side navigation for the anirec?

[sothis]

i'm posting this for ideas for the new site... there will be side navigation (kind of like here: http://www.anime-planet.com/vendors/), and i'm open for suggestions on what to put there.

here's what i know will go up for sure:
(not necessarily in this order)

FAQ
Sign Up
Add an Anime
Make Recommendations
Recently Added
Advanced Search
Report a Problem

"make recommendations" will be the entry point to making any recs. add an anime will display a link to the tutorial, and have instructions on how to submit (and maybe have a submission form right there). recently added will be a link back to the entry page of the anriec... i figure if people find the anirec via google search (very common), they wont necessarily go to the main page of the anirec and wont see the new stuff. this way there's always a link that shows there's a place to find it. report a problem might stay with each anirec entry, but i might have it as a link on the left side too... not sure yet. advanced search might be up with the alpha list and regular searcvh, and expand into a panel... not sure.

any other ideas of what should go on this side? ANIREC SPECIFIC ONLY! for example ill probably have a paypal donation button somewhere, but i only want to know about what will show up in the side nav while in the anirec.

any ideas would be welcome! thanks!

[Syndicate]

I love this site so much. The fact of it all is that i visit it almost everyday just to see what all anime there is out there. This site is truely a great tool for any anime fan and is just what any anime fan is looking for. My friend who is an anime fan told me about it and since then i have been hooked. I want to post reviews but for some reason my yahoo email account wont let me email you ; ; but anyways if you can email me at douglasyoungers@yahoo.com it would be most appreciated. Thank you for creating such a ideal website and i hope i can help more with it. The layout of the site now is great in my opinion, but any minor changes that you feel it needs, i am sure than it needs. I am a photoshop wiz so if you got any ideas for more page layout designs i would be happy to design a few for the site. I hope i speak to you soon and thank you so much. Enjoy =D

[sothis]

i appreciate the compliments but am not seeing how that applies to wanting ideas for side navigation o_o

[Lord_Vegita]

hmm, atm i can't think of anything else to add. this looks like a good list of things to have there in the side bar

Actually. It doesn't really have to be in that part, well it could be part of it of course.
It would be to add a genres filter.
There already a way to find "similar anime". But it's quite limited. Since you have to have an anime to base your research.
So If I am looking for a "drama", "comedy", or "horror" anime for exemple without having a name or an idea of witch to choose. My only choice is to randomly look through the animelist.

So a fonction like that would be good. But it might be too hard too add it now since you might have to go through all the anime to make the fonction available :(.
Ha yeah, sorry for my english I hope it wasn't too confusing.

[sothis]

there will never be genres in the anirec :) i don't want people being biased about what to watch based on that.

I would love to see a feature where you just signed up, rated a couple of series (that got stored) and then you get recomendations based on that. I belive this would both make the users recomendations sky-rocket and that more users would join. There is a similar thing to this in sweden called Filmtipset.se roughly translated to movietips when I login my 500+ ratings are checked and they give me recomendations and also let me see the estimated rating (calculated from other users with similar taste) for all movies in the database. The site rarely gives incorrect estimates for me (belive it or not) and are really great. So having this for anime would be awesome.
If there is need I would be glad to give a helping hand. I know some C++, Java, PHP and MySQL.

[sothis]

what you speak of is actually already available at anidb, called anime hint. you rate series, other people rate series, and then it shows you (via an algorithm) what other ones you might like. a few other sites also do this route. but, anime planet is the only rec db that is based on votes from actual people, as opposed to an algorithm (well, animenfo has somewhat of a related system but its better here ;)) so for that reason, i dont think i want to duplicate that here, but i can see why you'd like that sort of a thing. i've also been very against seeing average scores for anime, because usually it just ends up that the most popular things are the highest rated, etc.

but what i AM going to do is add a lot of functionality to the anirec, which will give more tailored recommendations:

-you can add users as favorites... so if you always seem to agree with someone's recs and you add them, you'll have an easy way of seeing all the things they've recommended, their reviews, etc. when you look at rec lists there will be some sort of indication that someone on your favorites list has made that series rec you are seeing

-you can filter by series you've seen. i'm going to giev users the option of marking series as watched... and also to rate series... but, these ratings wont be used as an average anywhere... just so, if you agree with someone's recs a lot, you can look at their individual list and see what they rate things. anyways, if youve marked series as watched, you can choose to have those not show up in the recommendation lists, so you are only shown ones you havent seen.

hm actually those ar ethe main 2 but i know im probably forgetting stuff :)

What I thought would be very convenient is if I had a way to "remember" recommendations. I mean, I can just...write down titles to remember every time I search for something. But then I end up forgetting where I wrote them, or what "Kyou Kara Maou" or "Burst Angel" were about in the first place, and then I'd never end up watching them. If I had a way to store titles on the site under my username, I'd be able to easily manage them and look them up again while I'm at the site. I thought "saved recommendations" might be a good side bar link. Would this be out of the question, or do you think this would be a good idea?

[sothis]

so you are looking not so much for saving a title to look at, but a recommendation pair? that's a very interesting idea that I haven't thought about before.

i know one aspect of the site will be marking something as watched, so you can filter those out of the list. someone once had suggested being able to mark a series as a favorite, though i don't remember why. sounds like there could be 2 options:

-flagging a SERIES so you can find it later
-flagging an actual RECOMMENDATION that you think looks sound, and want to check it out eventually

which one is closer to what you are thinking? or maybe both? ill ponder on ideas for this.