Proposal: Navbar Update

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Mystes
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Proposal: Navbar Update

Post by Mystes »

REDUCING THE SIZE OF THE WIKI SIDEBAR PROPOSAL

Please access a compiled list of all existing sidebar related proposals on:

This Google Docs Page.

Please place your suggestions there, so we can keep better track of everything. Do not repeat points, and keep it concise.

Please do not discuss the suggestions on the Google Doc. The Google Doc is for short points only. Add your feedback and comments to this thread.

NOTE: Cloud has hijacked Kira's post. Sorry! @____@ Read Kira's original post below this line:
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TL;DR at the bottom for the ones that are too lazy to read this.

Since the beginning of the year, around 35-37 novels have been added to the sidebar. That's a lot. Obviously, it is always better for BT and for the community to have more novels to read, but the sidebar might grow more and more unorganized. A few changes would be for the best, I think.

Here are my suggestions:

1. Add a separate category or page for stalled projects.

Considering that many stop being updated after the one and only translator stops working on it, I believe we could bring some changes. Some projects have been stalled for a very long time. 7 Nights, for instance, has been stalled since 2009. I think it is pretty safe to say that the project is dead. Hence, we can either create a new category in the sidebar called "Stalled", between the "Light Novels" category and the "Visual Novels" one, or create a separate page called "Inactive Projects" between "Pending Projects" and "Teaser Projects" that lists them all. This should differentiate active and inactive projects while reducing the size of the list of novels that are getting regular updates.

If a project should brought back from its tomb, it should follow the same procedure as the promotion of a teaser into an official project. It would require the equivalent of 2 chapters to become active once more.

2. Add a separate category for completed projects.

BT never had to deal with this in the past, since, unfortunately, not a lot of projects get finished (I can only think of Toradora and F/Z). However, there has been many single-volume LNs like Iris on Rainy Days or Gekkou, and even more or less big series, such as Oreimo and probably Baka-Test, that will get translated entirely. By the end of next year, I think we could get about 8-10 series under that category, so I don't see why we can't create this category. Again, it would reduce the current big "Light Novels" list and make it more organized than it is.

3. Add a separate category or page for hosted projects.

There weren't a lot of LN translation websites back when BT was created. But since then, there have been some groups such as CE and ND that bring a fair bunch of novels to the LN community. So if they want, they could list their projects in a page called "Hosted projects", which would be place right between the "Teaser Projects" and "Categories" in the sidebar. It would kinda be a list of novels like this:

- Novel Title+Cover illustration
- Translation group+Link to the project page
- Summary

For the projects that have a version hosted directly on BT, they don't have to be listed since they are pretty much the same as a solo translator with automatic text lock.
For projects that are fully hosted on another website, this becomes handy since there's no need to create a project page on BT to advertise their series.
For the hybrid projects that are both being worked on by both BT members and other groups' people, it will be treated the same way as right now.

4. Raise the standards for a project to become an official one

We should raise the standards for a teaser. Not every translator will be dedicated and translate 3-4 volumes within a whole year, and that's pretty obvious. Some will come, translate a bit, leave after a few chapters. That's how in the current LN list, there are so many series with about half of a volume done and hanging there. Instead of 1 prologue+1 chapter, I suggest we raise the minimum to 3 chapters or half of a volume, whichever is shorter. Of course, we're talking about half of a normal volume, not some 1000-page Horizon one. While I do know that for new project starters, this might not sound very fun, it is not that unreasonable.

I do think there are also bad sides to my proposals, though it wouldn't hurt to consider them IMO.

TL;DR:

Official project standards should raised and new changes could be made to the current sidebar format:
Preview of the new sidebar suggested:
Project Presentation
Recent changes
Alt. Languages
Pending Projects
Stalled Projects
Teaser Projects
Hosted Projects
Categories
Network
Active LNs
Completed LNs
Visual Novels
...........
P-S: Guys, please don't quote the whole thing if you want to reply.
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EusthEnoptEron
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Re: Sidebar changes suggestion

Post by EusthEnoptEron »

Just a thought on these new categories: Pretend for a moment that you were a new visitor who's on Baka-Tsuki for the first time in his life, armed with a list of super-cool anime. Also reduce your IQ by at least 50% for this assumption. Now you want to look up the novels for these super-cool anime. As a complete n00b, however, you have no idea if the project's completed, abandoned, stalled or if it's a teaser even.

