MyAnimeList is probably the most used site by most anime viewers and bloggers besides AniDB, melative, or Anime Planet to log all the watched anime and also manga, although not everyone read manga compared to Anime. However, I feel that MyAnimeList just like Facebook is cluttered and have too much going on and you have to log in just to update your list and most of the time, you forget to update that list. This is why there are programs like MAL Updater on Windows and MAL Client OS X on Mac OS X with a small number of other MAL Clients. However, MAL is not making it easy with developers to create these programs and I already have some trouble trying to figure out how to implement it.
The problem is that the MAL API is very incomplete. There is no documentation on how to obtain the list or even get the information of the Anime using the APIs. sliceoflifer made the Unofficial MAL API , which is the supposed replacement of the MAL API and also makes life easier since all the functions are there and you can easily implement the API. The problem is, there is no Manga support. With the Official MAL API, there is a severe lack of information on how to use the API and the lack of JSON support. Also, it’s buggy since in some instances, searching for titles like Kampfer does not even pop up any results due to the bad data spit out by the official MAL API.
MyAnimeList in my opinion is becoming too big and the developer APIs are left neglected for months and left to rot. MAL Updater is a closed sourced program and there is no native open source solution (No, AniChou does not count as native alternative) that would work natively on Windows or even a full Mac solution. The developer of MAL Updater have to resort largely with HTML scraping which is a pain in the neck to figure out and I commend him on his effort to do so… Why should developers be left having to do this time consuming process of making code to get rid of the HTML tags and convert it to XML? Does MAL want developers make more programs that would work with MAL and instant updating instead of resorting to the near-monopoly MAL Updater…
Another gripe is that their site is STILL not iPhone friendly or perhaps smartphone friendly… Most sites these days have iPhone versions of the website since the iPhone grew in popularity due to it’s powerful browser. iPhone friendly MAL would help since if some people watch anime on the TV and don’t have their laptop on or want to go to a computer just to update their status, they can do it easily on the iPhone. Why not jump on a iPhone solution for MAL, either a iPhone App or a iPhone friendly website… It shouldn’t be terribly hard to do since popular social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter already have one with their own iPhone apps.
Hopefully you take these suggestions seriously and help make MAL better, or I have to resort more with melative since it’s works alot better… (and why not join in on the fun).