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Recommendation Threads/ Beginners Guide to VNs


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There have been a ton of recommendation threads recently which is a good thing. However, I'm seeing a lot for the same basic recommendations. I figured maybe there should be a dedicated thread, or forum just for recommendations.

 

I also was wondering about the possibility of some of the more experience members of the forums to create a Beginners Guide to VNs, recommending some good, beginner VNs for people who are brand new to the medium. If we create a dedicated forum for recommendations, it can be pinned and titled with a "Read before Posting" tag. 

 

Thoughts?

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We had the exact same discussion on the staff forum a few days ago.

Basically what came out of it was:

-A single thread would be a mess because of overlapping demands and tracking who's recommending for who would be hard

-An entire sub-section would be overkill

 

So we left it as it is on the assumption that there wouldn't always be so much "recommend me a VN" thread.

 

From now since the trend is still existent, I was also thinking about making that beginner's guide with the help of the community, but struggling about an efficient and satisfying way to put it together. 

-> Ideas welcomed on this point!

 

A temporary solution would be a pinned thread linking to topics like Kaguya's "50 VNs etc" list and a reminder to use the search engine. Said links should be included in the possible beginner's guide actually.

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We had the exact same discussion on the staff forum a few days ago.

Basically what came out of it was:

-A single thread would be a mess because of overlapping demands and tracking who's recommending for who would be hard

-An entire sub-section would be overkill

 

So we left it as it is on the assumption that there wouldn't always be so much "recommend me a VN" thread.

 

From now since the trend is still existent, I was also thinking about making that beginner's guide with the help of the community, but struggling about an efficient and satisfying way to put it together. 

-> Ideas welcomed on this point!

 

A temporary solution would be a pinned thread linking to topics like Kaguya's "50 VNs etc" list and a reminder to use the search engine. Said links should be included in the possible beginner's guide actually.

 

Well, for the guide, I suppose we could break it into sections. Try to have it as categorized as possible, somewhat like VNDB. Have catagories for length, routes, genre, etc. There would be over lap with novels being listed multiple times, but hopefully, by doing it that way, people can find exactly what they are looking for to begin with VNs.

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Well, for the guide, I suppose we could break it into sections. Try to have it as categorized as possible, somewhat like VNDB. Have catagories for length, routes, genre, etc. There would be over lap with novels being listed multiple times, but hopefully, by doing it that way, people can find exactly what they are looking for to begin with VNs.

 

I was thinking about making about 4 main categories: Translated, Translated for beginners, Untranslated, Untranslated for beginners in japanese. Then making groups with a main tag and further adding other tags along with a presentation of said VN. Tag system allow people to ctrl+f to whatever interests them. Probably still need some ideas about that though.

 

My main concern was rather about how we, as a community, decide what to put on the list? How much VN should there be, who gets to choose them and on what criteria. 

It should be a way that allows underrated gems to find their way into the list without making it a concatenation of everyone's favorite stuff. Also, a tidy way.

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Perhaps a Fuwa Committee should be formed to do this? Made up of the brightest and wisest of Fuwa VN readers. 

 

An alternative solution is for one person to just to do it and edit it based off suggestions from the community. For length, we could limit it to just 10 or 15 VNs for beginners with a variety of genres. As for Untranslated stuff, I have no idea how to go about that. 

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Personally I think we should take a few vn's from each genre. We should have some a few very good ones each because too many would make it messy.

As for different genres is because people like different things. I think the first vn someone plays should be something they already enjoy. Possibly not something new. What is the main focus (genre) in the vn? Mystery, moe, characters, action etc. They should start reading "My girlfriend is the PRESIDENT" if they don't like moe. They should read something else. It's not a bad vn, just not good as the first one.

We prbly should mix some all-ages and eroges together? Tag them? Other section for them?

 

Steins;gate example is a good vn for someone new, it has science fiction, characters, story, all-ages, mystery. (the patch is abit buggy tho..)

 

 

As for untranslated vn's. People who are new to vn's prbly ain't going to start playing untranslated vn's from the start. That's more for people who have played a few.

But yeah, a good guide about untransled vn's  would be very nice. I agree because I read untranslated ones, still learing jp tho...

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Well, if we mix them, the thing to do would make sure we make it clear that the VN has explicit content in it. A quick way I see it working is something like this.

 

Short VNs

Name

Name

Name (Explicit Content)

Name

 

Medium

Name 

Name

Name

 

Repeat for long VNs. Then do genres. Listing the same VN under multiple tags should be fine as a user can simply look over the list and see what it falls under.

 

We could also simply list the VNs with a breif plot summary and tags and do our best to keep them grouped together by similarity. 

 

Edit: We could also easily do a "If you liked, X, we suggest reading, Y" type thing too.

