[FEEDBACK] new Genre System

Forum for discussing AniDB rules & standards. No small talk!

Moderator: AniDB

Locked

Do we have all needed genres listed?

Yes
10
38%
No
16
62%
 
Total votes: 26

rowaasr13
Posts: 415
Joined: Sat Sep 27, 2003 4:57 am

Post by rowaasr13 »

egg wrote:Launguage
Launguage::Infrequent Coarse
Launguage::Strong Coarse
Launguage::Crude Indecent Language
Japanese hardly care about things mentioned in this classification and have quite different view of what is appropriate in language and what is not. "Rude" addressation is used everywhere even in kids show you will hear "kisama". I've watched Pugyuru today and when missiles were launched in "country B" there were at least several "shit"'s and I don't exactly remember it, but there were "fuck" as well. So, kid show with "Launguage::Strong Coarse"?
exp
Site Admin
Posts: 2438
Joined: Tue Oct 01, 2002 9:42 pm
Location: Nowhere

Post by exp »

fahrenheit wrote:this is just a silly question.. but aren't we planning on complicate without need the genres?

the current genre system is lacking in some aspects, true, but some of the ideias are just too much cumbersome..
I think you've missed the main idea behind this feature.
We're all aware that it means a shit load of work to add such a detailed categorisation to all the animes in the db. But it's a gradual process, we don't have to do it all at once.
What we really want are anime categorisations which we can then use in automated queries of all sorts.

The user voting on categories is an interesting idea though. However I don't think we should start with that right away. IMHO it's better to first have the mods add the info to some animes and after some time, when the majority of the anidb users has gotten a hang on how the categorisations are supposed to look like, we can add some kind of voting feature.

About the load. As the anime page is cached anyway it won't change anything load wise as long as we do not introduce new anime hint features which work with that additional data yet.

BYe!
EXP
egg
Posts: 769
Joined: Tue Nov 11, 2003 7:17 am

Post by egg »

rowaasr13 wrote:
egg wrote:Launguage
Launguage::Infrequent Coarse
Launguage::Strong Coarse
Launguage::Crude Indecent Language
Japanese hardly care about things mentioned in this classification and have quite different view of what is appropriate in language and what is not. "Rude" addressation is used everywhere even in kids show you will hear "kisama". I've watched Pugyuru today and when missiles were launched in "country B" there were at least several "shit"'s and I don't exactly remember it, but there were "fuck" as well. So, kid show with "Launguage::Strong Coarse"?
That is exactly why there is not an age designation. If we just list what people may find objectional, then they have the information to determine if it is appropriate.
Raptor
Posts: 155
Joined: Mon Nov 01, 2004 11:07 pm

Post by Raptor »

I think that before chosing which categories goes where we should make sure that we all agree on the way to implement the categories. My huge post was intended as a possible canvas for this solution, not as a reference to how i think hentai titles should be handled. I simply chose hentai because it is something quite straightforward. I didnt meant to start a discussion to the level of details an hentai needed :P

My idea is incomplete and may be complete crap maybe fahrenheit idea is the best but this need to be chosen before deciding to go all out on details that could well prove to be complete garbage if they dont fit with the way genres are handled.

the possibilities seem to be:

-tree-like
-genre,subgenre
-genre
-genre, main genre, themes

ratings can be added in any of these ideas

lets choose one of these or an other and then decide on specific genres/categories/whatever.

the main thing is that before we chose what is a main genre or not maybe we should choose what will be the way used to structure the whole thing. because right now this deasnt seem to be quite clear.

As for caching problems in search the common search could most probably cached rather easily (i leave this to exp the final say) so i dont think the risk is too high.
egg
Posts: 769
Joined: Tue Nov 11, 2003 7:17 am

Post by egg »

OK, I think that the way that it has been presented would be there are a few major categories:
  • Genre
  • Setting
  • Target Audience
  • Content Indicators (There must be a better name for this.)
Each of these categories would have a list of values and then subvalues (usually denoted by '::' in this topic).
For instance the genre list would be something like:
  • Action
  • Comedy
  • Drama
  • Fantasy
  • Hentai
  • Romance
  • Science Fiction
  • Thriller
Then the subgenres would be something like:
  • Action::Martial Arts
  • Action::Martial Arts::Samurai
  • Action::Martial Arts::Ninja
exp has already said that as many levels can be added as is necessary, just the names need to remain unique.

