[PROJECT] New website for the 48 franchise (14/01/01)

Please spend a few minutes reading and considering this proposal.

A few months ago, the following mail went out to several people involved in the fandom.

Up until now I've talked to people from various bigger sites, a number of smaller blogs, tumblrs and sites run by single individuals. The response has been pretty positive at this point but of course we need to get something started.
I would like to involve subbing groups as well in order to have their output reach an even bigger audience. And yes, this will be the long-awaited new home for blog48.

The site is also intended to function as a (if not the one) reliable and quotable source replacing the "NEWS-only" threads on Stage48.

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I run a blog/tumblr/website. You want me to just stop doing that and join this?
No one is asking you to abandon the place you've spent valuable time building. But if what you're transmitting are contributions that fans can profit from, then we want to support that and make it available in the most convenient way possible to the largest possible amount of fans.
Of course ideally, over time, the new place will become your new home. But that's your choice. It's not decided yet how the site is going to be run anyway - whether you will have to make your submissions in one of two or both places or if we are going to simply link to people's blogs. We don't want to make any important decisions before getting enough people on board.

I can be quite opinionated on my blog. You really think it'll be appropriate on a bigger site?
I suppose that's a case-by-case issue, but in general we're not trying to run just another site that focuses only on news. Of course news will be a large part of it, but opinion pieces won't only be appreciated but essential.

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I know that there's many people out there who can translate/program/photoshop/etc, want to share their valuable experiences or simply want to help out bringing things to the fans.

Please raise your hand if you are one of them.

We're starting this project from scratch. I myself have several ideas about how this could be run, but nothing of that is set in stone. There isn't much I will be able to give you a concrete answer to because we intentionally chose to not decide anything. We don't even have a name yet. We didn't want to present people with a finished product, but involve everyone. So please make suggestions.

It's a project from everyone for everyone and not limited to members of Stage48, but discussion should be taking place in this thread, on our IRC channel (the chat at the top of the forum) or through Skype.
There's a lot of help and initiative we'll need in a whole bunch of departments to get this running, but I believe that if realized united and properly it will be for the better of the fandom.

Hopefully this thread can become a place for exchange and concrete planning.

 

Re: [PROJECT] New website for the 48 franchise

Correct me if I'm wrong, but this website sounds like a blog with multiple and varied contributors, with links to other fan communities. The one distinct advantage this website will have is probably the large amount of pooled contributors. I think the defining problem for this kind of website will be organization and content quality. If somebody lands on the website and got overwhelmed with little tidbits such as some KKS getting her nails done, it may turn off a lot of people. I know I would!

 

Re: [PROJECT] New website for the 48 franchise

The goal of the site (the people involved at this point are all agreeing that it should differ largely from Wrapup in that regard) is to be one characterized by quality content, run by people that know their field. Quite honestly, that is what I consider one of its main goals. Quality over quantity. So no worries about that.

 

Re: [PROJECT] New website for the 48 franchise

bilingual48 would like to contribute [hi]

 

Re: [PROJECT] New website for the 48 franchise

i love the idea, its gonna help spread the 48news faster [clap]

agree with mayuyu, with a lot of writer involved, i'm expecting a lot of article coming.. i'm just hoping the article wont be too your-oshimen-centered.. i mean, why would I follow your site if it's only about rena, i can follow gekirena for that (just for example)

so yeah, the quality control is a must here..

-------------------------------------------------------------EDIT-----------------------------------------------------------------
1 QUESTION : what will differ you from wrapup?

 

Re: [PROJECT] New website for the 48 franchise

I would like to help out if I can. I don't have a ton of experience but I'm decent in photoshop (I took classes in college before I got too sick to go) and could write some articles or reviews or things like that (you know, text stuff). lol I'm not really sure exactly what I might be able to contribute but I'd really like to help out. Even if it's just spreading news and telling people about the site, I have a tumblr and an idol blog and a ton of Facebook friends (lol). I would like to help in any way possible because I think it's important to stay up to date on idol news.

