Split forum into; more parts

[Guest Magatsu]

Hello everyone,

 

If I remember right this kind of topic was already been discussed longer ago.

And I still yet think it's a good idea to divide the forum into more "parts"

 

Let's create a kpop part. to discuss kpop things and to download kpop stuff. 

 

Also would be nice if we could seperate visual kei and jrock.

Now days this forum is almost Visual Kei only and it's hard to find non-vk topics or music.

 

 

So the music part  of forum would look like:

Visual Kei

Japanse pop, rock & metal.

Korean pop

 

with all subforums we already have.

 

 

somehow it doesn't matter if the VK part and the Kpop part would be more active. but at least those who want to talk about "normal" they don't need to.

We just need to kinda post then in those sub forums. we need to fill them.

 

 

however a kpop part is 100% needed.

 

 

EDIT:

I saw Style talking about "ANIME" subforum.

and yes that's a damn good idea. and ANIME/MANGA subforum would be even greater!

Also cdrama jdrama-kdrama subforum would be also nice. to discuss our dramas

 

 

ps. if more people have ideas for must have subforums, then post it!

[kissapuu 4]

Like I voiced my opinion in the chat, despite being new blood, I'll put it up here too.

 

I think this is something that should be considered, however, too clearly dividing a forum into three or so parts wouldn't be good because people might easily get holed in their own little circle. It can't be good for the forums as whole.

 

Maybe the best way would be to keep the "public" general area as wide as possible by leaving as many of the important main subs there as possible (sort of a plaza), and then form smaller forums with less subs for the different musics. That way people could be encouraged to post about general Japanese rock/pop/whatever or K-pop in the appropriate forum, without making the separate forums the main thing and having people hole up in them too much (hopefully).

 

As a new user who is not specifically into Vkei, but Japanese popular- underground- indie- and whatever J-music in general (including some Vkei), I find myself browsing through a lot of threads that I know are about just another Vkei band to me. I know there are some threads about other stuff, so there should be some interest in music other than Vkei, but I'm afraid single threads here and there are not very encouraging for posting after the thread has been dead for a while.

[Peace Heavy mk II 7200]

So you want to share Korean pop music on a Japanese rock forum.

[Guest Magatsu]

yeah kinda also to make it more intersting for more people.

and more and more people who listen to jrock gonna love kpop or love kpop. so would be "nice" to add it.

[Gaz 1097]

"So forum would look like:

 

Visual Kei

Japanse pop, rock & metal.

Korean pop

Korean pop

Korean pop

Korean pop

Korean pop

......"

 

RIP M-H

[Guest Magatsu]

MH will be not death if we add kpop.

Now it's almost visual kei only. and that's also a pity.

[Peace Heavy mk II 7200]

Actually, there seems to be a lot more non-vkei being added. There has been a decrease in the amount of touhou being shared, at least from the few times I check the download section a week, but saying it's only visual-kei wouldn't be completely accurate. Most of our avid sharers tend to stick to just the vkei scene, but if people make more requests for other kinds of music then I'm sure that will be shared as well.

[Guest Magatsu]

maybe people don't really ask because it seems to be more a "VK" forum only.

We could try it out to split it, and there are users who have "non-vk" to share. 

 

we have the tag sytem. but as for me I don't like it. I don't wanna click on a tag to know what kind of music it is.

[Champ213 1858]

I will say two things about this:

 

A while ago we reorganized the forum to reduce the number of subforums. Why? Many subforums simply weren't used. For example, I think we did have a subforum for Anime and Manga long time ago - but it had very little activity, so we merged it with the general Entertainment forum. So obviously we are hesisant to create a new spree of subforums that in all likelihood won't be used either. The general Entertainment forum has a decent amount of activity - but now imagine we would split this up into seperate forums for Anime/Manga, Games, Books, etc. Each section would have a lot less activity. Less activity would mean that people won't go through the extra clicks of checking all these subforums individually, slowing down activity even further.

 

As a general rule I think forums should only be split up if they get a lot of activity that makes a split necessary, and each new subfoum should be able to "live on its own" ie. be able to attract enough users to make it active. If I look at the Entertainment section, I don't really see enough anime/manga-related posts to make a viable subforum. As a matter of fact, the majority of posts seem to be videogame-related. So if anything it would the Games that deserver their own subforum. Our past experience has shown that simply creating a subforum for something will not make users post in it.

