Cultural exchange/cross-polination on MAL?

I think in order to get more interesting discussions like that, interactions and reactions between fans of different genres should be encouraged not shunned.

@tchitchouan 100% it does seem like people tend to stick to their own "tribes" when it comes to anime, it ruins a lot of conversations by Turing them into debates on which thing is better, like power scaling and such

795 people on MAL have watched the show you want to discuss in the main thread. Half of them probably long have left the server. So the people addressed can easily meet in a phone booth.

P.S. Gen-Z, a phone booth is a very small space where boomers used to talk to each other before the iPhone was invented.

@inim
That supports my point: A lot of anime are like that, hence why "over-sub-division" sucks.
It makes sense to sub-divide stuff when each can self-sustain (Say, big franchises, popular anime), but it doesn't when they can't.

Unironically a single thread of "70's and below anime discussion" would already be superior to the current system.

Technically, the system that would solve everything would be able to "subscribe" to specific series discussion boards and get notified whenever a new thread gets made.

"cross-polination"

Ewww. That sounds gross...or maybe you are calling us plants?


"Princession Orchestra?"

Ok, this looks like PriPara (which is horrible on its own, but at least was entertaining for 20 episodes or so) gone wrong... Like shows which main goal is product placement and nothing more are getting worst?
Anyway. this is too niche to expect a big discussion about it.


"I do genuinely believe that having people who are mostly fans of one type of anime giving their experiences on another one is one of the most interesting types of discussions"

In our days of echo chambers and defending grounds by default, I think those fans will take it as an attack, instead of a genuine attempt at discussion...thus on Reddit you will be downvoted to hell.


"how we could generate more discussions like that"

Making literally posts like "Fans of X, I have a weird comparison on purpose here, what do you think about Y? Also despite both having little common ground, do you think that somehow those two can create sort of a synergy?".

No it doesn't, please do not put words into my mouth. And I apologize for sarcasm not being ASCII compatible.

So in clear words: All you want to do is to show off that you are watching fringe shows in the lime light. Odds anybody who watched the same show sees the thread and is interested in a discussion is practically zero. The thread is stillborn and only serves your attention whoring. Using an obfuscating thread title makes it worse.

@inim
No, all I want to do is to make so EVERYONE is showing off that they're watching fringe shows in the lime light.

@thewiru

Nobody wants that.
You're the only one who uses "watching fringe Shows" as currency that can be traded for attention, in the forums.
We don't want to show off. We just watch cartoons and enjoy them.

I actually agree with this take. I feel like moderators in general can become very "lack-of-oversight-y" and just do whatever they want, and mod groups tend to protect their own rather than do what's best for the community.

Not criticising the MAL staff, just a general observation. And not just online, either. I might be old-fashioned, but I remember the old days where moderators took constructive criticism, but I think Reddit really changed how mods online in general started to act.

They can become very rigid in their enforcement of the rules, ie. "this kind of discussion doesn't belong here", and I think that ultimately stifles the community overall by restricting the topics of discussion or the communities within which those discussions are able to take place.

Indeed, it'd be interesting to know the perspective of a different group (or a broader group) on any given topic, rather than only relegating Magical Girl topics to Magical Girl subforums (for instance).

Equally, I had a post taken down recently (which I believe you recall) because it contained a topic the mods don't like people discussing... despite half of the website being about said topic. If you want to censor it, then censor it across the board and remove those anime from the website entirely. If not? Don't be a hypocrite.

It's not gross if it's yuri:



(I don't know if that's niche enough for the thread.)

@LifelineByNature
I do think that the format here encourages what I call "a thread graveyard" where someone asks a question, a few people respond, and then the thread dies.
I compared this to some examples of /a/ threads where only a general idea is given and it's up to the people responding to the thread, rather than the author, to find some subject to talk about, and the subject might change multiple times during the thread, as well as there being multiple subjects at the same time.

"Classic View" makes it so comments that are made in any page that isn't the first or the last might as well not exist, but this wouldn't be an issue in a model that isn't as strict/bureaucratic and allowed for this "natural drift" of threads.
Likewise, the "Conversation View", which now allowed threads to subdivide and have infinite scrolling, now made the previous subdivisions redundant.

If you notice it, I try to "solve this" with my threads by always bringing an article, a post, a video, etc, and implicitly asking people "Hey, discuss this".

Just like I love my forums. Perfect.
Yea, you want a thread as a living room full of unfocused rambling people who wallow in their own diary bullshit. Go to 4chan for that and don't ruin a perfectly working forum.
If you weren't an insensible clod, you long would have noticed that the majority of MAL forum users told you: thanks, but no thanks. About 1000 times by now.

@inim "Just like I love my forums" you love forums to be... dead?

Even in the olden pre-YouTube days, that's not how forums were. In fact, forums thrived simply because discussions were not overbearingly controlled by moderators. Mods served a single purpose - controlling spam, and controlling egrarious comments (open racism, illegal content, for example).

You say "just like I like my forums", as if that's how forums have always been - but it isn't. The opposite, in fact, is true. This is a recent development and it's likely what's actively killing forum use across the board. At least, it's one factor.

You seem old enough to have experienced the old forums back in the 90's and 00's like I did, but it seems you've either forgotten that due to changing with the times as forums gradually changed, or you never were involved in forums back then.

Just like I love my forums. Perfect.
Yea, you want a thread as a living room full of unfocused rambling people who wallow in their own diary bullshit. Go to 4chan for that and don't ruin a perfectly working forum.
If you weren't an insensible clod, you long would have noticed that the majority of MAL forum users told you: thanks, but no thanks. About 1000 times by now.

@LifelineByNature I am even old enough to have used Usenet before forums. Sigh.

Anyway, I do not want forums dead. I am just no fan of unfocused meandering eternal threads. We have the Casual Discussion for those who are fans. We have the per-anime threads for detailed discussion of shows, odds you find somebody interested in detail discussion is nowhere higher than there. We have clubs with their private forums where you can do whatever you want without moderator interference. But you need actual friends to found a club and keep it alive, and there is no lime light. Otherwise, this is what I'd suggest OP.

My point is another. The main page's default forum is not the right place for people with psychological issues to roam. Threads here should be straight, solve a problem and solve it well. But then that issue should die off to make room for new issues. That is what I call a lively forum, not pathological and meandering threads where people are doing circle jerks and ego stroking.

@inim I genuinely cannot understand how anyone would love that, unless they dislike the idea of forums in the first place. That's closer to a survey than an actual discussion. Like isn't the point to talk about these things, not just leave a singular reply to OP and move on?

Blogposting is pretty uncommon on /a/, having more open-ended threads doesn't mean it's going to turn into "a living room full of unfocused rambling people".

There are things that could be improved in MAL's system, like the clubs and the lack of series name along the thread title in the general series discussion board, but your main issue seems to be cultural.

We have threads and the possibility of creating more that leave space for different kinds of anime fan to discuss different series or genres together. If people just dump their replies without interacting with others, then it's on them. And if you want to change that, I suggest leading by example. Go to the dumpster threads and reply to the posts. Or create more threads that invite discussion about anime instead of anime culture and fans.


Isn't it fine to make threads like "what do you (dis)like about mahou shoujo?", "mahou shoujo fans, what mahou shoujo series do you think are under/overrated and why?" or "are there common elements between mahou shoujo and battle shounen?" here? Wouldn't questions like those work well enough for your purpose?

@Sen1793
I feel those would just end up with people leaving and answer and then leaving the thread.