Forum reorganization (Was: New "CR" links)

[Slice of Life]

Originally Posted by GHDpro

Back on topic - about forum reorganization. I think the "Current/Older/Unaired" structure might work, but only if we set up a strict set of rules that determine when a series discussion thread should be moved from Current to Older.

Why?

The only reason I see for separating current and older shows at all is to keep the traffic in the older threads visible. That is, if somebody has a question about a show that aired in 2004 people get the chance to actually see it before it gets pushed down while the forum gets flooded with contributions about newer shows. Consequently, threads should be moved when the posts become sporadic. That might even apply to current but unpopular shows!

This 2 weeks/4 weeks rule is not only arbitrary and ill-suited for OVAs and movies, it's also means a hell of an organizational effort. This is very different from the current unaired -> fansubbed -> licensed moves where both moves follow immediately after a clear signal. Or followed, I should say, because since CR began to acquire shows quietly the staff already lost track of things. And now they should keep all those dates in mind?

Who benefits from such time constraints? People who browse the threads randomly won't care when exactly a thread is moved. People who look for a particular thread will use the search function except if they are resonable sure to find the thread on the first or second page. They, too, won't care if a thread is still on page five of the current anime forum or already in the older anime forum. Few people will enter a subforum with an exact end date in mind and then click through a number of pages until they find their thread - or not because the move is two weeks overdue and they're browsing the wrong forum.

tl;dr
1. no benefit for the users
2. a lot of work for the staff

I still think trimming the current anime thread (which could then alternatively be named popular anime thread) once it reaches a certain length is

1. simpler to manage
2. more efficient (=less staff time wastted)
3. auto-adaptive, i.e. threads that remain popular for whatever reason stay longer in the current forum
4. for all practical purposes no different from GHDpro's plan when it come to actually finding a thread

The last point implies that as a user I don't really care either way. But I don't want to be in the staff's shoes when this 2 weeks/4 weeks rule comes into force.

[GHDpro]

That makes sense. Indeed the reasons from moving from "Current" to "Older" should be obvious for both staff and regular members.

Then how about this:

- Any series discussion thread that resides on page 3 of the "Current" forum (using forum default posts/page)
OR
- Any series discussion thread which has not been posted in for a whole week (7 days)
AND
- Which has ended airing in Japan (lookup through Mahou Showtime/ANN/AniDB)

... should be moved from "Current" to "Older".

In this proposal the "Current" forum typically has no more than 40 threads in it (~2 forum pages), so you can quickly scan the current forum and move onto Older if you can't find what you're looking for.

When I look at the first two pages of the Fansubbed forum now, all of them have been posted in the last 48 hours. There are a bunch of older (in some cases, much older) series among these, but if we check often enough such series will be eventually relegated to the "Older" forum too, as their new popularity is probably short lived.

The reason I still added the "and the anime must have ended" requirement is because I think the move from "Current" to "Older" should be permanent and if we make sure any series we move has ended it's quite likely their popularity will not re-surge. The only problem lies with slow moving ongoing series (like "Major"). Unless these slow ongoing series get to abundant, I suppose we could keep them in "Current".

[npcomplete]

(.. i disagree about ghd's CR/industry opinion and hope that's not used as a rationale in reorganizing stuff.. but to debate/discuss it might be getting off topic)

Not a fan of moving current to older. A thread index sticky with links to each series thread organized alphabetically would help tremendously btw.

[GHDpro]

Originally Posted by npcomplete

Not a fan of moving current to older. A thread index sticky with links to each series thread organized alphabetically would help tremendously btw.

You mean this? http://forums.animesuki.com/showthread.php?t=13483

The problem with such an index is however that I can imagine it being quite tedious to keep updated.

I think the advantage of a "Current" forum (in Slice of Life's vision) would be that ALL popular threads will be in one place.

To expand on the idea from my previous post though, perhaps we should keep the "Older" forum separated into older fansub threads and licensed for DVD/BD threads (ie: keep the "Licensed" forum). The only thing that'll change is that the "Licensed" forum will only be for older series, and any current series will go to "Current". So the "Current" forum will have the popular threads, regardless of licensing.

