ahh.. just a suggestion.

[Kriminal]

How are ya, fellas ? Although I don't post a lot, I do read the reviews on the site everytime new ones are posted. Just a suggestion.. but do you think it would be a good idea to make the site more.. "intearctive" ? Like, when you review an anime let people give it a rating, and have an average rating of the people on the side or at the bottom ? Also, a section for user reviews would be pretty cool. I dono, it may be a lot of work but I think it would be very cool for the people who come to the site ^^.


Oh, one other thing that I've always wanted to ask, even though it has nothing to do with the topic. For Grave of the Fireflies, the lows are "absolutely none". I've always wondered, if it's perfect how is it a 98, and not a 100 ? Thanks for reading !

[kyubichan]

On the rating suggestion, I think that would be a bit of work. It's kinda a technical thing... I hope someone explains this more clearly, but yeah, it is a good idea, just too much work involved.

[isolatedotaku]

Oh, one other thing that I've always wanted to ask, even though it has nothing to do with the topic. For Grave of the Fireflies, the lows are "absolutely none". I've always wondered, if it's perfect how is it a 98, and not a 100 ? Thanks for reading !

I believe my first post asked the exact same thing. This is what I got in reply;

Anime A has no lows and yet is given a lower score than Anime B, which has a low. Is this a flaw in the grading system?
This is a common misconception. When a graded anime is dissected, we simply divide their components into two categories based on quality: highs and lows.

Whatever does not appear as a high or low component is assumed to be of average quality and not worth highlighting. Anime A could very well not have any bad elements, but that doesn't mean all of its components are perfect; they could be mediocre. On the same note, even if both Anime A and Anime B have animation as their highs, for example, that doesn't mean that their animations are equal; Anime B could have higher quality animation than Anime A. In that regard, great animation is not perfect animation, and for an anime to achieve a 100% would require perfection in every facet.

That is of course a quote from the FAQ.

--

I agree with your suggestion. It would be pretty interesting to see the popular opinion vs. the "professional" opinion. While it might be a lot of work, I'd say AA needs it. New reviews every month are awesome, but change is also a necessity to growth.

[LadySage]

If you want popular opinion, I recommend stopping by animenfo.com. Is it really so hard to go to two websites instead of one?

[Erigion]

We're more l33t or something at AA so our opinions count for more. I know mine does.

[Roark]

Now, I have no authority for the main site, just forums, so take this with appropriate amounts of NaCl.

The problem with user ratings is all the normal things you get when you let anyone and everyone have control of something: you lose any quality control. We'd like to assume that people would be honest and unbiased in the ratings, but this just isn't the case. Look at animenfo.com to see why. You get people who love something, people who hate something, or people who have only seen a bit of something/heard of something and think it's the best/worst thing in the world. This makes any results from that kind of system, well, useless. Sure, you get some honest people in there, but mostly it's the "I like/hate this, so I'll praise/bash it" crowd.

In theory, user ratings are a good idea. In practice, everything would tend towards a middleground score. This doesn't even account for ballot stuffing problems.

The other problem is that this puts way too much focus on a single number: that rating. A big part of this site's focus (and appeal, I'd like to think) is that review text is more important than the little percentage next to it. People here say why they like things, not just put a number on it.

Finally, we do have a spot for user ratings: The Library subforum. If you would like to post your own review, or discuss the merits of a particular review, go ahead. You're more than welcome.

[A-R@D]

There are ways you could have quality control. For instance if you made it a requirement to register and have a minimum of ten posts on the forums before they can post ratings. It doesnt assure that you get all of the flakes but It does keep people from drive by posting ratings. Of course, that requires more work for the forum mods making sure everyone posts appropriatley and people don't spam just to get to 10 posts or whatever post minimum you set.

[ShinoMatrix]

I like AA's system as it is. It's certainly not the only anime review site out there which employs this same system, however it is what has made it good and well known. There are already other sites out there with those changes which you proposed and I must say there are a lot more of them (often visited ones anyway) than there are sites like AA, so I don't see the good in making AA conform with this more popular (and I'd say lazier) route to anime appreciation.

[Ojisan]

Gamespot (http://www.gamespot.com/ps2/adventure/okami/players.html) implements this exact feature very nicely.

At Gamepot though, all the dumbass 1 ratings (Windwaker sucks cause it looks gay! 1!) balance out due to the sheer number of people voting, with the majority being level-headed. Here, one person can totally skew a ten person vote. Despite this, I still think it is a fun feature this very stagnant website needs.

At GS, the player "reviews" are simply paragraph or two comments, but that works great since it leaves numerous different impressions. For AA however, where the number system is weak, the comment portion is a great strength since much like reviewers, people get to know other forum goers and their tastes. In every signature a link to that person's "comments" could be posted (much like Gamepot's "Track Author") and open up an entirely new aspect of the website. If I see Roark as a sensible if not pretentious man with good taste in anime, I could simply clicky the link and see what comments he left for which animes.

