Relation Graph Improvements

egg · Post by **egg** » Fri Feb 27, 2004 9:27 pm

I looked over the website and it looks like it will just take a bunch of playing around with different settings to find something that works well. The shapes, colors and things should be fairly easy to set, but how it does the layout will take some work to figure out.

Do we really need both the forward and reverse relations??? For instance, do we need it to have links for both the prequel and sequel? In the graph form, I don't think this is necessary, it is important to see when you are looking at the anime listing, but in the graph you see all of the nodes and if you see a relation, you can assume the opposite is also true. And for things like "Alternate Story Line" which may end up without a directional link, just leave off the arrows.

This would eliminate half of the lines and clean up things a lot. Also after seeing the examples, I think it would do a better job at the layout without the double relationships.

DonGato · Post by **DonGato** » Sat Feb 28, 2004 12:25 am

I see them really confusing and it seems some people already made mistakes. I would let only one arrow.

Maokun · Post by **Maokun** » Sat Feb 28, 2004 1:25 am

Hey all! Im the new around here. Actually I joined after reading this thread because I'd like to help

First of all, egg is right there's no need for the prequel arrows, maybe is better to leave the word "prequel" for the actual prequels of a series, that is, the story "before" but released after. I'd leave the arrows for alternate series to show what part of the whole story are they suggesting the alternate settings. I think there's no need either for arrows to the not direct sequels, that produces maybe the most confusing part of it all, not showing a progressive line (like, how's that Tenchi GXP is not the last item in the "X" axis but the third one?) So, well... I fear the graph wont ever be fixable this much, nor look better visually, it would be a lot better a tree like graph, that I humblily offer to realize. (it wont be a very quick process because I could make only a few ones every day...but hey! is something, and it will look a lot better I promise

) At least it will be just a bit slower than keep messing with that proggie and generating those complex .dots. Anyways, if you interested, please let me know, I'd love to help

Skywalka · Post by **Skywalka** » Sat Feb 28, 2004 3:06 am

DonGato wrote:Just as you and you're not helping either. This is not a 5 min work and after seeing the code/page explaining the code I don't see how it can be made prettier.

Yeah. I got so much other stuff to do, I can hardly make time to visit the forum and bitch about others

^____^

Post by **exp** » Sat Feb 28, 2004 7:37 am

Maokun wrote:So, well... I fear the graph wont ever be fixable this much, nor look better visually, it would be a lot better a tree like graph, that I humblily offer to realize. (it wont be a very quick process because I could make only a few ones every day...but hey! is something, and it will look a lot better I promise ) At least it will be just a bit slower than keep messing with that proggie and generating those complex .dots. Anyways, if you interested, please let me know, I'd love to help

well i appreciate the offer, however i am strongly opposed to manualy generate those graphs. that's just overkill. (atm there are 1367 animes which result in ~ 140 anime groups -> 140 graphs, which are atm recreated every 24h within ~5secs)
it's just not possible to do it manually.

about the request to drop one of the arrows. that's not as easy as it may sound. and i don't know if it is a good idea at all.
bc the graph still has to give the following information to the user:
a) which is the sequel, which is the prequel or which is the summary and which is the full story, ...
b) is the relation unidirectional/bidirectional (not used much yet, but possible)
so if you want to replace the two arrows with one you need to get all those infos in it, and in that case especially the direction of the relations is almost impossible to convey.

about the tenchi graph, that one is so messed up bc someone added indirect relations (something the sequel/prequel/relation edit page explicitly tells one NOT to do), i hope some anidb mod will clean that entry. If you want to speed the process up, feel free to post the correct relations in the dbchangereq forum.

BYe!
EXP

wahaha · Post by **wahaha** » Sat Feb 28, 2004 10:21 am

exp wrote:if you want to replace the two arrows with one you need to get all those infos in it, and in that case especially the direction of the relations is almost impossible to convey.

It is somewhat possible. All edges could be replaced by "dir=both, headlabel=(old label), taillabel=(reversed)".
My current playing-around-with-dot-sample: http://wahaha.eu.tt/anidb/dot-wahaha_1.png
(Don't pay attention to the crammed nodes ^^;)

Skywalka · Post by **Skywalka** » Sat Feb 28, 2004 3:15 pm

Looks great wahaha. That's the way I would have done it concerning the labels on the arrows. Very nice.