Not pooling all older fansub & licensed threads together will mean a lot less "Licensed" tags will have to be applied, and also solves the problem that many older threads in the "Licensed" forum actually aren't series discussion threads. Also keeping the forum will emphasize that these series are (due to be) available on DVD/BD. And as it will be more difficult to find older series anyway, keeping them split in two forums won't make much difference.

[xris]

Originally Posted by Slice of Life

Why?

The only reason I see for separating current and older shows at all is to keep the traffic in the older threads visible. That is, if somebody has a question about a show that aired in 2004 people get the chance to actually see it before it gets pushed down while the forum gets flooded with contributions about newer shows. Consequently, threads should be moved when the posts become sporadic. That might even apply to current but unpopular shows!

This 2 weeks/4 weeks rule is not only arbitrary and ill-suited for OVAs and movies, it's also means a hell of an organizational effort. This is very different from the current unaired -> fansubbed -> licensed moves where both moves follow immediately after a clear signal. Or followed, I should say, because since CR began to acquire shows quietly the staff already lost track of things. And now they should keep all those dates in mind?

Who benefits from such time constraints? People who browse the threads randomly won't care when exactly a thread is moved. People who look for a particular thread will use the search function except if they are resonable sure to find the thread on the first or second page. They, too, won't care if a thread is still on page five of the current anime forum or already in the older anime forum. Few people will enter a subforum with an exact end date in mind and then click through a number of pages until they find their thread - or not because the move is two weeks overdue and they're browsing the wrong forum.

I would have to agree with the most of this. As I posted earlier in the thread.

Originally Posted by xris

I think we need to step back and ask ourselves "why do we need or want sub-forums"? In this context I am talking specifically about the Anime Discussion sub-forums.

[snip]

The question I would ask is what other sub-forums are actually required nowadays. Why not just put all the other threads (be they fansubbed, streamed or licensed) in a single forum? My main objection for this would be that certain threads would again become "lost" in the general activity. The question is if the division of these threads into three sub-forums (Fansubbed, Streamed and Licensed) actually needed.

It has been suggested that we should have separate forums for Current Series and Older Series. This might be a good example where we don't really need to worry about a series being licensed, streamed, fansubbed or untranslated. It has the advantage that the active threads (i.e. those currently airing) will be small number (about 50 or so) and therefore they will be easy to find on the first page of the sub-forum. Since they are separated from the older series, they won't drown out any discussion for these older series making them "easier" to find in their own sub-forum. It might encourage more discussion for such older series since their threads will be more visible and easier to find.

My main objection with this is the logistics of the Mods having to move threads. While it may sound a trivial task, it is a task all the same. When do threads get moved from Current to Older? When the series finishes airing, a week after, a month after? When the fansub run have been completed? When the "activity" of the thread has died down?

The main reason I see for having an "Older" sub-forum is to try and encourage discussion on older threads.

Originally Posted by GHDpro

That makes sense. Indeed the reasons from moving from "Current" to "Older" should be obvious for both staff and regular members.

Then how about this:

- Any series discussion thread that resides on page 3 of the "Current" forum (using forum default posts/page)
OR
- Any series discussion thread which has not been posted in for a whole week (7 days)
AND
- Which has ended airing in Japan (lookup through Mahou Showtime/ANN/AniDB)

... should be moved from "Current" to "Older".

In this proposal the "Current" forum typically has no more than 40 threads in it (~2 forum pages), so you can quickly scan the current forum and move onto Older if you can't find what you're looking for.

The problem with this is that it is very easy to abuse the concept. Since the three factors are based on an OR condition, it would be easy to push semi-active threads onto page 3. It's also easy to bump threads so they never go for more than a week being inactive.

It has to come down to a Mod making a subjective decision as to when to move a thread. Basing it on when the series finished airing is good since it can be applied objectively but again, this is no easy task for someone to check. It might seem trivial but after doing this for a long period of time it becomes a real task to maintain day in day out.

