Introducing Natively - A free community book sharing site with over 900 popular books graded by difficulty

Japanese Language Resources
#11

Right now, you can only alter / add links on the book pages, but one of my next projects is to allow editing the ‘more information’ links, along with editing more book details. Thanks for pointing those issues out… will fix! Most of these books I haven’t read and did the best I could.

Edit: Right, Aria is an especially weird edition… I agree. In general I don’t think editions will cause a lot of issues, but we’ll see. I think usually you can just say you read a book and not worry about the edition. Regardless, books in general are just a bit of a mess… even look at Amazon. Just doing the best I can :sweat_smile:

Edit 2: If you want, you can also just shoot an email to brandon @ learnnatively com if you continue to see issues…

5 Likes
#12

Sure, that’s why I’m pointing out as many things as I can :wink:
Allowing people to edit directly is a bit of a double-edged sword. Maybe make it so that changes have to be vetted by an admin (e.g. you) before it goes through.

Should I click on “request more books” every time I notice books are missing or only if I want to mark the books as finished/owned?

4 Likes
#13

You can go ahead and just do it wherever you see books missing. I did a first pass of adding all these series which was not complete, but now I’m ready to finish anything you mark off.

With regards to editing details concerns, yeah… I am logging all changes made and I agree I’ll eventually need some sort of admin system. But you know, roll with it until it’s an issue! :slight_smile:

Really appreciate the help!

2 Likes
#14

I’m currently grading the books I marked as finished
85/471 right now :sweat_smile: I don’t know if I will be able to do everything at once.
If I just move away, my progress is saved, right?

2 Likes
#15

Oh boy haha. Yes everything is saved. And I probably should say that!

If you grade all those books though, you’ll be top grader on the site :joy:

Eventually I’m going to need to make the system smarter so you don’t have to grade as much…

2 Likes
#16

By the way, a bunch of us have a bookmeter page listed in the 多読 thread, if you want some inspiration for adding books. :wink:

Edit: it’s really hard to compare the difficulty of novels versus manga :sweat_smile:

5 Likes
#17

By the way, a bunch of us have a bookmeter page listed in the 多読 thread, if you want some inspiration for adding books. :wink:

Thanks for that call out! Saved that and will definitely peruse. In general I lean on what my users request, rather than trying to guess the level of things and adding them myself :sweat_smile:. But anything super popular I like to add, so I’ll read through… may put my own goals too! I like the idea.

it’s really hard to compare the difficulty of novels versus manga :sweat_smile:

yeah I know haha. At the end of the day I wouldn’t stress too much (can always say you don’t know), but the data will be valuable. I haven’t really read advanced novels compared to advanced mangas… so would love to hear your thoughts :grin:

4 Likes
#18

This looks awesome! Started grading some books…
I‘m gonna request some of the books I‘ve already read as well. :slightly_smiling_face:

Since the ratings everyone gave are all kind of dumped at the bottom of the page: have you considered maybe only showing comparisons relevant to the user? So, when checking an unread book, only showing comparisons to books in the user‘s library, etc.
(At least I‘d be more interested in that than in comparisons to books I don’t own and don’t plan on reading.)

Since Naphthalene pointed out the 多読 thread:
Most people have a Bookmeter account linked in the big table there, maybe you could somehow scrape the data for people‘s „Read“ books? Bookmeter also has the Amazon link on the book‘s page most of the time.
(If you’re not even looking to add a bunch of books automatically, then ignore this)

5 Likes
#19

I’m just using skip on that. I don’t know how I would compare 風の谷のナウシカ which uses old Japanese words like 汝 and 朕 versus a book like ハルヒの憂鬱 that has everyday Japanese, but put into page-long complex sentences. Both present different types of difficulties. So I just vote “I don’t know” in those cases :woman_shrugging:

Unrelated, but do you plan on having some kind of “affinity” measure between users? On bookmeter, you get a list of the top 10 users with the most affinity with you (taken from the books you have in common), and I use that to get additional recommendations.

6 Likes
#20

Thanks! =D
I’m a bit of a hoarder so that list is not tiny :wink:
I am working on getting them moved to “read” :crazy_face:

I’ll enjoy going through and adding all my stuff when I have time! =D

5 Likes
#21

I am afraid then all the books will be considered “easy” :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

On a more serious note, book difficulty (as a non-native speaker) really depends on one’s level. And the level may change in a relatively short time span (e.g. a year). So for a learner who rated something like Yotsuba& challenging the same book may be easy after a year of studies.

4 Likes
#22

The rating is actually relative, which I really like! It gives you matches of two books and ask which one is harder (plus the options “equal difficulty” and “I don’t know”).
That number was the number of matches I had left.

image
image1125×2040 234 KB

7 Likes
#23

I’ve only briefly scrolled through the website but it looks really nice! I might start using this site when summer break starts :grin:

2 Likes
#24

Ah, right, Elo was mentioned in the OP! Now I understand.

6 Likes
#25

Some more random thoughts:

  • it would be nice to be able to search by author (if you like one of their book, you’ll probably like the others) or publisher/collection (since they will have similar books; I like stuff from 富士見L文庫 for instance)
  • what should I do when I want to say that a series has more books, but it’s registered as a single book and does not have the “request more books” button? (e.g. fukaboku)
  • it’s interesting to be able to see how others have graded books versus how I did. I wonder if there could be a way to pick a match you have graded already and see all the votes on the same match (I’m thinking of only allowing that once you have graded to prevent bias).
6 Likes
#26

@Myria really appreciate all the grading you’re doing as well :grin: Thanks!

have you considered maybe only showing comparisons relevant to the user?

No I hadn’t considered that… and it’s a really good suggestion. Especially as I get more gradings it’ll become much more relevant.

Most people have a Bookmeter account linked in the big table there, maybe you could somehow scrape the data for people‘s „Read“ books?

I could certainly build something like that and it very well may be a pretty large issue for a lot of my users having to manage a bookmeter and natively account. That’s good feedback and I’ll think on it.

4 Likes
#27

@Naphthalene First just want to say I’ve fixed up The Melancholy of Haruhi, 氷菓 and Saint Young Men to be series and added the rest of the volumes! I see you’ve put in some user book requests too, will be getting to those today too.

Unrelated, but do you plan on having some kind of “affinity” measure between users?

Yes I’d love to do affinities and general recommendation, but it’ll be a while I’ll be honest! I need a lot more users in order for those sorts of things to be viable.

it would be nice to be able to search by author

Haha yeah, just one of the number of search things i’ll need to add. Starting to get to a place though where it makes sense to prioritize :slight_smile:

what should I do when I want to say that a series has more books

Uh hopefully that’s rare!.. i’ll fix fukaboku. In the future you can just simply send a message via contact us.

pick a match you have graded already and see all the votes on the same match

I think being able to pick two books and seeing the comparisons would be very interesting. Like show all the comparisons between Flying Witch 1 vs Yotsubato 1, maybe with a percentage breakdown. Once I get enough comparisons cool features like that make a lot of sense!

5 Likes
#28

Wow, that’s fast!

For the list of features, I understand it’s going to take while. I’m looking forward to see how your service develops :slight_smile:

Will do! I have found another one already :sweat_smile:

2 Likes
#29

What? Where is that??

2 Likes
#30

Here it is :slight_smile:

image

7 Likes