2020 Yearly Wrap-Up...
...in Code
MAL's business and development team were hard at work over the last year, even with all the mess and complications of pandemics and lockdowns, to continue improving the site for our community. Here are some of the major changes and events we saw over the last year:- Carole & Tuesday 3rd Live Free Global Stream—We kicked off this year with a free global stream of the 3rd Carole & Tuesday Live event on the newly introduced MAL Live Streaming Platform.
- Duplicate Account Scoring Correction System—As promised at the end of 2019, we rolled out our system to correct for rating troll scoring votes in February and recalculated all DB scores site-wide. Despite some concerned PMs I've received recently regarding Shingeki no Kyojin, the system is continuing to work well at combating duplicate account scoring.
New Public API—After extensive beta testing by a group of trusted 3rd party developers and the creation of a new API area in your account settings, MAL's API v2 was made public for all users. The next version is currently being beta tested and we hope to see more development on the API in the next year.
- Official Android & iOS Apps (Phase 1)—We launched brand new, made from scratch, apps for MAL on both Android and iOS systems! The apps are still in the first phase so include only basic anime features for now, but new features have been in development for the last weeks and you can expect to see more updates on these early in 2021.
- Two-Factor Authentication—For users looking to add an additional layer of security to their account, we implemented 2FA near the end of the year. This can be turned on (or off) via your account settings.
- Performance & Security Upgrades—Our development team has put a lot of time and effort into upgrading MAL's backend code over the last year, to keep the site both secure and functioning optimally. Since the site is a mix of new and very old code, sometimes the delicate balance can be thrown off, and developers and users alike were tearing out their hair during various periods of frequent downtimes in 2020. As MAL's community continues to grow, these upgrades become more and more important, even though they're development efforts we can't really "see" (unless something goes wrong...) A big thanks to our development engineering team for their constant dedication to keeping MAL up and running.
...in Community
Come hell or high water, MAL's recurring community events continue on. If you haven't done so yet, make a New Year's resolution to try at least one in 2021!- 2020 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 2021 challenges opening within the next week!
- My MALentine Story: 2nd Edition—This year, we brought back a previous Valentine's event where users emptied text bubbles on manga panels and put their own text to create their own story. MALentine's event changes up each year, so keep an eye out for our 2021 plans.
- Scoring System Update: Express yourself with emoji 💯 💩—We "updated" MAL's scoring system to be hip and popular with the young folk by taking out scores and implementing emoji for our yearly April Fool's prank. Some people always forget every year~ >:]
- Easter Bunny's Beach Episode!—MAL's Easter Bunny got tired of pandemic spring and decided to race towards summer instead, before being stopped by 538 MAL detectives! Our participation stayed high this year and we hope to get even more participants in 2021 as well! MAL's yearly Easter event involves a site-wide treasure hunt (including riddles!) to save Easter, and is a favourite of many community members.
- Fantasy Anime League 2020: Spring & Fall Editions—FAL continues to be a popular event for many users. The goal of the event is to guess which new anime will be the most watched and talked about show that season. Fall 2020 is wrapping up next week, but the event should return for the Spring 2021 season.
- MALoween✟Mansion: Kimitachi no Naku Koro ni 7 -When You Cry-—Our spooky mansion returned for its seventh year, filled with challenges and quests. Only 281 users attempted the event, so we'll be hoping to see an increase in that number next year. Still it's super fun for the staff to see many returning users and new faces each year.
- Secret Santa—Final user count still to come, but Santa's Workshop shipped out a record-breaking 1,665 gifts this year! If you missed it this year, be sure to sign up in the first week of December 2021.
...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 9.1 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 5th year anniversary since reboot, and the club is still going strong~
Last but never least, a very big thank you to the ever-growing and dedicated staff. In 2020, we did massive recruitments across almost all teams and half of the members you see on the staff page weren't staff at this time last year. I am constantly grateful for the time and energy they give to our site and community to continue to grow it further. Innumerable database additions, edits, requests, reports, sns posts, and problems are processed each and every day of the year (even on Christmas!). MAL wouldn't be MAL without this amazing group of people.
If you would like to join this team and give back to MAL, are well-versed in the guidelines and requirements of your position of interest, and have the motivation to work independently, please consider checking out our Open Applications thread.
Current Statistics—taken on Dec 29th- Anime: 17,407 (↑2,397)
- Manga: 52,769 (↑4,275)
- Characters: 123,880 (↑6,915)
- People: 40,044 (↑3,100)
- News: 10,680 (↑704)
- Forum: 951,78 (↑27,823)
- Reviews: 179,210 (↑10,192)
- Recommendations: 204,820 (↑---)
- Facebook followers: 616,856 (↑201,079)
- Twitter followers: 285,400 (↑87,782)
Happy New Year! May 2021 be better than 2020 for all of us... |