2018 Yearly Wrap-Up...
...in Code
2018 was a very rough year for MyAnimeList's community, code-wise. After the initial release of our new Android App and the Manga Store, the API went offline, all users' passwords were reset, and the site went under a debilitating security review for ~3 months. The official Android app is still not publicly available again and all other 3rd party apps are still down unless their dedicated creators have managed to bypass the API being offline.
I've posted my feelings on all of this elsewhere, but would like to thank everyone again for sticking with us throughout this difficult year—users, 3rd party developers, and moderators alike. In 2019, Xinil and I will continue doing everything in our power to make the best interests of MAL's community known to its owners, and the moderators and I will continue doing everything we can (outside of code changes) to continue making MAL a welcome place for anime and manga fans.
...in Community
Development issues aside, the moderator staff and dedicated community members have continued our yearly tradition of community events and contests, undeterred. Hopefully, you were able to participate in some; if not, look forward to 2019!- 2018 Anime Watching & Manga Reading Challenges—Want to increase your anime/manga power levels and diversify your list(s)? Our yearly challenges are a great way to do this. Watch for our 2019 challenges opening soon!
- Ode to MALentine—Users coupled poems/inspirational quotes with anime gifs, and then the community voted for the best in each category. Our MALentine cupids are still cooking up the event for MALentine 2019, so expect something different this year~
- Easter Wars: The Last Holiday (V)—MAL's Easter Bunny stole April Fools this year, and did his best to steal all the other holidays, before being stopped by 221 MAL detectives! Our yearly Easter event involves a site-wide treasure hunt (including riddles!) to save Easter, and is a favourite of many community members.
- MAL Makes Anime! 'A MAL Documentary' Now Airing—A few of our moderators got together and created the first episode for last years' best-selling (April Fools joke), A MAL Documentary. We put it on everyone's lists and managed to a fool a bunch of users who forgot April Fools existed, once again. Feel free to forget again over the next 3 months~
- Fantasy Anime League 2018: Spring & Fall Editions—While the Spring Edition was cut tragically short due to the unexpected downtime, the Fall Edition is currently wrapping up, and I look forward to another edition in Spring 2019.
- Manga Translation Battle—The 7th edition of MTB was held on MAL, once again.
- MALoween✟Mansion: Zombieland 5 ~Kimi no Brains wo Tabetai~—Our spooky mansion returned for its fifth year, filled with challenges and quests. Only 105 user attempted the event, down significantly due to no theme change, but we were happy to see many returning faces.
- Secret Santa—Final user count still to come, but our participants were also significantly cut due to no theme change. If you missed it this year, be sure to sign up in the first week of December 2019.
...in Contributions & Crew
A very big thank you to all our active users who participate in our community, are committed to improving our databases, write reviews and recommendations to help fellow users, and who make up MAL. We are now 5.6 million registered users!
Special shout-outs to:- MAL Discord—A big thanks to all our Discord staff for moderating our server which continues to grow since we opened it in April 2017. Feel free to join and chat about anime, manga, and more.
- MAL Rewrite—Our DB synopses rewrite project marked its 3rd year anniversary since reboot, and I hope to have some new synopsis milestones (along with another recruitment call!) to announce sometime this month.
- MAL Articles—Since the Featured articles section opened for user submissions, the club has been working hard to deliver interesting content from the community to the community.
Last but never least, a very big thank you to the ever-growing and dedicated staff. They suffered through the downtime with no more information on the situation than the rest of the community, and despite coming back to daunting queues after weeks without moderation tools, they have continued to stick with us. It truly takes dedication to donate your most valuable commodity—one's time—to volunteering for nothing in return. Please remember that a little consideration and politeness when making requests goes a long way.
Current DB Statistics—to be updated once I get the numbers from the devs- Anime: 15,254 (↑1,385)
- Manga: 46,513 (↑874)
- Characters: 108,869 (↑7,072)
- People: 35,781 (↑1,528)
- Forum: 874,409 (↑57,266)
- News: 9,119 (↑1,234)
- Reviews: 150,556 (↑20,372)
- Recommendations: 99,804 (↑9,228)
Happy New Year! Here's to a better 2019 than 2018 o/ |
