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Indeed, that’s what I meant. And thanks for the affirmation, I think Satori Reader would be a really great addition. It would also make a lot of sense within this community because you can link your Wani Kani account within Satori Reader to remove furigana from Kanji you’ve learned in WK.

I could reach out to Brian Rak (Human Japanese / Satori Reader creator) and make sure he’s cool with it, but I don’t see any reason why he wouldn’t be. You could ask a few Satori Reader users to gather story titles along with total numbers of episodes for stories that are completed (there are a handful that are still ongoing).

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Luckily I already have all of the titles + episode counts written down and up to date :slight_smile: I did not include the grammar lessons since those aren’t graded readers, but everything else is here

Easier (around LV15?)
Story Episodes
Sakura and Suzuki’s Long Distance Relationship 43
Meditation 6
Akiko’s American Foreign Exchange 133
Kiki-Mimi Radio 27
Hole in the Wall 58
The Jam Maker 60*

*Ongoing, episode count listed is how many there will be at the end according to site

I would say these are around level 15? Sakura and Suzuki is the easiest, maybe that would be a bit lower. The other thing to note is that Akiko’s American Foreign Exchange is marked as Easier, but it gradually gets harder, and by the end it’s more of an Intermediate story imo

Intermediate (around LV20?)
Story Episodes
Kona’s Big Adventure 45
The River Sanzu 20
The Neighbor 12
Koibito 52
Oku Nikkou 62

I’d say these are around level 20.

Harder
Story Episodes
Fujiki Consulting Services 41*
Kona’s Big Adventure II: The Journey I Live 88*
Secret 98
My Sweetie is Japanese 28
Streetside Interviews 17
Closeup: Obon Society 9
Closeup: The Zama 9 Murders 11
Closeup: After the Tokyo Subway Attack 11

*Ongoing, episode count listed is how many there will be at the end according to site

I haven’t read any of these, no idea what the level would be

Assorted
Story Episodes
News 60
Dialogues: Restaurant 28
Dialogues: Hotel 10
Dialogues: Train Station 10
Dialogues: Airport 10
Dialogues: Bus Stop 8
Dialogues: Hospital 15

I haven’t read any of the Harder stories b/c I haven’t gotten there yet, so I have no idea what the level would be for those. As for Assorted: I haven’t read any Dialogues, but glancing at them, they look to be pretty easy (around Easier level? i.e., LV15) and they’re pretty short. It’s been a while since I’ve read any of the News episodes, but they’re probably around Intermediate level, i.e., LV20).

Also anyone feel free to chime in with how difficult yall think these are b/c my estimates might be wrong

I hope these are able to be added!

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Uh, hello you absolute legend! That’s amazing. Thanks for putting in the work and for being so organized.

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Hey @Tranquil-Lo & @meagstudies !

Thanks for thinking that all through with regards to the episode as a page count - I had no idea how to handle that. Quite a few users have messaged me about adding Satori Reader stories, so you’re certainly not alone! I didn’t realize until recently that each story does have a publicly accessible url page, which makes it more possible to add them.

Originally, I had thought to bucket Satori Reader into my project to look into “web graded readers”… stuff like Wasabi graded readers. Right now, if something isn’t on amazon it’s a pain for me to add it, which is why Natively only has one non-amazon series: the Tadoku Free Series.

That project, unfortunately, is not terribly high priority as I don’t get too many requests for that content… so I don’t think it’s really desired. Except for Satori Reader.

I still question a little bit how necessary it is to have Satori Reader on platform… as I expect they surface stats, judge difficulty for you, and allow users to write reviews on their stories… all of which are the primary use cases for Natively.

But, I know it’s useful to have things in one place. I’d love to hear a bit more on why you’d love it on platform. You just want your tracking in one place? Better tracking capabilities? Better difficulty ratings? Reviews?

If I were to add, I would think I’d want to group all of Satori into one series, like Tadoku, but perhaps that’s not right.

I definitely plan to add Satori at some point, just not sure where to prioritize.

Thanks! :slight_smile:

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No worries, that all makes sense. I think for me the primary boon of having the stories surfaced on Natively would be – as you mentioned – having all of my current Japanese reading tracked in one place. And while stories in Satori Reader can be grouped by difficulty, aggregated difficulty is a little more obscure. I’d also be interested to read user reviews because some stories may be easier or more difficult depending on how one studies, and what resources one uses to study.

