An observation: The evolution of community structure

[Access]

Well even in your case I assume people were still working on things because they wanted to. Some people have more flexibility than others, and some positions or workgroups are more modular than others. But if that group of 60-or-so you were in split into two, what would the end result be? Most of the members, especially the intertwined ones, would simply end up in both groups (doing half as much work in each). In theory, projects could die off, but the reality is that if the people working on those projects intend to keep those projects going, they will go on, one way or another. In this way, the name of the group, the channel it provides, whatever internal dump and distro it provides, webpage, etc., these things are secondary to the people within the group, the synergies and enablers between those people, attitudes, trust/mistrust, good faith/paranoia, etc. Since it ultimately comes down to the people and not these other things like website or group name; sub-groups end up being more modular than people realise. Remember the initial question was "what's with all these one-shot wonders".

[fizz]

Originally Posted by Access

In theory, projects could die off, but the reality is that if the people working on those projects intend to keep those projects going, they will go on, one way or another. In this way, the name of the group, [...]

Your view of this is quite cold, I must say; leechers see things the way you do, because most of them just want those anime out. They don't care about internal conflits, key members leaving or group splits, even though those things are huge factors for the availability of some anime. But the reality is, members of big fansubbing groups had the synergy between them, friendships and all of that, and with all due respect, it was a tragedy when a big group split apart. Emotions ran wild, and certainly the umbrella model didn't collapse as logically as you seem to present that.
All in all, I'm saying this as a former member of two big groups, we weren't working for corporations.

[Access]

Rather than being cold, I'd say it's a view of empowerment. My point is that it's the people, not the group, that make fansubbing possible. If you believe it's the group, when a group folds you might as well throw up your arms and give up altogether. If you believe it's the people, the individuals, then you can stick with your friends, pick up the pieces and move on, continuing to fansub despite the tragedy of the past, despite what was. Philosophies and views like this are borne of necessity, out of the current climate, and a self-empowering view makes sense b'cos of that same climate. I've been on projects as far back as 2001 to current and I've always considered the people more important than the group as a whole.

[complich8]

I've got two answers for the OP question.

1: small groups are agile.
2: diffusion of responsibility / social loafing

explanations:
1 - just like TheFuzz said, small groups are easy to manage. Not only that, they're easy to know everyone in, easy to build relationships in. Working with a large group, it's a lot harder to do that. There were something like 40ish members in my group at one point -- I couldn't even remember what country everyone was from or what roles they all had.

2 - with more people, everyone feels less responsible for their own work.
diffusion of responsibility (wikipedia)
social loafing (wikipedia)

There's a lot I could say about these phenomena in large groups -- particularly the large group I was in. But I'll save it ... don't feel like subjecting people to that right now .

[Starks]

Do you guys think the current community environment could allow the formation of a new large group?

[Access]

The 'environment' does not allow, disallow, or support things, it's merely a reflection of trends, what has worked, and what hasn't worked up to the current time. In the end it all comes down to what the people doing the work want. If a bunch of people want a large group, it's perfectly possible; and anyone who said 'oh but the environment or climate would not allow for that right now, too much has changed, it would no doubt fail' could be safely ignored. A large group would probably have to consist of people who care to keep it a large group, occassionally engaging in self-sacrifice for the sake of unity, or it would have to have some compelling advantage over smaller groups in order for it to survive intact for a long time.

[the.Merines]

Originally Posted by Starks

Do you guys think the current community environment could allow the formation of a new large group?

To answer that I have to refer back to something that was previously said in this thread. Big groups need to have a figurehead/leader. This leader needs to be enthusiastic, all-powerful, amicable, and driven (among other things). People might hate Shinsen, and people might not like Vincent or his methods, but they do put out a good number of releases as one of the last remaining (active) large groups.

At this point fansub groups seem very segmented from each other, and there doesn't seem to be enough available, experienced people to even start a group that hopes to emulate or equal the large groups of the past.

