Sandbox MTL

Discussion in 'Novel General' started by elixium, Feb 11, 2022.

  1. elixium

    elixium Member

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    Hi everyone,
    I and my friend are working on developing a sandbox MTL Site.
    Is it okay to talk about it in here?
     
  2. pleasepickthisup

    pleasepickthisup ✨pretty✨

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  3. elixium

    elixium Member

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    Our project's main goal is about creating user-driven MTL site.
    In general, The system will permit readers to add series just by giving raw site url, then system will translate it within minutes and reader can read the serie. You can think it as going raw site and using google translate in it. But with much more features.

    Currently we are on the stage-0.
    In this stage we try to implement normal features any mtl sites would have.
    Such as;
    - Multi translator engines
    - New added series
    - Latest updates
    - Library
    - Ranking
    - Rating
    - Comments etc.
    and also backbone of the site.

    After completing and testing stage-0 features we will move to stage-1 and start implement sandbox features.
    Stata-1 features will be
    - Allow readers to add series
    - Supporting more languages
    - Supporting multi raw for one serie
    - Adding more translator engines
    - Adding more raw sites
    - Recommendation system
    and much more.

    We have more things in our mind but these things should be done before that things.
    We welcome your opinions about our project.

    PS1: You can request series in dm.
    PS2: Right now we can only add Chinese LN from supported raw sites. If that serie is on that supported raw site adding it takes 2-3 minutes.

    You can check the current version in here WTR-LAB
     
  4. GoldEmperor

    GoldEmperor Well-Known Member

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    yeah sure! i will try it
     
  5. elixium

    elixium Member

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    Hello everyone,
    Its been a while! We are happy to announce that we completed (almost) all stage-0 features.
    You can check the current version in here WTR-LAB (v1.1.0)
    We would like to inform about improvements on WTR-LAB and our next plans.

    What we have done so far?
    So far, we almost complete all the stage-0 features.
    Short summary of each feature:
    + Translator engines
    - Currently we have 3 translator engine(Google, Bing, Sogou). We improved stability of these engines. We might add more engines if needed.

    + Language options
    - We added Spanish. We will add more languages as time passes.

    + Rating & Comment
    - We changed this to Review. We tried to implement as novelupdates review section. There is some features missing, such as 'like', but we will add them in future.

    + Similar Series
    - This features suggest series based on the serie's tags and genres. We will enhance the algorithm when there are more reviews and rating to improve quality of recommendations.

    + Reporting
    - We add report feature to chapters, series and reviews.

    + Ranking, Library, History, New added Series, Latest chapters, Tags, Serie Listing, Serie Ranking
    - All done.


    What is next?
    We want to improve the current features further, add some missing ones from stage-0 such as user profile page and then the stage-1 features and sandbox core. Our goal is make an user-driven, sandbox mtl site.

    Stage-1 features would be such as those;
    - Users can add series to translate and read them without admins adding it.
    - Users will have power to re-crawl, re-translate chapters.
    - Users can suggest, modarate series, such as tags, genres, description etc.
    - Global announcement and news system
    - Supporting more languages
    - Supporting multi raw for one serie
    - Adding more translator engines
    - Adding more raw sites
    - Recommendation system
    - and more
    We will focus on those features and implement them on WTR-LAB.

    Also we think about adding some gamification elements on the WTR-Lab and some achivements and badges etc.
    There are also some plans on enhance the translations from engines to improve the readablity but it is after completing sandbox core functions.

    We have more things in our mind but we need to do them step by step.
    As always, we welcome your opinions about our project.
     
  6. Yasi

    Yasi Well-Known Member

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    The site looks nice. It's snappy.

    As someone who reads CN MTL from time to time, I like to just sift through novels. Checking your library, you don't seem to have a big collection. So why would someone go to your site and not one of the other sites, that I assume has better mtl/bigger collection. Two that comes to mind are comrade and the ln one.
     
