*IMPORTANT!*
Any questions/comments regarding the project, go here. For the translation of the original Majikoi, go here. For the translation of S, go here.
Translation project for Maji de Watashi ni Koi Shinasai! A-1 ( or "Majikoi A-1," for short.) By Maji Translations
Hi everybody,
Congrats! The fact that you're reading this means that the forums are online and you successfully made it back. While the data loss sucks pretty hardcore, I do have some good news for you all:
After an ungodly amount of time, I believe that all of the following items are now complete. If I think of more that I did, I'll add them.
The forums text editor should now be fixed (correct icons, correct places) and match what we used to have
I went through each and every walkthrough and fixed the spoilers and formatting errors
There is a new forums theme: Dashboard. I still need to tweak it so that it looks better on the forums index on a desktop PC, but it's another light theme (yes! I heard your cries and have come to support the few of you who haven't fallen in love with Temporal!). It looks pretty slick on phones and tablets, I think.
I fixed the spoiler function. If a post still has those weird spoiler problems where it shows some content before you expand it, just "Edit" it and then save the changes -- I believe everything is set up so that it'll fix itself as long as you make and save an edit (you don't need to touch the spoiler, just click "Edit", then "Save", without touching anything)
A ton of back-end fixes and optimizations
Killed round avatars
Buried the body of round avatars
Dug up the body of round avatars and burned it
Re-buried the ashes of round avatars
Set fire to the ground above the ashes of round avatars
Please post any feedback/questions/lamentations about these upgrades/changes in this thread. Looking forward to your bug reports.
Got it, played it, I'll complete episode 5 one of these daysTM I have this really weird thing that makes it so that the closer I am to finishing something the more likely I am to drop it indefinitely. It's really weird.
Have exams tommorow. Was getting bored, suddenly remembered that I hadn't watched much anime lately. Randomly decided to watch Durarara! The first episode was pretty good, definitely managed to get me interested. The characters are all interesting too. For some reason I don't want it to become full-blown supernatural, would be better if such powers remained mysterious and rare. Stopped after ep 1, as I realized that isn't what one is supposed to be doing just before an exam.......
Umm tay, i realize this is only partly on topic, but i felt sending a email about this to be a bit excessive.
I am one of those people who got one of those emails in which you said that my login name and display name were different and that they were now merged. (no problem with this) Except i did not get one mail i got three of them which were all send at the exact same time, now i dont mind recieving mail from fuwa but recieving the same mail three times is a bit strange. any idea as wo why this happed.
P.S please fix the line distance it is way to big rigt now, and pressing shift+enter every time i want to end a line get mildly annoying.
Bullying is never "that big of an issue" unless/until you're the target, believe me.
Most of the time it's not one but a few kids singled out, depending on group / gender makeup within the class, and gets even worse in bigger subjects/courses like P.E. or arts classes.
It's not limited to Japan or the US either, but is pretty much happening everywhere. Just be thankful no one put you through the hell that is year-long bullying.
Well, it's mostly me being burnt after many years of seeing the same thing. Studios pick the less satisfying resolution (doesn't deserve to be called resolution) to get an easy open-ended final episode, in case they get to adapt more stuff. That, in turn, means they need to make the heroines face their feelings but, unlike in the original material, the plot does not truly advance. So we get the same sort of ending in every single anime of this genre. Not only it's repetitive, it also feels insanely unsatisfying to watch a final episode that denies the progression of the whole season.
Contents of this Update:
1. Introduction
2. Site analytics
3. Abbreviated financial report
4. Loligeddon feedback survey
5. Commentary from Tay
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1. Introduction
I hope the information in this community update is both useful and interesting to those of you who want to keep a finger on Fuwa’s pulse. This report may not look like a lot, but it took a lot of time to compile (especially trying to compensate for an analytics bug which I’m incapable of fixing myself). Now that it’s done, I’m already noticing things I should have included but forgot. Just remind me of questions you have in the thread below, and I’ll try to reply to everything.