Maokun · Post by **Maokun** » Sat Feb 28, 2004 4:39 pm

uh? 140 is not that much ...making 5 daily it would be done in less than a month

and its not like every 24 hours appears a new anime that can be related to another one....actually I think that only one of every 20 new animes is related to another one, so graphs need some updating but just everyonce in a while

Wahaha try is great but it still bothers me visually (cant help it, Im a designer >.<)

egg · Post by **egg** » Sat Feb 28, 2004 5:42 pm

I also think what wahaha has done is great! I was also thinking of including the number of episodes, but the way he did it was better than what I was coming up with...

What we need, though, is an example of every type of link for exp to work with. I don't have time to make a dot file atm, so I will just put things in here for discussion.

Code: Select all

+---+ prequel            sequel +---+
| A |<------------------------->| B |
+---+                           +---+

+---+       same setting        +---+
| A |<------------------------->| B |
+---+                           +---+

+---+    alternative setting    +---+
| A |<------------------------->| B |
+---+                           +---+

+---+    alternative version    +---+
| A |<------------------------->| B |
+---+                           +---+

+---+         character         +---+
| A |<------------------------->| B |
+---+                           +---+

+---+ parent story   side story +---+
| A |<------------------------->| B |
+---+                           +---+

+---+ full story        summary +---+
| A |<------------------------->| B |
+---+                           +---+

+---+           other           +---+
| A |<------------------------->| B |
+---+                           +---+

The question I have, is should some of the arrows be only on one side. For instance for character, presumably one (or some) of the characters from a main series were used to make another series, so it might make sense for a one way arrow. The only problem with this, is from the entry unless you are at the source anime when you create the relation it would be a backwards arrow... I think the same logic could apply to same setting, alternate setting and alternate version. Just some food for thought.

Skywalka · Post by **Skywalka** » Sun Feb 29, 2004 5:23 am

Yup, I agree with the "ony way" arrows but I think there is no problem since I really wonder what you mean with a "backwards" arrow.

Just think of it as a family tree. Just because somebody knows you and looks at your family tree he would never think that the arrow between you and your partens is "backwards". It is always forward since your partents were there before you. The "backwards" relation is represented by a forward arrow.

egg · Post by **egg** » Sun Feb 29, 2004 6:22 am

Skywalka wrote:Yup, I agree with the "ony way" arrows but I think there is no problem since I really wonder what you mean with a "backwards" arrow.

Sorry, I didn't explain that very well. From the CGI Interface, there is a link called character. This link doesn't have a different name for the reverse link (that I know of, I haven't created random links to see the results). So from the CGI interface and go to what would be the "child/destination" and create a link to the "parent/source", and it shows up fine in the CGI. If we make one way links in the graph though, it would be pointing the oposite direction than it should have.

There is enough of a problem of people creating things wrong when things are clear, but this would create unintentional problems that people may not even realize.

Skywalka · Post by **Skywalka** » Sun Feb 29, 2004 7:12 am

Err sorry but you are not very clear in that last post either

egg wrote: From the CGI Interface, there is a link called character.

CGI Interface? What would that be? Do you mean the "Add/Edit Relation for (Anime)" page that pops up when you click the "Edit" link below one of the relation graphics?!?

egg wrote: This link doesn't have a different name for the reverse link (that I know of, I haven't created random links to see the results).

I guess you should not call it a "link" you should call it a "relation" because this could be confused with a hyperlink (we are talking about the WWW here) ^_^

I think what you mean is there is currently no name for the connection between an Anime that has a character in it that has previously appeared in another anime. Right?

I guess that is in fact currently a small problem since at the moment this "relation" makes the graph tool draw two arrows. One from the Anime that had the original character in it and one back. That I agree has to be changed. There should be no arrow back from the Anime that was produced later and has a character in it that was introduced in another, earlier anime.

The reason for this is the "Chained action" box. At the moment the person who adds the "character" relation should in fact uncheck that box if you ask me, because a "character" is not a vice/versa relation.

Concerning the problem that it could be easily misunderstood: inter-anime relations are no easy business. You have to know quite a bit about an anime before you can add these relations and while I think that there currently is not enough information about how to add this kind of information I cannot say that everything on AniDB is well documented. I had to learn quite some things on my own (hence the 6 denied CREQs I got). I guess there are enough moderators available on the forum and on IRC to ask, and of course there will be changes to this interface since it is currently quite new.

To get this problem solved:

Example:
http://anidb.ath.cx/perl-bin/animedb.pl ... eq&aid=409

Code: Select all

Anime: Tenchi Universe (409)
Title:*  [empty box]
         May be Anime Title, Anime Synonym or Anime Short Title

Should be changed somewhat. Maybe to

Code: Select all

Anime: Tenchi Universe (409)
has/is a
[relation drop box]
of
Title:*  [empty box]
         May be Anime Title, Anime Synonym or Anime Short Title

Unfortunately I currently do not really know how "character" works but you could enter an anime in the Title: box that has a character of Tenchi Universe in it.

egg wrote: So from the CGI interface and go to what would be the "child/destination" and create a link to the "parent/source", and it shows up fine in the CGI.