At any rate, it’s no deal-breaker; just a nice-to-have. Thanks for your consideration!

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Ah, okay, it makes sense that it wouldn’t be high priority.

Yes that would work

Mainly better difficulty ratings. The most that anything is broken up on Satori level-wise is Easier-Intermediate-Harder (and then Assorted, but that’s not really a difficulty level). But difficulty within those levels can vary a lot. I think the Natively level system would help people figure out the following:

  • if you’ve read this Satori story you can read that manga, light novel, etc.
  • the inverse of that: if you’ve read these graded readers, manga, etc, you can read this Satori story
  • better understanding the difficulty differences between stories. E.g., Sakura and Suzuki is a much easier story imo than Akiko’s Foreign Exchange, but both are simply marked Easier
  • related to that, knowing which story to start with once you’ve finished all of the stories in a level (e.g., once you’ve finished all of the Intermediate stories, which of the Harder stories would be easiest to start with?)

Other than that, tracking in one place would be great! And seeing stats (right now Satori only has a heatmap, unless there’s a stats page somewhere I don’t see). But my main thing is being able to see difficulty levels

But like @Tranquil-Lo said, it would be nice to have, but isn’t essential. It’s totally understandable that it’s not a priority or if it might not be added at all.

Thanks for considering it, and thank you for all the hard work you’ve put into Natively!!

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Thanks @Tranquil-Lo & @meagstudies.

Yes, I can’t say how soon I’ll be able to add them, but that context really helps a lot! It shouldn’t be terribly difficult to add, but as you might imagine, there’s a long list of stuff.

I’ll try to add when I can! :slight_smile:

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Adding on about Satori Reader – I think it’s been long enough for me already that I’d be hesitant to try to rank their difficulty so I don’t think I’d use them, but I would have LOVED if Satori Reader was on Natively for one simple reason: having a scale that placed native content against them. I was reading a little manga, but for me personally at least, Satori Reader was kind of my transition material into proper Japanese reading. So if they were on Natively I could get some guess at what level of reading I was managing and see how near / far various native stuff was from it.

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Right! And there’s a good case to be made that Natively provides a ton of value to people just beginning to dip their toes into native content. That’s a pretty big barrier and originally my impetus for founding the site, so any way I can help certainly makes sense!

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Of course I do understand that a forum needs some kind of rules but it still makes me sad that people actually need rules for interacting with each others.

The rules are not that important it’s more important how the rules are applied. Imo the most important thing is that the rules apply to everybody in the same way.

Actually I personally don’t like how the mods run the forum. They allow even controversial topics sometimes but once people start to express the wrong opinion the topic gets closed immediately.
Sometimes members of the forum break the rules and the mods look the other way, while people like me get a warning because of every little thing or get a message being accused of spreading so called “Conspiracy Theories” just because I dared to question the official narrative. This is the reason while I hardly participate on this forum any more, only in a few selected threads. If you don’t want people to talk about a specific topic just don’t allow said topic problem solved.

How will the movie thing work? I’m not sure if most of the movies I watch are even available on amazon.

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I agree! I won’t lie though - this will be an evolving process. I will be starting out with pretty minimal rules and only implement rules as things become issues. I’ve never run a forum before so the rules I’m starting out with will be simply inspired from Discourse’s default policies along with some topic guidelines. The community input will also be a big factor as they will be helping to moderate the policies. Overall, I only favor adding a guideline if it’s a problem.

I do very much agree on preemptively limiting topics, rather than moderating opinions. In general, I want the forums being focused on media and Japanese learning… but I will allow other non-political topics starting off too and we’ll see how it goes. I expect there won’t be much forum activity to begin with, so it’ll be easy to monitor.

As for the WaniKani moderation, I’d love to hear some specific complaints if you have time, maybe via email? (brandon@learnnatively.com). I’ve mostly been on reading & learning focused threads (book clubs) and I appreciate how positive the communities are, but, as I’ve said before, I’m inexperienced with regards to moderation so examples you didn’t like would be really useful.

