 The 3D Clubroom is a new interactive space which allows club members to select an avatar, walk around the room, and voice or text chat with other club members—as if you were inside a real club! No external applications are required. Club members can simply click a link on the club page (web or app) and will be directed to the 3D Clubroom inside their mobile or desktop browser. For now, the feature will only be made available to active clubs that are excited to use it. Activity requirements to apply for beta testing include:
How do I know if it's enabled in my club? |
KinetaFeb 19, 2023 6:45 PM
| I had the opportunity to try it a bit. avatar system and scenes are very complicated. It's almost impossible for an untrained person to create their own Avatar here. We must be able to adjust the speed of movement. There needs to be a community part like vr chat game. I can't add avatars or scenes. (in glb format) These are the problems in mobile right now. You can get plenty of examples from Vrchat. I look forward to its development. |
Asa07Feb 19, 2023 7:43 PM
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| Wow, very good use of MAL's resources for a feature that is mostly dead. It's not as if darkmode is high up on dev team's agenda anyway |
_cjessop19_Mar 5, 2023 2:00 AM
| dark mode when? my eyes are hurting because of this white who the hell will even use that shit 3d when clubs are dead? |
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| Oh wow you added another feature that nobody fucking asked for instead of something that users have already requested a million times. Who is gonna use this shit? Clubs are fucking dead after you neglected them for a whole decade. What is your agenda with this? And why can you only choose furry avatars? |
ateksFeb 20, 2023 1:56 AM
| I'm familiar with how our MAL Bunkasai rooms worked, so it's great that we can have rooms like this that don't require us to download Steam, then another game, and then wobble into the virtual room if one's computer could handle it. Even better, I was able to access the room from both my phone and laptop. I think once it reaches its full potential, it can be seen as a great addition to MAL! I'm already thinking of ways to use these rooms. |
Catalano said: dark mode when? my eyes are hurting because of this white Use a dark mode Chrome or Firefox extension, mine is lightweight and tested, updated soon too https://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=2072574 Or a dark theme https://userstyles.world/style/8298/dark-myanimelist-2023-lightweight-includes-lists- |
| Never understood the appeal of these kind of things. Isn’t it just like the forums or Discord but a million times more complicated? |
| the MetaVerse is dead why MAL is doing this now same with NFTs that are dead too the MetaVerse is too soon it will need at least decades for it to become mainstream |
| Why do the devs focus so much on clubs? Do people still care about clubs? Most clubs I encounter these days are either completely dead or barely active. No offense to any dev or anyone who's into clubs, but Discord is a superior replacement. |
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| Question: how are club officers expected to moderate this? For text, it might be possible to see everything that is said, but for voice chat, moderation is too much unless the club has a group of officers willing and able to sit in the club 24/7, which is quite unreasonable. Honestly, I'm in the "who asked" camp. I'm guessing might be easier to add VRChat to MAL than to modify MAL's spaghetti code to get dark mode or something, but I'm not sure if people would use it. My club is probably too small for people to use it, but I guess the bigger clubs might see some action. There seems to be some hype, but I can't tell if it would last. It's pretty much a novelty at this point. |
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| btw if MAL is trying to become a full anime social media site then Kitsu already tried that and failed Kitsu have Twitter like social features and also its club features called groups are more easy to navigate afaik than MAL here is it in action https://kitsu.io/groups |
| Can you please make proper mobile pages for clubs? I'm not even considering actively using clubs until then. Orion_Gospel said: Clubs keep people on the site which means more ad money for the owners.Why do the devs focus so much on clubs? Do people still care about clubs? Most clubs I encounter these days are either completely dead or barely active. No offense to any dev or anyone who's into clubs, but Discord is a superior replacement. |
| this will be dead in 5 hours i am shocked this was added, i have three words to describe whos ever decision this was OUT OF TOUCH |