Edited by solidbatman
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Tays Short Version:

Recommendation threads work because they're personalized and social. That's often why people make them, not just because they don't know where to go to tag-search, etc.

The decision about a VN guide boils down to whether or not we want to make this an "official" Fuwanovel guide/product. If we're not looking for a shiny product, then I'd suggest opening the option to any member to write a guide, which we'd feature in a "table-of-contents" like sticky. If we ARE looking for an official project, we should probably follow Batman's idea and create a core team.

Tay's Long Version:

Recommendation Threads -- There are two issues that come to my mind with these. #1) People of varying VN experience create these threads (including many "advanced", or experienced VN readers); and #2) Many of these threads are made because for many it's more fun and more enjoyable to socially ask for recommendations. The best recommendations seem to only work when the query has been personalized to, "What do you like to read?" and/or "What have you already read and praised on VNDB?"

Beginner Guide(s) -- Depending on how the majority wants to do this project, my mind's eye sees two ways of successfully doing this:

Option 1 - Anybody who wants to make a "Beginners Guide" about any VN topic can do so, and we'll sticky a "Table of Contents"-like thread of these guides in the VN forum. Pros: Anybody can make a guide about any VN aspect they'd like, and the workload will be voluntary and much reduced. Cons: Quality may vary, some topics may be missed.

Option 2 - We create an "Official Fuwanovel VN Guide" or "Beginners' Guide" (or whatever). It would be a large project and would probably benefit from a core team working on it with community feedback at certain milestones.

Edited by Tay
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In a perfect world, we could move the recommendation threads to a separate forum/ sub-forum and still create the guides. Life has many annoyances and if marking something as read is a major one, I'd say someone has a wonderful life ;)

 

It's not that I don't like the recommendation threads. I think they are a great thing. They just feel like they are cluttering up the VN Talk forum, much like the forum games were cluttering the General Forums. 

 

I love the idea for an official VN guide, and I believe it could be done in a way to benefit all members. I prefer option 2 because it would have more people working on it, and thus, more opinions. 

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Many of these threads are made because for many it's more fun and more enjoyable to socially ask for recommendations. The best recommendations seem to only work when the query has been personalized to, "What do you like to read?" and/or "What have you already read and praised on VNDB?"

 

That's a fair point. I hadn't thought about it. I'll leave up to you admins to decide if creating a new sub-section for that is worth another line on the front page. 

 

Still would be willing to try to put together that VN guide too, even though I have little experience since I didn't read much VNs.

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That's a fair point. I hadn't thought about it. I'll leave up to you admins to decide if creating a new sub-section for that is worth another line on the front page. 

 

Still would be willing to try to put together that VN guide too, even though I have little experience since I didn't read much VNs.

Recommendations: I'm not sure I know what the best solution is. I hope you and others will keep weighing in -- it's enormously helpful.

Guide: It could be very, very cool. I agree.

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Hm. I'd say that recommendations being personalized is quite a fair point. Still, in a lot of those recommendation threads, you can see that the VNs suggested are about the same VNs (Ever 17, G-senjou no maou, Little Busters, Rewrite, Fate Stay Night, etc) okay I'm getting to lazy to list all of them, but I'd say there are about 20 VNs which are most suggested here.

 

I think making a team and listing a few recommendations for every genre is a good idea that would help a lot of people. If a certain person wants a recommendation that is not in that list, then they can just make a thread. However, I'm quite confident that with official recommendations for most genres the number of "suggest me a VN" thread would decrease quite a lot, so I support the idea.

 

Also, if you're actually thinking of making a team I'm all up for helping, if you guys want~

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you can see that the VNs suggested are about the same VNs (Ever 17, G-senjou no maou, Little Busters, Rewrite, Fate Stay Night, etc) okay I'm getting to lazy to list all of them, but I'd say there are about 20 VNs which are most suggested here.

 

In addition to the fact that a large majority of the community cannot readily view untranslated novels, I would have to go for another vote on "No". 

 

I have a review site in my siggy.

I tag all the "potentially good" titles with "Recommended by Joyjason". 

I think that's good enough.

 

To elaborate on your idea, though, why don't we make a team of 10-20 members who regularly play untranslated games, and have them "vouch" for a title? So when we make a "recommended list", it'll look something like this:

 

Title 1: Genre: Suspense | Recommended by (A, B, C, E, F, I)

Title 2: Genre: School Life Romance | Recommended by (G, F, I, J)

 

and you get my point. 

Go a step further? Let's say I was the letter "J" (lol Joyjason). I'd probably hyperlink the letter (the part that's bolded) to my review site on my blog. 

 

Just one person "recommending" a title isn't good, but having an entire section dedicated for recommendations seems to be overkill.

 

Doesn't the idea above seem like an in-between?

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Well since I'm being half quoted out of context here, I will just copy paste what I already wrote.

