Forum - View topicIncorrect credits
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Dan42
Chief Encyclopedist
 Posts: 3786 Location: Montreal |
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We'll do what we have always done; slowly and gradually improve it. It's the only thing we can do.
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wao
Posts: 224 |
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I'm extremely tired so I'm not going to make much sense right now, but I'd just like to clarify with Dan42: Will the improvements you're going to make to the encyclopedia result in a complete rewrite of the software, or just an upgrade? I'm just wondering.
I think certain parties are rather interested to know exactly what improvements have been decided on and will be worked into the new version of the encyclopedia. I think they know that you have considered their suggestions. Now they want to know what exactly is being done with it. Even if the changes are made slowly, I think it wouldn't hurt to clearly state exactly what will be done with these suggestions. I'm sure we all want to clear up any misconceptions once and for all.... [Actually, I'm kind of curious too (I'm only aware of a few things here and there). I'd really like to know if the new version will let you edit tasks and not just precision...] Just to be obnoxious and provide a "friendly tip", however: I suggest making it clear and very obvious that the new version will make key animators come before in-between animators. This has been mentioned more than once before, but it is quite a sensitive issue. I hope you understand why. I can understand if not all the currently unordered tasks can be properly ordered because there are so many different kinds of credits. But Key Animation is something common to every anime and I think in most cases it's quite clear where they should stand in terms of importance. Reading their comments, I am under the impression that they would like to see some kind of change as soon as possible, so while I definitely understand that there is only so much the admins can do at one time, at the risk of sounding annoying I think it would be good to take this into consideration - for the sake of the site as well. Also, in what way can this situation be alleviated by us normal users? Is it just submitting error reports for ambiguous "animation" roles and filling in missing roles for others? |
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Dan42
Chief Encyclopedist
Posts: 3786 Location: Montreal |
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We'll be doing gradual upgrades until the system has been entirely rewritten. Originally we were planning on a full rewrite but our experience with the rewrite of the CMS confirmed the common programmer wisdom that the worst mistake you can do is restart from scratch.
I don't want to give out all the improvements we want to make yet; partly because it would set up expectations on things that are not yet firmly decided, and partly because I want to keep the surprise. But I can say that the main change will be to allow users to participate in fixing errors more directly. Instead of just submitting an error report to be approved by staff, you'll submit a change request to be approved/rejected by peers. If information can be edited without having to involve the staff (e.g. change "animation" to "key animation"), fixing errors will be accelerated and the focus will move away from "more information" towards "more accurate information". As for putting key animators above in-betweening, I wish I could do it but it's a difficult call. I agree that key animation can be very important and deserves extra recognition, but at the same time I don't think it can be bundled with the other major tasks such as director, screenplay, character design, etc. So it would require a third staff category, between major and minor staff. And I'm wary of the effect that would have on the clarity and easy-of-use of the interface. But if there's a good way, I would definitely like to put more emphasis on the animators. They don't get nearly enough exposure here in the West. |
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wao
Posts: 224 |
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ARGH. Stupid computer died halfway while typing... -___-;;;;;
I am so annoyed that I have to retype my post that I will put it in points. 1. I can understand why you don't want to give out all the improvements, that's why I was only interested in the ones that are decided (well, firmly decided). The ones that will be there for sure. 2. I'm all for it being easier to edit other peoples' tasks while putting less stress on the admins. If it makes editing easier I'll be really glad. 3. Having a third category was what I was thinking of too (and probably what many others were thinking of as well). But I'm not so sure whether it will have a negative effect on the useability of the interface as you described. It's not like current entries that have complete animator information (see Ouran, Noein, etc.) are all that easy on the eyes as it is - but I think creating a third category would only make it easier, rather than harder, for people to navigate. At least it makes it clear which are the more important roles among the humongous amount present in that entry. It's still going to be long and clunky whether you create a third category or not. 4. So, how about asking the users whether they think it'll make a difference? I lean towards the point of view that says that the importance of properly ordering the credits outweighs the (IMO) minimal difference in useability, but that's just me. Would polling the users help in your decision? If they say it doesn't make a difference then I do think you should go with it, although it might irk your design sensibilities. 