How often do you visit the Symposium and the A4 Clubs?

[Opace]

As the topic suggests, how often do you visit the Symposium and the A4 Clubs? Also, any quick questions and suggestions can be made here.

Thank you for the feedback.

[Zer0]

Ehh once in a while. About a few times a day.

[Mr. X & Mr. Y]

Only when there is a new post worth reading. So it's relative.

[Ikki]

I basically just use A4 for the clubs I'm a member of these days, it's very rare for me to post outside that section, usually only 2-3 posts a week are outside the club area.

[Mizumi]

I visit the club section everytime I log on, which is usually only once a day.

[Gin Ichimaru]

The clubs are my primary use of A4.

[Kewkehtsu]

I might accidentally click on that section occasionally, otherwise I usually don't go there.

[KenpachiZuraki]

Im everywhere and i love the clubs on here! Everyday every hour :)

[AoX]

Never, anymore. They have no use for me.

[Foxyknoxicle]

I've said it before and I'll say it again; I wish the club I'm in was viewable on the main forum page as it was before the layout update. Instead I have to go to community > groups > choose my club. Maybe, I'm a just lazy bastard (it's a possibility).

I've noticed a pretty big decline in the activity of the one club I'm in since the introduction of the new layout too. Is it a coincidence? It could be, but I doubt it. I know for a fact that I used to follow it a lot closer and post in it more when it was viewable on the main forum page. Nowadays, checking on the club I'm in is something I have to remember to do, rather than seeing its activity as soon as I log in to A4.

It may sound like much ado about nothing, but it's a small change that I would really appreciate.

The Symposium is something I visit about once a year lol. Should I ever decide to go to a convention I'll hit it up for sure.

[NATE RIVER]

its the main thing i go to when i sign on

[Gin Ichimaru]

It seems to be an even split almost. Either users make use of the forums as a primary use of A4 or they dont go there at all.
So what should be done to maybe incorporate users who dont ever go there to get more involved in that section.
And what could be done to get users who only use the club section to be more active elsewhere on A4?

[Hybrid]

Maybe once or twice a Month, it use to be my primary reason for even coming on A4 at all...

[Jam-Kiske]

I don't visit the rest of the forums at all as I've found the clubs to be the only place conducive to almost all intelligent anime related discussion.

[Amerowolf]

I used to be in a few clubs when I joined in 2005, I was pretty active in them too, but they died. Now as I've come back I find it a bit more...unfriendly looking, but perhaps my outgoing nature has dissipated with age.

So very rarely.

[Gin Ichimaru]

I used to be in a few clubs when I joined in 2005, I was pretty active in them too, but they died. Now as I've come back I find it a bit more...unfriendly looking, but perhaps my outgoing nature has dissipated with age.

So very rarely.
I have found that the friendlyness within the clubs however has gotten a lot better in the last 3 years. =)

[Raven]

I used to be in a few clubs when I joined in 2005, I was pretty active in them too, but they died. Now as I've come back I find it a bit more...unfriendly looking, but perhaps my outgoing nature has dissipated with age.

So very rarely.

i was somewht active with those clubs myself but it didnt pick up until 06/07 when they had a boom of clubs. Now i check my clubs list, read, maybe say something then log off as such is habit

[Jam-Kiske]

i was somewht active with those clubs myself but it didnt pick up until 06/07 when they had a boom of clubs. Now i check my clubs list, read, maybe say something then log off as such is habit
This is basically the same thing I do.

I check my subscribed threads [pretty much clubs] and then move on to the next forum to check.

[Aeropolis]

I check the A4 Clubs a few times a week.

[Rom]

I check the Naruto, Dragon Ball, and One Piece clubs every time I log in.

[Muppers]

If you're implying to banish this section of the forum, I think you'd be making a vile choice. There are many people who are dedicated to these clubs and depriving them of there clubs is taking away a community.

