- Joined
- Dec 24, 2018
- Messages
- 21
I think severe changes in manga search is needed. Before you say ‘Why? It’s completely fine’, just hear me out: (btw I just made an account today so this is from an outsider’s perspective and I don’t know about the insider features but regardless…)
Introduction
I’ve been reading manga online for six years now. I’ve used a variety of websites, from the worst to the best, I’ve seen some seriously dodgy design decisions and some pretty good ones and overall I’ve gathered some experience with what I expect to see in a manga website:
Manga search should be a way to easily find new and old manga quickly which is not only your favourite but also new potential manga which you might enjoy, not necessarily the manga that is trending. It should be flexible and easy to use. When I go to the front page, I’m looking for a few things: 1) New manga I want to read, 2) Latest manga I have already been reading, 3) popular manga which is currently hot and 4) popular manga overall.
Let’s tackle point 1: New manga I want to read
Since manga is a visual medium, I want to search visually. You can clearly tell when looking at manga sometimes if it’s yaoi, yuri, hentai, isekai, even Chinese and Korean. I want to look first when it comes to reading a new manga because if the drawing is clearly something I am not interested in then it’s a waste of my time to look at (of course if the manga is good despite drawing [e.g One Punch Man webcomics] then it should be in the popular list anyways).
Of course I would also judge by title. So picture and title is enough. Now new manga I prefer to search up quickly, and to do that the easiest way is scroll format. You only need to click one button, and you can see around 6 manga covers at once. Using a list for new manga is simply put, redundant. I want to look at lots of manga all at once and I haven’t read the manga yet so why do I care about extra information in the ‘latest update’ section? The answer is I don’t, that information has secondary importance, picture and title is first. If I like what I see I’ll click anways and then I can bookmark then I’ll know when the next chapter will be released anyways since it’s in my bookmarks list. The front page updates list is more simplified but doesn’t have everything and newspaper colum type list doesn’t look very good personally for me. I think a simplistic latest updates list with chapter number, volume and title is needed, but that’s all, the rest of the information is unnecessary since that’s on the popular page anyways. In point 4 I’ll discuss exactly what would be better for this change.
Point 2: Latest manga I have already been reading
There is a bookmark system so this doesn’t really matter, but sometimes I would use the scroll system (if I’m not a logged in member) to find the latest updates on other websites, much easier when offline, (I’ll be touching on this topici n point 4). Just a thought to consider.
Point 3: Popular manga
Popular of course should be at the front page. The top chapters section is good, it shows what is currently trending by hours. There is a strong link between popular manga on reddit and popular manga on mangadex, which to be honest for the most part most other websites don’t have the same type of lists. On the plus side it’s more recent and relevant but sometimes it lacks variety since reddit tends to favour isekais and fluff romances the most but I believe with time and a bigger audience the popular list genres will be balanced out.
Point 4: Top manga overall
This is pretty good as well, it’s more balanced now I suppose since time usually filters out trending from the list so classics and really good manga (instead of trending phases) gets to stay on the list. Of course there are plenty of excellent trending manga which represents the site users as a whole. There is a slight issue with that list in the fact that the top manga only really covers things from the start of the website onwards, and not the obviously popular manga or any popular shounen or shoujo before 2015/2016, so perhaps there could be a ‘classics’ or ‘past popular manga’ list implemented in as well.
Website design issues/things I liked:
At the bottom there are two scroll lists which I like to use on other websites: featured titles and new titles. I’m going to mention some suggestions and also some likes and dislikes. Let’s start with likes. I like the featured list more now, seems a bit more balanced than before (which was too much yaoi and yuri). I see there is a lot of isekai and harem type romances, it could be a bit more balanced, and to be honest out of the whole list I would only read two, but it’s fine overall for now.
My biggest issue with this website
I’ve already discussed a little bit of this above but my biggest issue by far is the ‘new titles’ list. Firstly it has TOO MUCH YAOI AND YURI. Now my suggestion is to have a mini filter option to get rid of this massive influx of both genres in the scroll list. But my biggest issue by far is how the list is cyclical, and not chronological and ongoing (and if it’s ongoing it should have a number counter).
If let’s say I want to find new manga past the 20-30ish titles there (on the scroll format), exactly how can I do that?
The popular lists only trending stuff, not new, the latest updates list is as I’ve already detailed, is redundant and inefficient, and filled too much with ecchi, yuri, webtoons, isekais and yaoi, which on the latest list I’m unsure if it can be filtered out (and even if it could I don’t like searching manga like that). So to search through all of that and to keep having to move the cursor, go to the end, scroll up, zoom in to see the cover pictures, scroll down, click the next, and keep going is a total nightmare.
