Although there is a completely scanlated option in advanced search, I noticed (the hard way), that some of the included series weren't actually completed (dropped, hiatus, cancellation, sometimes even ongoing if scans have caught up). This search also includes oneshots, which actually has its own separate search option and doesn't really need to be included with a complete series option.

Call this a poll to figure out if this is something people actually want and bring it to the devs notice, before i start flooding their inboxes with messages 😛

Not sure there is a problem with the inclusion criteria, to be honest. I use the "Show me only completed series" option frequently on a combination of searches. Reasoning:

- A one shot is a completed series on it's own. It should be included with the completed series and as someone who is looking for completed series, I would be annoyed if I had to run two separate searches just to see one shots.

- One shot has it's own search term because sometimes people are looking to just read a one shot or a self-contained story, rather than a series that they need to follow updates for. It's a distinct category of story.

- Dropped, hiatus, and cancelled series are complete and should be included. There are no more releases and there aren't anymore to be expected in the near future (a hiatus is the exception, I guess, but some are on indefinite hiatus) - it sometimes does tell you on the page if it's cancelled, dropped, or on hiatus, too. However, I don't think this is logged consistently or updated as regularly - just from an observer's perspective.

On this note, it would be nice to exclude this in case people want stories with a beginning, middle, and an end, but I don't think there is anything wrong with the inclusion of these in the "only show me complete series" search setting. Exclusion criteria could be added with branching logic, I guess. For instance, when you select "show me completed series," two more multi-pick options appear: "do not show me series that are cancelled, dropped, or on hiatus" (this assumes this information is logged and logged consistently) and "do not show me one shots."

However, 100% agree that this: "sometimes even ongoing if scans have caught up" is somewhat problematic if active series are being shown in the Completed list and that should be investigated. However, I just checked and that option in Search is for the series itself being complete. You need to use the "only show me completely scanlated (including one shots) series" if you're interested in scan status and not if it's just a complete series in its native language.

Last edited by flowinmyboat at 12:31 pm, Sep 14 2023

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But you can see my point as to how there should be a separation of absolutely completed and scanlated series from the scanlated but not completed and the discontinued, cancelled, hiatus, TBA categories?

I provided them a suggestion of separation of each of these attributes "completed", "completely scanlated", "oneshot", "scan releases available" from the current mosh mash of options present by combining these 4 in different permutations. They said it has been implemented in the API, but getting it on the website is not a priority

Here's the link to that:
https://www.mangaupdates.com/topic/kv3pp3c/advanced-series-search-needs-to-separate-the-attributes-completely-scanlated-completed-oneshots-at-least-one-release

Those terms by definition mean the story is incomplete. Whether the serialization is considered complete by the publisher is irrelevant. Nobody cares about that when looking for stories to read unless they're looking for the serialization itself. Which, if they are, they can read the page for more info because clearly they already know the serialization exists. So, they don't need that information to filter their searches.

As it stands, this is a useless filter criterion. Unless there's some sort of use case I'm not seeing. Are there people who want to read only stories that will never have more chapters regardless of the story's actual completeness? I think that's a weird expectation. Maybe masochists would like that, but I don't see why MU should cater to them.

I agree with the sentiment about Oneshots, though. They're intended to only be one-offs regardless of what sort of series may or may not later spawn from their release. As you mention, there's also a Oneshot filter, so that would be extra weird to exclude from completed works.

The "only show me completely scanlated (including one shots) series" filter is working as one would expect, I think, and is irrelevant to this discussion.

You can filter a lot of them out if you exclude the following categories.

Incomplete Due to Author/Artist Death
Rushed Ending / Axed
Incomplete Due to Cancelled/Discontinued

Last edited by lollylopmr at 6:09 pm, Sep 15 2023

Sure, doesn't change the fact the option itself is pretty useless.

This is a matter of the definition of 'Complete' on MU then. My impression is that the definition is whether the serialization is considered complete by the publisher, not whether the story line is resolved (which is how I think you're defining a complete series, which is also valid). However, even by a variation of what I think your definition is, some of these series are 'complete.' They have endings/wrap up despite being dropped, on hiatus, or cancelled - they were just rushed. Some series are episodic so while it was dropped or cancelled, there is no story line to resolve. Some series have unrelated arcs and were dropped between arcs, so it's self-contained. A rushed ending is still an ending, however bad it may be, and the series is over.

