Forum - View topicAnother Easy Fix - Submission Feedback
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chris keck
 Posts: 96 Location: Rhode Island, U.S. |
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Mina-san,
A thread of recent posts expressed the frustrations of contributors waiting for their submissions to be approved and the staff trying to get the submissions vetted. animenewsnetwork.com/bbs/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=14274 I can understand why contributors would be annoyed. I myself am still waiting to find out what happened to several titles I submitted back in February. The main problem as I see it (if you don't count the reviewer to submission ratio) is the lack of feedback. It seems like as soon as you click the submission button it just disappears into a black hole. The ANN Encyclopedia staff used to post newly released titles in the forum. animenewsnetwork.com/bbs/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=6299 I suggest that the staff return to that posting policy. Make a new sticky thread (they seem to be really fond of those) for Submissions. Then periodically (once a week should be sufficient) post the new submissions, the approved submissions and the rejected submissions. It should be very easy for the staff, just copy and paste. No website changes are required. That way the contributors can see that their submission have indeed been received and are awaiting consideration. They can also help the staff out by noting any problems with the titles that are awaiting review. I hope this helps. chris keck |
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dormcat
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 9903 Location: New Taipei City, Taiwan, ROC |
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The reason is simple: we are understaffed.
Take myself as an example: I can (and have to) deal with following submissions: error reports, duplicate persons reports, release information, and new title submission. Each action takes time to be finished. - A simple error report (typo, importance of the role) or duplicate persons report with clear source of information takes about a minute. - An error report without source (particularly when the report was submitted by an anonymous user) info but seems to be valid may cost me up to 30 minutes to look up for the source information myself. - A complex error report (such as the reorganization of episode titles) requires up to an hour or two to be finished, depending on the stablilty of my network connection. - A duplicate persons report with o/oh/oo/ou problem requires source info from the official site. If an official site is not available, I'll compare various sources to see which one would be the fittest. Takes about 10-30 minutes, depending on the availability of the information. - A release info takes about 10-15 minutes, including finding the sharp and correct picture for the respective title and other info e.g. release date and pricing. - Last but not least, the new title submission. First, the 'new' title must not exist within the Encyclopedia already. When the submitter made a typo or the addition/deletion of a punctuation mark, the system would not be able to detect it and will queue it to the submission list. Second, official sites in Japanese is a must have for new anime titles. Vintage titles listed on fansites or other anime-related sites have to be verified with archives of the production companies and/or Japanese merchandise sites (Amazon, Rakuten, etc). Third, the format of a title is sometimes debatable, e.g. the recent Elfen Lied 'episode 14'. Two users had submitted it: one as a 'Special' and one as an 'OAV'. We are still not sure which type should it be categorized. Therefore, even when being processed, a new title takes up to two hours to be confirmed and listed, and now we have HUNDREDS pending. We do have day jobs. 
That sounds fine. We'll resume it shortly. |
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chris keck
Posts: 96 Location: Rhode Island, U.S. |
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animenewsnetwork.com/show.php?text=28 I would think that if there was such a deluge of work that they would be recruiting for more help. I commend Mr. Chang and the other individual ANN staff members for their efforts. But they (and the site's users) aren't being supported by the senior staff if no one cares about getting them some more help. I assume there is a list somewhere of the titles that have been submitted, so it should be simple to copy that into a post once a week along with those released and rejected. As a sometime contributor all I'm asking for is a little feedback. Is that unreasonable? Thank you for adding the submission post. I'm looking forward to seeing it. chris keck |
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abunai
Old Regular
 Posts: 5463 Location: 露命 |
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You are confusing paid staff (which are recruited for the jobs, as the situation applies) with unpaid volunteers (i.e. most of the Encyclopedia staff). We don't get paid. In essence, you are getting the benefit of our hard work for free. Take a minute - a full minute, all of sixty seconds, please - to consider the implications of that last sentence. Recruiting new Encyclopedia staff is not as simple as just putting jobs up. One requirement of being on the staff is that the person in question must be unusually meticulous, almost to the point where "anal-retentive" is the proper term. After all, any error in the Encyclopedia takes ten times as long to remove as it does to enter. Worse still, it propagates through the internet, as we are often used as a reference database. In other words, though there might be many applicants, few would qualify. And the few users who qualify might not be willing to spend long hours on unpaid work. I know that I have second thoughts sometimes, and I presume this applies to all my colleagues.
