Parenting within pool of episodic comic

We have two ways of grouping comics: parenting in sequence, or putting them all in a series pool. We only need one or the other, as having both are redundant. But sometimes there will be comics that directly follow from another even though they are not adjacent in the pool. We should still be able to use parenting relationships for those, right?

The comics in pool #19989 have an official order, but the comics are standalone for the first couple of seasons, after which it starts to transition into stories spanning five posts each. Three of these early strips are meant to be a Part 2 to a previous strip. The post pairs are:

post #6194445 and post #6195993
post #6230720 and post #6230767
post #7505005 and post #7509638

I set parent/child relationships for all three, but the first two were removed twice*. The first one is obviously a continuation; the titles match and the second one has a 2 on the end. The second pair is the same, but they're adjacent, so I can understand why the parenting was removed in that case, but I still think they should have a parent/child relationship because multi-page strips are still very rare at that point and it would keep it consistent with the other two pairs.

The third pair has different titles for each, but it's clear from the content this is a two-parter even if you can't read Korean. It still has the parent/child relationship. I believe it should stay, but my goal is to understand what the current policy is, and I will respect it even if I don't agree with it. However, I would strongly advocate for a policy change if it turns out this kind of relationship really isn't allowed in series pools because it doesn't make sense to me to remove information pointing to a Part 2 when there are several comics in between. I also want to make sure all cases are being handled consistently.

I am not arguing in favor of parenting the multi-page comics in later seasons because the 5-page formula was already established by then.

*I was not edit-warring when I readded the parent. The child posts from the first two pairs were only approved after being deleted from staying too long in the mod queue. At around the same time, I noticed the parenting was removed, so I assumed when the post was deleted, it removed the relationship automatically. I didn't realize they were removed manually until recently, which is why I didn't bring it up until long after the fact.

> I noticed the parenting was removed, so I assumed when the post was deleted, it removed the relationship automatically. I didn't realize they were removed manually until recently, which is why I didn't bring it up until long after the fact.

You are right in this, deletion doesn't remove parents/children, in any direction.

As for comics, you always should use pools, according to help:post_relationships:

> Generally, parent/child relationships should be used for minor variations of the same image. For comics or other series of posts meant to be viewed in order, use a Pool instead.

reg_panda said:
As for comics, you always should use pools, according to help:post_relationships:

> Generally, parent/child relationships should be used for minor variations of the same image. For comics or other series of posts meant to be viewed in order, use a Pool instead.

Read that sentence again. "Generally" does not mean "always." In practice, we usually use parent-child relationships for comics that are only a few pages long. Anything with only two posts would almost certainly use parent/child relationships unless there were plans to add to the pool later. Subpools are also usually frowned upon. There's no way having three subpools with two posts each would be justified.

Pools with three posts can be acceptable sometimes because it keeps the posts in order if they are accidently uploaded in the wrong order. But doing so with two posts gives no additional benefit for ordering because the parent will always be listed first.

This sounds similar to pool #22961, where all are part of a series but it's further subdivided into days, and I've partented + pooled them accordingly. They were unparented once, but I reverted them and believe it to just be a mistake (it's possible that it wasnt immediately obvious what was going on). With the exception of cases where there's a ridiculous number of child posts (like >10), it'd be pretty stupid to not parent them even with them being in a pool since, like you said, we'd be losing information.

ANON_TOKYO said:

This sounds similar to pool #22961, where all are part of a series but it's further subdivided into days, and I've partented + pooled them accordingly. They were unparented once, but I reverted them and believe it to just be a mistake (it's possible that it wasnt immediately obvious what was going on). With the exception of cases where there's a ridiculous number of child posts (like >10), it'd be pretty stupid to not parent them even with them being in a pool since, like you said, we'd be losing information.

I think you're probably right. There was definitely an oversight one way or the other. I just wasn't sure which way it was.

I noticed the parented posts in the pool you mentioned are adjacent to their children, so if that's acceptable, I don't see why the parenting I described wouldn't be. I'm also starting to think there would be value in adding parent/child relationships to the 5-parters that appear more often in later seasons. I was skeptical because they're all adjacent, but it would make it easier for readers to find the starting point of an episode if the green border is around the post.

For now, I just readded the parents to the above examples, but if it really would be worth it to parent the 5-parters, I'll do that too.

ANON_TOKYO said:

This sounds similar to pool #22961, where all are part of a series but it's further subdivided into days, and I've partented + pooled them accordingly. They were unparented once, but I reverted them and believe it to just be a mistake (it's possible that it wasnt immediately obvious what was going on). With the exception of cases where there's a ridiculous number of child posts (like >10), it'd be pretty stupid to not parent them even with them being in a pool since, like you said, we'd be losing information.

To be honest I don't really see the argument here, a post being related to the next post is basically the default for series pools. For Blank User's case I could more see the use in it (and I've been unsure about removing that kind of parenting before), though I don't remember removing those in particular.

ANON_TOKYO said:

This sounds similar to pool #22961, where all are part of a series but it's further subdivided into days, and I've partented + pooled them accordingly. They were unparented once, but I reverted them and believe it to just be a mistake (it's possible that it wasnt immediately obvious what was going on). With the exception of cases where there's a ridiculous number of child posts (like >10), it'd be pretty stupid to not parent them even with them being in a pool since, like you said, we'd be losing information.

It's not similar at all. As far as I can see, all of the posts in your example pool are already in the order they're supposed to be read in. What information are we losing by not parenting them? They're already obviously related just by looking at them, we don't need redundant parenting to tell people that posts already in their intended reading order should be read in a certain order.

