User blog:Bagwis/2022 Q2 Report

''This blog is a part of a report series. If you're interested, you may check out the previous related published report here. Have fun reading the archives!''

Here's a quick disclaimer: the discussion below is not exhaustive, intended to be comprehensive -- and may be updated from time to time whenever it is convenient and necessary.

Welcome! We're almost halfway through the year 2022. Since we published the last report, the season started with many daunting world news concerning wars, civil unrest, and government instability. It's as if there's almost awful news to be reported every day. However, the community was blessed to receive an update on two new anime seasons published on the second week of July and by the year 2023. Fans, readers, and series enthusiasts were delighted to hear such news, as most of us didn't expect this to be made in the next anime season or even expect it to be produced at all.

Interestingly, numerous news sites covered this update, and the echo chamber across the internet certainly made the series peak twice in trends. In effect, while we're experiencing relative inactivity among staff across all community departments, as to be discussed later, we're expecting a high turn-out rate for new members, which will offset the dwindling server activity. Yes, we don't expect it to bounce back similar to early pandemic period figures, but it might be enough to keep the community to last long for a while.

We shall discuss a few points to highlight in the community divisions as per statistics for this report. I'll keep it concise as much as possible to keep you from boredom while reading.

On the Discord moderators, the unresolved issues mentioned in the last report are still the same. There was a lower time devoted to online activities, and if this goes on, I have no choice but to open up new slots for the team. True, there are fewer grave concerns in moderation as the demographic is relatively more behaved than two years ago. Still, the escalation of issues and improving the efficiencies have stagnated after the first moderator attrition.

It's funny to think before that, I used to tell the server that I'll be leaving in the next month or so until it went on and became a meme. But in reality, what's keeping me from doing so is knowing that what I have done for the community is not enough to keep it sustainable -- so that the organization won't be paralyzed even after I leave. There's certainly a crisis as it is evident that most active members are experiencing fatigue to the point where they stop interacting on the server. People come and go; the same thing is true for moderators. As I stated in the previous report: "we don't know how long the community will last," but one thing I can promise you, on behalf of the staff, is that in the remaining years that we have, we will make the best out of it.

During the last three months, we implemented three events testing the waters. First is the confession season in February, which was an intriguing yet debatable temporary feature added to the server. There were 1,980 confessions submitted in the channel, and the threads associated with it made it the fourth most active channel garnering 36,956 messages over the last 30 days. While we encountered some issues due to some members trying to abuse the system given the guaranteed anonymity, we still consider that this event successfully developed an interest for new active members in early 2022.

The second is the festival of colors, which was an idea I brought up due to frustration over the suspended project on the colored role shop. There were 36 choices among two sets (regular and premium) of colored roles back then, revamped into 63 colors evenly spread among 13 hues (including grayscale). While this does not directly encourage activity among the server members, the reception is unusually high.

The last one is the mini-event during the April Fools season, where everyone is allowed to change someone else's nicknames. There were 2,258 commands used overall, participated by 75 users (name changers) with 385 users as collaterals (name receivers). Again, some people tried to bypass the rules, but that didn't stop us from regarding that this event successfully developed interest among active members.

As for the general moderation side, we implemented changes on the verified role, which improved the new entrant figures. According to the server insights, the server is easy to join as there are fewer than 10% of new members who fail to get access to our channels. There was also an update in the minimum S-EXP requirement for each leveled role and the associated colors. All bot tags affected by this change are now modified. The only action item we're facing is a quick revamp of the rules, guidelines, and FAQ to keep them updated based on the newly implemented changes. This will be the main focus of the staff during the following season.

On the camp generals, there's a relatively higher number of candidates who ran for the 12th batch. Admittedly, we allowed a particular camp to have a general even though they haven't reached the minimum number of required electorates. It was a gamble we never expected to have yielded thrilling results. Good job to Shadow, Cruzer, Scarbrothers, and Len for ensuring that the tradition for the intercamp event push through by operating on a straightforward yet engaging activity. There is an 83.33% utilization rate for the S-EXP rewardable events among these four generals. We are aiming for 100.00%.

Here’s the reconciliation of camp activity, including the relative change from last year's report as of May 2022.

There is an increase in the number of members in general, but the number of active communicators and readers is quite counterintuitive. Only the camps whose heroines have little to no screen time, such as Arisu Camp and Ichika Camp improved in all three aspects but what people should understand is that there are a lot of factors concerning the significant drop in other camps.

