Discuss a "mark anything in a franchise" feature here

@Halex showing a full franchise list AND how they all relate to each other (independent of how they link only to a specific title) is incredibly difficult and infeasible for the staffing that we have. It might potentially work for those rare cases like One Piece or Detective Conan where there truly is a "first" and everything else is explicitly related to that first title, but for "franchises" with multiple universes or unrelated groupings of series/specials/OVAs, it doesn't work. For years we received strong, consistent complaints (and understandable ones) about the relations sections being unmanageble - especially for things like Gundam - which is why the new relations breakdown is only "direct" franchise content, with ways to access related ones easily with one click.

This is veering a little too much into "why the current entry is how it is" rather than a full franchise feature discussion, but calling attention to this because if/when we do offer a "view everything in the franchise" page, it's almost certainly not going to be feasible to show the relation type. But for the seemingly most common scenario people have which is "i just want to see where I'm at in the series chronologically with all related titles", it would solve that.

@sothis Thanks for your reply, so for what I understand, you are trying to separate the different universes in a franchise in order to make it more manageable and relevant. That indeed makes sense as Gundam 00 is completely different than the original and unicorn universes for example, so it will make it easier to navigate on the universe you are actually watching.

However, regardless of the organization and categorization in the Related Anime area, what is important to me is to be able to see the status, update the status, add the rating, and see the relationships within the related items. If you were going to add that functionality back as in "@AllaliAdel" post that will be good enough for me (although ideally the title should not be truncated but at least it will show in full in the popup)

Something like this would be nice to have:
Ex2w.jpg


and when you hover over it just like in browse anime section:
lfQL.jpg

I see your team is very small and they are all volunteers, is impressive you manage a site this large with just 4-5 people. I'm also a web designer/developer in case you need help, I'm usually quite busy but I do spend a lot of my free time in this site anyway, so I don't mind giving back when possible, I just wouldn't be able to commit to a fixed schedule. I mostly work on WordPress sites and I'm a full-stack developer knowledgable of HTML/CSS/JS/PHP, SEO, MySQL, Apache, WHM/cPanel, User Experience, Interactivity & Accessibility. Let me know if I can be of help.
 
In the "full" redesign, the button will likely be the only list updating option (no more exposed table mode for the list widget content - always a button). We've been conducting UX research on that item for a good 8 months (plus the public survey we posted about it awhile back).

Wait, what? What button are you talking about? No table view anywhere or is this just referring to not reverting the change you've already made to the Related Anime lists?
 
Wait, what? What button are you talking about? No table view anywhere or is this just referring to not reverting the change you've already made to the Related Anime lists?
This is refering to a yet to be added button which is coming with the final redesign changes. There are no plans to revert the redesign changes.
 
ok, and this button, whatever it is, will be replacing all of the tables somehow?
The button will be for list management nothing else as sothis said:
In the "full" redesign, the button will likely be the only list updating option (no more exposed table mode for the list widget content - always a button). We've been conducting UX research on that item for a good 8 months (plus the public survey we posted about it awhile back).
 
@sothis Thanks for your reply, so for what I understand, you are trying to separate the different universes in a franchise in order to make it more manageable and relevant. That indeed makes sense as Gundam 00 is completely different than the original and unicorn universes for example, so it will make it easier to navigate on the universe you are actually watching.

However, regardless of the organization and categorization in the Related Anime area, what is important to me is to be able to see the status, update the status, add the rating, and see the relationships within the related items. If you were going to add that functionality back as in "@AllaliAdel" post that will be good enough for me (although ideally the title should not be truncated but at least it will show in full in the popup)

Something like this would be nice to have:
Ex2w.jpg


and when you hover over it just like in browse anime section:
lfQL.jpg

I see your team is very small and they are all volunteers, is impressive you manage a site this large with just 4-5 people. I'm also a web designer/developer in case you need help, I'm usually quite busy but I do spend a lot of my free time in this site anyway, so I don't mind giving back when possible, I just wouldn't be able to commit to a fixed schedule. I mostly work on WordPress sites and I'm a full-stack developer knowledgable of HTML/CSS/JS/PHP, SEO, MySQL, Apache, WHM/cPanel, User Experience, Interactivity & Accessibility. Let me know if I can be of help.


