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Saturday, April 9, 2005
The children love the show. | Well, here I am again, after a brief absence. Why the absence? I guess I really didn't have anything to say.
In my personal life, things have not been going well at all. Some of you know about that. I don't really care to share it here, but I do want to thank everyone for your well wishes. It means a great deal; I really place a lot of value in our little community here. It's nice to have that closeness, even when it's just over the Internet.
I also want to take a moment to comment on OtakuBoards. Although I hadn't really announced any kind of official date for the next update, I was planning to have everything completed within March. Of course, it's now early April and we haven't launched anything new.
This is really all due to me. Apart from other more regular online work (things like N-Sider and other aspects of this network, including myOtaku), I've also had an increasing amount of freelance work to take care of lately. And as some of you know, I have been working away on my own portfolio site - it's very important that I get that online as soon as possible.
This has, unfortunately, resulted in less time for OtakuBoards. But do not worry; OB is still my baby. Part of the reason that I haven't really put it on the top of the priority list is because I feel that there's nothing urgent about the update. OtakuBoards is not facing a dire situation by any measure. Things are going well, I'm happy enough with the way things are being managed and I feel very secure with Dagger as our Administrator. And in terms of general forum structure, I'm quite satisfied with OtakuBoards as it is. So I haven't really had a burning desire to jump in and retool everything so quickly.
Of course, the new update is still coming and I'm sure you will enjoy what it offers. But I am not going to offer any launch date, because things are very unpredictable right now.
In addition, I have been thinking about the site's longer-term future.
At the present time, we are in the process of changing this entire network. That change is all about our demographics - in other words, the people who visit the network. We are making changes that are based on attracting an older audience in general; increasing the general age of visitors. Right now, I am told that about 20% of the network's visitors are 18 and over. Obviously, it'd be nice if it were 80/20 rather than 20/80. There are a number of reasons for this, but it's largely about finding ways to appeal to different kinds of people and to grow the network further.
Why do I mention this? Well, even OtakuBoards can play a role with that. OtakuBoards is kind of the black sheep of this network I think. By virtue of its much more strict quality rules, it tends to exclude the vast majority of people who visit myOtaku. As a result, it's more of a niche corner of the network.
I have no problem with that (if I did, I would change the site accordingly). However, I do think that OtakuBoards can change in certain ways, to reflect the direction of the network.
Part of this involves age restrictions. As you know, in order to register at myOtaku, you need to certify that you are at least 13 years old.
At OtakuBoards, we do not use this system. You may still register regardless of age. However, I think this will change when our new update goes online - or even sooner.
I would like to deny registration to those under 13, for various reasons. One is a simple question of quality. But another relates to the general change we've been seeing at OtakuBoards over the last year or more. If you look at what people are posting over there, I think you'll find that the content strongly differs from most of the stuff you see on myOtaku. I'm talking about both the quality of the discussions and the actual subjects involved.
This isn't to say that I want to suddenly make OB an adult-only site overnight. No matter what we do, I think it's important for OtakuBoards to be family-friendly. That is to say, we will never loosen our restrictions in certain areas - we will continue to provide a language filter and we'll continue bar things like hentai and discussions relating to software piracy and so on. In other words, it'll still be a safe environment where people will be assured of quality.
I think it is also important to consider how OtakuBoards can continue to be fresh and interesting in the future. While I am satisfied with the conventions we've established on V7 (ie: the way posts work in Anime Lounge and Play It), I do think that there are more things we can explore. This includes new forums for subjects that we do not currently cover, but it also includes other ideas for expansion - some of which I've mentioned before.
The truth is though, I find myself at a loss with some of these things. In many ways, OtakuBoards has reached a certain point where I am pretty happy with it. Aside from the obvious surface things (new skins, some added features, fixes to some problems), I tend to feel that the fundamentals really hit the spot. It's kind of like "once you reach your goal, where do you go from there?"
I suppose I could try to take OB in some crazy new directions...who knows. I'm sure part of my inspiration will come from what we do on the rest of the network in the future. Or maybe some of you have bold thoughts about where OB should go next. I'd definitely be interested to hear your thoughts.
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