 

 

I don't think a single topic for it is a good idea, because often there are 2 active recommendation topics at the same time and it would just get mixed together and it would be a big mess, and then take that mods would be moving the new topics (because people will still make new topics for it even if there is a topic for it already) and it would get mixed even more.

 

A sub forum would work, but in that case I would like to request that the "Mark this forum as read" button also marks subforums or that subforums do not make the whole section glowing, it already is annoying in the general discussion as it is constantly glowing for me thanks to the IRC chat even though there are no worthwhile posts. (which often results in me ignoring GD completely and I don't want that to happen in VN talk section)

 

 

There is also 3rd option, leave it be. Yes there is few of these topics a week but they can start VN discussion which is what the section is about and also once they are solved, they instantly disappear on page2+, because nobody is posting in them anymore.

I as the "VN talk/Fan TL talk mod" do not see this as a problem.

Currently there is 4 topics like that, spread on the first page. That is from 30 topics.

What the suggestions above do is make such topic ALWAYS on top, either with sticky topic or a subforum, which I don't think is ideal.

 

Just take in mind that any sticky topic or subforum will take space from the page. I would already merge the IRC info and IRC client info there into one topic but I understand why it is separated.

 

 

Then reaction to comments about recommendation topics being 'noise' and me being 'lazy' because I don't want to enforce a strict one topic for everything recommendation related rule.

 

Well if you read some of my previous posts in this section, I was always promoting the idea of members moderating themselves, and it has worked just fine till now.

The idea is to not turn this into VNDB where people are afraid to even post because they might post in the wrong section of ask a forbidden question.

 

And how is it a noise if its a discussion about visual novels, if this was the case then there might also be a topic for "GD for all VNs" where all VN discussion comes and people just have to quote everyone to even have a discussion.

 

Recommendation topic is something that is always unique to the person asking so it is not useless that people can start their own.

 

 

If its all in one topic, some people can just get ignored or overlooked because something else is discussed etc... and I feel that is not good for the community.

 

I don't know, its my personal opinion but I really don't think this is a problem at all, it starts new discussions which is what we want, shoving it all in one topic just seems wrong.

 

 

 

 

And final words and conclusion:

I think a guide or a basic help topic of sorts with short info should help people decide on what they want to play next without the need for a topic, but the personal topics should still be available for people that have more detailed requirements or want more details about the game itself (for example the recommendation topic with the ☆ rating system was pretty original and nice discussion).

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And final words and conclusion:

I think a guide or a basic help topic of sorts with short info should help people decide on what they want to play next without the need for a topic, but the personal topics should still be available for people that have more detailed requirements or want more details about the game itself (for example the recommendation topic with the ☆ rating system was pretty original and nice discussion).

I agree that we shouldn't outright say no to recommendations. And I now agree that a single thread wouldn't work at all. My problem is that I'm beginning to see a lot of the same requests, and the same big titles being recommended. 

 

Of course, we could just leave it as it is. It really is just a minor annoyance for me, just like the glowing unread marker is for you. (All of my green markers are glowing all the time. I didn't even notice them until it was pointed out :P Thanks, now its gonna bother me too)

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My problem is that I'm beginning to see a lot of the same requests, and the same big titles being recommended. 

 

Of course, we could just leave it as it is. It really is just a minor annoyance for me, just like the glowing unread marker is for you.

 

Understandable, I believe that the guide should help reduce number of such topics, it was a great idea.

There will still be such topics, but without some strict rules you can't prevent them completely.

And one of the strict rules on fuwanovel is not having any strict rules at all as you might know :)

 

There are people asking for recommendations in completely unrelated topics (in a TS topic for example), asking for technical help to questions answered in faq etc., but they should not be treated any less than other members, they might just have less time to read through everything important before they ask (there is lot of it if you look from perspective of a new person) and we mods are there to direct them the right way, not punish them :)

 

Just ask yourself how many times did you just need a quick answer on some other forum and did not even read the rules of the board? I am certainly guilty of that and that's why I can easily forgive someone on fuwanovel.

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Understandable, I believe that the guide should help reduce number of such topics, it was a great idea.

There will still be such topics, but without some strict rules you can't prevent them completely.

And one of the strict rules on fuwanovel is not having any strict rules at all as you might know :)

 

There are people asking for recommendations in completely unrelated topics (in a TS topic for example), asking for technical help to questions answered in faq etc., but they should not be treated any less than other members, they might just have less time to read through everything important before they ask (there is lot of it if you look from perspective of a new person) and we mods are there to direct them the right way, not punish them :)

 

Just ask yourself how many times did you just need a quick answer on some other forum and did not even read the rules of the board? I am certainly guilty of that and that's why I can easily forgive someone on fuwanovel.