- Tay
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2. Site analytics
A few weeks ago we started paying for a second, small server to host our analytics software. There’s a bug in the software which makes it difficult to get hard numbers for the past few weeks, but I think I found a clever work-around. Here are the numbers as best as I'm able to find:
Front site: 4-5k unique visitors a day and something like 7-8k daily hits
Fuwazette Blog: Weekdays: 1.7k unique visitors (average); Weekends: 2-4k unique visitors per day following VNTS posts
Forums: 6-10k unique visitors a day, 11-15k hits per day
Reviews Hub: 40-60 unique visitors a day; each time a FuwaReviews review goes up, it spikes to several hundred uniques per day for several days
VNTL-Moon: ~60 unique visitors a day, ~100 hits
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3. Abbreviated Financial report
Many members have been extremely generous with their donations, and from the bottom of my heart I want to say THANK YOU. All donated site funds have been put directly towards site costs:
I’ve saved up a 3 month rainy day fund (split between donations and my personal funds)
We’ve had one full round of software license fees
We paid $100 past site debts
Put aside funds for new Reviews Hub theme
$70 spent on developing an articles hub site which ended up being extremely unsecure and ex’d by Nayleen (Maef and I were SO CLOSE). $40 of the $70 came from saved-up donation funds.
Free: The feeling you get flirting with Flutterz or getting clever ideas in a PM from Eclipsed
Free: #Renenvy
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4. Feedback Survey: Loli Policy
I promised Sanah a follow-up survey about Loligeddon, and haven’t been able to follow-up until now (well, technically, a bit later in October). If you’d like to give feedback on the Loli policies, have suggestions for changing them, or have something you want to tell me, here’s the link:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1Yp2ADO3AROV7LvQ3mS47g0sINkFn-OEaPRPf6ZHzsqE/viewform?usp=send_form
Any proposed changes will be considered with our law maester when I next talk to him. There’s an option to include your forums username and be added to a follow-up roundatable discussion (space is limited) once that occurs.
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5. Commentary from Tay
Commentary on Analytics:
It may come as a surprise to some that this quarterly update is the first time I’ve officially opened our analytics numbers to the public (Nay’s done it in the past, but always on his own impetus). This coincides with a decision to make the front site open-source and seek help from a much larger coding pool than before. These may be small steps, but they’re meaningful and I hope they’ll represent the seeds for yet more transparency in the future.
So. Let’s talk about these numbers. The big-picture take-home message is that Fuwa has continued to grow in the four(ish) months since our last analytics report. I’m a big data nerd who likes to try to use big-boy statistics (and, inevitably, breaks something and needs a math genius friend’s help), so here are a few other trends:
Users are spending a lot more time, on average, in the Visual Novel and Dev/Translation boards. Almost twice as much time as they were in March 2015
Walkthroughs are still a huge draw
New members are, literally, about nine times more likely to go to the dev boards than they were in March 2015 (within their first week on the boards). They’re about six times more likely to regularly go there afterwards.
The amount of VN-centric sites linking to Fuwanovel has increased a tremendous amount. Like, a seriously crazy amount. Several times more links to us from other VN communities than in March 2015 (I didn’t do any hard numbers for this, though, since I only thought to check it right before posting this. Apologies.)
Tay’s daily hatemail has decreased by several hundred percent since March 2015
The blog’s popularity on VNTS days has increased by about 45% since July.
The front site’s traffic has decreased somewhere between 20-40% since pre-torrents, but the other sites have maintained solid, steady growth
Daily user registrations on all the various sites are still a horrible approximation for traffic and engagement
Autoposting is the bomb
Our Google+ page is a lonely, lonely place, but I met a few really nice people on there who have since become friends. So… yay. Google+ did something good.
The reviews hub traffic has continued to steadily grow. It’s not a steep growth, but it’s steady. The traffic spikes for FuwaReviews official reviews are higher than ever and they last for longer than the used to, as well.
Our new anti-spam-user software is doing fairly well, which is great
Commentary on Site Finances:
I just wanted to thank everyone who has generously donated to the site. As soon as I can get Nay’s help with an authentication library (or something like that), I’ve got a slick new donations app which will automate the donation process and make sure you get your goodies instantly.
Commentary on Site Leadership:
Fuwanovel is an important part of my life. I’ve learned a lot over the years from building and running this place, and many of the most important lessons I’ve learned came from making mistakes or falling short of goals and deadlines. I’d like to open up a bit and share a bit of vulnerability on two such shortcomings.