In the anime page each of the category types would be displayed, and each of the items selected would show (I think it needs to be one per line, and it needs to show the full inherited name).

For instance for an imaginary anime where a Samurai helps people out (but does not necessarily fight), the subgenre Samurai should be there, but Martial Arts does not really apply:

Code: Select all

Genre:              Action ***
                    Action::Martial Arts::Samurai *****
                    Fantasy ****
Setting:            Past *****
Target Audience:    Shounen ****
Content Indicators: Violence::Mild ****
The simple view should take out anything 3 stars or less and should hide the stars:

Code: Select all

Genre:              Action::Martial Arts::Samurai
                    Fantasy
Setting:            Past
Target Audience:    Shounen
Content Indicators: Violence::Moderate
I don't think that the tree structure would work for display, expecially since a sub-category does not necessarily mean the parent is part of the anime. In actuality it will be stored as a tree in the DB, but it will display like a list.
fahrenheit
AniDB Staff
Posts: 438
Joined: Thu Apr 08, 2004 1:43 am
Location: Portugal

Post by fahrenheit »

hmm regarding the part of the code to the new anime indexing system (i think we have passed the genres with the introduction of so many vars):

Code: Select all

Genre:              Action *** 
                    Action::Martial Arts::Samurai ***** 
                    Fantasy ****
Setting:            Past ***** 
Target Audience:    Shounen **** 
Content Indicators: Violence::Mild ****
                    Drama::High ****
I'm in agreement with that, that could extend the search engine by a lot as for the display i think this would be a more readable solution:

Code: Select all

Genre:              Martial Arts::[b]Samurai[/b] [...] 
                    [b]Fantasy[/b] 
Setting:            [b]Past[/b]
Target Audience:    [b]Shounen[/b] 
Content Indicators: [b]Violence::Moderate[/b]
                    [b]Drama::High[/b]
What i'm saying is that we only show in the sub-genre and cat before that, not the full path, the full path could be shown by means of the title/alt tag of the html language or by a little symbol to show the full path.

This is because imagining we have something like 5 cats deep doesn't clutter the layout of the page, as it is we are gaining page height, but that isn't much troublesome, page width is.

So either way the things we have to define are the Content indicators what they can have and define the genres and sub-genres/themes.
Target audience is being taken care elsewhere and i think is prety much done, settings doesn't take much thinking (past, present, future and alternative; something like the current relations).

This was my further comments :)
PetriW
AniDB Staff
Posts: 1522
Joined: Sat May 24, 2003 2:34 pm

Post by PetriW »

Something I don't understand...
Why do you write

Code: Select all

Drama::High
when

Code: Select all

Drama: High
is more sensible? Has noone brought this up before? (Sorry, omw to job interview so didn't want to read whole thread.)
rowaasr13
Posts: 415
Joined: Sat Sep 27, 2003 4:57 am

Post by rowaasr13 »

egg, the problem with language indication is that because japanese see this problem differently, you will have to add at least "Launguage::Infrequent Coarse" to >90% titles in DB.

Besides, how will you determine if language is strong or not? Based on subs? For example, already mentioned "kisama" is not strong language in my opinion, but in subs it could become anything from "You!", "You bastard" and "You fucking prick". So, will that make same word usage assigned to different "Language" levels?
Rafal
Posts: 39
Joined: Fri Jan 07, 2005 2:46 am

Post by Rafal »

I agree that adding a language category like this doesn't make any sense, words like "kisama" might be pretty rude, but nobody would use it in actual spoken language and it doesn't have any social value attached to it. The only thing I can think of you could do with a category "language" is indicate the dialect(s) or the amount of slang used in an anime, but I don't think that's really useful information to add.
Amour
Posts: 640
Joined: Fri Oct 08, 2004 5:19 pm
Location: France