deg said: btw if MAL is trying to become a full anime social media site then Kitsu already tried that and failed Kitsu have Twitter like social features and also its club features called groups are more easy to navigate afaik than MAL here is it in action https://kitsu.io/groups Users can react and even share comment links (can comments be edited, though?)! The members' sidebar even looks nicer compared to what we have here. That looks cool and feels somehow more intuitive compared to the comments sections MAL have in both desktop and app but Kitsu groups lack threads/'Club Discussion'. Also, somewhat feels like AniList's Social/Global feed (although I don't use that feature). I don't have an account in Kitsu yet but I might make one for backup. --- I'm tired of retyping my suggestions so I'm just gonna quote them here from other threads I commented on: "Cabinet" Comes to Clubs In-App [Sep 13, 2022 3:55 PM] It'd be nice if there's a tab for 'Anime, Manga and Character Relations' in the app so we can see those relations like the sidebar on desktop; add a toggle bar similar to lists with 'All', 'Anime', 'Manga' and 'Character' options. Plus, a forum tab so we can directly read and discuss on threads within the app instead of requesting for the desktop version each time. Allow users to edit their comments as well. Let us edit club comments [Jan 18, 2:50 PM] Even on mobile, we can't edit club comments, just delete and repost. And the comments section in the app is separate from the one on the desktop version. So those who don't use/check the app never get to see comments made in the app and vice versa; if they choose the desktop version on their phone then they could still read club comments made on desktop but there's no way for desktop users to read comments made by users in the app. I don't really get why they separated those. It should've been seamless. Edit Club Comments [Jan 28, 6:00 PM] ^Make that 9 years! I commented on another thread (Let us edit club comments) regarding this but I just found this old one so I'm bumping this. I always check my club comments before I post them but I still commit mistakes sometimes especially when BBCode is involved since there's no preview. It's kinda annoying that we'd have to delete and repost again; we have to redo comments with BBCode too (this is why I use MyAnimeList - BBCODE2HTML for my comments with BBCode but sometimes there are still mistakes)! Please allow us to edit club comments once you implement the BBCode editor on clubs, MAL devs! And can we have a live preview as well? BBCode Editor: Now on Forum & Private Messages This functionality will be added to profile comments, clubs, and other text boxes soon! I wonder how "soon"? LOL. Clubs are actually available now in the app (see: Clubs Have a Brand-New Look—In-App! and "Cabinet" Comes to Clubs In-App). So they want us to use the clubs more!!! Then they should also revamp the clubs in the desktop version. Yeah, the site has so much spaghetti code compared to the app... If clubs don't get much love then it's even worse for MAL's blogging side. 😭 The club comments section feels like Twitter in a sense because we're not allowed to edit comments. However, Twitter users can now edit tweets but they have to pay. We can even edit comments on YouTube and (edited) appears with the comment once it's edited. Come on, MAL! Wait, they could just delete the club comments section like how they deleted the comments section on 'People' pages (see: Company Page Edits Released; People Comments Closed). 🙄 They could just "forget the edit button, let's just delete the comments section so less work and moderating". Oh, no! Clubs Have a Brand-New Look—In-App! [Feb 1, 1:20 AM] I wish there's a link in club pages in the app that could direct to the club's desktop version so we can see the relations and comments made on desktop. When I want to check something on the desktop while I'm on mobile, I just click on a random user's profile, then check their club list and look for a specific club until it brings me to that club's desktop view. Can you please make the messages/comments viewable on both the app and desktop? Most clubs are active on the desktop version but I've seen a bunch of clubs like The Ramen Shop and The English dub Anime Community aka T.E.D.A.C which are very active on the app but inactive in the desktop version. It would be nice if club activity reflects in both the desktop and app. [Feb 11, 9:20 AM] Perhaps there could be a separate tab/page for club invites in the app just like with the desktop version ('Invitations')? It's kinda annoying that they're always on top of the 'Discussion' page. So I'd have to scroll past them to see 'My Clubs' and the 'Recently Active Clubs'. I know they're collapsible but that option isn't even on default. Yeah, we can always click 'Deny' to get rid of them but I don't want to do that. Please, just improve the clubs on desktop and app. This new feature is only really suited for the MAL Bunkasai ~Our School Festival~ club/event and a few other clubs. Maybe it could've been just beta tested with that club? Edit: I arranged everything by the date I posted. |
IridescentJauneFeb 23, 2023 10:50 AM
| Sounds completely pointless. Can you just go through the suggestions forum and add things people have been asking for literally years instead of stuff like this? |
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| as if any of the devs even bother reading this, they don't care in the end. just doing whatever the suits ask of them to make, much easier than to pretend that they listen to the feedback of the community. hope you have a terrible day devs :^) |
