Tidying the forums

Rui

Karamatsu Boy
Administrator
Agent-347 said:
Dannielle said:
EDIT: Just a thought, seeing as we have MVM & MangaUK discussion/Q&A threads, what do you all (& Andrew if you see this) think of making an Anime Limited one? =]
I do approve of the idea, but the "General Anime Discussion" zone feels like an utter mess, extremely cluttered and unorganised to me at this moment in time. I really wish Rui or Arbalest could perhaps split that zone into 2 zones.
Perhaps split off everything about anime releases or distributors to a separate zone.
I have been meaning to make a post with suggestions in the feedback zone but never can find time to do it. (Might have to make time for it though. I hate to be a nuisance though.)

I usually defer to Chaos on such things but as he isn't around these days I'm happy to just do it as all of the stickies in General have been bothering me for a while. Working 12 hour days right now so I'm a bit of a zombie (I just got home a moment ago T_T), but when I get some time I'm happy to do a tidy up.

Something like this?

Anime Industry Discussion: Find out more about upcoming releases and legal ways to watch anime.

(A new forum in which the distributor threads will be placed along with the other retail/streaming topics.)

General Anime Discussion: The place to find any other anime-related chat.

(I'll leave everything else there and move the occasional active thread which doesn't match into the new forum.)

Feel free to take it to the Suggestions forum if you have a lot of input :)

R
 
Re: The News Thread (for news that does not need a thread)

Sounds good to me Rui :)

What about a topic regarding Non-UK titles within the Anime Industry sub? (or anywhere else deemed appropriate) I have trouble finding stuff out about those, so condensing it into one area under (eg) "North American & Aus Anime News" or something neater than my brain can come up with might be good?
 
Re: Tidying the forums a little

Ok, done. I'll do some more tidying when I'm not about to fall asleep as I don't want to accidentally destroy anything :D

Non-UK news sounds good to me since a lot of people ask about overseas stuff. If someone makes it I'm happy to sticky it as needed.

Regarding the original question, we could just repurpose the packaging feedback thread as a general Anime Limited thread since Andrew is so responsive? Or if you'd rather we had a dedicated one, feel free to start one, Andrew, and I'll sticky it. And if so, please feel free to write an intro in it with a list of all your licenses so newcomers know what you guys do :)

R (a.k.a. the lazy admin who talks to people who aren't technically part of the thread at the moment)
 
Re: Tidying the forums a little

Agreed - I know a lot of other people are interested in international news, but for me, I think it's good to have a nice clear bit to discuss just UK stuff in its own place.
 
Re: Tidying the forums a little

I'm currently busy in notepad writing up my own feedback topic to post up my ideas and suggestions.
I am in fact going to address the structure of the forum a bit as well, but can't promise I'll have that written up by later today, but I'm working on it.
In a 'note beforehand' I am currently addressing the controversy that some suggestions will have, I have experience from the past I had to push a few times with my team to get some stuff approved.*

*No promises it'll still be there in the published version of the topic, but I just am saying I am working on writing it up.

--

By the way, Rui.. You goofed up a bit when moving the topics. ;P There's a certain option you need to select to avoid "MOVED: -->" topics in the old zone.

Lutga said:
Agreed - I know a lot of other people are interested in international news, but for me, I think it's good to have a nice clear bit to discuss just UK stuff in its own place.
One suggestion of mine addresses this as I believe this forum runs on phpBB3 and doesn't actually use the feature where forums can be placed beneath forums.

Like now we have:
Code:
ANIME & MANGA
- Anime News and Rumours
- Anime Industry Discussion
- General Anime Chit-Chat
- General Manga Discussion
- Creative Arena
- Conventions, Events and Websites
- Anime and Manga Marketplace 

OFF TOPIC
- Random Chit-Chat
- Gaming
- Media Discussion
- Ever Enduring Forum Games
- Introductions

ANIME UK NEWS
- Forum Rules & General Website Feedback

ANIME UK NEWS' CHARACTER BATTLE
- The Character Battles
- Battle Chronicles

In fact if I'm right about us being on phpBB3 we could and in my opinion need to go deeper. You could put subforums beneath Anime Industry Discussion that add structure and a resort for people to discuss some stuff.
Whether there'll be a lot of topics there then is up forum discussion, but honestly it's not as if the Conventions, Events and Websites forum/zone has a lot of topics. xP

I need to go to class, so I'll just publish this, but I'm going home at noon today so I'll get back to this later today. ^_~
 
Re: Tidying the forums a little

Agent-347 said:
By the way, Rui.. You goofed up a bit when moving the topics. ;P There's a certain option you need to select to avoid "MOVED: -->" topics in the old zone.

Yes, I did that on purpose to avoid people who have their favourite forum sections bookmarked opening dozens of topics asking where they were since they're such important threads. Most people will never look at this thread and realise there's been a shuffle.

Trust me, I know how to use the moderation tools; I moderate people and threads here almost every day in spite of the mess ;)

Agent-347 said:
Lutga said:
Agreed - I know a lot of other people are interested in international news, but for me, I think it's good to have a nice clear bit to discuss just UK stuff in its own place.
One suggestion of mine addresses this as I believe this forum runs on phpBB3 and doesn't actually use the feature where forums can be placed beneath forums.

...

