Mad Skillz
- Joined
- Feb 25, 2005
- Messages
- 19,145
hey if you don't like it volunteer to add news and what not. what point is there in bitching about the issue without offering to help fix it
I don't think the front page being more active would do anything to boost the activity of the forums. For the longest time, HJU was seen as a forum first and foremost and for a brief period of time, yeah, it was a decent news source. That time has passed. HJU's front page, as much as I hate to say it, has lost almost all of its credibility. You've got inactivity, reposts from Orends and JE Fusion, two of the least credible yet prevalent toku sites out there, and thinly veiled advertisements for online gambling hurting the front page. Also, gathering news isn't easy. Sure, you can continue to be another repost machine and copy news from a place that copied news from a place that copied news from a place that actually translated it and sourced it properly, but what's the point in that? Your average Western tokusatsu fan and HJU member doesn't speak or read Japanese.
As a forum and community, HJU has been on its death bed for years. The decrease in activity, engaging discussion, and new member registrations has annihilated its ability to thrive. A number of vital members who facilitated interesting discussion have moved on from forums to social media. You had a period of people humoring trolls or those who were just ignorant of their offensive posts that did little to spur any discussion of merit. With less and less engaging discussion and even just the basic activity a forum needs, there was less of a reason for potential members to sign up and post. What you have left is this strange place in where only a small handful of members make regular posts in a small handful of threads.
In its heyday, HJU could easily get you a new episode discussion thread with 2-3 pages worth of content within hours of an episode airing. These days you're lucky if one of those threads reaches 5 posts. There's less an incentive for staff to do anything of note (one of the key reasons I stepped down as an admin) because that user base just isn't there. At this point you'd need to almost totally wipe the forums, bring in a set of active staff members, and really try to interact with people. You don't even need any sort of thought provoking discussions – we had tons of off topic chat threads that were engaging and a great place to make a new friend or two.
HJU on Facebook these days is mostly an image reposting machine, but it's...fairly active there? I dunno, I do miss the way HJU used to be but the core that helped bring in activity and new members is so splintered that I don't ever see it being what it returning to its former self.
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