Having to be registered and logged-in is even better, and if you could set a post limit, or even individually grant the privilege, would help to weed-out anonymous spam votes.

Of course, Mugs is too lazy to make any changes, and some of these may be too technically challenging, so as much as I am a proponent of the idea, we'll not see it happen anythime soon.

I like AA's system as it is. It's certainly not the only anime review site out there which employs this same system, however it is what has made it good and well known. There are already other sites out there with those changes which you proposed and I must say there are a lot more of them (often visited ones anyway) than there are sites like AA, so I don't see the good in making AA conform with this more popular (and I'd say lazier) route to anime appreciation.

AA's system is stale. I in no way see this as "conforming", it's a great use technology to spread people's opinions on anime. Sure, I could go over to Animenfo, or anywhere else, but I don't know those people and couldn't care less about their opinions. I like AA for my anime critiques, whether in the forums or the library. Believe me Shino, I'd rather read comments and look at ratings from you or two-twenty or Roark or anyone else that's been around awhile and I've gotten a feel for. It's worlds better than reading joe-blows comments over at animeshitsite.com.

[Mana]

I find it quite a grand assumption to say that AA is stale when you have no data on the actual site itself. Just because the forums aren't too hot recently doesn't mean that the general site gets a hell of a lot of traffic that the forums don't.

[Roark]

I'm not opposed to the idea in principal. There are some problems to work out in implementation, though, that would make it unattractive to Mugs. The Gamespot system does work rather well, and if there was a way to steal that back end, it'd be nice.

As an evil, iron fist mod I would like some control over the system, a way to edit/delete comments. This is mostly due to drive by spammers (can any recent members tell me if AA uses catchas in the registration process now? When I joined we didn't, but that was 5 years ago.) Also, obscenity would be an issue, and astroturfing. These are mostly problems with a text comment system, but I don't think just a "rate from 1-10" and give a secondary grade would be a good focus for this.

Tying the privilege to post count would, of course, create some issues with "OMG! bump post count+++ZZZ!!!1one!" It could drum up new forum people. It might encourage some activity among the staff to provide additional counterpoints to old views or react to the new views, balancing out a low/high user comment score with a staff view.

There's also the whole coding problem for this. I'm sure some kind of free stuff exists for this kind of thing, but I don't know who here has the experience to make it all work. The only people I can think of are Mugs, who's really busy, and Rit/LB, who aren't on all that much.

[Ninja Realist]

I find it quite a grand assumption to say that AA is stale when you have no data on the actual site itself. Just because the forums aren't too hot recently doesn't mean that the general site gets a hell of a lot of traffic that the forums don't.

Whether or not a site is stale has nothing to do with the number of hits it gets. In fact I agree with Oji that this site has become stale though my issues with the site are of a quite different nature.

[Milkymagic]

I think a site is only stale if you've been on it for too long, though improvement never hurt anybody, I actually used to scan the reviews on the main portion for years. I read AA reviews when I was curious what they thought of titles I was interested in checking out (or just watched for a counterpoint). They're great reads, and I still look at them now. Of course, after a few years of reading reviews, I finally decided to participate in the forums because I wanted to mingle with the anime community (basically this is my first message board).

Improvement is nice, though I am currently satisfied with my time here. I do enjoy reading other anime review pages too, just because of the variety of opinions I can saturate. In the long run, a Reader Review system doesn't sound bad, but I'm not exactly begging for it. Do what you guys need to.

Thank you! :D

[Mana]

Whether or not a site is stale has nothing to do with the number of hits it gets. In fact I agree with Oji that this site has become stale though my issues with the site are of a quite different nature.

Who said anything about numbers of hits? It's not just the clicks the site gets, but the people who do that clicking, and read through the reviews. Just recently I got the pleasure of meeting someone who is one of the heads of an anime club that frequently uses AA's reviews for discussion and to decide what to watch, although none of them had ever joined the forums, and, according to him, probably won't.

I don't know what your personal issues are, but I still stand by my beliefs that it is a very grand assumption to make about the site.

Although I will say that updates have been incredibly slow lately, and no Late For Class in a while either.

[Ojisan]

What kind of data are we talking about? When I said AA is stale, I wasn't at all referring to the forums.

Since Late for Class, and for a looong span before that, very little big at all has changed for AA with the exception of dwindling staff and waning updates. First Looks and lectures are things of the past. As good as the formula is, even the best website in the world is going to need some updates and touch-ups here and there to stay fresh and competitive. I can understand people being busy, even when I call Mugs lazy, I'm not serious, I'm sure he has a lot more stuff to do than implement complex code to a non-profit website. But still, the stale situation definanetly shows if you've been here awhile and have seen the past attempts at improvements. Cafepress merchandise, new sorting methods, Comic Strip and mascot, etc. The only reason that it bugs me is that I truly like AA and like to see good things going for it. I'm very happy you're a new proffessor, so we can read your lovely reviews during the drought.