In fact if I'm right about us being on phpBB3 we could and in my opinion need to go deeper. You could put subforums beneath Anime Industry Discussion that add structure and a resort for people to discuss some stuff.
Whether there'll be a lot of topics there then is up forum discussion, but honestly it's not as if the Conventions, Events and Websites forum/zone has a lot of topics. xP

I'm actually not a fan of lots of subforums as you have to click through to see the full information about which section updated last and it's a hassle, so I end up not reading them properly or forgetting to check hard-to-find topics. It makes sense on sites where you get thousands of threads a day and they're for topics which are completely distinct (e.g. Technical Support as the main forum then subforums for Windows and Mac OS X and Linux) but here there are a lot of 'fuzzy' topics which are probably of interest to a large number of users.

However, I don't actually use the forum sections for navigation very often since I read every single thread update every day (zzz) to make sure everyone is behaving and purge any spambots. So if there's a lot of demonstrable demand from the community, I'm happy to do it your way.

R
 
Re: Tidying the forums a little

I don't really think there's a need for any subforums, there isn't enough activity to necessitate them - it isn't as if threads are disappearing off the first page of a forum on an hourly or daily basis.
 
Re: Tidying the forums a little

I guess we could demote Forum Games and the locked character battle section to being subforums if people want the front page to be less tall. Neither are particularly essential reading most of the time.

R
 
Re: Tidying the forums a little

I really like the reorganisation. Nice to have the industry stuff in one place.
 
Re: Tidying the forums a little

Rui said:
Most people will never look at this thread and realise there's been a shuffle.

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щ(゚Д ゚щ)

R
 
Re: Tidying the forums a little

Rui said:
I guess we could demote Forum Games and the locked character battle section to being subforums if people want the front page to be less tall. Neither are particularly essential reading most of the time.

R
Well you could put the character battles in the Ever Enduring Forum Games section since the character battles are games anyway.
 
Re: Tidying the forums a little

Ok, have had some more great feedback so here are the suggestions I think might be good.

Anime & Manga

Anime News & Rumours
Discuss the latest news and rumours concerning the UK anime community and beyond.

Anime Industry Discussion
Find out more about upcoming releases and legal ways to watch anime.

Overseas Anime Industry Discussion
The forum for those interested in what's being released in the US, Australia, Japan or anywhere else outside the UK.
(Note: If we add this, I'll change the name of the one above to be 'UK Anime Industry Discussion' for clarity.)


General Anime Chit-Chat
The place to find all of the anime-related chat which doesn't belong in the other sections.

General Manga Chit-Chat
Discuss, review and rant about manga.

Creative Arena
Discuss & share your drawings, fan videos and creative writing in this forum.

Conventions, Events & Websites
Feel free to discuss and plug websites and events (like conventions and fanclubs) in this forum.

Anime & Manga Marketplace
Buy, sell and trade anime, manga and any other related merchandise in here.

Off Topic

Random Chit-Chat
Join us in here to discuss anything that's on your mind.

Gaming
Join like-minded individuals and talk/review/rant about the topic. Video games, pen and paper, board games - it's all in here.

Media Discussion
A forum for you to discuss your favourite music, movies, television shows, YouTube videos and AMVs.

Ever Enduring Forum Games
A place to chill out with the rest of the community.
SUBFORUM: The Character Battles
Do you dare enter the Arena of Dreams?
SUBFORUM: (Locked) Battle Chronicles
Check out the battles from previous years.


Introductions
Feel like announcing your arrival? Drop by and introduce yourself.

Anime UK News

Forum Rules & General Website Feedback
We value your opinions and feedback on the site. Please drop by and let us know what you think!

--

Any objections to the changes, especially the ones indicated in green? I've adjusted the descriptions slightly for a few others but I don't think any of the changes are major.

Other changes I think are definitely worthwhile:

- Custom ranks for our three industry reps so people can identify them more easily). Done.

- Archiving the current official industry rep threads and having new versions (with a link to the old ones) where the top post has all of that company's info and links to their social media accounts etc.

- Making the names of our sticky threads more consistent with one another.

- Making it more obvious things are changing. Done. I've made this an announcement in the hope of gathering more feedback. To be honest I don't think the changes are massive enough to warrant keeping the announcement up for long, but the regulars should definitely get a say.

Suggested changes I disagree with and my reasons (please feel free to disagree, that's why I'm posting them here):

- Separate forums for Japanese/US industry news.

We don't get enough threads from JP importers - and where do you stop adding new forums? We could end up with separate forums for Italian/German/HK releases, each with one thread inside them. I think this will just increase administration with users having to visit lots of different sections to get the news they want, and people who post overseas artwork having to use lots of different threads.

- Separate forum for streaming information.

At the moment it would only have three threads in it (unless I went back to earlier seasons and archived everything in there). We seem a bit reticent about streaming at the moment and it's got a lot of crossover with physical releases, or at least it should do (some distributors are yet to jump on the bandwagon). I don't think this is worthwhile at the moment, though if conversations about streaming increase it's certainly well worth exploring further.

- Highlighting merchandise in one of the forum sections so people know where to discuss it.

I think the figure thread is the only merchandise thread we have which is regularly updated. Is it easy enough to find in General Anime? I think so, but if you disagree you can say so. There can be merchandise for both manga titles and anime titles, so unless there's demand I'd prefer to leave it to individuals to put merchandise threads wherever they think they fit best.

- A forum for members to post individual threads showcasing their collection e.g. a thread for Arbalest's collection, a thread for Rui's etc. The idea is to cut down on having to rummage through the thread to see what's changed when people update.

