Genre Discussion [DONE/DENIED]

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Wlah
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Post by Wlah »

Shouldn't we make a new thread about discussing different ways to handle genres and close this one?
wahaha
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Post by wahaha »

Not really. The last page's topic wasn't much different from the first page's. If anything, the thread-title could be changed to better fit the contents.

(Or you could split it - but that's somewhat hard to do, probably)
exp
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Post by exp »

well,

I am too lazy to read this thread.
So a post which summarizes this one might be usefull :P

BYe!
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Wlah
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Post by Wlah »

Fear the necromancer once more!! muahhahaha :twisted:

I just had a chat over IRC discussing the genre system of anidb.
I think it should be changed for the better. The current system isnt very.. usefull imho.

So I did post it before in this thread. But I think we need to bring this subject back into discussion again...

My suggestion is having 2 different genre 'id' systems like we have aid's, eid's etc. A main-genre id, and a sub-genre id.
The main genre should only hold very compact and 'general' genres that could cover a wide range of show..
While the sub-genres should have close to anything anime could dish up with.

I already mentioned ranma as an example but I'll try another example:
Anime : FLCL
Main Genres : Comedy, Drama, Action
Sub Genres : Mecha, Music, Dementia, Parody, sci-fi (more I can't think up)

what I'd like to suggest we all should discuss are these (imo) issues about this particular suggestion:
  • - How many, and which main genres should there be?
    - Should there be a limit to how many main genres could be added?
    - How many sub genres could be added?
    - Should sub-genres be entries, self inserted text or something like a mix?
    - Should it be possible to -add- subgenres as normal users?
    - If not, then who should decide the list?
That discussion will only be nescessairy if my suggestion is what's going to be used.
So I guess before we discuss a particular suggest we should first decide which better genre system to use for anidb (I guess that's mainly exp's decision)
exp
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Post by exp »

well,

I think I am doing something about this soon, so we should come up with a good solution.

My main goal would be to make the data more usefull to the anime hint and advanced search while at the same time keeping things clear.
This would mean adding as much data as possible in a formalized way. The final result would be a genre-style formalized description which covers most of the anime description.

One possible approach would be to have hierachical and weighted (1 to 5 stars) genres.
The weights would not have to add up to a certain value. They'd be more like the current quality rating for files.
I.e.
- main genres
- sub genres
- sub sub genres
- sub sub sub genres

an example:
Anime: XXX
Genres:
- Action (4/5 stars)
- Comedy (2/5 stars)
Subgenres:
- Action::Sports (4/5 stars)
Subsubgenres: (maybe called themes?)
- Action::Sports::Cars (... stars)
- Action::Sports::Match (... stars)
Subsubsubgenres: (maybe called subthemes?)
- Action::Sports::Cars::Driving (... stars)
- Action::Sports::Cars::Mechanics (... stars)

another example
Anime: YYY
Genre:
- Action (... stars)
Subgenre:
- Action::Sci-Fi (... stars)
- Fantasy::Magic (... stars)
SubSubGenre:
- Action::Sci-Fi::Mecha (... stars)
SubSubSubGenre:
- Action::Sci-Fi::Mecha::Transformation (... stars)

note that the genres/subgrenres... would be hierachically ordered, however it would not be required that the parent genre is also added for the anime. I.e. just bc there is some magic in an anime, Fantasy would not have to be listed in the main genre list.

only the genres and subgenres would be displayed directly on the anime page.
the rest would only be shown in a popup and there would be a profile option to change this in one way or another (i.e. show all genre info, show only main genres ...)

thoughts?

BYe!
EXP
Wlah
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Post by Wlah »

A good system exp, IMO.

Should we use that we'll need to think up and discuss a list of what should be entries for the different genres... but wouldnt that take quite some time?

I mean when we're at the sub sub genre level there's possbly more than a couple of hundred different things that could be added..

...So I guess it'd be smarter to decide a very compact genre and sub genre list, and then allow sub sub and subsubsub genres to be added additionally by users (and if needed, veryfied by mods)?
exp
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Post by exp »

in the first version only mods would be able to add any genre information to an anime.
and each mod would be able to add new subgenres... to anidb when needed, so we don't have to specify the complete genre tree in advance, however we should at least have all genres and subgenres specified and the most important subsub and subsubsubgenres.

BYe!
EXP
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Post by Andemon »

Hm. Brilliant system -- and I'm not saying that only because it's similar to what I was going to suggest. -_-; It certainly doesn't make much sense to have genres and themes on the same list like they are now; glad to see that EXP agrees.

You do all realise that it'll be a huge amount of work, though -- right?