They care. It's a frequent topic at our "staff meetings" (i.e. the separate staff forum). However, as I indicated above, the problem isn't getting willing volunteers - it's getting willing and able volunteers.
It's not unreasonable, but I question whether it is feasible. We already provide feedback when titles are approved. I'm sure we could make a list, somehow - even though the present format of the data requires that we do so manually. This would, of course, take time. Time that would have to be taken out of our regular work commitment to the site. As my colleague dormcat pointed out, we do have day jobs, and other commitments (for instance, I am the father of three - as well as being already committed to various other projects). Now, could you please give me an itemised list of which tasks you would like us to neglect instead, in favour of keeping you informed? - abunai |
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Samurai CDZ
 Posts: 776 Location: Manhattan, KS |
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Er, just automate it. On the right side of the encyclopedia pages under Misc. put a new subheading that says New Additions. And then have the database pull the last 20 additions (or 50 or whatever you want) to the database. And this list will automagically change with each addition. Of course, it works best if there is a datetime stamp, but you could do it off the id number, too. It's a very simple query:
Replace the brackets with the proper names. Is the database really built in a such a way that this is not possible? |
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chris keck
Posts: 96 Location: Rhode Island, U.S. |
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Mr. Rasmussen,
I’m sure your time is quite valuable. But, I also think it would be worth your time to keep the contributors up-to-date on the status of their submissions. For every one of the staff there is at least a hundred regular contributors who care just as much about building the Encyclopedia as you do. Whenever you feel overburdened you should keep in mind that you’re just the tip of the iceberg, that most of the work is being done by those regular contributors. Nothing you’ve written so far has convinced me that posting the status of submissions once a week would take an excessive amount of time, and "Samurai CDZ" has suggested a way it could be automated. And, if nothing else it shows that you value the contributors’ efforts and treat them as equals in building the Encyclopedia. chris keck P.S. I just got the notice that twelve submissions of mine, including those ones from February, have been approved. I don't know if it was just a coincidence of if you were greasing the squeaky wheel, but I'd be remiss if I did not thank you for getting those done. Thank you. |
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Dan42
Chief Encyclopedist
 Posts: 3817 Location: Montreal |
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Your prayers have been heard. Having a list of recently approved titles has been a suggestion for a long time, and seeing how everyone wants it so bad, I'll implement it... soon. In the meantime, we will post lists in the encyc forum when a new batch is approved.
But to address a few criticisms: 1) It's not true that there is no feedback on new titles. It's our policy to send a PM to the one who submitted the title when it has been approved. 2) As abunai pointed out, the issue with getting new encyc staff is that they have to be already familiar with the encyc. Basically, this means it is pointless to post something in the staff openings page. When we feel we really need more manpower, we will contact someone who is already an active contributor and offer the "job". 3) The basis of the encyclopedia is contribution by regular users, not by specially-empowered staff, and I would like to keep that focus. Although some measure of administrative tasks is unavoidable, I would like to work on making the encyclopedia more open rather than get more staffers. |
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woelfie
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 380 Location: Belgium |
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Maybe you could have a list of this errors without clear information, and leave it up to other (reliable) regular contributors to provide you with this information. |
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Shiroi Hane
Encyclopedia Editor
 Posts: 7595 Location: Wales |
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The same would apply to Uta Kata, if not more so, since the DVD-exclusive episode is labelled as 第13話 (OVA) 「初冬の双夏」 on the DVD itself. |
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