Retirement of Fansub-related Forums

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by brocko

Well how many translators/series being translated do we have at the moment then?
Maybe it might be worthwhile if we can try to quantity the size and scope of the issue??

I'm sure it'd be probably continue to grow in the future under the current status quo, but at least this way we'd have a benchmark to refer back to, whatever the conclusion that gets decided.

Yeah, this is one of the things that we've been looking at, in addition to talking about some ideas of how to address the issues discussed. We'll probably come back fairly soon with some ideas of what we're thinking for the LN section to get more feedback.

[zzhk]

Speaking as someone who does random translations somewhere, I certainly see no value in single-line update announcements, link dropping or meaningless thanks.

The best way to express appreciation is to engage in meaningful discussion of the content, which in itself informs readers of the thread that there is new material released.

Direct conversations with translators can be carried out through PMs and VMs without cluttering threads with worthless comments of "so fast!"/"so slow!"/"what happened to so-and-so, is the (insert LN title) project dead?"/"when will xxx be released?"

Besides, the vast majority of fan translations can be found in the top Google results of "(insert LN title) light novel" anyway so it's not like they're especially difficult to find.

There is no reason why LN translations can't be subjected to the same standards as manga and anime in regards to links and mentioning of groups.

[IceHism]

Some how i have the feeling that this could all be easily solved with better forum plug-ins or looking at other innovative ways to deal with it.

If the main thing that is worrying is the pain in the ass work, then you could probably just put the name of the translator(not even where to find it but that's what google is for) on the first post of the threads of any unlicensed series and forbid any extraneous links or meta discussion in the rest of the thread by just telling people to look at the first post. If any legal issue comes up, first post is edited, new post is made to announce of the change and everyone would be fine since the "I'm removing this because i don't want to get my ass sued" is a universally accepted reason to anyone with common sense. And if you don't, well, i suppose it's a fine thing that that series got some new fans.


You could also inform translators to post their blogs and progress on their signature as those are easily edited or removed as well.

Other ones would include even looking for skilled people to generously donate some free time to make/improve vbulletin plugins to improve the accessibility and visibility of social groups.

I can think of various pros to something like this. Easy cleanup when random shit comes out of the blue like "so-and-so has been licensed by yen press". Promoting interaction with LN/VN fansubbers of less known series that have 1 to 0% chance of ever getting out of japan. And you're not adding substantial work to the moderating team nor are you sacrificing quality discussion. (btw, just to note, fansubbers of VNs generally don't host the games, they only host the patch to translate it)

Instead of worrying about the principle of the rule in the first place too much, we should think of more effective solutions to quell the fallout. I'm concerned as much as most people are when things randomly come out and you get a huge big mess that seems daunting to clean. But that mess doesn't have to be big to begin with regardless of what happens. Just like you mentioned with the torrents index: "We flipped a switch and it disappeared". I've made this post in consideration of how you would like AS to be run as well.

If there's any rule that i would like to be looked at, it'd be the spoiler rule tbh. I understand the principle behind it but it's not really effective when it makes a large amount of users go "i'm only pretending that i don't know the source"

[KuroiHikari]

Interesting, any specific list of posts that I can read that has the meaningful interaction mentioned?

[SeijiSensei]

Originally Posted by relentlessflame

I think something like that will happen eventually, yes. I'm not sure if the forum will become www, or if www will just redirect to the forum... but something like that.

I've been in discussions with Chris MacDonald ("Tempest") at ANN to have them lift the ban on AS links. I mentioned that www.animesuki.com was going to be repointed to forums.animesuki.com, but apparently that hasn't happened. Is there any reason to keep the www site?

[Solace]

Originally Posted by SeijiSensei

Is there any reason to keep the www site?

Discussion has died off a bit over the last year but for a while we were considering creating something more community oriented to replace the main site. So it's still up in the air, kinda. Time, interest, and motivation have never lined up, I suppose.

[MikuruX]

Originally Posted by Solace

Discussion has died off a bit over the last year but for a while we were considering creating something more community oriented to replace the main site. So it's still up in the air, kinda. Time, interest, and motivation have never lined up, I suppose.

In all honesty, if you guys plan on doing something like that then it might be best you start looking for a CMS to use to give the site more of a community look & feel (I've been using Invision Power Board for years.....even at the time when I was under the name "Hideki-Motosuwa" on this site when I was looking for help for a fansub group back at the start of this site.....ah, memories).

But yeah, I think that would probably be the best route to go unless you guys must absolutely retain all the information that's on this site as it is right now (nothing wrong with starting anew but I understand the pains in doing it).