Tay

*Clephas makes a burnt offering of one million lolis in tribute to the gods of otakudom, that they might give blessings to the mods and admins and all who might follow them in service to Fuwa*
 
*Clephas feasts*

This post MUST be read against one of the following background music tracks. You can choose any of the songs from the selection, but you cannot proceed to the party without reading this post to background music. These songs were chosen to match a wide range of emotional states. If you want the feels, you can find the feels. If you want the party, you can find the party.
 
Option A (Default Option)


Option B


Option C


Option D


Option E


Option F


Option G


 
 
 

 
 
“My dream is to become the Eiffel Tower.”
 
If you recognize this quote, then chances are good that you are/have been a moderator. It mathematically follows that you’re a stellar human being and a friend to the masses. Being a moderator has its ups and its downs, but at least the money is good and the global fame helps… right? (… anybody?) Every moderator who has given time to the endless war against spam, derailing, AMA threads, and otherwise served the People’s Republic of Fuwanovel has impacted the evolution of our community. Your blood, sweat and tears have left Fuwanovel changed for the better. The dozens/hundreds/thousands of hours you gave our community – more often than not without a lot of thanks – can never be adequately honored.
 
But that doesn’t mean we can’t try!
 
And what better way to honor moderators’ work than create a party thread which is doomed to much derailing, spam, and an ungodly amount of imgur/youtube tangents? Kidding! Well. Kinda. This thread IS going to be all of the above, but it’s also a chance for the community at large to voice their thanks.
 
THE RULES
SO! Here are the rules for this party thread:
·       Party like it’s 1999
·       Have a ton of fun
·       Also take time to thank the moderators (as a whole and, if you can, specifically) for all of their time and effort. Please be sure to make at least one such post today.
·       Moderators should be encouraged to give speeches
·       Embrace the feels
·       Be a little vulnerable and say something nice!
·       Listen to your heart (when it’s calling for you)
·       Say a lot of nice things about the mods and share favorite stories
·       This thread will (theoretically) close at 11:59 PM tonight (October 3rd, 2014). You have but 24 hours!
·       Party like it’s 1999
 
 
I'd like to close with a quote from a certain fanfic. “Search in your heart. Batman is not any one person. Batman is a symbol of justice and freedom from fear of criminals. Batman can be anyone.”
 
Today, my friends, you moderators are batman. (Literally, for at least one of you.)
 

 
 
HAPPY MODERATORS’ APPRECIATION DAY 2014!

A screenshot so you can remember the big 100!
 

And to think all y'all could be getting sleep or playing a certain new 3DS game...


Thanks for all the love to our past/present mods : D

This post MUST be read against one of the following background music tracks. You can choose any of the songs from the selection, but you cannot proceed to the party without reading this post to background music. These songs were chosen to match a wide range of emotional states. If you want the feels, you can find the feels. If you want the party, you can find the party.
 
Option A (Default Option)


Option B


Option C


Option D


Option E


Option F


Option G


 
 
 

 
 
“My dream is to become the Eiffel Tower.”
 
If you recognize this quote, then chances are good that you are/have been a moderator. It mathematically follows that you’re a stellar human being and a friend to the masses. Being a moderator has its ups and its downs, but at least the money is good and the global fame helps… right? (… anybody?) Every moderator who has given time to the endless war against spam, derailing, AMA threads, and otherwise served the People’s Republic of Fuwanovel has impacted the evolution of our community. Your blood, sweat and tears have left Fuwanovel changed for the better. The dozens/hundreds/thousands of hours you gave our community – more often than not without a lot of thanks – can never be adequately honored.
 
But that doesn’t mean we can’t try!
 
And what better way to honor moderators’ work than create a party thread which is doomed to much derailing, spam, and an ungodly amount of imgur/youtube tangents? Kidding! Well. Kinda. This thread IS going to be all of the above, but it’s also a chance for the community at large to voice their thanks.
 
THE RULES
SO! Here are the rules for this party thread:
·       Party like it’s 1999
·       Have a ton of fun
·       Also take time to thank the moderators (as a whole and, if you can, specifically) for all of their time and effort. Please be sure to make at least one such post today.
·       Moderators should be encouraged to give speeches
·       Embrace the feels
·       Be a little vulnerable and say something nice!
·       Listen to your heart (when it’s calling for you)
·       Say a lot of nice things about the mods and share favorite stories
·       This thread will (theoretically) close at 11:59 PM tonight (October 3rd, 2014). You have but 24 hours!
·       Party like it’s 1999
 
 
I'd like to close with a quote from a certain fanfic. “Search in your heart. Batman is not any one person. Batman is a symbol of justice and freedom from fear of criminals. Batman can be anyone.”
 
Today, my friends, you moderators are batman. (Literally, for at least one of you.)
 

 
 
HAPPY MODERATORS’ APPRECIATION DAY 2014!

This post MUST be read against one of the following background music tracks. You can choose any of the songs from the selection, but you cannot proceed to the party without reading this post to background music. These songs were chosen to match a wide range of emotional states. If you want the feels, you can find the feels. If you want the party, you can find the party.
 
Option A (Default Option)


Option B


Option C


Option D


Option E


Option F


Option G


 
 
 

 
 
“My dream is to become the Eiffel Tower.”
 
If you recognize this quote, then chances are good that you are/have been a moderator. It mathematically follows that you’re a stellar human being and a friend to the masses. Being a moderator has its ups and its downs, but at least the money is good and the global fame helps… right? (… anybody?) Every moderator who has given time to the endless war against spam, derailing, AMA threads, and otherwise served the People’s Republic of Fuwanovel has impacted the evolution of our community. Your blood, sweat and tears have left Fuwanovel changed for the better. The dozens/hundreds/thousands of hours you gave our community – more often than not without a lot of thanks – can never be adequately honored.
 
But that doesn’t mean we can’t try!
 
