Anime-Planet's Weekly Manga Club - proposal and discussion

[sothis]

I'm proposing a new club - one that I'd personally participate in.

Anime-Planet currently is severely lacking in manga recommendations; only about 5 people have contributed the bulk of what's up, and what's up is slim at best. The only way we can attract more manga fans to the site is by having more recommendations, so I'm hoping this club can help get us in the right direction.

The idea is that every week, we'd have a theme (ie, horror, shoujo, ecchi, etc) and a small selection of titles that we'd each read. This would differ from Waste Your Weekend and Find a Buddy in that the the theme and selection of titles would be set - everyone would read the same things.

The goal of this club would be to try to add as many quality recommendations as possible, so people participating would need to agree to add them if they come up with recs. Users who don't know how to make recommendations could get a wakthrough from other club members to get them onboard. Another goal would be for users to add a user review (launchng hopefully tonight) once finished.

Because the goal would be recommendations, the titles would be chosen based on what are probably similar; this data would be collected either via the few current recommendations, personal ideas, or other sites (for example, mangaupdates' automated recs which are sometimes accurate and sometimes not).

Now, I'm not saying we'd automatically add recs for the things we read - we'd only add recommendations if they make sense. But, hopefully after awhile the things we read would spark some good conversations and recommendations.

Another idea is to have 'tracks' - ie, when people join the club they say what genre they prefer and what they'd like to focus on. We could have teams of these groups, and maybe every week the horror group reads a few horror manga. By going deep in a certain genre and reading things often, it could mean there are more recs made for that genre. A good example of this is me - I've read most horror stuff out there so I've made recs between them, but there's no way I could do the same for ecchi or shounen.

Also, if going along with the track idea, let's say someone can't do one week but wants to read those [genre] titles. The past weeks' titles could be listed on an archive page, and if several people want to tackle those during the week instead of the current titles for that genre, they could do so (so that would be similar to the find a buddy in that regard)

I'm also thinking we could offer incentives to people who have never read manga, as I'm a poster child for someone who said she'd never read manga but ended up liking it once I found the right stuff. We could offer big TACO points or something to newbies who have read zero or barely any manga and have them choose a genre track they like. Who knows? We could get our own new fans ^^


So, questions I'd have:

-Do you like this idea?
-What additional ideas do you have on how to change it?
-How much is reasonable to expect people would read in a week? (# vols)
-Any other suggestions on the genre track idea?
-Other thoughts?

[purplemo]

Originally Posted by sothis

(for example, mangaupdates' automated recs which are sometimes accurate and sometimes not).

If you're talking about finding basic similarities between basic shounen action and shoujo fluff mangaupdates is pretty good. Otherwise if you're looking for a "deeper" relationship between shows (or other genres), I would not trust mangaupdates. A lot of the recs are based on broad genre similarities, not actual similarities. Deep Love has FMwS and Ichigo 100% as recs for example . . .

[wolfdv]

Originally Posted by sothis

So, questions I'd have:

-Do you like this idea?
-What additional ideas do you have on how to change it?
-How much is reasonable to expect people would read in a week? (# vols)
-Any other suggestions on the genre track idea?
-Other thoughts?

-Yes
-None yet...it would probably be one of those "fix as you go" type suggestions
-Personally I usually power through whatever I'm reading(took me 3 days to read all of berserk if that gives you an idea) so I'm not sure what would be a normal timetable for your average reader.
-Nope
-Nope

I'm up for it but ideas dont flow well from my brain into print format which is why I've been hesitant on making manga recommendations or synopsis entries.

[sothis]

then we could get personal opinions from people who have read them (and potentially made recs), etc. or if there's a genre track, eventually recs could be made off of what's there. i think it's a potentially great way to start getting more recs and opening up people to interesting stuff.

depending on how many users we gain there could be special weeks too such as 'little known gems' (similar to the list you came up with) so people could learn about new stuff. or, a mangaka specific week, etc.

[sothis]

Personally I usually power through whatever I'm reading(took me 3 days to read all of berserk if that gives you an idea) so I'm not sure what would be a normal timetable for your average reader.

thats my problem too, i read really fast and like plowing through so id want a more balanced opinion from everyone else on what's reasonable XD. it could be that there's two levels, the 'normal' level and then a 'challenge' level for those of us like you and me. maybe it could be something like if theres a 10 vol series, 1-3 are for normal and 1-10 are for the challenge

[Omurqi]

Great idea, I'm not reading nearly as much manga as I'd like (basically only stuff I see recommended somewhere), so I'd definitely join.
The only problem I see with this, is that we'd have to read a considerable amount of each week in order to have some variety (atleast 3-4 titles) and still having read enough volumes of each to make solid recs. I personally power through anything I start like wolfdv, but I'm not sure what most people find a reasonable amount.

[sothis]

i dont see this as necessarily needing 4 a week - it depends on the length. i think if we do the track idea, people would just read more and more each week so they'd have a good way of making recs.

[Otaku108]

-Do you like this idea?
very much so, I kept tossing the idea around myself but never got around to putting it out there.

-What additional ideas do you have on how to change it?
so far it's well thought out and planned, I may or may not have suggestions once the theory is put to practice.

-How much is reasonable to expect people would read in a week? (# vols)
I'm not a good person to ask this of, I've yet to find a manga that I couldn't finish in 5 days. Even Monster didn't last a weekend. A solid guess would still be 10 volumes max for a 7 day period IMO... seems most people should be able to dedicate a volume or more per night casually.

-Any other suggestions on the genre track idea?
again, so far this seems like a good way to work around people's particular tastes. it also eliminates the problem of people feeling pressured to read a particular genre they can't stand, like I hate horror for the most part and I refuse to read shounen-ai.

-Other thoughts?
other than sign me up, or let me know if you need help with anything, not really. thx for a-p as well :P

[sothis]

so there's not a huge amount of support for this but i'd like to start it anyways. how about the few of us who responded chime in with which genres we would want to tackle, and which ones we wouldnt?

for me:

REALLY like - horror/thriller/survival
REALLY dislike or want to avoid - shounen ai / yaoi, yuri

anything else i'm up for.

[chii]

Originally Posted by Otaku108

I refuse to read shounen-ai.

*giggles*

anyway :P

i think 3 vols would be good depending on the page length. (i'm basing my 3 vols a week on a 150ish chapter) And this is coming from a SLOW. VERY SLOW manga reader. :P

but you could always just wait till the title is chosen and see how people feel about it with how much/little they can read.

OR

you could have a slow/fast reader category and they can be set at different paces and people could choose which one to follow along with.