Thinking of removing blog functionality

snivets said:

For series that don't have reviews or recommendations posted, the next place I look is blogs, just to see if anyone has mentioned the anime. Sometimes, I find a person giving reasons why they dropped it or just giving a basic plot overview, so they definitely can be useful.

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this is also why i think having better visibility into forum threads would be very helpful - as the currently airing series threads are filled with stuff lke that, and older titles might get discussions going too, if there was a better setup for them

Well if keeping blogs is that much of a problem it woulndn't be that much of a problem (still wouldn't like it) I'd remove them. But we are still waiting for that like/dislike system in fan reviews :)

Well, if the word "blog" is part of the problem, that's a simplistic fix. Just replace "blog" with "personal posts" or "diary" or "salami". :p

Personally, I think removing the feature would be fine. If it's causing as many problems as you say, sothis, then just remove it. I think many people here would like the focus to be on maintaining anime-planet's quality instead of wasting resources on a feature seldom used.

I think it's a bit of a knee jerk to say that the blogs are actually a necessary feature of the site. If you consider it carefully sothis is entirely right that the feature is basically superseded by the forum system. The only thing we would lose by moving to this as the main method would be direct integration of the blogs with our main site profiles.

Aranneas said:

The only thing we would lose by moving to this as the main method would be direct integration of the blogs with our main site profiles.

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I think that, for the people I met on ap.com anyway, this direct integration is exactly part of what helped make ap.com seem friendly and "personal" to them.

That's too funny. I was just thinking today that I should post something on my blog just to keep it active. Oh, well. Since I have 17 blog posts with barely a reader or respondent, I guess I won't miss it. If resources are better used elsewhere then... kill it.

I honestly didn't even know we -had- blogs on here, which I think shows how much I care about the things. :P So personally, I wouldn't mind seeing them go.

That being said, I do like the idea of limiting the users who can use the feature. Now I don't mean just a blanket "ok these people can use blogs and the rest can't" kind of thing, as that would be bad for new users that would like to use it. But maybe there could be some sort of application process, and then you put someone in charge of reviewing these applications and approving/denying people into the system.
The actual application could contain questions like what they intend to use the feature for and whatnot.

I think this way, you can still have the select few people that use it right posting as they want, and you get no more spam from even legit users just to get a badge.

Oh and also, if you do intend to keep it, please do rename it something else. "blog" is such a massive buzzword for bots that it just attracts more and more of them. Name it something clever, yet descriptive.

Tbh, I've always thought of blogs on ap.com as a way to easily convey information in an organized way to those you've already made friends with on the site, as opposed to hoping that some random person who I've never talked to before would read it.

well, one thing that i may do is get vbulletin 5 - ive been waiting to see how it shapes up, but it does in theory have better 'club' functionality. if that's the case, groups of friends could create a club to chat about stuff, in the forum (and again, hopefully stuff would surface on the user pages too - all of this is hypothetical since i have no idea how much work it would take, and i have very little time to spend on AP anymore)

My 2 cents: If they're such a hassle, get rid of them. I don't think they add to the site's personality or change the friendly atmosphere we have going. All my interaction with other users is done through the forums, and in the future once the site and forum are joined blogs will be pretty much completely obsolete for me.

I think we discussed about this for the "Help club" account as well, and how that would store its FAQs and such, and we came to the conclusion that a forum section was way better than using the site's blog feature, since it allowed for better interaction and visibility.

Habhome said:

All my interaction with other users is done through the forums, and in the future once the site and forum are joined blogs will be pretty much completely obsolete for me.

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Clearly we use ap.com in completely different ways. :p

Minai99 said:

Clearly we use ap.com in completely different ways. :p

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just saying, your last blog post was may 2012, and prior to that august of 2011, so i'm not sure why you're advocating for the blogs being used to communicate to groups of friends :p

at least for this situation, i've noticed you tend to leave lots of user comments instead (which wouldnt go away), and/or tell people to go to your private IRC chan (which i still think takes away from the community here, as there would be a lot more discussion in the oft-dead main AP irc chan)

Minai99 said:

I think that, for the people I met on ap.com anyway, this direct integration is exactly part of what helped make ap.com seem friendly and "personal" to them.

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rectifiable and would provide better longevity for the system by actually having optional integration between forum accounts and site profiles (though I don't know what kind of resources would be required to make this happen, it could well be a pipe dream :( )

sothis said:

just saying, your last blog post was may 2012, and prior to that august of 2011, so i'm not sure why you're advocating for the blogs being used to communicate to groups of friends :p

at least for this situation, i've noticed you tend to leave lots of user comments instead (which wouldnt go away), and/or tell people to go to your private IRC chan (which i still think takes away from the community here, as there would be a lot more discussion in the oft-dead main AP irc chan)

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In my very first post in this thread I admitted that I don't use them personally. I'm just saying, I *do* see people using the blog functionality to good effect, completely independent of myself or anything I've ever said to them. And even though I rarely post, I do actually read blog posts on other people's pages. I asked earlier, not sure if you saw, how many people are we talking about when you say there aren't many people using it properly? If only 100 people are using it...probably not worth it. It surely is a sad thing that the ap.com irc channel is dead, as well. I have on occasion gone into there, but most of the time I'm met with either silence, apathy, or outright hostility, but that's another discussion. You asked for our thoughts on the blogs, so I said what I think about them, since it is a somewhat important matter. Even if I don't use them, there are other people who do use them in a positive way and probably aren't even aware (and sadly might not be aware until it is too late), that you are thinking about changing things.

I'm not saying I'm against changing or getting rid of the blogs, either, if there is some suitable replacement.

as far as how many people use them, check the link to 'recent blogs'. based solely on what i've noticed, i'd say only about 25 people use them consistently/frequently, and most are 'i played x game for 2 hours today' types of posts, or random asides like 'i just got a badge'. there are a few people who use them for super helpful stuff like suggested orders and chii's content all up

i did forget to mention that the only other type of post i tend to see is advertisement - people either posting links to their own external blog every time they do something, or an advertisement to their blog/site in general

the rest of the non spammers who use them tend to post once or two, usually just to get the badge, sometimes a 'hello' and nothing else after that.

Aranneas said:

rectifiable and would provide better longevity for the system by actually having optional integration between forum accounts and site profiles (though I don't know what kind of resources would be required to make this happen, it could well be a pipe dream :( )

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I definitely feel that the forum is too detached from the main interface of one's personal profile, as evidenced by the fact that I rarely use it. It's also kinda...dead, I think.

deleting blogs because the site is having spammers sign up just seems strange to me. the forum gets just as many spammers these days i've noticed... yes one is used more than the other but time is still needed to get rid of the spam.

even if we don't have blogs anymore spammers are still going to be signing up to the site and they'll just find other ways like they always do. i really think adding a re-captcha would help somewhat. it won't catch all of the spam but you don't see a lot of spam going into people's profile comments and all that because of the captcha unless i'm totally blind to that way of spamming.

maybe you should try the captcha and if it proves to not help at all over say a month the getting rid of option could be looked at again or another solution thought of. Like a member needs to be active for x amount of days or applying to use the feature. applying could be a good solution because the member has to be active and if you haven't made an anime list and whatnot that's a good flag that maybe this person doesn't really need access to a blog if they are applying randomly at a later date.

how about this:

you need to rate 5-10 anime or 5-10 manga before you can blog

seems like it should be easy enough to accomplish, and (hopefully) complicated enough that it will keep the spammers off for a bit