Fuwanovel Thoughts - Quarter 3

[Darklord Rooke]

The number of times you get sick and almost die… let’s put it this way. If there were any truth to that adage ‘what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger’, you’d be the embodiment of all things Hulk, and would be wandering around Canada-land (or wherever you live, Canada’s close enough ) hulk-smashing everything around you. And you'd be doing it with a bucket of bourbon in one hand, and an incomplete Fuwa-review in the other. And every so often you'd roar 'Sakuraaaaaa' :3

[solidbatman]

The number of times you get sick and almost die… let’s put it this way. If there were any truth to that adage ‘what doesn’t kill me makes me stronger’, you’d be the embodiment of all things Hulk, and would be wandering around Canada-land (or wherever you live, Canada’s close enough ) hulk-smashing everything around you. And you'd be doing it with a bucket of bourbon in one hand, and an incomplete Fuwa-review in the other. And every so often you'd roar 'Sakuraaaaaa' :3

I fully expect to be in the hospital before I am ready to finish my Sakura trial

 

And christ, that sounds like a legit Sakura game.

 

Sakura Trial. You play as Jun Takeshi, a young, upcoming lawyer in Japan. One day he gets a case he can't turn down. Two sisters, accused of shoplifting clothes stand trial for theft. He must now choose which sister to fuck. Oh, and maybe keep them out of jail or something. 

[Darklord Rooke]

Sold *slams money on the table*. Oh… there’s no such game yet

 

Take care of yourself, Bats. Your health is the most important thing you have, and If you die not only will it sadden us immensely... but I’ll take it upon myself to write your Eulogy. And I know everybody keeps telling me ‘NO!!!!!’ with much arm flapping but honestly you guys won’t be in any condition to protest, in fact I’ve already got Wink’s written and stored safely in a drawer *heh*.

[Decay]

Fuwanovel reviews are cool and all but uhh...

 

Is that image on the forums index really the only means anyone has of accessing them from the site? Because that seems decidedly not good. It actually took me quite a while to even find the reviews hub. And I've been here a while.

 

edit: what the fuck is this? http://reviews.fuwanovel.net/2015/09/27/sekai-project-reveals-six-new-titles-at-anime-weekend-atlanta-2015/

[Ryechu]

Fuwanovel reviews are cool and all but uhh...

 

Is that image on the forums index really the only means anyone has of accessing them from the site? Because that seems decidedly not good. It actually took me quite a while to even find the reviews hub. And I've been here a while.

 

edit: what the fuck is this? http://reviews.fuwanovel.net/2015/09/27/sekai-project-reveals-six-new-titles-at-anime-weekend-atlanta-2015/

 

RSS Feed from somebody who doesn't know how to properly set their tags.  We get those from time to time. (EDIT:  Huh, I don't see it anymore, I wonder what could have happened to it )

 

And getting improved visibility is something we're working on.  But anybody who follows the Facebook, Twitter, Google+, or looks at the front page ever will see our reviews.  Our statistics are actually quite good, all things considered.

[Darklord Rooke]

Fuwanovel reviews are cool and all but uhh...

 

Is that image on the forums index really the only means anyone has of accessing them from the site? Because that seems decidedly not good. It actually took me quite a while to even find the reviews hub. And I've been here a while.

 

It's a fairly big problem and the only other way to get to the Reviews page is by going through the Fuwazette blog, which is incredibly counter-intuitive. Ideally there'll be a tag on the front site to direct people to the review page, but the redesign of the front site is taking a while due to RL stuff.

[Tay]

(Thanks for the great post, Ren, and for everyone else who has posted. I've got a community update post half-done somewhere in OneNote I wrote last week. I'll go finish it and put it up on the community board so y'all have the latest to continue this discussion)

 

(It's neither easy nor fun to read through these sorts of posts, but I genuinely appreciate them and all the time you all have taken to share your thoughts.)

[Zakamutt]

I actually talked to babiker a bit earlier about the fuwazette itself, and how he couldn't find a single link to it from the forums. I kinda called off the community blog section autoposts by fuwazette-chan because they looked immeasurably crappy due to unconverted html tags, etc. The sidebars, somewhere, could be a decent place. If vntl-moon gets a picture... yeah. Doesn't need to be big either, even showing the latest post title would be enough.