And what better way to honor moderators’ work than create a party thread which is doomed to much derailing, spam, and an ungodly amount of imgur/youtube tangents? Kidding! Well. Kinda. This thread IS going to be all of the above, but it’s also a chance for the community at large to voice their thanks.
 
THE RULES
SO! Here are the rules for this party thread:
·       Party like it’s 1999
·       Have a ton of fun
·       Also take time to thank the moderators (as a whole and, if you can, specifically) for all of their time and effort. Please be sure to make at least one such post today.
·       Moderators should be encouraged to give speeches
·       Embrace the feels
·       Be a little vulnerable and say something nice!
·       Listen to your heart (when it’s calling for you)
·       Say a lot of nice things about the mods and share favorite stories
·       This thread will (theoretically) close at 11:59 PM tonight (October 3rd, 2014). You have but 24 hours!
·       Party like it’s 1999
 
 
I'd like to close with a quote from a certain fanfic. “Search in your heart. Batman is not any one person. Batman is a symbol of justice and freedom from fear of criminals. Batman can be anyone.”
 
Today, my friends, you moderators are batman. (Literally, for at least one of you.)
 

 
 
HAPPY MODERATORS’ APPRECIATION DAY 2014!

This post MUST be read against one of the following background music tracks. You can choose any of the songs from the selection, but you cannot proceed to the party without reading this post to background music. These songs were chosen to match a wide range of emotional states. If you want the feels, you can find the feels. If you want the party, you can find the party.
 
Option A (Default Option)


Option B


Option C


Option D


Option E


Option F


Option G


 
 
 

 
 
“My dream is to become the Eiffel Tower.”
 
If you recognize this quote, then chances are good that you are/have been a moderator. It mathematically follows that you’re a stellar human being and a friend to the masses. Being a moderator has its ups and its downs, but at least the money is good and the global fame helps… right? (… anybody?) Every moderator who has given time to the endless war against spam, derailing, AMA threads, and otherwise served the People’s Republic of Fuwanovel has impacted the evolution of our community. Your blood, sweat and tears have left Fuwanovel changed for the better. The dozens/hundreds/thousands of hours you gave our community – more often than not without a lot of thanks – can never be adequately honored.
 
But that doesn’t mean we can’t try!
 
And what better way to honor moderators’ work than create a party thread which is doomed to much derailing, spam, and an ungodly amount of imgur/youtube tangents? Kidding! Well. Kinda. This thread IS going to be all of the above, but it’s also a chance for the community at large to voice their thanks.
 
THE RULES
SO! Here are the rules for this party thread:
·       Party like it’s 1999
·       Have a ton of fun
·       Also take time to thank the moderators (as a whole and, if you can, specifically) for all of their time and effort. Please be sure to make at least one such post today.
·       Moderators should be encouraged to give speeches
·       Embrace the feels
·       Be a little vulnerable and say something nice!
·       Listen to your heart (when it’s calling for you)
·       Say a lot of nice things about the mods and share favorite stories
·       This thread will (theoretically) close at 11:59 PM tonight (October 3rd, 2014). You have but 24 hours!
·       Party like it’s 1999
 
 
I'd like to close with a quote from a certain fanfic. “Search in your heart. Batman is not any one person. Batman is a symbol of justice and freedom from fear of criminals. Batman can be anyone.”
 
Today, my friends, you moderators are batman. (Literally, for at least one of you.)
 

 
 
HAPPY MODERATORS’ APPRECIATION DAY 2014!

Flutterz flutters where he pleases.

A screenshot so you can remember the big 100!
 

This post MUST be read against one of the following background music tracks. You can choose any of the songs from the selection, but you cannot proceed to the party without reading this post to background music. These songs were chosen to match a wide range of emotional states. If you want the feels, you can find the feels. If you want the party, you can find the party.
 
Option A (Default Option)


Option B


Option C


Option D


Option E


Option F


Option G


 
 
 

 
 
“My dream is to become the Eiffel Tower.”
 
If you recognize this quote, then chances are good that you are/have been a moderator. It mathematically follows that you’re a stellar human being and a friend to the masses. Being a moderator has its ups and its downs, but at least the money is good and the global fame helps… right? (… anybody?) Every moderator who has given time to the endless war against spam, derailing, AMA threads, and otherwise served the People’s Republic of Fuwanovel has impacted the evolution of our community. Your blood, sweat and tears have left Fuwanovel changed for the better. The dozens/hundreds/thousands of hours you gave our community – more often than not without a lot of thanks – can never be adequately honored.
 
But that doesn’t mean we can’t try!
 
And what better way to honor moderators’ work than create a party thread which is doomed to much derailing, spam, and an ungodly amount of imgur/youtube tangents? Kidding! Well. Kinda. This thread IS going to be all of the above, but it’s also a chance for the community at large to voice their thanks.
 
THE RULES
SO! Here are the rules for this party thread:
·       Party like it’s 1999
·       Have a ton of fun
·       Also take time to thank the moderators (as a whole and, if you can, specifically) for all of their time and effort. Please be sure to make at least one such post today.
·       Moderators should be encouraged to give speeches
·       Embrace the feels
·       Be a little vulnerable and say something nice!
·       Listen to your heart (when it’s calling for you)
·       Say a lot of nice things about the mods and share favorite stories
·       This thread will (theoretically) close at 11:59 PM tonight (October 3rd, 2014). You have but 24 hours!
·       Party like it’s 1999
 
 
I'd like to close with a quote from a certain fanfic. “Search in your heart. Batman is not any one person. Batman is a symbol of justice and freedom from fear of criminals. Batman can be anyone.”
 
Today, my friends, you moderators are batman. (Literally, for at least one of you.)
 

 
 
HAPPY MODERATORS’ APPRECIATION DAY 2014!

And to think all y'all could be getting sleep or playing a certain new 3DS game...


Thanks for all the love to our past/present mods : D

And to think all y'all could be getting sleep or playing a certain new 3DS game...


Thanks for all the love to our past/present mods : D

This is more along the lines of how I see moderators.
 

 
Topics aint gonna de-derail themselves!

