[IMPORTANT] Upcoming Changes to Stage48

Good evening,

I'd like to address a number of changes that the forum is going to go through in the following weeks. I want to explain them prior to rolling anything out since I'd like everyone to get adjusted to a slightly different environment.

I. Staffing

First of all, I'm welcoming Smilodon to our team of staff as moderator. He's been contributing well and is generally very no-nonsense about his approach. I trust him with his opinion and insight, so I'm sure he will be of good help.

II. Updated rules

Over the years, our forum's rules have turned old and rusty. Some rules are hardly applicable anymore and others aren't enforced much. We have prepared a new, more detailed and quotable set of rules.

Also coming up is a general "manual of style", a guide on how to best make a post, how to quote, how much to quote, use tags etc...

Once I publish the new set of rules, all currently registered members of the forum will be demoted to below reading level. This means that you won't be able to see any of the threads on the forum.

You will have access to one sub-forum, containing two topics: a thread containg the new rules + a thread that you'll be able to post in. As soon as you have made a submission in that thread ("Read the thread", "OK", "Got it"... anything works), you will regain full access to the rest of the forum.

By doing this, we intend to hit two birds with one stone: 1) make sure that all members have been made aware of the new guidelines, and 2) get a clearer picture of our active population.

III. Content changes

There's several cosmetic changes we'll be making. We'll introduce a fresher look to the place and small tweaks here and there. There's going to be a little bit of shifting around of what goes where to make Stage48 more organized.
The sister group forums will be expanded to more closely resemble the forum for AKB48 in scale. There's no point in making it seem like they're not being taken as serious as the "mothership".

The Depot is going to be removed. It's a remainder from a time when media wasn't as easily accessible and is hardly used anymore. I don't want to encourage piracy on this forum beyond what's already available on trackers and other places.

I plan to create a 48-related "small talk" forum, where members can talk about anything and everything AKB without fear of being off-topic. That way I hope to keep more major threads on the forum from going off track.

IV. Member groups

Currently, members on this forum are grouped into two categories. The standard, grey "Member" status and the promoted, blue "Stage48+" one. The only difference between those two is that Stage48+ members are given access to the depot. Most members are promoted after a certain amount of submissions, the regulations being rather arbitrary. What this encourages is spamming for post count, which naturally has no positive effect on the forum.

Since the the depot is going to be removed and we're not going to have any sub-forum accessible to only a specific group of people (at this point), we will be retiring the separation between grey and blue members.

V. Member reputation

In the future, staff will evaluate members based on quality and value of their submissions. Due to a growing forum population, staff is dealing with more spam and spam-like posts than ever before. We feel that we want to reward our active members for good contributions by poking in little notes of appreciation and encourage others to follow their example.

What this doesn't mean is that we expect you to echo the views of staff and try to garner favors. I fully trust ithebigc and Smilodon to be able to fulfill this job responsibly. We know a good post when we see it, even if it diverts from our own opinion. It's about the effort you put in a post and "effort will be rewarded".
Of course not only opinion, but also general contributions such as translation, helping out newcomers, writing event reports, supplying relevant media and all that are extremely important and will be highly appreciated.
Posts in the above-mentioned "small-talk forum" will be largely ignored.

As a way of evaluation, we are implementing a simple reputation / "thanks" system visible to the forum staff. We refrain from giving members the possibility to use a "thanks" or "like" system on each other since we don't want to encourage abuse of the system eg. bullying of members and voting for people rather than posts.

VI. Member ranks

The result of this evaluation is going to reflect in the members' ranks. Your rank is the text under your name (Auditioning, Training, Backup Dancer, etc). Currently, ranks are still automatically assigned after a certain number of posts is reached. Members with a post count of over 1000 used to receive the "Super Idol" rank.
We're changing these ranks to make them dependant not on post count, but on the careful evaluation of your posts by our staff. It's a measure to promote better, structured posting that adds to the discussions on this forum.

All members registered prior to the introduction of the new rules will start, equally, on the same level, regardless of their previous rank. We want it to be fair to everyone.

Longtime members will have no problem continuing to contribute in meaningful ways, as this rule is meant to inhibit spammers and set an example for forum etiquette and morale. We want to make the forum accessible and not have it become a place where people talk over another and will be attacked without reason for their opinion.

