Anime Naming Convention

[godix]

When we're talking English primary, how official of an English title do you mean exactly? I can think of examples where what a show was called in English before being officially released changed. For example, I think Higurashi no Naku Koro ni was commonly given the English title 'When the Cicadas Cry' until it was officially distributed in the US under the name 'When They Cry'. So would English mean only the title given when it's officially distributed or would it include the common name fans give it before it's official?

Which brings up a second question, would the database names be changing over time? If a show is currently only in Japan and gets entered under the Japanese title, or the fandom English one, and later gets an official distribution outside Japan under a different title then what happens? Does does it keep it's original title because that's what we're used to or will people suddenly be confused as the title they know suddenly changes? Will there be some sort of notification of title changes, perhaps a sticky that's updated as needed or something? Or will the database just be updated to today's status and slowly get more and more out of date over time?

I'm inclined towards English Primary (Japanese Secondary), but if that means database entries are going to be randomly changing without notice on use, I'd be more inclined towards Japanese Primary (English Secondary) since the Japanese name won't be changing.

[pink haze]

I find this slightly daunting:
Place Promised In Our Early Days, The (Beyond The Clouds) [Kumo no Mukou, Yakusoku no Basho]

But I'll prolly vote for it anyway. =_=
English is the site's official language. Also, if you're trying to find an anime quickly in an alphabetical list (w/o using ctrl+F), it's more practical for the more common title to be listed first. I think the English is the more common on this site.

[Nya-chan Production]

I find this slightly daunting:
Place Promised In Our Early Days, The (Beyond The Clouds) [Kumo no Mukou, Yakusoku no Basho]

But I'll prolly vote for it anyway. =_=
English is the site's official language. Also, if you're trying to find an anime quickly in an alphabetical list (w/o using ctrl+F), it's more practical for the more common title to be listed first. I think the English is the more common on this site.

The Japanese is recently more used in anime naming, though (see http://www.animemusicvideos.org/forum/v ... m.php?f=33 )

Actually, question more for doki or dero - would it be possible to have some default setting on this (probably by the votes Eng [Jap], it seems) and be able to switch it? That shouldn't be that hard, right?

I'd even agree to help moderating names of anime if lacking of some titles would be a problem in this. And I mean it seriously.

That would require a complete overhaul of how the catalogue works. As in, a fair chunk of the database would have to be rewritten/modified. The "Main [Secondary]" thing would be just stored like that as the name, it wouldn't be an automatic database detection. Of course, if doki/dero feel like modifying the catalog to reflect that, it would be awesome. Sure, it'd require a lot of effort to sift through the whole catalog to fix everything, but it is a thing we'll probably have to do regardless, considering what most of the votes seem to be.

Anyway, I personally would like a "Japanese [English]" naming convention.

I don't know how the naming is managed right now, in my opinion the proposition as it stays now would need overhaul too, and doing a second column for a separate name isn't that harder. It's even more advantageous, because it allows for greater flexibility.

[mirkosp]

No, it's not a "second column for a separate name," we'd rather need a column with a pulldown to manage whether a name is Japanese, English, or Other, and another Pulldown for that name+language combo "main" or "alias" status, aside from the alias columns we have right now. That way based on the language and main/alias combination, the names would be properly displayed as per the users favourite settings. Right now we only have the name, and alias status. If one is alias then it's just linked to the main entry without any other specification. The overhaul that would be needed by just renaming would be different, as we'd just need to change the name of the main entries to reflect the "Title (Secondary Title)" convention, instead of reprogramming a chunk of the database and having to fix all the entries in the hope nothing screws up meanwhile (it will because the database will work differently, so the catalogue would be offline while we work, I suppose, if we go for that).
That is, if my somewhat limited knowledge of databases and SQL is actually on spot. Of course it's true that your suggestion is more flexible and would ultimately be better, but we also have to think how feasible would it be to implement at this point.

[Nya-chan Production]

No, it's not a "second column for a separate name," we'd rather need a column with a pulldown to manage whether a name is Japanese, English, or Other, and another Pulldown for that name+language combo "main" or "alias" status, aside from the alias columns we have right now. That way based on the language and main/alias combination, the names would be properly displayed as per the users favourite settings. Right now we only have the name, and alias status. If one is alias then it's just linked to the main entry without any other specification. The overhaul that would be needed by just renaming would be different, as we'd just need to change the name of the main entries to reflect the "Title (Secondary Title)" convention, instead of reprogramming a chunk of the database and having to fix all the entries in the hope nothing screws up meanwhile (it will because the database will work differently, so the catalogue would be offline while we work, I suppose, if we go for that).
That is, if my somewhat limited knowledge of databases and SQL is actually on spot. Of course it's true that your suggestion is more flexible and would ultimately be better, but we also have to think how feasible would it be to implement at this point.

