Hello everyone,
Books are still one of the most important sources of information we have as a human species. However, the media on which this information has been stored has changed considerably over time and with it its accessibility and influence on our society.
Nowadays you can find an enormous range of books and texts online. Most of the time, however, access to them is extremely fragmented, difficult to find, subject to a fee, incompatible with the software platform of your choice or, in the worst case, goes under with its provider over time.
To counteract this, annas-archive was founded to make the knowledge stored in the texts and books openly accessible and to preserve it for future generations. On the other hand, there are platforms such as Goodreads that aim to simplify the joy of reading and the exchange of information, as well as the review and discussion of books and texts.
Unfortunately, Goodreads is a centralized, proprietary solution that in addition also happens to be owned by Amazon. BookWyrm is a decentralized, open source alternative in the fediverse that steps in right here.
Now here's the kicker: what if we combined the power of both platforms? What if we combined the enormous book database of annas-archive with the fediverse, i.e. BookWyrm? Annas archive could benefit from reviews and discussions about the books and BookWyrm could expand its still very limited database many times over.
From my point of view, this would be the perfect combination of two already great projects. What do you think?
TL:DR What do you think about combining annas-archive with the fediverse (BookWyrm)
Oh yeah, absolutely. I used to like Goodreads and would linger on the site, but the reviews themselves started to get weird a couple few years ago and now I only go when I need a link. A Federated, open version of it (with effective but non-corporate moderation) would be great, because it would have the honest range of reviews Goodreads used to have, hopefully without corporate attempts at manipulating the content.