Where is our world going?

[Bauzi]

Yes we have to edit for wider audiences!

Come on and finally upload all your beloved Vampire Knight and D. Greyman amvs. You know you always wanted to

[OropherZero]

YES!

...

No not rly. Just my opinion on why no new viewer would choose to join this site now.

I think another big contribution is if someone started an AMV blog, networked with the other anime blogs and really gets a lot of readers. Like make a blog entry about a big new release then link it back here, idk.

[BasharOfTheAges]

I'd honestly think a continuously changing wiki approach would confuse more than it helped. If I was new to editing something and editing along with the guides over the course of a couple of weeks and things started changing it'd be pretty discouraging - possibly downright infuriating. Also, wikis are too easy to vandalize unless you have a highly active team of people with no lives monitoring them 24/7.

[Ikore]

Come on and finally upload all your beloved Vampire Knight and D. Greyman amvs.

those are already "old" anime

[JudgeHolden]

Ignore my blunder ...

[Qyot27]

Yes, AMVWiki did go down the crapper, although from what I can remember of it (and I even contributed, but that was what, 2005?) the larger focus of the site was less about theory and the community, and more about scripting examples - not to say those weren't addressed, but the encoding-related and series-related AviSynth examples outnumbered them by a large margin. It was also brought down by spambots and technical problems which caused images to crash and burn horrifically, but I'd hope those issues would be relatively easy to avoid now, what with the popularity of Wikia.

I actually like the idea of having a new Wiki established, but citing the fear of vandalism and what-all, that can be addressed by simply not allowing just anyone to edit it. Have a selected team that manages it, and is punctual and attentive enough to edit in the necessary info when it becomes relevant (or have a set review and update schedule, say, every six months or so). As far as reader feedback, have it concentrated in the Talk or Discussion areas, so that the management team knows what needs to be put in. In other words, operate under the condition of all articles being locked with only admins (the management team) able to edit them.

For instance, I tried (and eventually grew bored with) writing up a guide on how to do DVD-centric encoding with HCenc, as it offers a much newer, less restrictive - read, totally free of cost - way of encoding MPEG-2 than TMPGEnc, with practically equivalent quality to boot. A Wiki format would allow that info to disseminate much faster and perhaps more efficiently than a monolithic guide would.

If the management team was selected here on the forum, I don't see how that drags the discussion away from the Org, save for maybe the thing being hosted on a different server or host (but that's already the case for some guides around here anyway). If everything on the Wiki refers strictly back here, I'd say that's plenty.

[Corran]

It is interesting to note that Bewbtube went live in November of 2005. Look at the dramatic fall off in video uploads to this site the following year. The tube one shotted us. It wasn't even a slow decline.

The stats for peak activity and pre-phpbb3 are three years apart.

[JudgeHolden]

It is interesting to note that Bewbtube went live in November of 2005. Look at the dramatic fall off in video uploads to this site the following year. The tube one shotted us. It wasn't even a slow decline.

The stats for peak activity and pre-phpbb3 are three years apart.

Didn't notice the stat shift ... at all other points in the chart it's roughly one year increments.

So, what was the drop (if any) for videos and regs in '06?

[Enigma]

Now that i think of it,The "Journal" System reminds me of Tube's old Bulletin system

[LittleAtari]

There's a ton of noob guides out there, anything from Read ErMaC & AbsoluteDestiny's Friendly AMV Guides to how to use FTP to how to be an org asshole. Problem is they're spread all over god knows where; some aren't even hosted on the org. New users have no chance of seeing them until they do something wrong/ask a noob question and someone points them to it. Some putz should gather those up, write a noob faq linking to all of them, and make the faq a link on the new user registration page. Just use your female wiles on Otohiko to do it or something. Perhaps a better idea would be to have the system automatically PM the noob faq to users on joining. That way they get an email pointing to PM system, which indirectly brings them onto the fourm and once they're there then they might stick around.

I agree with godix on this. Why are most of the recent guides in the forums when we have a guides section on the member's page? They should be there. PMing the newly registered users about the guides would be pretty good too.

Make preview not require being logged in. Let viewers watch without needing an account. Would probably end up with more viewers. If you assume the number of viewers who then become editors or active in the community is stable, more viewers = more active users. Keep uploading, commenting, etc. requiring registration. I doubt that'd require much change on the coding, perhaps just disabling QCs on preview so people not logged in can't spam QCs or something. On this one the tube has the right idea.

If possible, I think this is a great idea to implement. Just have downloads be restricted to members only. What we've seen with previews is that current members do watch and download more AMVs. I believe that making preview public will attract people to become members. Think of it. Someone gets to browse the previews freely and then becomes a member to download the videos.

The boochsack filter is just stupid. It's not effective, it causes confusion and questions, and it's easily bypassed by anyone who really wants to say youtube or knows about tinyurl so it doesn't even work for what it is supposed to. It's not an issue affecting the future of the org, but still, just kill the stupid thing.

I think my main beef with the boochsack filter is that I think that it only fuels the hate for the new kids that post it. People still need to catalog their videos to announce them and while the filter does let people know what's up, it seems to be the center for members to make fun of the new kids. So perhaps getting rid of the filter and the whole YT 'ban' would make the Org more welcoming.

I'm reading this thread and have come across a lot of good points. From an admin's point of view, I've got two (related) questions that I'd really like people's input on:

1. What do you think is the administration's role in sustaining this site and community into the future? Do you believe that the mods and admins should play a big role in this, or that it's mostly up to the members? Or is everything inevitable due to external forces? Do you think that admin involvement should increase or decrease, or stay the same? By admin involvement, I am referring to control of site policies and the enforcement of those policies. Because...