We're currently working on a way of visualizing the different groups to give them a distinguishing look. We'll give them different names too. Something along the lines of "Kenkyuusei" < "Team Member" < "Senbatsu" < "Kami 7" < "Grandmaster Flash". Or so.

VII. "Stage's little helpers"

In addition, particularly valuable contributors to the forum will receive badges at later stages. We want new members of the forum to know who they can refer to for guidance on particular subjects. To a newcomer, we're all just a bunch of names, so I'd like them to know who they can go to and feel like they're in good hands.

There are members who are particularly knowledgeable about the stages, members who can let you in on a few tricks on how to heighten your chances of winning a show at the theater, there's those who can guide you through the process of applying for handshake events and those that can help you with getting goods from Japan or getting things to the girls.
We have members who have been fans for many years and can share a lot of insight on the group's history, members that can speak Japanese fluently and members who are involved in subbing.

We want you to know who they are and not feel lost if you ever want to put something into practice. We'd like to enable you more to make the most of your time in the fandom.

All the above changes will take effect on Monday, September 30th.​

I'm positive that these adjustments will be a big step forward in eventually creating a stronger, more respectful and harmonious community environment.

The staff will gladly address all questions, comments and hesitations.

HoneyRoastedPeanuts



And last, but not least...

VIII. The website project

Due to personal commitments, I unfortunately wasn't able to pursue the development of the new website in the past two months. With that out of the way, I have been checking with several of the people involved and I'm glad to announce that we plan to reveal the site on January 1st, 2014.

 

Welp, finally, here we go HoneyRoastedPeanuts and I have been talking about potential changes to the forum for a while, changes that we both felt would benefit the community and the level of discussion that is possible here. Us two have spent literally the whole night (it's 8 am here and I haven't slept and I have an interview in 4 hours, yay!) hashing out the details and making sure we agree on points and ensuring it's fair for all. So, I'll be expanding and giving my view on each detail.

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1. A big, warm welcome to the newest member of our team, Smilodon. I haven't had much chance to talk to him personally, but we have talked on Twitter and from my impression, he's someone you can have a good discussion with that certainly knows his stuff about the 48 group and is well-spoken. He's also been quite active on the NMB48 forum and has done translations for things like Geinin! (as I'm sure some of you have seen), so I think he'll be a good addition to the staff. [clap] HRP did mull over the choice of a new moderator for a while too, so this is not a sudden decision. The addition to the team is a much needed addition that will allow us to more easily roll out the below changes.

2. I'm sure most of you have noticed, but our rules were indeed outdated and I think most people didn't even read them before posting away. The idea here is to make a newer set that is objective and is referred to by all members of the staff, and one that is read by all members of the forum. When they are out, please take the time to read them carefully and thoroughly. It'll help us with our jobs and cut down the time staff have to make posts saying "Please remember rule #x" and let us spend more time helping the forum members out elsewhere. We don't like making those posts much, because they're boring

3. The Depot is completely dead anyways, so it really serves no purpose for us. Pirated content or links to pirated content that is easily available via HMV, Amazon Japan, CDJapan, etc. (all stores that ship worldwide) shouldn't be posted on the forum. The idea is, if you call a girl an oshimen, you should be truly supporting her. That means buying things. Of course, things like appearances on Music Station are welcomed as you can't buy them, but no one uploads those to the Depot anyways. Just linking them on Youtube, Youku, Yinyuetai, will be fine. Think about it this way. AKS Management knows of the existence of Stage48, seriously, they do. On the off chance they visit it, we don't need posts showing "Oh yeah, we download a lot of our stuff." The Depot was hidden for that purpose, but given how the Internet has changed, there is no point in us hiding it if there's nothing for us to be ashamed about.

As for the sister groups, the expansion of their forums were long overdue. They've gotten big enough that they deserve to have more space to discuss them, and the idea is that giving each group more visibility on the forum will help those of you who only pay attention to AKB expand your horizons. There is a lot to the 48 group besides AKB, and it's time we treated the sister groups as equal.

4. Nothing to say here. It was largely useless already, so it makes sense to retire it in favor of the new changes covered in points 5, 6, and 7.