For me, the cleanest definition of "Complete" is by serialization. I am not sure why it's masochistic to want these categorized as "Complete" - I don't want them to constantly pop up when I am looking for active series because they will never be updated and they clutter my search. What's there is there and if it's properly labeled, you can make an informed choice whether or not to engage with it. Or better yet, you should be able to filter them out -- whether they're marked incomplete or complete. In your scenario, a person looking for complete series doesn't wanna see something without a resolution and that's masochistic. But on the flip side, someone looking for a new series doesn't wanna start one that won't update either. That's what I think OP meant by needing the filter; it eliminates the need to open the page and find out, like you're suggesting, if they know up front they don't wanna see them at all. It's not an inclusion criteria ( "only show me.." ), which is what I think you're thinking? It should be an exclusion criteria ( "do not show me..." ).

The filter exists on the API apparently, according to OP, so IDK - they saw a purpose. Take it up with the developers of MU. I am just engaging with OP - I see their point that some people don't want to see these, but I'm not entirely with you that keeping them indefinitely incomplete is the better option for search and categorization. My strongest objection was to the categorization of one-shots in the OP. I don't really run into this problem with the genre I mainly read in, so either way, it's not a massive inconvenience to me.

If you feel strongly about it, you can post for clarification and/or suggest it. I think your definition might already be the case? IDK. Not sure how to contact the mods, but they are active in this forum.

Last edited by flowinmyboat at 10:27 am, Sep 16 2023

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If by definition, they are incomplete, then they should not show up in "completely scanlated series" either right? Or should that be an intersection of "completely scanlated series" and "completed series"?
Whichever implementation is taken, that is the feature I actually feel the website needs.

And on the topic of "only show me completed series (including oneshots)", there's a filter for "only show oneshots" alongside this as well. My contention is that why is there no "only show me completed series (excluding oneshots)". You can't tell me that there is no actual need for this, can you?

Last edited by Zackdgod at 9:39 pm, Sep 17 2023

You are absolutely correct about my intention of requiring that the filter serve the purpose and actually show whether or not it has a proper ending, be it rushed or not. Most of these are marked as tags other than complete as mentioned previously.
As you can see, I did try taking it up to the devs since there is an API implementation, but since it's low on their list of priorities, I started a poll to see if it could do any convincing. Looks like it's bound to have no effect, considering the responses 😢

While having an option other than Ongoing and Complete would be useful. Is suspect that the problem is the amount of effort and time that would be needed to make the change.

The likely issue is how the MU database is structured (I think I read somewhere that it is a form of SQL.)

The below is a technical ramble with sentence fragments because I don't want to write an essay no one will read to explain database structure.

Possible Technical issue (If MU is a SQL style database)

-- The data type for complete/ongoing could be the type of field to only allow True/false values. (think of how a traditional light switch that can only be on or off there is no third option)
----- A field type is defined when you create the value in a data. You can never change the data type after creating a field. So if it is a true/false style field then it would have to be a new field. --> If it was remade with a new field then code for the series page on the website would have to be change. Also the setup for the Advanced find would have to be reworked --> Someone would need to go and retroactively add the new data by hand to make sure it is accurate.

TLDR

++Not a big enough problem to justify the time and effort to make the change.

++My rule of thumb: What a non-technical person thinks would be hard to to do is actually easy to code, and what they think are easy things are hard to code".

Last edited by lollylopmr at 10:14 am, Sep 18 2023

Ey, you don't wanna get on with me on the technical jargon, I've had 4 yrs of coding experience behind me, currently studying software project management.

The series are not tagged as only ongoing or complete, they are tagged with over 10 different kinds of keywords ( not an assumption or exaggeration by any means). I was into European villainess manhwa last year and even in the Completed section I found around 7 different kinds of tags when I went through around 400 manhwa series.

