How to deal with a compilation of stories in a volume

[sothis]

so stressful.

so, i've added a few 'one shots' that haven't really been one shots, they've been a part of a compilation of stories. such as this:

http://www.mangaupdates.com/series.html?id=10351

we don't have a system in place to deal with these so upgrading the solution in any way will be time consuming and likely will require donations to fix.

i need you guys to hash out a solution for this. i can see a few options, all of which are difficult to implement:

1. like MU, make the volume title the main one, but list the titles separately and have them link to the volume. also break the synopsis guidelines we've had since day one and let people write separate synopses for each story.

2. do the above but only describe the volume, which wont satisfy people who find one story to read and want to know what it's about specifically (probably a lot)

3. other ideas?

[sothis]

updated link to the one i meant

[Lemur]

Ugh. My solution is deeply- deeply- flawed, But would be an OK temporary fix and shouldn't be too hard, imo.

Do an One Shot entry for each short story. Then in the description field of each, add:

Other stories in this compilation:
Link to first one
link to second
Link to third
ETC

For a long term solution, I would almost recommend a set up like the recommendations.

Well- Yeah. Deeply flawed, but its my attempt.

[kilrothi]

personally, since MU already does option number 1, i feel like we should do number 2. so synopses would read something along the lines of:

'In this collection of short stories by Author Name, we'll meet Haruko as she attempts to save the world, Mitsue as she struggles valiantly to get into her dream highschool, Keiichi as he tries to live past his 15 birthday, and many other characters with their own struggles.'

Obviously, if you were basing it on a manga and not pulling it out of your butt, it might be longer. We could also consider:

'In this collection of short stories by Author Name, we'll meet Haruko as she attempts to save the world in 'Haruko Saves the World'; Mitsue as she struggles valiantly to get into her dream highschool in 'Entrance Exam Excitement!'; Keiichi as he tries to live past his 15 birthday in 'Will Dr. House Figure it Out?', and many other characters with their own struggles.'

Like, dislike, other ideas?

[Wolfco]

Personally, it makes more sense for have one entry for the volume itself. Short stories are exactly that. You don't need detailed synopsis for them. I really think kilrothi has the right idea with one multi-descriptive synopsis for the volume itself. The manga industry conveniently publishes collections that generally contain just one authors/artists work. Most people who buy them, do so because of their familiarity with the a/a. I think creating a special tag for collections would avoid confusion; since, collections often have very different stories gathered together. As far as users using the search function to look for the stories there-in specifically, merely add the volume's various story titles as alternate titles for the actual volume itself. I know that the anime database is already setup to have bunches of searches lead to the same entry. With the layout you are currently using, you can merely use Volume block to indicate it is a collection of 3 or 5 stories. When someone does search for a specific story and is dropped to the whole volume, the multi-descriptive synopsis should be clue enough for the reason. As to recommendations which is of course the most important part of the database anyway, that is always a quality issue anyway. If the person making the recommendation is at all intelligent, they will be able to make the recommendation in such a way as to say whether it is volume to volume or component story to volume or whatever.

Let me give you an example... There is a volume of short stories by Sumono Yumeka released under the "main story's" title Same Cell Organism. Since that is the main and most popular story, most people would probably be searching for it. The same volume contains "To Make an Angel." So, I would set up that as an alternate title as least for searches. For the entry itself, with the volume block I would indicate "1 SS" for one volume of short stories. That would allow leeway in case it was re-released in a slightly different format with or without certain stories, or if some of the stories had more than one title themselves. This volume has more than one "story" featuring the "main story's" characters. For the synopsis, it wouldn't be necessary to have a description for each of the main's sections. Instead, it would make more sense to have descriptive lines providing information about mains as theirs was one story. This would be combined with lines about the other vignettes contained within in the volume. Something to the effect of, "Yokoto and Nakagawa don't have much in common either in personalities or lifestyles, but a moment of a rooftop will create a connection that could grow into the love of a lifetime. Yuki and Sasaki have known each other a long time, but Sasaki didn't understand the true implications of the promise they made many years ago." This of method synopsis would be useful in this case particular as To Make an Angel (Yuki & Sasaki) is a multi-part story as well. The other unconnected stories could also each have their own lines of description. A simple line of description with the characters names included would make sure searchers would know they were where they meant to be and would clue them in on the collection factor. As to the database function, well I personally always look at the reasons why something is being recommended for something else. That should be enough to make sure users are getting the quality rec's they should be getting. For example, I would say in my rec that if you like this collection, you would like work or this other collection. Or, I could say if you like this story i.e. To Make an Angel, you would like this work, other story, etc...

[Otaku108]

Of the One Shot compilations I've come across on different sites, it's common for the site to just use the name of the first story in the compilation as it's listing name and give a detailed synopsis for each story inside it's description area.

This seems to be the easiest solution IMO because most of those stories in compilations are rather similar anyway. Or have been in the ones that I've come across.

I'd also recommend adding the tag Compilation, to avoid any confusion. Just my 2 cents