I’d like to publicly apologize for my inconsistent presence in the community. I have not been able to give the site everything it’s needed, and I want everyone to know that I recognize it. Beyond being busy in general, I’ve had a truly bizarre amount of freak accidents or tropical storms or RL craziness mess up my genuinely well-meaning plans time and time again. I’m not trying to make excuses, I’m more or less just trying to express that I’m likely as frustrated as you with the lack of progress in certain site projects. I have plans burning in my brain for where we need to go and what we need to do in order to get there, and at times I, too, get a little burned out and discouraged when I see the discrepancy between where we are and where we need to be.
Secondly, I’d like to apologize to the dozens of friends who have spent hundreds of hours participating and working on the site who don't feel adequately appreciated. In the real world I make a real effort to reach out to and thank the people I work with for their good work. It’s an important part of being a leader, and it’s an important part of being a friend. I am disappointed when I review my track record for tracking and recognizing all the work done by so many great people on this site. When I get "Fuwa time", I tend to jump in and do work on the site without taking time to check in with everybody. I want to improve in this department, and I hope you'll help me as I try to do better.
As far as site leadership goes, only one other thing to discuss: adding another (/more) admin(s). This is something I feel like I’ve discussed so many times I worry that you all think I’m a broken record. I’ll be the first to agree that we need to spread the autonomy around. The way this works at the moment is that all the different parts of Fuwanovel have a dedicated leader who has the autonomy to run their project within a pre-agreed upon framework that she/he and I set at the beginning of the quarter (or year, depending on the project). It’s not a perfect system – in many ways because this is a hobby site, not a paying job, and I’m fairly adamant that people keep Fuwa in a healthy balance and not burn out – but it’s also not too bad.
Judging from recent posts as well as more than a few a hellaton PMs and emails, many people disagree with me on two fronts: the forums and the front site. I’ll tackle each of those below.
Commentary on the Forums:
I’m quite happy with the trends I’m seeing in the analytics. I like to think that the improved engagement of new members with the VN and Dev boards heralds the wider change of userbase from torrent-seekers to VN-community-seekers. Even if that’s not true, VN engagement is higher than it was earlier this year, and traffic is still robust.
I’m still embarrassed and frustrated about the forums’ sidebar formatting. I spent an hour last week trying to figure out what I needed to do to fix it, but I can’t find my old notes anywhere. I’ve reached out to Nay about this and other things, of course, and I really hope I can get this fixed for you soon.
Earlier this quarter Sanah and I had some great discussions about the limitations of the current blog app and how we might provide a better blogging platform for users. At the moment I’m still waiting to see how the upcoming IPB 4 forums’ software upgrade feels for our bloggers. Sanah eventually opted to start his own blog and use the Fuwa app to drive readers to his new location. That’s, obviously, fantastic, since my goal with the blogs app has always been to give people a platform and help drive VN fans to them. So, what I’m getting at here is that if the IPB 4 upgrade is poorly received, I’m up to the challenge of finding a way to host a blogging platform if need be. Hopefully it won’t come to that, but the blog authors need to know, at the very least, that we’ll do our best to take care of them.
Not going to write any more about Loligeddon. Go take the survey if you want to share your views and/or propose policy changes. I will personally review all the entries.
Quite a few people have asked me to add a forums admin who would be in charge of both moderation and engagement. I’m skeptical of the idea due to past experience, but it’s brought up enough that I’m willing to open the door to feedback. Would you like me to make a survey about the forums experience and include a field for you to write desired forums organizational/leadership changes?
Commentary on the Front Site:
Here’s the situation: we’ve committed to the open-source plan, but I’m not technical enough to make sure that’s set up or manage the various software forks that will result. Nayleen, our webmaster, has been traveling and working and dealing with craziness and thus hasn’t been around lately, but as far as I’m aware he’s sticking with us. Which is a good thing: the man’s a genius.
Back in August Nay and I realized that the plans we had for the front site were too ambitious to try and bite off all at once, so we decided to scale-back the initial launch plans and simply try and get a basic redesign up and running (using a lot of the old code under the hood) which would then be improved bit-by-bit over the next few months. This was poorly communicated to the design team, and Emi and Beato deserve an apology. Furthermore, that scaled-back version is still not up and running. Which is frustrating. It isn’t something I or a novice coder can address, however, since the front site is written with multiple coding languages.