Outside of coding, donation and setting the general policies of the site, I really dont know what the role of an admin of this site is. I guess it also involves listening to the general feedback of the users and developing new features for this site. Also, analyzing trends in the community and seeing how the site can cater to that or shift it? For the general trends thing, I'm thinking more that you guys have access to all the site info and can analyze the numbers to figure out if something should be done or can be done. A specific example would be, if you guys see a general drop in active members, how can you draw more members? Which I guess is one of the results of this thread.

2. There will be no more major code development on this site in the foreseeable future. As I understand it, this is due to a long-running problem regarding licensing and code ownership. Others who are involved may comment as they wish, but with my limited knowledge of the technicalities I'm just going to leave it at that. Yes, we realize that lots can be done to improve the site's design and infrastructure, but that simply isn't feasible at the moment. With this in mind, how would your comments in this thread change, if at all? In other words, how do we work around this issue?

I dont know specifically how we can work around the coding issue, but completely redoing the design, I guess, is out of the question. Well I guess we just have to optimize what we have then. Note that everything I say for this section of my post, I know that there is a chance that due to coding constraints, there is a chance they cannot be implemented, however I'd rather mention the ideas and have some of them rejected instead of not saying any of them.

Just make certain things more obvious.
I've gotten PMs on YT about everything from 'How do I upload to the Org?' to 'How do I vidID?'

FTP
If we're not getting rid of the FTP system soon, make a video tutorial on how to use FileZilla and put it in the guides and link it on the upload page.

VidID
Right now, vidIDs are just a little picture of a chain in the video info. There is no clue about that picture being click-able and actually meaning something. I recommend just displaying the vidID info on the video page, similar to how YT displays the embed code and links for their videos in the video description.

Condense related information
I know I already mentioned the guides, but things like viewing Ops given and received should be, viewing alerts and modifying them, journal buddies and my journal, should be in the same place and not scattered across multiple categories. I find it odd that when viewing other people's journals, that I cant directly go to my own journal or make my own entry. Considering a lot of people post in their journals in response to other journals having that option handy would be nice.

Star Ratings
I've talked to people that didnt even know that they could check the star average on their own videos. The only way it's ever come up is if I mentioned their rating to them. Since I'm a donator, I can see their ratings, but a lot of people dont seem to know that they can find out their own ratings by going to edit their own videos. Make it so that people can see their own ratings on their video pages or something

Social Feedback Outside the Current Features
Any type of social feedback outside the forums, ops and QCs would be good. Right now, the only thing I can think of is for public comments. Basically, I know that there's a lot of people who dont use the forums. Maybe it's because they're intimidated or maybe it's because they dont know about the forums. Either way, I'd like to see something more done for the other 98% of the members of this site to be more involved so that they stick to this site more.

Continued QCs
I already mentioned this before, but I'd like to be able to re-QC a video. Sometimes I'll watch a video and just rate it to get it off my star ratings que, but then later on I find that I have something to say. Sometimes, even if I have QC-ed a video, I find something else that I want to say about it. I look at this as opening up more room for feedback. It also makes the creator feel that their video has gotten more attention.

Get Rid of the Stuff We Dont Use or Revive them
I'm thinking specifically of things like Interviews, Newsletter, and Software Reviews. Those things havent been updated in ages and only add to the clutter on the front page. You guys can have an archive section or something for stuff that is old. Still though, I'm thinking that it'd be great if we actually got this kind of stuff up and running again. They made the site more valuable in that it was more information being put out there. Especially in the case of the Interviews and Newsletter, those represent a part of our community's strength. Getting people who are interested to start working on that stuff again would be great. Reviving #amv-review would also be great. Kio and Godix kinda said that I should try running my own review and I'm going to try it. Mind you that this was just mentioned a few days ago, but I'm looking for people interested in participating. Shoot me a PM, if you're interested in being part of a review session. (I'll probably end up making another thread for the AMV-review bit because i doubt people are sifting through this long post)

Interacting More with the Other AMV Sites
While I'm sure there are people that have pride in their home sites, I'd like to encourage more awareness of and interaction with other AMV sites. The goal of this would be to draw in members from other sites and create a richer AMV experience for everyone. Note that this would require Admin/Mod activity.

Inter-site Competition
One major one that I can think of is any of the award winning videos of each site can be collected and then voted on by all members of each site. Basically, the general thought of the VCAs are that these are the best videos of our community. I'd like to see how the best videos of each community fairs against the other.

Displaying the Top videos of Each Site
It'd be pretty cool if our Top videos were displayed on Akross, AMVFrance, AMVNews, etc. In exchange, we would also display their top videos. The links for the videos on these lists would go to their respective site.

EDIT:
Something else to make more obvious are the URLs of the profiles that contain a person's user name. There is nothing on our profiles or on the site that tells us that feature exists. Just display it on the profile page or something. In general, I think the Org has a lot of amazing features, but I question how many people know how to use them or even know that they exist.

In addition, I noticed that in AMVNews videos a lot of people tend to include the address of the site. Can we encourage putting the Org Logo and Address in AMVs? I doubt that we can actually mod this. So I'm thinking that it could just be something noted on the upload or enter video page. For example, somewhere on the page have it say "Did you remember to put the Org logo and your profile URL in your video? It's not required, but it could be helpful to you to include that in your video so people know where to come back to look for your videos and it helps this site out"

Also, it'd be neat if contests like the ones on AMVnews were organized for the Org. It seems like every 2 months, they have something going on over there. I think it encourages people to make more videos and mini contests like these generate recognition and more AMV discussion.


One last note: I know I'm someone who makes a lot of requests when it comes to the site features and how things work around here. I dont expect anything that I suggest to implemented quickly and neither do I expect each thing to be implemented. I do appreciate the work that the staff puts in here.