Again, willing to accept debate on this but I'm not sure there's justification for it? There aren't many people who regularly update their collection shots (many of us don't post them at all). It feels easier to ask individuals to link back to their previous post each time they update, since so few members are involved? As an aside, we also did have a problem once with a user feeling he 'owned' a thread he created and had the right to make his own rules for it which didn't sit well with a number of other members...

- Adding more sections (at the moment we have Anime & Manga, Off Topic, AUKN (site news) and the character battle section. We could separate it further to have Industry news, Anime & Manga, Community Spotlight, Off Topic and AUKN (site news).

I don't see the point as it will just make the main index list longer. The way Paul set it up was to have anime-related stuff at the top in one section, off-topic stuff that regular anime fans aren't interested in below it and then a final section for site-related stuff more of interest to regulars. The purpose of the sections is that you can avoid the parts of the site you aren't interested in by browsing by section instead, but surely regular anime fans will want both Industry news and Anime & Manga, while the social crowd will want both Community Spotlight and Off Topic? I don't see the purpose in changing this; it seems to improve the aesthetics of the main index page for one group of users while reducing its functionality for another.

- Moving old split/locked threads into a separate archive forum (placed in the same section as the Forum Rules & General Feedback forum).

Again, this is my personal opinion but I can't stand sites which do this as it makes it impossible to find old information. I never, ever read their archives. If I'm unique in this, let me know. I feel it's overmanaging for the amount of traffic we have here.

- Splitting threads on a weekly/monthly/quarterly/yearly basis.

I know some are quite long, but I find it much harder to locate old, closed threads in the forum than browse through the long ones. I could add an ever-growing list of previous split, archived versions of the thread to the new top post each time, but it just seems like unnecessary management - am I wrong here? I'm against it both as a moderator and a user, personally. If the server was having resource problems with the long threads I'd say that would be a good reason to implement regular pruning.

- Adding new BBCodes.

If there's demand for a particular feature I'm happy to add it. We have a dedicated hangman code, for example. I'm not really willing to add things nobody will use, so this needs to come from demand, not the other way around.

- Making some forums invisible to users who aren't logged in.

I don't understand which sections would benefit from this - I often browse without being logged in because I don't want to lose my read/unread thread when I'm on a device which I know isn't suitable for moderating people or writing long responses. Or when I'm on a device where I can't log in for some other reason, such as an insecure computer. I don't think I'd like being unable to see some sections of the forum that way (aside from the ones which are already private and hidden). I guess I could make a second account but...

- Limiting certain forums so only selected members can post there.

We used to have this for the News area when Paul ran the site and site news was automatically cross-posted to the forums. That's not possible any more, so in the end it was opened up to the community. My personal feelings are that most people here have a lot to contribute - some new users come in out of nowhere with informative posts - so I wouldn't really be willing to do this unless there was a good reason to, and it would necessitate opening even more forums for that to happen. For example, I could see there being a purpose in an official industry rep announcements forum which untrusted users couldn't add topics to, but is the UK anime industry really active enough to justify that taking up a whole forum? Or we could have a forum where the people who post regular news like Ian's weekly anime/manga release threads are collected without any other news stories in between them - but the site already has a release schedule section elsewhere, so making it a feature of the forums is not the way I'd handle it (which would be adding a manga section to the Anime Schedule area). Again, it's also more administration and I'm not sure we need it when we have hardly any people here who habitually misbehave. I think we can all handle the occasional kitchen advertising spambot, can't we?

I'm willing to be taken to task for my domineering opinions above so please do add feedback! If it's clear early on that the simplest changes are either strongly wanted or strongly not wanted, I'll make my decision on those quickly.

R
 
I think industry discussion should be in one forum, not split in twain UK/Rest of World wise. Since our local industry is still largely dependant on what happens in the US and Australia, there will be a fair bit of cross referral between the fora anyway (and cynically speaking, since a lot of criticism these days, is Company M screwed up their release, is there a Region B compatible release in Australia/US?, I think just one forum for Industry Discussion is less confusing).

Maybe it's worth seeing just how crowded it gets in there first...
 
Maybe keep the UK/US/ROW Industry news together and try to get people making threads in that area denote the country the topic is relating to in the thread title:

ie:
(UK) Anime Limited Announce they have the rights to Natsumes Book of Friends
(JPN) Production I.G Announce new xxxHolic series
(USA) Geneon rises from the Grave

The same could be done for the anime discussion threads in the UK/USA/ROW Anime discussion forum?

edit - Also, I don't get the differentiation between the Anime News and Anime Industry discussions section you suggest. There are a lot of overlaps in discussions that could feature in both areas, or is it just me?
 
Good ideas, thanks.

britguy said:
edit - Also, I don't get the differentiation between the Anime News and Anime Industry discussions section you suggest. There are a lot of overlaps in discussions that could feature in both areas, or is it just me?

I suppose one thing we could do is lock the News forum so only the 'Guest' threads (which are generated from the website's news articles) go there, the way it used to be*, then move the big user-created news threads to Anime Industry discussion (or wherever is appropriate, as some relate to manga etc.). The news staff could always turn anything they feel is worthy of a full article into one. Would that be weird, or helpful? It would mean that you might have a topic where there's both an official news report and a separate discussion raging in the Industry forum (though I could easily merge them) - or the reporters might just link their topics to a preexisting thread if there's already a debate going. You could always check the site's front page if you weren't sure.

