it is announced at Plastic Tree one-man live "瞳孔乱反射(doukouranhansha)" at Zepp Tokyo at 2013/10/04 that their new mini album (title not yet finalized) will be released at 2014/03/05, although details have not yet been announced
their DVD "ONGAX〜Plastic Treeの千プラ(Plastic Tree no chi-pla)〜" will be released through J-ROCK and at their live at 2013/10/24 (4,900yen), which will include 2DVDs
There is a small weakness in the current mod team from my perspective not mentioning what being said above. None of them live in Asia which means there will be no mods active for 24/7 or at least in Asian daytime. Sometimes I see a misplaced topic or something that is not right on MH (including my own mistakes), but I can't report it to the mod team immediately.
i guess stuff like how to change the forum would rather belong into the thread magatsu created, but im just going to include it to this post , as it somehow belongs to modteam changes too (you need to have some ideas too after all.)
many regulars (at least chat regulars) talked about this situation for a while. its a fact that the forum is less populated than it was before , so we wondered why and talked about the whole situation a lot in the chat recently. but stuff like that belongs in the open or nothing gets changed at all. i also hope that people might join this discussion.
General thoughts about responsibilites and the modteam:
Like dispo said, the most important thing about a modteam that they are 1) active active active and 2) actually interested in the stuff the forum offers and 3) actually interested to be part of the community.
Sadly i dont see any of these things in the current modteam. there are exceptions of course , but im not going to say any positive or negative examples as that wouldnt be fair to anyone of the current mod team.
To get a little bit more detailed.
1) Lately i refer to mh as a lawfree place. you rarely see any mods and wrong topics or stuff like that sometimes stay on the site for a few days or they just dont get discovered at all. So thats where the first point comes in: a mod/admin team should actually be active and not just hope for the best and be kinda idle all the time. again as dispo said i dont know whats going on behind the doors, but i was a mod myself in the past( im going to say a bit about that too later on) and theres not so much stuff "backstage" to actually justify the common abscene of mods on here.its not the users job to report any single wrong thing in the forum. of course its nice to report something if you see it, but in a ideal situation the mods themselve would see stuff and correct it .
2) that leads me to my second point: you need to be interested in the stuff thats posted here to actually be able to properly do you rmodwork. not being interested in most of the news and downloads posted here AND being lazy or away is the worst combination possible. again: in a ideal situation or rather in a must be situation the mods actually need to be interested in visual kei /jrock /the news / kpop / whatever to be able to mod properly. its ok if one moves away from vk or anything offered here, but then you are just not fit to be a mod on a forum about that stuff anymore. imo a mods job is not just moving topics/locking threads. its also to be highly dedicated and interested in what the site is about, to take part in discussions and be a part of the community. and thats what my third point is about. one shouldnt be a mod just to ensure "law", one should be a mod because he/she LOVES to be on this site and LOVES the stuff the site is about. its just sad and cant be justified if a mod has like 5 posts in two months.
and to actually reach that goal the mod team (and/or possible new mods) needs to be reviewed. that leads me to a bit of my own mod story and why i left the "team". it wasnt a team at all in the past.
when i joined the mod team back in tainted world days it was actually more or less a team. everyone was fairly active and you could b e sure that if you wouldnt be able to look into the forum for lets say two days, someone else would be there for sure. that changed someday. sooner or later i found myself doing most of the stuff myself as some of the staff was just suddenly away and others lacked interest in the forum. that quickly lead to my removal of the team, because i just dont want to look over everything all the time , even though i really love this forum(im part of it for 6 years or so now). but a team is a team and not one single person and the others can lay back and hope that no one registers on the site.
meaning: a mod team should consist of people that actually care about the forum and want to increase the community AND actually being interested in the stuff thats most common in here. ideally a team should be mixed with people that like different things (vk, jrock, jpop, kpop, other stuff) .
of course things can stay like they are now, but the forum is slowly dying and it will die out sooner or later. im going to talk more about that in the second section, but atm theres no real reason to join mh. i chat with people yes, but i can just add them all to skype and it would be the same.
and thats the point: a mod team should be a good role model and actually be interested to be a part of the community.
now theres maybe the question who should be a mod: thats something that should be discussed later on , IF this might actually change something. i for myself would be willing to join, BUT it depends on how much the team changes and if i can actually say "yes this is a team of people who are active", because no one can change something alone.
changes for the forum, current situation, what to do?
