Recent Automatic Recommendations

I love the thumbnails on the Recent Automatic Recommendations (and wish the other lists offered the same feature). But what I really wish for is for two things: (1) that, in addition to the green "Add" button when you hover over a Recent Automatic Recommendation, you could also click some button to never see that title again, and (2) that the Recent Automatic Recommendations list did not include books you already have in your book list but that are just some other edition of the same book. Since both those features are missing, I generally ignore the entire Recent Automatic Recommendations list as it's too full of titles I don't care about or already own such that most of my time reviewing the list is wasted energy.

>1 tnilsson: Where are you looking at them exactly? Because on the recommendations pages such as https://www.librarything.com/recommendations , each recommendation has 2 buttons - green Add that allows you to add it and a red Dismiss that removes it from your recommendations forever (and that one will also allow you to remove the author or series completely as well once you press it).

Ah, do you mean the home module - that shows the old style recommendations? You may want to look at the new ones as well - the two systems are very different and use different algorithms.

>2 AnnieMod: But is there a way to winnow out the books already in one's library? I am trying to make the algorithm work for me by removing recommendations of books which do not interest me, but how do I encourage recommendations? Put the titles of interest on my wish list?

>4 MsMixte: You can narrow down collections used for recs and use it only for some, or turn it off for all collections and create one for recs where it will be on. You then and books you want recs based on there, in addition to where you normally have them

Edit. when you click on a collection in the dropdown, there's a setting 'include in recommendtions', which is on by deafult

>4 MsMixte: Pretty much. Both algorithms look at the books you have in your library - and which are in at least one collection that is used for recommendations (if a book is in a collection which is marked not to be used and in one where it is used for recommendations, the latter wins).

Both algorithms work differently but they use the same starting point and they cannot invent data.

Keep in mind that the old recommendations (the old system) looks for books that match books specifically (that’s why you can see why they are recommended if you go to the page with them: https://www.librarything.com/profile/MEMBERNAME/recommendations while the new system looks for recommendations based on all the books (and it is unclear what caused a specific recommendation). In addition, the new ones do not get recalculated daily but in batches - so unlike the Automatic recommendation module that shows the classic ones, you may need to wait days or longer to see new ones in the new system (depends on your usage of the site, changes in your library patterns and so on).

But if you want recommendations in a specific genre style, yes, you will need to add books to your library so LT can match against them.

PS: Removing a recommendation does not influence the algorithm - it just stops recommending you that book but similar ones will keep getting recommended for the same reason why that one got recommended. The only data that matters are the books you have in your library, in collections which are used for recommendations - and the site will just not show you the recommendations you dismissed (directly or by dismissing series and authors).

Sounds as if I need to play around with the recommendations to get more of what interests me.

Thanks to both AnnieMod and SandraArdnas for the explanations.

Normally, you shouldn't be recommended different editions of books you already have in another edition - sounds like a combination issue.

Do you have an example?