This is more along the lines of how I see moderators.
 

 
Topics aint gonna de-derail themselves!

This post MUST be read against one of the following background music tracks. You can choose any of the songs from the selection, but you cannot proceed to the party without reading this post to background music. These songs were chosen to match a wide range of emotional states. If you want the feels, you can find the feels. If you want the party, you can find the party.
 
Option A (Default Option)


Option B


Option C


Option D


Option E


Option F


Option G


 
 
 

 
 
“My dream is to become the Eiffel Tower.”
 
If you recognize this quote, then chances are good that you are/have been a moderator. It mathematically follows that you’re a stellar human being and a friend to the masses. Being a moderator has its ups and its downs, but at least the money is good and the global fame helps… right? (… anybody?) Every moderator who has given time to the endless war against spam, derailing, AMA threads, and otherwise served the People’s Republic of Fuwanovel has impacted the evolution of our community. Your blood, sweat and tears have left Fuwanovel changed for the better. The dozens/hundreds/thousands of hours you gave our community – more often than not without a lot of thanks – can never be adequately honored.
 
But that doesn’t mean we can’t try!
 
And what better way to honor moderators’ work than create a party thread which is doomed to much derailing, spam, and an ungodly amount of imgur/youtube tangents? Kidding! Well. Kinda. This thread IS going to be all of the above, but it’s also a chance for the community at large to voice their thanks.
 
THE RULES
SO! Here are the rules for this party thread:
·       Party like it’s 1999
·       Have a ton of fun
·       Also take time to thank the moderators (as a whole and, if you can, specifically) for all of their time and effort. Please be sure to make at least one such post today.
·       Moderators should be encouraged to give speeches
·       Embrace the feels
·       Be a little vulnerable and say something nice!
·       Listen to your heart (when it’s calling for you)
·       Say a lot of nice things about the mods and share favorite stories
·       This thread will (theoretically) close at 11:59 PM tonight (October 3rd, 2014). You have but 24 hours!
·       Party like it’s 1999
 
 
I'd like to close with a quote from a certain fanfic. “Search in your heart. Batman is not any one person. Batman is a symbol of justice and freedom from fear of criminals. Batman can be anyone.”
 
Today, my friends, you moderators are batman. (Literally, for at least one of you.)
 

 
 
HAPPY MODERATORS’ APPRECIATION DAY 2014!

This post MUST be read against one of the following background music tracks. You can choose any of the songs from the selection, but you cannot proceed to the party without reading this post to background music. These songs were chosen to match a wide range of emotional states. If you want the feels, you can find the feels. If you want the party, you can find the party.
 
Option A (Default Option)


Option B


Option C


Option D


Option E


Option F


Option G


 
 
 

 
 
“My dream is to become the Eiffel Tower.”
 
If you recognize this quote, then chances are good that you are/have been a moderator. It mathematically follows that you’re a stellar human being and a friend to the masses. Being a moderator has its ups and its downs, but at least the money is good and the global fame helps… right? (… anybody?) Every moderator who has given time to the endless war against spam, derailing, AMA threads, and otherwise served the People’s Republic of Fuwanovel has impacted the evolution of our community. Your blood, sweat and tears have left Fuwanovel changed for the better. The dozens/hundreds/thousands of hours you gave our community – more often than not without a lot of thanks – can never be adequately honored.
 
But that doesn’t mean we can’t try!
 
And what better way to honor moderators’ work than create a party thread which is doomed to much derailing, spam, and an ungodly amount of imgur/youtube tangents? Kidding! Well. Kinda. This thread IS going to be all of the above, but it’s also a chance for the community at large to voice their thanks.
 
THE RULES
SO! Here are the rules for this party thread:
·       Party like it’s 1999
·       Have a ton of fun
·       Also take time to thank the moderators (as a whole and, if you can, specifically) for all of their time and effort. Please be sure to make at least one such post today.
·       Moderators should be encouraged to give speeches
·       Embrace the feels
·       Be a little vulnerable and say something nice!
·       Listen to your heart (when it’s calling for you)
·       Say a lot of nice things about the mods and share favorite stories
·       This thread will (theoretically) close at 11:59 PM tonight (October 3rd, 2014). You have but 24 hours!
·       Party like it’s 1999
 
 
I'd like to close with a quote from a certain fanfic. “Search in your heart. Batman is not any one person. Batman is a symbol of justice and freedom from fear of criminals. Batman can be anyone.”
 
Today, my friends, you moderators are batman. (Literally, for at least one of you.)
 

 
 
HAPPY MODERATORS’ APPRECIATION DAY 2014!

Thank you for removing it before SB won

How dare you remove it before I won. 

