MangaCircus/docs/greatest.md

Shijō Saikō no Manga — Greatest of All Time

greatest.html is a second, single-page dashboard. The Japanese title is 史上最高の漫画, romanized Shijō Saikō no Manga (“greatest manga of all time”). It displays the research reading map as ranked five-year cohorts from before 1970 through 2025–2026. Each period keeps its own separator and tile grid.

Separation and data ownership

• greatest/catalog.json is a versioned, read-only editorial seed in the application image. Entries have stable IDs, debut year, cohort, curator rank, rationale, official source lead, and optional AniList cover/chapter/status metadata. It is not part of library/, scraper queue, or data/catalog.json collections.
• greatest/index.js validates the seed and performs only exact title/alias matching against the existing library index. A match adds the local cover, chapter count, status and In library badge; it never moves or downloads a title.
• data/db.json holds greatestRatings[userName][entryId]. Each account can select flame, good, neutral, or skip, or click its current choice to clear it. Existing chapter-version votes are separate. Deleting a user removes their ratings. Include data/db.json in backups as before.
• The only write route is authenticated POST /api/greatest/rating with {id,rating} (null clears). Authenticated GET /api/greatest returns the catalog, per-user choice, valid-user community counts, score, and local-library match. Unknown IDs/ratings are rejected. There is no admin-only gate: every account may vote.

Within each cohort, Rank by my vote sorts flame → good → neutral → skull → unrated; Rank by everyone uses 3×flames + thumbs-up − 2×skulls, with curator rank as the tie-breaker. These are preference scores, not independent critical ratings. The quick chips filter by your ratings (or in-library status), even when community sorting is active. The popup shows the full rationale, metadata, official source link, community counts, and a library link where available.

Covers and metadata

The one-time seed is curated from the research document. node tools/enrich-greatest-catalog.js is an optional manual public-AniList metadata refresh, paced at one request every 1.5 seconds. It only accepts matching manga title and original serialization year, leaving uncertain results blank rather than using a sequel or remake cover. The server makes no AniList calls at runtime. Browser covers are lazy-loaded from AniList's CDN; a title-letter card remains if a cover is missing or fails. Local library covers take precedence.

Public catalog chapter counts are often absent; the UI says “Chapters unknown” rather than inventing one. For owned titles, the local library count wins. Status comes from AniList's releasing/finished flag or local library metadata, and may be unknown. Official source links may be publisher editions, chapter services, or an award/info lead; they do not imply all chapters are available in every country. No unverified hoster coverage is claimed.

Deployment and QA

The Docker image now copies greatest/ as app code; no new Compose service, volume, port, secret, or migration is needed. Rebuild/recreate reader only to pick up catalog/UI changes. The scraper and sentinel do not need restarting. Existing data/db.json accepts the new greatestRatings object without migration.

Run npm run test:reader for catalog/API tests and node tools/test-greatest-ui.js for disposable headless-browser QA. The UI fixture blocks remote covers and never contacts the scraper. Manual catalog edits should preserve stable IDs once anyone has voted; changing a title's ID strands its votes.