R

* I'm not 100% sure this will actually work as the link broke when Chaos took the site on from Paul and it was never fixed properly (hence our hardworking reporters always being credited as 'Guest'), so it might not work out - but I'm happy to try :/
 
Re: Tidying the forums a little

Since this all is my fault I should add on to what Rui said (she summarized my suggestions basically).
Some things have really been bothering me and while I can understand I just have to put up with some stuff some changes would really increase convenience in general I think.

Forum structure
Rui said:
Anime & Manga

Anime News & Rumours
Discuss the latest news and rumours concerning the UK anime community and beyond.

Anime Industry Discussion
Find out more about upcoming releases and legal ways to watch anime.

Overseas Anime Industry Discussion
The forum for those interested in what's being released in the US, Australia, Japan or anywhere else outside the UK.
(Note: If we add this, I'll change the name of the one above to be 'UK Anime Industry Discussion' for clarity.)


General Anime Chit-Chat
The place to find all of the anime-related chat which doesn't belong in the other sections.

General Manga Chit-Chat
Discuss, review and rant about manga.

Creative Arena
Discuss & share your drawings, fan videos and creative writing in this forum.

Conventions, Events & Websites
Feel free to discuss and plug websites and events (like conventions and fanclubs) in this forum.

Anime & Manga Marketplace
Buy, sell and trade anime, manga and any other related merchandise in here.
Let me say that my original suggestion had Anime News & Rumours move to the archive zone if possible or get hidden (or moved to Anime UK News) and had new clean forums for the news threads in each industry zone. (not deleting the existing, but archiving it on 1 January)

I sent the suggestions in the form of an actual forum, I'm willing to post the link to it here but I doubt this is allowed.
But here's the structure of the original suggestion I sent to Rui:
Code:
THE ANIME INDUSTRY
- UK Anime Industry
- US Anime Industry
- JP Anime Industry
- Manga & Merchandise Industry
- Online & Streaming Industry

ANIME & MANGA
- General Anime Chit-Chat
- General Manga Chit-Chat

COMMUNITY SPOTLIGHT
- Member Collections
- Creative Arena
- Conventions, Events and Websites
- Marketplace

OFF TOPIC
- Random Chit-Chat
- Media
- Gaming
- Introductions

ANIME UK NEWS
- AUKN' Ark of Archival
- Forum Rules & General Feedback

Let me try to clarify - and perhaps I didn't do a good job of doing that towards Rui given I was really tired when sending it to Rui yesterday - that I added the last 3 in "The Anime Industry" separately as I think there's more material for topics than is currently on here or being considered. I strongly believe you first need to offer the space and then the topics will come and that it doesn't usually work the other way around. I have owned and been staff on forums in the past after all as well.

I personally wouldn't really use the last three industry forums mentioned barring some exceptional cases, so I'm fine with those three not making it.
Manga can be kept where it is, but I'd for example like to see a monthly thread summarizing all coming English manga releases in that month.
I also have the suggestion for a list of manga releases that never got finished being published in English as I have found myself really wanting to know that.

I want to add - and this is important - that the "Anime & Manga Marketplace" isn't solely used for anime & manga, thus not rightfully belonging where it is currently.
Or the rules need to be amended to forbid the selling of certain things (but I personally rather not add that rule as I think it's hard enough to sell stuff already).



If I update my suggestion taking away those three forums and merging JP et all with the US forum you get this:
Code:
THE INDUSTRY & FANDOM
- UK Anime Industry
- Overseas Anime Industry
- General Anime Chit-Chat
- General Manga Chit-Chat

COMMUNITY SPOTLIGHT
- Member Collections & Acquisitions
- Creative Arena
- Conventions, Events and Websites
- Marketplace

OFF TOPIC
- Random Chit-Chat
- Media
- Gaming
- Introductions

ANIME UK NEWS
- AUKN' Ark of Archival
- Forum Rules & General Feedback
I do like the balance of those categories each having 4 forums then in them besides the last one. Although I am aware I didn't put the forum games in my suggestion.


Members' Collections & Acquisitions
Rui said:
Suggested changes I disagree with and my reasons (please feel free to disagree, that's why I'm posting them here):
- A forum for members to post individual threads showcasing their collection e.g. a thread for Arbalest's collection, a thread for Rui's etc. The idea is to cut down on having to rummage through the thread to see what's changed when people update.

Again, willing to accept debate on this but I'm not sure there's justification for it? There aren't many people who regularly update their collection shots (many of us don't post them at all). It feels easier to ask individuals to link back to their previous post each time they update, since so few members are involved? As an aside, we also did have a problem once with a user feeling he 'owned' a thread he created and had the right to make his own rules for it which didn't sit well with a number of other members...

I believe that was something I did clarify but it's supposed to be a forum where a member would post all their anime-related (so incl. anime, manga, VN, LN, figurines & OST) acquisitions and collection updates in their own thread.
It's even more important if people don't do collection updates I feel as there's no way to catch up with them unless you are going to spend hours or days scouting and figuring out existing threads.
You have no idea how often I just wanted to visit ALL of somebody's posts in a certain thread, but the broken search function once again prevents this usage so yeah.


