Ideas for a federated anime tracker - eviltoast

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/14934313

Hello Lemmings.

I will be attempting to make a federated anime tracker this summer, but I am not quite sure what features people would want and how I would get the details for animes, mangas, etc.

For the latter: What I thought was to either scrape other anime websites continuosly in the background, but this most likely is against the ToS of every anime tracking website, such as AniList or MAL. (I actually asked anidb.net for special access to their DB because apparently you can request access to it, but I’ve been left on read by the two staff members) My second idea was to make it an anime tracker website where animes are only user-submitted. And the user submissions would be approved by assigned moderators. However, I think this would be quite inconvenient. I’d like to get your opinions and/or ideas for this.

For the former: So if you have any requests or suggestions, please drop it down in the comments section.

Thanks in advance.

  • wjs018@ani.socialMEnglish
    10·
    7 months ago

    So, as somebody that hasn’t used an anime tracker for anything other than a database to look up information about shows, is the intention to make something like Bookwyrm, but for anime? If so, then you might want to check out how they implement the population and federation of titles/reviews/comments/etc. I haven’t used it before, so I am not sure how it all works.

    As for populating your database of shows to begin with, the only anime database api I have interacted with before is AniList (this api is what @rikka@ani.social uses). I just pulled up their api TOS and it does say this:

    Prohibited from use within competing noncomplementary services of the same nature, including but not limited to Anime/Manga list/tracker services. Competing services may be authorized on request if they provide significant and sustained integration/syncing with the AniList API and AniList user accounts.

    Something tells me they are not about to authorize a fediverse alternative to their own site, but you can always try.

    I don’t know all the legalities around things like image usage and whatnot, but I do know that Sonarr uses cover images and posters that it fetches from tvdb. Their api is also completely free to use for non-commercial purposes as far as I can tell.

    As for feature requests, I would say that the most important thing (other than base functionality) would be to enable easy migration from the existing trackers. I am not a dev, but perhaps some way to migrate over existing reviews/watched status/etc. from MAL or AniList. Those sites have been around long enough that people have a lot of history saved up on them. They aren’t about to manually re-enter all that again.

    Good luck!

    • asudox@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
      3·
      7 months ago

      Yes, something similar to Bookwyrm. I decided to use the Jikan API which scrapes the MAL website if I get approval from the MAL team. The migration feature shouldn’t be hard and I’ll implement it for various platforms (MAL, AniList, Kitsu, etc.)

      Thanks.