One thing I am wary of is how contrary opinions may be more likely to escalate into an inflammatory tone, leading it to be moderated. I’m not entirely sure this is a real phenomenon (contrary opinions having more inflammatory tone), but I’d imagine people giving contrary opinions would be more on edge in general. Everyone does have an obligation to be a responsible thread participant, but I don’t want tone moderation leading to idea moderation.

I really do appreciate how concerned you are on the moderation. Like I said, we can talk a lot more on moderation on the platform once it’s running. I’d love to hear about your experiences :slight_smile:

I’ll be relying on TMDB, so you’ll be able to request anything from there. I believe TMDB has a pretty extensive collection, but I may also allow MAL / AniList links as well if TMDB seems like it doesn’t have good enough coverage.

I was going to do this callout later, but if anyone wants to search on TMDB for some of their more obscure movies / tv shows / anime and report back, I’d love to hear the results! It’d help me gauge how much data input we may have to do.

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My experience via Plex is that TMDB has pretty much everything. I just checked some obscure anime I’ve watched and they are on there, though one has a poster that is most definitely not from that show. :joy:

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I am hoping that is the case! Makes my life a heck of a lot easier :sweat_smile:. Thanks for the check.

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This is a good way of wording some of the situations I’ve seen.

Even without getting specifically political, various topics can come up where people are vocal about something being the right way, and when someone expresses a different view, they’re suddenly one against many.

In this kind of situation, “the many” will always have some people with skill in arguing their position, and if “the one” doesn’t, then suddenly they’re put into a defensive position having to defend their “wrongthink” and they’re really bad at it. (I’m speaking generally across various conversations I’ve seen here, and not about any specific person.)

In this specific subset of cases, you get “the one” going all out and disregarding all manners, and that leads to people who are not interested in the conflict to mark posts by that person for moderation. This leads to tensions rising all around until the thread ultimately gets closed.

I’m unaware of any “better” solution.

I’m glad I ran a message forum back when such things didn’t exist =D

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I don’t know anything about @natsuha’s situation, but in general, one issue here is that the mods can’t keep up with the forum and will usually only intervene when tagged or when posts are flagged by the community. I hope you’re going to get help moderating, otherwise you probably want to keep things as minimal as possible :sweat_smile:

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Right, this is what I was imagining. Even if they are good at arguing, it still can be overwhelming to argue against everyone’s points at once.

I’m not sure of the solution either except to perhaps emphasize in guidelines that this is an issue to be thoughtful about. But it’s food for thought… one of many things i’m sure.

Right! Yes, I don’t know exactly how all the moderation will work yet. Obviously, I hope some users will be inspired to help moderate, but if that’s not enough I’ll have to hire some part time employees… we’ll see.

It’s one of those things where I’m sure it won’t be an issue for a long time and then all of a sudden it gets out of hand! It’ll be a little bit of a rollercoaster ride at points, but I’m looking forward to it :slightly_smiling_face:

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If you start with only Natively-related categories (discouraging extreme off-topic discussions) you might minimize moderation needs. For example, only have categories for:

  • Natively
    • Subcategories as needed
  • Reading
    • Maybe subcategories for each reading classification you have like “Light Novels”, etc.
  • Watching
    • Maybe subcategories for each watching classification you will have like “Movies”, etc.
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I’m sorting by difficulty descending. This is the second page, and it’s obviously not right.

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Hah! I had something similar recently but couldn’t reproduce it later on. Will try it out once more to see whether I can get the error back.

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Thank you for catching that!

Yes, this was a problem for your particular library it seems… レンタルおにちゃん was still listed as level 18 in your search database.

I’ll go ahead and fix this particular item for you.

A detailed technical answer on what went wrong

Basically, wherever you need search something on the website (personal library, book search), I create a separate fast-search database (ElasticSearch) that I need to sync to the main databse. For your personal library search data, the rating level there for レンタルおにちゃん wasn’t synced properly for some reason… it was listed at lvl 18. Confusingly though, when processing the search results I pull all the book information from a different cache which I then use for display (I don’t store all the book information in the search database… only critical fields used for filtering).

Therefore, the sorting was done on the incorrect data from the search database, but the book data still showed properly because it was drawn from a different, correct cache.

In order to make speedy search, it gets complicated with all the databases that need to be synced! :slight_smile:

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