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Collaborative Filtering

richardshagrin ๐Ÿšซ
Updated:

This quote is from an Author's Blog. Jason Samson. It proposes a new approach to finding stories to read, not necessarily new ones, but new to the person looking.

"Finding new stories

9/2/2018 Posted at 1:10:28 PM

I read more than I write.

How do I find stories? I read the 'new stories' section! And if I like the story or if its a continuation, I click on the author and see what else they've written.

But of course there aren't many new stories. I can read quicker than people post. So I've taken to searching.

Only searching is very crude. I'm kinda skeptical about the scoring algorithm and classifications. I have actually taken to searching by random word like a thing 'lake' or a person 'alice', just to get random stories and see what is good.

What this site really needs is a recommendation system. "People who liked this story also liked..." etc.

Technically this is called 'collaborative filtering'. Its not as scary mathematically as it sounds. If there were a list of users (anonymous, their usernames are really not useful data) and their views and scores, it would be trivial to group stories by who likes them, and to suggest to people what stories they might enjoy reading next.

As it is, the homepage announces there are over 46 thousand stories, but I'm sure that searching by category is not going to find good ones just as I'm sure that the absolute scoring doesn't reflect anything useful.

In the meantime, if you know any authors with good romantic stories, please let me know; the chances of me chancing upon them by random searching are pretty slim! ;)"

It occurs to me that by using readers "History" the site has a potential mine of information about what is being read. Often I give scores to the stories I read that I liked and occasionally scores (low ones) to stories I didn't like. It might be possible to use that data at least for some authors who agree to have their readings mined to set up a listing of what they liked. I like Author A's stories, I would be interested in what he liked (stories by other authors, not his own). It is probably far too much work so maybe it might be worth something if we, or some of us who help pay for the site, offer to pay a little more for a useful source of what to read.

I tend to mine the data on recently concluded serials to find newer stories worth my time to read. That doesn't help me find stories posted more than a year ago, and there are a lot of those stories on this site.

One more thought. If stories authors like aren't doing the job for you, consider looking at stories reviewed. If there is a reviewer who reviews stories you liked, probably other stories he (or she) reviewed should appeal to you.

joyR ๐Ÿšซ

@richardshagrin

In the meantime, if you know any authors with good romantic stories, please let me know; the chances of me chancing upon them by random searching are pretty slim!

What kind of romantic stories do you enjoy?

Simply asking for romantic stories will get many suggestions, including those that include D/s FF MM Zoo etc etc. You need to narrow down your preference to actually get to the types of story you wish to read.

Correct use of the category search function will allow exactly that, include stuff you enjoy, exclude stuff you dislike. Then simple choose how the results are sorted, size, score, A-Z, whatever, bookmark the results and you can continue later at whatever point you stopped.

Switch Blayde ๐Ÿšซ

@richardshagrin

What this site really needs is a recommendation system.

There exists an author's favorite stories. Those are recommendations.

The blogger said if he reads a story by an author he likes he'll click on the author to see what other stories he wrote. He can also click on the author's favorite list (if he has any).

Replies:   REP
REP ๐Ÿšซ

@Switch Blayde

And there is also a Similarly Tagged Stories link included with each story. A list of similarly coded stories is displayed.

awnlee jawking ๐Ÿšซ

@REP

And there is also a Similarly Tagged Stories link included with each story. A list of similarly coded stories is displayed.

Sometimes.

As I've discovered recently, if a story has few codes, even if it's very good, it won't have a list of similar stories :(

AJ

Switch Blayde ๐Ÿšซ

@REP

And there is also a Similarly Tagged Stories link included with each story.

Except, in my experience, the stories listed aren't similar. I think it's driven off the story codes.

Replies:   REP
REP ๐Ÿšซ

@Switch Blayde

Yes the codes drive the selection. Isn't it interesting that dissimilar stories have the same codes.

Replies:   Switch Blayde
Switch Blayde ๐Ÿšซ

@REP

Isn't it interesting that dissimilar stories have the same codes.

I guess if the codes were listed in order of importance the similarity might be better. (I'm not recommending that as a change.)

seanski1969 ๐Ÿšซ

@REP

Similarly Tagged Stories link included with each story.

This must be a Premier feature as I have never seen this or am I missing it somehow?

