Should news threads that are one month old be locked? Reason, counter arguments, and complaints

Should news threads that are one month old be locked?

Dec 10, 2013 9:14 AM

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Jan 2011

2858

Luna_ said:
Modification of Rule #2 due to threads consistently being bumped with no new information beyond the two week time limit. Old news threads will now be auto-locked without message 1 month after their creation. The goal of this rule is (and has always been) to keep the topic list relevant. A user should be able to enter the News Board and easily see new news topics which they can discuss, without needing to read through 100+ (5 index pages of) threads. The modification of this rule will help us to better facilitate the purpose of the News Board: "current news".

2. Do not bump threads more than two weeks old unless you have new information to add.
+ News threads will be locked 1 month after the announcement to keep the topic list relevant (quarterly threads are exempt). If additional newsworthy information is released after this time period, please submit a news article or message a moderator from the News Team. Otherwise, please move series-specific discussion to the anime/manga series boards.

Counter arguments

Symbv said:
When I was a news mods, I actively policed the News Board and reported every unwarranted bumping (like a news about a "new anime" that was 2 years old) which of course caused quite a bit of work for the mods, and I asked for locking of threads that is more than TWO YEARS OLD, but in return I got thrown with a "guideline" that said there should not be any more post for news thread more than TWO WEEKS OLD. And when I resisted, I was told that "no useful information got posted to such thread after a few weeks anyway" and there will only people posting "want to watch" "don't like" kind of posts will post. I find such attitude to be quite condescending and cynical, not to say running totally against the facts - as you and I and everyone who frequents the News Board know very well. The thing is, even news mods post to thread older than one month to provide new update like new cast or new PV that is not worth a thread of its own.

Now I have a bunch of info that I could no longer share with MAL. For example a PV on Kiki's Delivery Service live action movie (where else can I post it?) or the new D-Frag PV or the KanColle official anime website and so on and so on. I find it deeply ironic that I am so eager to share information, while the very place that is supposed to facilitate information sharing is rejecting me. Shall I go back to my haunt in Japanese forums and stop sharing news with the international fandom? This seems to be what MAL is telling me to do....

Ejc said:
I think the new policy is utterly ridiculous. MAL is going backwards in usefulness, as further threads made due to older threads being locked, just clutters the forum board. The thread closures, also makes it annoying when you don't even know a thread is locked, unless you actually visit the thread. Also, it is much harder to communicate new information on anime that hasn't aired yet in their individual series-specific discussion boards.

Who exactly is making these decisions here now?

We need someone to make a thread, and get all poople against the closure of threads after 1 month to post in it. We need to pressure the mods to revert this decision, as symbv and I did a while ago to consider preair dates on database entries (they now add the preair information in bold on the anime synopsis rather than assuming everyone knows about the More Info tab, which is better than nothing done at all).

shigeru212 said:
I'm not a big fan of the news forum changes.

Let's say that a brand new PV comes out for Noruin in the next week. Usually symbv or someone else would post a link to that in the "Nourin gets an anime adaption thread", a thread which is certainly over a month old. Under the new system, that thread will be locked. Moreover, the only way to communicate the new information is to make a new thread about it. However, it's a relatively minor piece of news and it's unlikely that it would get it's own thread or that the news system would be navigable if every minor story got it's own thread, given the sudden influx of stories.

Besides PV's, seiyuu announcements, concept art from the show, information about the OP and ED, and other important information might not be communicated. I can only imagine minor benefits from closing the threads and this may be a case of making the perfect the enemy of the good.

hpulley said:
Time from green light announcement to actual showing is months or years. New details, PVs come out. Do we need a news article separately posted every time a seiyuu or key visual is shown? Seems silly to me but there must be a proper bitching thread somewhere.

Progeusz said:
I can't help but think mods are getting lazy and want to avoid trouble of reading so many news threads. I doubt many would link them just a PV asking to create a new thread (or even if they had no problems with that, they would still feel bad about creating so insignificant thread sothey would decide to not send the PM at all), so most of discussion in this board would be effectively killed, only early impressions would remain and mods would have an excuse of them being too fast to moderate - all resulting in having almost no work to do. Such a great plan. Too bad it hurts the community. Gravely. News forum is probably the most useful of all on MAL. It certainly is to me and it saddens me to see how things are changing lately. I hope you'll forgive my maybe too hasty assumptions but please understand me - I'm worried about state of this forum and want to find some reason in your actions.

What are your opinions on the matter? As a user, the person most affected by this change.