Originally Posted by npcomplete

Not a fan of moving current to older. A thread index sticky with links to each series thread organized alphabetically would help tremendously btw.

This is something I used to maintain (i.e. Series Discussion Index) but after about 4 years of updates it became so mind-bogglingly boring that I had to give it up.

What is actually required is an automatic version based on the torrent database (mind, that is now also seriously out of date).

[xris]

Recents posts concerning the search feature have been moved to the better search function? google search? thread since they are rather off-topic to the purpose of this thread.

[relentlessflame]

If we're going to go towards the "Current Series" global forum system, I must say that I'd greatly prefer there be one single metric to determine if a thread is "current" or not. I don't like the idea of it either being subjective or being based on some weird combination (like show age + thread age or bump threshold).

Maybe it's just me, but the thing that's seems most beneficial about any potential forum re-organization is that it might make it easier to know where to find every (or "any given") show. If all we're worried about is "making the most popular threads easier to find", then all we need is some sort of "top 20" SQL query that makes it into some sort of link. But, to me, what's more valuable is predictability: for any show that I might want to talk about, I know that there's just (hopefully) one piece of information that I need to know in order to be able to find it. Maybe that's airing time. Maybe that's subbing status. Maybe that's production status. Who knows. But I should know, based on there being some sort of system that based on X, Thread Y should be in Forum Z, and that'll just always be the case (or at least, that's the goal).

The problem with the newly-proposed current -> older transition is that it's totally random from an outside perspective. Let's say I want to discuss a show that just ended a few weeks back. Where is it located? Under the proposed, it could be either under Current or Older, and under the revised proposed it could be under Current, or Older, or Licensed (now we're back to having multiple factors). Where's the logic? In that case, you'd be back to using the Search feature, and in my mind the whole point of a reorganization would be "make it so that you can know what forum any thread is in without searching". We kinda sorta have that now except for the fact that we're using two different systems for threads and sub-forums. I'm concerned if we move to a system that adds the subjectivity of the sub-forum moving process to the system for regular threads. To me, that would be a step back.

So... I'm no longer clear about the problem we're trying to solve. Or rather, I think different people are trying to solve different problems and so we're arriving at incompatible solutions.

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." My hypothesis is: "Creating a single common system based on a single variable factor is the most logical way to organize a hierarchy so that it's easy and predictable to navigate." Not agreeing on the hypothesis is one thing, but if we don't even agree on the problem, then we're never going to get anywhere.

[Slice of Life]

You sound as if you're asking for order for the sake of having order. Where is the benefit of theoretically knowing where to find every show as long as you can't actually find it?

In my proposal, finding a thread wouldn't really be so different from before. Think of "current" as the first 2-4 pages of a common forum, and of "older" as the rest. Under both systems you can use the search function right away, obviously, which would be the sensible thing to do for older shows. Otherwise, under the old system you browse through the appropriate forum until you find what you're looking for or give up and use search. Same thing under the new system except that you'd always look into "current" (and afterwards into "older" if you're really stubborn).

Advantages: 1. You don't need to know the license status. 2. Those that browse aimlessly will find all "hot" shows at a glance. 3. Comments on older shows remain visible to those that browse the "older" forum.




If you want an alternative proposal that is more "orderly" then what about the following:

1. Anime being subbed, old or new, go first into "current".
2. There is a clean-up at a (roughly) fixed date every season where all shows that have ended are moved to "older", regardless if they are still being subbed or not.

That would be more work for the staff but still be much more efficient than constantly monitoring every show. Good clean-up dates would imho be Feb, May, Aug, and Nov 1st, i.e. 4 weeks after most shows end.

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by Slice of Life

You sound as if you're asking for order for the sake of having order.

Well, actually, yes... The point of a re-organization in my mind would be to bring order to chaos, and I perceive the current structure as being somewhat chaotic due to it being a mismatch of different goals. If we can simplify the whole thing to just one single system based on an agreed-to process, then it's both cleaner and more "orderly", and I think that would be good.

