For a long while, I've been toying with the idea of developing a non-wiki-based novel aggregator/host that covers most of MediaWiki's shortcomings as a novel host, for instance:
- A built-in API that isn't based on parsing
- A distinct way to recognize complete chapters/volumes for updates and announcements purposes
- A way to organize the chronology of chapters (or multiple versions of a chapter from different translation groups)
- Allow translators to control/restrict who has edit access to their uploads (or make them public like on Baka-Tsuki)
- Browsing by genre/rating/popularity/etc.
The main application would preferably only work as a API back-end/repository (no HTML reader included) for translation groups to upload translations. The benefit of doing this is that (1) we could encourage more translation groups to upload content for the purposes of getting their translations on mobile reading apps without competing with their own private translation blogs/websites (2) avoid getting novel series indexed by search engines so they are less likely to be hit by random shotgun DMCAs.
The vision for this host would be a universal mobile-only aggregator host.
Was curious if anyone was interested in this kind of project. It's pretty big in the sense that it would ideally consist of:
- API backend/repository + portal for translators to upload things
- (intentionally no HTML reader for reasons stated above)
- Android reader app (separate)
- iOS reader app (separate)
- anything else people feel like developing off of the API; open source would be nice yo~