VioLinkDec 10, 2013 9:55 AM

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Dec 10, 2013 10:03 AM

Hahalollawl

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May 2013

760

Here is the thread in the Suggestions forum: http://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=702895

Dec 11, 2013 1:22 AM

Rachmaninow

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Feb 2012

4070

Closing those threads after only a month is inane. Many anime get additional information revealed much later- like the cast and whatnot- and every time that happens, we are supposed to make a new thread just for that (or let the news mods know)? That is clearly and undoubtedly a sign of the mods getting lazy and trying to lessen their workloads as much as possible. And usually I could understand that. But in this particular sub-forum (the news board, that is) such behavior cannot be tolerated. Make it 6 months at the very least and then we can talk.

The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one. - Albert Einstein

Dec 11, 2013 4:42 AM

hpulley

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Sep 2012

3948

I posted this as a comment but this will last longer here:

I first came to MAL just for what it is by name "my anime list" but later I got involved with the forums.

I do like that they have a thread for every episode/chapter so you don't have to worry about spoiling beyond the current episode, though people do that too...

The news should be the most important part of the forums but honestly you can get the sales numbers and news elsewhere for the most part, often earlier. With new 'mods' basically just posting articles suggested to them, with the exception of when symbv was a news mod they rarely ever add anything to it.

If the news mods are allowed to edit the first post and IF they will actually accept submissions to the first post I suppose it could work for them to add details later but that seems like a lot of work for them when we could just add new details to the post instead if it wasn't locked.

But I do agree there is a ton of junk in the news threads, "This looks bad. I won't watch" sort of posts. Those people should be warned once, banned for a week and then permabanned after that IMO.

Necrobumping with actual news is fine IMO. Even partway through the season, new seiyuu are introduced and I believe that is newsworthy.

Dec 12, 2013 6:15 AM

tsubasalover

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Nov 2007

31560

At first I thought I shouldn't join this club because I'm part of the mod. team, but I'm thinking the same with the club that I joined in the end. (I might get mad at other mods. if they found this out, so I'm going to put spoiler tag)

tsubasaloverDec 12, 2013 6:24 AM

I ♥ Two Syaorans from Tsubasa RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE and TRC!!!

Dec 12, 2013 11:29 PM

Hahalollawl

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May 2013

760

^^^ Your honesty is appreciated. And frustration absolutely understandable. It appears you are a victim of this policy as well.

For example, I saw you post a new thread for Rettousei when there was news about when it was going to air. Since the other thread was closed, that seemed to make sense, as people would then be able to discuss it. But then the thread got closed and your post merged into the previously closed Rettousei thread which was then reopened. So the question is, why was the old Rettousei thread closed in the first place?! Did they think that it would never be updated with the airing date? Or is it their plan to close off discussion/threads until there is an update? WHY NOT JUST LEAVE IT OPEN?! By the way, I have a question, as a News mod do you have the power to reopen the closed threads in order to post updates like the Rettousei airing date, or do only certain mods have that power?

And if you do have that power, are you supposed to open closed threads whenever there is an announcement? Or only certain announcements? It's so unclear. Are we supposed to depend on mods reopening threads for every update? Or are they just going to reopen threads for updates that they deem sufficiently important? What about the Seiyuu announcement I mentioned in the Suggestions thread? Is that not significant enough to reopen the thread for Black Bullet? If the threads for these shows were left open, the community could contribute the "less important" news updates.

The problem is using this policy to stop necrobumping is like using a chainsaw for brain surgery. It can cause so much collateral damage that it doesn't seem worth it. However, I appreciate you posting in here. I understand you have probably stuck your neck out a bit doing so, but I think voicing your opinion is the right thing to do. It seems like someone (or some people) at the top just decided to do this without consulting you or many of us in the community.

HahalollawlDec 12, 2013 11:38 PM

Dec 13, 2013 4:46 AM

tsubasalover

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Nov 2007

31560

The power to reopen the forum would be forum moderators. I don't have the power to do so because I'm only posting news and check if the news submissions are newsworthy or not.

tsubasaloverDec 13, 2013 4:50 AM

I ♥ Two Syaorans from Tsubasa RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE and TRC!!!

Dec 13, 2013 11:21 AM

Hahalollawl

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May 2013

760

tsubasalover said:
The power to reopen the forum would be forum moderators. I don't have the power to do so because I'm only posting news and check if the news submissions are newsworthy or not.

Ahhh, the silent majority. Such an annoying argument because it's so difficult to prove right or wrong. Nobody really knows if this "silent majority" even exists because they are...silent...

I don't know if you have noticed, but a lot of us in this "minority" are those who frequent the News forum and contribute to discussions a lot. Those of us who actually CARE enough about it to comment and be concerned. Some of these users have been around for YEARS. Sure, plenty of people haven't said anything. But do you think they actually support this policy? Or, perhaps, they simply don't care about the News forum very much.

