Forum reorganization (Was: New "CR" links)

[relentlessflame]

I don't care too much either way either about the order of the three forums, but I think it's not a bad idea to have Older be at the end. Since "Unaired" will only be one small forum, it might get lost a bit under the giant list of Older Sub-Forums. Plus, the chronological order is a nice bonus. But like I said, I don't care that much -- just a small preference.

Love the goddess suggestion as well! (Maybe vBulletin has a plug-in to do forum-specific logos/banners and we can do it that way? )

[CrowKenobi]

I'm with xris' idea of the forum structure (and nicknames!) but one small problem I see is the gaggle of sub-forum names under the older series forum...

Perhaps placing those sub-forums under an alphabetic sub-forum would give the front page a "cleaner" look.

An example would be:

Older Series
Forums for discussing popular anime that finished a while ago.

Sub-Forums A-L Sub-Forums M-Z Retired

[relentlessflame]

On the one hand, I agree about the long list of sub-forums (which is why I think it's better to put it at the bottom of the set), but sorting by title has its share of problems. For example let's take "The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya". Currently, the forum name is "Haruhi Suzumiya", so it'd be under H. But according to the way it's written it should probably be under M, because everyone knows the rules about "The", right? Or wait, should it be according to the Japanese title, and so under S?

Sorting by name works well when you have databases so you can do "aliases", like they do on AniDB, ANN, etc., but it's a bit less good in this case.

On the other hand, the whole reason we created the "Retired" section was to reduce the length of that list. So another solution would be to move older series to "Retired" more quickly.

But on yet another hand (I don't know how many there are), if we're splitting the sub-forums into further sub-forums, why do we still need Retired?

So... all that said, in the interests of keeping it simple (less clickthrough), I'd say we should just leave it, at least for now and maybe consider moving more to the Retired section. We can always make this sort of change later if it continues to be a problem.

[npcomplete]

Originally Posted by relentlessflame

For me, my problem statement is: "For any given series x, without doing a search, it's too complicated to figure out where the discussion thread can be found."

Yes, this is what I'd really like to see out of this reorg. It's what brought about the implemented-but-retired idea of a thread index (due to being manually maintained) and the vB search = crap discussion. It's definitely useful if you have a question about an old series. Furthermore if we do without a current -> old series separation, then threads on older series when they are bumped from the occasional question will receive more attention, and perhaps will find someone who can answer your question who would not normally peruse threads in the "older" cat

[Secca]

Personally I really like Xris idea and the setup looks nice. It definitely can help the older series discussion too. But to be honest, it's not really organizing it. Basically it's like moving all your old stuffs to your basement. The next few years it's gona keep piling up. Thus come the other main problem: Searching for a specific thread. It will be a nightmare browsing trough them. The curent Fansubbed forum is like 50s pages long already. Then it'll be combined with the Licensed forum. When the next season come some of them would be moved to the Older Series again and so on. Do you see where this is going?

Originally Posted by GHDpro

An alphabetic structure would have its issues too. Some series are known by both their English and Japanese names. In other cases some people like to abbreviate series (by using only the lead "keyword" from the title). A good example: depending on whether you think you should use Japanese or Western order, where would you search for "Suzumiya Haruhi" or "Haruhi Suzumiya", or even "The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi"?

A yearly archive would be almost as bad as the season structure for older seasons. Can you remember what year "Stellvia", "Prince of Tennis" or "Petopeto-san" aired?

I know it's not perfect, People would probably find alphabet more friendly than years. I used to do the same thing using alphabet to sort out my fansub series. But like you already mentioned there is the problem with the series which have several different names. Thus at certain point I start using yearly categories. It's more universal. Each year say I put all the series from 2005 into one hard disk then label it 2005. After that I build up an index list of that year fansub. If my friend want to watch something, I just look up the titles on the index, then find the right years and voila it doesn't take 5 minutes. Basically it's just an example how I organized my fansub archieves.

Don't take it too seriously ok? I don't want to put you into a headache with the idea organizing. This basically just one example how you can manage your threads make them more easier to keep track for people to find them.