Could the current community allow a large group to form? No, I don't believe it could. From the tiny amount of experience I have in the community, it seems like most groups are either A) competitive or B) justifiably out of touch. We all know that quality is what we want, but speed is what the downloaders need. A new group can release the best version of a new episode, but if it happens to be released two weeks late, that fact plus the unfamiliar group name makes it hard for these new groups to be recognized.

To form a new "super" group, several established groups would have to merge, and I don't know very many personalities that would agree with that kind of collaboration. I think we see some of this collaboration between smaller groups in the form of joints, but a group merger is something I've never seen.

^Keep in mind I've been around for less than six months, so my opinions aren't as valid as some of the others who've posted in this thread. Don't even bother telling me I'm wrong because I realize that my thought processes are flawed and based on a very small amount of data.

[fizz]

The environment isn't hostile towards change, and even more likely, it just can't do anything against it because people will do what they wish on the internet. But if you want to understand why bigger groups aren't forming like the way they used to, you have to take a look at old groups' growth curve. One trend of the past was to form a group and keep it alive, and the only way you can do that even in these days is with a steady recruitment process. Most smaller groups these days have a tendency to recruit members to a level where they feel they have sufficient resources to pull off their projects, but the really big groups of the past haven't stopped the recruitment process even after they were "full". Anime-Keep was well known to have at least a few new members constantly just idling in the staff channel. Some of them left because they were inactive for too long, still the group kept recruiting because from the standpoint of the groups' leaders it was always good to have extra assets laying around. Similar was the story of distro capabilities. Good distro always meant a big crowd, even in the first two years of BitTorrent.
One other very important factor is the series these groups picked. A group subtitling Naruto, Inuyasha, Fullmetal Alchemist, or Chrno Crusade was an instant hit, speed and distro had something to do with that too. There were a lot more translators on the "market" too. As I remember, competition was so fierce at the peak of fansubbing in 2003 that you had multiple good groups releasing many shows only hours, minutes apart. This rarely happens in our times, perhaps on some of the more popular series like Kanon.

I can't be sure of the cause, but I highly suspect low translator availability, as to why there are no more bigger groups. Has the quality of available shows degraded to the point that many translators are just not interested in them anymore? I think not; there's always a few good series out every season (Kanon, Death Note and Code Geass from the past season, for example). But then again this is a totally subjective assessment.

[Devastator]

Kind of mixing things in with the merging idea, I find joints to be much less risky. In joints, you can build a sense of how well you can work with the various people in the other group. Merging has more of the risk that, if you do go through with it, you may end up getting stuck with some people you later regret working with. Then what do you do? Split?

If you feel that you can expect the others to support your opinions and you can support theirs, a merger probably isn't all that difficult to sustain. I'm not sure if there are any such people or groups that I could state that I trust to that level, however there are some who may come close.

As fizz said, project selections can sometimes play an issue in keeping a group together as well. I still remember amongst the groups I've worked with, there was often quite a diverse set of series names that would come up as to what each person wanted to work on and more often than not, few, if any, would actually coincide with one another.

I really don't see a merge occuring anytime in the future for myself. I have my own set of goals and desires, and little tolerance to work on things that I find of little worth or outside my interests. I'm sure a lot of other groups feel the same (being one of the main reasons they don't take series suggestions).

[Jiji]

My impression had always been that in the dim mists of the past, fansub groups were comprised from University anime clubs. Back in the day, that was the easiest way to get a feeling of "community" about your passion for the medium. But the internet has gotten easier to use, moving from usenet to IRC and from hacked IRC bots to easy torrent distro. So now, it's easy to form a little group with people whom you've never met except over forums and IRC.
In other words, I think it has to do with physical dictates of technology that numerous small groups have been on the rise. It has made it *possible* for someone to throw together a "one-hit-wonder" group from frustration over other groups' slowness.
Maybe. ^_^

[sangofe]

Originally Posted by fizz

The idea of project channels is in my opinion the only way a group can function when they have 10+ projects on their plate. For some it's already hard to keep things organised with 5 projects using just one staff/project room.