Switch Blayde ๐Ÿšซ

@seanski1969

I have never seen this

At the end of the story there's a box where you vote. Below that is a link called "Show Similary Tagged Stories."

Lazeez Jiddan (Webmaster)
Updated:

@seanski1969

Similarly Tagged Stories link included with each story.



This must be a Premier feature as I have never seen this or am I missing it somehow?

It is a premier feature.

Replies:   seanski1969
seanski1969 ๐Ÿšซ

@Lazeez Jiddan (Webmaster)

Thanks I thought I was blind for a minute.

Replies:   joyR
joyR ๐Ÿšซ

@seanski1969

Thanks I thought I was blind for a minute.

If you were blind you would not have been able too read Laz's reply.

:)

Uther_Pendragon ๐Ÿšซ

@richardshagrin

Romantic, eh?

Not to blow my own horn, or anything, but I've written a fair number of those. _Sparky's Dad_ and _The L Word_ are contemporary romantic. *I* think that the Brennan stories are romantic, but they're married. That kills romance for some.

Jason Samson ๐Ÿšซ

The thing about collaborative filtering is that it beats tags and category and author search for the general "find stories I haven't read that I would like".

Amazon and everyone else have done the maths so we don't have to. The algorithms for "people who liked stories you liked also liked..." is, these days, just a lib.

All the ways of explaining the various mechanisms for how you can find stories you haven't read today are just missing the point really.

Collaborative filtering for the win.

Replies:   Keet  Tw0Cr0ws
Keet ๐Ÿšซ

@Jason Samson

The algorithms for "people who liked stories you liked also liked..." is, these days, just a lib.

Yes those libs are available, but... they need specific input build upon previously stored data to get the desired result. I doubt that the tags could deliver the required input. The tag markings are set by the authors, not data driven, and thus very inconsistent.

Tw0Cr0ws ๐Ÿšซ

@Jason Samson

The algorithms for "people who liked stories you liked also liked..." is, these days, just a lib.

I don't have a Premier account here, but my past experience over on Lit. gives me little hope for those.

The so-called similar stories for a classic type sappy romance story included a rape story, a vampire story, a BDSM story and a group sex/bukkake/golden shower story.

Replies:   Dominions Son
Dominions Son ๐Ÿšซ

@Tw0Cr0ws

The so-called similar stories for a classic type sappy romance story included

I don't know about how Lit does it, but here on SOL, the function is call Similarly Tagged Stories.

It's not claiming to give you stories with similar plots. It will give you other stories that also have some % of the tags from the source story.

So say you start with a story with 5 tags, you might get a list of stories that have any 3 or 4 of those 5 tags, which doesn't exclude stories with more tags for other kinds of content you might not like.

Replies:   garymrssn
garymrssn ๐Ÿšซ

@Dominions Son

So say you start with a story with 5 tags, you might get a list of stories that have any 3 or 4 of those 5 tags, which doesn't exclude stories with more tags for other kinds of content you might not like.

I wonder what kind of programming nightmare it would be to apply Category Exclusions to the Similarly Tagged Stories function?

I just checked a few stories and apparently it doesn't.

Replies:   Dominions Son
Dominions Son ๐Ÿšซ

@garymrssn

I wonder what kind of programming nightmare it would be to apply Category Exclusions to the Similarly Tagged Stories function?

I can't imagine it would be worse than the advanced category search. But then that IS a premium feature for a reason.

jimh67 ๐Ÿšซ

I've found Similarly Tagged Stories to be utterly worthless and a waste of time. If you have a premier membership a carefully done category search will yield infinitely better results.

Replies:   awnlee jawking
awnlee jawking ๐Ÿšซ

@jimh67

I've found a few good stories that way, but it does seem to work better when the base story has a decent number of codes (excluding the ages and genders of participants in the sex scenes).

It might work better if absence of codes was taken into account as well as presence.

AJ

Replies:   Switch Blayde
Switch Blayde ๐Ÿšซ

@awnlee jawking

It might work better if

I wonder if the score is a factor.

Dominions Son ๐Ÿšซ

@Switch Blayde

I wonder if the score is a factor.

I doubt it, but there's only one person who can say for sure.

Lazeez Jiddan (Webmaster)

@Switch Blayde

I wonder if the score is a factor.

No, not a factor. The tag matching search returns results by the closest match. So the more codes match, the higher on the list it is.

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