The "aside" you mention is stuff staff over time has to deal with a few times and perhaps add rules about in the general forum rules section. If they don't agree their topic gets either locked or deleted. If recreated or continuous bad behaviour occurs you take away the users rights to make topics anywhere. If the user doesn't behave then a tempban feels in place and so on. (or so)
I don't mean to sound demanding, but I've had to deal with some retards before in the past as well, so there are multiple ways to deal with them. I usually warned them using a reputation/karma score system.
Reach the ban penalty goal due to bad behaviour and I send them flying for some time. Really rare occurrence though.

Also, there're currently no rules being used about double posting etc. and since it would be a collection and acquisitions forum with each user to have their own thread if they want to share I don't see how they could demand/use their own rules. xD


Nota bene - I don't feel like the "what did you receive today?" threads should contain anime & manga acquisitions, it's part of the off topic zone ... As in the zone where we talk about other things but anime & manga. But well ...


The Time-based Topic Split
Rui said:
- Splitting threads on a weekly/monthly/quarterly/yearly basis.

I know some are quite long, but I find it much harder to locate old, closed threads in the forum than browse through the long ones. I could add an ever-growing list of previous split, archived versions of the thread to the new top post each time, but it just seems like unnecessary management - am I wrong here? I'm against it both as a moderator and a user, personally. If the server was having resource problems with the long threads I'd say that would be a good reason to implement regular pruning.
First and foremost I want to mention I don't want weekly/monthly/quarterly/yearly based threads for all threads, that's just insanity. But next to the streaming news thread on quarterly basis we have no split topics.
Oh, there's also the "New Anime Releases " and "New Manga Releases" threads that are on a weekly basis being posted with regularly faulty topic titles clogging the "Anime News and Rumours" forum while it's neither news or a rumour. More on this later though.

To reply to the first part of your stance, compare it to collection for example used glue tubes (I don't do that, but do something else).
You can leave them on your desk for a while but at some point your desk gets too cluttered and you want to clean it, so you put them in some archival/showcase place without actually getting rid of them. (badly worded, I know)
Yeah, if you were to move the threads to the archival ark without adding structure in the ark that'd be bad of course. I'd have structure in the ark as well, but I felt like that was obvious.

One collection I have archived in a box I can easily access is a huge set of comics I got from my dad when I was young. Those 'topics' aren't of importance anymore and are archived for access when I occasionally feel like revisiting one.

But really, I really, really, really find it annoying, almost find myself hating the fact we have certain megathreads that especially due to a not-working-properly search function aren't easily browsable into the past at all.
I find myself wanting to go back and find a piece of news or go to a period of time and not finding it. I regularly go back to look at Andrew's posts and such as well.
Analysing stuff over time, but the more posts the user you want to find something of has the harder it gets to browse and find it (at all).

I've given up doing something with some of these 5000+ posts users. I am a member since 2012 and I have always felt outdated about some of you without ever finding a good way to update myself or find out stuff about someone.
A good example here is that I want to check whether Conan always has been as aggressive in his replies towards Manga UK announcements - and please don't reply by yes or no, I want to read the posts -.

Yeah ... I feel AUKN could at the very least introduce yearly topics for news, cover art, sales, your viewing journal and a few other threads.
Although for release schedules monthly threads seem more appropriate.


Replying to people
britguy said:
Maybe keep the UK/US/ROW Industry news together and try to get people making threads in that area denote the country the topic is relating to in the thread title:

ie:
(UK) Anime Limited Announce they have the rights to Natsumes Book of Friends
(JPN) Production I.G Announce new xxxHolic series
(USA) Geneon rises from the Grave

The same could be done for the anime discussion threads in the UK/USA/ROW Anime discussion forum?
One of the reasons I suggest to split off import (overseas) from non-import (UK) is just because not everybody likes to import and thus some members (or future members) could see a vanilla forum for them. Most people who import on here don't seem to have restrictions when it comes to from where they'd import so yeah.

Also, as said earlier, I sent Rui an example forum with example threads that use [January 2015], [2015], [Q1 2015] or [Winter 2015],
  • , [UK Anime Distributor] & [US Anime Distributor] with room for more like [QnA], [Survey], ...

    Also important is that if they are merged some of my ideas for topics wouldn't work. A thread for eg. overseas sales I definitely wanted to see separate from the UK one. Again partly because not all members import.

    PS: I still don't get what was so great about Geneon, another thing I should browse back the forum for ...


    britguy said:
    edit - Also, I don't get the differentiation between the Anime News and Anime Industry discussions section you suggest. There are a lot of overlaps in discussions that could feature in both areas, or is it just me?
    My suggestion didn't keep it (see above), but if necessary for the homepage I'd suggest hide it (in a sub-forum or in the AUKN section and renaming it to Homepage Headlines or something alike).
    I have a pretty clear view on what I wanted to achieve with my suggestion though and normally little confusion can occur, especially when UK and overseas get split.

    Just Passing Through said:
    there will be a fair bit of cross referral between the fora anyway (and cynically speaking, since a lot of criticism these days, is Company M screwed up their release, is there a Region B compatible release in Australia/US?, I think just one forum for Industry Discussion is less confusing).
    While true and I assume you read my text above, people will mention how awful Manga is at authoring, how much they hate Sentai dubs etc. wherever.
    Whether forums get split or not it'll get mentioned everywhere and I don't see why having The Anime Industry as one forum would prevent that.
    I believe that it may actually solve some stuff. Some people on AUKN aren't keen on importing and others don't do anything but importing. So it might keep some posts 'we' don't want to read away from the section we do read.
    I mean, if user X doesn't buy UK anime releases anymore he could just refrain from complaining and just place praise and a little grump in the Overseas forum. Get what I mean?