[Rom]

If you're implying to banish this section of the forum, I think you'd be making a vile choice. There are many people who are dedicated to these clubs and depriving them of there clubs is taking away a community.
I agree. How dare you Opace, asking us a completely reasonable question! And you phrased it so politely.......you must be looking down on us!

[Gin Ichimaru]

If you're implying to banish this section of the forum, I think you'd be making a vile choice. There are many people who are dedicated to these clubs and depriving them of there clubs is taking away a community.


I agree. How dare you Opace, asking us a completely reasonable question! And you phrased it so politely.......you must be looking down on us!
Ok what in the heck are you two babbiling about over here? A4 Staff is not getting rid of the club section. It was mearly a question posed to gage what percentage of users visit and are active. That is all.

[Rom]

Ok what in the heck are you two babbiling about over here? A4 Staff is not getting rid of the club section. It was mearly a question posed to gage what percentage of users visit and are active. That is all.
Actually, I was making fun of kurapika's post by agreeing with it, a la Stephen Colbert. Sorry it came off as crazy :D

[StrawHats]

It's the section of A4 I love most about. It's awesome

[Shattergraves]

We have clubs?

[Struggler]

I look at them and post in them multiple times a day, and they're where I go first when I log on (aside from reading new PM/VM). They're where I'm most active.

They're like communities within a community.

[saramohebmosa]

Here is the feedback you need :-
well..I rarely and almost never visit A4 clubs ..maybe cuz I amn't into the groups and clubs thing ..

[Hybrid]

A4 was full of life and activity when the Clubs Section was around, getting rid of that cut A4's members list and overall activity in half... shot yourselves in the foot with that one, eh staff? lol
The funny thing is that you still haven't realized your mistake and fixed it... O_o
Myself along with many members left because of this asinine move, also don't you realize that the clubs section also had a big effect on the RP section?...

[Rusted-Blade666]

I never got to use the clubs because they were taken down before I joined but I've looked back through the archives and I must say they looked like great fun. It's a shame they are gone I would have loved to joined a few. There are still the groups but they are infantile compared to the clubs, but I guess the huge post counts were part of the problem. Still I think it would be interesting to bring them back, if only for a little while to trial and see if you can't remedy whatever issues you had before to get rid of them.

The other thing is...What is the symposium? I've never even heard of that.

[Hybrid]

a lot of us would really love to see the clubs section back, but thinking and planing ahead have never been a strong points around here... lol

[Gamma]

But the problem is, and I hope you'll really take this to heart and understand, is that the clubs were NOT full of life and activity nor did they feed into the rest of the forums except perhaps coincidentally.

And as for planning ahead, that discussion went on for quite some time before the change was made.

[Melyngar]

I check it a few times in a week. Generally I glance at it to see if there's any new activity. I don't want to spam up the fan forums with all my posts.

[Rusted-Blade666]

I check it a few times in a week. Generally I glance at it to see if there's any new activity. I don't want to spam up the fan forums with all my posts.

Yeah but the clubs now are babies compared to the old clubs they had. They were like massive, monstrous threads which you had to be invited to and some had actual rosters for different jobs inside the club and it looked really damn fun. A far cry from what they have now but at least they aren't entirely gone. If I remember right I heard they were shut down because they just got too big. Some had hundreds and hundreds of pages of posts in them and it was clogging up the server or something so they went with their new approach which is a completely miniturized and simplified version.

But the new clubs are pretty much dead except for fun and games so if not bringing back the old clubs I still think something has to be done to revitalise the existing groups system.

[Kouketsu]

I've posted in a whole bunch of places the reasons why we got rid of the clubs forum. This is the excerpt from the News forum thread on it when it happened:


This one is probably gonna hit some people hard, but there are a whole host of reasons behind it and we've all sort of seen it coming for years now. The clubs forum is going to be archived and all threads in it locked down and we're going to go through a 'transition' process in which people will be allowed to transfer any content they'd like to transfer (Club rules, etc.) to social groups. For those wondering why we're getting rid of clubs, I'll post a thread with a more thorough explanation in the club forum, but the short of it is:

A) Clubs are killing a fair chunk of activity in other forums. Topics that used to warrant multiple individual discussion threads in the anime forums now only get covered within a single, monolithic club thread where many people that may want to discuss them will never see.