ateks said: Oh wow you added another feature that nobody fucking asked for instead of something that users have already requested a million times. Who is gonna use this shit? Clubs are fucking dead after you neglected them for a whole decade. What is your agenda with this? And why can you only choose furry avatars? I feel like who ever leads the developer team possibly doesn’t speak English so it’s futile. Orion_Gospel said: Why do the devs focus so much on clubs? Do people still care about clubs? Most clubs I encounter these days are either completely dead or barely active. No offense to any dev or anyone who's into clubs, but Discord is a superior replacement. Discord and other group chat programs don’t allow for much meaningful conversation if it’s a fairly active club since too much chatter at once. It’s just a time waster that killed the clubs off that made Discord groups because people like to waste time doing nothing. deg said: the MetaVerse is dead why MAL is doing this now same with NFTs that are dead too the MetaVerse is too soon it will need at least decades for it to become mainstream It’s not really a metaverse thing unless VR is involved. It’s more like Club Penguin or something lol |
| I just want updates to features we actually use or completely new features we would use. It’s been ages since the last major update. |
| Please stop, I don’t want to see any more Dekugo😭 |
| Is this going to replace the desktop equivalent to the club chatapps that was mentioned back when those launched? |
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| Hahaha is this a joke? MAL devs are going to implement f*cking Clippy in here before dark mode, aren't they? |
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| Sorry Kineta, this is pretty dated feature. These things have been dead since the early 2000's. Considerably bigger companies with bigger budgets have failed repeatedly with this kind of stuff. This feels as out of touch and as cringe as the Diablo Immortals announcement. I mean, why don't we have sections for non-Asian animation? Why is it that I need to use IMDB, Facebook, or other websites just to keep track of and discuss animation like, Avatar the Last Airbender and Puss in Boots? I think if MAL wishes to grow, it will need to be more inclusive and appeal to a broader audiences. MAL will need to be more flexible. Forums are dusty, a post at the bottom of a thread... These days it's about getting that tweet or comment front and center, top of the discussion. The Home Page has "articles" like a newspaper. Discord is about real time commenting. Today is all about real time. |
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AnimeMastery said: Sorry Kineta, this is pretty dated feature. These things have been dead since the early 2000's. Considerably bigger companies with bigger budgets have failed repeatedly with this kind of stuff. This feels as out of touch and as cringe as the Diablo Immortals announcement. I mean, why don't we have sections for non-Asian animation? Why is it that I need to use IMDB, Facebook, or other websites just to keep track of and discuss animation like, Avatar the Last Airbender and Puss in Boots? I think if MAL wishes to grow, it will need to be more inclusive and appeal to a broader audiences. MAL will need to be more flexible. Forums are dusty, a post at the bottom of a thread... These days it's about getting that tweet or comment front and center, top of the discussion. The Home Page has "articles" like a newspaper. Discord is about real time commenting. Today is all about real time. "Modernizing" the forums would get me to stop using MAL immediately. |
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Narmy said: AnimeMastery said: Sorry Kineta, this is pretty dated feature. These things have been dead since the early 2000's. Considerably bigger companies with bigger budgets have failed repeatedly with this kind of stuff. This feels as out of touch and as cringe as the Diablo Immortals announcement. I mean, why don't we have sections for non-Asian animation? Why is it that I need to use IMDB, Facebook, or other websites just to keep track of and discuss animation like, Avatar the Last Airbender and Puss in Boots? I think if MAL wishes to grow, it will need to be more inclusive and appeal to a broader audiences. MAL will need to be more flexible. Forums are dusty, a post at the bottom of a thread... These days it's about getting that tweet or comment front and center, top of the discussion. The Home Page has "articles" like a newspaper. Discord is about real time commenting. Today is all about real time. "Modernizing" the forums would get me to stop using MAL immediately. Thanks for the input? Clearly they are looking for more engagement and at the very least, upvoting comments works for Reddit. Your either growing or dying, there is no in-between. Except the $1.50 Costco Hotdog - A true wonder of the universe. |
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| yoo $1.5 costco hotdogs are damn delicious fr |
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| why not just use vrchat instead?? |