In other words, those categories are great if you want to discover new novels to read, but bad if you want to quickly find one. I'm really just bringing this point up because I had trouble finding my Hakomari thread before, because I had forgotten if it was considered caught-up or running at that particular moment. :D

That being said, I'm all for reducing the size of the sidebar. Maybe there's a nice little plugin for MediaWiki floating around in the Interwebs?
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Re: Sidebar changes suggestion

Post by cautr »

I don't like to raise the qualifications. What LNs do have such a high frequency? But I'm for the seperate display of stalled projects that have LESS than one volume translated. There isn't much content available then, anyway.
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Re: Sidebar changes suggestion

Post by Mystes »

@Eusth

You bring up a good point. For clarity, it could be separated like this
>Active LNs
>Inactive LNs
>Completed LNs
>LNs on other websites

These titles all three have "LNs" in the title instead of "projects". It could be pretty clear. Maybe we can een write a little description of the categories in the main page to fill it up a bit. :lol:

For the organization, I think that if a novel is stalled, hosted or completed, there would be no need to need to check them regularly. So being at the bottom is OK for both a casual reader who checks a few novels once a week or a translator who's working on his/her project.

On the topic of which goes where, I don't think we will be throwing projects Inactive for one week directly the the "Inactive" category. The requirement is 6 months, iirc. Caught up projects and others should normally stay in the "active" category in order to avoid that.

But of course, if it really doesn't click well, we could make the sidebar changes simplier by separating it into "A-M" and "N-Z".

@cautr

The intention behind it is so a project doesn't get promoted with a translator disappearing right after, or because an a anime ended and no one cares about it anymore. Translators aren't bound by a contract to continue working on a series till the end, so there are projects barely translated with the official status.
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Re: Sidebar changes suggestion

Post by Darklor »

Uhm, I see some problems with that:

1. we have already the "stalled" category
2. Some time ago we had the stalled category on display in sidebar - I want to believe that it wasnt removed without reason
3. Your proposal would mean that those few who can change the sidebar and who are already seldom online would have a higher workload - I am not sure that they would like that or even do that...

But I think too, that a better clarity would be nice maybe they should be separated alphabetical?

Maybe we should add a "Full Project" or maybe alphabetical categories for better sortability?

btw. what did happen with the idea of the pictured projects page /overview?
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Re: Sidebar changes suggestion

Post by cautr »

Darklor wrote:btw. what did happen with the idea of the pictured projects page /overview?
If the frontpage would get some kind of facelift, cramping the infos together tightly followed by a list of all the novels/full projects (could be pictured, but that's a lot of work then, especially when you consider the frequency of new novels being added) available, it would definitely look sweet and modern. But I don't think that the old and wise here would like it. :mrgreen:

It'd also be really heavy on the bandwidth, for the server AND the user. If we just make an enlistment similar to the teaser projects/pending projects page, it'd be less heavy and probably equally functional as adding them on the sidebar. The projects could then even be removed from the sidebar and just be replaced by a link "Full Projects", "Novel List", "Front Page" w/e; with a link to said front page on every project page, like it's done on the chapters with "Return to Main Page".

Well, I do like the idea, especially considering how cramped the sidebar is by now. But my ideas aren't really loved around here. :roll: But I'll state 'em anyway. :twisted:

Also: Do we have some kind of category list with the "official" categories, that can be added to a project? I didn't really inform myself about that, so pretty much like the average user, and my impression on the category page at the sidebar is, that it's pretty cramped and loaded with unnecessary ones. And the more unnecessary categories you got, the less functional categories are, IMO.
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Re: Sidebar changes suggestion

Post by Darklor »

cautr wrote:
It'd also be really heavy on the bandwidth, for the server AND the user. If we just make an enlistment similar to the teaser projects/pending projects page,

Also: Do we have some kind of category list with the "official" categories, that can be added to a project? I didn't really inform myself about that, so pretty much like the average user, and my impression on the category page at the sidebar is, that it's pretty cramped and loaded with unnecessary ones. And the more unnecessary categories you got, the less functional categories are, IMO.
For that you would just have to add for example a full project category for those projects. Currenty they usually dont have any beside for most their publishing label. (Btw. Couldnt those seldom British English projects get a British English category, so that no one tries to change those into American English anymore?)

Did you ever visit the categories link in the wiki? There are at least all categories listed, which are in use.
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Re: Sidebar changes suggestion

Post by cloudii »

I also really favor a pretty page that lists all the projects with pictures... but I think many people think it's redundant with the sidebar. xD Though, with the size it the sidebar is right now, it really wouldn't hurt to have a page that lists all the projects now... we currently have 117 projects on the Active sidebar (and rapidly growing)... That's getting difficult to scroll through.

Personally, I really think we should have a page on the wiki that is "Updates on Translation". It really shouldn't be hosted on the Forums...

I think the reason why the stalled category was removed was because very few people have privileges to edit the sidebar. It was thus a really big hassle to move things in and out of stalled --- I mean, one day, we might get an obscure chapter updated in a stalled project, and then we'd need to ask Oni to update the sidebar again. |D
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Re: Sidebar changes suggestion

Post by denormative »

cloud wrote:I think the reason why the stalled category was removed was because very few people have privileges to edit the sidebar. It was thus a really big hassle to move things in and out of stalled --- I mean, one day, we might get an obscure chapter updated in a stalled project, and then we'd need to ask Oni to update the sidebar again. |D
The sidebar could do a page include (like how the 'full text' pages are built) that pulls in the contents of another page locked down to either registered users or another privileged group (if that's possible), for just the 'titles list' section. That way it should be possible to modify it on a regular basis without interrupting admins.