first im just going to repeat something i said on the chat some days ago about the current situation: monochrome heaven as it is right now is just another blogspot site. sounds kinda stupid? maybe but if you take a closer look its not exactly far fetched. currently the only really active stuff on the site are 1) the chat 2) dl section 3) news section. lets see what a random vk blogspot offers me: news and downloads on one site and most of the time a chatbox on the sidebar. sounds exactly the same.
so that relates to the activity of the forum: if you visit this forum for the first time (maybe even coming from a blogspot because you saw that many downloads come from here) you actualyl see that its not different at all, so why contribute to the forum at all? seems kinda useless.
and thats the one most important thing right now: ACTVITY. especially in other existing categories or in new forums. because if things stay like that than monochrome heaven is just another blogspot. nothing else.
so what could be changed about that? for me its out of the question that we need to look into things beyond visual kei /j-rock. imo it wouldnt hurt to be a little bit more open to other asian stuff as k-pop/rock and maybe even other stuff like dramas. we had a bigger music section a while ago and imo it worked quite well (own forums for western and korean music for example) i think it was all migrated into the general music section in an attempt to make the forum slimmer. imo that kinda failed, as the general music section is a huge mess right now and if you are interested in korean music for example its kinda impossible to see whats in the section.
its not going to hurt anyone if we try to get people from other genres over here. its not like the vk section is going to decrease just because we have a kpop section and not just a general music section.
ideally people might even check other sections if they are active, but one can also just stay away from it. not like anyone forces you to be part of every single section here.
alright thats it from my side. if i can think of anything else to change the forum im going to add it
Lately me and various other regulars ( whom I hope voice their support for immediate action and add to the discussion ) have been thinking that there's a problem, and that is the severe lack of participation in forum activities in part of some of the staff members. It's pretty much widely acknowledged all around that especially a bulk of the blue ( and the late green, whom were subsequently and justly culled ) mods are notoriously inactive when it comes to interacting with much of the community.
It's true that I have no idea what goes on behind the scenes and what are the contributions of each one there, but I do believe that actual "moderating" is far from being the only job of a staff member. A member of the staff should have a proactive approach to the forums; interacting with the members, making topics and creating discussions as often as possible and not just once or twice a month when the mood is right. The benefits of this approach for example have been seen in the review and general sections. If Zess and CAT5 wouldn't have made all the topics and discussions there that they have I bet nobody would have and the general section would still be pretty much dead.
I think the forum would benefit a lot from updating the staff roster with users who are in the loop of the current goings in the Japanese music scene, and imporantly the said users should be known by the people and the people should know them. I bet many newcomers who registered in the late 2012, early 2013 have no clue who these people are and I can't really blame them, seeing as some of the staff rarely post anything that classifies as a contribution.
And I'm not trying to come off as hostile, but I really think this forum has seen a surge of activity as of late ( some people would very much disagree with me though ) and I think that we should capitalize on that with a new, active and participating staff. There should be as little inactivity as possible and most definately zero people that clearly stick around just because they're friends. A mod status should be for those who are absolutely dedicated and if the time comes when they cannot live up to their duties, they should resign without a second thought.
edit: I urge everyone to say either yay or nay below. There needs to be some discussion about this because this is what people complain about all the time.
Everyone, and I mean everyone has complained about the forum being dead at one point. I honestly think that a staff that is right there in the middle of everything is the best way to engage this problem. While I also realise that you might be hesitant to do a revamp after the failure of the green mods, culling the one or two that are certainly solely dead weight right now and replacing them with new ones wouldn't hurt.
edit2: To address another concern that was voiced: The user and mod apathy.
It may be a convenient excuse for staff members and users alike to free themselves of the burden of contributing just because "What does it matter when nobody else won't do anything either". That's reasonable, why would anyone post when nobody else does?
I feel this concern can be directly addressed with a proactive, enthusiastic and most importantly of all, in the loop staff. What makes or breaks any content creator and site on the web is quality and consistency. The amount of good coming from a staff that brings life to where there isn't should be obvious for anyone. One or two mods can't do that alone, it needs to be the whole team.
These changes need to be done swiftly and throughout with zero compromise or months long discussions between the administration. I think it's necessary that the amount of new blood is large is enough to reinvigorate the staff and forum.
I don't know why people are complaining about this... This is a perfect place for Satoshi to vent all of his pop, vkei songs that he wants to do and leave the heavy stuff for girugamesh
Delkmiroph reacted to Trombe in Plastic Tree new mini album & DVD release