AnimeSuki Forum - View Single Post - What is the long-term plan for the site?

***relentlessflame*** · 2024-03-23, 19:53

There may come a time when we have to upgrade the forum software, but mostly for security reasons. This vBulletin is old after all, and at some point there could be a security issue so severe that it's deemed unfixable. We have looked at migrating in the past, but there's not really any interest in changing for the sake of changing, and we would want the new experience to be as close as possible to the current one. Ideally we'd like to not lose any functionality, but some of that functionality is custom-built, so may be difficult to reproduce. I don't think anyone's interested in chasing fads and our kind site owner is paying for the servers out-of-pocket with no need to monetize the site. If the site owner decided they didn't want to keep paying for it, there are probably still some options.

I have thought at some points in the past that the site is falling behind the times and has less traffic and maybe we should try to do something about it. Obviously the fansub torrent site is what drove a lot of traffic here, so when we lost that it was inevitable that there'd be a lot less organic traffic. Plus, waiting for fansub torrents to appear/download provided a perfect opportunity for people to hang out on the forum while they waited, but that doesn't really happen anymore when everything streaming on day-one. I thought at some point about what sort of thing we could create that would be useful and drive traffic, but nothing super-obvious comes to mind that wouldn't also be a massive amount of work.

As others posted, and some fellow staff also shared when we discussed this internally, a lot of the appeal of this forum is that this is sort of an unchanging oasis still like the webforums of old and has survived all the social and monetization trends. It's a comfortable home to people because it's mostly unchanging and because we try to not let people get too out of hand with flaming/baiting/etc. (please report stuff we miss).

There are still probably little things we could stand to upgrade, though. Certainly things like the file size limits could be reviewed. I have wondered if there's still a good reason to have series sub-forums anymore. Some of the sub-forums we split out in years past should probably be recombined (like General Chat). Basically, given that the population is smaller, we don't need to be so "spread out" anymore. Definitely open to feedback about that stuff.

But yeah, I can at least say that if we are forced to change the software some day, we will try as much as we reasonably can to have some sort of skin or mode that is close to the look of the current site and retain as many features as we can. But we're not actively working on any migration at the moment, and we don't have some big idea of "pivoting" the site to be something else in pursuit of money, fame, or whatever else. This site can just be a comfortable "old-fashioned" forum for people to discuss anime for as long as it makes sense to keep the servers running.

2024-03-23, 19:53	Link #4
*relentlessflame* 　 Administrator Join Date: Dec 2003 Age: 41	There may come a time when we have to upgrade the forum software, but mostly for security reasons. This vBulletin is old after all, and at some point there could be a security issue so severe that it's deemed unfixable. We have looked at migrating in the past, but there's not really any interest in changing for the sake of changing, and we would want the new experience to be as close as possible to the current one. Ideally we'd like to not lose any functionality, but some of that functionality is custom-built, so may be difficult to reproduce. I don't think anyone's interested in chasing fads and our kind site owner is paying for the servers out-of-pocket with no need to monetize the site. If the site owner decided they didn't want to keep paying for it, there are probably still some options. I have thought at some points in the past that the site is falling behind the times and has less traffic and maybe we should try to do something about it. Obviously the fansub torrent site is what drove a lot of traffic here, so when we lost that it was inevitable that there'd be a lot less organic traffic. Plus, waiting for fansub torrents to appear/download provided a perfect opportunity for people to hang out on the forum while they waited, but that doesn't really happen anymore when everything streaming on day-one. I thought at some point about what sort of thing we could create that would be useful and drive traffic, but nothing super-obvious comes to mind that wouldn't also be a massive amount of work. As others posted, and some fellow staff also shared when we discussed this internally, a lot of the appeal of this forum is that this is sort of an unchanging oasis still like the webforums of old and has survived all the social and monetization trends. It's a comfortable home to people because it's mostly unchanging and because we try to not let people get too out of hand with flaming/baiting/etc. (please report stuff we miss). There are still probably little things we could stand to upgrade, though. Certainly things like the file size limits could be reviewed. I have wondered if there's still a good reason to have series sub-forums anymore. Some of the sub-forums we split out in years past should probably be recombined (like General Chat). Basically, given that the population is smaller, we don't need to be so "spread out" anymore. Definitely open to feedback about that stuff. But yeah, I can at least say that if we are forced to change the software some day, we will try as much as we reasonably can to have some sort of skin or mode that is close to the look of the current site and retain as many features as we can. But we're not actively working on any migration at the moment, and we don't have some big idea of "pivoting" the site to be something else in pursuit of money, fame, or whatever else. This site can just be a comfortable "old-fashioned" forum for people to discuss anime for as long as it makes sense to keep the servers running. __________________ [...]