So basically it sounds like they want news moderators to be the gate keepers, which in my opinion could create more work for you guys as you have to evaluate news and determine whether or not it is worthy of making a new thread. Also, it sounds like a lot of announcements/updates will be ignored under this policy, because they are not worthy of having their own threads. That's such a bad idea...

Honestly, I wouldn't mind if this policy applied to other forums, but the News forum is the one forum where I think it makes things particularly difficult, since minor updates not worthy of new threads happen often, yet people want to know about them.

And part of the problem is, who is deciding what will or will not be discussed? How can they predict that and who is judging? What if I want to discuss something but someone else does not? For example, the Seiyuu announcement wasn't included in the Black Bullet thread, but I think someone like hpulley might find that newsworthy (he's a Horie Yui fan) and might want to discuss it. Someone who doesn't care about that might not want to discuss it. If you close the thread nobody can discuss it right? Is THAT the BEST solution?!

As for the "little information", it's difficult to comment on because I'm not sure what it would look like. Does that thread stay permanently open? How long does information stay in that thread? If it stays forever, that thread could get REALLY long and difficult to sift through. Also, part of the problem is, announcements probably wouldn't show up in the title of the thread. Using the example I mentioned above, if a new announcement of Black Bullet comes out and is put in the "aggregated news thread", will I be able to tell that the announcement has been posted in that thread based on the title of the thread? Or do I have to go into the thread and search through the updates to find it? If I don't know an announcement has been made how will I know to look through the aggregated news thread for that announcement?

Dec 13, 2013 12:32 PM

shigeru212

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Jun 2012

535

tsubasalover said:
The power to reopen the forum would be forum moderators. I don't have the power to do so because I'm only posting news and check if the news submissions are newsworthy or not.

In my opinion, it might be difficult for people to find the suggestions thread and this club and that's why more people are not commenting.

The mods should open a up a news thread and put this change to a vote. It might be an easier pill to swallow if it became apparent that the community at large supported this change, the loss of utility in the news forum in exchange for a reduction of necrobumping. The silent majority might not be a majority at all or they might not fully understand the changes.

In all honesty, this site isn't the easiest to navigate. A year ago, when I wasn't checking the news forum so often, I wouldn't have been able to find the suggestions thread and comment on the changes, but I probably wouldn't have supported them or at the very least I would have been neutral. I'm sure a lot of users feel the same way.

I don't fully understand the aggregate news concept (would they not be locked after a month) but anything that helps restore the lost utility of the news forum would be a welcome change.

Check out the News Club for daily rankings, discussion on future CD and BD releases, manga and novels. New members are welcome!

Dec 13, 2013 9:40 PM

#10

tsubasalover

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Nov 2007

31560

Hahalollawl said:
Ahhh, the silent majority. Such an annoying argument because it's so difficult to prove right or wrong. Nobody really knows if this "silent majority" even exists because they are...silent...

I don't know if you have noticed, but a lot of us in this "minority" are those who frequent the News forum and contribute to discussions a lot. Those of us who actually CARE enough about it to comment and be concerned. Some of these users have been around for YEARS. Sure, plenty of people haven't said anything. But do you think they actually support this policy? Or, perhaps, they simply don't care about the News forum very much.

So basically it sounds like they want news moderators to be the gate keepers, which in my opinion could create more work for you guys as you have to evaluate news and determine whether or not it is worthy of making a new thread. Also, it sounds like a lot of announcements/updates will be ignored under this policy, because they are not worthy of having their own threads. That's such a bad idea...

Honestly, I wouldn't mind if this policy applied to other forums, but the News forum is the one forum where I think it makes things particularly difficult, since minor updates not worthy of new threads happen often, yet people want to know about them.

And part of the problem is, who is deciding what will or will not be discussed? How can they predict that and who is judging? What if I want to discuss something but someone else does not? For example, the Seiyuu announcement wasn't included in the Black Bullet thread, but I think someone like hpulley might find that newsworthy (he's a Horie Yui fan) and might want to discuss it. Someone who doesn't care about that might not want to discuss it. If you close the thread nobody can discuss it right? Is THAT the BEST solution?!

Yes, I noticed.

I'm a seiyuu fan myself, too, so when I submitted my submission for applying news moderator then, it always got denied because they are not popular enough (the newsworthiness of seiyuu news depends on it). Also, I requested to unlock Nobunaga the Fool news forum before for additional casts before, but she (the head of the moderators) always says not newsworthy until I said some might want to discuss about seiyuu mentioned. But in the end there was no discussion about the update info. that she now thinks that it was not a good decision at all.