[sanahtlig]

Yes, I am upset. I am upset on a more personal level because I do stand by what I said in my original post - I am the only member of this site that actively tries to do anything when it comes to a sense of community on the forums. Nobody else does giveaways. Nobody else does games for the forums like I do. Nobody else hosts monthly themes in an effort to unite people on the forums. Nobody hosts the podcast or cares about it as much anymore. I wanted to plan a Halloween event for the site, but I don't even think that will interest people given how inactive this place has become.

I can only speak for myself, but I'll be straight with you.  Most of what you do doesn't interest me.  Occasionally you do a podcast on a topic that does interest me, and I volunteer--only to realize that hardly anyone actually watches because, well, people wouldn't be hanging out on forums in the first place if they preferred to get their news and discussion through the audio medium.

 

I'm not quite sure why you expect everyone to flock to your activities.  Maybe, just maybe, a lot of people just want to post occasionally on topics that interest them and don't have any particular interest in these community building activities you're offering?

 

I can sympathize with the burnout and lack of appreciation you're feeling, but maybe it's not the community that needs to change.  Maybe it's you.  And maybe it's me.  It's a lot easier to change your own behavior than to change the behavior of tens, hundreds, or thousands of others.  If you feel your passion ebbing, maybe it's time to move on.  Whether you keep doing what you're doing or not, the community will remain mostly the same.  You're one small cog in a machine.  Your actions have little effect on others.  But your actions have great effect on yourself.  Maybe it's time to put your effort where it counts the most: towards yourself.

[Decay]

I actually talked to babiker a bit earlier about the fuwazette itself, and how he couldn't find a single link to it from the forums. I kinda called off the community blog section autoposts by fuwazette-chan because they looked immeasurably crappy due to unconverted html tags, etc. The sidebars, somewhere, could be a decent place. If vntl-moon gets a picture... yeah. Doesn't need to be big either, even showing the latest post title would be enough.

I feel like most parts of the site needs more exposure on the other parts. Right now it feels like Fuwanovel is four independent sites with nothing to do with each other, the front-page game database, the Fuwazette, the Reviews Hub, and the forums. More interconnectivity and more ways to see what's happening on one part of the site from another would be great and would encourage more people to participate in all aspects of the site. Sometimes a simple solution can work really well. Look how many more personal blog posts were being made once they enhanced the sidebar to show the last 10 (although it's back down to 5), that was a pretty immediate boost. The user blogs are a minor and unpopular section of the site, so I'd imagine that adding that level of exposure across the other sections of the site would have even stronger effects. 

[Ryechu]

I feel like most parts of the site needs more exposure on the other parts. Right now it feels like Fuwanovel is four independent sites with nothing to do with each other, the front-page game database, the Fuwazette, the Reviews Hub, and the forums. More interconnectivity and more ways to see what's happening on one part of the site from another would be great. 

 

I do a few things behind the scenes with Fuwazette and look for community involvement in the form of Community-Submitted Reviews, but it requires people to want to be interested.  And if they aren't, that's fine - I have a team of great reviewers, and that's all I can really ask for.  Anything more is just icing on the cake.

 

That's the one thing about official things that happen on this site, they happen behind closed doors and the public doesn't really see a lot of what goes down.

[Guest]

I feel like most parts of the site needs more exposure on the other parts. Right now it feels like Fuwanovel is four independent sites with nothing to do with each other, the front-page game database, the Fuwazette, the Reviews Hub, and the forums. More interconnectivity and more ways to see what's happening on one part of the site from another would be great and would encourage more people to participate in all aspects of the site. Sometimes a simple solution can work really well. Look how many more personal blog posts were being made once they enhanced the sidebar to show the last 10 (although it's back down to 5), that was a pretty immediate boost. The user blogs are a minor and unpopular section of the site, so I'd imagine that adding that level of exposure across the other sections of the site would have even stronger effects. 

 

I agree, and this is coming. The new website is going to centralize everything back together and put it on the front website.

[Rose]

I feel like most parts of the site needs more exposure on the other parts. Right now it feels like Fuwanovel is four independent sites with nothing to do with each other, the front-page game database, the Fuwazette, the Reviews Hub, and the forums. More interconnectivity and more ways to see what's happening on one part of the site from another would be great and would encourage more people to participate in all aspects of the site. Sometimes a simple solution can work really well. Look how many more personal blog posts were being made once they enhanced the sidebar to show the last 10 (although it's back down to 5), that was a pretty immediate boost. The user blogs are a minor and unpopular section of the site, so I'd imagine that adding that level of exposure across the other sections of the site would have even stronger effects. 