The sidebar itself is cached for non-authed people so it should be pretty difficult for some random person to make a change and for it not to be noticed in time to be reverted before it's recached, so it should be relatively resistant to vandalism.
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Re: Sidebar changes suggestion

Post by Mystes »

Darklor wrote: 1. we have already the "stalled" category
2. Some time ago we had the stalled category on display in sidebar - I want to believe that it wasnt removed without reason
3. Your proposal would mean that those few who can change the sidebar and who are already seldom online would have a higher workload - I am not sure that they would like that or even do that...

But I think too, that a better clarity would be nice maybe they should be separated alphabetical?

Maybe we should add a "Full Project" or maybe alphabetical categories for better sortability?

btw. what did happen with the idea of the pictured projects page /overview?
Dunno why I couldn't get new posts notif for that thread. Anyway.

1. Yes, but right now, it makes no difference on the sidebar whether a project is stalled or not. Stalled projects take a lot of place.
2. Didn't know that. When did it happen?
3. I don't really think it's a lot of work to do, since there are measures to be taken in order to avoid a project switching between stalled and active. Not a lot go from stalled to active anyway these days, as new people tend to prefer picking up popular or new series instead of choosing an old one.
=======

I mean, the sidebar pretty cool when we have 10-20 links, and 30-40 links is OK. But when it has way more than that, I find it a bit more useless.
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Re: Sidebar changes suggestion

Post by krytyk »

I agree with Kira's propo, but there're few things i'd see differently.

First, i still don't agree with existence of pending projects, there's no need for 3 groups of projects. I'd drop the pending projects from BT whatsoever. But that's a minor issue. Either a teaser if it hasn't got at least a volume and a dedicated translator, or a full project if it does have a full volume done and a dedicated translator willing to continue. That's it.

Second, stalled projects are often just "inactive" projects rather than stalled as their name suggests. So the naming doesn't fit there, and yes, I know that it's currently referred to as stalled. But mostly stalled suggests that there's someone who intends do it later, while in most cases there's no translators willing to do it, ever. So i suggest a naming change to inactive.

Third, not sure if it's possible, but having a customizable sidebar would be a nice thing. It's mainly to allow people to browse between the series they're interested in more comfortably, as the amount of series overall just keeps increasing. There's a ton of teasers and pending projects, not to mention the proposed projects that might possibly be picked up in future.
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Re: Sidebar changes suggestion

Post by KuroiHikari »

Yes, change "stalled" to "Dead/Inactive" or something

Let's do away with the concept of full project. Too much misunderstanding.

Projects with at least 1 completed volume would be allowed on the sidebar instead.

All other projects would be either classified under teaser or a new page, other projects (to be managed by supervisors)
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Re: Sidebar changes suggestion

Post by Darklor »

Uhm, the category is already "inactive projects" - the tag name is "stalled"

@ Kira

It was like that at the time I started here and some time after that.

@krytek

Pending cant be removed, because that is needed. Its the keystone between a newly started project and its approval by the higher-ups.

Also there is a difference between a teaser and the fully approved projects. Just because some teasers do the transition to the fully approved projects doesnt mean the every teaser is meant as a stepstone to a full approved project. - Btw I call the fully approved projects full projects because they met all of the necessary requirements for the approval to be represented in the sidebar. (Its just the short form for this sentence) And translation requirement is only one complete translated chapter. And its unimportant which chapter as long as it is long enough. Would it be required that it is one volume I believe we wouldnt have that much translations nor translators as we have now.
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Re: Sidebar changes suggestion

Post by KuroiHikari »

Approval to full project = everyone's expecting an update every week or something.

My idea is to do away with such terminology of misunderstandings.

We can have instead a project page with all projects and only few of the better ones get represented in the sidebar.

A higher bar of requirement could also limit all those 1 chaptered dead projects.
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Re: Sidebar changes suggestion

Post by Mystes »

Darklor wrote:Uhm, the category is already "inactive projects" - the tag name is "stalled"
Sorry if I didn't phrase it properly, I meant it as a category directly in the sidebar, as I know there's a template for it.
Darklor wrote: It was like that at the time I started here and some time after that.
Back in the days there were probably only about 20 projects in the sidebar. Also, I just noticed that Suzumiya_Haruki_no_Seitenkan was a project that was removed from the sidebar because it was stalled. :lol:

=====

Asking a minimum of 1 volume should be OK, though I'm thinking 3 chaps/half a volume is already enough to eliminate projects done on a whim without any plan to be continued.
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