If you know the Japanese names of the series,
go to amazon.co.jp and search, then use their listmania
It helps a lot in looking for similar series and expanding the horizon for reading. It's good for shopping (and window shopping)

Similarly, you can add a tagging system. That idea probably comes from listmania and is widely used for blogs now. For each series, users can add tags for it's category, art style, featured content and even the related authors (some mangakas used to be assistant of older mangakas, the master system in Japan).

As for the rating, if there are enough people rating the series, statistics can be used to rule out those few extreme ratings to improve the representativeness of the data. Amazon's rating is not very reliable, often biased.

Last edited by megane007 at 7:22 am, Mar 16 2007

if ive read a manga i like, ill look at the authors other works to see if anythings good

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Name: Bikuki
Date Of Birth: xx/xx/19xx
Location: XX
From: The Place That Rhymes With China.

i am totally for a recommendation system. even if it would be flunky and not viable at first.
just a simple: the readers who rated this high, rated this high too. would be perfect i say.

hmm a category of genre?

Example:
Mystery = (best mystery of the week) Detective Conan

There should be a cover and a link to the database with the info of the manga though xDD Because we all judge the manga by its cover.

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R-18 below

Detective Horror Series

Tracker BakaBT

to really find good stuff i look at my favourite scan groups. or any group who done any good serie and check what else they did. same goes for authors.
second i check out the rating-comments, if there are any. and check peoples lists, if they have any public. thats if-if.

for now. i say the thing we need is a list of users with public lists.
and maybe also to have that list then sorted by users favourite genres.
so one could look for all users with public lists that have yaoi as there favourite.
is can be based on there completed list. or on a profile-option.

I think having random recommended titles are better, since chances are, the really good/popular ones are already being read. It could be like maybe a summary of a certain manga with each different page you click, and the manga would be something totally random, a taste of all sorts of genres. That way, if anyone's interested, we could just check out more details while following a link. Don't know if that's a good idea or not, but I like it

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As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods,
They kill us for their sport
- King Lear, Shakespeare

i dont see the point of random. you can do that yourself. just manga search for any letter, for example: d. then click more series and click any serie. and keep your eyes closed the whole time.. ;)
or use the genre search and just check one pink box. then you get the full list. choose a page number. and again, click with the eyes closed.
you dont need a special feature for that.

Ok well there's something at least towards that goal.. I added a "likes" thing to the member info page for people with public lists. It will show their 3 top favorite genres... I don't even know if it will be useful or not

I also do not know how usefull it is, but i think it is way cool!
I'd like to see more statistic extracted from the lists (for example favourite mangakas). I also want to be able to look at statistics about my own lists regardless of whether they are public or not.

By the way, i almost exclusively find new manga using the advanced genre search now adays..
First, i set it to only search for completely scanlated manga. Then i check a genre or genre combination i am interrested in reading. (Sometimes i just fool around looking for weird combinations, it can be supprisingly fun ^^) After that i deside by the descriptions which series i want to read...
I also have the habit of puting everything interresting i see on my wishlist, so when doing genre searches those !-marks helps me to destinguish manga i already decided i want to read.
The wishlist by it self is not very useful though since it is so huge (124 titles and it is fast growing lol). What kind of manga i want to read is highly dependant on the mood i am in. Even if all manga in the wishlist are manga i do want to read sooner or later, there is only a few manga i want to read right now. Also the wishlist contains a lot of series that is not finished and therefore dont want to read right now.
Basically, i'd like to be able to search my wishlist using the same kind of criteria there is on the advanced genre search (plus some more criteria i'd like to see in both places, but ill save that for later)
(also, something like the simple genre search (but without all the descriptive text) would probably make a lot of sence to the wishlist (more so than the global one imo ))
(hehe, sorry for the long post)

Last edited by lambchopsil at 4:32 pm, May 21 2007

Yeah I also do the genre search a lot.

But the manga I put on my wish list are there for a different reason.
You place them there because you want to read them but you can't yet for some reason. I place them there because they aren't (being) scanlated (yet). (Don't know enough japanese for RAWs).
Thus all the manga on my wish list (wich is just 2 or 3 at the moment) are series I would like to see scanlated.

Another thing I do to find manga I might wanna read, is some random clicking on the links on "The Evil Empire" ongoing/done sections. I just open up some 10 till 20 new windows, close that are not interesting, leave open those that are.

Hmm lets see what else... if you notice that you are reading/have read 2 or more series that are done by the same scanlator you might wanna check out what other projects they are doing. The same think goes for the Author, mangaka offcourse.

If I have a name in mind and I want some more info I either look it up here or google for it. Mangawiki and amazon can be pretty usefull to.
When google-ing you have to 'play' with the keywords though. Entering "Shin Kotaro Makaritoru" will most likely give you the proper result(s), but entering "touch" will probably not give you the manga of adachi.

ketti, don't double post. I already fixed your post (and don't just post saying "sorry" or "thank you" or whatever...)

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A just ruler amongst tyrants

@ketti its not the wishlist that you have to put public. its the reading and the complete lists.
so other people can see what you like and how you rate stuff. ( i really hope you rate stuff.)
then other people can maybe decide they have the same taste like you and check out other stuff you really enjoyed.
this is what we trying to accomplish and talk about in this thread. to find good manga. but since everybody has a different taste we try to get a sistem going.

@manick. great stuff. that likes-these-genres thingy. (i never knew i read so many drama.. ). seems like you finished your exams. went well ?

Last edited by lakesurface at 4:40 am, May 22 2007

@lakesurface well, it also happens to be the complete list and not the wishlist that i've put public. I know i havn't rated that much yet, but i'm trying
I agree about the taste thingy - a system of global ratings spanning all users is pretty useless to me, while a system of ratings that only takes into account users with similar taste would be usefull. The problem is finding those users with similar taste
But i also think what i was talking about regarding the wishlist would be very usefull.

i was not really awake last time i posted, so bare with me.
i think i know now what you mean. and i think i mentioned something similar somewhere in a suggestion. that it would be nice to have the availability not only in reading but also in wishlist.

and
it would be kind of fancy to have a compare feature; a function that would compare lists (and ratings) and would show the user with lists closest to you. and then would compare and show the differences. block out all series that are the same.-> i know, this sounds like a hell of a job
so nevermind and please continue on this heavenly scripting path (*applauding for manick*)

edit;just adding it here. the unfinished list is now counting too in the likes-these-genres thingy.
thats a little wrong. aint it.

Last edited by lakesurface at 7:42 am, May 22 2007

Yea i was thinking about that lake... but then I thought... well, you technically must have been interested in the genres to start reading it anyway... so it might have sucked, but you DID start reading it at least, so it should technically count? (the unfinished list)