    Plus, with some of the suggested topics I made on my dummy forum for Rui I really believe we would have a lot more of "oops, wrong thread" if we had it as one forum!

    Just Passing Through said:
    Maybe it's worth seeing just how crowded it gets in there first...
    I wouldn't be opposed to the approach that we trial the split method where UK and Overseas have their own split forum first and get merged after 4 months if it all miserably fails.


    Post scriptum
    I have some other stuff to say, but wanted to get this out already.
 
Quick responses to Agent-347 (sorry for my tone, it's just how I talk) ^^;

1. Yeah, I'm not going to move the News forum because it's deeply connected to the site (we're AUKN after all) and Chaos doesn't have time these days to fix anything I break there. I'm happy to experiment with locking it to staff posts only but a lot of people do comment on the 'Guest' posts which relate to the content on the front page; I'm not sure why we'd want to hide those threads somewhere nobody could see them?

2. It's fine to post the link to your sample forum if you want, I don't mind at all.

3. I'm not sure I agree that if you make a load of empty forums, people will naturally come up with topics to fill them. I think people make threads when they feel strongly about something; writing a list of OOP manga is a massive, massive undertaking with decades of records to go through and I don't think it will just happen on its own. Most of our big lists start when some user (sometimes even a brand new one) asks a question and inspires someone else to add more information than was originally requested, then other people start chipping in. Forcing it doesn't seem likely to work.

4. I completely agree that the broken search function is very annoying. Very, very annoying.

5. I disagree that splitting overseas buyers off into their own section will stop them complaining in the UK release threads. All it will do is make them use two more clicks to see all the information they want. Assuming importers will never buy locally is the exact same thing people like Jerome have tended to do in the past, but the question people should be asking is why these people are importing and why the UK anime industry has failed them so badly that they're paying more in order to boycott it. I don't think it's good to separate both halves of the fandom with those questions still unanswered, and I don't think there's any value in protecting both sides from one another; for example, I still won't buy Manga UK products but Andrew has tempted me back to the UK for select releases by proving that the UK isn't a complete loss when it comes to anime. And the grumps should warn buyers when a release is known to be lacking in some way, to make distributors realise they shouldn't be releasing poor products. It's all part of the same puzzle. Now, I don't mind dividing things into UK/non-UK if everyone agrees it would be easier to navigate and reduce clutter, but if it happens I think that should be the reason, not because fans should be divided up into UK-only/non-UK/both philosophies. We're all UK fans, so the UK industry should be serving us, and we're all inhabitants of planet Earth, so the global industry should also be serving us. The people who are only on one side of the divide and don't care at all about the industry as a whole are only that way because the industry isn't currently working for them.

6. I guess Marketplace could move sections or we could add a general non-anime Marketplace too. Is it a big problem that people include gaming items there? It's never bothered me that some anime/manga content leaks into Off Topic, either, as the entire reason I come here is to talk anime/manga with anime/manga fans, not general people with no anime/manga in their life.

7. If a topic title is incorrect, mark it for moderation and I'll fix it any time.

8. I don't have a problem with double posting here, and that's why it's not in the forum rules. It's not as though it happens much, and sometimes it's annoying when someone adds something important to the first post and you miss it because you read it before the edit. To be honest, in some situations I find double posts a heck of a lot easier to read and follow than really, really long posts which span multiple topics (oh, like this one ^^; ). I trust that people will use common sense (and those who don't will receive a private message eventually). If it happens enough to be a problem and common sense isn't any help, I'll add a new rule about disruptive posting.

I know I probably seem like a really soft/lazy moderator, but it's a pretty mature community and the entire reason I was originally brought onto the team was because the owner wanted this style of moderation, so I've tried to keep to his vision. Even though I've been accused of power tripping numerous times I think the community is pretty solid here and the last thing I want is to start getting strict on unnecessary rules.

By the way, we have a system for escalating punishments before a ban too (though I tend to use my discretion since bad behaviour is so infrequent these days, and I eradicate suspected spambots without giving them a chance). I'm afraid I have the type of personality where trying to tell me how to do something I clearly already know how to do tends to make me stop responding and move on to another topic in exasperation, so I'm trying to avoid that each time it comes up - everyone's feedback is valuable whether they consider themselves a forum wizard or not ^^;

9. Fundamentally, I don't want to change too much as the reason our regulars use this particular forum is going to be that they like how it's set up, on some level. There are definitely some improvements which could be made but as soon as we turn a forum organised with one philosophy into something completely different, some people will stop wanting to use it, even if it makes other people enjoy navigating here a bit more. Especially when other forums already exist which use that design philosophy and the people have specifically chosen to be on this one. There's nobody here I would want to lose for such a pointless reason.

R
 
With the permission from Rui I'm directing you all to what I originally sent to Rui (and please do browse to the forums and topics to see some of the BBCodes as well):
http://dcnl.forum-xl.nl/index.php [Do not create an account on there as permissions for the original AUKN suggestion only are accessible as a guest.]

Mind that it is using an old project of mine that got abandoned due to my partner giving up and I not wanting to do it alone really.
With some of the changes Disney pulled on us in Belgium I'm kind of glad I abandoned it. I had another project that was really popular at the time as well.