 

 

So, let's talk about the forums with the most activity. That would be the News and Downloads forum. Splitting up the DL forum in particular has been discussed by staff members many times. Some are in favour, some are not. Some problems include clear genre seperations and the fear that a "Non-vk" forum would not receive enough activity. There's also the worry that splitting the forum into "vk" and "Non-vk" would also split up the userbase of the forum, reducing their interaction. We hoped that the introduction of the tagging system would help a bit in this regard - if you look for a specific genre, you can click on the tag and get all downloads for that genre - as long as it's tagged correctly. Obviously, adding proper tags is the responsibilty of the uploader. Once a month or so, I go through the list of tags, merge duplicates, delete tags violating our rules etc. but I cannot check every thread that is missing tags, download it, listen to it, and then add the matching tags myself.

 

Overall, the idea to split up the DL forum into subforums is an idea that's still on the table, if enough people really want it.

[Guest Magatsu]

Yeah but it's so annoying that there are no more split ups because somehow it's also stupid to post everything into entertrainment or other parts. if you want to talk about something.

 

And even if it's not that active. So what? at least we have a nice overview and we don't need to check up all topics from the damn entertrainment to find something.

 

 

It's always "if enough people want it".

 

 

Why can't it just HAPPEN?

 

Just let's try it one one more time!

[Champ213 1858]

And even if it's not that active. So what?

 

Because:

 

Less activity would mean that people won't go through the extra clicks of checking all these subforums individually, slowing down activity even further.

 

In other words: if a forum is hardly active, people won't bother to check there anymore. If they don't bother to check there, they won't post replies or new topics. What good it is to have "a nice overview" if nobody actually responds to your topics?

 

And as I said, it's not like we haven't tried before. We used to have a LOT more subforums then we do now. When we finally trimmed down the mess of subforums, the feedback was overwhelmingly positive - including yours, by the way.

 

If the Entertainment section needs a split-up the Gaming posts would be the most obvious choice for their own forum. Which in reverse would also clean up the remaining Entertainment section a bit, I guess.

 

It's always "if enough people want it".

 

Why can't it just HAPPEN?

 

Because it's always about what the people want. We don't just want to introduce a major change like this just because we, or a few select users, want it. And the last time this was discussed in public, most of the participating users were actually against splitting up the forums. So we didn't.

 

However, that discussion was two years ago, so t's quite possible that public opinion has changed since then.

 

So I'm more then interested to hear what other people think about this. I'm off to work now (nightshift awaits), but maybe when I'm back there's some more feedback from other users about this. I will also post some of the thoughts/suggestions that were made when the issue was discussed among staff members in recent months.

[Kaye 296]

Being one of the people who's been here for years, and being one who listens to kpop at that, I still think this isn't a good idea.

 

This forum is supposed to be about Japanese music, right? We already have a section where we upload rock music that isn't necessarily Japanese, but it still is Asian. Isn't that good enough? Also, it's been years since this forum was only about all the VK. I get most of my Japanese rock music from this place, and I haven't been really listening to VK in years.

 

There are a lot of blogs and websites out there sharing Kpop music. Now I'm not against listening to kpop, but it would result in a surge of kpop kids who, if you've seen anything at all, are pretty much brain dead (not everyone, but I'm sure you know what I mean) and you'd get threads full of oppa oppa ooppppaaaaaaa. Aren't there already enough websites for this? Call me narrowminded or ignorant or anything you'd want for that opinion, but as someone who's seen enough of the kpop world, I'd like to see Monochrome as some kind of website that still keeps to its original idea.

 

Besides, how could we have split forums for every genre for instance, when so many rock bands are such a mix of thousands at once?

[kai_desu 340]

Kaye you stole words out of my mouth on this matter.

[Guest Magatsu]

Kai, this was requested 2 years ago. now I'm requesting again after 2 freaking years. time does change.

And I'm sure people would love to have a kpop part to talk and share stuff.

 

but your words kinda tell me that you are afraid to try it out.

 

Also why should this forum stay Japanese only? eh.. the name is monochrome heaven. so to add kpop is no problem.
 

 

yeah my feedback then was positive but as I said back then

But I actually hoped for the upgrading of the download section

 

and then champ said

We (or Kai, to be precice XD) are currently working on something for
the DL section. I can't really say when it will roll out though,
because it's not just some minor tweak.

But nothing did happen in the mean while at all.

 

Also about that renewal ZESS board topic from back then here my notes.
 

- Rumors and Current Events have now been condensed into the News Section. Now, you only have to look at one place to get all of your information.
That was perfect it still is.

- The subforums for Artists have been done away with. All artists are now together under one forum.
Yes that was good just to have one forum for ARTIST. but it's still japanese only and kinda jrock only.

- A new metaforum, Words & Images has been created to hold the Gallery and Lyrics forums as subforums.
Is still nicu that it happened

- The American, Asian and European music sections have been deleted and all topics moved into Global Music General Discussion (which is just arenamed version of the General Discussion forum for that section).
But we need to get kpop back. just only kpop. all others can be still be Global

- The Others section has been renamed to Odds & Ends.
- The Japanese Stuff section has been scrapped due to long-standinginactivity. All 8 topics can now be found in Odds & Ends General Discussion.
- Games & Spam is now a subforum of Toasted Waffles.
That was okay.