This is the reason i used the Table, I also like to watch all related entries for an anime. I don't mind how the relations are done I just want to see Dragonball relates to DBZ, DB GT, DB Super and all the movies. They may not be direct relations but the franchise is connected.

Same with things like Fairy Tail but related to Rave through one special. I can understand other may not like this but for someone wanting to watch as much anime as possible it gives me a reason to add it to the Want to Watch list.

I do use the Related Anime Not Marked section, which is good for finding new and old anime added to the site which is related , but when i come to watch a show 6 months after adding an Anime to my list i still need to go back and then find all the related anime to the main show to schedule it to be watched.

No other site had a table or related section like AP and i feel it was a positive not a negative for me.
 
I don't mind how the relations are done I just want to see Dragonball relates to DBZ, DB GT, DB Super and all the movies. They may not be direct relations but the franchise is connected.

This is still the case - we've just begun cleaning it up so that it's easier to parse what belongs to what. the DB entry, for example, has links to its direct relations in the main tab (its movies, sequel, etc) and the first of the other franchises are referenced in the "other franchise" tab.
 
I can’t actually believe how rude people can be across these threads when giving feedback. Feedback is Feedback but there’s definitely an appropriate way to give it, which appears lost on a lot of people. Especially on a site that is free to use all features on....


Anyway I would say that being able to see what you rated the other things listed in the “same franchise/other franchise” options is nice to have, being a mobile only user it definitely is nice to see at a glance and I did find that useful
(but it’s not that much more effort to just type the name of the franchise in the search bar and view them all at once there. Which is what I’ve been doing since the update. I know it doesn’t work in all cases where maybe the titles aren’t triggered by the same key words but I would assume it works for *most* franchises - if that helps anyone reading anyway)
 
This could have been a good solution, but alas it’s not, as name can be quite unrepresentative of a franchise. Say, I want to see everything in the Monogatari Series: typing in “Monogatari” I get 6 pages of search results… not at all what I wanted to see.
I was wrong here, putting in "Monogatari Series" gives nice results. Right now, I don't know of any other examples where search by name would go wrong, so I suppose it's a sufficiently good replacement.
 
This is still the case - we've just begun cleaning it up so that it's easier to parse what belongs to what. the DB entry, for example, has links to its direct relations in the main tab (its movies, sequel, etc) and the first of the other franchises are referenced in the "other franchise" tab.
Oh! I see. The first one I looked at was SAO, and it was somewhat unintuitive without the franchise tabs. It's way better with them.

After clicking around in the Dragonball, SAO, and My Hero titles, I feel like it can be pretty difficult to tell what you're seeing.

Like with Dragonball, DBZ is listed as a related entry, but not a separate franchise. But if I click on DBZ, there are a million related entries to that that weren't apparent from the main Dragonball page, presumably because they are movies and ovas and whatnot that are directly related to DBZ and not to the original show. It makes sense in a way, but there's no indicator to identify that there are cascading relations that are not currently visible. The only real way to know that you've seen every entry, is to click on every single entry in every related list to make sure that there are no entries you haven't come across yet. I don't know if there are future changes coming that will clarify these relationships better somehow. And, no, I'm not one of those people who are claiming they want to watch every entry from every Gundam series or anything, but I can easily imagine a world where the way things are now, there might be a related entry that I would care about that I wouldn't easily be able to tell existed.

I like the way the 'other franchise' thing works. The only change I can think of that might be useful is to maybe have the "current" franchise in that list, but greyed out, making it more clear where it falls in the franchise order, but I'm not 100% sure that even makes sense. I do, however, think the attempt to track directly related entries tightly without a visible indicator that there are "hidden" entries is making it kind of hard to follow what's going on. If that makes sense.

Oh, and for the people fishing for an example of a show that has titles that can't be matched with a simple string search, Lord El-Melloi is related to the Fate series.
 
