Reinvigorating the Forum

Anime Boulevard Redo Project

Anime Boulevard has declined in membership recently. Some changes to the sites general layout, along with advertising on other, more popular sites, should help reinvigorate the forum back to what it once was. Obviously, these are just changes to the forum layout and general aesthetics of the site—any more serious changes need to be consulted with some with more programming skills than I have.

Okay, so here’s the general consensus on what we would like the forum to look like:

~Get rid of the old topics. While Anime Boulevard has no policy against necro-posting a lot of the locked topics in many of the sections take up space and, in general, look very out of place. Topics that haven’t had any activity in them, such as the many contests on hiatus around the site, can be gotten rid of as well unless the creator of said contest would like to restart it. More on this idea later, however.

Rules and Announcements
Until someone tells me differently, the organization for the R&A section is fine. Cleaning it out of some old topics will probably be necessary but for right now the section needs no major changes.

Anime & Manga Questions
Needs to be gotten rid of. It will be split and merged with another section.

Okay, here’s where the big changes come in (this is a layout that hopefully builds on our old one, please tell me if something won’t work):

I. Anime & Manga
a. This is the new, and large, section I’m proposing. Instead of having anime and manga divided into separate categories, such as Anime/Manga questions or specific series, I think that we can have one major header titled ‘Anime’ and Another labeled ‘Manga’. So these two would be two major categories and the other various things we have related to this would be split between the two.

II. The New Anime Section
a. First, I think we should get rid of the icon structure. It limits the number of series we can talk about and many don’t have posts in them. Plus, grouping the rest into ‘Anime & Manga not listed’ makes the section very crowded and hard to navigate.
b. So, I think that instead of the icon structure we should implement a major heading titled ‘Anime’ and have this sub-categories under it: Anime News, Anime Questions (here we would include 'Looking for' and 'what anime is this' threads) and Anime Series.
i. Anime Series would have the categories of A-H, I-Q, and R-Z and Currently Airing. It allows users to list series alphabetically and would reduce clutter on one 'anime' page. If we wanted to expand upon this idea we could have 'sub-sub categories' that list series names if they become popular enough for their own group.

1. Why the currently airing section? It would allow us to keep threads related to popular on-going series, such as Naruto, Bleach, and One Piece, in one area so they don’t clutter the rest of the group.
ii. Anime Questions would take the place of the sub category we have now. In it we could have questions relating to certain series that wouldn’t belong in the anime series section (such as ‘how many episodes does anime A have?’) Then, after these questions are answered, we could lock these threads and move them to another area (discussed later). Also, we could use this thread for general anime questions like ‘what anime you like’, ‘why do you dislike genre X’, etc.
iii. Anime News would, of course, be for news relating to anime. Articles reporting various news regarding anime would be listed here and discussed. It’s an interesting addition I’ve seen used on many other forums.
III. The New Manga Section
a. As I’m unsure of what to do with the manga section, I’ll list what I’ve posted for it in the ‘Reinvigorating the forums’ thread:
i. I am a little unsure about what to do with manga. I don't know if the anime structure would work: I don't know how much manga would be discussed in the long run. However, for now, until I think of a more fitting grouping, the anime structure would work: the basic categories would be added (Manga News, Manga Series, and Manga Questions) with the exception of 'Currently Airing' as that would cause confusion because lots of manga are currently being published as opposed to the relatively few anime series airing on television. I believe we would simply make a 'category' for certain series on their own: for example Naruto, Bleach, or One Piece. We could even have a vote as to what series would get their own groupings (much like the icon system now except we would also have the alphabetical groups). So the anime of a series would not be grouped with the manga to avoid clutter).

IV. Creative World--Fine, nothing needs to be changed here.
V. Other Discussion
a. Clans--I'd like to know what the plans are with these. Delete them, revamp them, make news ones? Until I know that I'm going to suggest getting rid of the section for a while because it doesn't seem to be used often.
b. Japanese Discussion--I'm not quite sure what this group is for either. It can be merged with 'Other Discussion' but, for now, keep it as it's own section.
c. Anime/ Manga Discussion--Under the new proposed format, such sections would no longer be needed.
d. Off Topic--Fine, nothing needs to be changed.
e. Forum Games--Again, fine, nothing needs to be changed.