Encyclopedia FAQ
Q: I added a picture for an anime but later I came back to the page and it was gone. Why?
A: Simply put: your image didn't follow the guidelines. You know, that big block of text before the "submit" button? Maybe you should have read it. For the most part, the encyclopedia contains purely factual information. Pictures however are more subjective, and what may seem like a good picture for you may not match our criteria.
Q: I added a plot summary for an anime but later I came back to the page and it was gone. Why?
A: Simply put: your text didn't follow the guidelines. You know, that big block of text before the "submit" button? Maybe you should have read it. For the most part, the encyclopedia contains purely factual information. A plot summary however is a *lot* more subjective, and we have strict criteria for what we consider a good plot summary. A summary is not a review, so the perfect plot summary is as neutral as possible. It shouldn't encourage or discourage seeing the anime; it should only inform about what's the anime's plot.
Q: The picture sucks for anime X!
Q: Why is there no picture for anime X?
Q: The plot summary sucks for anime X!
Q: Why is there no plot summary for anime X?
A: The Encyclopedia is a user-driven system, and as such it's only as good as its users. If something is missing or not good enough for your tastes, why not submit it yourself?
Q: Why is Anime X only 15 episodes long? I'm sure I've seen episode #16 of it!
A: There are several possible explanations. - That 16th episode is actually an OAV or a special - It's an error in the database. Please find out for sure and if it's the case, make an error report.
Q: Are there any fun games we can play with the data?
A: Hmmm... you can try to surf from anime to person to anime without ever visiting the same person or anime twice. How long of a chain can you make?
Q: Aren't Shinichi Watanabe and Shinichiro Watanabe the same person?
A: No they're not. Thank God! The World can only handle so much of Nabeshin!
Q: Why do I get some weird warning about "The following name is suspiciously
similar to ..." ?
Q: What's the issue with the extended vowels? Why are there o-, ô, o, oh,
ou, oo, and such? Shouldn't X's name be written with an [o-, ô, o, oh,
ou, oo] instead?
Q: Why is "Junichi Seki" spelled that way? Shouldn't it be "Jun'ichi Seki"?
A: The "fun" thing about the Japanese language is that, because it uses a different writing system than occidental languages, it can only be *approximated* using the roman alphabet. That approximation is called "romanization" and there are many different/contradictory ways of romanizing the Japanese language.
Extended vowels (a.k.a. long vowels) are the bane of every romanization system for the Japanese language. As demonstrated by our lexicon entry for shoujo, extended vowels can have a significant impact on the meaning of a word. The Japanese ear is trained from birth to recognize the subtle different between U and UU but, just like Japanese can rarely recognize the difference between R and L sounds, we gaijin can rarely recognize the difference between short and long vowels. This results in some romanization systems (like Hepburn modified) that drop long vowels entirely and others (like ...) that keep it. This is complicated further by different ways of romanizing long vowels. "o-", "ô", "oh", "ou", and "oo" are all usually equivalent... but not always. There are so many exceptions that it's simply not possible to adopt any single standard for the Encyclopedia. For the most part, we try to use the "most common" romanization for any single name.
See lexicon entry for Romanization