4a. Or alternatively you could keep it in two categories, and then have the second category just list Key Animation first, then background art, then photography, and then in-between and colouring and all the rest goes after that. Like how the first category always has director at the top. 5. This is a suggestion from the 2ch boards. Is this feasible or applicable? Instead of transferring existing data as-is from the current version of the database to the new version, how about re-entering them all? For entries that have no problem with the key animation/in-between animation ambiguity, they can be pretty much copied and pasted, but with entries that have a. incorrect labeling ("Original Picture" or whatever) or b. ambiguous labeling ("Animation" with no qualifier), the proper credit could be found and entered. This suggestion works on the fact that a. It forces you to go through everything in one go (I don't know how to explain this, do you understand what I mean?) and b. It's easier to add new information than edit existing ones. This would be carried out only once. You could either 1. Set it to be done at a particular time, and recruit volunteers via the forums etc. to do it over the span of one week or so. (This estimate might not be ridiculous if everyone really got together to do it.) They could ask questions about "where can I get the credit info for this and this show" and other users could check the thread to see if they have the DVD and supply screenshots of the credits. (This thread could be stuck on the main page so that non-contributors could notice this and help too) I think even some Japanese otaku would be willing to help. Of course, this means that for the duration of that week or whatever, the encyclopedia will have to be closed - or, the "old version" will have to be shown (and locked so nobody adds in new information until the new version is done) Or, 2. Have a mix of the old and new database. Entries that haven't been checked will display data from the old database, while those that do will display data from the new one. Once people have finished entering checked credits into the new database, they post in a thread and an admin can go delete the old entry and have the encyclopedia show the new one. The advantage is that the encylopedia will never be closed off, and it doesn't have to be all done within one week but gradually. I don't suggest this option for obvious reasons because it's extremely cumbersome and I don't even know if the system works in a way that you could display two separate databases at a time, since you are upgrading and not rewriting at one go. So what do you think of this? Is it impossible? This doesn't address the issue of the order of credits, but about the ambiguous credits. It does sound like an ambitious suggestion, but I'm just putting forward what the 2ch people - well, at least some of them - wanted to say. |
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wao
Posts: 224 |
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And since abunai has set the precedent for typing Japanese in their posts, I will take the liberty to translate Dan42's points in my own broken Japanese. I know, I suck at this, but I have tried to convey his meaning as accurately as possible to avoid any more misunderstandings. Also, I have added in some things he hasn't said so that the context is made clear. Therefore this is not a translation of Dan42's post, but of his points. I hope it doesn't backfire and increase the misunderstandings...
abunaiさんはこのフォーラムで日本語を使う前例を作りましたので、誤解を減るように下手な日本語でdan42さんが言ってたポイントを出来る限り訳します。文脈を明確するために、dan42さんが言っていなかったことも含めていますのでこれを注意していただきたい。彼のポストそのものの直接翻訳ではありません。 まったく素人ですので誤訳ごめん。(?)がついているところは、訳がちょっとあやしいかも知りません。 1. システムの書き直しに関して システムは一気に書き直されません。完全リライトはプログラマーの立場から見ると、賢明な判断ではありません。これは前でCMSを書き直す時に分かりましたことです。ですので、改装は段階ごとに行います。 2. 改良するところは一体なんですか？ すべての改良点を公開できません。理由は 一、まだはっきり決めていない改良を公開すれば、余計な期待を招きます。その改良ができなくなったら期待は裏切られますのではっきり決めたまで公開できません。 二、驚かせたい (?) でも、主の改良点はこれです： 将来ユーザーはミスをもう少し直接に直せます。今のシステムでは、普通のユーザーは他のユーザーが投稿したものを編集できません。出来ることは間違いを管理人達に報告するだけです。（"Report an error"ボタンで)。そして彼らは報告による間違いを直す。 でも改装したシステムでは、その報告は管理人達だけじゃなくて、他のユーザーも読めます。そして、そのミスを直すレクエストを許可できます。そしたらミスの修正は早めれる。これで本サイトのフォーカスは「データ量」より「データの正確さ」に移せます。 3. 原画を動画の前に来るのはどうした？ これはやりたいですが、難しいです。 原画は重要でもっと認知されるべきなのは賛成しますが、監督・キャラデザ・脚本など並びのものではありません。（つまり一緒に表示できません） 今のレイアウトではセクション二つしかありません。上なのは最も重要なメインスタッフ（演出作監コンテ脚本も含めて）で、他は全部下のセクションでアルファベット順に出ます。 だが、原画を動画の前に来るために、第三のセクションを作る必要はあります。つまりこうです 上 メインスタッフ （監督、演出、脚本など） 中 原画 （背景や撮影も含めるんでしょう） 下 その他 （動画、仕上げなど） だが、その第三セクションはインターフェース的に問題となります。第三セクションが入れたら視認性や操作性に効果はあるんでしょう(?) でも他の方法があったら、是非教えて欲しい。アニメーターにもっと注目させられて欲しいです。外国での認識は本当に足りませんので。 I hope the admins don't mind this. (For the record, I can't post at 2ch - I have no idea why, maybe my IP is blocked.) And now I am going to desparately catch up with my homework. |
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Dan42
Chief Encyclopedist
Posts: 3786 Location: Montreal |
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What do you consider "proper" ordering? For me, I consider alphabetic ordering to be very proper.
