This is the camp I fall into as well This is main reason I left those tags on the homepage with the JLPT markers although I admit I might switch them to more generic ‘beginner’, ‘intermediate’, ‘advanced’ descriptors at some point… if I convince myself it’s nearly as compelling.
I’d love to roll my own commenting platform, probably using the same software WK uses (discourse) However, there are perks to WK right now - it’s the premier place for book clubs, great for long form discussions and the thread gets a ‘bump’ every time there’s a comment, which brings in new users.
Of course there are drawbacks like you mention and it obviously isn’t the only outreach required, but it’s pretty darn good for a discussion platform (imo better than reddit / facebook / twitter / discord).
FWIW, @sweetbeems pinged me directly about this thread as we were talking via email. Not sure if he pinged anyone else to join here but wouldn’t be shocked to hear it. I think this is the only WK thread I’ve commented on and didn’t use the site much before after opting for a different kanji learning method that suited me better (best routine is the one you’ll do and all that).
To me this thread makes sense for the stage of growth the site is at. Smaller, manageable growth while the details are worked out.
I was looking through various manga to see their difficulty score, and I was surprised to find New Game at a 22. I haven’t actually read it, so it’s possible that it’s accurate. But these 4-koma Manga Time Kirara series tend to be similar in difficulty. So far, others are from 26-30 from what I could see (excluding Machikado Mazoku which is just insanely hard compared to the rest). So far New Game has only been rated by one person, so a skew is certainly possible.
As I was looking at New Game, I also saw a user’s review where they said “has furigana”. This is most certainly not true. I double checked a preview on Amazon, and as expected, it does not have full furigana (which is what people typically mean when they say “has furigana”). This is what I expected to find because I don’t believe any Manga Time Kirara series have full furigana. This made me see an opportunity though. I think it would be a great addition for each book to indicate whether it’s written with full furigana or not. For manga, it will pretty much always be one way or the other, while for novels it’s possible that both are accurate if there are multiple editions.
Yes I absolutely agree! In fact, I already have a ‘furigana’ tag (meaning the text has full furigana) which can be appended to ‘Where To Find’ links - it’s the ‘F’ you see on よつばと！ links. Any link can be edited to add that Furigana link. キノの旅 recently added the tsubasabunko version which makes this even more clear.
Of course, this isn’t a perfect solution as I should be surfacing the editions and the tag applied to an edition rather than a link, but it’s a pretty good mechanism that has some good use already. Maybe making it furigana books searchable might make it more apparent.
I agree though, that functionality can be very nice!
In other news, still working on custom lists (and doing some summer vacation). Hoping to finish it up by end of next week.
Ah, I didn’t realize it would only be indicated on the links. I think it would be an improvement to make it a top level piece of information for the book itself, and mentioning both when it’s full furigana and not would make it clearer in all cases.
I don’t find the text for the previous/next book links to be that helpful. It starts to show the title in parentheses, but tends to only show one character (at least on my 13 inch laptop screen).
@seanblue well, I can at least reproduce that on Firefox, what a bummer . If you simply choose ‘decline’ or ‘decline all’ rather than specifying customizing certain cookies it seems to work, but I think this may be the end of the road for this cookie popup.
Granted, I may not get around to fixing it immediately, but it’ll be in the next sprint. For now, just hit ‘decline’.
Makes me feel a bit bad since I like to keep on the cookies that help with metrics. I guess I’ll turn it back on once this issue is fixed. Hopefully browsers eventually let you set your choices globally in browser settings and these popups go away.
Aw, I appreciate your want to allow the tracking Really ok though as it’s this popup’s fault not yours!
And yes it’d be very nice if this could be configured on a browser level, rather than on a popup. It’s quite a difficult issue as is. These cookie popups are quite sophisticated (they proactively block certain scripts from running until you’ve made your cookie preferences).
Ok! I’ve finished the features proposed as ‘upcoming’ in the last announcement. This one took me a little while as it ended up being a bigger overhaul than I’d imagined, but I think it was worthwhile!
Summary:
User book requests are more streamlined
You now no longer need to specify an estimated book level or a personal status on a book when requesting a new book - all that’s required is an amazon link! If it’s a part of a series, simply say ‘series’ in the notes field.
Better temporary difficulty rating system, many more manga added
The temporary rating system now works better - namely I keep the temporary rating until the book gets to a level where it begins to receive a variety of gradings (harder / easier / about the same). So if よつばと was accidentally started at lvl 5, most likely the first 10 or so gradings would mark よつばと harder before it reached a level where it’s getting compared to books around its level. The new temporary rating system would keep よつばと temporary while the gradings kept saying ‘harder’.
Since this system handles very bad initial estimates much better, this enables me to start adding books en mass without a user request. So, I am in the process of contracting out & scaling up book additions so that we have a lot more books getting added. In case you’re curious, the default levels for new books getting added are based on book type:
Manga - level 24
Light Novel - level 30
Novel - level 35
Childrens Book - level 22
Other - level 30
Overhauled 'My Resources' - better search, book actions & more
Ok, so this is the most important part of the announcement! You’ll now see a completely different personal library ui!