I am talking about database mainly, though, not about mod/admin interface :/
I don't even know how that looks or how that is written ;x

[pink haze]

I find this slightly daunting:
Place Promised In Our Early Days, The (Beyond The Clouds) [Kumo no Mukou, Yakusoku no Basho]

But I'll prolly vote for it anyway. =_=
English is the site's official language. Also, if you're trying to find an anime quickly in an alphabetical list (w/o using ctrl+F), it's more practical for the more common title to be listed first. I think the English is the more common on this site.

The Japanese is recently more used in anime naming, though (see http://www.animemusicvideos.org/forum/v ... m.php?f=33 )

When it comes to making the database more search-friendly (be it using the search function or just eyeballing a list), it's not a question of which language names more anime. It's a question of which gets more searches overall. That includes duplicate searches for the same anime. You have to take into account that some anime are looked for more often than others.

Naturally, we're disregarding anime for which both languages use the same title, be it Japanese or English (or French or gibberish). For those there is no nomenclature problem. Same goes for anime that are never released internationally.
Also, when it comes to using the search function, I'm trying to ignore anime where the common keywords are the same in both languages (ex: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon).

That said, which language gets more searches? I'm leaning towards English for now.

[Nya-chan Production]

I find this slightly daunting:
Place Promised In Our Early Days, The (Beyond The Clouds) [Kumo no Mukou, Yakusoku no Basho]

But I'll prolly vote for it anyway. =_=
English is the site's official language. Also, if you're trying to find an anime quickly in an alphabetical list (w/o using ctrl+F), it's more practical for the more common title to be listed first. I think the English is the more common on this site.

The Japanese is recently more used in anime naming, though (see http://www.animemusicvideos.org/forum/v ... m.php?f=33 )

When it comes to making the database more search-friendly (be it using the search function or just eyeballing a list), it's not a question of which language names more anime. It's a question of which gets more searches overall. That includes duplicate searches for the same anime. You have to take into account that some anime are looked for more often than others.

Naturally, we're disregarding anime for which both languages use the same title, be it Japanese or English (or French or gibberish). For those there is no nomenclature problem. Same goes for anime that are never released internationally.
Also, when it comes to using the search function, I'm trying to ignore anime where the common keywords are the same in both languages (ex: Bishoujo Senshi Sailor Moon).

That said, which language gets more searches? I'm leaning towards English for now.

Your opinion is pretty biased - it is well known that the list IS English, so why should people look for Japanese names? If it was well-known it was Japanese, people would mostly search for Japanese names. Only if it supported both equally, you could have a look at the statistics and say "This gets more searches".
I can see your point, though, that's why I say I'd be for both, switchable, if it is possible.

Btw: Kumo no Mukou, Yakusoku no Bashou]

[mirkosp]

I assume you guys are just ignoring that the current aliasing system takes into account the aliasing when displaying search results and that the only reason for this discussion is for the name displayed in the entries/VIDIDs, correct? Search is in no way the issue here, imho, since it'd work fine regardless.

[pink haze]

Search is in no way the issue here, imho, since it'd work fine regardless.

Ah, so even if "English Only" were chosen, running a search for "Kumo no Mukou" would work regardless? That would be a convenient improvement.
(Correct me if I'm misunderstanding you; I'm not sure if we're talking about the same things.)

Anyway, search is still an issue when you're using your eyes, not the search function (ex: when you're looking at a various anime list); I've been discussing both.

Your opinion is pretty biased - it is well known that the list IS English, so why should people look for Japanese names? If it was well-known it was Japanese, people would mostly search for Japanese names. Only if it supported both equally, you could have a look at the statistics and say "This gets more searches".
I can see your point, though, that's why I say I'd be for both, switchable, if it is possible.

Btw: Kumo no Mukou, Yakusoku no Bashou]

Don't worry, I'm taking that into account. Of course it's necessary to look at what queries people make, or would make, under ideal conditions (i.e. their choice isn't affected by the site's current system). It's better to consider, not this site's search statistics (which I certainly don't have access to, and Mirko points out is irrelevant anyway), but whether popular anime titles (which people are likely to be looking for) usually go by their Japanese or English names in general use by populations similar to this site's. Still leaning towards English. I don't plan on voting until I'm more convinced one way or the other.

And I agree, I'd prefer switchable if possible, though in that case I'd rather only one language be shown at a time, to save space.

Because I still find these daunting:
Record of Lodoss War: Chronicles of the Heroic Knight (TV) [Lodoss Tou Senki: Eiyuu Kishi Den]
Lodoss Tou Senki: Eiyuu Kishi Den [Record of Lodoss War: Chronicles of the Heroic Knight (TV)]

A character limit would be nice. << I work for a publishing company; creating giant navigable lists of names is what we do. Character limits preserve space-efficiency and legibility.

[Nya-chan Production]

The alias search works even now, so that's not really an improvement ;x

And a character limit is kinda useless when any entry has to be approved by mods, who won't approve unnecessarily long entries ^^