Manga character list page :maybe:

[MooPoint]

I think it would be very useful to have the ability to maintain a character name (and aliases) + picture(s) of character page (pictures in cases where the character has multiple 'faces' or have aged/isekai'd/etc). MAL has a character page... but for a LOT of Manga it's either empty or incomplete. And if I go to a Wiki page (if it exists) then I may stumble upon spoilers.

I, and I'm sure many others, follow many Manga. But I tend to forget characters... especially side characters. Even more so if there's been a long delay and only a few chapters have been released. It would be very helpful to have a character list page to find the name + face of the character, and possibly a short description of them as a refresher (like how MAL does it). Ideally it would be maintained by contributors as well.

 

[Holo]

That's a lot of characters to enter information for.

 

[MooPoint]

Indeed, but I would do it for certain Manga I'm following if I had nothing better to do.

 

[Zephyrus]

I'm not sure if implementing this would be worth it in terms of added value to MD. I'm moving this to Maybe since Holo appears unsure if he wants to pursue the idea.

 

[jokerxhisoka]

I believe this would add a lot of unimportant data to the site. Why do a work that has already been done a second time? Since there are sites, like MAL, that we already link to.

 

[MooPoint]

@Zephyrus I can't speak for what values it adds for MD, but for users such as myself it enables me to keep track of what characters exist in a given manga. It's not that I can't sift through multiple/many chapters to figure out who the character is, but it would be a great time saver if I didn't need to go through that ordeal. It would help save a lot of time.

@jokerxhisoka I believe I already mentioned this in my first post; MAL is almost always lacking data about characters. Unless it's a super popular manga less than a handful of characters ever gets logged into MAL's database. Even worse for Manwha, which generally aren't even in their database.

 

[jokerxhisoka]

@apothem that's true, but it's something that the users themselves fill in, that would be a work that would need to be done here on MD too meaning it would probably end up with the same result as the one on MAL.

 

[MooPoint]

@jokerxhisoka Yes the hope is that contributors of MD will fill out such information - but more complete than MAL. The difference between MD and MAL is that at the moment, contributors in MD (which has been openly provided) can edit metadata about manga. I have contributed to updating multiple manga metadata, and I'm sure others have as well. But in MAL you can only submit requests to modify a manga... which from my experience takes forever to be approved (and no response if it isn't). The time I would potentially spend to 'create' a character profile (name, image, and basic summary) ind MD will likely be much less than the time I would spend jumping between chapters to find out that same information.

If you want to look at it from an efficiency point of view, if I had the character's information at hand I wouldn't need to waste MD's bandwidth by going through the process of rediscovering who the character is (assuming other manga readers do the same as myself).

 

[ununseti]

There are lots of other character databases out there already, though. I think some things to keep in mind here are Not Invented Here syndrome and too many competing things.

Some other character databases (ish) that I can think of off the top of my head:
[ul]
[*] Wikipedia
[*] The fandom's corresponding Wikia or custom Wiki (e.g. puella-magi wiki, touhouwiki)
[*] TV Tropes
[*] Danbooru wiki
[*] Pixiv wiki
[*] MAL
[/ul]
Most of these are community-editable, but unlike the manga info system on mangadex right now, most of them have edit history, making it easier to revert vandalism etc.

It's true that wikis tend to have spoilers and moderated databases like MAL are slow to respond, though. Danbooru wiki is the best fallback in this case, because of their policy on keeping the information about characters and works to the bare essentials. But that might not be very useful if a lot of spoilery information about that character is required to understand what's going on in the latest chapter.

One hugely impractical idea that comes to mind is for the character pages to have a sliding scale of spoilers based on chapter number, and have the spoilery information become visible based on your security clearance which chapters you have read, you know, like the redacted content in SCP wiki or the little excerpts at the beginning of every chapter of that Madoka fanfic, "To the Stars". That be very cool. But sounds very impractical. Would require a lot of effort from contributors, so just some wishful thinking there.

When I read manga, I tend take continuity notes anyway because past experience has shown that my memory is very fallible ?. The main advantage of taking my own notes is that they mirror exactly the content that I've read, so guaranteed no spoilers! More work, though.

Just my two cents.

 

[MooPoint]

I think scope of the feature is important before falling into the NIH syndrome. For example... why did MangaDex need its Follow to also include dropped, on hold, etc? MAL has the exact same thing! I can even write it down in a spreadsheet! The reason, I would think, was because it made sense in the scope of a site that allows its users to better keep track of the things they were following. Character pages definitely seem a bit out of scope for MD functionality wise, but from my point of view it centralizes information that this site is basically focused on (which is manga). To be clear I do not think MangaDex is trying to be a source of information nor am I pushing for such a goal. I just want an easier way to remember who is who.

I am aware of all the sites you have mentioned but only go to MAL or a fandom Wikia for information about a manga. Unfortunately I find neither to be sufficient, as for one my contributions seem ignored (MAL) and for the other I have not even attempted to change (Wikia). Though you make a good point on controlling vandalism/spoilers - it's not an easy task to police content. On the chance that this idea isn't implemented, can we instead have the ability to link manga to its own fandom Wikia?

 

[tathra]

i don't think theres enough benefit to be provided by having a character database here, particularly when one can find the info on wikipedia or the series' wikia, to justify the work involved in making it. a link to the relevant wiki would serve the same purpose.

 

[MooPoint]

I'm not sure if this will take more work than writing the codebase for this forum, but I'm sure it would take some work. In the end I believe it would bare more fruits than not.

But I agree I am leaning more towards fandom Wikias right about now, as a lazy solution. But an ideal solution would be a separate tab on the manga's page that lists a handful of main characters and their image + can be expanded to view more. Theoretically an input field can be added to mark down when (after logged in member finishes reading chapter x) a character will be displayed in the character listing.

 

[tathra]

there's also the contributor work of inputting the info. just a your normal cost:benefit analysis here.

linking to the relevant wikias would be useful in other ways other than character info, so that's something that might be good to implement regardless.

@apothem your suggestion could possibly be rolled in with personal tags, if it could be kind of expanded to being able to put personal notes for a manga. if you wanted to put in a character listing there it wouldn't be any different from any other type of notes.