AntennaPod
Discovery screen enhancement
Checklist
- [x] I have used the search function to see if someone else has already submitted the same feature request.
- [x] I will only create one feature request per issue.
- [x] I will describe the problem with as much detail as possible.
System info
App version: 2.1.0 (0dcf44f67)
App source: Google Play / F-Droid / ... Google Play
Feature description
Problem you may be having, or feature you want: Currently, when changing Discovery's country to Bulgaria, I get mixed content.
Suggested solution: Add the option to force a specific language along with a location. Note - these should be separate, as many countries have more than 1 official language.
hi @roshavagarga,
I added that feature to browse by country in the discovery screen.
Just so you know, the list of podcast are ranked by iTunes (Apple Inc) as the top 25 podcast subscribed to in Bulgaria. That is why there are English language podcast in that list.
Given that information, are you asking for a filter where you don't want to see certain languages in the podcast list, or only want to see a single language? As an example, how many languages are there in Bulgaria?
I'm thinking maybe we add a filter by language in that screen.
Hey @tonytamsf
I'm guessing that iTunes was the only viable options? I know that PodcastIndex supports language codes (Bulgarian = bg-bg), so that might be an alternative.
Legally, Bulgarian is the only official language within the country. There are, however, two big minorities - Bulgarian Turks and Bulgarian Roma, where the former speaks Turkish (albeit in a regional dialect) and the latter speaks the local type of the Roma language. As far as I'm aware, there are no codes that would help with narrowing it down to local subtypes, but if there are any podcasts in those languages made in Bulgaria, they would either be official religious podcasts or nonexistent.
Partially this is on me - I didn't realize that screen would show the Top podcasts in a country, rather the top podcasts from that country or in that country's official language(s).
A language filter would definitely be the way to go in my view - personally I'd like to have a way of seeing all podcasts available in Bulgarian.
If Podcastindex is an option or could be a future option, that would also be nice - getting to choose the aggregator for the top podcasts that is. I found said project today and I already got a reply about having my personal list added to their index, which would help, since the podcasts themselves are available in over 10 hosting services and aggregators never find all of them - partially to blame on the content creators themselves (there was a massive amount of new podcasts these past 2 years, before that it was an ultra-niche market).
Thank you for informing me about the language options in Bulgaria.
For podcastindex.org, we already implement thier search API (at the bottom of the Discovery screen)
I don't see a 'top podcast by country' api PodcastIndex.org yet that can replace Apple's API https://podcastindex-org.github.io/docs-api/
This is the Apple 'top podcast by country' API that we use (see rss.txt file that I linked)
https://itunes.apple.com/BG/rss/toppodcasts/limit=20/explicit=true/json
- The iTunes API does not allow us to filter by language when we call it
- I stand corrected, the result does not tell us what language each of the podcast is, so we cannot filter by language without querying each podcast (which we cannot because we will end up spammning Apple)
I can think of one thing you can use from the itunes link you just sent me - parse it based on a lack of Cyrillic? I'm not a developer, so correct me on how feasible it is, but I'm guessing you can check for Cyrillic symbols in summary label.
Example:
"summary":{"label":"Какво Научих Днес е проект, в който споделям какво ново и интересно съм научил. Нещо кратко, което можете да слушате сутрин като се събудите, на път за работа или училище, по време на обедната почивка или вечер. Всъщност няма значение кога, важното е да се предоставя интересно съдържание, което да разнообразява огромните количества от простотия и сеир, с които сме заринати ежедневно."}
As you can see, this is in Bulgarian, which only uses the Cyrillic alphabet. While the name of the podcast might use Latin, for the most part the description will have some Cyrillic text, with a translation (although rarely I'd guess?). If you specifically restrict it to the Cyrillic symbols used by Bulgarian and disregard any results that use Cyrillic symbols that are only used in other Slavic languages, that'll make it even more accurate.
A comparison of Cyrillic alphabets can be found here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyrillic_alphabets
As a minus, I'd note that it'd be fairly hard to do this for most other languages and the overhead would be pretty horrible?
My next proposal is based off of my personal views. As a user, I don't care about the 'Top X Podcasts' for my country, I'm more curious about the number of episodes, finding a relatively new podcast or browsing podcasts available in X language but with certain category filters and maybe having the option to arrange all of the above based on alphabetical order/last episode order/etc. Based off of that, podcastindex is a viable option if you use /api/1.0/episodes/random and maybe have filtering options that make use of lang and cat. Another option is doing the same but with /api/1.0/recent/feeds or /api/1.0/recent/episodes or /api/1.0/recent/newfeeds.
parse it based on a lack of Cyrillic
This would only work for some languages. No way to filter out Dutch based on the character set (vis-a-vis German or English). If we can't filter all languages, that we should not offer this option (people will get frustrated about their language not being in the list). So I'm afraid this won't be a viable option.
My next proposal is based off of my personal views.
Thanks for sharing that! That's a very interesting approach. With all these new discovery options we should maybe start to think big in terms of options and what's interesting, and then start defining a new Discovery screen alltogether. Because adding bit by bit will probably not help us create the best user experience ever.
@keunes So it was as I feared, hahah. That idea was pretty niche anyway, so I don't care much about it.
I agree that the discovery screen could be used or turned into many things - maybe you could offer a one-time survey or something of the sort to gauge what people would prefer to have there? I can see people liking the current way it's set up and the PodcastIndex idea I had could be something only I'd use, so coming up with a few more ideas and stuffing them into a survey seems like it would save you some time as far as prioritization goes :)
A survey is a loooot of work to prepare & process (we know because we did it for the new logo). Instead, why don't we lock this issue and start a discussion on our forum? @tonytamsf @ByteHamster If need be, when we're stuck or want to put our ideas out for feedback, we can consider a survey with closed questions only.
- We can create a new issue specifically about the number of podcasts that we load, so that that can be improved relatively easily
- Issue specifically about categories exist here: ~#4726 [UX] Categories in Discover and~ #3756 Browsing for podcasts by categories and subcategories
I'm going to leave the decision up to you - I'm not against closing this issue, just wanted to offer my 2 cents and show the random flaws that might pop up for less podcast-y countries like my own :)
If you open up a discussion, feel free to leave a link here for future readers and you can close this whenever you feel is right.
I'd noticed those category issues, do they cover arranging podcasts in some manner? (Alphabetical, # of episodes, last episode date, etc.)
I'm not against closing this issue, just wanted to offer my 2 cents
If we do lock it (not close - it'll remain open but without the option to comment until some sort of conclusion has been reached, then we'll re-enable comments), we'll sure post a link. And you'll be very welcome to continue the discussion at the forum then - such 2 cents are very valuable!
I'd noticed those category issues, do they cover arranging podcasts in some manner? (Alphabetical, # of episodes, last episode date, etc.)
I don't have the impression that was brought up, but please chip in there - it's a good question.
Hi! Many of us use podcast as a tool to practice or learn new languages. So a language filter will be a nice improvement. Also if the listener is intrested in different cultures or discover new things the single limitation is the language one is able to understand Thanks!
Hi! Many of us use podcast as a tool to practice or learn new languages. So a language filter will be a nice improvement. Also if the listener is intrested in different cultures or discover new things the single limitation is the language one is able to understand Thanks!
I agree with this, I like to switch to Chinese or English
Ok, a discussion about a new discover screen is here on the forum: https://forum.antennapod.org/t/feature-rich-podcast-index-based-discover-screen/773?u=keunes
Please all be invited to contribute there! Will lock this issue until a conclusion is reached there, and technical details here can be described for implementation.