Dude, that is not even a sentence, thats word soup. I don't get what you mean ^_^

egg wrote: If we make one way links in the graph though, it would be pointing the oposite direction than it should have.

At the moment a person who adds a relation is advised on the "Add/Edit relation" page that he/she should thoroughly read the information about relations before adding anything. There will always be people who are to lazy to do this, but I think what you mean is that currently there are not enough safety nets to prevent people from doing stupid things to the anime relations (or people who are too lazy to read up on the relations will ask stupid questions).

I guess this depends on how things turn out. This feature is still in the experimental stage I guess and people who choose to add stuff should read about it first. EXP linked this thread directly from the news, that should be enough if you ask me, it's the page that pops up every time you open AniDB ^_^

egg wrote: There is enough of a problem of people creating things wrong when things are clear, but this would create unintentional problems that people may not even realize.

I guess you are right but there are not too many things that can be done wrong here and in the end this all can be easily fixed. Even if we had to throw all the relations away it would be a matter of an hour or two to add the info again.

I had more problems with bogus anime episodes added to the db than there will ever be with this feature, I am sure about that.[/code]

egg · Post by **egg** » Sun Feb 29, 2004 5:45 pm

Skywalka wrote:Err sorry but you are not very clear in that last post either

Let's try again...

Skywalka wrote:CGI Interface? What would that be? Do you mean the "Add/Edit Relation for (Anime)" page that pops up when you click the "Edit" link below one of the relation graphics?!?

The CGI Interface is the Web interface, remember there are an IRC (Chii) and Client (AOM) interfaces as well. AFAIK, it is only implemented in the CGI, but I wanted to make sure people knew which I was referring to.

Skywalka wrote:I guess you should not call it a "link" you should call it a "relation" because this could be confused with a hyperlink (we are talking about the WWW here) ^_^

Relation is a better word.

Skywalka wrote:The reason for this is the "Chained action" box. At the moment the person who adds the "character" relation should in fact uncheck that box if you ask me, because a "character" is not a vice/versa relation.

Dooh!

I did not notice the chained box. I guess we should just put the arrows whichever way(s) the user defined the relation.

Skywalka wrote:
egg wrote: So from the CGI interface and go to what would be the "child/destination" and create a link to the "parent/source", and it shows up fine in the CGI.
Dude, that is not even a sentence, thats word soup. I don't get what you mean ^_^

I was in a rush and did not proof-read. Anyway I did not know about the chained box. I was just thinking if by default it created a relation one way, the user could create a relation backwards from the way it should be. But by default it would create relations both ways, the user would have to do extra work to make it wrong.

My main concern was that users who were even trying to do things correctly would make a reverse relation by accident, but since the default is a double relationship that will probably not be an issue. I guess my main issue is the same name for the relations going both ways, but that is another thread and atm I can't think of anything better.

There will always be users that will do things wrong, I just wanted to make sure it wasn't too easy for them.

Post by **exp** » Mon Mar 01, 2004 1:44 pm

I've now fixed the true type font problem.
The fonts should look somewhat better now.

I've also added a short syntax description to the add/edit relation page.
I'd like to get some feedback on that one, does it make adding relations more clear? Or is even more info needed?

BYe!
EXP

egg · Post by **egg** » Wed Mar 03, 2004 5:02 pm

exp wrote:I've also added a short syntax description to the add/edit relation page.
I'd like to get some feedback on that one, does it make adding relations more clear? Or is even more info needed?

I don't think that it is needed. Most people who wouldn't understand the page without it, would probably get more confused with this line. If you used javascript or something to fill in the anime name and relation type, then it might add something, but I do not think it is necessary.

My main concern was that people would create one way relations going the wrong direction by accident. Since the default action is to do it both ways, I don't think this is a problem.

As far as other changes for the graphs, I think that wahaha's changes are really good (I even like the crammed nodes he told us to ignore). I would recommend going forward with something like that.

As far as the routing of a graph, the only complex graph I have found is Tenchi, and that is only a mess because it has relations that need to be removed. Once those are removed it will just be a straight line with a couple of branches which should be handled fine. Most anime that I can think of that would have other types of relations have not had the relations added yet... If someone can find another complex graph, I can try to tackle any routing issues.