Book Descriptions

[brandon]

@cat

Imagine I land on a page of a book with no English summary. I would like to default to seeing the publisher summary in that case, and maybe a blurb asking for an English summary since I know that’s the overall site preference.

Fair enough, I think that makes sense too. I still think i’m inclined to highlight a review for hover overs, but we’ll see

[seanblue]

@brandon

I’m sure though there are many books without an official English summary, correct?

AniList will have a summary for most manga and LNs, though for less popular series those can be auto translated or left blank. Would you have permission to copy those? At the very least you can get official English translations for officially licensed series.

@cat

I’m also a bit leery of user generated summaries (from someone who hasn’t read the book) and would probably preference ones direct from the publisher anyways.

I would certainly worry about spoilers from user summaries. Everyone has a different tolerance for spoilers and some people naturally reveal more as a result.

[seanblue]

One more thing @brandon: Do you plan to allow just series description or also individual volumes? I worry the latter would result in rarely getting summaries in later volumes and also even greater risk of spoilers in those later volumes. I’d personally strongly prefer just a single series description.

[brandon]

@seanblue

One more thing @brandon: Do you plan to allow just series description or also individual volumes?

This is the complicated one yeah. I’m also inclined to just series descriptions as well. However, there are some series which don’t have a strong narrative connection between books. In those cases, you really do want to allow individual volumes.

Thinking on the fly here, I think i’ll default everything to series only, but have a field in the database where I could toggle a series into ‘individual volume blurb’ mode?

[Jintor]

I sort of feel like user reviews fulfil the need for user summaries?

[brandon]

I agree that if you’re looking at the book page, they do fulfill much of what you want from user summaries.

However, when you’re browsing it’s very nice to have a quick snap shot of the item and then be able to drill down more. For books, that quick snapshot would be something like:

• level
• genre tags / tags
• brief summary
• average rating / popularity

Ideally, for desktop you can put all that information in a little hover over which would appear in search & browse. Secondly, it’d be nice to have all that information at the top of the book page / series page so that even on mobile, you can get a quick glance.

Reviews are what you see next when you scroll down.

[Jintor]

Right, but what I specifically mean is the summary in my view is better served as the ‘neutral’ description (so to speak) from the publisher when possible, rather than a user summary right off the bat.

[brandon]

I think I agree @Jintor. Maybe we should only allow you to add a summary from a publisher then?

I.e. We specify only publisher summaries are allowed and you must provide a source.

If the summary is not in English, then you can submit a translated version of the Japanese version into English, albeit you have to specify if it’s your own, user translation or machine translated.

Does that make more sense? Then the summaries are never personal user summaries. Does that sound better @cat ?

[enbyboiwonder]

Could it be user preference whether target-language or English summaries get displayed by default? I, for one, am well tired of seeing crappy MTL’d summaries from having to scroll past them to get to the JP ones on CDJapan

[omk3]

Machine translation is so awful, I don’t think we should officially feature it on the site. If someone wants to translate a summary for themselves they can always do so, but having it displayed proudly? It’s so often full of mistakes, incomprehensible, even misleading at times.

I think that while official summaries should be preferred, it’s not a bad idea to allow user summaries, as long as they’re freely editable by anyone (wiki style) who’s read the book in order to avoid spoilers and mistakes. By the way I know of at least one case where the official publisher’s summary should be avoided at all costs, since it describes the whole plot up to the very last page.

[brandon]

@omk3

I think that while official summaries should be preferred, it’s not a bad idea to allow user summaries, as long as they’re freely editable by anyone (wiki style) who’s read the book in order to avoid spoilers and mistakes. By the way I know of at least one case where the official publisher’s summary should be avoided at all costs, since it describes the whole plot up to the very last page.

I think I agree with you on the machine translated. How about this then - we ask that you insert word for word an official summary OR translate it. If you have some issues with the official summary and would like to deviate (like your example) then you must include a note at the top that explains your changes.

If there are a lot of deviations, we can build some special functionality for it (like a checkbox).

What do we think about that?

[omk3]

Some thoughts:

• Is it possible that there might be copyright issues if we translate directly? (Honest question, I have no idea about this stuff)

• Will people be willing to put in the work to translate? If I were to translate, I’d worry about the nuance of every word. It would be much easier for me to write my own blurb, maybe following more or less the official blurb’s content, maybe not, but at least I wouldn’t be worrying about the quality of my translation. I personally would be less likely to submit summaries if I had to translate.

• Who would check translation quality, or indeed accuracy? Is it really safer than allowing people to write their own summary, following certain guidelines?

[brandon]

I’m a fan with keeping it freeform, sure. I think it is still good to know though if something is freeform, directly from a publisher or translated from a publisher. What do others think?

[cat]

@brandon

Does that make more sense? Then the summaries are never personal user summaries. Does that sound better @cat ?

I’m more on board with that, yes

An aside

I’m also capable of ignoring summaries all together (presumably can even hide them with via CSS if I feel inclined). Something that started rattling around my head last night is that I don’t think I’m really the target audience of this site anymore.
I’m perfectly comfortable browsing Japanese book stores and reading the summaries there which I know is not the case for people just getting into books, particularly Japanese books. This isn’t saying I’m wandering off or anything (my book clubs ) but more that maybe I shouldn’t be a strong voice in some product requests as things which serve my interests are very different than things which serve newer learners.

I don’t want to derail the discussion in this thread so if anyone has thoughts on that please DM me instead

[brandon]

Response to aside

@cat

This isn’t saying I’m wandering off or anything (my book clubs ) but more that maybe I shouldn’t be a strong voice in some product requests as things which serve my interests are very different than things which serve newer learners.

While I see your request to DM, just want to call out here for other advanced learners too. Totally understand that feeling. Natively always will be in a bit of an awkward position because advanced learners offer the community the most (gradings, reviews, advice / guidance) and yet less advanced learners receive the most.

So while it may feel like you aren’t the ‘target audience’, you are a really critical part of the whole site success… meaning we will bend over backwards to make sure it’s still a wonderful experience for you. Your perspective still matters

And if a simple setting to always use publisher summaries makes you happy, then happy to provide.

[pm215]

@omk3

Machine translation is so awful, I don’t think we should officially feature it on the site.

I used to agree with this but I think there’s now a bit of a spectrum from “traditionally awful” through to “actually pretty reasonable if you give it a once over to check for problems”.

The last book club submission I did, for the English summary I asked ChatGPT to give me three draft translations, and I picked the one I liked best, and cross checked it didn’t have any mistakes of interpretation. I think the result is at least as good as and arguably better than I would have come up with doing the translation myself from scratch, and it certainly took a lot less time…

So while I agree we don’t want automated no human oversight machine translation, I don’t think we should necessarily insist on 100% artisanal handcrafted English summaries either…

[brandon]

Hey everyone,

So i’m getting closer to releasing this and wanted to let you all know what ending up with.

For each ‘blurb’, there will be a:

• language specified
• summary text
• source type (Publisher Summary, Publisher Summary (Translated))
• source name (Publisher name usually) & url (if applicable)

For the reasons @pm215 lays out, I think it’s ok to not distinguish Human translated vs Machine translated. As long as the source material is simply the official summary, the quality of the translation doesn’t really raise any of the concerns @cat or others are worried about.

All that being said, I think I won’t be allowing custom user summaries for the time being. If there is an issue with a publisher summary, we can address that on a case-by-case basis.

[cat]

@brandon

@cat or others are worried about.

Not me being confused thinking you were quoting me in the bad book descriptions thread at first

[brandon]

As this is now released, let’s move all discussion to this thread.

Closing!