I noticed that when I wanted to add an entry, it already existed: 変な地図 | L29 It shows neither when searching for it by its name not by the author. Then I noticed that an entry I added in September doesn’t show either 原宿★たけのこ交番 | L24??
It’s not exactly a bug. New books have to be manually approved by an admin before they can appear in the search, and the admin haven’t approved anything in the last 6 months, so there’s a large backlog of items in limbo.
It really does need to be addressed, though. It’s gotten to the point that it’s negatively affecting the ability to use the site.
Not only this issue, though. There hasn’t been any feature development in, like, a year or so? People are already complaining and dropping off (one of the more prominent examples being the Mystery Book Club who moved back to WK). Not even maintenance is being done regularly.
Sorry to say, but this site started off with a promising concept but now it feels like it’s slowly dying
I worry that one day the website will just disappear and we’ll never know what happened. Brandon really should be more open about what’s going on at this point.
Yep, as much as I genuinely love the site and the concept, it’s slowly becoming more and more difficult to use. I already use Natively a lot less frequently than I used to, specifically because of these issues that keep accumulating, between new books not being approved, and lots of small bugs. I’m honestly finding it hard to recommend Natively to others as well, because when they do check it out, they come back to me asking whether this site is abandoned, and I really don’t have much to say to refute that.
A lot of us would be willing to help (whether that’s through a librarian system where we can approve books/series/movies being added, or something else), we just want Natively to stay alive.
I’m really glad that I still kept my bookmeter site up-to-date so that I don’t lose too much if it disappears (although the tags and private notes are really handy, I must say).
It seems Brandon is not too interested in that, sadly I offered to help him with the dev work, because, honestly, even if the site would work perfectly (from a technical perspective) in its current state, there is sooo much that irks me from a usability perspective, and I would love to have helped improve that.
But although I think I offered my help three times or so, and although we even talked once to figure out how things could work out, he never got back to me.
I stopped recommending Natively as well - as you said, it leaves a bad impression.
Well, it’s just armchair psychology, but I assume it was burnout → got slightly better and do what everyone who got slightly better do after burnout and picks up too much stuff to “catch up” → burnout (and repeat, considering posting patterns). If discussions happened during the slightly better periods, they would just stop when burnout comes back and then (talking about personal experience in this case) it just feels incredibly hard to come back to people months later.
I dunno, maybe I’m just projecting, but that’s how it feels.
I’m actually still recommending it because, as bad as it got, there’s still a lot of useful data for people who are under the N1 level.
I also regularly back up my data from here, but yeah, that’s also something I am afraid of.
I understand life happens and sometimes things get away from us despite best efforts, but I definitely agree with the above sentiments. I think if the site is still being worked on the first thing that should be on the list is a community librarian role, at the very least the basic usability of the site would be in tact with the books being searchable. Natively to work depends on user input ratings, right now it’s hard to recommend for above stated reasons.
First off, i started the reindex for all these new series.
Secondly, I’m glad you all are expressing these concerns. I’ve had a difficult mental year the past year and i’ve managed things poorly, to say the least. I think the first thing to do is to find partners for help and open the librarian role, as you all are suggesting.
I’m not sure if you’re still interested @nikoru but i’ve sent you a DM. I’m also considering taking on more than one dev partner. As it’s the new year, i’m trying to rededicate myself. Thank you all so much for all your support for the site and the community, even despite my absence!
sorry to belabor this point but doesn’t look like new books are being indexed still? The recently added page still looks the same to me, is there some sort of cache issue on my end?
I offered to help him with the dev work, because, honestly, even if the site would work perfectly (from a technical perspective) in its current state, there is sooo much that irks me from a usability perspective, and I would love to have helped improve that.