Admins have already stated in no uncertain terms that we shouldn't be using parent/child relations for redundancy like this, and I wholeheartedly agree. Pool or parent, not both.

Blank User's examples are on opposite ends of the pool, not right next to each other, so there's an actual argument for parenting them despite being in a pool. I'm not entirely sold on it, personally, but I can see the argument. Your example is exactly the kind of parenting we've been telling users not to do.

Unbreakable said:

To be honest I don't really see the argument here, a post being related to the next post is basically the default for series pools. For Blank User's case I could more see the use in it (and I've been unsure about removing that kind of parenting before), though I don't remember removing those in particular.

It's not just about which ones are related, but where each "episode" (day, in this case) ends, since the stories are only per-day (there's no overarching story). Someone who doesn't know better may not realize post #8055788 and post #8055794 or post #8160150 and post #8160154 are related, parenting per-day while still having the posts pooled indicates this relationship.

blindVigil said:

It's not similar at all. As far as I can see, all of the posts in your example pool are already in the order they're supposed to be read in. What information are we losing by not parenting them? They're already obviously related just by looking at them, we don't need redundant parenting to tell people that posts already in their intended reading order should be read in a certain order.

Admins have already stated in no uncertain terms that we shouldn't be using parent/child relations for redundancy like this, and I wholeheartedly agree. Pool or parent, not both.

Blank User's examples are on opposite ends of the pool, not right next to each other, so there's an actual argument for parenting them despite being in a pool. I'm not entirely sold on it, personally, but I can see the argument. Your example is exactly the kind of parenting we've been telling users not to do.

As above, this isn't reduntant. The pooling and the parenting are indicating different types or relationships (series vs. day). What would actually be the redundant type of parenting would be parenting all posts in a conventional comic pool, say in pool #23582, to the first image. In that case both the parenting and the pool would be telling you the same thing. Blank's example is similar despite the exact circumstances being different ("these 2 images are related in a way that them being in the pool doesn't express to you")

ANON_TOKYO said:

[...]Someone who doesn't know better may not realize post #8055788 and post #8055794 or post #8160150 and post #8160154 are related[...]

Aside from looking at the number in the commentary?

Unbreakable said:

Aside from looking at the number in the commentary?

By that argument, why parent or pool at all? "Just look at the commentary to see they're part of a series".
Not to mention, sometimes a bonus image gets added with different commentary, and in one case (post #7994447) it's even parented to an image outside of the pool because it's visibly part of that image's narrative.

ANON_TOKYO said:

By that argument, why parent or pool at all? "Just look at the commentary to see they're part of a series".

I mean, if you want to overreact, sure, thought it doesn't really sound helpful.

Unbreakable said:

I mean, if you want to overreact, sure, thought it doesn't really sound helpful.

It's the same thing though. The parenting is basically a substitute for having a pool for every day, and I assume we can agree that's by far the worst option. We have this nice feature to indicate posts are related, it's just that in some cases like the pool described here, there's multiple relationships going on. Refusing to represent both just because one is already present is ridiculous.

ANON_TOKYO said:

It's the same thing though. The parenting is basically a substitute for having a pool for every day, and I assume we can agree that's by far the worst option. We have this nice feature to indicate posts are related, it's just that in some cases like the pool described here, there's multiple relationships going on. Refusing to represent both just because one is already present is ridiculous.

It's redundant, and it's not needed. You don't even need to be able to read the commentary to tell the posts are related.

The whole point of pooling is to make it easier to read a series of posts. It's not to show they're related. It's so that images that are meant to be viewed in a certain order can be easily viewed in that order without jumping through hoops, especially if they weren't uploaded at the same time or were uploaded out of order.

We don't need a pool for every day, that would be absurd, and we don't need to parent images that are already pooled in the correct order. I don't think an image being parented to a post outside of the pool really helps your argument, either. Nothing about that supports parenting images that are already in the same pool in the correct order.

Hell, the parenting is actively detrimental in some cases. https://danbooru.donmai.us/posts/7979565 and its children are parented out of order because they weren't uploaded in the right order. The parenting actually ruins the reading experience. Making it entirely pointless outside of an entirely unnecessary "These images are related to each other, as if you couldn't already tell that."

blindVigil said:

It's redundant, and it's not needed. You don't even need to be able to read the commentary to tell the posts are related.

Except you do in some cases, I gave examples. The pool already indicates they're related by series, but without the commentary and the parenting the information that this series is made up of independent sub-stories of varying length is lost.

The whole point of pooling is to make it easier to read a series of posts. It's not to show they're related.

Posts being part of a series is precisely the kind of "they're related" I'm talking about.

Hell, the parenting is actively detrimental in some cases. https://danbooru.donmai.us/posts/7979565 and its children are parented out of order because they weren't uploaded in the right order. The parenting actually ruins the reading experience. Making it entirely pointless outside of an entirely unnecessary "These images are related to each other, as if you couldn't already tell that."

Yes, parenting is less than ideal for this reason, it's a problem that pop ups more often.

Maybe it's different for you, but when I "consume" episodic comics/series like this, I am actually interested in groupings like this, and I don't want to have to open the pool as a whole in order to find these post relationships. Of course I recognize that this only really works in cases where the # of posts is small (so the usual 1~4 posts that would usually be fine just parenting). How to handle larger sub-groups without making a million pools actually recently got brought up on the Discord in relation to pool #23511 (it's not really solved yet), but in cases like the pools discussed here the parenting approach serves the purpose well enough, and I just don't see it as redundant at all.