Originally Posted by Slice of Life

In my proposal, finding a thread wouldn't really be so different from before. Think of "current" as the first 2-4 pages of a common forum, and of "older" as the rest. Under both systems you can use the search function right away, obviously, which would be the sensible thing to do for older shows. Otherwise, under the old system you browse through the appropriate forum until you find what you're looking for or give up and use search. Same thing under the new system except that you'd always look into "current" (and afterwards into "older" if you're really stubborn).

Advantages: 1. You don't need to know the license status. 2. Those that browse aimlessly will find all "hot" shows at a glance. 3. Comments on older shows remain visible to those that browse the "older" forum.

So, I think the primary driver here is simply to reduce the amount of locations that you'd have to look in by aligning the whole forum with the "current/older" methodology. I think those goals are admirable, and they meet my primary objective of making it simpler to find things without a search (or at least to know where to look), which should hopefully reduce the amount of duplicate threads being posted in forums like General Anime and so on.

Originally Posted by Slice of Life

If you want an alternative proposal that is more "orderly" then what about the following:

1. Anime being subbed, old or new, go first into "current".
2. There is a clean-up at a (roughly) fixed date every season where all shows that have ended are moved to "older", regardless if they are still being subbed or not.

That would be more work for the staff but still be much more efficient than constantly monitoring every show. Good clean-up dates would imho be Feb, May, Aug, and Nov 1st, i.e. 4 weeks after most shows end.

I personally could at least accept this method, although I am a bit concerned that some fansub-only viewers may perceive it as a bit of a slight to have shows move to over if they're not fully subbed yet. But maybe they don't care. At least this proposal has the benefit of being straightforward and predictable.

(Although I'm not sure what you mean by "anime being subbed, old or new". Do you mean that if someone were to start subbing some old 80s OVA, it would first go into "Current" until the next-scheduled clean-up? Or...?)

[felix]

@Slice of Life: Cleanup at fixed dates is a good idea.

Originally Posted by relentlessflame

Well, actually, yes... The point of a re-organization in my mind would be to bring order to chaos, and I perceive the current structure as being somewhat chaotic due to it being a mismatch of different goals.

And with that you've said... nothing. "order to chaos"? why is order important? we can have chaos as long as its friendly, easy to understand and efficient. Forums that follow your philosophy of order end up having a dozen sub levels with everything split into as many possible categories as imaginable. Order means we have to click 4 links or more; more links more page loads, the slower the interface is. I don't care what the solution is, but a alternative where I have to decide between (and click) even more links (ie. the overly dorky season split idea) is only a step backwards.

[Slice of Life]

Originally Posted by relentlessflame

Although I'm not sure what you mean by "anime being subbed, old or new". Do you mean that if someone were to start subbing some old 80s OVA, it would first go into "Current" until the next-scheduled clean-up?

Yes. To have its 15 minutes of fame, too. But on second thought, since such shows seldom spark heated discussions (Gokinjo Monogatari is on which page now?) one could also argue they should go directly into "older".

As for shows that are still subbed 4 weeks after they have ended, it's my impression that when subs are this late they are typically really late and discussion slows down anyway.

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by Cats

And with that you've said... nothing. "order to chaos"? why is order important? we can have chaos as long as its friendly, easy to understand and efficient. Forums that follow your philosophy of order end up having a dozen sub levels with everything split into as many possible categories as imaginable. Order means we have to click 4 links or more; more links more page loads, the slower the interface is. I don't care what the solution is, but a alternative where I have to decide between (and click) even more links (ie. the overly dorky season split idea) is only a step backwards.

But if you actually recall the proposals that I was was considering (outlined in my previous posts), they all represented a net reduction in the amount of forums and an overall simplification of the forum structure, because I believe that complexity leads to confusion and a simple system based on one single factor (not multiple factors) is best. The season split, if that option were selected, in my view would only apply to the current and previous season, so would not be anything like the ridiculous extreme you describe. I was against the proposal of having the season sub-forums extend to the Older section (which would have been too much). The only benefit (whether it's "overly dorky" or not) is that it's clearer than "current" about what goes where, and less ambiguous (although the proposal on the table now is also less ambiguous than the original proposal regarding when series would be moved and no longer be considered "current").