I'm in no position to bitch at anyone, and I'm not trying too; I just truly think something this big would breathe a lot of fresh air into the website as a whole, and even stirrup new members. Having lasting comments on the site would surely have more people enthusiastic about coming here and sticking around.

Sadly, and as I had assumed, the technical hurdle and getting someone to jump it is the largest problem. The AA funds (Mug's pocket?) has never exactly seemed large.

Mana, I'm really not trying to be malicious or demeaning of the website, more so I'd just like to see a big revamp of AA for the mere fact that one of my favorite websites will be a funner place.

[Mana]

Mostly my response was against the phrasing/terminology you used. Thanks for clearing things up a bit. ;)

As far as adding things and livening stuff up goes, I'm definately all for it, and I would gladly volunteer my time and effort into such a project, be it writing more interesting things for the main page, adding new merchandise, whatever. Hell, I would love to do advertising, and I'm even in somewhat of a position to do so.

Personally, though, I'm generally against the whole "group/peer review" thing. I don't think it's the right move for AA to make. On a mechanics side, it would be a pain to implement into our system, not to mention creating and implementing a system to stop ballot stuffing/fanboys/god knows what else. And, of course, there are so many other bloody websites that do that exact same thing; I've always been proud of AA for its uniqueness as an anime reviewing site.

All in all, yes, go ahead, suggest changes! We could use it, and I'm willing to help. I'm just not very fond of this particular idea.

[Tyrdium]

Why not just have someone read the reviews section of the forum and manually add links to the good ones to the main review page? Zero coding effort, plus whitelisting to ensure quality. With the rate at which student reviews are posted, it wouldn't be all that much work.

[Kriminal]

What kind of data are we talking about? When I said AA is stale, I wasn't at all referring to the forums.

Since Late for Class, and for a looong span before that, very little big at all has changed for AA with the exception of dwindling staff and waning updates. First Looks and lectures are things of the past. As good as the formula is, even the best website in the world is going to need some updates and touch-ups here and there to stay fresh and competitive. I can understand people being busy, even when I call Mugs lazy, I'm not serious, I'm sure he has a lot more stuff to do than implement complex code to a non-profit website. But still, the stale situation definanetly shows if you've been here awhile and have seen the past attempts at improvements. Cafepress merchandise, new sorting methods, Comic Strip and mascot, etc. The only reason that it bugs me is that I truly like AA and like to see good things going for it. I'm very happy you're a new proffessor, so we can read your lovely reviews during the drought.

I'm in no position to bitch at anyone, and I'm not trying too; I just truly think something this big would breathe a lot of fresh air into the website as a whole, and even stirrup new members. Having lasting comments on the site would surely have more people enthusiastic about coming here and sticking around.

Sadly, and as I had assumed, the technical hurdle and getting someone to jump it is the largest problem. The AA funds (Mug's pocket?) has never exactly seemed large.

Mana, I'm really not trying to be malicious or demeaning of the website, more so I'd just like to see a big revamp of AA for the mere fact that one of my favorite websites will be a funner place.

This is exactly what I was thinking when I first posted this idea. I think more people would enjoy the site and stick around longer if their opinions were shown.

As for people who say that some people will just come in, and give their favorite animes 10's and completely mess up the ratings. This is true. Still, that is why we have the professors to give their "expert" opinions on it. I just think it would be pretty interesting to see how the community would like to rate and rank these animes as a whole.

[ShinoMatrix]

Kriminal, in case you missed Roark's post, the community's thought's are already voiced here, in the General Anime and The Library sections.

Ojisan, yes, I do agree with what you said and I wasn't entirely arguing the "staleness" of the site, merely how the implementation of the system Kriminal was referring to in my opinion wasn't going to be as great an idea as it seems. I'm all for revamping the site, in fact I do agree with you that perhaps it needs a facelift, but maybe adding this to that list of "how to improve AA" is something to be much more argued about.

[A-R@D]

I Now I don't really consider myself a part of the comunity, but I've been here a while, since before the forums went down (way back when), and I've seen professors and students comes and go. I've thought of a few other ways that might be less trouble to spice up the main site. Now all of these would require getting a decent number of people off the ground and willing to work on this sort of stuff so this is probably just a pipe dream on my part.

Anime Academy Awards -a yearly reward special article with awards with categories similar to those of the Oscars, with comedy, drama, acting, directing, best picture etc. and possibly a jury prize voted by an elected group of elected students

More editorials -Editorials on things such as the state of the anime
industry, copyright issues, morality of fan subbing, the anime boom in the U.S. and other countries etc.

Did you find this review helpful (yes/no) X% of people found this review helpful -sort of like amazon.com's review system.

More updates on biographies of famous people in anime.

User reviews- previously mentioned

As was mentioned earlier the main site has been steadily seeing less frequent updates, and what that says to me is that it is growing stagnant. While the forums are still alive and kicking (I guess) the main site seems to be slowly shutting down. I know that I come here more to read the reviews than to participate in the forums, and I have not read a review that was worth reading in a while.