Aaaaaaaah. So THIS is the thing you were referring to, Ren! I thought you were talking about a PM, and as I’ve been going through all my inboxes I kept thinking, “Didn’t Ren say he sent me a PM about my absence and site stagnation?” Glad to see it was here in GD, right in front of my eyes the whole time : P.    First of all, and if you don't know me well this may surprise you -- this thread warmed my heart. Thank you for all the well-wishes, but more than that, thank you all for caring about the community. Even those who are frustrated, like maef, are frustrated because they are coming from a place of genuine concern. I understand that, and I’m extremely grateful. Second of all, just so we’re clear, I have no problem with frank discussions like this. I didn’t/don’t take personal offense to anything that’s been said, and if anything I respect you guys all the more for your input. I’m not perfect (by any means) and I don’t claim to be infallible. Like all of you, I’m just doing the best I can with the hand I’ve been dealt. As long as we keep talking to each other in a civil way, and as long as we keep caring about the community, we’re not going to fail or falter.   Alright. Would anybody mind if I took a second to offer a response? Maybe it’ll be informative and/or interesting. Maybe it’ll be long-winded and boring. Either way, it’s a good idea for me to give you guys a meaningful response after you've put a lot of thought into this discussion.   Let’s start by talking about “The Problems of One Admin”. They are legion, and as a community we know this all too well ; ). Aaeru’s departure sent ripples-turned-waves through the community, and imo we’re only just getting over the last throes. Just to be clear: I give you my word that I won’t up and abandon Fuwanovel. Should something really terrible happen, I will make it a high priority to at least log on, explain what is happening, and publicly (aka: not in a moderator/leadership board) appoint a replacement/proxy. Should I get killed or maimed or something and you don’t hear from me for >1.5 months, consider it my will and testament that Batman should become kingmaker and select somebody to lead the site. After all, he’s the hero Fuwanovel needs (and he’s got a good head on his shoulders, too).   In my recent post I said something along the lines of, “Nobody knows better than I the logistical problems of running the community alone.” What I meant by that was: “Nobody knows better than I that we need distribution of responsibility, because we’ve been burned one too many times by investing too much in just one person.” One of the central motivators for me to launch the cleaning house/restructuring period was to do exactly that: change up the leadership structure.   The fact that I was KO’d for a month sucks (royally!). It was bad for Fuwa, and it was bad for my RL responsibilities (studying while sick is le suck). Focusing on the Fuwa part: the real problem, in my opinion, was that I hadn’t gone sufficiently public with upcoming changes. It was a mistake to leave upcoming changes as a nebulous cloud to be revealed sometime in the future. I’m working on fixing that. The novel I posted the other day in the improvements board is ~1/4 of the changes I have planned. I still don’t believe it’s wise to reveal all the cards in my hand yet, but I promise to do much better at keeping everybody posted.    On that note, I think you deserve a little more info about why I didn’t post my novel earlier and cut that feeling of nebulous-ness out at the offset. Health issues compounded with staying afloat during finals was part of it, but another part was that much of the restructuring behind the scenes is emotionally exhausting. I decided to honorably release (with gratitude) a lot of moderators from their moderating duties, and while they’ll still be able to participate in site leadership via the upcoming leadership council, the symbolic gesture is still painful. I felt a strong need to put in the time to write personal letters to all of the mods. Second, the plans I have brewing in my head are fairly extensive and I was (and still am) working out the finer details. I’ve got about 40 pages of notes that I’m going to have to condense and transcribe to get feedback before letting the plans go “gold”. Third, I have to put in a surprising amount of effort to maintain balance in my life. School and work are no fun, and I study about 12 hours a day. Psychologically it’s very easy for me to get a rush focusing on Fuwanovel and dedicating an irresponsible amount of time to the community, and so maintaining a balance isn’t easy. My point: you’ll often hear me say things like, “let’s remember that this is a hobby, not a company, and temper our expectations.” What I’m really saying is, “In the past I’ve been known to put in 40 hours a week into the community, and in so doing, I end up pressuring everybody else that I work with to treat Fuwanovel very seriously and put in more time than they should. This has led to a lot of burnout over the years and a lot of lost partners.” I figured that it may be helpful for all of you to understand where I’m coming from on this point. When I budget a whole month for what appears (to some) as a list of easy changes, it’s in part to keep myself from ruining my life by spending all my time here, but it’s also to preserve the mental health of all the moderators, community leaders, and friends who help out.    I could say more, but I don’t want to bore everybody. Let’s move on to the other point: (Re)Balancing the focus of the community. You guys know that I like data, so there will occasionally be tangents into numbers. I’ll try to give tldrs afterwards for each tangent.   Fuwanovel is, by nature, focused on visual novels and promoting their spread (directly via translation, but also indirectly). That’s our tagline, and I’m sticking by it. Maef’s frustration that the community’s focus is shifting is legitimate, I think. I think he and others were right to critically point to the blog and declining focus on fan TL.   Here’s where I’m coming from on those issues, starting with “focusing on VNs”. In my mind the thing we're doing best for the VN world is draw in, orient, and educate new VN players in the ways of the force. I do polling from time to time of members who make introductory posts saying they’re new to VNs, with the intent to learn how we’re doing on this front. The responses are overwhelmingly positive. Across the board new users say that Fuwanovel is extremely effective at connecting a player to a wide inventory of VNs, and giving them access to a lot of information about the hobby. < -- These responses are so common that they’re kind of boring to me now, and so here are a few other related things which intrigue and impress me. Something like 30% find Fuwanovel as their first VN community and the majority of those users will exclusively use Fuwanovel and VNDB. ~40% come to Fuwanovel after trying other VN communities, and this group has the highest opinion and satisfaction with the site. To this group, game availability isn’t such a big deal, but the friendliness and forum activity are very widely praised.    Okay, tldr with those statistics: I think the community is very valuable to new and new-ish VN players and is very good at showing them the ropes of the hobby. I think we’ll all agree that this is awesome!   Another point we’ll agree on is that the blog needs work. The social media team is doing great things with VN news, and Zaka’s TL updates are very popular on the blog. As soon as the server issues are resolved, the blog is going to get a serious makeover. I also hope to revamp the organization of blog contribution so that news and pieces are coming out of the blog much more regularly. I’ll be posting about this soon.   Fan TL: This is a big one for me. The “Ongoing Projects” board in the Development forum section is, as far as I can tell, driving MUCH more traffic to the topics found within it than they were getting in the Fan TL board. Calls for help on projects will be a prominent feature of the blog again, and (fingers crossed) will be addressed on the forums via a tagging system. Further down the road (once the high priority changes are done), I’ve got plans for further innovation in the Development boards for guides and resources for getting into TL, TL workflows, and Japanese.   Starting to get tired (my med treatment has seriously messed up my sleep schedule), so I’m going to stop there. The point I’m trying to convey: I agree that we need to take two steps back to VNs.   In the same breath, let me also be clear that a top priority for me is to foster friendship building. Friendships are what bring a lot of us back to Fuwanovel once we’ve got a grasp of the VN world’s landscape. They’ll outlast Fuwanovel, and they make the work we do here more meaningful. (After all, there’s always work to be done on the site, and doing it with friends is a lot better than slaving away for the good of an abstract, monolithic concept of the Fuwanovel brand!) Where we agree on this point is that the current forums organization is very poor at parsing out the different ways we can interact with each other.   The VN and Development boards appear to be on the right track as far as organization goes. To address your concerns about the other parts of the site, let me say this: general discussion and games and chatter are undergoing a serious existential deconstruction ; ). The Fuwanovel based stuff (projects about fuwanovel, announcements, discussions about fuwanovel, etc.) will be moved to a new community hub (new forum). The topical discussion part will go into a new general discussion board. Posts for getting to know each other and having fun with each other will have a new home, tentatively titled the “Lounge”. Within the lounge will be the “Arena of Death”. That’s where spammy, fluffy, obnoxious, excessively derailed, floody, and delightfully stupid threads will go. Also AMAs. The AMAs and their ilk must die. The arena of death will have something of a metagame to it (fitting, methinks), but the stakes are high! Their survival is on the line! More information coming soon.   Why all of these changes? Why MORE forums? Two reasons. It’s so every user can better choose how they want to participate on the site, and also so each of those types of interaction have a “space” and won’t be stigmatized. The upcoming board moderator program is going to go a long way to helping maintain this organization. Hopefully this will help new and long-term members feel better about forums content. It’ll help people parse out exactly how they want to engage Fuwanovel, in any case.        Lastly, a few words to Maef (who is taking a break from the site, but who may someday return). Thank you for sharing your honest feelings. I agree with many of the things you said, and I can appreciate where all the rest is coming from. I hope to see you around here in the future. All the best.         Another novel! Sorry guys… I didn’t realize this post would be so long. Like I said above: I’m trying to learn and improve, and I figure it’s probably better to say and repeat too much during this period of changes than to say too little. Also, now I have to think up more juicy stuff for the podcast with Ren. I used up ~1/3 of what I wanted to talk to him about! Rats!   Have a good day, everybody. Tay   PS: Confirmed! Fuwa can never be allowed to die! We can’t let Clephas ride away into the sunset!  