 

Re: [PROJECT] New website for the 48 franchise

so it will like merging Blog48-Sub48-Melos together?

i could help if anyone needs Indonesian to English translator, but i'm pretty slow with JKT's news lately

 

Re: [PROJECT] New website for the 48 franchise

In some ways, this is such a broad topic~

The worry, as some ppl have mentioned already, is the number of contributors that might post to the site. You mention quality, how will this be enforced? Quality over quantity is nice, but 48 group as a whole is pretty damn big, blog and g+ translations alone will overwhelm the site.

Anyways, I'm willing to help out, not sure what capacity, but I'm pretty up to date on news. LOL~

It's nice to get the discussions going, hope it leads somewhere~

 

Re: [PROJECT] New website for the 48 franchise

Maybe the site can have separate sections??

Like, of course blog/G+ translations would have a LOT of content... So maybe a section of the site dedicated to that specifically...

And then on another section there'd be news and reviews and stuff like that... So that one section's feed wouldn't get so cluttered with blog/G+ translations and the news of a new single or something won't get buried pages back in one day or something.

Just ideas.

 

Re: [PROJECT] New website for the 48 franchise

@ xenozaga: I agree on all points.

I addressed the Wrapup question in my second post. It's generally about quality control. Sure that's something that I'll be in charge of to some extent but as to the how - that too is something we will have to decide together as a team.

@ sillythings: Take a look at the homepage of the New York Times (a wonderful example of a good website) or any other newspaper. There are categories for Politics, Sports, Economy, Health and so on. The same is possible on a site about AKB.
"News", "Blogs", "Translations", "Gossip", "Opinion"... there are many ways of organizing a site and no one franchise is too big to be dealt with in one place.

One of the first issues is of course going to be to get hosting issues out of the way, finding people to actually create a functioning website and all that stuff. The thing is going to be big and I don't want to run into too many limitations.

 

Re: [PROJECT] New website for the 48 franchise

By the way, before anyone asks (and I feel like some of you will) and for clarification, stage48 is a part of this through and through, we're not doing a split or anything. We're great at the forum stuff, and that's what we do best. However, it's undeniable that there are certain other things that other sites do better. For example, a lot of people do translations on tumblr, and our News and Release thread is almost never updated regularly after makistar stopped doing it. A lot of discussion of news simply is reported in the respective member's thread now.

The idea is that as our fandom continues growing, there's no point to this fractured existence that the international AKB48 fanbase is currently living under. Why split ourselves when we can benefit so much more from being organized? We want to be a one stop source providing high quality content (be that news, blog translations, discussion, w/e) so everyone has a reliable home to go to for AKB48 and by extension, its sister groups. So while stage48 will provide the forum aspect as a part of this new site, we as fans can gain a lot from consolidating all our expertise into one, catch-all site for the international AKB48 community.

When HRP brought up the idea and after talking to him about it via Skype a few months ago (it's been cooking for a while), I found myself incredibly supportive of it because it's been something I've been dreaming of, in a sense. I encourage anyone that has questions or hesitations to post here or hit HRP up on Skype to talk about it, because I really believe this will be a big boon to our overseas community of AKB48 fans as a whole.

 

Re: [PROJECT] New website for the 48 franchise

Well, if you look at any of newer layouts for news websites, I think they are a bit overwhelming, no?
So much content on the main page, lol. I think i'm worrying about something that is too early for discussion at this point so I will leave it.

There will be plenty of volunteers for this no doubt.

I think the key at this point is what will be the platform you will be using for the site to do what you want and of course hosting will be an issue in terms of capacity.

In general, the main content will always be News and Translations~

 

Re: [PROJECT] New website for the 48 franchise

I can help you with it. I think former Indonesian wrapup translator could be pooled in here too

 

Re: [PROJECT] New website for the 48 franchise

But I think an AKB48 only news site would help the fandom greatly. I think the one thing the AKB Wrap-Up fails at is quality in writing and the website is pretty messy.

A huge mass AKB news site would be great because AKB48 is a huge group with plenty of news to discuss. There could be translations of tweets, translations of blog posts, AKB48 news and announcements in general, properly formatted concert set-lists, a correct discography/videography list.