So basically, I don't know what you think my "philosophy of order" is, but I believe I was clear in my previous posts and proposals that I'm advocating a simple system based on a single variable factor. That, to me, would be "orderly" and, most importantly, easy. I don't think the two are mutually exclusive.

[Secca]

@GHDpro if you like to restructure the forum, the most ideal is just alphabet everything disregard it's fansubbed, licensed, unaired or whatever. Then add info or tag if they are licensed, fansubbed, etc.

Another idea is keeping the curent structure then add a different section organized by years for older series. Like a yearly archieve. If people want to discuss older fansub series, they don't have to compete with the curent show. It won't be perfect but it would make things more organized for the future also.

[felix]

Originally Posted by Slice of Life

Yes. To have its 15 minutes of fame, too. But on second thought, since such shows seldom spark heated discussions (Gokinjo Monogatari is on which page now?) one could also argue they should go directly into "older".

As for shows that are still subbed 4 weeks after they have ended, it's my impression that when subs are this late they are typically really late and discussion slows down anyway.

Hm, that gives me a idea. Lets ditch "Current"/"Older" in favor of "Mainstream"/"Archive". We then don't have to worry about them being popular, fan subbed or not, from a technical (need to be in "Current") perspective, any more.

[GHDpro]

As I already hinted at out in the last bit of the post where I proposed the seasonal structure, I agree that keeping threads in season subforums even for older seasons (<2008) is not very practical.

I think the Current/Older structure is similar to a structure where you'd have the 2 subforums for the current & previous season, except that in such a structure it would be slightly harder for users to figure out in which of the two subforums a popular thread might be if they don't have a solid grasp if that series aired the current or previous season. Simply putting all currently airing & ongoing series in a "Current" subforum makes slightly more sense than splitting them up in current & previous season.

As we already have established (I think), the "Unaired" forum works pretty well for the problem it was trying to solve (keep threads (=news) about new & future series easier to find). It would make make sense to expand on the same idea (Unaired="Future"). I think the main discussion (and possible objections) against the idea was what exactly should go into a "Current" forum and how the workload for moderators can be kept to a minimum. Having fixed clean-up dates would be a good solution.

Originally Posted by Secca

@GHDpro if you like to restructure the forum, the most ideal is just alphabet everything disregard it's fansubbed, licensed, unaired or whatever. Then add info or tag if they are licensed, fansubbed, etc.

Another idea is keeping the curent structure then add a different section organized by years for older series. Like a yearly archieve. If people want to discuss older fansub series, they don't have to compete with the curent show. It won't be perfect but it would make things more organized for the future also.

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?

Originally Posted by Cats

Hm, that gives me a idea. Lets ditch "Current"/"Older" in favor of "Mainstream"/"Archive". We then don't have to worry about them being popular, fan subbed or not, from a technical (need to be in "Current") perspective, any more.

I think the naming and description should be as simple and clear as possible. Even if users don't fully grasp if a series belongs in "Current" or "Older" any new structure should offer them the largest chance of finding the thread in what that user thinks is the right forum.

Some technical bits I've been thinking about:

- The subforum list now visible on pages like this (which would push the list of threads way down) can be hidden in the same way spoilers are: keep the header bar and add a "Show List" link & hide the list by default.

- To mass appy a "Licensed" thread prefix to all series discussion forums from the "Licensed" forum, allow me to achieve this through an SQL query rather than doing it manually. Then once the series discussion forums are moved to their new destination, undo all the thread prefixes for any remaining (non-series discussion) threads and move those threads to the "General Anime" forum.

Of course, these technical notes only apply once we agree on a new structure.

[felix]

I still think "Current" is too ambiguous. Using the "clean at date XXX" system suggested, how about:

Proposal A:
- Currently Airing
- Older Shows
- Unaired

Proposal B:
- Currently Airing
- Finished Shows
- Unaired

(is the order/naming ambiguous?)