Just going to take a second to say that there are fairly good methods of statistics in epidemiology and nobody should be freaking out that this will turn into a zombie-style outbreak. The etiology of Ebola is well known, and hopefully a little info will help you realize the threat isn't as dire as uninformed newscasters can make it out to be.

The following is summarized from the website of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the national public health institute of the United States:

Ebola virus causes a hemorrhagic fever disease, presenting with fever, headache, joint and muscle aches, weakness, diarrhea, vomiting and abnormal bleeding. The incubation period is 2-21 days after exposure, most commonly between 8-10 days. The most important fact is that the virus is transmitted through direct contact with blood or bodily fluids of an infected person or by exposure to objects, such as needles, that are contaminated. There is no spread from droplets (for example coughing) or from food or water.

The major concern arises if a person with the virus leaves West Africa, and this leads to the necessity of increasing awareness of the condition. The major potential for preventing spread of the virus is avoiding contact with secretions from an infected individual. Medical personnel in particular do need to be vigilant and take immediate precautions if a person is suspected of having the virus. This might include immediate isolation of the patient and those who have been in direct contact. There is no risk of transmission during the incubation period and only low risk of transmission in the early phase of symptomatic patients.

So! Like pretty much anything else in life, limit who you swap body fluids with and don't reuse needles. The actual # of people who need to be concerned is very low, thanks to how poorly Ebola spreads.

Ebola is thought to have come from bats. When somebody is infected with Ebola they are very bad at transmitting it. Even when personnel had scary blood-blood contact, we think the transmission rates were <1/300.

Ebola's natural reservoirs in the body are primarily blood, organ secretions, and sex organs that have secretions. Sneezing and coughing more often than not is when you expel the bacteria and junk in your nose and lungs as a clearing mechanism, and thus rarely includes the types of body fluids that would be infectious. Add the fact of poor transmission and you'll see that sneezing is thus not really an issue.

If it helps you can think of Ebola transmission similarly to something like AIDs. If you don't encounter their blood or body fluids (milk, semen, other types of secretions), the chances of catching it are very low.

That changes, as said above, when you actually are dealing with a confirmed case. We have advanced protocols about that. But in your day to day life, the guy sneezing next to you without covering his mouth is still annoying and can give you the flu, but Ebola ain't something to stress about.

Ebola is thought to have come from bats. When somebody is infected with Ebola they are very bad at transmitting it. Even when personnel had scary blood-blood contact, we think the transmission rates were <1/300.

Ebola's natural reservoirs in the body are primarily blood, organ secretions, and sex organs that have secretions. Sneezing and coughing more often than not is when you expel the bacteria and junk in your nose and lungs as a clearing mechanism, and thus rarely includes the types of body fluids that would be infectious. Add the fact of poor transmission and you'll see that sneezing is thus not really an issue.

If it helps you can think of Ebola transmission similarly to something like AIDs. If you don't encounter their blood or body fluids (milk, semen, other types of secretions), the chances of catching it are very low.

That changes, as said above, when you actually are dealing with a confirmed case. We have advanced protocols about that. But in your day to day life, the guy sneezing next to you without covering his mouth is still annoying and can give you the flu, but Ebola ain't something to stress about.

