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Scryer: Fanfiction Search Database (Alpha)

Discussion in 'Announcements' started by Lord Ravenclaw, Feb 17, 2014.

  1. Crash

    Crash Fourth Year

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    Thanks for putting this together - I've found some great stories through it! As a suggestion, it might be neat to have an option to filter based on at least some number of reviews/favourites.
     
  2. readerboy7

    readerboy7 Fourth Year

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    While we're at it, Scryer doesn't list reviews, follows etc. accurately. Take the following fic (the first one on the list with 'test' in summary and ordered by updated)
    compare that to the stats on the author's page on FFnet:
    they differ in 'time since update' (I loaded & copypasted the FFnet stats after the Scryer stats), and Scryer is missing 1 review, 6 favourites, and 10 follows.



    Your Opening Post is also out of date.
    has been fixed, (the lack of non-HP fics in the DLP library is annoying, but that's not Scryer's fault), and

    has been achieved. You may want to update that, to avoid giving new users bad info.
     
  3. Lord Ravenclaw

    Lord Ravenclaw DLP Overlord Admin DLP Supporter

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    That's not incorrect behavior. Scryer pulls deltas the majority of the time, that is, stories which have been updated since the last time it checked FFN. This happens hourly.

    Every so often, it'll additionally re-crawl the entire FFN index. This process is too expensive in terms of sheer numbers of requests and time to run often, so to avoid ire from FFN it happens infrequently. A full recrawl can take on the order of hours to complete.

    Unfortunately, that results in exact counts drifting over time. Mildly inaccurate review/follow/etc. counts are preferable to no service at all.

    Scryer isn't built to be a FFN replacement, nor will it: Scryer is a search engine. The additional metadata provided (reviews/follows/etc.) are for convenience to allow you to gauge the potential popularity of a story. I had considered just not showing that data given the drift over time, however I found it to be more useful to display than not.
     
  4. Jpzh2d

    Jpzh2d Disappeared

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    Possibly an error. If I just search using scryer without touching any of the settings it the whole first page of search results are stories that don't actually exist anymore. When I click on the link I'm taken to fanfiction.net where I get an error that says: 'Story not found. Unable to locate story. Code 1'

    I checked using the filters and I didn't get this problem. It seems this only happens when I don't specify any characters or whatever and use the 'Best Match' and sort 'Descending' options, which are the default.
     
    Last edited: Jan 15, 2015
  5. Lord Ravenclaw

    Lord Ravenclaw DLP Overlord Admin DLP Supporter

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    Jpzh2d This is just another case of my above explanation. I'm planning on doing a full refresh here pretty soon which includes purging stories that have been deleted.
     
  6. SilverOtter

    SilverOtter Seventh Year

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    Could you possibly keep the name + description of the story so users can possibly go and search for other places that host it?

    Maybe have an option to hide deleted stories for those that don't want to do so.
     
  7. Jpzh2d

    Jpzh2d Disappeared

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    Could you possibly add an 'All' category to the crossover section.
     
  8. Lord Ravenclaw

    Lord Ravenclaw DLP Overlord Admin DLP Supporter

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    Not a bad idea, I'll play with it.

    Sure, I'll get that rolled out here fairly soon. I'd been somewhat wanting the same functionality anyways.

    It's definitely subject to change as I imagine most would want to ignore certain crossovers, but "All" is a nice start.
     
  9. readerboy7

    readerboy7 Fourth Year

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    I know that the scryer function for DLP Review Score doesn't work on non-HP fandoms due to the lack of a non-HP library. However, there is this, which is essentially the other fandoms library. Would it be possible to get review scores from there? (e.g. get DF reviews from here, Naruto from here, etc.) I know not all the fandoms supported in Scryer have libraries, and vice versa, but it would be nice.
     
  10. Lord Ravenclaw

    Lord Ravenclaw DLP Overlord Admin DLP Supporter

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    All-crossover support has been rolled out. You can now search for stories in your favorite fandom in all the crossovers it has. I'll be making a change to be able to /exclude/ crossover fandoms soon, but it's not in yet.

    Other changes coming soon now that I have time to work on them.
     
  11. Nuit

    Nuit Dark Lord

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    I assume that the All Crossovers (*) was meant just for when Harry Potter is the main fandom? However if you switch to another and then back to Harry potter, All Crossovers (*) is no longer an available option. Then you have to refresh the page to get the option back.
     
  12. Lord Ravenclaw

    Lord Ravenclaw DLP Overlord Admin DLP Supporter

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    Fixed.

    More work on characters is on the way
     
  13. bobbybrown

    bobbybrown Squib

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    I was trying out the new all crossovers option in Scryer but it seems like i can only use characters from doctor who to make options. This was not a problem yesterday am i doing something or was it a small update that fucked this up?
     
  14. readerboy7

    readerboy7 Fourth Year

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    would it be possible to have saved searches? I'm going through the list of 'popular and recent' stories, and putting minus signs next to the authors of slash fics in the author search bar. I know I can save that search in a .txt, but I would also like to access that specific search on my kindle.
    Therefore, would it be possible to save searches on our Scryer accounts?
     
  15. Lord Ravenclaw

    Lord Ravenclaw DLP Overlord Admin DLP Supporter

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    As said in the previous post, there's more work to do to get the character intersection. It still works with specific crossovers.

    This is already planned. It's a matter of creating a usable UI.
     
  16. Hero of Stupidity

    Hero of Stupidity Villain of Sensibility ~ Prestige ~ DLP Supporter

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    Could there be an ignore option, like that ffnet plugin? It would be awesome not to crawl through the same 1000000 fics to get the one I want.

    Otherwise it works great. Maybe a little more options for time? Like searching by year?
     
  17. readerboy7

    readerboy7 Fourth Year

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    There is a rudimentary ignore function already, actually. In the title &/or author search bars, you put minus signs next to the titles and authors you don't like. So put, for example, -"Partially Kissed Hero" in the search bar to remove that abomination from your searches. You'll need to keep a .txt of all the authors and fic titles you want to exclude, though.
     
  18. Hero of Stupidity

    Hero of Stupidity Villain of Sensibility ~ Prestige ~ DLP Supporter

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    That's kinda convoluted don't you think? Sadly I have no knowledge in coding, so I don't know how complicated it is to do what I'm suggesting so I can't argue that much :p
     
  19. Nuit

    Nuit Dark Lord

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    I could just be talking out of my ass but, it shouldn't be too hard to set up user database(?) to keep track of Authors/Stories you don't want to see. I suppose when logged into Scryer you could go to Settings and there could be forms for Authors or Stories where you could type in the names of those you don't want to see.

    Or maybe even a toggle on the story in the result that you wish to hide.
     
  20. Hero of Stupidity

    Hero of Stupidity Villain of Sensibility ~ Prestige ~ DLP Supporter

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    I selected Naruto as fandom with all crossovers. The Character name list went till the B. Even if I wrote it in (for example Naruto) it didn't autofinish it.
     
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