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Barrycade said: why not just use vrchat instead?? Because MAL thinks if they reinvent the wheel more people are gonna use their website. Meanwhile their main feature, the anime database, is in an absolute HORRENDOUS state. Not just completely outdated but also full of false information that never get corrected when you report them. Literally Wikipedia is a more reliable and up-to-date source of information for anime these days. |
Sethispr said: yoo $1.5 costco hotdogs are damn delicious fr The Australian equivalent of the Bunnings snag (Any Australian will back me up) |
| God I’ve been to aus but haven’t try that, will definetly try it out looks heck delicious and simple |
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| Clubs aren't dead, by the way. The chatapp launch was really, surprisingly successful and brought a ton of additional activity to clubs that set it up. Following chatapp, clubs became MAL's main source of communication and interaction for people who access the site through their app. Hence, the investment into clubs and why they're stressing this as also available on mobile. What still struggles are traditional club comments. The type of activity that clubs and club comments used to serve - light chatting amongst like-minded people instead of lengthy forum discussion with a diverse range of perspectives on a topic - is much better served by third party apps, and clubs who didn't adapt and offer their members a Discord server early tended to die out from member loss to clubs that did hop on the Discord train. This caused club activity to get hypercentralized onto a few clubs, hence the number of inactive ones. Chatapp boom hasn't allowed a lot of new clubs to replace those ones that died, either, since the big ones that activity has been centered on just all hopped on that and started running that side of things too. You're not witnessing a dead area of a site. You're witnessing less competition and a lot of shuttered businesses as a result of things getting really adapt or die back in 2016 - 2018, and activity that has largely evolved to be focused away from the areas of clubs MAL put front and center due to being the place to be and where everyone was talking in clubs back in 2008, i.e. club comments. |
ManabanFeb 23, 2023 3:38 AM
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AnimeMastery said: Sorry Kineta, this is pretty dated feature. These things have been dead since the early 2000's. Considerably bigger companies with bigger budgets have failed repeatedly with this kind of stuff. This feels as out of touch and as cringe as the Diablo Immortals announcement. I mean, why don't we have sections for non-Asian animation? Why is it that I need to use IMDB, Facebook, or other websites just to keep track of and discuss animation like, Avatar the Last Airbender and Puss in Boots? I think if MAL wishes to grow, it will need to be more inclusive and appeal to a broader audiences. MAL will need to be more flexible. Forums are dusty, a post at the bottom of a thread... These days it's about getting that tweet or comment front and center, top of the discussion. The Home Page has "articles" like a newspaper. Discord is about real time commenting. Today is all about real time. Because this is myanimelist, not myanimationlist. There are plenty of sites to track western animation. |
| Maloween 2020 candies Main candies:         |
Narmy said: Sounds completely pointless. Can you just go through the suggestions forum and add things people have been asking for literally years instead of stuff like this? Completely agree! There are tons of suggestions in the Suggestions board. The devs can also look at other boards like Support or even the Official MAL API club. |
AnimeMastery said: Thanks for the input? Clearly they are looking for more engagement and at the very least, upvoting comments works for Reddit. Your either growing or dying, there is no in-between. Except the $1.50 Costco Hotdog - A true wonder of the universe. I wouldnt call that working. It creates massive circle jerks and people creating alts to downvote people they dont like or upvoting themselves. Manaban said: Clubs aren't dead, by the way. The chatapp launch was really, surprisingly successful and brought a ton of additional activity to clubs that set it up. Following chatapp, clubs became MAL's main source of communication and interaction for people who access the site through their app. Hence, the investment into clubs and why they're stressing this as also available on mobile. What still struggles are traditional club comments. The type of activity that clubs and club comments used to serve - light chatting amongst like-minded people instead of lengthy forum discussion with a diverse range of perspectives on a topic - is much better served by third party apps, and clubs who didn't adapt and offer their members a Discord server early tended to die out from member loss to clubs that did hop on the Discord train. This caused club activity to get hypercentralized onto a few clubs, hence the number of inactive ones. Chatapp boom hasn't allowed a lot of new clubs to replace those ones that died, either, since the big ones that activity has been centered on just all hopped on that and started running that side of things too. You're not witnessing a dead area of a site. You're witnessing less competition