Aaaaaaaah. So THIS is the thing you were referring to, Ren! I thought you were talking about a PM, and as I’ve been going through all my inboxes I kept thinking, “Didn’t Ren say he sent me a PM about my absence and site stagnation?” Glad to see it was here in GD, right in front of my eyes the whole time : P.    First of all, and if you don't know me well this may surprise you -- this thread warmed my heart. Thank you for all the well-wishes, but more than that, thank you all for caring about the community. Even those who are frustrated, like maef, are frustrated because they are coming from a place of genuine concern. I understand that, and I’m extremely grateful. Second of all, just so we’re clear, I have no problem with frank discussions like this. I didn’t/don’t take personal offense to anything that’s been said, and if anything I respect you guys all the more for your input. I’m not perfect (by any means) and I don’t claim to be infallible. Like all of you, I’m just doing the best I can with the hand I’ve been dealt. As long as we keep talking to each other in a civil way, and as long as we keep caring about the community, we’re not going to fail or falter.   Alright. Would anybody mind if I took a second to offer a response? Maybe it’ll be informative and/or interesting. Maybe it’ll be long-winded and boring. Either way, it’s a good idea for me to give you guys a meaningful response after you've put a lot of thought into this discussion.   Let’s start by talking about “The Problems of One Admin”. They are legion, and as a community we know this all too well ; ). Aaeru’s departure sent ripples-turned-waves through the community, and imo we’re only just getting over the last throes. Just to be clear: I give you my word that I won’t up and abandon Fuwanovel. Should something really terrible happen, I will make it a high priority to at least log on, explain what is happening, and publicly (aka: not in a moderator/leadership board) appoint a replacement/proxy. Should I get killed or maimed or something and you don’t hear from me for >1.5 months, consider it my will and testament that Batman should become kingmaker and select somebody to lead the site. After all, he’s the hero Fuwanovel needs (and he’s got a good head on his shoulders, too).   In my recent post I said something along the lines of, “Nobody knows better than I the logistical problems of running the community alone.” What I meant by that was: “Nobody knows better than I that we need distribution of responsibility, because we’ve been burned one too many times by investing too much in just one person.” One of the central motivators for me to launch the cleaning house/restructuring period was to do exactly that: change up the leadership structure.   The fact that I was KO’d for a month sucks (royally!). It was bad for Fuwa, and it was bad for my RL responsibilities (studying while sick is le suck). Focusing on the Fuwa part: the real problem, in my opinion, was that I hadn’t gone sufficiently public with upcoming changes. It was a mistake to leave upcoming changes as a nebulous cloud to be revealed sometime in the future. I’m working on fixing that. The novel I posted the other day in the improvements board is ~1/4 of the changes I have planned. I still don’t believe it’s wise to reveal all the cards in my hand yet, but I promise to do much better at keeping everybody posted.    On that note, I think you deserve a little more info about why I didn’t post my novel earlier and cut that feeling of nebulous-ness out at the offset. Health issues compounded with staying afloat during finals was part of it, but another part was that much of the restructuring behind the scenes is emotionally exhausting. I decided to honorably release (with gratitude) a lot of moderators from their moderating duties, and while they’ll still be able to participate in site leadership via the upcoming leadership council, the symbolic gesture is still painful. I felt a strong need to put in the time to write personal letters to all of the mods. Second, the plans I have brewing in my head are fairly extensive and I was (and still am) working out the finer details. I’ve got about 40 pages of notes that I’m going to have to condense and transcribe to get feedback before letting the plans go “gold”. Third, I have to put in a surprising amount of effort to maintain balance in my life. School and work are no fun, and I study about 12 hours a day. Psychologically it’s very easy for me to get a rush focusing on Fuwanovel and dedicating an irresponsible amount of time to the community, and so maintaining a balance isn’t easy. My point: you’ll often hear me say things like, “let’s remember that this is a hobby, not a company, and temper our expectations.” What I’m really saying is, “In the past I’ve been known to put in 40 hours a week into the community, and in so doing, I end up pressuring everybody else that I work with to treat Fuwanovel very seriously and put in more time than they should. This has led to a lot of burnout over the years and a lot of lost partners.” I figured that it may be helpful for all of you to understand where I’m coming from on this point. When I budget a whole month for what appears (to some) as a list of easy changes, it’s in part to keep myself from ruining my life by spending all my time here, but it’s also to preserve the mental health of all the moderators, community leaders, and friends who help out.    I could say more, but I don’t want to bore everybody. Let’s move on to the other point: (Re)Balancing the focus of the community. You guys know that I like data, so there will occasionally be tangents into numbers. I’ll try to give tldrs afterwards for each tangent.   Fuwanovel is, by nature, focused on visual novels and promoting their spread (directly via translation, but also indirectly). That’s our tagline, and I’m sticking by it. Maef’s frustration that the community’s focus is shifting is legitimate, I think. I think he and others were right to critically point to the blog and declining focus on fan TL.   Here’s where I’m coming from on those issues, starting with “focusing on VNs”. In my mind the thing we're doing best for the VN world is draw in, orient, and educate new VN players in the ways of the force. I do polling from time to time of members who make introductory posts saying they’re new to VNs, with the intent to learn how we’re doing on this front. The responses are overwhelmingly positive. Across the board new users say that Fuwanovel is extremely effective at connecting a player to a wide inventory of VNs, and giving them access to a lot of information about the hobby. < -- These responses are so common that they’re kind of boring to me now, and so here are a few other related things which intrigue and impress me. Something like 30% find Fuwanovel as their first VN community and the majority of those users will exclusively use Fuwanovel and VNDB. ~40% come to Fuwanovel after trying other VN communities, and this group has the highest opinion and satisfaction with the site. To this group, game availability isn’t such a big deal, but the friendliness and forum activity are very widely praised.    Okay, tldr with those statistics: I think the community is very valuable to new and new-ish VN players and is very good at showing them the ropes of the hobby. I think we’ll all agree that this is awesome!   Another point we’ll agree on is that the blog needs work. The social media team is doing great things with VN news, and Zaka’s TL updates are very popular on the blog. As soon as the server issues are resolved, the blog is going to get a serious makeover. I also hope to revamp the organization of blog contribution so that news and pieces are coming out of the blog much more regularly. I’ll be posting about this soon.   Fan TL: This is a big one for me. The “Ongoing Projects” board in the Development forum section is, as far as I can tell, driving MUCH more traffic to the topics found within it than they were getting in the Fan TL board. Calls for help on projects will be a prominent feature of the blog again, and (fingers crossed) will be addressed on the forums via a tagging system. Further down the road (once the high priority changes are done), I’ve got plans for further innovation in the Development boards for guides and resources for getting into TL, TL workflows, and Japanese.   Starting to get tired (my med treatment has seriously messed up my sleep schedule), so I’m going to stop there. The point I’m trying to convey: I agree that we need to take two steps back to VNs.   In the same breath, let me also be clear that a top priority for me is to foster friendship building. Friendships are what bring a lot of us back to Fuwanovel once we’ve got a grasp of the VN world’s landscape. They’ll outlast Fuwanovel, and they make the work we do here more meaningful. (After all, there’s always work to be done on the site, and doing it with friends is a lot better than slaving away for the good of an abstract, monolithic concept of the Fuwanovel brand!) Where we agree on this point is that the current forums organization is very poor at parsing out the different ways we can interact with each other.   The VN and Development boards appear to be on the right track as far as organization goes. To address your concerns about the other parts of the site, let me say this: general discussion and games and chatter are undergoing a serious existential deconstruction ; ). The Fuwanovel based stuff (projects about fuwanovel, announcements, discussions about fuwanovel, etc.) will be moved to a new community hub (new forum). The topical discussion part will go into a new general discussion board. Posts for getting to know each other and having fun with each other will have a new home, tentatively titled the “Lounge”. Within the lounge will be the “Arena of Death”. That’s where spammy, fluffy, obnoxious, excessively derailed, floody, and delightfully stupid threads will go. Also AMAs. The AMAs and their ilk must die. The arena of death will have something of a metagame to it (fitting, methinks), but the stakes are high! Their survival is on the line! More information coming soon.   Why all of these changes? Why MORE forums? Two reasons. It’s so every user can better choose how they want to participate on the site, and also so each of those types of interaction have a “space” and won’t be stigmatized. The upcoming board moderator program is going to go a long way to helping maintain this organization. Hopefully this will help new and long-term members feel better about forums content. It’ll help people parse out exactly how they want to engage Fuwanovel, in any case.        Lastly, a few words to Maef (who is taking a break from the site, but who may someday return). Thank you for sharing your honest feelings. I agree with many of the things you said, and I can appreciate where all the rest is coming from. I hope to see you around here in the future. All the best.         Another novel! Sorry guys… I didn’t realize this post would be so long. Like I said above: I’m trying to learn and improve, and I figure it’s probably better to say and repeat too much during this period of changes than to say too little. Also, now I have to think up more juicy stuff for the podcast with Ren. I used up ~1/3 of what I wanted to talk to him about! Rats!   Have a good day, everybody. Tay   PS: Confirmed! Fuwa can never be allowed to die! We can’t let Clephas ride away into the sunset!  

