Korean Beta - Feedback from Korean Users

Korean
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Yay, we have our own thread! :smile:

Like @NihongoLearner19, I get the server problem when trying to add 19+ books, but otherwise it seems fine. I did experience a minor hiccup while trying to add a tv show: I got an error on the request page, but when I checked my dashboard, it had indeed been added. :thinking:

I discovered some other minor issues to add to those mentioned in the other thread:

  • Profiles are missing the number of book contributions
  • I can’t view my own stats, but can view other people’s
  • The ‘where to find’ tooltip still refers to Japanese books
  • Occasionally, moving from the forums to the site reverts the learning language back to Japanese.
  • The profile links in the social tab all include /jpn/
  • There seems to be a ghost volume in the Harry Potter series
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Yonsei mess ㅠㅠ
  • Main textbook (new edition) 1-10, 13, 14, 17-26, 36, 40, 44, 48, 52, 56, 61-67 (I think, hard to tell when they’re so muddled)
  • Main textbook (old edition) 96-107
  • Readers 120-123, 127, 139
  • Workbooks 108-119
  • Korean in 3 weeks 76-83
  • Korean in 3 weeks (teacher’s guide) 68-75

The rest are for speakers of other languages or different editions.

As for the levels, I think all the university textbooks have 6 levels, which presumably map to the TOPIK levels. I’d probably grade them something like

  • 한국어 1-1 - level 0
  • 한국어 1-2 - level 3
  • 한국어 2-1 - level 6, and so on.

In regards to the publisher/series issue, I don’t have strong feelings either way. It could be argued the 오늘의 젊은 작가 series is tied together loosely by the theme of “new writers” (and the matching cover designs), so if you enjoyed one book, it’s easy to find similar ones… On the other hand, it can be misleading to group them as a series when they are standalone novels, and they’re less likely to show up in search results…

On the Japanese side, there are series like 100年後も読まれる名作 that have a similar issue of having similarities (theme of foreign classics, level) but not being linked by narrative, setting, etc. Compare to 青い鳥文庫 or 角川つばさ文庫 books, which are often recommended for beginners but aren’t grouped together as a series, which makes finding them difficult.

I wonder if there’s a way to have the best of both worlds, such as including the publisher/imprint on the natively page in the same way as the author. Then the volumes could be separated, but there would still be a way to find similar books… Just an idea. :slightly_smiling_face:

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This could also fall into the editions/tagging updates potentially: unrelated books are no long grouped together by series, but are still linked to each other via either an alternate edition or some common tag. Doesn’t really help with the short term, I know.

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So to the best of my knowledge, while they’re all from the same publisher, that doesn’t mean that they’re similarly leveled. At least for Chinatown, the reason that I guessed it was level 35ish was because I’ve read the English translation before and it’s definitely on the literary fiction side of things.

I think that independent leveling would be more appropriate, since all the books are by different authors, so writing style and content can easily differ and affect the level. However, the series grouping might be helpful for finding similar books to read.

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Yeah, I’m not sure how well the whole forum mutings / back and forth is working. Not entirely sure how to diagnose either, so if you figure out a series of steps which I can reproduce, let me know!

I made it now so that it defaults to /kor/ if they have korean as their target language, otherwise it will default to /jpn/. Obviously if you’re viewing a profile in jpn, then that prioritization is flipped.

As for all the spots where manga vs manwha appears, it will be a work in progress. I may at some point just make the underlying data say ‘manwha’ rather then the current situation of keeping it as ‘manga’ and just displaying it as ‘manwha’. We’ll see.

I’m still working on Yonsei, but everything else should be fixed! Including the things in the other post :slight_smile:

Done!

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Frustratingly it didn’t work when I tried to reproduce (of course :roll_eyes:), but I’ll keep an eye on it.

On another note, I’m glad fetching series seems to be working now, that saves me from copying a million links! :laughing:

ETA: @brandon

  • I accidentally tried to add a book already in the database, and it returned a server error message rather than a link to the book page.
  • I tried searching for “Harry Potter”, but nothing came up as the title is written in 한글. Should we be adding English titles for well-known books (like HP and The Little Prince) to make them easier to find?
  • Just got the server error again trying to add a children’s book
  • Numbers haven’t updated for several book series
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  • I’ve noticed when adding some books, it doesn’t detect that it’s part of a series, even though the Yes24 page does have the other volumes linked under 이 상품의 시리즈 (most recently, the 미생 volume I just added)
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Do you that Yes24 link / ISBN? Should return a Natively link…

So english titles are a bit complicated yeah. I think we’ll need to rely on submitting feedback for now or intial request notes. I’ve not devised an automated process. As for hangul to english lettering, I do have a process for converting japanese into romaji for search purposes… i just need to do the same for hangul. Should be easy.

What did you type? Granted I can probably find alerts by knowing what you submitted always helps :laughing:

good catch will address.