Not to mention all the information on the right hand side for NEW latest manga when I have never read it before isn’t necessary, people are gonna only click on the manga anyways if they like the cover and title, then they will find out how many chapters or views there are and if happy they will bookmark. I also think the views creates a bias instead of people actually reading manga for the quality, they are reading manga which ‘reddit seems to like’, which doesn’t help to put a spotlight on new and potentially good manga, and the views overall don’t seem to be accurate for the moment since the website is a new one.
That is my biggest pet peeve of this website: finding old yet good manga or finding new yet good manga which isn’t trending (using only mangadex) is very hard to do, and very time-consuming.
I also have one more suggestion to add: Put the new titles scroll bar at the top of the page. It makes the website look less like a forum and more like an actual manga website, and people can quickly search through new things to read straightaway. Of course if the creator of the website prefers to stick to the forum looking design then that’s fine too, but since manga is a visual medium I would think it’s better to see visuals of covers first.
In conclusion
I love mangadex and their community input system, I love the flexibility of the manga reader, the changes they (the mangadex team) are willing to put in, the incredibly awesome and talented team of people and the new ideas they keep adding which adds to the overall brilliant and fluid manga reading experience. Their manga reader is literally par to none, no other website has a better reader, that’s a fact. However, to make this a proper manga website which has all the features implemented, to have a balanced manga list of old and new manga, and for other people to find new manga which they may like rather than trending manga, these changes HAVE TO be considered.
Men/women/girls/boys/young/old read manga yet the popular/trending seems to cater for only one specific demographic…I have seen a lot of complaints about lack of variety of reddit uploads and it seems to be linked to the mangadex search system. This website had pretty much refined the manga reader and polished it to a shine, but at the same time the flexibility and ease of the search function of unpopular yet good past/present manga is lacking. Of course I’m well aware it will take time to implement changes so I'm expecting nothing big for now. I am by no means sad about these changes, I think they are a positive step in the right direction and it will take time before the overall favourite lists reflect the quality of the manga.
I hope I made my points clearer than the last attempts I made before, and I greatly wish that these changes are taken into consideration. I want to use all of mangadex’s features to the fullest and to use this website as the only one I will ever need, both search and reader has to be the best it can be. I have no issues with the reader and it is seriously a wonderful experience for me to use. Thank you for reading and of course if there’s anything I missed (or if a feature of such nature already existed which I said might not exist) than please let me know. ?
Introduction
I’ve been reading manga online for six years now. I’ve used a variety of websites, from the worst to the best, I’ve seen some seriously dodgy design decisions and some pretty good ones and overall I’ve gathered some experience with what I expect to see in a manga website:
Manga search should be a way to easily find new and old manga quickly which is not only your favourite but also new potential manga which you might enjoy, not necessarily the manga that is trending. It should be flexible and easy to use. When I go to the front page, I’m looking for a few things: 1) New manga I want to read, 2) Latest manga I have already been reading, 3) popular manga which is currently hot and 4) popular manga overall.
Let’s tackle point 1: New manga I want to read
Since manga is a visual medium, I want to search visually. You can clearly tell when looking at manga sometimes if it’s yaoi, yuri, hentai, isekai, even Chinese and Korean. I want to look first when it comes to reading a new manga because if the drawing is clearly something I am not interested in then it’s a waste of my time to look at (of course if the manga is good despite drawing [e.g One Punch Man webcomics] then it should be in the popular list anyways).
Of course I would also judge by title. So picture and title is enough. Now new manga I prefer to search up quickly, and to do that the easiest way is scroll format. You only need to click one button, and you can see around 6 manga covers at once. Using a list for new manga is simply put, redundant. I want to look at lots of manga all at once and I haven’t read the manga yet so why do I care about extra information in the ‘latest update’ section? The answer is I don’t, that information has secondary importance, picture and title is first. If I like what I see I’ll click anways and then I can bookmark then I’ll know when the next chapter will be released anyways since it’s in my bookmarks list. The front page updates list is more simplified but doesn’t have everything and newspaper colum type list doesn’t look very good personally for me. I think a simplistic latest updates list with chapter number, volume and title is needed, but that’s all, the rest of the information is unnecessary since that’s on the popular page anyways. In point 4 I’ll discuss exactly what would be better for this change.
Point 2: Latest manga I have already been reading
There is a bookmark system so this doesn’t really matter, but sometimes I would use the scroll system (if I’m not a logged in member) to find the latest updates on other websites, much easier when offline, (I’ll be touching on this topici n point 4). Just a thought to consider.