and a lot of shuttered businesses as a result of things getting really adapt or die back in 2016 - 2018, and activity that has largely evolved to be focused away from the areas of clubs MAL put front and center due to being the place to be and where everyone was talking in clubs back in 2008, i.e. club comments. Ive seen the opposite happen that clubs that created a Discord group killed all activity in the club and they no longer really are a club just a discord group with membership status displayed in a club. The comments I dont think are highlights while users do chat with them that is better read in a club forum thread in that you can more easily quote users and can read more replies at once. The club comments to me are more for introductions and brief updates users give and short chats so they dont need a constant stream of comments for the clubs to be active the clubs need a better window to them. I think problem with low activity is because you have to go into the clubs to see the club forum posts of clubs you are in. There is no recent club forum posts box in a convenient place outside of the clubs like there is with the forum front page or the club comment update notification when you are on that home page after logging in. |
traedFeb 23, 2023 1:44 PM
traed said: Reddit brought in $350 million in revenue in 2021, primarily through advertising. Drama, Alt's, etc. Are all engagement. We don't have published numbers for MAL, but its estimated to be between $10-40 Million.I wouldnt call that working. It creates massive circle jerks and people creating alts to downvote people they dont like or upvoting themselves. Reddit and MAL are vastly different, but both draw their revenue largely from advertisement. Reddit is 10x more successful than MAL. Businesses adapting successful methods from other businesses is a tried and true method. Regardless, I couldn't care less if we adopted stuff from elsewhere, if MAL stopped existing it wouldn't effect my life much, but the business staff does, and what I'm saying is "Dark Mode" wont increase revenue by $100 Million. Updating the site to be more in line with todays markets is what will allow MAL to grow. Adding things like a non-nippon section increases market capture. More eyes, better ad revenue. Making the app more user friendly and streamlined would help, I agree. But at the end of the day, either you charge more for your services or you get more customers. Many people have the mentality of most home owners. "We need more services, businesses, and cheaper housing" Ok, lets build apartment buildings, for cheaper housing and to attract businesses in. "No, I don't want my community / neighborhood to change." Logic 404? I want it exactly the same but better... |
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traed said: Ive seen the opposite happen that clubs that created a Discord group killed all activity in the club and they no longer really are a club just a discord group with membership status displayed in a club. The comments I dont think are highlights while users do chat with them that is better read in a club forum thread in that you can more easily quote users and can read more replies at once. The club comments to me are more for introductions and brief updates users give and short chats so they dont need a constant stream of comments for the clubs to be active the clubs need a better window to them. I think problem with low activity is because you have to go into the clubs to see the club forum posts of clubs you are in. There is no recent club forum posts box in a convenient place outside of the clubs like there is with the forum front page or the club comment update notification when you are on that home page after logging in. MALgorithim. As things currently are, for desktop and non-app mobile users, the club with the most recent comment is pushed to the top of the visibility line when you first click on the club tab. On app, it's who has the most recent chatapp - which dictates the overwhelming majority of communication activity on the app considering the main forum isn't easily accessible through the app, if at all. Club forums have a tool for sharing threads to alert your members of something such as an event or an important notice. You get one a week to prevent spamming notifications for attention. These have no effect on your visibility to potential new members, just the ability to ping all of your existing members who don't have that notification type disabled. They don't help you reach new people, they help you reach existing people by giving you an organization platform for them. That's the main purpose of forums and how they're most often utilized. Every 10k+ club ran/runs this structure, with the only real deviation being some clubs offering forum games in their forums on top of using them for event organization - the backbone of it is that club comments as main activity, forums for organized events like GFX cards or character contests or whatever. It's so integral to maintaining activity to the point where it's a fundamental to even succeed. Hence, by design, clubs live and died for many years by how active their club comments section was. It was the only way to get new blood and new