B) The vast majority of the clubs here are totally dead now.

C) Social groups are just a flat-out better alternative. They allow you to create 'discussions', which are like mini threads and easier to follow with organizing.

And there are more thorough explanations elsewhere if people are interested in those. The short of it is that club threads strongly encouraged (and resulted in a ton of) spam, discouraged people from posting topics on certain series that non-club members could respond to, and all but like three of the dozens (Hundreds?) of clubs were totally dead. The concept had really run its course, at least in that incarnation. We put in a lot of work towards trying to make Social Groups work in place of clubs but many of the remaining club members were too stubborn to even give it a try because they held a grudge from us getting rid of the old section.

I really don't wanna sound mean about it, but if people left the forum solely because we transitioned clubs from their spammy threads to an organized, policeable social groups format, there's a valid question to be asked about whether or not they were coming here for the wrong reasons.

[Shannon Apple]

Yeah, I have to agree. The social clubs allow for much more freedom of how information is displayed. People can even mod their own groups and to keep a group active is really up to it's administrator. If the club leaders endorsed the move to begin with, there wouldn't be a problem.

The clubs allow people to have a spam thread where they can talk about their day, a serious thread where they can discuss the topic and other threads for various club competitions and whatnot.

Actually, while we are on this subject, if any new members wish to take over some of the old clubs from people that left, (causing the club to die) I am willing to transfer ownership so long as you have a revival plan in place. Just PM me.

[KingSpart22]

I agree that the clubs are set up better for how they can be controlled. But the ubrupt relocation and change confused me and kinda pushed me away. I lost interest because we had a thriving community in the Clubs and RPs. The people who disliked the change affected everything and to me it wasnt handled properly by the staff that had control over that situation. However, that is not an excuse for the Clubs not being active NOW, people who made the Clubs or who make the Clubs know the situation now and take on that responsibility, if you join a club then u also take it on. It's your job to be social about ur club and in ur club.

This is all just my opinion though.
Ke

[Shannon Apple]

Actually, that is one of the most sensible and accurate posts that I have seen coming from any of the ex club forumers. Thank you Spart.


I am not sure what the staff could have done better, since we had a handful of activists who were hell bent on opposing us, but there are always better ways of doing things in hindsight. The move to clubs was always going to happen, but the two years it took us to move them was probably too much. I guess we were trying to keep people happy, but in the end, with 3 active threads in there, it wasn't worth it. Clubs forum used to be 3-4 pages of active threads that were posted in daily, a lot of the newer people wouldn't have known what it was like when it was alive because it had been all but dead for a very long time. Sad, but true.

[KingSpart22]

No prob, Shannon. I loved the old A4 and I miss what it once was. But with all honesty I've tried to find other forums and NONE come close to how A4 looks and feels. A4 is an accepting place and there's a place for everyone. I hope it flourishes again at some point.

I just thought of something that mite be a ridiculous thought but it would undo a lot of damage and hopefully make the forum a little more active as a community.

It's a very simple idea, just not easily done.

DO IT AGAIN.

The rite idea is there, give control to the creators of the Clubs and the layout isn't bad. The only thing is it should be COMPLETELY wiped out again. Have everyone start from scratch so that the people who make clubs NOW are people that are active NOW. But this time make it as big of a deal as it is instead of saying "the way you guys had it is messy and we don't like it, so now do it this way, the end." Because I feel that's how it was handled. Announce that the clubs have been reset and that the Forum WANTS people to create and participate in them. It mite be easier said than done but A4 is capable of having an actual community again. It seems like people just wander around and don't feel invited to communicate.