 

Talking about that, does anyone knows why the scroll bars were removed? We used to have a bigger one for the Recent Topics while also having the last 10 blog posts, as well as the Recognition blog posts. Recent Topics in special are extremely weird, I mean, a scroll bar for a single extra topic? I think having something between 7 and 10 would be a better idea.

[Flutterz]

Talking about that, does anyone knows why the scroll bars were removed? We used to have a bigger one for the Recent Topics while also having the last 10 blog posts, as well as the Recognition blog posts. Recent Topics in special are extremely weird, I mean, a scroll bar for a single extra topic? I think having something between 7 and 10 would be a better idea.

A side effect of whatever it was Tay was doing last time he was around, IIRC he needs Nay to fix it. Either that or he just doesn't have the time to do it himself.

[Darklord Rooke]

Talking about that, does anyone knows why the scroll bars were removed? We used to have a bigger one for the Recent Topics while also having the last 10 blog posts, as well as the Recognition blog posts. Recent Topics in special are extremely weird, I mean, a scroll bar for a single extra topic? I think having something between 7 and 10 would be a better idea.

 

*A mental reminder I will never act upon: Insert downwards pointing arrow here*

 

Please Note (8:16 PM EST):

 

I haven't done any work to restore the forum index sidebars yet because I'm waiting to first confer with Nay. If the conversion software is, indeed, fixed, it may be worth it to just upgrade to IPB 4 this weekend and get it over with. (The apps in IPB 4.x work much differently than 3.x, so whenever we do the upgrade I'll need to put in time re-doing everything) If today's loss means I have to re-do all the forums customizations anyway, my thinking is that we might as well just bite the bullet and avoid having to do this again a few weeks down the road.

[Diamon]

Imho, bonding in a forum as big as Fuwanovel doesn't have the same connotation as bonding in a group of friends. There's a simple reason for that : in the end, we're all a bunch of strangers to each other. Ren, you want to use games and activities as a purpose for bonding members between each other, but I think that can only work among people who already appreciate each other's company. I play games / participate in events when I know I can have a good time, and it's just not likely it will happen with people I don't know. Sure, I could take the time to get to know those people, but the keyword here is time, if I already have a group of friends to play with, and other activities that keep me busy, I'm not sure I'd take the risk to involve myself in potentially time-consuming activities where I'm not sure I'd enjoy myself as much as with my friends.

 

In a community with so many diverse people, where so many different people can be found, I think Fuwanovel really thrives with it debates and exchange of constructive opinions about Visual Novels. That's the simple reason why VN discussions is still going strong, because no matter how different we all are, the one and only common thing that links us all together are Visual Novels. And it seems normal to me that bonding should come from those discussions, rather than random activities. And, relating to one of Rooke's post earlier, this bonding is deeper than one you could get from activities, since you genuinely gain a sense of respect for the people with whom you exchange constructive ideas. To me, that's the real sense of community we could develop on fuwa. As mentionned earlier, the fuwa reviews are a prime example : when I see one of Ryechu's reviews (or any other reviewer), I read someone's opinion that is structured and well thought, that I may agree with or not, but no matter what I will relate to it because it talks about Visual Novels, and people are all here because of their interest in Visual Novels. I gain respect for people who are able to make me reflect about VN, or teach me new things. Maybe it's just me, but I bond with people that I respect. When you had personal issues and you made this thread saying that you might not be able to continue your activities on Fuwa, I remember posting something in the thread, but it was more because I respected you as a person for giving so much of your time to Fuwanovel, rather than because I was sad that you wouldn't be able to host your events.

 

tl,dr : Fuwa's dynamism comes from the discussions concerning VN with all the members, bonding comes from people exchanging opinions and gaining respect for one's well written thoughts, so community events/programs should probably focus on VN discussions (could be a lot of things, organized debate, VN polls, VN discussions thread similar to /visualnovels/, ...)

 

Some ideas that I didn't put many thoughts in it, so they might be bad ideas :

- Would it be possible to rank the thread replies depending on the number of like? It would push people to write more relevant stuff (since it does feel rewarding to have your post being the first one displayed). very similar to /visualnovels/ once again, but it gives more meaning to the like system, and might have the benefit to make the more relevant content be easier to spot (I always found it bothersome as a user to have to scroll through mountains of pages to be able to be able to find the relevant info needed when I wanted to reply myself, and it's even more overwhelming in topics I'm totally unfamiliar with.