I never think of anyone as less of a member. Its just getting cluttered in my opinion. And like I said, I'm not saying to get rid of them at all. This is in no way adding another rule, but just a place for Recommendation threads to go. Plus, having a dedicated recommendation forum thingy might help newer members find what they are looking for right off the bat. 

 

Seeing how nearly everyone is in agreement on the guide at least, I suppose a team should be formed for it and it move forward?

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I never think of anyone as less of a member. Its just getting cluttered in my opinion. And like I said, I'm not saying to get rid of them at all. This is in no way adding another rule, but just a place for Recommendation threads to go. Plus, having a dedicated recommendation forum thingy might help newer members find what they are looking for right off the bat. 

 

Seeing how nearly everyone is in agreement on the guide at least, I suppose a team should be formed for it and it move forward?

 

 

No no, it wasn't targeted at you, just in general.

 

 

Back to the guide... I actually have a thing to say before that, let me compose it into a post :)

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Lot of the topics are in this format:

I played VN A, VN B, VN C, is there any other VN that I could like?

 

Now you might think that all the VNs would fall into one category, but that most of the time not the case.

 

What people reading the topic and giving a recommendations do is they think "Oh, I played those and I liked them too and I also played VN D and that is what Im going to recommend".

So the categorization isn't really according to genre or tag, but more like 'VNs Steve liked', 'VNs Joyjason liked', VNs batman liked' etc.

 

Essentially what Joyjason said could work, but imagine this idea:

 

People who are often looking for recommendation come from fuwanovel website, which is focused on English translated VNs only.

Now I would not include non-English translated VNs in the guide, because it is nigh on impossible to include all of the good ones, I would still leave that to the personal recommendation topics.

 

And as for English translated, I present you:

 

 

LINKED ORGANIZED LIBRARY INTERCONNECTION SYSTEM for Fuwanovel (aka LOLIS for Fuwanovel)

 

What is LOLIS for Fuwanovel? Well let me explain:

 

Only portion of the people visiting Fuwanovel website are then registering on the forums, why limit the guide only to them and not include all users of Fuwanovel website. LOLIS would allow common users of Fuwanovel website to see what VNs were liked by people who also liked the VN they just finished, as well as recommendations from the page of VN they liked.

__________________________________

 

How would it work? I imagine it like this:

 

You would use your Fuwanovel forum login (that would be necessary to prevent spam and misuse like in the case of the comment box).

And then:

1. you would be able to mark VNs you liked from those that have a listing on the website.

2. you would be able to create a 'link' between 2 VNs about which you would recommend if one was liked

3. you would be able to vote if you agree or disagree with 'link' created by another registered member

__________________________________

 

So what would it look like in the end? For example:

 

You come to a listing of Rewrite and you would see:

74 people like this game (show list)

35 people who liked this game also like Little Busters (show list)

12 people who liked this game also like Wanko to Kurasou (show list)

17 people (85%) (show list) would recommend Little Busters if you liked Rewrite, 3 people (15%) (show list) disagree.

12 people (75%) (show list) would recommend Hoshizora no Memoria if you liked Rewrite, 4 people (25%) (show list) disagree.

 

the names in the list would be clickable and just linked to a single page like lolis.fuwanovel.net/Steve where you could see likes with links (preferably with images) about what they liked on Fuwanovel, what recommendation links they created, what links they agree and disagree with and all that.

__________________________________

 

Why is this better than having someone create the links and recommendations? Well its simple:

More people will always produce more accurate result, if you leave it to only few people, they will select what they believe and that way people might miss on some VNs because of that.

__________________________________

 

I know it wouldn't be easy, but it would be in my eyes the most effective solution that would most likely vastly reduce the repetition of identical recommendation requests and only leave the unique, more personal topics.

 

Now I ask you, would you like to see LOLIS on Fuwanovel?

 

 

disclaimer: I have no power to actually make this system nor do I have any say in Fuwanovel website administration, this is just an idea I just had and think would be cool :)

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LINKED ORGANIZED LIBRARY INTERCONNECTION SYSTEM for Fuwanovel (aka LOLIS for Fuwanovel)

 

What is LOLIS for Fuwanovel? Well let me explain:

 

Only portion of the people visiting Fuwanovel website are then registering on the forums, why limit the guide only to them and not include all users of Fuwanovel website. LOLIS would allow common users of Fuwanovel website to see what VNs were liked by people who also liked the VN they just finished, as well as recommendations from the page of VN they liked.

__________________________________

 

 

 

well the idea is super good it's like something similar to MAL but for vn's and i love the name it's a must keep like hey can you link me your LOLIS it's genius

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In practice, a single thread for all recommendations is enough.

 

It's not like X's recommendation for Y will be a lot different from X's recommendation for you unless you really specify what you like. And you can always quote.

but we want LOLIS and yes dubble meaning intended

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