Story Variations - how best to handle these?

[Koquillion]

Speaking of the ‘tabs’ idea, I just had a look on desktop and spotted where potential tabs could go. Did a mock-up:

My reasoning is: when you click on the page, your eyes are probably immediately drawn to the title (large font) and screenshot, so you’d likely also see the tabs directly underneath the title. Also, at present, there’s a chunk of ‘dead space’ between the white bold title and the ‘strip’ below it [with the artwork, avg. rating, etc] so tabs could fit quite nicely there. You’d also be able to slot in as many or as few as required, without being limited to a quadrant of 4 or whatever.

(And on mobile view, these tabs would appear directly under the white bold title and potentially be slide-across-able or even just appear in a little dropdown.)

Just spitballing.

[deltaandthebannermen]

But it’s not ‘one version’ - it’s the story that they are searching for. Ultimately they are most likely to be wanting to complete/rate that story regardless of what ‘version’ it is.

I’d rather go to that page and then choose the one I’m experienced from there rather than have to scroll through 5 different version in the search bar to find the one I want. I too use apps/sites where there might be multiple editions of something and I hate it when I type in the book or whatever I want to log and fifteen different editions pop up and I have to try and find the right one from the drop down list. I’d much rather go to a page for the ‘book’ and then choose the right edition from there.

But then this precisely what I was saying - we’ll never please everyone so ultimately @shauny needs to go with whatever works best for him in terms of coding it to work a certain way.

[CommanderBayban]

That’s why I suggested not showing any version at all and just a generic entry that, when clicked on, gives you the versions.

If I’m looking for version X and when I type in the title the only thing shown is version Y, technically that isn’t what I’m searching for.

But we can agree to disagree

[deltaandthebannermen]

@CommanderBayban

a generic entry

I suppose, for me, a generic entry is the ‘main story’ because that’s the one from which everything else springs. I imagine that’s where we’re diverging.

[MrColdStream]

Great new points here. @deltaandthebannermen said most of it very well snd I liked @Koquillion’s mockup as well.

[Tian]

@CommanderBayban

If I’m looking for version X and when I type in the title the only thing shown is version Y, technically that isn’t what I’m searching for.

I think that this is solvable by showing variations on the search results. There is room to put variations on the story card like I tried to show with the clothing example.

[Tian]

I think that I agree with almost everything that you write. I have some questions.

@deltaandthebannermen

The DVD ‘director’s cuts’ should be on the site as adaptations so that they don’t count towards the main story - a bit like the novelisations. I doubt there are many fans who watch the director’s cut of Planet of Fire or the omnibus of Genesis of the Daleks with a view to that being them watching the ‘real thing’. They are a curio which most people will do after having watched the proper one.

Are they that different? To me they sound more like variations. This do not change how we solve the design but is something that we have to deside.

@deltaandthebannermen

Are there going to be lots of people rating three versions of a story on the same day? I think in some of the scenarios above we are worrying about what one fan might do rather than thinking about what the majority would do. We’ll never be able to make the site work in exactly the way everyone wants it to so best to go with what works for the majority and tweak it if we find lots of people are finding a particular thing frustrating. You can’t please all of the people all of the time after all.

Not a question but I really agree that we worry too much. It is not that big of a problem If someone’s diary is not 100% accurate if they are an edge case.

@deltaandthebannermen

I like @Tian’s mock up too.

Thanks

[CommanderBayban]

@Tian

I think that this is solvable by showing variations on the search results.

Yes, I also suggested that. I think that would be a good method.

But the consensus doesn’t seem to favor that style of search result? I don’t know; I think I’m just going to dip out of this and leave it to you and shauny et al to continue figuring out. I don’t think I’m the target audience for this anyhow!

[shauny]

Ok I think I know what the roadblock in my head is here, it’s because I know too much about how the site currently works (like how the database works) and I haven’t explained it so that might be why I’m more confused than you guys.

Here’s how it works, and I’m gonna use book/audiobook in the example because the difference is more stark but this also applies for tv stories:

If I read a book and rate it, then it puts in the database a record that says:

“Shauny read The Giggle on 2025-04-05, he gave it 5 stars, the story ID is 12345”

Then when the diary is logging stuff like how many pages I’ve read, it looks at that and adds the page count of The Giggle to my current total number of pages.

Alternatively, if The Giggle has an audiobook version and I added that, because that doesn’t have pages but it has an audio runtime, the diary would add the runtime to my listening stats

So in a future version where we just have a “main entry” for the story, and then “book” and “audiobook”, if you “mark complete” the main entry, unless we know for sure which version you did, we can’t log pages or runtime because we don’t know which you completed.

