[Submission] VN/anime recommendation sub-forum

[Tay]

Introduction

 

I'm still waiting for Steve to post a wall of text. As well as other users' opinions.

Maybe this should be a poll? Just so we can see what everyone wants overall

 

One thing i want to point out regarding anime suggestions:

Anime suggestions happen all the time, though not many threads are created there's always anime being suggested in "What anime are you watching?" and other threads so i have reason to believe the anime suggestion would be quite lively if there were a board dedicated to it.

 

Possibilities (feel free to suggest more)

 

1: Have a sub forum for suggestions only (VN/Anime/Manga and even other stuff like books and what not)

 

• Pros: Would avoid creating suggestion threads here and there in the general, anime and vn discussion only boards. Since anything can be suggested the forums would also be less dead.
• Cons: Would require the creation of a subforum

 

2: Have a sub forum for VN suggestions and a sub forum for Anime/Manga suggestions

 

• Pros: Separates anime and manga from VNs on the forums
• Cons: 2 subforums at once would need to be created. VN suggestion threads aren't that frequent so it'd be a pretty dead subforum most times.

3: Have a thread (pinned or not) for both VN suggestions and Anime/Manga suggestions

• Pros: Separates both anime and manga from VNs on the forums. No creation of subforums. No creation of multiple threads
• Cons: Similar recs (if not the same) on the same thread, everything will be crammed and browsing through it will be complicated and confusing once it gets a certain amount of replies. It also limits the specification and discussion one could have when a thread is made for a user in particular, making it less efficient and accurate.

 

4: Keep things as they are

 

• Pros: No sub forums will need to be added
• Cons: Suggestion threads will keep appearing both on the VN board and on the anime/manga board when these boards are mostly for discussion

 

 

There's currently 8 threads asking for VN recs on the first page of the Visual Novel subforum. There's a total of 28 threads on the first page not counting the pinned ones. That means that almost a third of the threads on the first page are about getting recommendations (I'm not counting clephas' list threads, just the threads were the first post is asking for recs) This is in my opinion enough to justify the creation of a subforum. I don't have time to make a new thread with the pros and cons for a subforum right now but I'll try to create one later this week.

 

I think there's tons of pros for it though. Especially since people can look through old threads easily and see if someone has asked for something similiar.

 

EDIT: I went back to page five and checked how many threads were VN recs. Remember there's 30 threads on a page normally but only 28 on the first since there's two pinned threads. (And again I'm not counting list threads)

 

Page 1: 8 threads asking for recs

Page 2: 5 threads. Of those, 3 are asking for recs and 2 are telling people to ask them for recs.

Page 3: 6 threads asking for recs

Page 4: 5 threads asking for recs

Page 5: 5 threads asking for recs

 

This means that about 1/5 of the threads on the first 5 pages are rec threads unless my math is wrong.

 

 

I'll try to sum up what has been said so that we can move on on this topic.

 

Pb: Recommendations. Wat do?

 

Point 1: Single centralized recommendation thread (1) vs. Individual threads (2):

 

(1) Pros:

*Everything in the same place. Less entropy equals good.

 

(2) Pros:

*It's easier to keep track of previous recommendations to avoid redundancy

*Everything in one thread would be confusing (recommendation overlaps, etc) and leave less room for expression

 

I think the majority votes that (2) is overall better?

 

Point 2: New subforum (1) vs. Everything left as is in VN talk (2)

 

(1) Pros:

*Filter out the rec threads from VN talk -> more place for discussion-only threads.

*We can also make it an anime/manga/games recommendation sub-forums

*We can also put there great threads such as Kaguya's and Clephas' lists, and make an index pointing to them

 

(2) Pros:

*One less sub-forum. Again, less entropy.

*There might not be enough activity in that new sub-forum (-> see Beato's figures above against that argument)

*Recommendation can overlap with actual discussion

 

And according to Yukiru's figures, there are for the moment six in favor and one against.

 

Did I forgot something or got something wrong?

 

What I said there was that recommendation topics are individual and personal for each person asking so it is better to keep them separated.
Sure, not everyone makes it long like the one I did but some people make pretty awesome ones, like from some I remember the assigning stars to the VN and such. People can be creative with these topics and it makes for nice discussion - and that's why I was against a single thread.
 
As for single subforum, I was saying that it will just make the topics disappear from the main discussion and as such some people will ignore (just like I most of the time ignore games & chatter as I don't like useless discussions on forums).
 
And a new forum section would make the forum even messier, less forum sections the better.
 
And also one of the arguments was - recommending VN or anime usually leads to pretty good VN or Anime discussion and as such they belong to the VN discussion and Anime discussion forums respectively.

 

Thank you to those quoted in my spoiler for the analysis! Very helpful! I've quoted theme here for easy access so newcomers don't need to necessarily read the entire 3 pages of discussion.