The critical bottlenecks are currently: open development onto git (or wherever) (which Nay has already done to some extent), finalize the database structure so the other coders can know how it’s structured, roll out the design update with or without an underlying total code revamp, tackle each module one at a time thereafter. (Maef and I have been working on the articles and team builder concepts, and I think they’re going to be pretty great.)
After the bottlenecks are addressed and the rest of the design timeline is sorted out, Nay, maef and I will be posting some more information on the rest of the evil plans.
Conclusion
Thank you for reading this post and for being a part of this community. I’m dedicated to keeping the site alive and improving it (even if by uneven pacing), and having friends and fellow fans like you makes the effort worth it.
Tay
This is the second anime adaptation announcement this month for a VN I've played.
Wow. Yay. Let's see how good/bad they'll make them. I'll watch anything.
Nothing. It's simply that light novels which get adapted to anime need to get cut a lot, since it would be impossible to fit anything into 12/24 episodes, and some people believe that the amount of things that are being cut are too many, and too important. I haven't read the LN, so I have no idea about this.
It's nevertheless a good anime, so I wouldn't care too much if I were you.
Well, here goes nothing:
Fate/Stay Night
Grisaia no Kajitsu
Maji de Watashi ni Koishinasai
Little Busters!
Ever17 - The Out of Infinity - and the rest of the Infinity Series, too.
Umineko and Higurashi series of games.
Muv Luv and Muv Luv Alternative
Steins;Gate
I've run out of entries that aren't from the same developer. I'll add CLANNAD
And Rewrite
I've played a lot of English stuff... but what I like always ends up being similar. Romance or Sci-fi, usually. It doesn't make for a very diverse list of stuff to read before you die.
As some of you are aware, I've been living on the Caribbean island of Dominica doing medical research with a med school there until my next semester started. Tropical storm Erika has trashed the island: we went to bed on Wednesday having heard that the storm would be minor and pass before we woke up, but then the next morning we found our rented house flooded ~3 inches and the street outside had become a river.
I'm told that there has been some news coverage, so you may have seen some of the bridges collapse, etc. It's been a crazy, crazy few days. We were stranded in the middle of a canyon from Thursday to this morning without phone access, internet, or water. The power kept going off as -- I'm told -- the generators in Portsmouth didn't have enough fuel to work without a steady stream from the capitol (which was cut off due to bridge collapses).
Nobody was killed near us, but there's something crazy like 20 dead and >100 missing people across the island. I joked Thursday morning that the internet gods really didn't want me working on the site, apparently, but the situation escalated so quickly that it just doesn't seem as funny anymore. Fortunately we've got water and food enough to last a week or so, but there's a good chance that the Portsmouth generators will fail later this afternoon and, again, I'll be stranded without internet/phone/power/water.
I'll post pictures when I'm able. Just wanted to report in and let you know that I haven't died (yet). I've got something like 900 emails to go through (downloading them to my tablet so even if the power goes off I'll be able to read them), but I'm going to hit them all. If you have an urgent problem please email me. If there's a true emergency I'm willing to take your phone number and call you (one of the phone providers here should be able to work even if the power goes off) (not sure I believe it, though), tho that's probably a bit of overkill.
Thanks for your patience. Apologies to VNTS fans, maef, Nayleen, Decay, and others for waiting on my Fuwa work and no-doubt feeling frustrated when I didn't appear.
Oh, I hadn't noticed Fuwanovel stopped distributing them.
I'm so glad we have good Samaritans like you notice the little details.
While I'm sure there are, pirates are everywhere, I don't think the average member is allowed to just spew a bunch of sites distributing illegal content when Fuwanovel prohibits it.
The visual novels distributed by Fuwanovel shouldn't be accessible anymore, as far as I know, and any you see are, as the user above pointed out, likely dangerous.
Edit: I should probably go to sleep, but my lack of self control won't allow me not to make this post.
Hopefully this thread won't result in a flame war, like all the other ones
I tend to gravitate towards 18+ VNs. I have a few all-ages titles, but the greater are by far 18+. Some of that can be attributed to my wanting to get the original version and not the one that was modified later to increase sales (usually going from 18+ -> all ages, but occasionally can go all-ages -> 18+), but I'm not gonna lie, I like h-scenes, as shitty as they tend to be. That's probably never going to change.
havoc reacted to Mr Poltroon in Fuwanovel Confessions
havoc got a reaction from Tay in IPB 4: Info and Error Reporting