Rui said:
Quick responses to Agent-347 (sorry for my tone, it's just how I talk) ^^;

1. Yeah, I'm not going to move the News forum because it's deeply connected to the site (we're AUKN after all) and Chaos doesn't have time these days to fix anything I break there. I'm happy to experiment with locking it to staff posts only but a lot of people do comment on the 'Guest' posts which relate to the content on the front page; I'm not sure why we'd want to hide those threads somewhere nobody could see them?
Those 'Guest' posts is another thing I never understood.
I'm not entirely sure what you are suggesting though with the staff lock.
I don't want to take away the News part at all. I would have brought it under in the Industry forums. But well ...

Let me initiate another suggestion: How do topics actually end up on the homepage? Are they created via a special button? If I were to create a topic it wouldn't end up on the homepage, would it?
If it wouldn't I could find myself in doing those monthly news threads in the current Anime News & Rumours forum. If anything it might keep the UK Anime Industry and Overseas Anime Industry forums extra clean then.
I'd still like to split off UK News into its own thread then though.

You didn't say anything about my remark in regards to the weekly anime releases threads though. But I'd take those to new topics using monthly release schedules.
Unless that's why you're suggesting a staff lock on some of them, although I would then rather see a subforum for homepage as the "New _ Releases"-threads would still clog up the Anime News and Rumours forum where they really don't belong.

Rui said:
3. I'm not sure I agree that if you make a load of empty forums, people will naturally come up with topics to fill them. I think people make threads when they feel strongly about something; writing a list of OOP manga is a massive, massive undertaking with decades of records to go through and I don't think it will just happen on its own. Most of our big lists start when some user (sometimes even a brand new one) asks a question and inspires someone else to add more information than was originally requested, then other people start chipping in. Forcing it doesn't seem likely to work.
It's not forcing it, but giving people room. I know I have kept myself from creating topics because of the mess here. I seriously can't be the only one who has all these ideas in his head.
Now, due to college I don't have as much time to compose some of these lists I suggest, but I would add them or start a topic for them if everything is approved in due course.

Rui said:
5. I disagree that splitting overseas buyers off into their own section will stop them complaining in the UK release threads. All it will do is make them use two more clicks to see all the information they want. Assuming importers will never buy locally is the exact same thing people like Jerome have tended to do in the past, but the question people should be asking is why these people are importing and why the UK anime industry has failed them so badly that they're paying more in order to boycott it.

I don't think it's good to separate both halves of the fandom with those questions still unanswered, and I don't think there's any value in protecting both sides from one another; for example, I still won't buy Manga UK products but Andrew has tempted me back to the UK for select releases by proving that the UK isn't a complete loss when it comes to anime. And the grumps should warn buyers when a release is known to be lacking in some way, to make distributors realise they shouldn't be releasing poor products. It's all part of the same puzzle. Now, I don't mind dividing things into UK/non-UK if everyone agrees it would be easier to navigate and reduce clutter, but if it happens I think that should be the reason, not because fans should be divided up into UK-only/non-UK/both philosophies. We're all UK fans, so the UK industry should be serving us, and we're all inhabitants of planet Earth, so the global industry should also be serving us. The people who are only on one side of the divide and don't care at all about the industry as a whole are only that way because the industry isn't currently working for them.
I didn't say the first thing at all, I even literally said "Whether forums get split or not it'll get mentioned everywhere and I don't see why having The Anime Industry as one forum would prevent that. ".
It's interesting to see what you think Jereome Mazandarani thinks, as I disagree with that as well. But that's pointless to discuss here.
Reasons behind importing are obvious and in some people's cases it's rather a case of when, not if. The BBFC is reason enough for lots of people to pay more for US releases.

I wonder though, are you a person that sees more structure in chaos than in actual order?

Some of the suggested questions could still get their own threads in separate forums. A "What have you imported and why?" thread in the UK Anime Industry forum feels appropriate to me to help Manga, MVM and Anime Ltd to understand.
I for instance think the disc count logo on earlier MVM Blu-rays is enough for me to not buy them. But well ... I should go deeper into that topic when I or someone else creates that topic when/if the forum is set up.

Not everybody will agree, that can be blamed on not everybody understanding some people really need actual structure. It's not because the boss' name is chaos that the actual forum has to be a chaos too.
Of course I see chaos, but from my understanding Britguy and JPT see clear order in everything thrown together.
So I wonder whether it's a question of 'everybody has to agree' or 'we want the forum to be more user-friendly'. More and 'better' structure will not make it less user friendly, as long as we don't go over the top like with the Hong Kong, France, Germany, .... (joke?) suggestions.

I get the understanding you strongly feel against borders and nations, but that doesn't change my view on the need be for structure.
According to your logic I can place announcements about Ben 10 also in the anime section because strictly seen anime is all kinds of animation in Japan.
I wouldn't do that - and perhaps I sound angry whilst I'm not - but that's the logic I get back from it now. (I really hope you see this as elaborate discussing and that I'm not offending you at all.)