 

We've been discussing this since time immemorial (usually in conjunction with another proposal: review sub-forums, like this proposal), but discussion was mainly kept in the staff forum.  Now that we have the improvement board, I'm glad to see the wider community engaging with the idea.  I guess that means this board is doing what it's supposed to ; ).  Before I move on, I'll repeat again that the main idea behind minimizing the number of boards is to centralize discussion.

 

Here's the forums' current arrangement:

VNs

Visual Novel Talk

Fan Translation Discussion, Volunteer Talk - (Note: we should probably rename this to simply "Fan Translation Discussion and Coordination") (anyone disagree?)

Walkthroughs

 

GENERAL

Introduce Yourself

Anime/Manga

General Discussion

Games and Chatter

Downloads and Requests

 

TROUBLESHOOTING

Technical Support - 

Improvements Board - 

 

 

More Thoughts

The proposals made so far are good, but they're not the only options.  In our current theme we have the ability to utilize tags.  We could start implementing stricter control of tag use (random examples could include: "VN Review", "Anime Review", "VN Recommendation", etc.) and even put links to them in sidebars. It would require everybody to start paying attention to tags, but we'd quickly adjust.  (A good example: after I implemented the "My Followed Topics" sidebar, the "Follow" function has increased ~450%)

 

That said, many people are for some sort of sub-board. Because we're a VN site (and we already distinguish VN talk from General talk), I don't think a combined VN/Otaku recommendation forum makes a lot of sense.  It makes more sense to me to embed "Recommendations" sub-forums in both the "VN Talk" and "Anime/Manga" boards (or in just one of them, etc.). If precedent matters (which it probably doesn't), the "Games and Chatter" sub-forum (which was an evolution of the IRC sub-forum) was put into place because "chatter" posts became unwieldy.  If many members feel such is the case with recommendation threads, then I'd understand the logical precedent.

 

Now, assuming we want sub-forums, let's discuss the two key points:

1. How do we make sure these new boards will be used often and in a meaningful way?
2. How do we make sure they don't harm the overall VN/Otaku boards? If we make (a) subforum(s), would we want to open it up to more than just recommendations?  What about reviews?  

 

My Opinion

I think the tag idea is interesting, and I think we should investigate ways it could be used effectively.  That would certainly be part of this discussion, but clever people who want to think of ideas are welcome to make a new thread for this.

 

Otherwise, I'll put in my two cents for the two questions I raised about sub-forums:

 

1. How do we make sure these new boards will be used often and in a meaningful way?

• What about merging this idea with review board proposals?  Make "Reviews and Recommendations" sub-forums inside the "VN Talk" and maybe the "Anime/Manga" boards. 
• One idea Steve brought up was to encourage people to spice up their posts (star systems, pictures, etc.).  Variety is the spice of life -- do we all agree that we should encourage this?
• If we have recommendation sub-forums, we absolutely need to highlight Clephas and Kaguya's posts.  I'd go so far as to suggest we pin them all.
• The big question: will there be enough traffic to these new boards to warrant their creation?  As I mentioned above, I suspect that by creating these boards, traffic will increase as people see the opportunity.

 

 

2. How do we make sure they don't harm the overall VN/Otaku boards? If we make (a) subforum(s), would we want to open it up to more than just recommendations?  What about reviews?  

• Will removing recommendation threads harm activity in the main boards?  Would removing recommendation threads AND review threads?  I don't think so, but I don't always have a lot of time to read the entire board.  I'd love to hear everybody else's opinions.

 

 

Thanks, everybody!  Sorry for the wall of text, but now that I'm healthy and my brain is clear, I thought I'd try and add a few more dimensions to the conversation.

[Beato]

As I posted on the last page. Currently 1/5 of the threads on the first five pages of the Visual Novel subforum is threads asking for recs so there is definitely a demand.

Though I'm against combining reviews and recommendations in the same subforum. Seems weird and cluttery.

[Steve]

I will bring another problem this would bring and that is simply "more work".

 

Now it might sound lazy, but understand it this way:

 

1. How it affects mods

- there already is enough stuff related to misplaced topics that requires mod attention, separating TL topics from VN discussion, Download requests from VN discussion etc

- by enforcing even more rules, there would be much more of these misplaced topics, people would still post recommend me topics without the main tag, they would still post recommend topics in wrong section if it was new section and mods would have to correct it

- it would cause mess if nobody was there to clean it at the time, sure there is enough mods but there are times when there is nobody actively browsing the forums and so suddenly some recommend topics would be in the correct place, some would be in the wrong place - at least until mod notices (which can take a while without mods being designated to specific section and with the current amount of content on the forums [i can't keep up with everything myself and I have no life])

 