I easily concluded with the fact that the advanced search checks are in the following format (which I mentioned in my post linked above, reading which you would have understood that I'm no layman):
-----------
Completely scanlated has its own boolean value
Completed has its own value which excludes ongoing hiatus and discontinued from its checks while looking for complete in the status value
Oneshots has its own keyword check from the status value
At least one has its own check
-------------
As you can see here, the only boolean is completely scanlated. Status is a varchar based value which is searched upon for all the keywords that they have previously detected (including complete, ongoing, tba, discontinued, cancelled, oneshot and 5 other keywords that I currently don't recall)

The advanced search is an if based logic which is implemented sequentially instead of building objects around the released series for categorising them.
I know this because initially the advanced search option used to show series that were tba and ongoing as well. I pestered the developers multiple last times last year and requested them to key it into negative logic. It happened, tba and ongoing don't show up in completed series filter anymore (they refused my argument about hiatus, saying that it was also complete unless it gets converted into TBA later on)
Since I have experience running a fanmade site in college myself, I understand how easy it is to overlook easy to implement features just because you're overworked. So bringing simple features like this to their attention is the only way I can think of going about this.

TLDR: you're wrong about both your TLDR points, since:

++the feature already exists on the API, if given access, I can implement it on live servers easily even in between classes

++I hope you realise how wrong you were, I bragged too much about my age and experience

Edit: Sorry, you caught me at a bad time, I just got shit on in my Agile methodologies exam at the time.
But still, get dunked on 😛

Last edited by Zackdgod at 11:03 am, Sep 18 2023

The take it up with the developers was for the other person since they seemed to feel strongly about the definition of "Complete."

I get what you want and agree that more filters on the Advanced Search would be great. Personally, I'm hoping that we get basic Boolean operators in the tag box first so I can search multiple overlapping, redundant, and/or related tags together instead of having to run multiple searches, tag-by-tag, on the site (i.e., not just the API). Not sure how it can be executed with the Genres, but that's also another filter that would be nice to have more range in (for instance, to see any title tagged "Josei" OR "Seinen" with a specific tag.) 😔 I'd also like to be able to search both "Shoujo Ai" OR "Yuri" ( also "Yaoi" and "Shounen Ai" ) because some people do not tag these correctly and frankly, some people don't see the difference. I also just wanna see anything in the umbrella of these genres in one search.

Last edited by flowinmyboat at 11:51 am, Sep 18 2023

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Ayo, that's also a boolean feature i wanted as well. I noticed how there are multiple tags for similiar categories, and ran into the OR boolean problem when I was looking for some **ahem ahem** questionable content.
Would love it if you could start a forum post regarding this so we can get the devs views on this, especially since I'm pretty sure they added the not exclusion feature after a user request, looking at the way it has been implemented.
They should be able to perform an and/or drop-down even with their checkbox +/- implementation which should be able to work using switching logic or if else block with loops for each of the selected checkboxes (although I'm not sure about their implementation)

I'd also love "NOT" to exclude tags. I will put a post up, think others have suggested this before me as well. I will start with just the tags vs the genre stuff...wouldn't be so bad on the genre front if there was also a "saved search" feature as well (then could just go into the saved search and switch the genre and re-run the search - not the most efficient but easy enough).

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I have asked for boolean searches as well. Or at least the ability to use the * (wild card) boolean modifier in the category section of advanced search. I do know you can use wildcards when searching the categories directly.

For anyone who doesn't know how a boolean search works, below is a modified version of a boolean search (AO3's search instructions)

------------------- The text belongs to AO3 (Archive of our own) a fanfiction site
Work Search: Any Field

Searches all the fields associated with a work in the database, including summary, notes and tags, but not the full work text.

*: any characters
book* will find book and books and booking.
space: acts like AND for search terms in the same field of the work
Harry Potter will find Harry Potter and Harry James Potter in any field, but it won't find works by a creator named Harry with the character tag Sherman Potter.
AND: searches for works which have both terms in any field
Harry AND Potter will find works by a creator named Harry with the character tag Sherman Potter.
||: OR (not exclusive)
Harry || Potter will find Harry, Harry Potter, and Potter.
"": words in exact sequence
"Harry Lockhart" will find Harry Lockhart but not Harry Potter/Gilderoy Lockhart.
-: NOT
Harry -Lockhart will find Harry Potter but not Harry Lockhart or Gilderoy Lockhart/Harry Potter.

Examples

"Fandom X" "F/F" -Explicit
will return all works from Fandom X tagged as F/F, and exclude those tagged Explicit
"Character A" OR "Character B" -"Character Death"
will return all works including Character A or Character B (or both), and no works tagged with "Character Death" in either the Warnings or the Additional tags
"Character A/Character B" Underage Mature OR Explicit
will return all works for this pairing that include an Underage warning and are either rated Mature or Explicit

Last edited by lollylopmr at 3:41 pm, Sep 18 2023