I went through the export from GoodReads and import to Bookwyrm, and was also disappointed.
I only had 2 books that wouldn't import, but once I was in, the lack of filtering and data-based lists was very meh. Maybe I'm missing something?
how do I browse books by category? I can only find user-generated lists.
how do I sort lists by popularity/rating? I can't see a single filtering option.
no recommendations? Granted, GoodReads sucks at this as well, but I would really like there to be an algorithm that was somewhat capable of looking at what I like and suggesting similar things.
I know that recommendations require some data that might not be there, but there should also be data available already that is workable for a rudimentary Recommendations system:
— Sort my Read Books List by My Rating as List W. — Select top 5 books from List W, sort by Book Rating, as List W¹. — Book X is the top book in List W¹, and is classified as being in Category X. — Find Book X in other libraries as List Y. — (if data available, sort List X by some sort of metric, e.g. amount of list Likes). — Select top list in List X as List Y. — Look at other books in List Y, select any that are in Category X. This is List Z. — Sort List Z by Book Rating, return top 5 books as Recommendations.
I know Bookwyrm is open source, but I don't have the skills to write something like that 😕
(I've tried editing the horrible formatting of my suggestions, but they don't seem to be saving. I'll try again later)