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.
I had a try ad Bookwyrm, which seems similar to what you intend to build. I was disappointed because the database itself is federated, meaning it's full of duplicated entries.
Correct. I thought there was some way to prevent those duplicates because of the federation, but apparently there's no such check being done so it's all duplicates. For that reason I won't put any effort into making the database federated. Only threads, reviews and comments will be federated. This might change as I make it though. There are also clubs in MAL which I might copy and implement in this project and they could be federated as well.