Thread: Proposal A few suggestions
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Old 2012-12-14, 21:33   Link #4
relentlessflame
 
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Join Date: Dec 2003
Age: 41
Quote:
Originally Posted by Traece View Post
I'm surprised that there's no unpaid programming staff. I'm sure you could find some individuals who would willingly improve the site or people who already have experience with vbBoard and are willing to help the site.
Well, there are some "unpaid programming staff" as it were, but there are three problems:

1. Most of us do this sort of work in our full-time jobs, so doing more programming in our spare time isn't always what we want to do.

2. Right now, we're in a bit of a messy situation because we're stuck on an old version of vBulletin. We want to upgrade eventually, but we have a lot of customizations that would need to be re-programmed from scratch. So again, referring to point 1, it's been a bit hard to find the motivation to get through that giant pile of (rather tedious) work.

3. Because of point 2, knowing that we do want to migrate eventually to a new version and whatever changes we do now may have to be re-done, it's hard to find the desire to program improvements/customizations to the current vBulletin either because it may all have to be re-done again later.

So, as you can see, we're basically at a stalemate right now, and given that the forum is basically working okay at the moment, it's been hard to break out of it. Maybe that will change at some point in the new year (once vBulletin 5 comes out, perhaps?).

Quote:
Originally Posted by Traece View Post
One thing that's bothered me since I came to Asuki is how there are a lot of general anime subforums that could just as easily fit into general discussion, but aren't present. I've seen a lot of non-anime threads in the anime music discussion subforum simply because there's not a regular one. Is this something that existed once but didn't work out well enough or?
I think this is because we have traditionally tried to keep our focus more on being an anime site first, with everything else coming second. While we do allow non-anime related threads in the anime music/games sections, it isn't really our intention that we start attracting an audience specifically to talk about mainstream music or gaming (etc.). So although the organization is a bit wonky, it did serve a purpose. That doesn't mean that there aren't other options, of course... but I think that's why it is the way it is now.


Edit:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Traece View Post
On that note it could be interesting to have private subforums for the really, really big groups.
Incidentally, I can also say that we have had conversations about the weaknesses/limitations of social groups and other possible options... but it's a difficult situation that doesn't really have an easy fix in vBulletin right now (without doing even more customization), or without causing a whole lot of other complications in terms of governance. So for now we're still at the status quo on this.
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