[Rusted-Blade666]

^That seems like a really good idea. I mean what seems to have caused the biggest dwindle in the club activities (And the new groups) is that all the founders of the clubs and groups are mostly inactive. If you start again from scratch it should work out at least for a few years. It would be a lot of hard work though but honestly it just might be what the forum needs to get that surge of activity that made it huge back in the good old days (Which strangely enough I wasn't even around for but am still passionate about...)

[Green Bird]

I’m sorry but I don’t agree with Spart or Rusted Blade, simply pushing the reset button won’t really solve anything. I feel that the main problem is that it’s turned into nothing more than a F&G dumping ground, there are no standards to the most active groups are cluttered with mindless spam topics. This wouldn’t be a problem if the main forum page still displayed the groups you have joined (AKA the groups you actually care about) and whether or not they had any updates, but due to VB getting some sort of update and screwing with Shain; that’s out the window. Now people have to manually check each group they’re a member of for updates, so no wonder the activity in most groups is slow at best.

I like Shannon’s idea of a revival plan because it involves having a plan. Too many members make a group dedicated to their favourite anime, make one or two “what are your favourite X” topics, and then add nothing else to the club, essentially leaving it to die.

But I guess the main reason I’m opposed to a complete wipe out of the existing groups is that it’s deleting all the progress the active group members have made, so yeah I’m bias xD

[KingSpart22]

Yea, I won't deny that its unfair to a lot of people if the clubs were reset again, but it would be done for the same reason it was done last time, for the good of A4. There are few people who are active in the clubs so why wouldn't they just join it again. I would think club members now would like the idea because some people who are active now don't have any control of the clubs, creating new ones means the active members are in control.

[ronin_the_great]

I'm gonna' agree with what part of KingSpart said, there are few active members in each club. I believe that I applied to join the Naruto club way back when I joined in December. Though it doesn't really matter to me now, I haven't gotten accepted to it because of the lack of moderation or members.

[Green Bird]

I would think club members now would like the idea because some people who are active now don't have any control of the clubs, creating new ones means the active members are in control.Like I said, I think Shannon's revival plan is a better idea, there's no need to reset the whole system, just transfer ownership to an active member with a plan to restore the group, that's what's happening with a few groups right now. Wiping the board clean of all the groups and starting anew isn't going to change anything in the long run, new members will still make groups with silly restrictions on them, and then leave after a month.

The problem is how the members receive the information about the groups, ever since the VB update I mentioned; the groups (with the exception of the major spam groups) have pretty muched died. Even if all the groups are reset people are going to get tired of constantly checking each social group they're a member of for updates. It's like not getting a notification every time you get a PM, you would barely ever check your inbox.

[KingSpart22]

That's actually not true at all, whoever was here when the clubs were actually thriving and were a big part of A4 knows that people don't care that they have to click one more thing to chat about stuff that interest them, stuff like not wanting to check threads and not wanting to lose seniority on an inactive club is why they are dead. ANYONE who says the old clubs didn't affect A4 as a whole is WRONG. Yea there was spam, well guess what, now there's not even a real community anymore. No one asked me about my seniority in the clubs I was in that WERE active. I'm not disagreeing with Shannon, but A revival doesn't work with something that's dead, u need a rebirth to fix that. PS: if ur not talking about an ANIME club than ur really not ny concern, those chit-chat places just to talk are fine, they just don't have to do with what im talking about.

[Shannon Apple]

Actually, a revival plan can work simply because each group has a list of members. New owners can delete spam threads and boot inactives while PMing all the existing members about new plans for that group. Start an event of some sort and get people interested. It would involve setting up the ranks again like they were in the old forums.

There are some active clubs in there and for their sake, to reset everything would be a bad move. We'd be alienating them and I don't think that's fair.

[Hybrid]

I can tell you this, as a veteran member of the main clubs that were active (Naruto Clan and Soul Society) that myself and probably about 10-15 (possibly more) older members would return to A4, I still talk to a lot of them and they want the clubs section back.
Perhaps I haven't handled this issue like I should have and actually discussed it with the staff instead of getting angry, and for that I apologize.

[ILIANZO]

I almost never visit them.