Hahalollawl said:
As for the "little information", it's difficult to comment on because I'm not sure what it would look like. Does that thread stay permanently open? How long does information stay in that thread? If it stays forever, that thread could get REALLY long and difficult to sift through. Also, part of the problem is, announcements probably wouldn't show up in the title of the thread. Using the example I mentioned above, if a new announcement of Black Bullet comes out and is put in the "aggregated news thread", will I be able to tell that the announcement has been posted in that thread based on the title of the thread? Or do I have to go into the thread and search through the updates to find it? If I don't know an announcement has been made how will I know to look through the aggregated news thread for that announcement?

shigeru212 said:

I don't fully understand the aggregate news concept (would they not be locked after a month) but anything that helps restore the lost utility of the news forum would be a welcome change.

We haven't fully finalized with the discussion, but planning to start posting one soon, but one of the moderators suggested to lock within a week (even shorter).

tsubasaloverDec 13, 2013 9:46 PM

I ♥ Two Syaorans from Tsubasa RESERVoir CHRoNiCLE and TRC!!!

Dec 13, 2013 11:09 PM

#11

Hahalollawl

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May 2013

760

Well, it sounds like you're on our side of this issue and you understand where a lot of us are coming from.

It sounds like the decision to implement this policy was made from the top down and it's really not your fault. I apologize if it seemed like I was directing my anger at you, it's just so frustrating. And you seem to be the only mod interested in actually engaging with us, members of the community, to discuss this policy. Perhaps just as many news stories are considered "unimportant", we the members of the community are "unimportant" and therefore deemed unworthy of being communicated with. I don't think I've seen any other mod bother to respond to this or the suggestions thread.

I think that has made this situation even more frustrating. The lack of communication (as far as I know) with members of the community and the apparent suddenness of the implementation just doesn't seem right.

Also, just because one seiyuu announcement didn't get discussed enough seiyuu announcements are no longer newsworthy? What kind of freaking logic is that? Ridiculous.

HahalollawlDec 13, 2013 11:12 PM

Dec 14, 2013 10:44 AM

#12

Rachmaninow

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Feb 2012

4070

Judging by what I've seen tsubasalover post, to me it looks like the mod job in general is made unnecessarily difficult and complicated. News mods, too, invest a good amount of their free-time in that particular sub-board, and instead of being praised for their commitment, they get scolded for posting 'not news-worthy' topics.
If that is how things are going to be from now on- maybe even worse- we might as well ditch the whole news system and post direct links to anime news sites. Such idiocy, unbelievable.

The release of atomic energy has not created a new problem. It has merely made more urgent the necessity of solving an existing one. - Albert Einstein

Dec 14, 2013 10:58 AM

#13

Hahalollawl

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May 2013

760

Honestly it sounds kind of like the forum mods want to dictate that only news that THEY deem sufficiently important gets posted in the News forum, and this is their way of making sure the rest of the news doesn't get posted. They don't think Seiyuu announcements are newsworthy? Well, then no more seiyuu announcements! Never mind what those of us in the community think is newsworthy...

And it sounds like they think THEY know what will or won't be discussed, and is therefore newsworthy. What hubris! It sounds kinds like they think they know the community BETTER than WE, THE COMMUNITY KNOW OURSELVES?! We want the threads left OPEN so people can POST and DISCUSS the smaller updates/information and they want to CLOSE them because the mods think they WON'T be discussed?! What kind of bullshit is that?

So I guess from now on news is supposed to only go through the mods. Yet, the news mods can't open the locked threads so...what the heck?! Do they need to go through the forum mods? Or is news about shows in locked threads just not going to get posted? Also, if the mods expect people to send the news to them (and thereby helping them do their job), perhaps they should think twice about alienating people in the community like symbv, who would be likely to keep track of that news.

HahalollawlDec 14, 2013 11:03 AM

Jan 4, 2014 8:34 PM

#14

quercifolia

☆A-Qing's hair☆

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Jun 2008

1564

1 month old? Doesn't mean it's irrelevant... News threads should be closed when irrelevant: IE, 'announcement' threads should close when the anime status changes and the news becomes irrelevant: For example: Iit starts airing or is cancelled, delayed, etc; and if the latter then a new thread be opened.

Otherwise, leave the thread alone! Unless it gets to be, like, a year old or something with no updates to the anime. I can understand not wanting to be completely old and pointless news, ie announced anime that never got any further news such as 'Savannah Game'.

On a case to case basis not just a huge blanket over everything, that's like trying to fit the squares triangles and crosses all through a single circle hole, doesn't exactly work ...

Jan 5, 2014 12:05 AM

#15

yhunata

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Apr 2011

13799

It seems kinda unfair for some threads that still has room for debate, but for some threads it's fine, I guess. I mean, threads announcing things other than sequels, such as deaths, injuries, incidents, etc. might be better off getting closed for posting after some time, unless anything new arises. I do have to say that one month is too soon, though.

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