Where is our world going?

[Kai Stromler]

Step 1) Kill Local, or at least make it more restrictive.

In addition to the financial argument in this regard, there is also the philosophical one: exactly what problem is local hosting solving in 2009/2010? In 2002/2003 when the demand for the Carrot/Donut turned into actual implementation, the problem was clear: hosting and bandwidth were expensive and difficult to get.

Now, though, this isn't a problem in need of solution. As mentioned upthread, there are a lot of free hosts for large files out there, and the main thrust of this entire discussion so far is that boochsack makes hitting more eyeballs than the .org wicked easy, so people are going there rather than here. There are still issues of control and of your stuff getting randomly deleted, but private hosting and bandwidth is also a lot cheaper nowadays: researching this post, Google randomly linked me to this hosting provider, and while I'm skeptical that "unlimited" transfer would actually cover, say, the 12 GB that I moved locally in September as a result of remastering my back catalog, whatever they end up allowing for $4 a month is likely to be plenty for normal people. The same will likely hold for their competition.

The idea behind local hosting was to lower the cost of access for the average user, so that more people could publish their videos. If another site is solving that problem, we don't have to. We've proved that if other alternatives are unavailable, the AMV community, not just the slice of people active on the .org forums, can DIY-finance its own solution. If cost-of-access is a problem in the future, we'll be able to solve it. Right now, though, it's not clear that this is a problem we need to solve.

--K

[Angelyco]

I think I am one of the luckier newcomers to the Org. I've been registered since 2007, but only started getting active a few months ago. I did NOT come from the YT community, my exposure to AMVs is my husband and his friend, and they are strongly Org-based. They were shocked when their first Otakon entry wound up on YT. Through them, I was taught that YT generally hosts worse AMVs than on the Org. Even they will admit that there are good ones there, but the Org is the main place to go.

When I finally made my own video, it was fairly decent. I got pretty good opinions, which I sought out through the Announcements forum and participating in the Opinion Exchange forum. I never got blasted for my work, probably because I took the time to read the guides and made sure that I was proud of what I made before putting it up.

Then I started participating in MEPs, which were really good for me to learn about different resolutions, frame rates, and forced me to learn more and improve. Again, I was lucky that the coordinators liked my work enough to have me fix minor problems rather than kick me out.

I feel like I'm slowly becoming part of the community, but I know that not everyone goes through my experience. It IS intimidating to come here, and if my first video had been poorly made, I don't know if I could have handled the criticism that I KNOW some of the people here can dish out. But there is absolutely no better place for someone to get help and learn to improve than right here, IF they can accept that they might need a strong backbone. But I can also see there are some editors that start with really crappy work, but they are out there and adamant about getting advice and improving, and they tend to get more in-depth, quality feedback than people who come here just to get views for their video and expecting everyone to love it (as posted earlier in the thread about some Tubers).

I DO care about this site, and I donate what I can. I guess I don't care what the site layout looks like and the FTP doesn't bother me because I'm just happy to be here and I love making AMVs. I appreciate the volunteers who keep the site running and I would never want to burden them because of what -I- think the site should look like, as long as the site is functional.

[Koopiskeva]

Let me rephrase what I meant by "dying"

I mean, the interest for this to be in it's current state has been and will continue to decline. If anything, the org will just revert back to being a database, and no longer host videos (though probably not for some time). There's a lot more to this, but most would probably agree that Anime/AMVs/AMV-making has plateaued long ago and is/has been declining in popularity (see Godix's google graph).

[Megamom]

but most would probably agree that Anime/AMVs/AMV-making has plateaued long ago

x2...This is true, anime forums are dead and every day there is less fansubs, fanart, anime motion simply on the Internet is disappearing, this includes AMVs, they become less AMVs and people no longer interested, is the fault of generational change ???

Now, as I said before, I love this system, I love The.org, now part of my living is so... edit and have fun, live with people from here , my best years were 2006-2007, mainly 2007 was year I decided to enter the forum (I complete my English classes)... but I can not live the past, the past is the past, we have to live this... and decide that we want for the future.

We all express our ideas...

[Knowname]

I think there should be a place where newbies can introduce themselves :/ Cos when people first sign up, they're looking for the "Greetings Thread" (at least, I know I was) or something, where they get to meet people, introduce themselves and integrate themselves in the community. But the only way they actually can integrate themselves is either by making a kick-ass AMV or by posting a lot until they get to know people. And even then, most people would just ignore them

I (along with an established group of ppl) more than welcome such in the journals ... :/ but nobody seems to want to. probly cuz it's not EASY enough . There are probably a million other (ok maybe only 2... one) ways to introduce yourself. In IRC, chat (do we have a chat room??), donator's forum. But again nobody wants to make it easy, and why should we? We tried the easy approach back in '03 with an all about me forum, administration didn't like moderating it so they shut it down (this was before the recruiting of invisi-mods and so on).