As you can see, you can now do text search / author search, book type filtering, collapsing series and status filtering. The filters are similar to the books search page - left hand sidebar on desktop, ‘filters’ button w popup on mobile. All the filters are saved in the url, so you can link to particular filtered results if you desire… however be sure to link to the library on your profile page, not ‘my resources’.
You’ll also notice the books are now grouped by ‘list’, where book statuses have an associated list. Honestly, this approach seems much more intuitive to me than the previous version where the status was just a field. I’ll shamelessly admit too that a lot of the UI was greatly inspired by anilist and it seems to work well there.
You can also change the status / update lists by hovering over a book and then clicking the image. That opens up a book editing form.
As your personal library is now ordered into lists, it easily allows us to add custom lists! Right now, the list functionality is still in its infancy… it simply allows you to group certain items together. But hopefully this is the beginning of allowing people ways to share books that they really like and group their recommendations (ex: first manga).
I’ve slimmed down the number of drop down options for book actions, but you can always pop open the additional options to get access to more statuses / editing custom lists. My immediate followups in the next day will be to re-enable setting a ‘default action’ and also allowing a recently done action (ex: adding to a particular custom list, setting as ‘owned’) to appear in the drop down.
Additional Notes
I think these new interfaces should all be speedier, but please let me know if you don’t think so!
Upcoming
Addressing a few ui tweaks (some @seanblue comments)
Add a few convenience features to book actions on book pages / search
Contract out & begin massively scaling up book index (I have a series of lists I plan to follow - AniList / MAL top 500 LNs & Manga, Akutagawa winners, best sellers on bookmeter & amazon)
Allow more grading on books & user specifications (only compare against manga)
Dive into lists iteration 2 & building out public board for lists
Why not add a checkbox or something for this since it’s so specific?
That makes sense. As with pretty much everything on this site, it’ll be a bit rough early on when there are very few gradings (due to very few users). But in the long run it seems like a good approach.
It does look very similar, and I think it looks good here too! My only criticism is the “All” view is a bit awkward due to there being multiple pages. For example, all of my books are “Finished” except two which are “Stopped”. It’s a bit weird that I have to go to the last page to see the “Stopped” books when in the “All” view. Maybe it would be better to make it paged per section, I’m not sure.
I think highlighting the entire row dark blue is a bit much. (I’ve honestly never been a fan of that behavior on AniList either.)
Also, just a reminder to change the (x) icon to a trash can or something (if you agree). I also think there being three separate buttons for modifying an entry is a bit much. There’s the gear that’s only visible on hover to edit the status, the pencil to edit the review, and the (x) to delete the book. I feel like combining the first two might make sense since they are both editing details about the book. Finally, the popup for the gear icon is missing the (x) in the top right corner to close it, which both the other popups have.
It seems like the browser back button doesn’t work. For example, select the checkbox for manga and then hit the back button. Or else go to page two and then hit the back button. In either case, hitting the back button doesn’t update the content on the page (even though the URL does revert back).
If you are on a later page (e.g. the last page) and then hit a book type checkbox, a server error can occur. Presumably this is because there aren’t enough books in the list when filtering by book type to render the page number already specified. You may want to just have it revert to the first page upon filtering by book type.
I’ve fixed those two bugs you mentioned - back button & pagination with new filter should now be working.
Yeah you’re right, i thought the same thing as I was typing it…
I agree, however I think other solutions are more confusing… like pagination within the lists, feels more strange to me. I’m not sure. I guess I could do something where I limit it and you could expand, but nothing felt clearly right. Ultimately, I think people will simply be filtering via the lists, but I probably won’t alter right now
I agree with all of that! Good call on changing the icon to a trash can & adding the cancel to the popups. Yeah the date editing will definitely be moved into the popup in the near future.
I’ll think on it. The nice thing about the background change is that it signifies a difference between an ‘active’ and ‘non-active’ state and encourages the user to look for differences (i.e. the image change to a editing icon). This is especially important on mobile where you ‘click’ to make it active. There’s also other subtle behavior such as clicks on book links for non-active items do not go to the book, they simply mark the item ‘active’.
I could also do a less aggressive blue, might make it more palatable. I agree that it’s a bit much, even on anilist… but I think it does solve a problem.
In my view, it’s better to simply not have differences. All possible actions should be clear and available at all times. For example, an always-visible edit icon. Or combining all edit and delete actions into a single action menu button that’s always visible. It would probably make things simpler on mobile too. That’s my take anyway.
This is main reason I left those tags on the homepage with the JLPT markers although I admit I might switch them to more generic ‘beginner’, ‘intermediate’, ‘advanced’ descriptors at some point… if I convince myself it’s nearly as compelling.
. If you simply choose ‘decline’ or ‘decline all’ rather than specifying customizing certain cookies it seems to work, but I think this may be the end of the road for this cookie popup.
Really ok though as it’s this popup’s fault not yours!