activity. The big member clubs (who didn't mass invite, at least) all had super active club comments sections. So, when Discord came out and provided a much superior option for the types of interactions that used to be found in club comments, clubs adapted or died. The ones who adapted to Discord being the primary area of communication stayed alive by ensuring their club comment section had activity at all times to keep their club visible to potential new members, given people will naturally leave over time. Some clubs - Namine's and E/H come to mind - had explicit staff jobs just for keeping the comments active. The reason Discord can kill a club is because the people operating the club don't get how the MALgorithim works, so they never get new people by ensuring they have an active comments section. You *have* to get as much out of the comments as you can while still making it seem like a place that people will want to be. If they treated comments as a secondary activity hub and their club dies out, it's purely neglect/ignorance of how club visibility functions on this site, if you want me to be blunt about it. Even pre-Discord, clubs that neglected their comments section tended to die out, and they tended to die out pretty fast. If you treat comments like you're saying to do so here, you're not going to keep activity in your club. You'll either all migrate elsewhere or your people who aren't part of your friends group will go to a club where they can actually meet people after a while. So, yeah. Comments are not only highlights, they have been - by MAL's own design - the main activity hub for (active) clubs since their inception. New people are important for keeping an online community active. It keeps things from getting stale, and activity functions like a snowball effect - the more you have, the easier it is to get more. These updates seem to be trying to move them away from that, first with the chatapp and now with this furry roleplay thing, rather than fix the frustrating elements of comments that made Discord kill them off (disorganization, lack of basic functions like editing, etc.) |
ManabanFeb 23, 2023 5:04 PM
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| Who asked for this? Like genuinely no one cares. DOA. |
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Manaban said: traed said: Ive seen the opposite happen that clubs that created a Discord group killed all activity in the club and they no longer really are a club just a discord group with membership status displayed in a club. The comments I dont think are highlights while users do chat with them that is better read in a club forum thread in that you can more easily quote users and can read more replies at once. The club comments to me are more for introductions and brief updates users give and short chats so they dont need a constant stream of comments for the clubs to be active the clubs need a better window to them. I think problem with low activity is because you have to go into the clubs to see the club forum posts of clubs you are in. There is no recent club forum posts box in a convenient place outside of the clubs like there is with the forum front page or the club comment update notification when you are on that home page after logging in. MALgorithim. As things currently are, for desktop and non-app mobile users, the club with the most recent comment is pushed to the top of the visibility line when you first click on the club tab. On app, it's who has the most recent chatapp - which dictates the overwhelming majority of communication activity on the app considering the main forum isn't easily accessible through the app, if at all. Club forums have a tool for sharing threads to alert your members of something such as an event or an important notice. You get one a week to prevent spamming notifications for attention. These have no effect on your visibility to potential new members, just the ability to ping all of your existing members who don't have that notification type disabled. They don't help you reach new people, they help you reach existing people by giving you an organization platform for them. That's the main purpose of forums and how they're most often utilized. Every 10k+ club ran this structure - club comments as main activity, forums for organized events like GFX cards or character contests or whatever. It's so integral to maintaining activity to the point where it's as fundamental as a football match having eleven players from either time on the pitch at once. Hence, by design, clubs live and died for many years by how active their club comments section was. It was the only way to get new blood and new activity. The big member clubs (who didn't mass invite, at least) all had super active club comments sections. So, when Discord came out and provided a much superior option for the types of interactions that used to be found in club comments, clubs adapted or died. The ones who adapted to Discord being the primary area of communication stayed alive by ensuring their club comment section had activity at all times to keep their club visible to potential new members, given people will naturally leave over time. Some clubs - Namine's and E/H come to mind - had explicit