 

- Separate the member lounge into two different things, a "Community activities" section, and a "Real life talk" section. I think that anything that doesn't belong to those two categories could easily be posted in the "other discussion" section. If the real purpose of the member's lounge is bonding, then, there's probably nothing better than having a section in the forums where you can share your problem, worries, ask for advices, tell a funny story or sad story that happened to you recently, rant about your problem in real life... Because empathy is also a real form of bonding, much as you happen to care about the characters in VN when they have issues, the same can happen in real life. It wouldn't be the brightest section ever, but not everything has to be cheerful and happy go lucky in a forum.

[OriginalRen]

In a community with so many diverse people, where so many different people can be found, I think Fuwanovel really thrives with it debates and exchange of constructive opinions about Visual Novels. That's the simple reason why VN discussions is still going strong, because no matter how different we all are, the one and only common thing that links us all together are Visual Novels.

 

That's just it though, that's what I have been doing. I've been creating meaningful activities that bring people together with a common interest in VNs, but still nobody seems to care (i.e. = the podcast). Normally I'd want to agree with these kinds of comments, but since in the past this didn't used to happen and people actually chatted and had a good time as a community, I can't agree with any of this. Do you remember when we participated in shit as a group of visual novel users? Remember when everyone was super excited for the changes to the site and when people banded together during the holiday season? That doesn't exist anymore, and yet people keep telling me Fuwanovel is no different than it was back then. That's bullshit.

 

Again, this wasn't like this. Ignoring my games, people don't even participate in things that require no effort anymore. The mystery month is meant to spark discussion in visual novels and anime, yet nobody gives a rat's ass about it. Very few people even comment in the threads or have a little fun. That's not a game, that's not time consuming, it's people refusing to admit that they think the site's community is boring. I still remember the time that I wanted to take a break from the site and people were commenting how boring the site would be without fun activities to do. Do you honestly think that even holds true now? Of course not. Again, my original post stated how progress accounts for a majority of this, but when people failed to see that they instead said straight to my face that we don't need to be a closely knit community. In the past, that wasn't the case. And yes, that will make me extremely pissed off.

 

Ryechu does reviews because he has a passion for it and enjoys it. Decay and others work on the blogs and Fuwazette because they also enjoy doing it (I hope). Tay puts his heart and soul into this site because he wants to. Do any of these people get paid? No. I have a passion for making everyone enjoy themselves, yet for some reason my passion is meaningless to so many people on this site when in the past it wasn't like that. But I'm done trying to prove a point. I have lost my sense of worth on this site and don't have a purpose here anymore except to be a regular shitposter, so it doesn't matter. Nobody agrees with me, and nobody will understand where I am coming from. Even if they do, it's not like anyone will stand up for what I am saying.

[Tay]

More of a practical idea: what about having a small section (maybe one or two items) on the forums sidebar which will list active streams? If IPB 4 rears its ugly head, we can simply make a blog in the blog app to which streamers can post before their streams go live. We may even be able to set posts to auto-delete after a certain amount of time.

 

There are a lot of tough angles to this conversation, so I thought I'd start with the low-hanging fruit and toss out ideas about the more general problem of poor visibility.

[Darklord Rooke]

A stream are those videos you watch live right? Those videos where once it’s over, you can no longer watch them? I know, I’m a little behind in the technology department, I prefer my quill and paper thank you .

 

The problem with streams is that users aren’t often active when the streamer is active – people sometimes forget, they have to deal with RL stuff, or maybe they’re just sleeping. I’ve never understood why streams are sometimes favoured over a video format that can be watched at the user’s convenience. Because it can often inconvenience the ‘watcher’, to counter this a stream should therefore be engaging, interesting, maybe even informative. Many streams are about really mundane things, though.

 

Podcasts – the problem with podcasts is it’s a less assessable way to get information you can already read up on the forums. That is, a lot of the time important people aren’t being interviewed, there isn’t a roundtable discussion that is engaging or unique. Sanah was correct when he said that forums are there for discussion, but a lot of the podcasts do the same thing, so why would people listen to the podcasts when they can get the information off the forums easier and quicker? A rethink on what podcasts should be based on, and the number of podcasts issued probably needs to happen.

 

You could have a multimedia thingy sidebar sure, but there’s some issues concerning the nature of these activities which should probably be addressed if you’re looking to maximise engagement. There’s nothing wrong with the activities, it’s always the ‘how’ which is important though, so a little more thought and a little less adrenaline imo.

[Tay]

Yeah, the sidebar idea is probably a bad approach. It's just... y'know... I have a legal obligation to try and make the sidebar as packed and complicated and miserable to navigate as possible.

