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Originally Posted by Infinite Zenith
What kind of features here are custom made? Depending on how many users use them and the cost/benefit of stepping over to a newer/more secure build, we might be able to get away with a migration. This is the admin and owner's call to make: for my part, being a forum with simple and straightforward functionality has made this place endure.
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Honestly, there are a lot of little things and a few big things. Some of these might already exist in the base of newer systems (or in plugins others have developed). Some of them also might no longer be as important they once were.
For instance, on the small side, we have a custom plugin that handles rotating the image in the banner. We added a custom feature that allows members to hide visibility in the "Recent Visitors" section. We have an Admin Form to create threads that follow predefined templates (for example, the new episode threads that go in subforums that include polls). We also increased the default number of options available in polls to accommodate some character threads. We added some custom elements in our registration to try to reduce spam accounts (that help a fair bit, although some still get through). We integrated a custom search feature that improved on the built-in default. We added some additional features for thread tagging, including some advanced tag search features. We have the custom buttons in the post editor for spoiler tags, tldr, Youtube, etc. We also made tweaks to the code of the base templates of the site for various reasons. And a lot more...
There are other forum features that aren't custom-built, but that might not exist in new software... but are also not being that used anymore. For example, for a while when the forum was real busy we tried to push some side-topics to Social Groups so it would not clutter the main forums with side-topics... but this never really caught on all that much so Social Groups are basically dead for the most part. (Not having much visibility is basically a death knell. That wasn't our intention, but it's the result.)
Anyway, like I said, definitely some of these are niche, some of them only made sense when the forum was much busier, and some of them would be built-in to any new forum software by default now. So you're definitely right that we could do a cost/benefit analysis of each and decide how important it really is.
At the end of the day, probably finding something that retains the same "look and feel" is the more important part, and some little changes in functionality probably wouldn't be missed that much (or people would get used to it). But obviously we need to make sure to identify what those "can't live without" features are, so we'd definitely need to do some sort of test first. But yeah, no plans at the moment... just something I figure we'll have to do eventually.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Infinite Zenith
I joined in a time right when blogging was on the downturn, though: as a lurker in the years before, blog authors were treated like rockstars here, and even the admin and mods would comment on their blogs. Times have changed, of course: I have a twinge of regret I didn't join earlier, since it did feel as though AnimeSuki helped some of those bloggers drive traffic and engagement.
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This site tended to attract a lot of people who liked to think and write long-form about anime. So, some of these bloggers started off as posters here and then went on to start anime blogs (so that's why some of the members here would eventually follow them on their blog), and others who started blogs would come here to have discussion. We had to create some self-promotion rules because of all this at some point, as a few bloggers would come here and just post links to their blog posts in the discussion threads to try to get traffic (so we said you at least had to actually participate in the thread not just post links to off-site content).
But yes, I think the generational shift that mostly killed anime blogs is basically aligned to the cycle of this site, tied to the "death" of fansubs, the shift towards same-day streaming, and a trend of more quick/short comments rather than long-form discussion (as seen on Youtube and Social Media). When watching anime was instant, the amount of time people spent talking and thinking about it also seemed to go down. I also think that a lot of "punditry" as you used to see on blogs has shifted to streamers, but the production bar to be a streamer is much higher, so to the extent that people follow the "discourse" nowadays it's probably from watching influencers on Youtube rather than reading anything.