Aaaaaaaah. So THIS is the thing you were referring to, Ren! I thought you were talking about a PM, and as I’ve been going through all my inboxes I kept thinking, “Didn’t Ren say he sent me a PM about my absence and site stagnation?” Glad to see it was here in GD, right in front of my eyes the whole time : P.    First of all, and if you don't know me well this may surprise you -- this thread warmed my heart. Thank you for all the well-wishes, but more than that, thank you all for caring about the community. Even those who are frustrated, like maef, are frustrated because they are coming from a place of genuine concern. I understand that, and I’m extremely grateful. Second of all, just so we’re clear, I have no problem with frank discussions like this. I didn’t/don’t take personal offense to anything that’s been said, and if anything I respect you guys all the more for your input. I’m not perfect (by any means) and I don’t claim to be infallible. Like all of you, I’m just doing the best I can with the hand I’ve been dealt. As long as we keep talking to each other in a civil way, and as long as we keep caring about the community, we’re not going to fail or falter.   Alright. Would anybody mind if I took a second to offer a response? Maybe it’ll be informative and/or interesting. Maybe it’ll be long-winded and boring. Either way, it’s a good idea for me to give you guys a meaningful response after you've put a lot of thought into this discussion.   Let’s start by talking about “The Problems of One Admin”. They are legion, and as a community we know this all too well ; ). Aaeru’s departure sent ripples-turned-waves through the community, and imo we’re only just getting over the last throes. Just to be clear: I give you my word that I won’t up and abandon Fuwanovel. Should something really terrible happen, I will make it a high priority to at least log on, explain what is happening, and publicly (aka: not in a moderator/leadership board) appoint a replacement/proxy. Should I get killed or maimed or something and you don’t hear from me for >1.5 months, consider it my will and testament that Batman should become kingmaker and select somebody to lead the site. After all, he’s the hero Fuwanovel needs (and he’s got a good head on his shoulders, too).   In my recent post I said something along the lines of, “Nobody knows better than I the logistical problems of running the community alone.” What I meant by that was: “Nobody knows better than I that we need distribution of responsibility, because we’ve been burned one too many times by investing too much in just one person.” One of the central motivators for me to launch the cleaning house/restructuring period was to do exactly that: change up the leadership structure.   The fact that I was KO’d for a month sucks (royally!). It was bad for Fuwa, and it was bad for my RL responsibilities (studying while sick is le suck). Focusing on the Fuwa part: the real problem, in my opinion, was that I hadn’t gone sufficiently public with upcoming changes. It was a mistake to leave upcoming changes as a nebulous cloud to be revealed sometime in the future. I’m working on fixing that. The novel I posted the other day in the improvements board is ~1/4 of the changes I have planned. I still don’t believe it’s wise to reveal all the cards in my hand yet, but I promise to do much better at keeping everybody posted.    On that note, I think you deserve a little more info about why I didn’t post my novel earlier and cut that feeling of nebulous-ness out at the offset. Health issues compounded with staying afloat during finals was part of it, but another part was that much of the restructuring behind the scenes is emotionally exhausting. I decided to honorably release (with gratitude) a lot of moderators from their moderating duties, and while they’ll still be able to participate in site leadership via the upcoming leadership council, the symbolic gesture is still painful. I felt a strong need to put in the time to write personal letters to all of the mods. Second, the plans I have brewing in my head are fairly extensive and I was (and still am) working out the finer details. I’ve got about 40 pages of notes that I’m going to have to condense and transcribe to get feedback before letting the plans go “gold”. Third, I have to put in a surprising amount of effort to maintain balance in my life. School and work are no fun, and I study about 12 hours a day. Psychologically it’s very easy for me to get a rush focusing on Fuwanovel and dedicating an irresponsible amount of time to the community, and so maintaining a balance isn’t easy. My point: you’ll often hear me say things like, “let’s remember that this is a hobby, not a company, and temper our expectations.” What I’m really saying is, “In the past I’ve been known to put in 40 hours a week into the community, and in so doing, I end up pressuring everybody else that I work with to treat Fuwanovel very seriously and put in more time than they should. This has led to a lot of burnout over the years and a lot of lost partners.” I figured that it may be helpful for all of you to understand where I’m coming from on this point. When I budget a whole month for what appears (to some) as a list of easy changes, it’s in part to keep myself from ruining my life by spending all my time here, but it’s also to preserve the mental health of all the moderators, community leaders, and friends who help out.    I could say more, but I don’t want to bore everybody. Let’s move on to the other point: (Re)Balancing the focus of the community. You guys know that I like data, so there will occasionally be tangents into numbers. I’ll try to give tldrs afterwards for each tangent.   