...Or you can use forums, as we do :P We only use staff channel for QC topics, and that's it.

[acidflower]

I think some groups are created solely for subbing a specific anime, so when that anime is finished the group either disbands or finds another.

Another reason could be that a smaller amount of people think up a good group name as opposed to the conventional anime-<fillintheblank> name. But some don't want to leave the group with a boring name because it's well established and etc.

[Mentar]

Hm.

I've been through pretty much all combinations: Solo projects, projects with very small groups, projects with very large groups and the different forms of joints. And if there's one thing I have found out, then it's this:

Big groups actually don't offer real advantages over small ones, but they are burdened with several (potential) disadvantages.

I'd define a successful project like this: An anime is fansubbed completely (all episodes) in a timely fashion (it's tolerable to fall behind, as long as the releases keep coming and end not TOO much later than the show itself), in a reasonable and consistent quality which makes the product enjoyable to watch.

Experience shows that in order to accomplish this task, you need not only the default crew of TL, Editor, Timer, TS and Encoder (skipping over QC and distro for simplicity), you need to make sure that all members are competent in their task and RELIABLE. Which means that they're all determined to deliver their parts, they also have the time and they need to have BACKUPS. It's basically impossible to do an episodic anime without having team members miss out for a variety of reasons, and this is when backups need to be available to carry on. Which means that more people need to be involved, which is slowing down the progress and which is making the quality of the releases uneven. It's like holes in the road, and the longer you fall into these holes, the more you fall behind, and the harder it gets to proceed. If the morale gets too low (usually, when you've been falling behind too much), the project stalls and fails.

Here, huge groups are disadvantaged. Why? Because in my experience, the "side" members which are called in to projects tend to have lower dedication. They tend to start out enthusiastic, but soon the strain starts to show. Problems occur, deadlines aren't met (or only met with so-so results, which might even require the team to ask for improvements or redos), and the discipline starts slipping, endangering the overall success.

Successful huge groups (at least in my experience) have all one thing in common: They have 2-3 different "core teams". Clusters of TL/Editor/Timer/TS/Encoder which stay the same throughout many different animes, and which are NOT changed except for backups, or for maybe 1 new position. Who know, respect and trust each other, and who share a certain sense of "duty" not to let the other team members down. This is what I believe to be the key ingredient, much more important to technical prowess.

Solo projects are possible (especially in the DVD world), but tend to be real hard, because the quality requirements are so much higher today compared to 4-5 years ago. Group projects are the default, and here, the rule of thumb is: The FEWER people you need for a project, the better and easier it is. I can say for sure that BY FAR the most enjoyable and relaxing work is in a group of 5 people only, where most members are multi-skilled and can take over tasks of the other ones without problem. This way you can stay consistent, keep deadlines and develop a genuine mutual respect and team spirit which keeps you going. Group projects of 8-10 members are MUCH harder to maintain.

A particular downside for most huge groups is the "leader" issue. In general, things tend to go well as long as the "leader" is active and competent, especially if his skills are well-respected. However, in my experience, problems arise when the "leader" stops being an active primary team member, but rather some kind of figurehead who feels entitled to "manage" the group. Basically telling people what to do and making decisions in their respective fields without really contributing. This is probably the single biggest cause of "splits", where team members get fed up and break away to work on their projects without interference. On the other hand, there are successful huge groups which have "leader" personalities - but in these cases, the leader is usually either an active primary team member or a friendly figurehead who doesn't impose his will on the active subbers. Smaller groups tend not to have this kind of disadvantage.

chaos4ever brought up an interesting point which I'm not sure I agree with: He said that it's imperative to always actively recruit. The upside is obvious: A continuous influx of new recruits makes sure that you've got a big number of talented people who have the skills and attitude to be successful. But at the same time, I see many groups with particularly free recruitment policies falter, because they have too many "noob projects" where too many green team members try their best. Brutally put, nothing is as discouraging as starting out with many other inexperienced members just to have them fail. I'd rather be VERY selective and introduce talented folks as the _single_ new member of a seasoned team, preferably even under guidance and oversight from the one which is replaced.