 

But yeah.. those changes back then where good.

 

but there still could be added a bit.

subforums for:

jpop downloads/discussions/news
kpop downloads/discusions/news

jdrama/cdrama/kdrama
anime/manga

 

 

And after all we need to find a way to get this forum more active.

So adding kpop to it, maybe new people will check this forum out because they can talk more easy about kpop~

and jpop would be nicu too. because we also should not forget that there are also many great jpop artist around.

 

 

and i'm not saying that I want that this forum turns into a KPOP forum.

[Pandabear 414]

Yeah personally I don't see the need for the creation of all these other categories. We already had them before and it was condensed. I think things work better the way they are now. Talking specifically about the DL section, tt gets people to try out new genres and bands they wouldn't otherwise try out and if you're looking for specific genres or bands, you can use the search function. It's a win win for everyone. For those who want variety/are looking for different music and those who want to specifically listen to one type of genre.

 

I haven't seen that many people interested in jdrama/kdrama, so I'm not sure how active those threads would be and for anime/manga you can just start threads for that in the entertainment section. 

 

And I don't see the need for a specific K-pop section either. If you want to download k-kop, you can go to the asian section where it's posted along with other asian music that's non-japanese. Actually, most of the posts in that section recently have become Korean releases. For the global music, simply start a thread for whatever korean band/group you want to discuss. I believe there's already Korean thread in there too. I don't understand why it's so important to have a category specifically dedicated to K-pop, when want you want can already be served with what the forum offers.

[Kaye 296]

Also why should this forum stay Japanese only? eh.. the name is monochrome heaven. so to add kpop is no problem.

 

I don't really understand why you don't get what people have been saying. It's not that everyone doesn't want there to be Korean releases. It's that it shouldn't be the focus, and if you're going to make half of the thing "kpop" it will be.

 

Besides, isn't this for the owners to decide anyway?

[Guest Magatsu]

@ Kaye
as if we add a kpop subforum or something similar that this forum turns into a complete kpop forum.

there are enough people here who would love to talk about kpop in special subforum for it.

 

you kinda sound right now that you totall not want it happen that there will be added a smal subforum just for kpop. you don't even need to visited it.

Also it's more fun for people to discover kpop with people they know then just going to THE kpop forums where you just don't know anybody.

 

@panda
You are right somehow but that's already 2 years ago or something. so kinda why not to try it out one more time and to check if it will be more active this time?

To say over and over "it's not gonna be active" without even trying it out after a long periot. then you really don't know if it really is not going to work out.

I would even be active in a manga/anime subforum and drama subforum (^.^)/  also if jpop would have kinda a subforum I would also be more active into it. now I've only feeling that this forum is only for VK. even not for normal rock anymore..

 

but anyway you 2

 

I've already also discussed this in the CHAT and there are few more members for this kind of idea.

However because first the "STAFF" thing need to be cleared they won't answer on this topic yet.

 

So~ let's put this topic at a small pit and let's first check what comes out at the topic from Dispo to reform the Staff.
ok?! ^^

[Champ213 1858]

But nothing did happen in the mean while at all.

 

Actually, it did. We wanted to add a system to allow users to sort/filter the download section better. Eventually that's why the tagging system was introduced. Instead of adding lots of subforums for different genres, genre-description should be added as tag. Clicking on a tag gives you a neat forum-like overview of all uploads of that genre.

 

It seemed like the best of both worlds: topics of less common genres are still posted in the main DL section (instead of being in a barely active subforum that people forget about), but at the same time can be searched and displayed easily.

 

Obviously that wasn't the "upgrade" you had hoped for, since you mentioned that you hate adding tags to posts.

[Guest Magatsu]

taging is just. not everyone use tags. and sometimes it's damn confused to put tags because a band can maybe have 10000 of tags. and then still if you click on a tag it doesn't mean that you will get something you are looking for.

 

The only thing if you really don't wanna change anything in subforums in da future.

Maybe more topic tags can be added?

that it kinda looks like [visual kei] [ALBUM] [name of band and name of song] - [jpop] [single] [name of band and name of song] <- kinda that.

And some other pars of the forum too.

 

But I would love to see more subforums for somethings.

 

But as said first the squarrel about "STAFF" positions need to be done. 
So let's talk about this later again!

[Gaz 1097]

more important thing is reorganisation in the moderation team and make forum more active than it is now. we don't need a lot of changes right now, imo. let's wait for the mods' decision about the main problem and not push on them with all things at once.

[Ito 2438]

squarrel? Is that like 2 squirrels fighting?