Post by Amour »

Language is useless as we already have information about child or not, action or not, ecchi or not, romance or not, ...
Raptor
Posts: 155
Joined: Mon Nov 01, 2004 11:07 pm

Post by Raptor »

I don't think that the tree structure would work for display, expecially since a sub-category does not necessarily mean the parent is part of the anime.
I must agree that if a category is limited to on single "place" in the structure for example samurais that would be in action and in action only then the tree structure cant work. In my example for example i placed demons at 2 different places and unless you allow that then any subgenre structure become useless because you will almost certainly reach exceptions and for these exceptions the full path will give false indications. Note that all these linkings would be easy to set up in java or things like that but i fail to see how it could efficiently be implemented in SQL so maybe it cant be implemented altogether. It could be implemented but that would be in a way that is against SQL logics. At least as far as i can see it.

In actuality it will be stored as a tree in the DB, but it will display like a list.
I fail to understand this one isnt it the programmer that decides how it will be displayed?

So if the categories will be made in SQL then genre, with theme is most probably a much better idea
exp
Site Admin
Posts: 2438
Joined: Tue Oct 01, 2002 9:42 pm
Location: Nowhere

Post by exp »

That's why we were also discussing just showing the sub-category by itself. However, I think that once a user knows how the system works it wouldn't be missleading if we show the entire 'path' to the sub-category either.
I.e. we could display something like Action::Martial Arts::Samurai for an anime which has only the samurai sub-category added (maybe bc it is some documentation style anime which does not contain any action or martial arts). We could also use colors there, i.e. greying the non-applying categories out.

And I think that at least for the full view (in a popup or however that will be accessible) we should display the category info with all parent categories. I don't have a good idea how exactly that page should look like yet though.

BYe!
EXP
Raptor
Posts: 155
Joined: Mon Nov 01, 2004 11:07 pm

Post by Raptor »

the only thing that i wonder is that if the sub categories only refer to "common sense" (you usually expect martial arts to involve some action, etc) why make it a subcategory of action in the first place since it doesnt bring any new information.

Why not simply make genre and subgenre. If I see
genre:action
subgenre: samurai

then i know ill see some samurais beating each other.

I dont see what information i get more by looking at
genre: action
subgenre: action:samurai

If i get back at my hentai example for simplicity,
I find
genre: hentai
subgenre: demon, tentacles, complete nudity, girl-girl

to be much more clear than

genre: hentai
subgenre: action:demon, hentai:tentacles, hentai:complete nudity, hentai:girl-girl

second showing doesnt bring me anything new and could mislead peoples with the action even if the action is removed/greyed

so at best the subgenre of something doesnt bring anything. At least thats how i see it but maybe there is something i dont understand in the system.

of course with the genre subgenre system that would be quite cool to be able to search for genre with specific subgenre but thats an other story that isnt linked to the present genre system.


for the newbies it could be said in the subgenre description that martial arts usually involve action but why clutter the page with redundant information.
nwa
AniDB Staff
Posts: 585
Joined: Sat Jun 07, 2003 10:51 am

Post by nwa »

on a useless sidenote, 'complete nudity' can already be read from the main genre 'Hentai' :D

anyway, this whole discussion is just too complicated to actually work out a final and reasonable version as there are multiple ways to do it... EXP'd need to choose something so that we could actually see how things would look and then do changes as needed... of course, that'd require more work which is a no-no for EXP :P
pelican
AniDB Staff
Posts: 234
Joined: Wed Aug 11, 2004 11:19 pm

Post by pelican »

Raptor wrote:the only thing that i wonder is that if the sub categories only refer to "common sense" (you usually expect martial arts to involve some action, etc) why make it a subcategory of action in the first place since it doesnt bring any new information.
IMO, half (the minor half) of the point of the tree part of this genre reform is to make it more feasible to have a large number of categories. A flat list of 200 or more would be rather hard to find things in, yes? (Especially if you don't know the exact name it's entered under, as you probably wouldn't.)

The other (and more important) half is searching. With a tree system, a search for action returns anime which have been entered under martial arts, etc.
Locked