December
Release of Deprecated / Blacklisted Smart Suggestions after 4 months of work + lots of bugs fixes and code improvements
Welcome to the last update of 2022 -> I decided to finish it with a bang, by using all my remaining holidays to tackle a number of bugs and finally finishing the monumental work around the Deprecated and Blacklisted Smart Suggestion functionality. There is a lot to cover, so let's get into it
Check the full changelog over here ->
Four months later and this feature has finally been implemented -> this took a lot longer than I anticipated and even had to be rolled back once after some issues were detected. But ultimately I am glad the work is now finished
As mentioned previously, this work was done to make sure I can address some groups or sites dropping a particular series, without affecting you. To my knowledge, most other trackers would remove series without notifying users (e.g. Anilist only recently started notifying their users) and I hated that - something I tracked suddenly would disappear, which is why I invested so much time into this functionality.
Whenever I detect that a particular source has been removed (e.g. MangaDex deleted a series), Kenmei would then wait 1 month to make sure it is indeed gone forever and then create a new suggestion, giving you another month to either migrate to another source, if possible or export your list, so you have a snapshot of series that are about to be removed
What that ultimately means is you will never suddenly lose entries without knowing and Kenmei will provide as seamless transition functionality as possible - whether it's migrating to another source or exporting your list, so you have a snapshot of series that would be removed.
I've had quite a few questions about this on Discord, so I am going to reiterate it here again. First of all, as mentioned a long time ago - Kenmei wasn't supposed to have pornographic content. Still, MangaDex supported such content without me realising it, resulting in some adding those series to Kenmei. I removed the ability to add or find such content months ago, but now that export functionality is out, I am permanently removing this content from Kenmei.
The other, more drastic change is the removal of the western made series. I've originally mentioned this in the August Update and now starting to actively remove them from Kenmei:
As I stated, Kenmei was never supposed to have western released series, as it was only intended to track manga, manhwa and manhua. But due to another oversight on my end, it was possible to add such a series without me knowing until the Review process was implemented. As a result, many western series has been added, but it was always tracked by less than 1% of the entire Kenmei userbase.
Now that I have all the necessary tools in place, I am removing the majority of western made series. Some will remain, due to popular demand and being very close in cultural and artistic purpose to either manga or manhwa, but the majority will be removed and new submissions rejected (as has been the case for months now).
Those who have tracked said series, have asked why and the answer is simple -> Kenmei has a clear purpose and the majority of people use Kenmei to track only specific types of series. It was never intended to be everything for everyone, as to build something exceptional you need to focus on a few things, instead of trying to build everything under the sun.
Another area I am really happy with this month is going through loads of bugs, some long-standing, and finally addressing them. You can see the full list in the changelog, but here are some of the highlights:
1. Fix an issue when sorting by unread -> would sometimes order old releases ahead of newer ones, when the latest released at was clearly older. Below is an example
2. Fix unexpected error, when trying to navigate between the pages (e.g. when deleting the last entry on the page). You should always be correctly directed to the right page, if available or fallback to the last page
3. Address some of the most occurring bugs, that have been around for months now. Below are some examples, where you can see a clear drop in errors
As mentioned, I've tried to do as much as I could this month, and most importantly wrap up a long overdue work on the Deprecation Smart Suggestions. With that finally finished, I am excited to go back to other features that have been put on hold in the meantime.
Moreover, I am going to be taking a long holiday in January, the first time in 3 years, so it's unlikely anything new would be added in January. I will continue to review series suggestions and keep an eye on things, but I won't be coding much.
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