 

I prescribe to the theory that you should have the absolute least amount of subforums as possible. It is impossible to give everything a home...it's kind of like trying to give genre labels to bands, and we all know how fucking ridiculous that this. 

 

This isn't about being anally organized, it is about creating just enough organization to be conducive to conversation. When you have a super active forum with thousands of posts a day, it makes sense to split things up so that threads don't immediately get washed down the page. But MH isn't in that kind of situation, about the only forum that is active enough to push a new post to the second page in the matter of a day is the downloads forum.

 

There are also massive negatives to having too many subforums, they massively limit exposure. I would argue there are places where subforums are hurting us now (specifically the news->events subforum). Making people drill down even further kills so many views to any specific thread in that subforum...I would say as much as 75%, if not more.

 

Needless to say, I do not think we need a reorg when it comes to subforums. I am fine with the discussion of reshuffling or adding new forums if the need arises.

 

 

Kpop:

 

There are two problems I have with this.

 

One: I reject that idea that you can not properly discuss or download Kpop as things are now. Absolutely nothing is stopping you. If you want to post it, talk about it, download it, it's all good

 

Two: We are not a Kpop site. If there is one thing that I have learned about forums over my past 10 years of actively visiting and running forums, it is that they work best when they are specific to a certain topic. In our case, it is Japanese Rock. I will never try and stifle discussion of Kpop, I will welcome it with open arms...which as I just stated above, you can already actively do on our site. But I will never make it our focus, just like I wouldn't agree to do it for any other genre of music.

[kissapuu 4]

 

There are also massive negatives to having too many subforums, they massively limit exposure. I would argue there are places where subforums are hurting us now (specifically the news->events subforum). Making people drill down even further kills so many views to any specific thread in that subforum...I would say as much as 75%, if not more.

 

 

Lack of subforums/organization can result in a lack of exposure all the same.

 

I absolutely agree that there should not be a ton of subforums, and that the existence of every single one should be well justified. I also don't see much point in dividing the downloads section, a tag system would work better, if it can be implemented (tagging old threads might be problematic though - who would do that?).

 

But even a single subforum for discussing "non-VK" stuff, general Jrock or whatever you want to call it, could be good. Because right now everything is in the general pool of discussion, and the general pool consists of mostly visual-kei. There seems to be a fair amount of interest in Japanese rock music other than just VK, and the threads and posts are there. But because the general pool is VK, everything else is just sprinkled in between. It's there, and sure, it can be discussed there in the future too, but it can really leave those single threads severely unexposed and eventually forgotten, because they've been buried under the VK stuff. Having even a single non-VK subforum to keep that stuff in it's own little locker would at least keep that stuff easily available.

 

No opinion K-pop though, sure this is a jrock forum so it's kind of a weird concept. But others have said many members here listen to K-pop so... dunno. Still, none of this is urgent or something that should be addressed right now, as Gaz said. Get the thing on your plate right now sorted out first.

[TheBistroButcher666 228]

A lot of members here listen to black metal, should we make an entire section of the forum dedicated to black metal? I know it's not Japanese but neither is Korean, it's also metal which is more related to rock than pop music.

Basically that's the argument I'm seeing for Kpop.

[Champ213 1858]

 

But even a single subforum for discussing "non-VK" stuff, general Jrock or whatever you want to call it, could be good. Because right now everything is in the general pool of discussion, and the general pool consists of mostly visual-kei. There seems to be a fair amount of interest in Japanese rock music other than just VK, and the threads and posts are there.

 

 

If anything deserves to get their own subforum, then I think it would indeed be "non-vk" Jrock. This has been discussed among staff several times before, specifically for the DL section. We hoped a tagging system would help out, but obviously while people tag uploads as "visual kei", nobody would really tag their files with "non-vk", so there isn't really a good way to sort the forum for jrock outside of vk.

 

I think a decent amount of activity has to come first, then the subforums. So my advice to anyone who wants a special subforum for their specific niche: talk about it! There are places to discuss allmost anything in here. But the person who started this thread and is so passionate about K-Pop that they want a seperate discussion forum for it hasn't posted ONCE in the Global Music Forum in any of the existing K-Pop threads. Why should we think they are more active in a subforum?

 

Show us that you care! Post about your favourite topics! If you know there are other people around with the same interestes, encourage them to join the discussion! If there really is a lot of activity for any certain niche, may it be Kpop, or Anime, or raw trve chinese underground black metal, then creating a seperate forum for it is a much more viable option.

[Zeus 7997]

So there you have it: if you want a dedicated subforum for a topic, you have to show there is significant demand for it. We only want to create a subforum if we know it will be used. So go out there, start some topics and see if you can get enough momentum going. We'll revisit this topic in a few months when we have more information.