On what basis do you include those tasks in the second category? Would you eventually include other tasks? Would that list grow to be 2 pages long? Right now if you want to find a task, you can scan the list of major staff (which is usually short enough to scan quickly) and if the task is not there scan the list of minor staff (which is easy because it's alphabetical). If you introduce an intermediate staff list, you force people to scan that list as well, which can be very long and NOT ordered alphabetically, thus difficult to scan.
* there won't be a "new" database, just upgrades (in programmer-speak, "refactoring") * do you really think it would only take 1 week to reenter all the data entered over the last FIVE YEARS? * you don't need to redo everything just to rename a few "animation" to "key animation" * even if you reenter everything and fix the "animation" problem, another similar problem may pop up again. what then? reenter all the data again? * chances are very high that *some* things would be reentered wrong * we'd basically lose the current contributors list Seriously, go read http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000069.html it explains in simple but very clear terms why this is a bad idea. Smarter and more experienced people than me have already pronounced a verdict on this. I don't want to seem like I'm shooting down all ideas without giving them a chance, but please give me a chance. I've been witnessing first-hand the weaknesses of the Encyclopedia for the last 5 years so I think I have a pretty good idea of how it should be improved. Please trust me and have patience. |
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dormcat
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 9902 Location: New Taipei City, Taiwan, ROC |
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Totally agree with you, Dan. To wao: while I'd like to praise your contribution to the Encyclopedia, I have to say that some of your suggestions are simply impractical. Have you ever tried to rebuild such a database yourself? I had. As I stated in another thread, I was the company S1 corporal, and I went through the organization reconstruction of ROC Coast Guard in early 2002. While my superior (battalion S1 officer) was in charge of personnel information of commissioned officers, I handled the personnel info of ~500 NCO and privates, moving and checking them to new job titles and assignments from the old structure to the (then) new one. It took me AN ENTIRE WEEK, and that was just copying/pasting plus checking for errors for LESS THAN 500 NAMES. At the moment, the Encyclopedia holds:
Now you can tell me if you still think it's logical to REENTER all information. 
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wao
Posts: 224 |
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Well, I guess I'll be a chicken here and say it wasn't my idea to begin with, but I agree you do have a valid point about it being difficult to do. I will admit that I ultimately can't see all that well from the point of the admins/programmers, but well. I suppose I don't have enough of a grasp of how many so-called "titles in need of fixing" there are in proportion to the complete range of titles. I did think I mentioned something about having a whole group of people doing it at one time but I guess that too is impractical...
I won't say anything more about that suggestion right now because I'm tired, and I'll probably say more stupid things, but I will reply to what I can think of.
I would include things that contribute most significantly to the production of anime and also require a lot of skill. Okay, this sounds very subjective and can be interpreted/argued in many ways, but I would include: Key animation, background art, 3D animation, sound engineers, digital composite/photographers, special effects, producers. I'm not referring to anything now so maybe I'm missing out something. Then below you'd put things like in-between animation, 2nd key animation, digital paint, production runners, casting management, and whatever doesn't fit.
I don't think it has to be particularly long, but it ought to be derived from looking at the pages linked some posts ago that talk about animation production. If you were to argue that it's hard to decide what's more important and stuff, I can see why, but I also beg to differ. I think if you considered the way anime is produced, it's kind of obvious that things like those tasks I mentioned earlier come before the others. Although maybe it's just me again... And I don't know how the software works, but is it that difficult to include other tasks should something completely unforeseen come up? I don't mean to say that it should keep changing wildly, in fact I'd rather a set of tasks to go there be decided once and kept that way; but should there be one or two unexpected tasks that, after research, you realise should be added in the second category, will it hurt so much to add them there? If I'm not wrong it was possible to move certain credits from the existing second section to the first section so maybe it's possible here too.