staff jobs just for keeping the comments active. The reason Discord can kill a club is because the people operating the club don't get how the MALgorithim works, so they never get new people by ensuring they have an active comments section. If they let that happen, it's purely neglect/ignorance of how club visibility functions on this site , if you want me to be blunt about it. Even pre-Discord, clubs that neglected their comments section tended to die out, and they tended to die out pretty fast. So, yeah. Comments are not only highlights, they have been - by MAL's own design - the main activity hub for (active) clubs since their inception. New people are important for keeping an online community active. It keeps things from getting stale, and activity functions like a snowball effect - the more you have, the easier it is to get more. These updates seem to be trying to move them away from that, first with the chatapp and now with this furry roleplay thing, rather than fix the frustrating elements of comments that made Discord kill them off (disorganization, lack of basic functions like editing, etc.) What makes Discord "much superior"? It's just a proprietary IRC, and IRC never killed the clubs. |
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Narmy said: Because clubs used to be the chatty/small-talk/bullshit place, i.e activity that'd typically go to an IRC. They had IRC-style content because the only IRC equivalent MAL had for the longest time was the place you used to go to appeal bans, and that looked ripped straight from the mid-'90s and was largely just for staff organization for...well, ban appeals. It wasn't a fun place to be.Manaban said: MALgorithim. As things currently are, for desktop and non-app mobile users, the club with the most recent comment is pushed to the top of the visibility line when you first click on the club tab. On app, it's who has the most recent chatapp - which dictates the overwhelming majority of communication activity on the app considering the main forum isn't easily accessible through the app, if at all. Club forums have a tool for sharing threads to alert your members of something such as an event or an important notice. You get one a week to prevent spamming notifications for attention. These have no effect on your visibility to potential new members, just the ability to ping all of your existing members who don't have that notification type disabled. They don't help you reach new people, they help you reach existing people by giving you an organization platform for them. That's the main purpose of forums and how they're most often utilized. Every 10k+ club ran this structure - club comments as main activity, forums for organized events like GFX cards or character contests or whatever. It's so integral to maintaining activity to the point where it's as fundamental as a football match having eleven players from either time on the pitch at once. Hence, by design, clubs live and died for many years by how active their club comments section was. It was the only way to get new blood and new activity. The big member clubs (who didn't mass invite, at least) all had super active club comments sections. So, when Discord came out and provided a much superior option for the types of interactions that used to be found in club comments, clubs adapted or died. The ones who adapted to Discord being the primary area of communication stayed alive by ensuring their club comment section had activity at all times to keep their club visible to potential new members, given people will naturally leave over time. Some clubs - Namine's and E/H come to mind - had explicit staff jobs just for keeping the comments active. The reason Discord can kill a club is because the people operating the club don't get how the MALgorithim works, so they never get new people by ensuring they have an active comments section. If they let that happen, it's purely neglect/ignorance of how club visibility functions on this site , if you want me to be blunt about it. Even pre-Discord, clubs that neglected their comments section tended to die out, and they tended to die out pretty fast. So, yeah. Comments are not only highlights, they have been - by MAL's own design - the main activity hub for (active) clubs since their inception. New people are important for keeping an online community active. It keeps things from getting stale, and activity functions like a snowball effect - the more you have, the easier it is to get more. These updates seem to be trying to move them away from that, first with the chatapp and now with this furry roleplay thing, rather than fix the frustrating elements of comments that made Discord kill them off (disorganization, lack of basic functions like editing, etc.) What makes Discord "much superior"? It's just a proprietary IRC, and IRC never killed the clubs. They housed that sort of activity because they could very easily organize into factions and interest groups that made it easy to meet new people they could quickly have that style of interaction with, and because there wasn't an accessible equivalent on MAL itself. Keep in mind that, as of right now, the heyday of club activity on MAL proper was about 10 years ago, before Discord even