Save our Stop Motion

kineta said:
I believe I can speak for everyone posting here in saying that we've all had quite enough of this thread. In truth, this thread really should never have occurred at this point in time. As I have been trying to say all along, the staff have been trying to put together a list of guidelines for all databases and that these guidelines have not been finalised. There is little point in discussing something that hasn't been finalised as if it has been. However, this discussion happened anyway, and so we must conclude it in some manner, although calling this thread a discussion is being very optimistic on the matter.

There were a few reasonable and logical posts among the mess of other posts, and this post is mainly for those people. For the rest of you, there is a lesson to be learned here: you cannot win someone over to your way of thinking with hostility, flaming, refusing to listen to and consider what the other party is saying, and trying to figure out how to go around them to prove them wrong. The way to win someone over to your way of thinking is to determine why they feel the way they do, and then try to persuade a change in the way they think or find a compromise between what you want and what they want.

The DB mods want a consistent, orderly, comprehensive database, for every animation we include. Stop-motion doesn't currently fit into this model as there are so few entries, and judging by submission trends, this doesn't seem like it will be remedied any time soon. While the moderators maintain the database, we rely on our users for submissions of less mainstream titles. Although you are very passionate in this thread, you must admit that you are a very small percentage of the userbase, and very few of you have been submitting to and maintaining that part of the database. Thus, rather than demonstrating the Japanese stop-motion culture you are all fighting for, currently these entries merely clutter the database and make it look like a handful of stop-motion entries were tossed into it by mistake.

In one sentence: MAL strives for a complete database, which is currently not possible in the category of stop-motion, due to its lack of user-based submissions and lack of total entries, which is affected by its low activity.

So how do you persuade the DB mods to change their mind? You offer to make the stop-motion portion of the database a comprehensive one! Is that so difficult to do? I wouldn't think so, and yet only one of you (TwoSoxs) managed to come anywhere close to this.

However, just an offer is not enough. As a very knowledgable person I know said: Words are cheap -- even cheaper on the internet. You need to take all of the misplaced passion in this thread and apply it to showing us that you care about Japanese stop-motion, and that you want it to be a contributing part of the MAL database and community.

How do you do that? You make MAL the resource for Japanese stop motion animation. This means more than just copying what entries exist on ANN and/or Anidb, as I doubt their entries even manage to scratch the surface. This means adding detailed entries that cover a wide variety of stop-motion animation (more than just Kawamoto) to the database, above and beyond anything ANN/Anidb have, and having activity on these entries. These entries must be detailed as moderators hate adding entries with minimal information to the database, and if they cannot be found on ANN/Anidb, provide links to sources in the More Info field.

If you can make MAL the resource for Japanese stop-motion, and a place where people can learn and share about this animation technique as a whole, then we will be more than happy to keep these entries.

However, if after some time there are maybe ten more entries in the database, 8 of them belonging to Kawamoto, and there is no activity on any of these entries... then we will likely consider removing them again, and will be less likely to believe any arguments you may have against that decision.

I hope you'll appreciate the opportunity we're offering you here, and will put it to good use. If you want it, we will place our confidence in you, the MAL community. Please show us this confidence isn't wasted.

So... is this an opportunity you would like to have?