5. This is very, very important, so I will reemphasize this. We are NOT judging you based on our opinions. We are merely looking at the content in posts: is it well written, does it make for good discussion, does it help people, is it logical, etc. Over time, we hope this system will give recognition to the contributors to the forum and give goals for people to strive towards. For all I care, you can make a post about why you don't like Mayuyu, and as long as they're well-supported, logical constructive criticism I'll still like your post if it's well-written.

Also, by the way, if anyone is concerned "But so and so staff member doesn't like me!," this is a system that is open to all staff members. We're all different people. If you post good posts, you will get the "likes."

6. Everyone's starting at the same level, whether you have 3 posts or 3000 posts. Post quantity doesn't matter, post quality does which is really what discussion should be based around. The ranks ties into the recognition thing - if you're contributing often, all members will be able to see that you're someone who has done a lot to help others. This is a system that rewards those who contribute in any way.

7. In general, the staff are quite knowledgeable about all manner of things 48 group related. We've been in the fandom for quite a while (me, 6 years) so we are here to help with pretty much everything. Please feel free to send a message to us with anything that concerns you, related to the forum or just for any questions related to the 48 group. We'd be glad to answer to the best of our ability. However, there are definitely occasions where other members can be more helpful. People who speak fluent Japanese, people who have been to countless handshakes, stuff like that. Until I can attend handshake events of my own (working on it, heh ) these badges indicate people that will be able to better address particular topics.

8. This is my favorite, but it's the one thing that I really feel will help unify our fandom and help it grow. A one-stop source for all news, translations, everything you want - which can then be discussed on forums will help our scattered fandom immensely. No more needing to looking through random tumblrs and blogs for info, this will be the thing to look to, both for fans new and old. That's the idea anyway, and I've spoken at length about my support for it in the actual thread (viewtopic.php?f=1&t=5804).

HoneyRoastedPeanuts and I were talking about it a week or so ago, and I was inquiring about the status of the project so we thought this would be a good way to start off the New Year, with the unveiling of our capstone project. The date is intended, for lack of a better word, to light a fire under our asses and make it happen. We've been talking about it, now it's time to do it.

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And that's it. We really, really think these new additions will bring about positive changes to the forum, such as more deep discussions about this group that is so dear to our hearts. We wouldn't have done it otherwise, because this is just more work for us, and we really get nothing out of it, lol But we as staff volunteer our time because we really enjoy this fandom, talking to others, and hopefully giving back to the fandom - just as people helped me when I was a new fan 6 years ago - and it's with that in mind that we're doing these bold changes.

As HRP said, please don't hesitate to give any comments, questions, hesitations about any of this stuff - one of us will address it as best as we can I hope you'll enjoy the new Stage48.

 

Re: [IMPORTANT] Upcoming Changes to the Forum

Hello, my name is Smilodon and I was recently appointed to be a moderator for Stage48. You may know me through my tumblr 48-family.tumblr.com. I’ve been a fan for about 2 years now since the release of Moshidora and Everyday Kachuusha, but have been aware of AKB since Heavy Rotation and Beginner came out.

My oshimen is Yamamoto Sayaka, whom I have followed since the very beginning of NMB. For those who follow my blog, the main group I follow is NMB. I do however follow all of the four main groups in general however, but NMB is my favorite group.

The work I primarily used to do resided in translations, as I gradually moved from text translations to later working for ProjectSubs48 and translating Geinin 1 and 2. I am Japanese, so the only way I can really contribute is to help spread the groups and members I care about among others.

Though I previously resided in the NMB forums of Stage, as a moderator I will be taking a more active stance on things and will do my best to maintain the accessible and friendly nature of what makes Stage so great.

Hopefully everyone takes these upcoming changes in stride as they are meant to update the forum and improve the general forum experience for everyone.

 

Well, first of all, thanks Smilodon for taking up on being a moderator.

Regarding the "reputation system" I must say that giving the members the chance to use it is a bad idea, so I agree that only the staff should be able to use it. My experience with all reputation systems is that they only bring trouble and used as a weapon rather than as a way to actually see who contributes.

Also, I like that the user ranks are not based on post quantity but rather on quality, that would also make it easier to seek for help, since higher ranked members would be people who contribute.

Regarding what ithebigc said about the new page, I'll try to comment that to the owner (or someone related to) Juurina (on tumblr). They might be interested.