In fact, my most pleasant experiences by far are from a purely-invitational group which doesn't recruit at all. Likewise, from joints over group borders which make sure that only interested and motivated veterans of their fields cooperate for a single project. For this, you need to have dozens of contacts over many different groups though, to be able to ask around "hey, would you like to do xxx?" and then assemble the team. In fact, I believe that this is where you tend to get the best results, performance- and qualitywise.

So, what it all boils down to: For all those points I listed which I consider most important for the success or failure of a project, being in a huge group doesn't really help at all. It's easier to maintain a small group, and it's also much more natural to keep flat hierarchies (preferably none at all), to keep a healthy working atmosphere.

==> Small is beautiful ^_^

[chaos4ever]

Originally Posted by Mentar

chaos4ever brought up an interesting point which I'm not sure I agree with: He said that it's imperative to always actively recruit. The upside is obvious: A continuous influx of new recruits makes sure that you've got a big number of talented people who have the skills and attitude to be successful. But at the same time, I see many groups with particularly free recruitment policies falter, because they have too many "noob projects" where too many green team members try their best.

/me double-checks checks what he wrote

I'm pretty sure I didn't say that groups must always recruit on an active basis. My speculation was more along the lines that some groups are much more difficult to get into than others due to high quality standards and efficient work within the group, and thus, smaller and newer groups heave an easier time to flourish and grow. However, the hit from this is that these smaller groups have a tendency having "subpar" releases.

I can say for sure that BY FAR the most enjoyable and relaxing work is in a group of 5 people only, where most members are multi-skilled and can take over tasks of the other ones without problem.

Personally, I'm a fan of specialization within a group. I'd perfer to do the best job as I can on a project on an individual job. Having to do more than one job on an episode would be an unpleasant burden, since it'd require me having to look at the script and the episode so many times.

[Mentar]

Whoops! I'm sorry, you're right, chaos4ever. The recruitment statement I wanted to address was actually from fizz.

[Quarkboy]

I've been lowering and lowering my project sizes (sometimes by choice, sometimes not) over time.

Pretty Cure 5 is a 2 person project.... I do everything except quality check (and the qcer knows japanese too, so she acts as a trans check as well).

But I also have projects with 5-6 people on them like hataraki-man. It all depends on how you're treating the show (and the requirements the show itself sets on you).

I do kind of prefer working in smaller groups because there's less places for things to bog down, but then in the smaller the group more burden is placed on individuals. It's a tradeoff, that each show/group needs to decide what they are comfortable with.

[fizz]

I can agree on Mentar's view of a successful project: a small number of people that are highly skilled and trust each other have a much higher chance of successfully completing a project. Many fansubbers can relate to this ideal, but as far as groups are concerned I believe it's a bit naive to think that seasoned teams can last a group forever. Everybody burns out eventually, gets tired of fansubbing, gets tired of the hobby, gets busy with life. Few people stay active fansubbers for longer periods of time (with the occasional breaks), and that's the main reason for recruiting. If a group stubbornly insists on selective recruiting by invitation, or on strict public recruiting, be sure it will meet its end before its third year of activity. Looking over this community, there are just too few examples of small, everlasting groups. In fact, only one crosses my mind (a.f.k., and even they heavily rely on the availability of a single member), which makes them an exception, but there are more examples of big groups that are still alive, even if their quality bar raised and lowered a few times in their history. AnimeONE, Anime-Keep, AnimeForever-Fansubs are still kicking even though their management and members have changed. These are groups that were constantly building fat and now they're burning it away, topping +4 years of active fansubbing while small groups are left to die when projects are finished or when members disappear.
I do think it looks prettier to finish projects in a timely manner than just finishing them for the sake of keeping the group active, but the current state of fansubbing productivity compared to a few years back does suggest that previous trends were more productive. Perhaps less enjoyable, but more productive.