[Darklord Rooke]

You know, I performed the dance of joy when the birthdays were finally removed from the sidebar. Unfortunately the nature of that dance led to me being locked up for something rhyming with ‘thin-recent composer’, otherwise it would have been a perfect day :3

Edited September 29, 2015 by Tay
This user has been permabanned for thought crime and salting still-tender wounds.

[Decay]

I actually talked to babiker a bit earlier about the fuwazette itself, and how he couldn't find a single link to it from the forums. I kinda called off the community blog section autoposts by fuwazette-chan because they looked immeasurably crappy due to unconverted html tags, etc. The sidebars, somewhere, could be a decent place. If vntl-moon gets a picture... yeah. Doesn't need to be big either, even showing the latest post title would be enough.

Also I just want to say that this is a good idea. And also the only reason I think so is because I've started posting content to the fuwazette and I'm the only one to do so. So it'll be just a little space just for me and no one else.

[Eclipsed]

Heh

Whether it be Ren's stream spams, sanah's blog promotions, Decay's one man Fuwazette postings.. I think everybody shares Clephy's "private evil pleasures" of getting to be in the limelight  #we're all spammers at heart

I wouldn't mind sidebar posting content from the other sections of Fuwanovel like News or Reviews.

 

Podcasts/streams is overdoing it though.

[Yotek]

I felt a need to at least reply to this thread. I will spare everyone the agony of my usual pages of text for shorter points.

 

Normally, I would stay out of these sorts of discussions based on my personality, but in this case, I think that might give this reply more weight. I am without a doubt not comfortable talking to people. Fuwa was (is) a community that I have actively joined despite my shyness crippling fear of people because this community is easy to be a part of. This was mainly related to the mentor program (you can read my post there if interested).

 

I can honestly say I have only attended 1 of Ren's podcasts. The one I did was awesome. I did it during work and almost got busted   . I've listened to a few others from the recordings and they were enjoyable. At least for me, participating in something like that is a bit tricky as I work very unstable hours.

 

As a community member, I'm probably a horrible example. I have, without a doubt, the least amount of posts of anyone replying to this thread (until someone makes a new account to prove me wrong). However, I will say I enjoy being here. It is great source of information such as the VN status posts every Saturday (It gives me hope that someday White Album 2 will be TLed). It let me know that Muv Luv was getting a kickstarter (so I could throw money at it). I got to join the VN club (Thanks for working so hard on it everyone, and thanks for your post here on it Nimbus). I've got to play games that took me places I never imagined (Grisaia made me cry so much, thanks Astro).

 

Am I a good example of what a community member should be? Probably not. However, I will say that the community that is here I still like. It may not be "as good as the old days" but from what I experienced, I like it. There are so many posters I can name offhand. When I see a topic or reply from them I open it immediately because of their knowledge or humor. Maybe I'm foolish, but to me that is a community. 

 

I see the point in a topic like this and I see a good community. The OP was pretty upfront. Most communities would blow up at something like that. Instead, I've seen constructive ideas and people keeping level heads and talking it over. I don't think there are many places like that. The only real parting thoughts I can provide are that if this community has changed and you think for the worse, find out what new ideas can be brought about to bring people in and how the newbies out there, like myself, can more easy integrate into Fuwa.

 

Edit: Ugh tons of embarassing typos. All remaining ones take backseat to my 日本ごのしゅくだい。

Edit Edit: Mispelled someones name. A fate worse than death itself!

Edited September 29, 2015 by Yotek

[shcboomer]

At this point I'm more of a shadow member, but let's throw out some thoughts.

 

I've been around Fuwa for a while now. (I also shadow post/edit on Fuwazette?) Long enough to go through a bunch of different changes and FuwaPocalypse's. Let's just say the more things change, the more they stay the same. Sure, people change, the site may change, even policies change, but at the end of the day a lot of the things that make Fuwa what it is really hasn't. Are people posting less in some of the boards? Sure. However, a lot of the discussion seems to have been moved from just one board to another.

 

Do people lose interest in things after a while? Of course, it's only natural. It's possible to run all the activies in the world and still not have as much 'participation' as you like. It's just something you have to live with.

 

Anyway, I guess all I'm trying to say is that things here are still going. Maybe not the most optimal way to get things done or move foward, but at least it's moving. I can't tell you the number of times where I thought Fuwa was actually done for. I'm not sure if you've all been around long enough to experience them, but there were certainly a lot of close calls. If you ever want to know about some of these events, talk to Ryechu.