Once again, I'm stepping onto shaky grounds, and I can only speak for myself, but I'm not sure about how it being alphabetical makes it any easier. Consider somebody who doesn't know much about anime production. I would imagine this person does not know the terms "in-between animation", "key animation" and so on. Hence, without knowing to look for those specific terms, how would he/she even be "finding a task" really? And when said person scans through the list without knowing what exactly to look for, "2nd Key Animation" and "in-between animation" come first. I won't say that they'll necessarily think it's more important because I trust they know enough English to know that "Key" implies greater importance. But if they wanted to know who was responsible for the animation of some particular show, and they didn't know what to look for, because the list is alphabetically ordered they'd have to search the whole list. Now consider if the list was done in some order of importance. After the main staff, he/she will immediately see, say, the Key Animators. Then the search for such tasks ends there, doesn't it? The benefits are two-fold for someone who isn't familiar with the terms: a. they don't have to scan through the whole list; and b. they know very clearly which animators are the most responsible because they did the key, important work. (Also they might become more aware of this hierarchy in animation production.) If it was tasks that weren't important, then I think people would be even less aware of what the actual name of the task is - and in such a case I don't know how it being in alphabetical order will help, because it all becomes irrelevant if you don't know the first letter of the task, doesn't it? It only matters if the task they're looking for is lucky enough to be something like "2nd Key Animation" where it'd come first in an alphabetical order, but only quite some way down in a non-alphabetical one. Of course, you might say that for people who already know the names then it's much easier to have an alphabetical list. But I think they would be more likely to use Ctrl+ F - why manually go down the list if you already know what you're looking for? And in such a case - having a non-alphabetical order shouldn't make things any more difficult for them, surely? Unless I'm missing out something (which is again quite possible.) I dare say it might even be more helpful. If you think I'm guessing too much as to what users feel and think when they're using the encyclopedia - then once again, I suggest polling the users in some way or another. I stress again that I might be wonderfully missing out some certain points of view although I have tried to consider them, in which case I would like to be politely informed of them. Of course, if the reordering of credits doesn't seem like it is worth so much work, then I don't think I could convince anybody either way and I imagine I would have nothing left to say. Also, I'm going to sound annoying once again, but to put it politely I think it's about time that disclaimer (about this being a user-modified database and the possibility of errors) got put there somewhere. Put it at the top or right above the credits or something, just put it somewhere visible. It doesn't even have to be super-specifically worded, just something like "Please be aware that this database is created and modified by ANN's users, and therefore there may be inaccuracies in the encyclopedia data." Or you can be big and obvious like Wikipedia: "ANN makes no guarantee of validity". Please. I'm sure it isn't that difficult to put it in... Because the longer the entries stay without the disclaimer, the worse it will be in terms of PR. I'm not trying to attack you guys, but I think it will help the situation somewhat at least. I hope you understand what I'm getting at here. I would bold, italicise, underline, and colour red this entire paragraph except that would be annoying. I'm going to sleep. |
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dormcat
Encyclopedia Editor
Posts: 9902 Location: New Taipei City, Taiwan, ROC |
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D-V-D D-V-D Those who know the joke get a cookie. |
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Tempest
 I Run this place.ANN Publisher  Posts: 10441 Location: Do not message me for support. |
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To add to what Dan said. It will be a complete re-write, of most portions of the encyc, but it will be released piece by piece. So at one point we will completely re-write feature A (say error reporting), then we will re-write Feature B (say new title submission) then we will add Feature 1 (say the ability to speak to a dead actor's ghost), etc... As Dan said, a huge part of the re-writes will focus on how users submit / edit / correct data. Chris |
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Tempest
I Run this place. ANN Publisher Posts: 10441 Location: Do not message me for support. |
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Dormcat, I think he was referring to Encyc readers, not submitters. Wao, as Dan and I pointed out earlier, at least one task currently links to the lexicon. Making other tasks link to the lexicon would be a decent way of informing people what each task means and which is most important. |
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dormcat
Encyclopedia Editor
Posts: 9902 Location: New Taipei City, Taiwan, ROC |
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Woops, my bad.  
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Shiroi Hane
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 7580 Location: Wales |
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Has anyone considered that there could just be some Korean fans who were simply dedicated enough to enter all the information into the database? This would simply mean that the Japanese fans who are complaining are less dedicated and just need to pull their socks up and start contributing. |
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dormcat
Encyclopedia Editor
Posts: 9902 Location: New Taipei City, Taiwan, ROC |
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Can't blame them; blame their education system instead. Here is an old article, but I can't find more recent data:
ADDENDUM: Found the official TOEFL Test and Score Data Summary: 2004-2005 Test Year Data (in PDF) from ETS: Computer-based test (full score = 300): 
Paper-based test (full score = 677): 
Columns, from left to right: number of examinees, listening, structure/writing, reading, total score mean. Just for the record for native English speakers: the admittance requirement of most US universities is 215 computer-based or 550 paper-based. |
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woelfie
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 380 Location: Belgium |
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If I correctly interpreted the tables on from the pdf file, I remarked that the USA has a total score mean of 226 and 570 respectively; the UK does barely better with 240 computer based. Overall mean for native English is 227/564. How can you explain that ? Is the knowledge of English so bad for native English people ? 
Boy, am I happy that Belgium scores among the very best with 257 computer-based and 617 paper-based. Only Danmark can beat us by a few points (261/618). Happy, abunai ? 
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