I stil like the Xris setup tho. It looks neat. Hope that can happen.

[GHDpro]

I still think your confusing categorization with organization. There are a tons of ways we could categorize the series discussion threads, but we're looking for a way by which people can easily find threads about:

- current popular series
- older series that are still popular
- new series

The proposed structure more or less satisfies this need. Sure, the "Older Series" forum is going to have 50+ pages full of series discussion threads which is going to be hard to navigate. But that's not really a big issue - if you want to discuss an older series and can't find it on page 1 it'll be easiest & fastest to use the search function anyway. I don't think any kind of categorization will really solve that.

About the search function btw, I've made a change to the AnimeSuki Default (Original Navigation) skin in which I've modified the options below the input box of the Quick Search dropdown a bit to search for thread titles instead of the contents of posts. I actually had made this change earlier, but as xris rightfully pointed out it was not very obvious because the option was hidden. Please check out the Quick Search option (in the navigation bar) to see if it works better for you than before. If you want to comment about the change though, please post about it in this thread rather than in here, thanks.

[monster]

Why are you guys keeping the Licensed forum?

[xris]

Originally Posted by monstert

Why are you guys keeping the Licensed forum?

From the current Announcement, Anime Discussion forum reorganization

Before the end of 2009 the Anime Discussion section of the forum will be reorganized to make it slightly easier to find the threads you are looking for without resorting to the search feature.

The effective result of the reorganization will be:

• The Fansubbed and Licensed forums will disappear.
  • All discussion threads about series which are ongoing, currently airing or have very recently finished will be moved to the Current Series forum.
  • All discussion threads about series which ended a while ago will be moved to the Older Series forum.
  • All discussion threads not related to a particular series will be moved to the General Anime forum.

Or in other words, the reorganization is not yet complete and the (old) threads currently located in Licensed have yet to be moved to their new home. Until that happens the Licensed forum will still be visible. If you looked a while ago you would have noticed the Fansubbed forum still visible but that has now been cleared so is no longer needed (and therefore no longer visible).

[Ansalem]

Originally Posted by monstert

Why are you guys keeping the Licensed forum?

Presumably, if you waited until it was finished, you wouldn't need to ask this question. Reorganizing a large section of the forums isn't instant.

[Theowne]

I really like the reorganization, feels a lot more orderly and sensible than the way it used to be.

[monster]

Oh sorry, I didn't know the reorganization wasn't finished yet.

[GHDpro]

Yeah sorry, I thought I had already hidden the forum (it's not actually deleted in order not to break links and bookmarks) but when I refreshed just a sec ago I noticed I hadn't pressed "save" in the Admin CP yet. It's gone now.

As far as I'm concerned the reorganization is mostly done. What remains is maybe moving some threads around (with hundreds of threads to move it's possible I made a mistake somewhere) and applying some "L" or "CR" tags where applicable. The biggest job left is to take care of the stickies from the old forums, which have now been dumped into General Anime, but clearly such a huge list of sticky threads isn't desirable.

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by GHDpro

The biggest job left is to take care of the stickies from the old forums, which have now been dumped into General Anime, but clearly such a huge list of sticky threads isn't desirable.

I wonder... should we create an "Anime Announcements & Information" forum that would be at the very top (above Current Series)? It would be restricted to new threads, but could contain all the threads like "New Announcements", "New License Announcements", the various rules posts, and so on. The sales rankings and viewer ratings threads could also go in there. You could put a "Request" thread there, but I think it'd be pretty unusual that we'd need to create any (as we'd already have all the basic kinds of news already covered).

Then "General Anime" could be more like "Other Anime Discussions", and the three main Series forums could have no stickies at all (other than maybe a rules post) and be just for "Series discussion". The net effect is basically splitting off some of what you currently find in General Anime (the stuff that's more informative in nature) into its own location, so that General Anime is more for conversations/discussion.

Just throwing it out there as an idea... haven't really fully thought it through yet.

