It's interesting to see humility cited in an explanation of why someone created something that suggests you read what he, or those curators he eventually chooses to whom to delegate, thinks you should read.
And a good chunk of the existing collection is already sourced from others who've used my previous book apps.
The process is still young so it's imperfect, but improving. Do you have any suggestions how I can do better?
Speaking of humility, it must've taken a good lack of humility on your part to make such assumptions without knowing the details of my process or the background of this effort.
Publish your book list, your selection process, and your metrics, to enable independent evaluation. I looked for such information and didn't find it; if it's there, surface it clearly. If you're presenting the balanced, apolar perspective you claim to seek, rather than some flavor of "alternative facts", this should not pose an issue, I think.
As for the rest, I wouldn't feel special about it. In these times, I see no reason why anyone claiming political motives, and apparently declining any meaningful transparency in sources and methods, merits any kind of credibility. Your claims are your claims, and prove nothing beyond that you've made them. You have an opportunity to substantiate them. Perhaps you will do so.
I noted elsewhere in the thread that I plan to open access to that information when it makes sense. This is a weekend project and I really didn't expect this much attention this soon!
But you made me realize just how important this issue really is. So I just added a Transparency section (link on very bottom of main page) with the titles of all books currently in the system, along with a link to a public Google Form showing all suggestions and how they were handled. I was using Typeform before but results were private.
It's not as thorough as what you had in mind, but I'll put that in place over time.
You might argue that this is against the idea of your site (you seem attached to the serendipity idea) but, if you are crowd-sourcing books and quotes, you'll end up getting something very similar to this with a lot more work. Look at the books and quotes you already have -- they are all in the top few percent of Goodreads, and the quotes have already been selected.
The point is not that you don't want to use algorithms; the point is that you want an algorithm that allows for serendipitous exploration.
All very easy to do! Am happy to do myself if you put the site up on github.
As long as quality remains high and variety is verifiably strong, it doesn't matter how the quotes are obtained.
This was more of a proof-of-concept, and I already had a database of books from a previous project, so it was a convenient starting point.