Rui said:
6. I guess Marketplace could move sections or we could add a general non-anime Marketplace too. Is it a big problem that people include gaming items there? It's never bothered me that some anime/manga content leaks into Off Topic, either, as the entire reason I come here is to talk anime/manga with anime/manga fans, not general people with no anime/manga in their life.
Having two Marketplaces would really be a slap in my face if the UK Anime Industry, Overseas Anime Industry and Members' Collections & Acquisitions forums don't happen. xD

I really almost feel at least we should just go to the AUKN chatbox and try to fully understand what I mean and want to achieve. (not all suggestions are things I actually want to achieve)
Why I said the previous line? Because I thought I said I think the marketplace shouldn't be in the forum section/category "Anime & Manga" if non-anime stuff is allowed.
Unlike the acquisitions threads where I rather have a split view over who buys what outside anime and inside anime, I don't have a real problem in seeing what they want to sell in general.
Perhaps that may be a discrepancy in my logic now, who knows ...

Rui said:
7. If a topic title is incorrect, mark it for moderation and I'll fix it any time.
You really want me to report over 100 thread titles that in my opinion need fixing?xD
It's not as if I didn't realize before you're one special person though, but still ... I'm the only person crazy enough to go forum-wide changing stuff. (I have done it before)

Rui said:
8. I don't have a problem with double posting here, and that's why it's not in the forum rules. It's not as though it happens much, and sometimes it's annoying when someone adds something important to the first post and you miss it because you read it before the edit. To be honest, in some situations I find double posts a heck of a lot easier to read and follow than really, really long posts which span multiple topics (oh, like this one ^^; ). I trust that people will use common sense (and those who don't will receive a private message eventually). If it happens enough to be a problem and common sense isn't any help, I'll add a new rule about disruptive posting.
I had an anti-bumping rule on all the forums I was part of in some way, I believe this forum to be very special in that regard.
It's one of the reasons behind my megaposts though. I'm so used to that rule. But honestly, I have asked myself before what I should do with my own posts.
Structure-wise I'd actually rather have split comments, with headers and such, but realistically ... Recently I wasn't on AUKN for 2 weeks due to college tasks, if I were to make every comment of mine then independently you could sometimes get perhaps over 10 posts of me in a row which feels wrong to me as well.

That is actually something I wanted to chat somewhere about at some point too, how people feel about my posts and way of treating my posts.
I really don't like how most users think black and white, but I've found myself wondering whether people NOT read my posts due to their length or because they come from me.

And this reminds me of another reason why I wanted the news threads to be monthly!
Earlier this year I didn't have time to compose my comments in the news thread spanning over 3 months of news, I felt inclined to comment but knew it was a mess.
People forget about news stories or don't want new feedback et all anymore, so if it were monthly threads people could have easier ignored my comments in October then.

And yeah, going back to the Haruhi Suzumiya news from July or August would be much easier if the news threads would be monthly. I think it was August.

Rui said:
I know I probably seem like a really soft/lazy moderator, but it's a pretty mature community and the entire reason I was originally brought onto the team was because the owner wanted this style of moderation, so I've tried to keep to his vision. Even though I've been accused of power tripping numerous times I think the community is pretty solid here and the last thing I want is to start getting strict on unnecessary rules.
You're special, that's all ...
I'm lazy too, but when I want to do something I can be really dedicated. People underestimate how much I (would) love to do certain things.

I mean, I wasted easily 3 days on this all already and it's looking like I'll have wasted 3 days of my life as the more time passes the less it looks like something that matters to me really will change.
Don't get me wrong, I don't expect people to adapt all my suggestions at all, but didn't expect this little to happen either. I mean, you approve the UK and Overseas split, but 2 members don't really see a purpose for it. Are you now going to listen to them? You probably will.
And later you and others will ask what happened to my ideas. I honestly don't think they'll work out if it's just Anime Industry.
Or the forum would have at least 2 threads with similar names to everything there:
- "[2015] UK Sales" and "[2015] Abroad Sales".
- "[January 2015] UK Anime Releases" and "[January 2015] US Anime Releases"
- "
  • Disappointing/Defective UK Anime Releases" and "
    • Disappointing/Defective US Anime Releases"
      - "
      • UK Licensed Anime Without Release Date" and "
        • US Licensed Anime Without Release Date"
          - ...

          I just expect people to click on the wrong thread and accidentally post in the wrong topic then, especially when they are in a hurry.
          And having it all in one thread beats the purpose of my suggestions.

          Rui said:
          9. Fundamentally, I don't want to change too much as the reason our regulars use this particular forum is going to be that they like how it's set up, on some level. There are definitely some improvements which could be made but as soon as we turn a forum organised with one philosophy into something completely different, some people will stop wanting to use it, even if it makes other people enjoy navigating here a bit more. Especially when other forums already exist which use that design philosophy and the people have specifically chosen to be on this one. There's nobody here I would want to lose for such a pointless reason.
          I don't want to change the philosophy and don't see how my changes would limit people more.
          I've been coming to AUKN for over 2 years as I liked the community, not because I liked how it is set-up.

          The last suggestion splits "Anime News & Rumours" and "General Anime Chit-Chat" into "Anime News & Rumours", "UK Anime Industry", "Overseas Anime Industry" and "General Anime Chit-Chat" with the introduction of a forum for members' collections & acquisitions.
          If we are keeping Anime News & Rumours and General Anime Chit-Chat there's less need for an Ark of Archival.
          I'd move some stuff around, but that doesn't change philosophy and I don't really want a rule on bumping threads. (although in the marketplace deleting some of these bumps might be appropriate really)
          Albeit I would really prefer some threads to start fresh in the new year using my suggested either monthly, quarterly and yearly treatment.
 
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