[felix]

I really like red's idea! News is hip/now and should have its own section rather then just be thrown together with discussion of what-may-come-to-pass. You might want to have special rules for that section so that not just every hot headed topic gets blown out of proportion there, but I really like the idea of a limited forum for that purpose. We could have related news threads from other sections as well. Like the news stories thread in the General Chat area.

[Dextro]

Originally Posted by relentlessflame

I wonder... should we create an "Anime Announcements & Information" forum that would be at the very top (above Current Series)? It would be restricted to new threads, but could contain all the threads like "New Announcements", "New License Announcements", the various rules posts, and so on. The sales rankings and viewer ratings threads could also go in there. You could put a "Request" thread there, but I think it'd be pretty unusual that we'd need to create any (as we'd already have all the basic kinds of news already covered).

Then "General Anime" could be more like "Other Anime Discussions", and the three main Series forums could have no stickies at all (other than maybe a rules post) and be just for "Series discussion". The net effect is basically splitting off some of what you currently find in General Anime (the stuff that's more informative in nature) into its own location, so that General Anime is more for conversations/discussion.

Just throwing it out there as an idea... haven't really fully thought it through yet.

I'm all for that idea but I wouldn't agree with renaming the "General Anime" forum. You can have announcements related to the forum activities that don't relate to anime directly (like rules changes or re-organizations like the current one).

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by Dextro

I'm all for that idea but I wouldn't agree with renaming the "General Anime" forum. You can have announcements related to the forum activities that don't relate to anime directly (like rules changes or re-organizations like the current one).

Well, it's fine to me if you keep calling it "General Anime" or whatever people want. I was only thinking of moving the anime news/announcement related stickies and threads out to make it so that it's not quite-so-big of a "catch-all". There might be other ways of doing the same thing; just an idea.

[Veritas]

Just chiming in to say I'm not real happy with the reorganization. It now takes one more click to find the only thread I'm interested in. I, I don't know if I can maintain.

It doesn't make much sense to me to attempt to reduce search loads by making one massive forum with more popular series threads pushing older ones down faster, making the only recourse for finding older threads the Search function. Granted, I don't know what the server load for searches in the Fansubbed vs. Licensed fora were previously.

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by Veritas

It doesn't make much sense to me to attempt to reduce search loads by making one massive forum with more popular series threads pushing older ones down faster, making the only recourse for finding older threads the Search function. Granted, I don't know what the server load for searches in the Fansubbed vs. Licensed fora were previously.

The idea was more to increase "findability" by eliminating the (increasingly murky) distinction between fansubbed and licensed and re-organizing around a single axis of "time". I don't think it'll have much impact on server load.

In your case, where you have one particular thread that you like to follow, I really recommend that you try the "Subscribe to Thread" option. Even if you don't choose to get E-mail reminders, all of your Subscribed Threads with new posts will appear when you click the "User CP" option. I personally have made that my "first stop" every time I visit the forum, and it's really helpful. I just subscribe to all the threads that I'm interested every anime season, and no more need to search or click around.

[xris]

Originally Posted by Veritas

It now takes one more click to find the only thread I'm interested in.

I'm wondering why it is it now takes you one more click to find the thread you are interested in? As far as I can tell it shouldn't have changed, you either click the Current / Older Series link (where before you would have clicked the Fansubbed / Licensed link. If you are interested in one of the series specific forums (say Eden of the East) then that link is visible from the forum front page as before.

Anyway, as mentioned the "Subscribe to Thread" option is a good alternative.

[felix]

Originally Posted by Veritas

Just chiming in to say I'm not real happy with the reorganization. It now takes one more click to find the only thread I'm interested in. I, I don't know if I can maintain.

As xris said, there is no "extra click" you speak of. Also as far as I'm concern before you had Fansubbed / Licensed which you had to be a walking licensing database to figure out if its there or not, while now you just need to grasp the general (and almost idiot proof) concept of "is the show you are watching is still airing" to suffices. With regard to "that unpopular thread being pushed down fast", its not like that wasn't true in the old layout. At least now once its moved to Older you will find its not pushed down so easily.