There are hundres of potential genres, here's just the few that I could think of:

(Surely Sci-Fi can't be a subgenre of Action. Not all Sci-Fi is action, and there's just so much of it that it'd benefit from an own genre...)

Action
Action::Adventure (Action::Adventure::Naval...?)
Action::Martial Art (Action::Martial Art::Ninja; Action::Martial Art::Samurai...?)
Action::Sports (Action::Sports::Cars...?)
Action::Survival
Action::War (Action::War::Military...?)
Action::Western
Comedy
Comedy::Black Comedy
Comedy::Parody
Comedy::Satire
Comedy::Slapstick
Dementia (...for anime that doesn't fall into traditional genres. ;))
Drama
Drama::Political
Drama::School
Drama::Thriller
Drama::Tragedy
Fantasy
Fantasy::Alternate Reality
Fantasy::Fairy Tale
Fantasy::Paranormal
Fantasy::Sword and Sorcery (Fantasy::Swords and Sorcery::Magic...?)
Fantasy::Urban Fantasy (Fantasy::Urban Fantasy::Magic...?)
Historical
Horror
Horror::Gore
Horror::Monster (...with subsubgenres ::Demon, ::Vampire, and such.)
Juvenile
Juvenile::Shoujo (...Juvenile::Shoujo::Magical Girl...?)
Juvenile::Shounen
Music
Music::Band
Mature
Mature::Ecchi
Mature::Hentai
Mature::Shoujo Ai
Mature::Shounen Ai
Mature::Yaoi
Mature::Yuri
Mystery
Mystery::Conspiracy
Mystery::Detective
Mystery::Intrigue
Romance
Romance::Romantic Suspense
Science Fiction
Science Fiction::Cyberpunk
Science Fiction::Near Future (Science Fiction::Near Future::Mecha...?)
Science Fiction::Post-apocalypse
Science Fiction::Science Fantasy (Science Fiction::Science Fantasy::Aliens...?)
Science Fiction::Space (Science Fiction::Space::Mecha; Science Fiction::Space::Colonization; Science Fiction::Space::Exploration...?)
Science Fiction::Super Power
Science Fiction::Time Travel
Science Fiction::Weird Science

The themes are far too numerous to list. -_-;
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Post by exp »

bbaab
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Post by bbaab »

I'd propose a slightly different set of genres (listed as a regular expression so you can add it easily to the AniDB):

Code: Select all

/^.*$/
exp
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Post by exp »

nah, we can't let the users specify arbitrary strings as genres.
we'd just be back at the anime description level.
there's not much to be won by doing it that way.
(but I take it your comment was not entirely serious anyway? :o)

BYe!
EXP
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Post by Rar »

Based on what he said on irc, I have a nasty feeling he was serious. He held this up as an example of excellence: http://www.imdb.com/Sections/Keywords/types_A
Somehow he doesn't seem to see that an indexing feature where most keys have only one film is... not really useful.

Rar
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Post by rowaasr13 »

"Genshiken" is a perfect example of anime of "Genshiken" genre. Why not, heh?..
bbaab
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Post by bbaab »

exp wrote:nah, we can't let the users specify arbitrary strings as genres.
we'd just be back at the anime description level.
there's not much to be won by doing it that way.
(but I take it your comment was not entirely serious anyway? :o)
I'm not enteriely serious, but mostly so. You have two levels of categorization mixed up here: genres, which should be few (about a dozen), exactly defined and have a common theme, and keywords, which should be used for searching (it was rar, I think, who used "searching for all baseball anime" as an example).

"Baseball" isn't a genre, it is a keyword. So are, for example, "time travel", "adult content" and so on. I think the best method to determine that is to ask two simple questions:

If that keyword would be a (sub-genre),

1. ..., how many anime would fall into that sub-genre? (for less than 20, don't bother)
2. ..., how many "parent" genres would it have? (if more than one, it should be either a genre on its own, or - most probably - just a keyword).

"Baseball" fails the first test, both "time travel" (fantasy/time travel? sci-fi/time-travel?) and "adult content" (whatever/adult content) fail the second, with the caveat that "adult content" might be a genre on its own - although I don't see the common theme here.

You're trying to lump keywords and genres into one big ... something ... and give them a very simple structure ... which won't work.
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Post by pelican »

But what's the harm in having a "subgenre" that is used by less than 20 anime? Since keywords are useless unless they're standardised in form, they might as well be added as subgenres (should be less work for the database, too).

As far as the tree structure goes, I think you're too fixated on viewing these as genres and subgenres. Time travel doesn't have to go under either SF or fantasy, but could and IMO should go under a completely different category for "Themes", just as target audiences and settings have been suggested to be separated. (Feel free to suggest a better or more appropriate (although this may require a little mind reading to understand what I'm getting at) label for this.)
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