I would imagine that there would also be lots of graphs and infographics on this website too. I think users will benefit greatly in seeing AKB48 data (sales, senbatsu results, MIXI, song rankings etc.) visually rather than reading about it.

I can work Photoshop and Microsoft Office to a decent level. I would definitely love to contribute to your site. I'm in school right now studying English Literature so I think my English writing skills will be perfectly fine if I ever need to write a post or correct grammar/spelling in translations.

 

Re: [PROJECT] New website for the 48 franchise

Long overdue indeed HRP! Indeed, so long that I thought this project had been abandoned and I've been considering advertising for new writers for MELOSnoMichi since sometime last year, but have never gotten around to it. Quite frankly, I can't cope covering all the AKB48 related news there without the other contributors (of course, Miss Moonlight still does an great job posting all NMB48 news) so have mainly been concentrating on the twitter account.

With a new site, the danger is it becoming too big for it's own good. And also the management aspects of it. It would be good to keep the news/reviews/blogs/translations sections relatively separate with separate twitter feeds for each - so for example, people wanting just news aren't spammed with translation posts etc.

ithebigc mentioned makistar's releases database - s/he still keeps it up to date at http://forum.nihongogo.com/topic/11923- ... 013-01-31/

As HRP mentioned that this is not an exclusive site to Stage48, perhaps the opening post should also be posted at some of the other AKB48 forums, including (but not limited to) Nihongogo, Everyday48, JPHiP, Hello!Online etc etc. I am reticent to post about it on MELOSnoMichi at the moment until the plans are firmed up as I don't want it to look like we are closing down.

 

Re: [PROJECT] New website for the 48 franchise

For content selection, there are multiple ways that have been done on many websites that have multiple contributors.

• You have an editor, or group of editors, that hand pick main articles to be prominently featured and edited for quality (story submission is hidden from visitors, they only see those that were picked)

• You can crowd source the articles a la Reddit, and let people vote up or down entries, people can see the low-scoring articles if they want

• Or, you can just have a page that has everything dumped in, and a cleaner main page where everything is hand picked and edited for quality. People who want to see everything that is submitted can still see them, they just can't vote up those articles to the main page.

• Tag articles, and only show the ones marked 'news' in the main page, other things will be shown if the visitor wants to view things that are tagged as blog translation, reviews, etc.

But if most of the content is categorized and separated (e.g. like Jul3 suggested), you may not have enough entries anyway in the main page to use user-submitted feedback and just put up edited news entries in the front page, and provide tags for other kind of contents.

 

Re: [PROJECT] New website for the 48 franchise

Sounds like a great idea. You already have Studio48 as best collection of lyrics for 48 available. (Even if a couple of the songs may need their translations looked over.)
I can't imagine you'll find yourself short of volunteers. As long as its managed properly, by combining so many things together, you'll have a lot of different opinions and views as to how things should work. That's why everything is so fractured in the first place.

 

Re: [PROJECT] New website for the 48 franchise

I'm for it.
I could help with the translations I'm currently doing, and help maintain the website at a technical level if needed.
I can even help set it up.
I'm not for using things like LiveJournal or the likes of that. Just so you know, if you need any help HRP just message me on skype or something.

 

Re: [PROJECT] New website for the 48 franchise

Awesome idea. I use to just go to AKBWrapup for my news before I found this forum but the forum can be a bit daunting to keep track of info since there is always so much.

I'll like to help however I can but I'm pretty sure you'll have more than enough.

 

Re: [PROJECT] New website for the 48 franchise

This sounds awesome. Before going further, may I ask something? Are you going to turn the concept of this idea into a news site (like how Melos is right now) but with an addition of translation and subbing only or will it be different than all I mentioned previously? There are a few parts that I am still confused at actually. One of them is a part that ithebigc addressed in his post

Does this mean the planned site will be developed to also got a hold of every members' news? Well not every actually, but just those who are being contributed to the site. Sorriez if I asked too much. I am thinking that if this member news system applied at one time the site will be overwhelm with the number of inputs. But I guess that's another case to solve later as we're still on preparation stage at this moment.