Feedback: More Subforum Creation

[Triple_R]

Some of the most popular and/or heavily talked about new anime shows of the last few years are Love Live!, Shirobako, and Sound! Euphonium. What do they all have in common? They never received an AS subforum.

And in fact, the only AS subforums for currently airing anime series' are also for older well-established franchises.

Subforums for truly new hot properties can become great draws for Anime Suki. I saw this with Madoka Magica, with Sword Art Online, with Valvrave the Liberator, and with Aldnoah.Zero. Subforums for new popular shows can help bring in large new audiences, and an excitement crackles through the electronic air as character discussion threads and speculation threads and episode threads all take off.

But recently, AS subforums are increasingly dominated by the old. Let me be blunt - The only people likely to get excited about Nanoha ViVid or The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan are people like me: People that are fans of the original anime that helped give birth to these spinoffs. Those communities tend to hit a holding pattern after awhile, as age slows down its growth. I'm glad those subforum communities are there, but I think its important to recognize that they probably won't help a site grow.

But what can bring in people are brand new anime franchises, that are neither sequel nor prequel nor spinoff of an older anime title. AS has been lacking in new subforums for these sorts of shows lately, as I'm pretty sure Kancolle is the only new AS subforum that's been created for such a "new IP to anime" anime show in 2015.

To be fair, this is mainly a side-effect of the recent domination of sequels and spinoffs in the anime world. A domination that looks to continue through the Summer 2015 season, and possibly the rest of the year.

However, because of these circumstances, and because of the benefits that new AS subforums can bring, my feedback is this - More aggressive AS subforum creation would be good for the future. Perhaps there are some older quantifiable measurements that play into subforum creation decision-making, and perhaps Shirobako or Sound! Euphonium didn't hit them as quickly as hoped for. If this is the case, then maybe those measurements need to be revised downwards, to something that gives new anime IPs a real chance anyway.


tl;dr I'd like to see more AS subforums, particularly for brand new (to anime) IPs. Love Live! is immensely popular, and it having a dedicated subforum could have been great for this site. And now I'm seeing a similar possibility with Hibike. I recommend more aggressive subforum creation.

What do other people here think?

[Klashikari]

The issues you are bringing about old franchises surfacing in such fashion doesn't have anything to do with the subforum system to begin with.

It is simply natural to bring back old subforum if the said franchise introduces a sequel or spin off to an already established series. It is a quick process and we don't exactly have to work on further thread creations save some addendum and the likes.
Also, just to explain further why there are still old subforums around: Dismantling a subforum just because its franchise is "old" is of course not really warranted, and it is pretty much a chore for people to track down every old threads if we were to move all of them back to general subforums they belong to. Furthermore, it would be jarring to see multiple threads in "old series" category from the same franchise simply due to the weekly episode threads.

Please note that a "subforum" isn't meant to show that a series is more "worthy" than any other. Instead, we create subforums for specific series when it appears that multiple threads would be more beneficial for the said series so we can expand discussion topics and so forth. By no means those who don't have any subforum are "crap" to our standards (some of you know I'm following Euphonium quite closely every week so heh). In fact, some franchises worked way better with a single thread for discussion purpose.
Also, it is because of a previously "aggressive" subforum creation stance that we have revised how often we create subforum in general. Subforums lile pumkin scissors hardly were popular and looked pretty much pointless for instance.

In conclusion, the problem isn't we are favoring old franchises at all. Instead, it is simply because recent series do not meet the criteria we are looking for when it comes to subforum creation.

[monster]

Originally Posted by Klashikari

Dismantling a subforum just because its franchise is "old" isn't exactly warranted, and it is pretty much a chore for people to track down every old threads if we were to move all of them back to general subforums they belong to. Furthermore, it would be jarring to see multiple threads in "old series" category from the same franchise simply due to the weekly episode threads.

I don't think Triple_R is asking for that, so I'm not sure why you're even discussing it.

[Klashikari]

Indeed, and I didn't imply that either. I was merely explaining the reason why old subforums are still around and why they are active just in case people are wondering.

Suffice to say, the main problem at hand lies with recent series instead.