2. How it affects users

- as a new user, it is currently very easy to know where to post your topic, you want to talk about VNs, there is VN discussion, you want to talk about anime, there is anime discussion, you need tech support, there is tech support section - all in big text and easily visible, yet still there are misplaced topics from time to time

- if there were to be more subsections for forums, people would have more difficulty deciding where to post their topic, maybe they would think that their topic is not really asking for recommendation but is like general thought they had that includes a recommendation question, just like it is often in the introduction threads, it is not always clear to the new people how exactly are the topics separated, having only a single section "Visual Novels Discussion" makes it very easy to find the correct place without a need to read any rules. And fuwa has always basically been the rules-free forum where the "rules of common sense" apply and as such people who have common sense don't even have to read any rules and can start posting right away and that makes the whole forum much friendlier, nobody is scared about breaking rules or posting in the wrong place

- if it got messy because there was no mod to clean it at that time, more and more mess would start to form, because people would not be sure where to post their stuff if they saw the "wrongly" posted topics, they would believe it is correct and follow the example, or they would see the topics in both sections and wouldn't be sure where to post their own topic, making them not post it in the end because of fear of breaking the rules

 

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With that said, I would agree with building some "Table of Contents" for each section and pinning that topic, which would contain separate sections for the favorite topics, for example in VN discusson pinned table of contents would be a section for reviews and recommendations and in there would be links to all the good topics people like Clephas worked on.

However this would require lot of work that is also updated quite often, which has proven to be a bit problematic in the Introduction section. Originally there were more people making the summary, I was one of them, but not even I am able to keep up with all the content on the forums and as such I am unable to update such table of contents because I can't read all the posts in fan TL talk myself so I cannot really form a table of content.

 

One way I am thinking this could work would be a wiki of sorts where multiple people can edit the same article, that way it would take the pressure from a single person and split the work between many people, making it possible to have a solid table of contents.

However I am not sure if you cam implement wiki-like topic into the forum, but it "could" be possible with some IPB addons or something.

 

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Bottom line:

It is important to remember that more rules mean more work for the mods, and by making the forum sections less intuitive (simple all Vn talk goes to VN talk etc), there would be more people "breaking" the rules if only by mistake.

That's why I still believe it should stay how it is.

Call me lazy but I'm telling you, I can hardly keep up with maybe 30% of the discussion happening on the forums, If I had to check if every topic has the correct tag or if a topic is a recommendation topic or is not a recommendation topic and move it to correct place, my head would explode xD

 

 

 

on topic image:

[Nosebleed]

I don't agree with merging reviews with recommendations simply because reviews can invite discussion and thus they're rightful place would be in the VN talk.

Making 2 subforums sounds nice in theory but as mentioned several times before we want to keep subforums to a minimum. Hence why i suggested a subforum for recommendations in general.

Keep in mind recommendations can range from anything you want. Not just VNs and Anime. That's why i think it would have a lot of influx if it were to be created.

I have no problems with encouraging people to spice up their threads and make them original. That's definitely a good thing.

And I also agree with pinning these threads made by Kaguya and Clephas that are great.

 

And Steve, do your job, although there might be some misplacements at first and even some time after I don't believe they'd be in such a large quantity that you'd find yourself overloaded. I don't know how the moving system works because I'm not a mod so correct me if I'm wrong but I don't think quick checking a thread's initial sentences to see what it's about and then moving it if required will put you under so much pressure.

[Beato]

Yeah I don't think moving stuff will be a problem. And if people see that there's a board called Recommendations they'll probably understand that they're supposed to asks for recs there.

[Steve]

Well the problem isn't much with the move itself, the problem is that it requires these steps:

Someone needs to notice the topic is misplaced, that someone needs to check if the topic is indeed misplaced because sometimes it can be confusing, and only then he can proceed the move the topic.

 

And putting everything into one giant bag "Recommendations" would just make even more mess, since it would be mixing all recommendations in one.

 

The thing is I don't see the topics as a problem, if the topic creates some interesting discussion then it will be up, and sometimes it indeed does - which means it belongs to VN discussion section. And if it doesn't create a discussion, then it is very swiftly pushed to pages 2+ where it bothers nobody.

 

Like I said in the staff section, if it was like 90% of all topics then I would see it as a problem, but since its usually like 2-5 topics from 20 on the first page, I would just keep it as it is

[Guest]

So I agree with making something special with recommandation threads.

 

Either a thread is gonna be a personnal thing, were the OP will ask for recommandations again and again on the same thread when he needs some help to chose.

In this case, a sub forum is great because these threads are going to last for long and will be easier to find and it would take care of the mess it can create in the "VN talk section"

 

Section possibility is that they won't last for long. People just pass by, ask for a recommendation, get 5-10 anwsers by active members and thread will never live again.

In this case, a subforum would be some kind of graveyard of threads with no future.

 

I'm in favor of a subforum IF we create a rule stating : "Don't post twice in this sub-forum, re-use your own post"

That would be neat.