  7. elixium

    elixium Member

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    Thank you.
    Yeah that is true. We don't have much collection yet. In the beginning we decided to don't add too much series and there are 2 reasons for this.
    Firstly, we focused on developing the site and make it stable and readable than mass release. For example, In development progress we might needed to delete database and re-create it.
    Secondly, our one of main goal is users can add series that they want to read. Well it is still not implemented fully yet but we are working on it.
    Because of those, we were adding 1-3 series per day.
    However we already finished the stage-0 and it is stable enough. Therefore we will increase the number of series added per day and expand the collection more quickly.

    We always welcome any serie requests. If you have any serie in your mind, you can dm me from NU or request it on d!scord.
     
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  8. bkwusa

    bkwusa Well-Known Member

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    Is there a way to submit alternate raw urls?

    The series I am currently following the raw site that you use tends to put stubs up for the last 20 or so chapters. I have found a alternative site with the novel that does not. The link I have is also 2 chapters further.

    I noticed that you have a drop down for translation tools, can you add one similar for raw sites?
     
  9. elixium

    elixium Member

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    You can submit it in different ways, such as on our dc channel or dm me from novelupdates or using report system on serie page saying like "hey there is better raw url ...".

    Currently we support those sites: uukanshu, 69shu, xinwanben, ptwxz, trxs, yushubo. If the raw site you want to suggest is different than those, then we need to first code the crawler of that raw site and test it.

    Right now we don't support the multi-raw option but it is one of the things in our road map. However i don't know when it will be on live. Until that feature come alive, we can just replace raw site to better one.
     
  10. elixium

    elixium Member

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    Hello everyone,
    We have some updates again. Its 1.2.0 now :aww:
    You can try with this link

    In this update;
    - We focused on multi-raw structure and how to enable this feature in our website with least errors.
    Now a serie can have multiple different raw sources. As you know, some sources are fast but sometimes their chapters might be half and some sources can be slow but their context is full or sometimes some chapters might be missing. For those problems, having multiple raw sources mostly fixes this problem.
    You can swap between raws and continue reading. We don't try to match/correlate chapters between different sources. When you change the raw source, finding the corresponding chapter is up to reader.
    Also we needed to develop some admin side functions for multi raw. For example changing raw, replacing with another source etc.
    Most importantly this feature is enable us to permit users to add their series (Sandbox System). There are some other things we need to control and test before open that feature but it is a step towards that goal. We are getting closer with each update.


    - Added advanced search to enhance the serie finder.
    Before you can filter series by genres but now you can filter series with mutliple tags and multiple genres (include, exclude, and/or). We try to replicate NU's serie finder with much less options to make it easy to use. We think it is enough for now but in future we may enhance it further.


    - Some unnessary water marks, ad context cleaning from raws to improve readability.
    - Some UI fixes and improvements
    - Some minor bug fixes
    - It is not a feature but we added much more series to expand our serie collection and adding 10-15 series per day. If you have any serie request you can contact with me.

    That's it for now.
     
  11. bkwusa

    bkwusa Well-Known Member

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    Just to add to your effort,

    is there a way to search by string? Currently when you type something in the search bar on top it will show you all the results as a drop down. But since the drop down in limited in size you can't actually read all the full titles or descriptions in the drop down. There also doesn't seem to be a way to press enter or such to view the full results. So when a lot of titles are similar like when searching Global it is hard to differentiate them and you end up having to press on each one to be able to see what the full title is as well as the description.

    Then a small UI request, can you add a javascript that when you press the right or left arrow on the keyboard that the chapter goes forwards or backwards?

    Otherwise thank you for your effort I love your site!
     
  12. elixium

    elixium Member

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    Hello, Thank you!

    Yeah we can add a seperate page for search results. When you click the search button it can navigate to that page and display all result with more information. We can also add left and right arrow navigation.
    We noted those in our to-do list but i can't tell when they will be ready.
     
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