Okay. There's been a crapload of speculation about what changes are in store for both the site and the boards ever since Merrill and I started our daily Employee Blogs. I'm going to tell you more about what's going to happen in the near future.
The Site:It's very likely that we will lose the sidebar navigation. We haven't finalized what the nav will be, but it will be different that those we've had in the past.
In general, the site look will evolve, not just jarringly redesign. You've seen it already with the homepage. But expect some steady evolution over time.
The Boards:Here's what most of you guys have been waiting to hear about. And I have to be honest, I'm about to lay some bombs on you. None of these decisions were made lightly or without serious thought, so please don't think that we are changing things just to change them.
The Rules:
In the future, we're going to be both more restrictive and less restrictive. I can't talk about that too much, as we haven't formulated everything yet, but the main point is that things are going to change from a moderation perspective. A change, I think, for the better. But don't worry, we're not going fascist on you.
No more ranks. Over the last two years we've learned that ranks provide very little in the way of an added board experience and encourage people to post, not with good post topics, but with little nothings intended only to increase rank. People who deserve rank will distinguish themselves by their actions, not by statistics, and the positive effect will be the same.
The folder structure is going to change.
There will be no Noise section. No Babbling, No Incoherent Babbling, no Rants. Instead there will be one General folder to encompass all non-Adult Swim discussion. This wasn't an arbitrary decision, but one we must adhere to in order to accomplish our larger goals for the site.
This will be the new structure going forward:
Adult Swim
.com
Fan Reviews
User-Generated
Anime
Comedy
Show Suggestions
General
Insider Boards
Adult Swim will be a general discussion of all things Adult Swim that are NOT shows.
.com will be a discussion of all site-related things, including games and technical issues.
Fan Reviews will be a place for fans to post reviews of shows. A user can only post a thread there, not reply. Other users will be able to rate each review.
User-Generated is the place for fan-made stuff. You know, whatever.
Anime is the discussion of anime.
Comedy is discussion of comedy.
Show Suggestions is where you suggest shows for us to air.
General will be where everything else goes. This will not just be Noise in one folder. It will be a entirely different type of general discussion, the vast majority of which will not be nonsensical.
Insider Boards will be a category set aside for Insiders. If they want one, we'll give an Insider their own board to rule as they wish, and to engender discussion of their shows. We don't know if many (or any) will really want to take advantage of this, but we hope they will.
There is more to it, but this is all I can say right now.
I want to reiterate that this isn't a punishment to any folder that's being removed or the people in them. It's just a decision we had to make for the future of the boards and where they need to be. Things are definitely going to be different, but I encourage all of you not to see it negatively. The boards are not just folder structures and rules. These boards are much more about the people in them. I hope you guys remember that as you go forward with these new changes in mind and try to think about reforging this community around those awesome people.
We don't know when these changes will happen. But we're thinking some time in July. We don't know yet for sure.
At the risk of making the first post far too long, I am gonna edit some of the questions answered into this post for those who aren't reading all dozen pages. Hopefully Torrent doesn't mind
.....
Wow. Okay.
There will be no rankings at all. When I said that about people distinguishing themselves, I meant by their actions to other users, not that we would assign our "favorite users" ranks.
We are not changing board software.
Posts will not be deleted, but they will not be a part of the board proper. Noise will be hidden from the view of regular posters. No posts from Noise will moved into General discussion at first, because we want that board to develop a personality of its own and get people used to the new guidelines they will have to follow there. A dedicated team of mods is determined to later move some key threads into General just so that they won't be lost and I'm okay with that.
General discussion will NOT be Noise all merged together. It will have to be its own thing, a new little animal for you guys to raise. You have no idea how hard it was even getting a General folder approved, so I hope you guys will treat it well and make it something just as unique as Noise was.
We can't call the section Noise, not if we need it to be somehow different than the current Noise mashed together. Raven and I both think it's a little silly to try to give boards clever names when we would be better off just making it clear what the board was.
There will be no Archive.
Other Anime will now be discussed in the Anime section. However, though we have yet to set these guidelines down, I think that a requirement of the board will be that posts be clearly delineated as AS or non-AS. Maybe, I don't know yet. It requires some thought. As always, though, spoilers will have to be clearly marked.
Many of you have asked why Noise had to go away. I'll be frank with you. If you've read our Employee Blogs recently you know what's happened, that control of the site has changed hands. This decision is one result of that. The main goal here is to make this a place where the average Adult Swim viewer can come and have a reasonable discussion about what he sees on TV. As such we need to raise the bar a little on discussions. Not that randomness can't happen, or that you have to have a degree to post here. Any frequent IBer knows the difference between clever random and non-clever random. One goal we had was to make the boards easier and friendlier to new users, and I think this new structure helps. But it was the mods who pointed out to me that you can't just move things around and expect change in the way people post. So I'm working together with them on new moderation strategies that will hopefuly allow you guys to be as creative as you want while improving the average quality of post.
And if users picking name colors is something I can do on these boards, I'm all for it, but I don't see that setting anywhere. I'll look into it.
And SwimMedicalTeam: we couldn't put it to you guys directly. You can't decide these sorts of things by committee. We relied heavily on the advice of the moderators and even then it was hard to get everyone to agree on a good course of action. With a committee of 500,000 it would have been impossible. So we just had to work with what we had and do what we thought was best.
I hope this answers some of you. I'll keep reading.
Message Edited by SwimMod_Bast on 06-09-2006 10:26 AM
Hopefully the site will be even greater though. 
AdultSwim.com is part of Turner Entertainment Digital which is part of the Turner Sports & Entertainment Digital Network.
