[Reader] UI for Scanlator Notes

[StrangeStripes]

Often scanlators will need to include supplementary information in the form of notes between panels, in the margin or on an extra page at end. It would be great if MangaDex itself offered support for displaying this in it's UI. So the uploader could add supplementary text to each page and perhaps one for the chapter as a whole, which would then be displayed to the reader in the sidebar, or a togglable popup box.

Example use cases:

• Explaining a Japanese cultural references
• Breaking down how a Japanese pun works in romaji
• Mentioning important aspects that can not easily be conveyed in English. Such as a character switch from formal to informal speech, indicating their changing relationship with another character.
• Providing a relevant URL such as a Youtube video for song being mentioned
• Translator/editor sharing their personally opinion (I'm aware not everyone would appreciate this, but at least it won't be on the page and can be hidden if reader prefers)

Benefits:

• Makes links easier to share, as manually typing them is error prone and they can easily be updated if they 404.
• The space between panels and in margins is typically very limited and so length explanations end up having to be put on an extra final page, meaning the reader can't quickly check them while reading through chapter. This would fix that problem.
• Easier to read since user can control typeface and font size.
• Some site rule violations can be auto-moderated, such as Patreon links and blatant hate speech.
• Reader can hide it if they want.
• Gives MangaDex another advantage over aggregator websites, encouraging readers to use MD instead.

This could be expanded to include page transcripts, thus enabling people desperate to read something not currently available in their language, the option to take a transcript and run it through a machine translator. Also it could be further expanded to a text box overlay system like booru sites (allowing the uploader to have text displayed over the page in positions they specify). Which would enable easier collaboration, with someone uploading cleaned pages and a translator providing the text. Makes it easier to fix any mistakes in text and make alternate language versions easier to produces (less redundant work).

 

[Remocracy]

Some site rule violations can be auto-moderated, such as Patreon links

Are patreon links banned on MangaDex? I thought it was just aggregator links.

 

[StrangeStripes]

Are patreon links banned on MangaDex? I thought it was just aggregator links.

Not strictly Patreon, but just general profiteering (Rule 2.5). Often groups breaking that rule will be using Patreon, so it is at least a red flag. This would also just detect links to the banned groups site, assuming no link shorteners are being used.

 

[CiceroCiceronis]

Disagree. Having uploaded various old scanlations to MD I've seen how easy it is for things to get lost when someone's personal blog/MySpace/tumblr/whatever goes down, and how without getting lucky and finding the content rehosted on an archive site (I've even taken pages from MangaKakarot before because it was the only place that had it) it's gone forever. Scanlations are inherently somewhat fragile, but at least they get disseminated to aggregators, zipped and uploaded to archive sites, and so on, and readers can download them easily for their own archival. In contrast, notes stored on one single site in a nonstandard format that won't be archived or disseminated elsewhere along with the pages is a pretty bad idea from a long-term point of view.

 

[T10_]

scanlator notes

chapter descriptions

 

[night_]

Disagree. Having uploaded various old scanlations to MD I've seen how easy it is for things to get lost when someone's personal blog/MySpace/tumblr/whatever goes down, and how without getting lucky and finding the content rehosted on an archive site (I've even taken pages from MangaKakarot before because it was the only place that had it) it's gone forever. Scanlations are inherently somewhat fragile, but at least they get disseminated to aggregators, zipped and uploaded to archive sites, and so on, and readers can download them easily for their own archival. In contrast, notes stored on one single site in a nonstandard format that won't be archived or disseminated elsewhere along with the pages is a pretty bad idea from a long-term point of view.

This is more of a distribution problem than a bad practice though. It can be potentially alleviated with an export function of sorts or even a separate method in the API that would allow pulling the same notes either as a JSON or even raw text.

Technically it more depends on the data format that will store the notes in OPs suggested feature, but if an export is allowed then you could later just transpose the notes over the images and rehost a copy on IPFS, Nyaa or somewhere else for future proofing.

As Tristan9 implied elsewhere, the real problem here revolves more around making the staff's data-maintenance PTSD worse the added complexity behind implementing OPs feature.

 

[slch]

• For group links mdex got group page
• For footnotes... use credit pages, you can paste as much info there as you want - i am enjoying reading these walls of text.
• For link updates (anything unrelated to the group), there are comments. Which will get integrated into the main site more in the future. There might be possible pinned messages by group and such.
• For using cleaned raws as ease to translate into another language... is a far shot. Groups would need to typeset on site or site would need to handle psd files. Could share them in comments I guess. Also mixing there a "reader" and a "scanlator tool".

Only benefit i see is (longer) links easier navigating. But also - use comments.

I'd imagine it get abused most of the time in form of obnoxious link spam and ascii art
Feature more suited for group/person own site/blog.

 

[CiceroCiceronis]

This is more of a distribution problem than a bad practice though. It can be potentially alleviated with an export function of sorts or even a separate method in the API that would allow pulling the same notes either as a JSON or even raw text.

Technically it more depends on the data format that will store the notes in OPs suggested feature, but if an export is allowed then you could later just transpose the notes over the images and rehost a copy on IPFS, Nyaa or somewhere else for future proofing.

As Tristan9 implied elsewhere, the real problem here revolves more around making the staff's data-maintenance PTSD worse the added complexity behind implementing OPs feature.

I mean, sure, in theory. But data dumps by API are also nonstandard, and (relative to plain old notes baked into pages) fragile. These notes are not going to make their way to MangaGo for readers there, and they're not going to make their way to Madokami or AnimeBytes to be preserved as archival copies. I wish that this were not the case, but we're operating in the real world here, where the universal interchange format is (and will remain for the foreseeable future) .png.