Point 3: Popular manga
Popular of course should be at the front page. The top chapters section is good, it shows what is currently trending by hours. There is a strong link between popular manga on reddit and popular manga on mangadex, which to be honest for the most part most other websites don’t have the same type of lists. On the plus side it’s more recent and relevant but sometimes it lacks variety since reddit tends to favour isekais and fluff romances the most but I believe with time and a bigger audience the popular list genres will be balanced out.
Point 4: Top manga overall
This is pretty good as well, it’s more balanced now I suppose since time usually filters out trending from the list so classics and really good manga (instead of trending phases) gets to stay on the list. Of course there are plenty of excellent trending manga which represents the site users as a whole. There is a slight issue with that list in the fact that the top manga only really covers things from the start of the website onwards, and not the obviously popular manga or any popular shounen or shoujo before 2015/2016, so perhaps there could be a ‘classics’ or ‘past popular manga’ list implemented in as well.
Website design issues/things I liked:
At the bottom there are two scroll lists which I like to use on other websites: featured titles and new titles. I’m going to mention some suggestions and also some likes and dislikes. Let’s start with likes. I like the featured list more now, seems a bit more balanced than before (which was too much yaoi and yuri). I see there is a lot of isekai and harem type romances, it could be a bit more balanced, and to be honest out of the whole list I would only read two, but it’s fine overall for now.
My biggest issue with this website
I’ve already discussed a little bit of this above but my biggest issue by far is the ‘new titles’ list. Firstly it has TOO MUCH YAOI AND YURI. Now my suggestion is to have a mini filter option to get rid of this massive influx of both genres in the scroll list. But my biggest issue by far is how the list is cyclical, and not chronological and ongoing (and if it’s ongoing it should have a number counter).
If let’s say I want to find new manga past the 20-30ish titles there (on the scroll format), exactly how can I do that?
The popular lists only trending stuff, not new, the latest updates list is as I’ve already detailed, is redundant and inefficient, and filled too much with ecchi, yuri, webtoons, isekais and yaoi, which on the latest list I’m unsure if it can be filtered out (and even if it could I don’t like searching manga like that). So to search through all of that and to keep having to move the cursor, go to the end, scroll up, zoom in to see the cover pictures, scroll down, click the next, and keep going is a total nightmare.
Not to mention all the information on the right hand side for NEW latest manga when I have never read it before isn’t necessary, people are gonna only click on the manga anyways if they like the cover and title, then they will find out how many chapters or views there are and if happy they will bookmark. I also think the views creates a bias instead of people actually reading manga for the quality, they are reading manga which ‘reddit seems to like’, which doesn’t help to put a spotlight on new and potentially good manga, and the views overall don’t seem to be accurate for the moment since the website is a new one.
That is my biggest pet peeve of this website: finding old yet good manga or finding new yet good manga which isn’t trending (using only mangadex) is very hard to do, and very time-consuming.
I also have one more suggestion to add: Put the new titles scroll bar at the top of the page. It makes the website look less like a forum and more like an actual manga website, and people can quickly search through new things to read straightaway. Of course if the creator of the website prefers to stick to the forum looking design then that’s fine too, but since manga is a visual medium I would think it’s better to see visuals of covers first.
In conclusion
I love mangadex and their community input system, I love the flexibility of the manga reader, the changes they (the mangadex team) are willing to put in, the incredibly awesome and talented team of people and the new ideas they keep adding which adds to the overall brilliant and fluid manga reading experience. Their manga reader is literally par to none, no other website has a better reader, that’s a fact. However, to make this a proper manga website which has all the features implemented, to have a balanced manga list of old and new manga, and for other people to find new manga which they may like rather than trending manga, these changes HAVE TO be considered.
Men/women/girls/boys/young/old read manga yet the popular/trending seems to cater for only one specific demographic…I have seen a lot of complaints about lack of variety of reddit uploads and it seems to be linked to the mangadex search system. This website had pretty much refined the manga reader and polished it to a shine, but at the same time the flexibility and ease of the search function of unpopular yet good past/present manga is lacking. Of course I’m well aware it will take time to implement changes so I'm expecting nothing big for now. I am by no means sad about these changes, I think they are a positive step in the right direction and it will take time before the overall favourite lists reflect the quality of the manga.
I hope I made my points clearer than the last attempts I made before, and I greatly wish that these changes are taken into consideration. I want to use all of mangadex’s features to the fullest and to use this website as the only one I will ever need, both search and reader has to be the best it can be. I have no issues with the reader and it is seriously a wonderful experience for me to use. Thank you for reading and of course if there’s anything I missed (or if a feature of such nature already existed which I said might not exist) than please let me know. ?