 

when you mean little badge, you mean like : "HKT48 specialist"? or KKS specialist?

sounds interesting. I see members only posting in sister group thread. (even i post majorly in HKT48 and only casually on NMB and SKE thread). It's a shame though, but can't be helped to only be interested in one group in particular.

 

I really, really want to believe this. I do. But I've been burned by this in the past - been a member of forums where mods and admins promised they would remain impartial and did not live up to their promises, and it never ended well. So, I suppose I am dubious, but I will remain hopeful that the same type of favoritism doesn't spread here.

Big welcome to Smilodon though!! [party]

 

I don't blame you for remaining wary. We discussed this change over and over again as we thought it would be quite controversial. At any time, feel free to call out one of us staff members. PM us, ask us "What made this post good?" and we should be able to explain what exactly distinguished that post.

Before all this staff business, I was and still remain a member of this forum. I still remember how intimidating it was to step into this world of Stage48, not knowing much about AKB48 at all and always asking questions, curious. And eventually I grew to be one of the experienced users answering questions for new members. So we all still remember what making good posts mean, because we went through the learning and growing process ourselves.

The badge thing was HRP's idea so he can probably explain a little bit better, but it was similar to things like "Handshake Expert" or "Goods Expert" for those that have been to lots of handshake events or buy a lot of things and can help guide people in those aspects. If you're familiar with all things HKT, I guess an "HKT48 Specialist" wouldn't be too far off expectations. I suppose it'll be a bit more standardized as things are rolled out, but that's what I think was meant by badges.

 

Let me address that issue shortly.

Once you deal with a forum and its members on a moderating / administrating level for an extended period of time, you become growingly indifferent to fights and conflicts of opinion. We all have no personal gain in favoring one member or one party over another.

The system we're using is very simple. We're neither giving your posts points on a scale from 1 to 5, nor can we penalize you for a post. All we can decide to do is to "+1" you, so to speak. So even if we should ever fail to be impartial about a post of yours, the only thing that's going to happen is that nothing's going to happen.

Naturally, not each and every one of your posts is going to be under scrutiny. This isn't a plus/minus system or popularity competition.

@ gocchisama: I gave a few examples of what kind of people could technically receive something like that. I'm wary about rewarding members for simply being an "{insert group name} expert". We don't mean to encourage elitism with this, but under circumstances that might be possible. It's not like each and everyone on this forum is going to get rewarded for something though. That's just going going to result in an inflation of "experts".

Making someone "Paruru's #1 Fan" or "the expert on everything Nonaka Misato" would encourage them to have an attitude towards other fans of the same member. It's one thing to have people on board who are recognized for being more in the know about event applications and the technical side of things, but no one wants to be told that they're not as big a fan of Nani-chan as I am, right?

 

First of all, congratulations to Smilodon for the promotion to Moderator! Thank you for taking your time to help with moderating the forum.

Also a big thank you to HRP and ithebigc for taking their time to try to improve Stage48 for us!

I've seen this thread since it was first posted, but I didn't post here before because, being a user for just a few months, I thought I'd better let the forum senpais speak first. All the planned changes look great to me. I'd just like to make a few suggestions.

First, about the staff +1 votes. There are currently 6 staff members, of which only 4 seem to be fully active. So what I'm worried about is that there may not be enough people to do the +1 thing considering the amount of traffic that Stage48 gets. This may make people advance too slowly through the reputation system. One possible way to avoid that would be to extend the voting right to users in the top rank of the reputation system, so that these top users could also +1 posts.

Second, about the badges. I think this is an amazing idea. Like HRP said, right now most people on Stage48 are just names to me. And since I'm a little bit obsessed with categorization, I went ahead and thought of a few possible badges to get the discussion about this started. The names and the descriptions are just suggestions, what's important here is the general idea of each badge.


Badges awarded for knowledge/experience

Handshake Master: This user has attended multiple handshake events.

Theater Master: This user has attended multiple theater stages.

Concert Master: This user has attended multiple concerts.

Japanese Master: This user is fluent in Japanese.

48 Group Master: This user has been a fan of the 48 Group for many years and is knowledgeable about many aspects of the group.


Badges awarded for contribution to the community

Subber: This member has often contributed by making subtitles to videos.

Translator: This member has often contributed by translating lyrics or texts.

Media Poster: This member has often contributed by posting pictures, videos, etc.