existed and Skype was actually somewhat alive. People wanted some kind of way to have that type of interaction on MAL. Clubs became that. Discord came and was way better and more suited for it, on top of being very accessible, large in scale and recognition, and very easy to redirect activity to in bulk compared to a Skype group. Our options were - at the time - to try to keep activity in the main club, or to migrate to a Discord server. My club, H&E, was one of the early birds to Discord. We have grown more (10k in our first 4 years and 12k in our last 4) and have had exponentially more activity (over twice as much since clubs were more active) than the days clubs weren't "dead," and a huge reason for this is because we went all in on Discord early. We've sustained and grown it from there, but that's what got our ball rolling and effectively let us kill the competition in what used to be the most competitive demographic for clubs. A thriving Discord server is *that* big of a deal these days. The big clubs from that time that tried sticking with their main club are all fucking dead because of it, because they bled members and activity to the clubs that adapted to Discord due to trying to keep them in a place where they couldn't even edit their own words after they posted them. Club comments only ever had that activity because the biggest alternative you could draw most people to at the time were fucking Skype groups. Hence, what I was saying earlier. Clubs aren't dead. A major event happened (Discord taking off and becoming such a huge deal) and the ones that rolled the dice by siding against their MAL activity early back in 2015/2016 wound up being rewarded with activity hypercentered onto them in the present day. There are some exceptions, but those fell apart for other reasons rather than their early adaption to Discord as a primary activity hub - for instance, the Slice of Life club was an early adapter, but fell apart due to staff infighting and lost their server but kept their main club, leading to a situation where a thriving server for a 15k member club is currently in the hands of a 200 member club with little visibility and ability to attract new members. |
ManabanFeb 23, 2023 5:58 PM
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traed said: I think problem with low activity is because you have to go into the clubs to see the club forum posts of clubs you are in. There is no recent club forum posts box in a convenient place outside of the clubs like there is with the forum front page or the club comment update notification when you are on that home page after logging in. Agree! Maybe the Anime & Manga Clubs section should be revamped. There should be a 'Club Spotlight' or 'Featured Club', like MAL could feature a club for a month or something. Same with the Blogs section; they could also feature interesting blog posts and not just show links to 'Recent Blog Entries' which are mostly spam ads by spam bots. More suggestions for blogs on: A list at the top of our Blog posts so that we don't have to scroll down a bunch. I saw old captures of MAL in the Wayback Machine and 'Recently Active Clubs' used to be on the sidebar of MAL's homepage. |
IridescentJaune said: Lmao. The amount of problems this would cause, ranging from accusations of favoritism given that all clubs are member-ran to non-selected clubs being hostile to the favored club, would wind up making it more trouble than it's worth for the club that's getting selected. I could very easily see this negatively impacting the club's reputation more than helping it.traed said: I think problem with low activity is because you have to go into the clubs to see the club forum posts of clubs you are in. There is no recent club forum posts box in a convenient place outside of the clubs like there is with the forum front page or the club comment update notification when you are on that home page after logging in. Agree! Maybe the Anime & Manga Clubs section should be revamped. There should be a 'Club Spotlight' or 'Featured Club', like MAL could feature a club for a month or something. The other - bigger, from a logical standpoint - issue is that people get settled into clubs like they would any other community so long as it's ran well enough, so it's going to see diminishing returns fast. The first one or two clubs - if we're doing them a month at a time, like you said - will reap 99% of the benefits, most likely, due to a combination of the concept losing novelty and therefore the amount of eyes it has on it, and that the people who it does grab would just stay with the club they went to first. The only exception would be that the featured club would have to shoot themselves in the foot via harsh mismanagement and cause their own members to go looking for something better, which would also hurt faith in the whole system. But no. These are member ran and operated. MAL Staff hasn't done clubs very good until recently, but they've done well at not really giving special favors and promotion. My personal belief is that we should keep it this way, so what's there remains organic. We're all by the people for the people yadda yadda. |
ManabanFeb 23, 2023 5:55 PM
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