So it would require you to choose both. That’s why I said maybe it’s a popup.

Same with if you mark “The Pyramids of Mars” as complete - do we add 100 minutes of time which is the original, or 76 minutes, which is Tales of the TARDIS episode?

——

So that’s my issue with there being such a thing as “just complete the main story and then afterwards you can rate whichever version you did” - that’s where I’m still confused what we can do here.

[AlfieSigma]

@shauny

just complete the main story and then afterwards you can rate whichever version you did

Is it possible to have whatever the original version as the main story, thus the ratings
default to the original media (broadcast tv rather than animation, book rather than audiobook) until the user specify a version?

[shauny]

So then if I rate the main TV episode and then rate the TotT episode, does it keep the rating on the main one but move my diary/stats to just the ToTT?

What if I watched both? When would it stop switching? People have said “if it’s the same day” but that kind of arbitrary rule is something that would confuse people isn’t it?

[shauny]

Maybe I’m too worried about stats/ diary being perfect and maybe I just need a little toggle against everything in the diary that says something like

“Exclude from stats”

So then someone can rate things and it doesn’t matter, they are not included in stats. I could also then not have an “archive” in the diary, just have those all excluded.

[deltaandthebannermen]

I don’t think I meant rate the main story and choose the version later but that might be how it came across. I mean that there is a page with all the variations as tabs and a user chooses the one to rate. There is also your pop up idea if they just go straight to the rate option on the main story which asks them which version so either way they are going to get the right stats go into their count.

The diary would then also have the right version.

If a user then rewatches that version it goes down as a repeat. If they watch a different version then it maybe counts as a ‘new’ story?

I’ve probably contradicted myself now from what I wrote last night but this seems to make sense in my head.

[shauny]

So this kind of means that nothing really changes to how we have it now, just hide the different variations from the search and listings and add tabs to switch between them on the story pages.

That’s all good.

And maybe the switcher (like the Hardcore Coldstream example) on the mini story so you can do the same without leaving the listings page.

However

Going back to my original question, this part is still not resolved:

@shauny

Let’s say I’ve never seen The Underwater Menace, so it shows as ‘Unwatched’ in my list. So I buy a copy of the Animated Reconstruction and watch it, and rate it.

The original will still show as ‘incomplete’ because I’ve only completed the animated version. If I mark it as complete, just to get it out the way, my stats will be off, as it will assume I’ve watched 2 copies of this now!

The same goes for when I add all the audiobooks, if I rate an audiobook version of The Ruby’s Curse then the non-audiobook version will remain incomplete. But if I mark it as completed as well, then my stats show I’ve done way more reading than I actually have.

[AlfieSigma]

I think the automatic skip you mentioned earlier could work fine. Maybe only change the name to “completed in other versions” or something in this case, so as to not confused by the manually skipped stories. If a user does completed more than one version, they can come back and rate that other version

What still confuses me though, is wether you want all the versions to have separate pages

[Tian]

@shauny

Maybe I’m too worried about stats/ diary being perfect

I think that we have to accept that the stats will not be perfect. It is a fun thing but I don’t think that everyone has logged all their repeats thatbygey did before the site and stuff like that.

@shauny

Going back to my original question, this part is still not resolved:

I think that the best we can do is to have the toggle as you mentioned earlier and the log it on the same day = no automatic repeat. That makes it as good as possible.

[deltaandthebannermen]

I’m not sure whether this is a huge issue especially if you add the automatic skip feature. We are talking about a tiny percentage of users that will have watched the original so I don’t think it matters hugely. And how many people read the book and listen to the audiobook?

[Tian]

I also think that this is a pretty small issue and this solution will solve more problems for the users than it creates.

[shauny]

@AlfieSigma

wether you want all the versions to have separate pages

I think they do still need to have separate pages, because:

1. You might want to read reviews of specifically the animated version of a story.
2. Sets like this exist: Tales of the TARDIS · TARDIS Guide or https://tardis.guide/set/animated-reconstructions/ If I get rid of the individual pages, those sets can no longer exist
3. After further thought, I can remove the variations from the quick (popup) search to make it easier but can’t remove them from the main story list / filters, because otherwise those Set pages can’t exist.

I’ll have a bit more of a think and then write down a full specification of how it might work and we can discuss that.

[Tian]

@shauny

I’ll have a bit more of a think and then write down a full specification of how it might work and we can discuss that.

Looking forward to this