Fuwanovel is, by nature, focused on visual novels and promoting their spread (directly via translation, but also indirectly). That’s our tagline, and I’m sticking by it. Maef’s frustration that the community’s focus is shifting is legitimate, I think. I think he and others were right to critically point to the blog and declining focus on fan TL.   Here’s where I’m coming from on those issues, starting with “focusing on VNs”. In my mind the thing we're doing best for the VN world is draw in, orient, and educate new VN players in the ways of the force. I do polling from time to time of members who make introductory posts saying they’re new to VNs, with the intent to learn how we’re doing on this front. The responses are overwhelmingly positive. Across the board new users say that Fuwanovel is extremely effective at connecting a player to a wide inventory of VNs, and giving them access to a lot of information about the hobby. < -- These responses are so common that they’re kind of boring to me now, and so here are a few other related things which intrigue and impress me. Something like 30% find Fuwanovel as their first VN community and the majority of those users will exclusively use Fuwanovel and VNDB. ~40% come to Fuwanovel after trying other VN communities, and this group has the highest opinion and satisfaction with the site. To this group, game availability isn’t such a big deal, but the friendliness and forum activity are very widely praised.    Okay, tldr with those statistics: I think the community is very valuable to new and new-ish VN players and is very good at showing them the ropes of the hobby. I think we’ll all agree that this is awesome!   Another point we’ll agree on is that the blog needs work. The social media team is doing great things with VN news, and Zaka’s TL updates are very popular on the blog. As soon as the server issues are resolved, the blog is going to get a serious makeover. I also hope to revamp the organization of blog contribution so that news and pieces are coming out of the blog much more regularly. I’ll be posting about this soon.   Fan TL: This is a big one for me. The “Ongoing Projects” board in the Development forum section is, as far as I can tell, driving MUCH more traffic to the topics found within it than they were getting in the Fan TL board. Calls for help on projects will be a prominent feature of the blog again, and (fingers crossed) will be addressed on the forums via a tagging system. Further down the road (once the high priority changes are done), I’ve got plans for further innovation in the Development boards for guides and resources for getting into TL, TL workflows, and Japanese.   Starting to get tired (my med treatment has seriously messed up my sleep schedule), so I’m going to stop there. The point I’m trying to convey: I agree that we need to take two steps back to VNs.   In the same breath, let me also be clear that a top priority for me is to foster friendship building. Friendships are what bring a lot of us back to Fuwanovel once we’ve got a grasp of the VN world’s landscape. They’ll outlast Fuwanovel, and they make the work we do here more meaningful. (After all, there’s always work to be done on the site, and doing it with friends is a lot better than slaving away for the good of an abstract, monolithic concept of the Fuwanovel brand!) Where we agree on this point is that the current forums organization is very poor at parsing out the different ways we can interact with each other.   The VN and Development boards appear to be on the right track as far as organization goes. To address your concerns about the other parts of the site, let me say this: general discussion and games and chatter are undergoing a serious existential deconstruction ; ). The Fuwanovel based stuff (projects about fuwanovel, announcements, discussions about fuwanovel, etc.) will be moved to a new community hub (new forum). The topical discussion part will go into a new general discussion board. Posts for getting to know each other and having fun with each other will have a new home, tentatively titled the “Lounge”. Within the lounge will be the “Arena of Death”. That’s where spammy, fluffy, obnoxious, excessively derailed, floody, and delightfully stupid threads will go. Also AMAs. The AMAs and their ilk must die. The arena of death will have something of a metagame to it (fitting, methinks), but the stakes are high! Their survival is on the line! More information coming soon.   Why all of these changes? Why MORE forums? Two reasons. It’s so every user can better choose how they want to participate on the site, and also so each of those types of interaction have a “space” and won’t be stigmatized. The upcoming board moderator program is going to go a long way to helping maintain this organization. Hopefully this will help new and long-term members feel better about forums content. It’ll help people parse out exactly how they want to engage Fuwanovel, in any case.        Lastly, a few words to Maef (who is taking a break from the site, but who may someday return). Thank you for sharing your honest feelings. I agree with many of the things you said, and I can appreciate where all the rest is coming from. I hope to see you around here in the future. All the best.         Another novel! Sorry guys… I didn’t realize this post would be so long. Like I said above: I’m trying to learn and improve, and I figure it’s probably better to say and repeat too much during this period of changes than to say too little. Also, now I have to think up more juicy stuff for the podcast with Ren. I used up ~1/3 of what I wanted to talk to him about! Rats!   Have a good day, everybody. Tay   PS: Confirmed! Fuwa can never be allowed to die! We can’t let Clephas ride away into the sunset!  

Yeah, the West African situation isn't very good at all. For those of us here in the West (NA, EU), though, the protocols are excellent and we're a far, far cry away from any kind of epidemic. Let's all be grateful for that and keep cool heads. : )