[monster]

Originally Posted by Klashikari

Indeed, and I didn't imply that either. I was merely explaining the reason why old subforums are still around and why they are active just in case people are wondering.

Ok then, it just seems like you didn't understand the request when you start with that.

[Klashikari]

I've clarified my post. I admit my post looked quite awkward upon rereading it.

[Triple_R]

Originally Posted by Klashikari

The issues you are bringing about old franchises surfacing in such fashion doesn't have anything to do with the subforum system to begin with.

I'm not questioning old franchises being brought back. Of course it is natural to bring back old subforums if said franchises introduces a sequel or spin off.

However, that doesn't change how "brand new IP" anime subforums can bring in brand new audiences that older IP anime subforums are often less likely to bring in. So my argument is just pro-new IP anime subforums. I have absolutely no problem with how older anime subforums are currently handled. Monster is correct there.

Also, it is because of a previously "aggressive" subforum creation stance that we have revised how often we create subforum in general. Subforums lile pumkin scissors hardly were popular and looked pretty much pointless for instance.

There is such a thing as overcompensation. As going from one extreme to the other. Love Live!, Shirobako, and Hibike were and are all very popular. I would argue that all would have benefited from character discussion threads and episode threads and image threads, on an AS subforum.

In conclusion, the problem isn't we are favoring old franchises at all. Instead, it is simply because recent series do not meet the criteria we are looking for when it comes to subforum creation.

If not a single new IP anime series, for the Spring 2015 season, is able to meet this criteria, then perhaps the criteria is overly strict? It certainly seems like an idea worth considering to me.

[SeijiSensei]

It appears that you cannot hide subforums permanently. I've seen the now-archived Playback Help subforum at the top of Tech Support for some time now. If I hide the subforum it disappears, but if I leave and return to the Tech Support forum, the Playback item appears at the top once again. Is there any way to permanently hide a subforum?

[relentlessflame]

There isn't an automatic way to do it on an individual basis right now. But we did come up with a way to automatically hide sub-forums by default on a case-by-case basis. In this case, it may be worth considering that (or just hiding the whole section entirely).

[RRW]

Actually curious on exact criteria on how moderator decided sub forum. Is there any solid requirements like posts per day or you guys simply judge it by activities like "this anime create lot of debate".

Also what prevent old anime series to gain subforum? Even if they are crazy popular like love live

[relentlessflame]

Originally Posted by RRW

Actually curious on exact criteria on how moderator decided sub forum. Is there any solid requirements like posts per day or you guys simply judge it by activities like "this anime create lot of debate".

Also what prevent old anime series to gain subforum? Even if they are crazy popular like love live

We wrote up something about this in our FAQs not too long ago.

More or less, we try to consider in each case whether the nature of the discussion that is happening in the thread would be helped or hurt by creating a sub-forum. We do look at metrics, but also past experience of what worked and didn't work.

Something like Love Live in particular -- the popularity has continued to grow in time and the variety of things to discuss has grown with it. Franchises like that which continue to build momentum and variety over time can sometimes get a sub-forum later on, even if it didn't "make the cut" in previous rounds. The likelihood to have enough different topics of discussion to keep a sub-forum busy and not "look dead" is certainly one of the factors we consider, so a show with a lot of varied distinct topics of discussion is a plus.

On the other hand, you can sometimes have threads that have tons of raw posts, but if you look at it in more detail it might either be a lot of vapid posts that aren't conducive to deep discussion, or it might be a lot of controversy over one particular issue that people keep debating ad nauseum but without any variety of true depth. So sometimes those shows don't make the cut -- they may be "busy", but we perceive that this may not be sufficient to support a whole sub-forum.

That's why, as it says in the FAQ, the best way to encourage a sub-forum is to participate in good discussion in the threads -- not vapid pointless stuff to increase the post count, but something interesting where it's clear that there's enough "weight" to support a sub-forum. (That doesn't necessarily mean that every show with a sub-forum has to be super-deep and cerebral either, as you can tell, but there needs to be enough different aspects that people want to talk about to keep it interesting, and not just repetitive arguments, shipping posts, and "spam".)