As tested time and time again, based on the plots in the previous year, the shorter yet regular screen time for these heroines played a role in the trend as there's a lower baseline for these camps giving a higher % change after a year. Another possibility I could think of is that most of the active members of the camps with a higher drop rate probably moved on from the story and in the server in general. With the new season's debut, we expect the numbers to go up for all camps all-around for the next season compared to last year. Fortunately, none of the camps are on the verge of closing yet.

On the translation and archiving team, we are yet to receive an update from our local translators for the upcoming release of the latest volume. During this period, D3nj4l and Jhelan stepped up in translating LN Year 2, Volume 6. On the other hand, Graze, and his team from Confused Translations have remained stagnant in delivering translation of the LN Year 2, Volume 4. We are still looking for the translation group willing to handle the LN Year 2, Volume 5 without compromising the quality.

While we support these fan translations, we urge people to support Seven Seas' Translations for official EN translations as the copyright holder.

We are also delighted to announce that we have partnered with the Weeaboo Scans, a translating group working on various manga mainly focusing on Shounen and Seinen Series. They decided to pick up the 1st and 2nd-year manga of Classroom of the Elite as no group we regularly handling it. They plan to catch up to the raws as soon as possible, so if you want to support them, you can simply join their discord server to motivate them to work on the series and release it faster. Any valuable feedback is always welcomed!

Theevent staff kept their activity as most of the members spearheaded several regular activities. For instance, Tuna handled Jackbox games on a semi-weekly basis and the QOTD on a daily basis. Ariadust still manages the Minecraft server. Shissou led the Post-Valentines podcast reviving the old event joined by more than 40+ participants and listeners. In early February, Jacob headed the Pokemon Showdown, and Shadow ran the Yugioh Tournament in early March. An anime music quiz was led by Kagaya while Zeph commenced his Smash or Pass tier list edition event. There's also one new Blitz and Mafia Hosts (albeit unofficial): Cruzer and Zestue. It was proposed to have a ranked version of Mafia similar to Blitz before. However, seeing the effects of this conversion to the latter, the event staff formed an unfavorable consensus against the former. We shall see the event grow for now. Also, a mini-betting event headed by Safwan (still debatable if he's going to be an official part of the event staff) has successfully commenced during the release of LN Year 2, Volume 6. Again, this team has successfully supplemented the server activity once again.

Similar to the previous observation, on the wiki moderators and editors, the wiki auditor has noticed less and lesser activity on both moderator’s and editor’s side, so that’s one thing we should be worried about. We received an outsider’s concern about the bureaucracy and retention of inactive members in the high position. While we understand that they meant their criticisms in good faith, we feel like their opinion will only matter once they know the inner mechanic of the whole organization. We don't unnecessarily demote an individual in the Fandom due to their inactivity in our current protocol. Most of the time, we retain them as they serve as emergency moderators whenever convenient to them. Again, I believe we should review this to keep only the active moderators remain in the ranks.

We are expecting a high visitation rate worldwide on the debut of the new anime season. Again, we recommend helping increase the workforce on the database side, especially on drafting plotlines beyond S1 anime. One of the benefits it provides to you as an editor is that you'll be able to refine your writing style for storytelling and have insight into programming. We welcome volunteers in this sector.

[List of people who claimed the hidden treasure in order: EmperorAry, Regulus Corneas, bens, assassink, Shissou]

There were no changes in the management of the subreddit moderators, similar to other reports. They reached 71,200 users as of writing this report (an addition of 10,000 since 3 months ago). There is no foreseeable mod application in the following months based on Candle, the head moderator, and if there's a new mod, they'll be directly hired.

Here’s the simple metric provided by the Discord on the server member's activity.

We can observe from the table that the numbers shoot up high during the announcement of the two new anime seasons. This is just a preview of the expected activity in the following six months. Almost 25% of the current members visited the server, and among these visitors, 1 out of 5 members talked at least once. There's also an average of 190 new members every week. We are also expecting another influx of activity during the release of the new LN volume. The peak of engagement is likely to be around the second week of July until August, which is the server's anniversary month.

This report may not show significant statistics, but here's the link to the server's basic statistics are open to the public.

That is all for the second quarterly report of the year 2022. I'm excited to write the next blog considering a positive trend across all community departments. Please look forward to our progress in the following season.