[Access]

Originally Posted by fizz

I do think it looks prettier to finish projects in a timely manner than just finishing them for the sake of keeping the group active, but the current state of fansubbing productivity compared to a few years back does suggest that previous trends were more productive. Perhaps less enjoyable, but more productive.

But since this is a hobby and nothing more, enjoyment trumps 'productivity'. Or even better, enjoyment itself is the product; more enjoyment = more productivity.

And even from a leecher standpoint, there's more out there, you have many groups subbing many different shows, of all genres. Rather than fewer groups subbing the same popular series and competing on a basis of time. Subbing a series where licensing is ensured, or subbing a series that another group is already subbing well, neither one increases any measure of 'productivity' from the leecher standpoint.

[Crovax]

Originally Posted by fizz

[...] One trend of the past was to form a group and keep it alive, and the only way you can do that even in these days is with a steady recruitment process. Most smaller groups these days have a tendency to recruit members to a level where they feel they have sufficient resources to pull off their projects, but the really big groups of the past haven't stopped the recruitment process even after they were "full". [...] Similar was the story of distro capabilities. Good distro always meant a big crowd, even in the first two years of BitTorrent. [...] There were a lot more translators on the "market" too. [...]

I can't be sure of the cause, but I highly suspect low translator availability, as to why there are no more bigger groups. [...]

All of these points you make here seem to suggest to me that the issue at hand is mainly increased competition. Putting aside non-essential functions such as fancy AAE-wielding karaoke typesetters/scripters, the greatest scarcity these days (judging by for example by the recruitment thread) are translators. In a market of perfect competition, scarcity leads naturally to an infinitesimal number of suppliers all of inconsequential size. Perhaps the lack of new behemoth groups and gradual decline of existing ones represents a shift in this direction. But then again, such an explanation may be too far out of touch with concrete reality.

What I do know of many smaller groups is, (as fizz mentioned) their constant want for translators. My experience in the fansubbing world is very limited and brief (so bear with me) but it seems to me that as someone else mentioned earlier in this thread it is no longer about 'find a series for people to sub', but rather 'finding people for subbing a series', especially for translators. I know of several groups who rely heavily on project-specific translators. The following is merely conjecture, I do not know from personal experience things would happen this way, but it seems plausible to me:
Let's say Animesuki-kun (who studied Japanese for several years and is proficient enough to reasonable translate) very much loves YASA (Yet Another Shoujo Anime), UpStart-Fansubs which direly needs TLs might very well be inclined to contact Animesuki-kun and decide on YASA as their new (or first) project, simply because a translator can be found for it. After YASA is finished, Animesuki-kun would be likely to move on leaving UpStart-Fansubs dead in the water unless they are patient in waiting for a similar opportunity for something similar. Obviously a very good time for a group to turn into a 'one-series-only endeavor. Even if Animesuki-kun would agree to do another series, chances are he will be dictating what series are subbed. Once the novelty of subbing wears of for the new/green staff they might very well get fed up with doing the series Animesuki-kun happens to be willing to TL.

Anyhow, that is just one scenario obviously. Another likely thing (as pointed out before) is a simple lack of experience, professionalism and discipline. I'd daresay a lot of the small newly formed groups out there consist largely of inexperienced enthusiastic people of unproven reliability. 1 or 2 of them are bound to get bored halfway, go MIA or turn out not to have the skill and devotion to deliver work of acceptable quality. At this point, it all depends on the leader's ability to quickly grow/learn/adapt and replace them, whilst taking the initiative and filling in the blanks himself where necessary. (Well, obviously more standard leadership skills like motivating people are needed as well.) The point is, one or two people need to be actively pushing the envelope to keep things moving. (Be it the leader or another member.) Opportunities aplenty for a group without routine to (eventually) go astray then. The first project may survive because it is special to those involved. But a person will get tired pushing that heavy envelope all the time and may not be willing to try so hard for the next project.

