What in the bloody smucks happened?

[Zarxrax]

Back in the days when lots of videos were coming out, this is when we had everyone complaining about "linkinball z" videos. Because basically, the vast majority of those huge amounts of videos were made in a couple of hours in windows movie maker, and most likely used dbz or linkin park. Most of them were never announced on the forums.

Also, good videos came out much more frequently back then. The video announcements forum was really alive and kicking. People checked it often because there was frequently some really cool stuff to be found.
Also, there were lots more actual viewers on the site, so their were also more eyeballs to watch all the vids being released.

[pacotacoshell]

People got lives.

This is something that is mentioned every time this sort of topic comes up. It's not that everyone stopped editing. Sure, a lot of people did. But guess what? They were replaced by new editors, there is a constant stream of them! They're just not flocking here anymore. It's not AMVs that are dying, it is this specific community.

It's sad though that alot of the newer editors don't even choose to come here or upload here, while just staying on youtube. Why not have your amv there and here. There's so much more benefits here. I started amvs on youtube for half a year before joining here, and there wouldn't be a single day where I would think of choosing youtube over here if I was ever forced to only have one.

I agree. In the perspective of a new editor wanting to become good at this craft, I don't get half the constructive criticism on Youtube than I do on here, even if a lot of people aren't posting on annoucement threads. But when people do, they give me detailed explanations showing me how to make myself better at editing. On Youtube, it's so extremely hard to find new people to meet. There's just too much clutter of random people to sift through to get to the people that are worth talking to. On these forums, it's so much easier to talk to the community as a whole and to get help with everything. The community here are all really friendly and helpful, rather than the people that just watch your videos on Youtube and go "o cool this is good anime thumbs up if u agree" The AMVs are all lined up by genres, song titles, editors, and all that. They have downloading and watching of videos on here. What else do you need for this to be better? :l

[gotegenks]

more convenient uploadability, simpler video information entering process, embeddable previews available to everyone, and small communication promoting things like journal replies and open commenting on videos and something REALLY SILLY that could be cool would be profile comments.

just my opinion. Org is in no way a superior site just more AMV oriented (naturally) with a community suited to its members + free hosting. But hey, that's money for ya.

[lloyd9988]

Sounds like the same argument on repeat about how there were so many people here at one time and it eventually died. :/ Honestly, youtube, as stated many times before, is a place where AMV editors don't really care about wanting to get better, they just want positive praise from everyone else, from their family and friends and online communities. Course, that's overgeneralizing a whole population of editors into one category which probably isn't completely true. Maybe there are many other editors out on youtube who want to get better but just don't know where to go. The org just looks like (I can't say for certain) a place where if an editor wants to get better with their editing style, they would most likely come either here, amvnews or join a *Decent* studio. Not to mention, when people watch AMVs, they don't come here to watch them, they go to youtube and, thus, they post their videos on youtube because they think that all the great AMV editors got their start on youtube and just making AMVs only on youtube. Maybe I'm overgeneralizing too much but its just kinda what I'm seeing from a noobie's perspective.

One plan that I think might work if you guys do want to make the community bigger is just give an intro or ending with the website's name to all the users so they can post it in the beginning or ending of their AMVs. Might work since they can post that intro or ending on youtube.

Between the org and youtube, all you youngins have it easy

Damn straight

[Pwolf]

Kinda going back to the original topic, I'm pretty sure the number of users on the forum right now (seeing about 56 as of this post) is about the same as it was in 2005 and even later anyway. As I mentioned earlier, the only two major spikes were 1) when the org started offering hosting and 2) what I suspect was caused by spam bots on the date mentioned in the original post. As far as using the forum as a way to measure activity, it's not really a good place to start. you really have to look at the bigger picture and sample other data like videos uploaded/entered into the database.

[gotegenks]

Sounds like the same argument on repeat about how there were so many people here at one time and it eventually died. :/ Honestly, youtube, as stated many times before, is a place where AMV editors don't really care about wanting to get better, they just want positive praise from everyone else, from their family and friends and online communities.

i wasn't talking about the community, I love the community here much much more than on youtube, but youtube has a vastly superior website design, i don't think anybody could possibly argue that. And also, i think i love the community, because i love the community. It's just my style of website. I'm a more critical person than average, so i felt like i hit the jackpot with this place where there's a bunch more people who are even more critical than i am. So youtubers could probably make the argument that their community is better, which, for the sake of being a community, might be true, but the Org is focused on the art itself and the typical member isn't as worried with making friends as on youtube or at least they don't do it as much here.

[I Fight For The Users]

I keep hearing sentiments that boil down to the idea that anime fandom in general is dying, and I wonder how it is that just about every large convention seems to pull in record numbers year after year despite this.

