I’d only start at the beginning again if I had only read a few pages - I can usually remember what I’ve read for quite a while, so there’s not much point in starting again if I’ve already read a good chunk of the story.
Things aren’t always on hold because of difficulty, either - maybe you’ve reached a part of the story that’s particularly slow or boring, another book has caught your attention, you’re reading too many books at the same time and decide to focus on a smaller number…
Again, probably not a big deal for a few pages, but if you’ve read a lot you may want to keep your stats accurate, especially if you have reading goals (pages/week for example). You could keep a note of the number of pages/time spent and update via the data manager, but that seems like a bit of a hassle - it would be much easier to just allow the book to be paused without having to reset/delete info, block gradings, or whatever other workaround there is.
I think it’s a personal thing rather than a “how many books have you read” thing. I have no emotional tie to marking a book as stopped or owned that I plan to return to. It feels all the same to me.
I also don’t care much about my Natively stats and don’t use it as my source of truth for when I do want stats which further influences my feelings.
Not saying I’m against this feature (don’t care) just chiming in that your feeling is also normal.
If you generally read books from start to finish one after the other, then it’s understandable that it’s not important to you, but it seems like quite a few users have an issue with how things are currently handled.
A book that’s a collection of short stories is one case where I would be unlikely to restart from the beginning if I’d stopped halfway through. (In fact I have one of those: 奥羽の二人 | L38?? though personally I tend to leave even books I haven’t read from in a long while in the “reading” state because I don’t have too many of them and I don’t like the finality of the Stopped state.)
I hope that didn’t come off as dismissive, it wasn’t intended as such. I was referring to people saying it felt like they were putting an end to the book when they intended to come back to it. That emotionally the option felt wrong, despite functionally (so far as I can tell?) the requested feature is the same except for grading (which grading on stopped books is already a bit controversial whether you intend to pick it up again or not).
There was a discussion a while back on whether it would make sense to not allow people to grade books if they haven’t read past 10 or 20% or so. I think in the end we decided it’s up to each one of us to decide whether to grade. I don’t like grading the books I’ve stopped reading because I feel I don’t have a clear enough picture. However if I had stopped a book for being too hard, I’d definitely feel confident in grading it. If you feel confident in your gradings, there’s no reason not to grade stopped books.
To comment on the current product request, I’ve been wanting an “on hold” option since forever. I finally caved only a few days ago and moved two books from reading to stopped. I very much intend to continue reading them, but not just now, and they’d been cluttering my “reading” for ages. I removed the couple of manga I had actually stopped though, so that my stopped category only includes paused books now. I had stopped them early enough that I couldn’t even grade them, and they kept coming up (never bothered to block) so removing was the best option anyway.
No need to do that… If you grasped the difficulty enough to grade, it’s all good. In fact, one of the hypothetical reasons to mark something stopped could be so you can grade it.
The only debate was “should there be a minimum threshold/percentage for allowing grading?”
Ah, I see. I suppose stopped could be renamed “unfinished”, with the grading being optional, but I think people would still want to have the books they intend to continue separate from those they don’t.
That one I got about 1/3 of the way thru before deciding there was no way I was finishing it—a combination of it being too hard and absolutely loathing it. If it were only one, I’d have been able to push thru as I have every other time so far (w some I feel some obligation to finish it and write an accurate review/warning, w some I’m still curious how it turns out—if not both), but not if it’s both. Turns out I only had one grading for it since I haven’t read much in that range yet, and I was confident it was harder than the one I graded it against, but, -shrug-
If it’s one of those things where it’s “technically you can, but you really shouldn’t/you’ll get looked down on for it” like logging shows/movies w EN subs, then I’m steering clear of it
What I was hoping to communicate is that it’s the exact opposite of that sorta thing. Afaik/can recall, nobody was looking down on anyone, regardless of their stance. It was just a question of “what’s the best way for the site to work?” The conclusion was “leave it up to the individual, instead of an arbitrary percentage” is the best way for the site to work.
I use owned for physical and digital. I think that’s the standard usage.
I read a lot of slice of life comedy manga, so if I did pause reading for a while and didn’t know when I’d get back to it, I’d still be unlikely to start over since there’s no real plot. I have moved a couple things back to Owned when I just read a few pages and thought I might want to try again much later, but normally for me either On Hold or Stopped is more appropriate.
Quick, someone make a state diagram!
You can if you feel like you’ve read enough to be able to. Some people aren’t comfortable doing so though and have to block gradings so Natively doesn’t prompt them. As already mentioned, it’s up to each person to decide.
Out of curiosity, if, by default, I wiped any grading blocks on an item when it moves to ‘finished’, would that solve the issues we’re having with ‘On hold’?
It’s always better to not add more statuses if another solution does the trick
To me, there’s not a large difference in meaning between ‘Stopped’ & ‘On hold’? Stopped doesn’t mean dropped…
I’d have my ongoing items more reduced if I had a “On Hold” status. As others said, putting it in Stopped status gives a sense of finality.
Also, when you check someone’s else activity, and see “Stopped” you are back at thinking “Damn, it’s probably not good” when it’s probably just a stop-gap for a lack of “On Hold” and intending to resume it eventually. Gives a very different image to third-parties.