I think my one complaint is the lack of being able to see what you've already marked in a franchise. Yes, you can use your own lists, but:
A) Not every title starts with the same letter as other entries, and if you're someone like me who has a lot of stuff marked, it can be harder to find. Especially considering some of the spinoffs for things have a completely different title than their main counterpart. I know most titles will have a searchable title that includes the main franchise, but I imagine some of them have been missed. Also, BL manga in the same series can have very different titles, and I wouldn't be surprised if that gets a bit messy (heh) if you can't see what you have and haven't marked.
B) If you're going through and marking things you haven't previously marked, lists are useless. You now have to go to each individual page to do so.

The cut-off titles are kind of a pain, too. Can some "hover to reveal the full title" thing be implemented? Agree with other users that being able to see what type of entry something is at a glance would be useful as well.

I never know if I use the site like other people do because I'm weird about how I do things, lol.

This is a first 5 minute impression so take it for what it's worth. The old list view gave full title names and dates. These great big blocky links make me feel like I should be using my thumb and not a mouse. To make matters worse on long titles like Dungeon no Deal, I would have to click on each link to get any real info. it just shows as partial titles with dates. What if you would like to copy the series names and dates to notepad so you can organize your viewing in date order?
The old list was a breeze. Try to do a timeline on Gundam with the method being introduced and what do you get?
I'm sure there are lots of positives to what has been done here. Granted, sometimes getting used to something new gets rid of the problems. I remember when Nexflix did their first revamp however. They basically destroyed the ability to search when they switched picture links and made searching their inventory for something new with your own curiosity almost impossible. Now suggestions just get poked in your face.
 
When viewing your watching/reading/all/stalled, etc lists there is a small option that says "more filters", when you click it, it then brings up the filters and search menu which you can then use to search your personal list for specific things via Tags, filters, etc. As shown below.

That's not the profile page, it's a subpage for it.
Also, for finding related stuff, it's no more useful than the anime browser.

It's a random assortment of everything you have not marked at all which is related to stuff you have marked watched, watching, etc. So if you mark the stuff in that page as won't watch or want to watch, it is then marked as something and no longer appears in that page again until unmarked. (I think theres also a way to hide things from the page without marking them somewhere in settings too)

So Its only a random useless page if you are not marking related anime/manga either from the page or as you go along. Once everything is marked as sonething the page will be empty until something new appears or you mark another franchise/entry as watched, etc, so that it has unmarked relations to put in that page.
Example: My personal "Related manga you haven't marked" page, it only has two series in it, both starter this year.

I'm supposed to go through HUNDREDS of suggestions and mark them, regardless if i want to mark them or know HOW i would want to mark them, just to be able to notice when new ones comes around?
Seriously?

Please, take a good look at what you're saying. Again, while that part may have its uses sometimes, it is NOT a useful tool for finding related stuff. Personally, i've used the "related xyz" at least a hundred times more often than the random suggestions, probably a thousand times more often as well. One is a tool, the other is a randomised slot machine.

Most franchises are entirely findable in this way minus the odd exceptional cases such as totally renamed spin offs, as long as you search using the appropriate search term.

And obviously, everyone ALWAYS knows what the "appropriate search term" is. Except oops, no they don't.

Also, again, this means that every time i want to check, instead of just going to the page of the series i'm checking, i have to waste the extra time it takes to do a search.

Let's think about it, hmmm, how many times since i registered 2008 have i done a search like what you're suggesting?
I can't remember, because i cannot remember the last time i did a search for that reason. But the total number can probably be counted on my fingers.
I use the top right search box to find whatever series i'm looking for, then on that page, i check the related section. Quick, easy and nearly instant.

Guessing you never looked at the relations for Pokemon or Gundam. It makes the pages a lot longer...

And? Who cares? Removing a useful feature everywhere because less than 1% of the pages gets a bit long, that's horribly failed logic.

Or you could just have made the table into 2 or 3 paralell columns and allowed them to take up more of the space horizontally, if the length of the page was such a dreadful problem.

All i'm seeing so far are failed excuses for a negative change that i can find nothing good to say about.
 
Ability to see some or all of status info. Based on feedback in the thread, it seems like the only crucial information is status and episode count

And rating.
Also, adding that through a single button on the cards is useless due to the problem below.

What else? The more details you can give about what your ideal feature would be and why, with details why, the more we'll have to research.

That's the problem, the table view that was, was pretty much perfect. No fuzz, high density of information and all the interactive options needed.