[ragre]

I think there should be a place where newbies can introduce themselves :/ Cos when people first sign up, they're looking for the "Greetings Thread" (at least, I know I was) or something, where they get to meet people, introduce themselves and integrate themselves in the community. But the only way they actually can integrate themselves is either by making a kick-ass AMV or by posting a lot until they get to know people. And even then, most people would just ignore them

I (along with an established group of ppl) more than welcome such in the journals ... :/ but nobody seems to want to. probly cuz it's not EASY enough . There are probably a million other (ok maybe only 2... one) ways to introduce yourself. In IRC, chat (do we have a chat room??), donator's forum. But again nobody wants to make it easy, and why should we? We tried the easy approach back in '03 with an all about me forum, administration didn't like moderating it so they shut it down (this was before the recruiting of invisi-mods and so on).

But you have to remember that when people first join, they don't know about the journals, and there's nowhere really that explains it well enough. OK, it's pretty simple, but come on, new people would be checking out the forums and guides, not the journals. And when they do get to the journals, some are too scared to make one, just to make sure they don't say the wrong things, annoy anyone or just step on people's toes. Intimidation is quite bad here.

[Enigma]

Things like this make me noticed how big of a community this is

[Knowname]

Intimidation is quite bad here.

lol It's the real world, bud is all I can say. And the org is not even THAT intimidating! I mean, ppl come here to have FUN, if you go to a PROFESSIONAL website you'll find EXTREMELY intimidating. The org may be a step above YT and it's theme park design, as many ppl are here for fun but there is the hybrid of improvement as well, whereas YT has a theme park attitude towards things where 1) the workers get paid 2) they CAN give out 'fun things' all the time! We don't want to be YT. Many of the posters here don't want us to become another YT... we CAN'T be another YT without some funding anyway -_-. So again, the org has that small element where one must (or really should >.<) learn and improve every day anyway, and thus is your intimidation. It's not (ENTIRELY) inherent in the denizens here and nothing you can really eliminate while keeping the same point of view.

[Taite]

I'm a relatively new member here; no one knows who I am. But I'll tell you what drove me to join the site:

I was never a member of any video-hosting site until a few months ago. I always lurked on yt and watched amvs, where I eventually came across links in the little description boxes linking to a-m-v.org.
I go to the org, and I end up lurking for... oh, about a year. I thought it was interesting how the whole site was run, and the people here were/still are interesting in their ways of... being. I don't mean alien-like or anything, but this is what I thought:

I remember seeing a lot of threads in the 'AMV Announcements' where someone new, who obviously didn't understand how the org worked, posted a yt link, or, figured out the ftp and uploaded their crappy video. And then I scroll down and notice people commenting with sarcasm, and the person becomes all happy (because they obviously don't understand sarcasm.)
But, really? That's just... wooow. That poor, poor person. I never saw anything like that on yt, which is why I automatically thought... "how could these people be so mean?"

At first I saw a clique, but then I saw a ton of people who took AMV-making much more seriously than yt people.
I joined the site, because I saw the passion that people held for AMV-making here, which is probably what drove them to treat newbies with sarcasm, etc.

yt - for people who liked to upload amvs made in 1 hour, or betas.
a-m-v.org - for people who take amvs seriously, and spend months/years working on one amv

^That's what I thought at first, basically. Of course, there is so much more to both sites, but yeah.

The reason people don't join the org is because yt appears much more laid back.

Does that mean we have to change the org's ways and become another yt so we can have more people? Please, I hope to God not.
People who want to take the next step will join the org. I'm not saying yt is full of passionless people, but I'm saying that there are few people who want to go the distance and join this site because it is so much more complex than yt.

Should the org ever change to become more like yt, that is the day I leave.
I joined the org because I knew the org was different from yt, and I liked the way the site was run. I like how there is an ftp system, I like the forum, I like the small little profiles everyone has, I like how you can post 'opinions' on people's videos and small private comments. Should any of this ever change... the org would not be the org. I don't think people need to change and automatically have to help every newb that joins the site, or the org should change how things are uploaded, because all of these things are what make the org.
The org is very diverse. The org is full of fun people. There are the accepting people, and the people who shun newbs. No one needs to change who they are so they can have a ton of people from yt join. People will join if they want to, regardless of the mean people. I joined, and I honestly don't care if people don't like my amvs. Everyone has their own tastes, and I will accept that. I'm not going to break down and say you have to like my amv. People who understand this will join.

At least, this is what I see.

As far as yt editors go, there is nothing wrong with them. There are a lot more bad editors than there are good editors, but there are definitely good editors that use yt. There are also a lot of people that enjoy amv-making A TON. I used to love making amvs to death. I loved my crappy, effect-filled videos, because they were fun to make.

I think that's where people from yt fail to want to join the org, because they automatically think they have to have Adobe After Effects, Adobe Premiere, Photochop CS4, and learn all these other complex programs like VDub/Avysinth and have an anime collection of 600 in order to join the site and be 'accepted.'


Sorry, that was really messy, and there are some flaws in the point I want to make. But, overall: The org does not need to change one bit so more people from yt will join. People will join when they realize what the org 'is.'


(WOW, so long. I hate that.)

[CodeZTM]

STUFF

I think that was very well said.

The org does not need to change one bit so more people from yt will join. People will join when they realize what the org 'is.'

Quoted for truth and awesomeness.

And you're right. The org doesn't need to change in order to facilitate the needs of others out there. The org is fine as is [minus a few problems here and there].