Analyst: This member has often contributed by making insightful posts about the 48 Group.

Wiki Editor: This member has often contributed by writing and updating articles on the Stage48 Wiki.


And one final suggestion. I don't know if this is possible given the constraints of the phpBB software, but could we ramp up the forum user profiles? You see, right know the main space that users have for expressing themselves is their signatures, which results in some quite big (and not so appealing) sigs around the forum as users try to cram the names of all their 36 oshis in there, plus a link to their tumblr. If we could let users express themselves in their user profiles, all that fan information would be in a single place instead of being repeated on every post. We could use our profiles to list our favorite members, or the events we have attended, or the fan projects we are envolved with, etc. Would such a thing be possible?

 

The people mainly in charge of this will be ithebigc, Smilodon and me.
We spend quite some time on this forum. As admin, I personally skim through almost everything that gets posted (except the galleries, which are something that Afro_Stud is currently in charge of). I don't necessarily carefully read each and every post, but I'm aware of what's out there. When you do this kind of thing for a while, you develop an eye for things.

I'm constantly on the lookout for possible new additions to our staff and I definitely have a number of people in my mind for future promotion. In due time, we will welcome further moderators.

For now, the dedication of our staff should make sure we're not missing out on things. ithebigc and Smilodon are both pumped to get busy and ruin their social lives and educational prospects over this.

Regarding the user profiles: That'll be part of the "small tweaks here and there". Absolutely possible. Of course all those fields like MSN and ICQ number are going to get updated and replaced with services that people actually use.
Signatures are of special concern to me. I too want the forum to look a little more organized and clean.

 

first of all , i want say congrats to all staff for working hard ...

but i think " reputation system" isn't really good system , because since i knew from another forum that's just using for something attack each other ... and really useless i think .

sorry i just can give comment without help

 

We can't attack people with the system; we can only reward them. There's no negative reputation or minus points. Of course as mods we can always warn or ban a member for misbehaving, but that's another thing.

We're not "another forum" and I'm confident we'll do it right.

 

I'd like to congratulate Smilodon for his promotion. About the changes in the forum, I believe they will make S48 a more mature and tidy place. There are still some aspects I'm not too sure if they will be successful, but that's something only time will tell.

 

Regarding depot, I hope that some threads will be saved (mainly "The subtitled PVs thread", as its content is not really available outside; some others might be worth, too).

I hope that past posts will be partially reevaluated over time - I don't want to look like spammer with over 1000 posts and "n00b" etiquette, haha.

Other changes look sensible, no rush, no losses for anyone.
[clap]

 

I'll be a plebeian again

 

I love the idea of the new rankings of kks, team member etc it's also nice to think of being rewarded for the quality rather than quantity of posts, since on one or two forums I put a reeeeally long and (imo) well thought through post, but that only counts as one, though it takes longer and more effort than spam comments forcing the increase of a member's rank. Hence my lowly status of auditioning [sweat] looking forward to the changes! And thank you for putting all this effort into this site! [clap]

 

Will post more thoughts later though I'm glad the forum is finally getting a tidy up and a renewal sorta speak. I have been rather inactive on this forum for the last little while, though I still browse and read many threads, I always think twice about whether I really want to post something in reply or not.

Just to confirm, only 1 staff can give "thanks" to a post? or can multiple staff give "thanks" to one post?

 

Congratulations to Smilodon ! (though that I barely see him/her anywhere in the forum before)

Cool, I'm looking forward to the upcoming changes.
Things like direct appreciation from forum's staffs to members would be a good thing in the future, rankings not based on forum posts and else, also are a nice plans to be applied.
I'm still curious about the "badge" things, luckily someone has already mentioned and asked it so then I'll just wait for the explanation from HRP

And dear staffs I hope you guys don't forget some things from this link, http://stage48.net/forum/viewtopic.php?f=4&t=5804 some people are willing to help like almost every single things for the new website and I believe they're still on their words. Just to let you know that these Little Helpers might ease your jobs. Cheers.

 

Yes to the first question. Once either Smilodon, ithebigc or I have voted for someone's post, the rest won't be able to do the same. The results would get a little uneven if we didn't do it that way.

We all agree on a lot of things and have a similar concept of what to look for, so I think it won't matter much who of us three happens to come upon your post first.