendation based on:
25. American Reformers, 1815-1860, Revised Edition by Ronald G. Walters
13 copies. 1 reviews.
No thanks! | Why? (close why) Recommendation based on:
26. Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women from the Renaissance to the Present by Lillian Faderman
220 copies. 1 reviews. Average rating 3.28.
No thanks! | Why? (close why) Recommendation based on:
27. The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
1908 copies. 14 reviews. Average rating 3.92.
No thanks! | Why? (close why) Recommendation based on:
28. The grounding of modern feminism by Nancy F. Cott
59 copies. Average rating 3.75.
No thanks! | Why? (close why) Recommendation based on:
29. The Many-Headed Hydra: The Hidden History of the Revolutionary Atlantic by Peter Linebaugh
123 copies. Average rating 4.33.
No thanks! | Why? (close why) Recommendation based on:

30. After winning : the legacy of the New Jersey suffragists, 1920-1947 by Felice D. Gordon
1 copies.
No thanks! | Why? (close why) Recommendation based on:

31. Rehearsal for Republicanism : Free Soil and the politics of antislavery by John Mayfield
1 copies.
No thanks! | Why? (close why) Recommendation based on:

32. Villains of all nations : Atlantic pirates in the golden age by Marcus Rediker
51 copies. 1 reviews. Average rating 4.
No thanks! | Why? (close why) Recommendation based on:

This has happened since the start of Recommendations by Tag. It should get fixed sometime.

It should. That's why I brought it up.

It's been mentioned in Bug Collectors too, less recently than this (can't find the thread). You might want to put it over there - it is a bug!

I just read this thread, hoping for some explanation of Recommendations, automatic or not.

No such luck, so would someone explain what I am seeing?

Beyond that, how would I make a Recommendation?

7: For an explanation of recommendations, are you looking for the basic theory or do you have problems?

Making a recommendation -
Go to a work.
Scroll past the tags section.
Click on "Contribute your own recommendation." near the end of the recommendations section.
Search for a work you want to recommend for the 1st work. Click it.
Look at the options and type a comment (optional).
Click the "Make Recommendation" button.

Thank you for the explanation on how to make my own recommendations. I already see other members' recommendations on books in my library.

What I don't understand are the "Automatic" and "Member Recommendations" on my home page. How are these generated, and why do I get them, rather than other books that might be recommended instead?

I have been in LT for a while now, but there is still a lot for me to learn.

Work recommendations are based on other people's libraries. People who have that book, also have... this other book. The same thing applies to tags and subject headings.

Because your library has certain sets of books, LibraryThing looks at member libraries that share those books and then recommends books that you don't have. As you add more books or or press "No Thanks" on some of the recommendations (that you don't like), LibraryThing will give "new" recommendations; these take time (day+), so aren't instant.

Member Recommendations are from other members.

infiniteletters,

This is a help. How do I say "No Thanks" to either kind of recommendation?

Um, go to the Recommendations page, click No thanks under the recommendations?

This only works for automatic recommendations at the moment, not member ones.

>12 infiniteletters:
I've actually suggested that this be extended to member recommendations. Will root out the thread.

Edited to add: Found it. Can we get back to autiomatic recommendations with no apparent basis whatsoever? <wanders off in search of caffiene>

Yup, I saw that thread, hence "at the moment".

*hands you a cup of turkish coffee* That's heavier than it looks; don't drop it!

Thanks! (Since I didn't start the threadjacking, I'll add that I have no idea how I'll haul myself out of bed for the 7AM bus to Rhinebeck on Saturday.)

AnnaClaire,

Having a basis for the automatic recommendations would seem to be quite reasonable to me.

I do see at least some connection with authors or subjects in most of the 1000 automatic recommendations that I have right now. I deleted some by saying "No thanks" but that just adds some new ones at the end of the long list. I am going to look again and see if I can find any that don't have some connection to my library books.

</i>
I'm not complaining that I can't think of a good reason why they're there -- just that for some of them the "why?" link doesn't tell me a damn thing. Literally: clicking on it will come up with the usual "Recommendation based on:" but fail to list any books.

Edited to close davidt8's HTML.

There's another problem with the "why?" lists when filtering by your own tags. Let's say I filter my recommendations by my tag "strikes." For many of the recommended books clicking on "Why?" produces nothing, as in AnnaClaire's complaint. But even when I do get a list of books they are frequently not books that I have tagged "strikes." Or even books that anyone has tagged "strikes."

It feels like there are two separate algorithms at work. Algorithm one produces the list of recommendations. Then when you click "Why?" for a book in the list, algorithm two compares that book to your whole library and creates a list of similar books. But, because it's a different algorithm, sometimes it produces nothing or it lists books not included in the filter used in algorithm one.

Or maybe its some other problem, but it's clear that the "Why?" link doesn't do what I would logically expect it to do.

Perhaps that's another thread. Right now, I think the thin-air recommendations are the bigger problem. And of the two, they're more likely to be a bug, rather than a working piece of code badly explained.

It's not a feature, it's a bug.

>19 AnnaClaire:
Calling it a problem of thin-air recommendations implies that there is no basis for the recommendation. I think, rather, that the problem is that the "Why?" link doesn't actually tell you the basis. This is obvious when it lists nothing, but I was trying to say that even when it lists something, I think what it lists may not be the real basis for the recommendation.

18/21: For tag recommendation, the recommended books don't have to use your tags. LT takes that set of books with your tag and creates recommendations based on the set (tags, subjects, library ownership, etc.)

>22 infiniteletters:
It's not that the recommended books don't share the filter tag, it's that the list of my books given as the 'reason' for the recommendation don't have the filter tag.

If tag recommendation is functioning as you say (I suspect it is), and if the "Why?" link were working properly (it is not) then the list created by "Why?" should only come from the set of my books that I have tagged with the filter tag.

23: Ah, true. Then that's a different case.

I think I am being really dense because I can't seem to leave recommendations anymore. I have done so in the past but the "Contribute your own recommendation" button seems to have vanished. Any idea what I may be doing wrong?

Any idea what I may be doing wrong?

You're not doing anything wrong. For info about the bug, see this thread:
http://www.librarything.com/topic/61567#1182093

Thanks for your help, sqdancer. :-)