Hi everyone,
Here at Anime-Planet, our goal is to continue to bring up awesome new features, or updates to new features. It's never fun to remove a feature, as even unpopular features have some diehard users who would hate to see them go.
Today we're announcing the deprecation of the blogs feature. In the few years that the blog feature has been up, it's seen very little use by only a handful of site users (in relation to how many users the site has). It's a time-sink to maintain, and takes away from our ability to add new, really awesome features and functionality you love (like the video integrations, or the upcoming redesign). It's a hard decision, but one that's being made for the greater good.
What kind of content gets posted in blogs, and where should it go?
98% of blogs posted are spam (which we try to delete in a timely fashion, but get flooded with it daily anyways), and the remaining 2% tend to be topics that could easily fit elsewhere in the site:
-Reviews - some people post reviews as blogs; they can and should be added as reviews instead.
-Episode discussions/thoughts - now that we have integrated discussion links in the anime entries, and given in the future we'll have integrated site/forum accounts, these conversations can go into the forum discussion threads. The bonus being more posts = more people joining in on the discussion, and more people around to read your thoughts on the episode
-Daily personal activity - such as 'episodes I watched today'. The personal feed contains date information about when you mark anime, and we plan to upgrade the feed moving forward to make it even easier to view your history.
-Assorted thoughts about anime or manga or anything - all of this could be posted in the forum
-Suggested viewing order info - This is some of the best info we've seen in blogs, and info we're really hoping users won't lose access to. For now, ideally these would be moved into the forum, and we'd build a way to integrate this content into the entries themselves in the future.
Can I still access my blog now?
Blogs are still accessible, and will remain accessible until the redesign launches (we're aiming for 2 months from now, if all goes well). That gives you a few months to sift through your content and move it into reviews or the forum.
In the very near future, editing blogs and adding new blogs will become inaccessible, and we'll post a notice on all blog pages that they are being deprecated (all of this within a few days). Blogs will not be removed until the redesign launches in a few months.
Moving forward
For the few of you who have used the blog feature over the years, your support is not forgotten and is appreciated! We're looking forward to getting the redesign out the door and focusing on awesome new features you'll love.
Here at Anime-Planet, our goal is to continue to bring up awesome new features, or updates to new features. It's never fun to remove a feature, as even unpopular features have some diehard users who would hate to see them go.
Today we're announcing the deprecation of the blogs feature. In the few years that the blog feature has been up, it's seen very little use by only a handful of site users (in relation to how many users the site has). It's a time-sink to maintain, and takes away from our ability to add new, really awesome features and functionality you love (like the video integrations, or the upcoming redesign). It's a hard decision, but one that's being made for the greater good.
What kind of content gets posted in blogs, and where should it go?
98% of blogs posted are spam (which we try to delete in a timely fashion, but get flooded with it daily anyways), and the remaining 2% tend to be topics that could easily fit elsewhere in the site:
-Reviews - some people post reviews as blogs; they can and should be added as reviews instead.
-Episode discussions/thoughts - now that we have integrated discussion links in the anime entries, and given in the future we'll have integrated site/forum accounts, these conversations can go into the forum discussion threads. The bonus being more posts = more people joining in on the discussion, and more people around to read your thoughts on the episode
-Daily personal activity - such as 'episodes I watched today'. The personal feed contains date information about when you mark anime, and we plan to upgrade the feed moving forward to make it even easier to view your history.
-Assorted thoughts about anime or manga or anything - all of this could be posted in the forum
-Suggested viewing order info - This is some of the best info we've seen in blogs, and info we're really hoping users won't lose access to. For now, ideally these would be moved into the forum, and we'd build a way to integrate this content into the entries themselves in the future.
Can I still access my blog now?
Blogs are still accessible, and will remain accessible until the redesign launches (we're aiming for 2 months from now, if all goes well). That gives you a few months to sift through your content and move it into reviews or the forum.
In the very near future, editing blogs and adding new blogs will become inaccessible, and we'll post a notice on all blog pages that they are being deprecated (all of this within a few days). Blogs will not be removed until the redesign launches in a few months.
Moving forward
For the few of you who have used the blog feature over the years, your support is not forgotten and is appreciated! We're looking forward to getting the redesign out the door and focusing on awesome new features you'll love.