Looking at the new view again, because of the combination of truncated titles and no popups when hovering the pointer over them, there's absolutely no way to tell them apart aside from opening a new page with each.
For some i can guess from the release date or episode count, but that's not really an acceptable way of searching.
 
That's not the profile page, it's a subpage for it.
Also, for finding related stuff, it's no more useful than the anime browser.



I'm supposed to go through HUNDREDS of suggestions and mark them, regardless if i want to mark them or know HOW i would want to mark them, just to be able to notice when new ones comes around?
Seriously?

Please, take a good look at what you're saying. Again, while that part may have its uses sometimes, it is NOT a useful tool for finding related stuff. Personally, i've used the "related xyz" at least a hundred times more often than the random suggestions, probably a thousand times more often as well. One is a tool, the other is a randomised slot machine.



And obviously, everyone ALWAYS knows what the "appropriate search term" is. Except oops, no they don't.

Also, again, this means that every time i want to check, instead of just going to the page of the series i'm checking, i have to waste the extra time it takes to do a search.

Let's think about it, hmmm, how many times since i registered 2008 have i done a search like what you're suggesting?
I can't remember, because i cannot remember the last time i did a search for that reason. But the total number can probably be counted on my fingers.
I use the top right search box to find whatever series i'm looking for, then on that page, i check the related section. Quick, easy and nearly instant.



And? Who cares? Removing a useful feature everywhere because less than 1% of the pages gets a bit long, that's horribly failed logic.

Or you could just have made the table into 2 or 3 paralell columns and allowed them to take up more of the space horizontally, if the length of the page was such a dreadful problem.

All i'm seeing so far are failed excuses for a negative change that i can find nothing good to say about.

Can you please give us the same baseline respect and courtesy we're giving you? We're unpaid volunteers who are doing our best here. We're open to feedback and are actively working on a patch based on the feedback. No changes that have been made were meant to be negative, or to make your life shitty. The questions in this thread are meant to gather data so that we can build the best solution (regardless of where it lives).

The aggressive/combative tone is unnecessary and is frankly demotivating.
 
Let's continue keeping this thread to the "full franchise" feature, but a note for folks who aren't checking the site announce, that we've made some temporary changes and discuss future plans in this post.
 
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This is getting out of scope for this conversation - tl;dr this is going to be behind a button eventually

As final thoughts on this, I'm glad that this button is planned.
About the Franchise entries... putting each and every title (seasons, extras, movies, OVAs, et all) from a franchise in a separate page (instead of how it used to be) makes sense too. Personally, I definitely would love
1: to have a franchise dedicated page just for all the titles to be arranged in release date order,
2: and also to have a way to mark progress or viewing statuses (wtw/won't watch/dropped/stalled) from that page itself. Like how it used to be for titles under the pages of other ones before the redesign. You could ditch the live rating. Doing that might make people visit the page for individual titles.

Out of these, #2 might be too much of a load on the devs given that they already have to deal with us and managing everything else. So it's understandable if they don't want to do it. Just please consider #1 for all franchises that go over a certain number of titles, say >6

Thanks for working so hard. You guys are awesome. Also, I'm extremely sorry if my points were too repetitive or if I may have been too aggressive in any way.
 
As final thoughts on this, I'm glad that this button is planned.
About the Franchise entries... putting each and every title (seasons, extras, movies, OVAs, et all) from a franchise in a separate page (instead of how it used to be) makes sense too. Personally, I definitely would love
1: to have a franchise dedicated page just for all the titles to be arranged in release date order,
2: and also to have a way to mark progress or viewing statuses (wtw/won't watch/dropped/stalled) from that page itself. Like how it used to be for titles under the pages of other ones before the redesign. You could ditch the live rating. Doing that might make people visit the page for individual titles.

Out of these, #2 might be too much of a load on the devs given that they already have to deal with us and managing everything else. So it's understandable if they don't want to do it. Just please consider #1 for all franchises that go over a certain number of titles, say >6

Thanks for working so hard. You guys are awesome. Also, I'm extremely sorry if my points were too repetitive or if I may have been too aggressive in any way.

Yes the "full franchise" page will have ability to mark status and such from there
 
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