In Anime Central's case, there's a not-insignificant number of people who have a peripheral interest in anime but really go to ACen because

1. their friends are going and they want to hang out
2. they have another interest like Japanese video games or the dances

(Yes, some people are interested in the dances. I've learned this by hanging out with some trickers and b-boys. They use the dances as an opportunity to have fun.)

So convention attendance isn't necessarily a good indication of the state of anime fandom; some anime conventions have become aggregate counter-culture gatherings, if you'll forgive how fucking pretentious that noun is.

---

On topic, I submit that this site's administration shares the blame for the OP's observation.

Obviously the administration lacks the resources to make technical improvements, and that's a downer; however, it's not that big a problem; there are plenty of Web communities that gather around websites that haven't seen an interface refresh in a long time (but could really do with one). For example, see fanfiction.net.

I think the bigger problems are social. The administration shuns community involvement and only reluctantly accept those who press for it, as the non-member front page demonstrates. (Why do you resist official endorsement of The Lip Flapper?)

Also, the administration also does not do anything with other AMV communities to bring them here. (That's bring or integrate, not assimilate.) Some members of this site try to do that, but that is no substitute for an official welcome policy and propaganda describing why a-m-v.org is still something that those communities should care about. (I'm talking about amvnews.ru, animemusicvideos.it, YouTube-based AMV editors, etc.)

There's another social problem with some members of the administration sending editors condescending messages on other websites, but I won't go into that now. The affected editors can speak up if they deem the issue important enough.

---

So, why does a-m-v.org matter? No, really. I've read a lot of handwaving about "it's all about the art", but that statement is so subjective that it is vacuous. Are the flood of posts in the Special Effects subforum about the next trendy plugin or After Effects feature really "about the art"? Is there really something structural about YouTube that prevents deep analysis of fan videos, and something structural about a-m-v.org that encourages it?

Is the video hosting actually a big draw? Sure, YouTube has that really terrible takedown system and its content ID system is a real pain in the ass, but why have people not moved away from it en masse? This site is still hit #1 for "anime music videos" in Google's index; it's not like it's hard to find. Maybe dealing with takedowns and working around content fingerprinting isn't quite as bad as we all think it is?

Is this site doing something to improve the legal or societal status of AMVs, or perhaps even just this site and its community? (I know Prof. Lawrence Lessig, at one point, had a big interest in AMVs; some reports I've heard indicate that he, or people he knew, would defend a-m-v.org in court if things ever got that bad. Why was that support allowed to go unused?) That's something that a-m-v.org could do that might pay off big in terms of community activity ("come to us, we're official!"), and it's something that smaller, more fragmented communities can't do. I know politics is a mess, but it's important.

I will not lead that push for AMVs: I have other issues on my plate. But more importantly: I don't care.

---

a-m-v.org used to matter to me because I found friends on it and it was the easiest way to hang out with them. At one point I also found making AMVs fun, and I guess that kept me around.

I stopped enjoying AMV creation around 2008; I've found other interests since then. More of my friends also found other things to do; and, as 2012 rolled around, I realized that I had no more reason to stay around.

Now I think it's time I made good on that.

- trythil

[AceD]

Whatever happened to our Japanese users? I remember they used to pop up around VCAs much like the Russians do now, their like taking turns. It's like the mafia rinse cycle.

Many Japanese/Chinese people still come here and amvnews, i see amvs posted on there websites all the time...just they have no reason to catalog their own videos here.

[Zarxrax]

Its easy to see that the forum used to be a lot more active than it is now. Just look at the dates of the threads in General AMV. Right now, the front page of threads ranges from Feb 1 - Jan 4 (last post date). A full page of threads over 1 months time.
Let's look at page 2 of threads. Jan 4 - Dec 4. Another month. Seems pretty consistent.

Now let's look back to 2005:
http://www.animemusicvideos.org/forum/v ... start=3960
A full page of post ranges from May 10 2005 - May 3 2005. A full page of posts per week.
Looking at the next page, May 2 2005 - April 26 2005. Still about 1 week.

Now, of course this is just looking at General AMV as opposed to the forum as a whole, but I think General AMV is a pretty good indication of the overall speed of the forum. We are only getting about 25% of the activity that we had back then.

[BasharOfTheAges]

I keep hearing sentiments that boil down to the idea that anime fandom in general is dying, and I wonder how it is that just about every large convention seems to pull in record numbers year after year despite this.

In Anime Central's case, there's a not-insignificant number of people who have a peripheral interest in anime but really go to ACen because

1. their friends are going and they want to hang out
2. they have another interest like Japanese video games or the dances

(Yes, some people are interested in the dances. I've learned this by hanging out with some trickers and b-boys. They use the dances as an opportunity to have fun.)

Hearing from quite a few security people, there is also a frighteningly high number of people that go to cons to pick up underage girls as well. I doubt those numbers are statistically significant in either case though... Or at least I hope not. Would suck to have Chris Hansen crashing a con with a party van - really bad PR there.