 

I don't think merging Reviews and recommendations would be good. Or it could be but we have to make Reviews stand out.

So there is the pinning option.

Or the tag option.

 

I actually really like the tag option + links in the side bar.

It's clean and makes a clear difference.

 

So there's my opinion.

[Nosebleed]

I'm in favor of a subforum IF we create a rule stating : "Don't post twice in this sub-forum, re-use your own post"

That would be neat.

That presents a problem

Imagine the title of the thread is "Suggest me a good romance VN"

Then when the person has the suggestions they want the thread will be buried.

If they want for example a sci-fi anime after. They'd have to rename the thread and then self-bump themselves and the thread would become a mess with different topics in it (derailing everywhere) and it wouldn't help for people looking for similar suggestions because there wasn't a defined topic per thread.

Not to mention the thread would get little notice after the topic change so it wouldn't be as efficient.

[Guest]

Then name the thread as 'X person recommendation thread' and ask more precisely about what you are looking for in the thread.

Remember these are just ideas.

[Nosebleed]

Then name the thread as 'X person recommendation thread' and ask more precisely about what you are looking for in the thread.

Remember these are just ideas.

It's still not as efficient as having a clear title asking for something specific. That way you're going in the thread knowing what the person wants. I don't visit a thread because of person X but because of the topic. 

[Steve]

Then name the thread as 'X person recommendation thread' and ask more precisely about what you are looking for in the thread.

Remember these are just ideas.

 

Well the point of topic name is to attract people to advise you without needing to read your whole post, for example if I see "Recommend me horror VN" I know I will not visit that topic as I have nothing to recommend, but if I notice topic like "Recommend me some romance VN" I might hop in there and read his other demands and see if Hoshimemo fits xD

Sure when I made my "get steve back to VNs" topic I didn't put genres in the name because most people already knew what my basic preferences were, but for new people asking, knowing only their name is useless.

[Guest]

Yeah but then we would have 10 'recommend me a mystery Vn' because too many of people don't take time to make their own research.

You are right, my idea is not attractive, but I assume many of the active members just surf on the new threads and even on necroed (revived) treads even if it's not to awnser it. 

[Nosebleed]

Yeah but then we would have 10 'recommend me a mystery Vn' because too many of people don't take time to make their own research.

You are right, my idea is not attractive, but I assume many of the active members just surf on the new threads and even on necroed treads even if it's not to awnser it. 

But that's why this idea was made in the first place.

Yes there will be threads asking for similar things. But that already happens.

But imagine one thread doesn't have something you want in particular or you've already seen or tried all the suggestions. You have all the right to make a new thread.

One thing i do when asking for suggestions is write down a list (if i don't have one already) of things of that genre that i've tried. Not only for people to know i've already seen those but also to give references as to what I want.

Not to mention all these threads will be in the same place. You will only have to make a new thread if you didn't find what you're looking for in other threads. But even so you can make a new thread and talk about previous suggestions to know if it's what you're looking for.

This way everything is more efficient.

 

Just go in the MAL recommendation forums. 50% of the threads ask for romantic comedies.

But within those there are specifics most of the time because people don't want a general opinion but a particular characteristic.

[Guest]

So your idea would be

"I'm looking for X kind of Vn, I've already read these Vn's of this type and I liked these and didn't like those please help me"

 

But then if you are looking for Y kind of Vn you make another thread.

 

Then if another guy wants the same he makes his own post so it fits his needs more ?

 

I guess that's fine. But the subforum will be one hell of a thread graveyard. Not that I mind, but that's what will happen.

[Nosebleed]

So your idea would be

"I'm looking for X kind of Vn, I've already read these Vn's of this type and I liked these and didn't like those please help me"

 

But then if you are looking for Y kind of Vn you make another thread.

 

Then if another guy wants the same he makes his own post so it fits his needs more ?

 

I guess that's fine. But the subforum will be one hell of a thread graveyard. Not that I mind, but that's what will happen.

The title can be generic  "I'm looking for X kind of VN"

The introductory post however can have specifications. That's what I meant.

 

Well if you use common sense you can probably avoid making it a thread graveyard. But this is already happening in the VN forum though. People make these threads and get burried. This is just a way to put these threads in a more helpful place so people who are looking for recommendations can suit themselves better.

 

Tay's tag idea can also be used to sort the threads better.

[Guest]

Yeah of course, the title will be shorter ^^

I just wanted to summarize the thread's content.

 

I don't think we can avoid making it into a graveyard unless :

we create theme specific threads in which case it wouldn't allow people to get correct adivse according to their tastes.

we create user specific threads with the problems discussed above.

 

And many Vn talk threads still can be revived while these would not be reusable.

[Beato]

Making it into a graveyard is the entire point of the subforum. Otherwise the graveyard will be the main VNs subforum.