@xdrfiredogx said in J-Novel meaning for Tags:
15 of 20 licensed and released - Ongoing
[...]
15 of 20 licensed and released but the 16th volume either hasn't been licensed or the team is busy with other stuff - Hiatus
I'm not sure if there should be a distinction between these two as the effective differences from a user facing perspective should effectively be nil.
Suppose, in an extreme, J-Novel changes their translation model such that the entire volume is fully translated and edited before starting weekly prepub serialization. Additionally, they also start inserting a random 2-to-12-week delay between volumes based on rolling a pair of dice. At that point, the only real difference between the two is whether or not a prepub is active.
A good example of that last one would actually have been when Holy Knight's Dark Road was being released... it shared the same team as Tearmoon Princess so the schedule was one volume of Tearmoon, one of Dark Road, then back to Tearmoon, etc. Whichever one was being released would for been Ongoing while the other would have been Hiatus . Now it's only Tearmoon, it would remain Ongoing and Dark Road would be Caught Up
It honestly doesn't seem like Hiatus is really communicating much more than is already being communicated. If someone randomly checks out Tearmoon while it's on Hiatus, all they really get is that there's no new content right now. They'd have to go elsewhere (e.g., forums) to find out why Tearmoon is listed on Hiatus. There'd be little difference from listing Tearmoon as Ongoing and people posting on the forums asking where is future Tearmoon. If someone really only cared if there's new content, that can be trivially inferred by there not being prepub and no upcoming release date.
Another side to managing the tag is knowing when something switches between Ongoing and Hiatus. A super conservative world where the tag effectively means there's an upcoming volume release doesn't add anything new. A very loose use of the Hiatus tag that can switch before even licensing contracts are signed also doesn't really communicate anything. And in the broad in-between, Hiatus doesn't appear to meaningfully differentiate itself from Ongoing.
I do agree the first three tags do meaningfully communicate something (Ongoing/Caught Up/Dropped). Ongoing/Caught Up reflect what the state of the series is relative to JP. Dropped communicates J-Novel's intention of no longer publishing the series, compared to their FAQ's stated intention of maintained publishing of the series. Otherwise, I think being able to search/filter the list by series that have an incomplete prepub and/or pending ebook publishing should cover what you're defining as the Hiatus tag.