So I thought I fixed that… mind trying to search https://www.yes24.com/Product/Goods/12278418 ? I get the below image indicating it found an ‘untitled series’

Screen Shot 2023-07-07 at 10.30.26 PM
Screen Shot 2023-07-07 at 10.30.26 PM1576×1146 111 KB

FWIW when i search 미생 I also get that :confused:

PS: You got quite the tsundoku pile, I’m impressed haha

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Speaking of @bibliothecary’s 積読 pile, I noticed this in their library:

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yeah makes sense. That’s tied in with @bibliothecary comment on the series volume numbers not being accurate in search too.

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Just tried the duplicate search again with both the link and ISBN and both returned the Natively link. I was also able to add the children’s book just now that returned the error. Maybe I just copy-pasted the wrong info.

I got ‘unnamed series’ for that book, too. I thought the result for 미생 said it couldn’t find the series at all, though…

I’ll take screenshots when these things happen in the future in case it’s just user error. :sweat_smile:

When I first started studying the language, I got into the habit of buying any second-hand Korean books I came across because it was almost impossible to get non-textbooks any other way.

… Is what I was gonna say, but then I looked around at the bookcases full of English and Japanese books and realised that’s not the whole story. I basically live in a library with a bed. I should change my name to ‘bibliophile’… :rofl:

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So that’s correct behavior. It found a Yes24 series but since there’s no link to a dedicated series page, we just use the same name as the book for the series. I don’t know why Yes24 sometimes has a link at the top to a dedicated series page and othertimes just surfaces the volumes on the item page… :person_shrugging:

:laughing: there are worse ways to live!

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This happened when I tried adding this book. Pressed search again, and it went through. :thinking:

FireShot Capture 005 - Add Resource - - Natively - learnnatively.com
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I think we may need to cap the number of volumes for this series populater, these yes24 series are a bit out of control :sweat_smile:

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After watching one episode, the series was automatically set to finished, even though it has 26 episodes listed. I’ve tried setting it to ‘watching’ in Basic Info, but it doesn’t save the changes. :pensive:

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Ugh, you’re really hitting issues with the video section :cry:

So, that series is just in a very sad state for TMDB. Is that series pretty obscure?

Basically the issue is that the other episodes don’t have ‘aired at’ dates, so we can’t tell if there will be more episodes. Outside of updating the tmdb database, i’m not sure what we can do… I could rework the logic, but not entirely sure how at the moment.

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I wouldn’t have thought so, but I suppose as a children’s show it wouldn’t be particularly well-known outisde Korea (although there is an official English dub). There was another show I wanted to add, but couldn’t find at all on TMDB, so I may have to sign up and add the content myself. :face_with_raised_eyebrow:

How has it been handled with Japanese if a book/movie/tv show can’t be found on Amazon / TMDB? I’m guessing it rarely happens, but it’ll probably occur much more often with Korean. :confused:

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So, both amazon.co.jp & TMDB have excellent coverage for Japanese it seems. There have been a few very rare cases where something wasn’t on TMDB or Amazon, but I believe the one or two times that’s happened, it’s been understandable… they’ve been quite obscure and it’s not really an issue for users.

I will say though, I’m not sure how many legitimate children’s shows people have added… it’s been mostly animation and live action. I could see children’s shows being a bit less likely to be added as the audience is less likely to track them i’d guess. I’m not sure.

Regardless though, please let me know how much of an issue it ends up being. For TV, most of the things i’ve been interested in have been on Netflix which obviously has great coverage. Have there been many things you couldn’t find on Yes24? From my exploration before launch, Yes24 seemed to have by far the best breadth compared to Amazon, Kyobo, Aladin… et al… but i’m still not sure of the coverage.

Also, I do think adding TMDB isn’t too hard, so that is an option if you’re willing to add things :slight_smile:

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Dang. Now there’s some reading practice for you.

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I’ve added dates for 플라워링 하트 and tried syncing, but the problem is still persisting. I also added 생일왕국의 프린세스 프링, but series/episodes haven’t appeared. Not sure if I’ve done something wrong, it needs approval, or just takes a while to update. Haven’t finished adding all the episodes yet, though.

The middle activity seems odd here, too…?

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FireShot Capture 008 - 플라워링 하트 S1 - L30 - learnnatively.com
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I’ve only had a couple so far, but I’ve just put them aside until I’ve finished adding the other hundreds of books. :grin:

Something else that might be another external site issue: Just Watch doesn’t list Viki for 커피프린스, even though it’s one of their providers and the series is licenced in my region.

On a related note, would it be possible to be able to add links like the ‘where to find’ section for books? Some series (especially children’s ones) are available for free on their official youtube channels.

I’ve also noticed you can’t switch languages if you’re on a series page. The link changes (?_language=jpn/kor), but otherwise the page (and selected language) stays the same. For pages that don’t have a direct equivalent, could toggling the language send you to the dashboard?

Giving you lots of work today! :rofl:

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Yeah, that makes sense, good idea :slight_smile:

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Amazing :joy::joy:

Interesting. I haven’t yet heard complaints around that. I’m not sure… perhaps they have a reporting form too?

Potentially. Right now, I can add them in the admin as a ‘more information link’… so if you put them in your book addition notes when you initially add them, I can upload the link.

Or you can submit feedback if they’re already added.

interesting. I’ll try take a look soon…

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