[xris]

Originally Posted by Slice of Life

If you want an alternative proposal that is more "orderly" then what about the following:

1. Anime being subbed, old or new, go first into "current".
2. There is a clean-up at a (roughly) fixed date every season where all shows that have ended are moved to "older", regardless if they are still being subbed or not.

That would be more work for the staff but still be much more efficient than constantly monitoring every show. Good clean-up dates would imho be Feb, May, Aug, and Nov 1st, i.e. 4 weeks after most shows end.

So far, I think that something along these lines would be the best compromise. I have an idea of what I would like to do but unfortunately vB doesn't quite allow it. (Edit: after reading GHDpro's post, it seems it is possible to do what I want).

This is what I would like to see

---

Unaired
Forum for discussing anime that haven't aired yet.

---

Current Series
Forums for discussing popular anime that are currently airing.

Sub-Forums:
Bakemonogatari Bleach Darker Than Black Fullmetal Alchemist
Haruhi Suzumiya Naruto One Piece To Aru...Index/Railgun
Umineko

---

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

Sub-Forums:
Ah! My Goddess Clannad Claymore Code Geass
Death Note Eden of the East Fate/stay night Full Metal Panic
Gundam Gurren-Lagann Hayate no Gotoku Higurashi
K-On! Kannagi Kanon Kimi ga Nozomu Eien
Lucky Star Macross Maria-sama My HiME / My Otome
Myself; Yourself Nanoha Negima Ouran Host Club
Pumpkin Scissors Regios Rozen Maiden School Days
School Rumble Shana Shuffle! sola
Sora Kake Soul Eater Spice and Wolf Tales of...
Toradora! True Tears Utawarerumono Valkyria Chronicles
Vampire Knight Zero no Tsukaima Retired

---

So, instead of having the existing Fansubbed, Licensed, Unaired, Current Series, Older Series, we just have Unaired, Current Series, Older Series

As a note, given that we no longer are orientated around Fansubs, I would suggest that series that haven't yet been fansubbed should be located in either Current or Older instead of the current situation where they are located in Unaired.

I like the idea of moving threads from Current to Older on fixed dates (once they have finished airing of course).

[relentlessflame]

I'm okay with xris's illustrated proposal along with the stated fixed date migration policy.

The only thing I would say is that I think we should, at least for the first little while, add a little note to the description that says something like "If you don't see a sub-forum, click the "Current Series" title for more."... or something like that. The wording can be perfected. The reason I suggest that, at least as a temporary measure, is that this is the opposite of the current top-level forums that are empty. I want people's attention to be drawn to the fact that top-level forums would have threads now, unlike before.

I also agree with the clarified definition for "Unaired", since the new layout is no longer based around fansub timing.

[GHDpro]

I agree with the structure proposed by xris, except that I'd order the main forums by importance/popularity, ie: Current Series -> Older Series -> Unaired, instead of having Unaired first.

[xris]

Originally Posted by GHDpro

I agree with the structure proposed by xris, except that I'd order the main forums by importance/popularity, ie: Current Series -> Older Series -> Unaired, instead of having Unaired first.

I prefer my order but I can't say I object strongly to this.

The logic for me is that Unaired > Current > Older is based on the future (Unaired), the present (Current) and the past (Older). A thread starts its life in Unaired (the first forum), moved to Current (the second forum) and finishes in Older (the third and last forum).

Maybe we should have these forums named Urd, Belldandy and Skuld

Originally Posted by relentlessflame

The only thing I would say is that I think we should, at least for the first little while, add a little note to the description that says something like "If you don't see a sub-forum, click the "Current Series" title for more."... or something like that. The wording can be perfected. The reason I suggest that, at least as a temporary measure, is that this is the opposite of the current top-level forums that are empty. I want people's attention to be drawn to the fact that top-level forums would have threads now, unlike before.

That might be a good idea to help during the introduction of the new layout.