Back to the competition thing, as correctly noted by others, bittorrent has leveled the playing field enormously, which makes the 'market' a LOT more sensitive to competition. The abundance of 'how-to' time/typeset/encode etc. guides have further lowered the threshhold for any considering to get into fansubbing (easy to use tools such as Aegisub obviously help as well). Aside from translating, anyone with enough time on his hands can produce a sub-par quality fansub that is (for all its flaws) quite watchable. Which again moves emphasis away from 'joining one of the established groups'. After all... deep inside we're all little entrepreneurs craving freedom. ;-)

Anyhow, those are just some random thoughts from me. I realize some of them are rather obvious and long-winded... but I have a tendency to state the obvious and bog down in overly lengthy elaboration. Hopefully it doesn't bother anyone terribly.

[cyth]

Originally Posted by Crovax

Even if Animesuki-kun would agree to do another series, chances are he will be dictating what series are subbed. Once the novelty of subbing wears of for the new/green staff they might very well get fed up with doing the series Animesuki-kun happens to be willing to TL.

Personally, I don't see anything wrong with that. Luckily, tastes differ between translators so the scene will most likely get each flavor of new anime seasons. It's kind of selfish to think that your translator will start doing the series you want next time just because you treated him/her nicely. Some groups don't even have that patience, and force-feed the translator another series weeks or even days after they acquire him/her.

Originally Posted by Crovax

Back to the competition thing, as correctly noted by others, bittorrent has leveled the playing field enormously, which makes the 'market' a LOT more sensitive to competition. The abundance of 'how-to' time/typeset/encode etc. guides have further lowered the threshhold for any considering to get into fansubbing (easy to use tools such as Aegisub obviously help as well). Aside from translating, anyone with enough time on his hands can produce a sub-par quality fansub that is (for all its flaws) quite watchable. Which again moves emphasis away from 'joining one of the established groups'. After all... deep inside we're all little entrepreneurs craving freedom. ;-)

I think there's only one reason why there are no more big fansubbing groups. The reason is fansubbing technology is freely accessible. Starting fansubbing before 2004/2005 wasn't as easy as it is today, not unless you were an editor or a translator. In 2003, Infusion released this fansubbing guide which has set a lot of the current fansubbers, including me, into motion. The guide was fairly scarce with information, but key things such as SubStation Alpha and VobSub were mentioned. Even so, it was pretty hard to find a downloadable SubStation Alpha installer, and even harder to realize that the only ASS 'guide' available was VobSub's documentation.
As far as the general trend went, fansubbers kept their knowledge and their tools to themselves. Big groups were attractive to many because they had tools which could only be rumored between fansubbing newbies. Japanese P2P, automatic finetiming tools, karaoke tools, \pos tools, some of the finest encoding filters... These were hard to obtain and weren't as given as one might think. They weren't discussed on forums as they are now. You had to either be friends with experienced people or programmers to obtain them, or be a part of a bigger group. It also depended on the group if they were willing to give their tools to just any member, and usually people without them weren't recruited, simply because some of them introduced a huge skill gap. Getting into a big group rarely depended on sheer luck, but on pure skill. Still, I think that's what drove fansubbers to join bigger groups.
I remember some people were pretty angry once tools similar to theirs got released freely. I remember the Winny guide getting 'leaked' on this forum just to piss off kj1980. Many of the current raw providers were shocked because secrecy was pretty much the only way of keeping the fansubbing position a speciality. Then a #kuraki-fans member released his simple karaoke tool in the IRC channel, crumja also released his kara tools, Tentacle put up a site with the collection of his various typesetting tools, kryptolus released Sabbu, RaistlinMajere his SSATool, and so on...
It's actually funny, even these days people hate to admit the elitism that was among fansubbers pre-2005, like it's taboo or something. I admit, it was pretty fun getting a program to which only a few people were granted use, and most of the time only people that truly deserved those received them. Because of this, I have to agree with people from this thread who voiced concern over the small number of shows that get subbed in our times. After all, tools are freely available. Does the scene lack translators?