Chit Chat 2022

[Robin Rain]

Indeed. x_x;

On a somewhat related topic, I have a Discord server for my art and projects and a bitty community. Several MR members are there already so if anybody, whom I'm familiar with, wants to join to hang out or stay in contact with each other in cases where the site is down feel free to DM me for an invite. (No public link atm due to wanting a slow growth of familiar faces for now.)

Vikings' also has a Discord meant for MR that I think most of the regulars are in already, but they've left it unmodded mostly, and it's not as active there.

[Suuper-san]

eyyyyy it's back

@robin I read your comment and thought "hey! someone else has a discord server!" and then I realized I'm already in yours XD

True the MR discord is pretty quiet, mostly I prefer to post on the forum rather than on discord, so it's more of a backup option at the moment for me

Would hate to lose MR to something as simple as a server issue :'(

[IndigoDoll90]

Yeah I kind of missed the small community here while the site was down. I've thought about making my own discord server but it would only be for close friends and would be invite only to keep the server small. I can't stand large servers with lots of people anyway. Besides I've tried joining other servers on discord only to eventually leave them after a few days because in my opinion the community wasn't the friendliest so I think making my own server of close friends would be the way to go.

[Suuper-san]

I dare say I'll start my own server at some point, although moderating it I can't be bothered so probably not the best idea :/

[Coryn]

Sorry about the downtimes everyone. Unfortunately the infrastructure we're hosted on has been having some issues, but besides the occasional network loss I think the data is safely stored if we ever need to migrate.

[Suuper-san]

Ahhhhh that's a silver lining if ever I heard it
I have saved a couple of my own pages to my PC anyway just in case XD

[Coryn]

If everything ever does go fully tits up (like say, a storm puts the whole facility under water), the waybackmachine is always there. And bitter sweet though it may be, I won't rule out a fresh start somewhere somehow. The MR dream of a space where people can get out creative ideas free from internet hate is evergreen after all.

[Suuper-san]

from what I've seen, thewaybackmachine doesn't have a massive record, just the front page most of the time.
but yeah as long as there is breath and blood in our bodies the MR dream will live on. And fortunately most us have each other's discord for backup.

I won't rule out a fresh start somewhere somehow.

Hmmmmmm.... in that vein, perhaps a reformat/spruce up might be in order? modernize the feel of the site a little?
Even just a fresh skin or something? The mobile site isn't quite functional for starters.
I'm happy to casually offer help for a long term redecoration project if that's viable.
I always had the idea of an app which scraped the site HTML and reformatted it more like a chat program, with notifications to boot. Just a pipe dream of course, but I think about it a lot.
If there's even a shred of interest, let me know and I could knock up a few demo layouts, ideas etc. part of a rejuvenating promotional campaign, of sorts :P

edit
while we definitely dont want to go in the direction of deviant art or instagram etc, we could definitely take a few ideas from layout and what makes their sites so attractive.
one such idea might be to have trending popular posts or something, popular stories or images. I have plenty of ideas of that sort but most need a second pair of eyes to filter out the bad ones.
I have always wanted a "gallery" view where you can see all the art ever posted in a single thread all in one place, and to comment on specific artworks. i know that overlaps with DA, but just putting it out there
moving away from the forum feel might be worth looking into. again just random ideas.

[Coryn]

Well at the end of the day, MangaRaiders itself as intellectual property belongs to Hasith and Corycaly as far as I'm concerned. So any real work would have to come from Hasith since he holds all the keys.

I think the biggest roadblock is that the old architecture of the site isn't going to play well with modern app design. When we tried to reskin in 2015 it was so buggy we had to revert to the version we're in now and had been in for a while before that. So I think any sort of structural update would have to be from the ground up.

I agree that those features could be nice though. Reddit is definitely the bane of single focus forums like ours, so something that mimics the functionality wouldn't be a bad way to hold attention.

Of course, who's to say the thing that will kill reddit isn't out there already  As it ever was on the internet, you never see your executioner until it's too late.

[Suuper-san]

yeah I figured as much.
I'd honestly be hesitant to make any changes on the site since websites are massively complex structures (mostly thanks to multiple browsers that all speak different dialects >_<).
That being said I'd certainly at least like to look at the underlying code and make a sandboxed test version.

I actually had an interesting workaround that I tested a while back but ultimately it failed, basically overriding the HTML of the site with a reformatted version, on the client side. So the website remains the same, but people who chose, can use the new version. It relied on a chrome extension that could reformat websites, but I couldn't get it to work how I wanted. (wait....since then I've learned to make my own chrome extensions...)

Would anyone be interested in a Chrome extension that reskinned MR? Serious question.
Second to that, an android app?
I think I definitely would, given that I tried once already.

maybe we'll see an update in the making. I think for me, what would sell the site more would be simplicity. i.e. instead of the user info block on the left of every post, it'd be just the name and icon, and hovering would give the extra info. I'd put signatures in the user info only as well, to streamline the comments and conversation, putting the focus on the interactions. I'd keep the personal user info box floating down the side of the page as you scroll as well probably, as well as links to hot topics etc.

and as always, a badge system would be awesome, also some sort of points system that many other sites use seems to work quite well in identifying popular users, information,posts, etc.

[Coryn]

I mean I'd give it a test shot if you're interested in building one. I don't know a thing about programming so best of luck!

[Suuper-san]

awesome
I'll put it on the back burner projects then, and it'll turn up at some point, along with the VN lol
making an extension do something simple doesn't require too much code, but an entire skin, plus adding functionality, would take a fair bit of effort. Although most would be in the design aspects, deciding how many pixels big stuff should be and how to make it in front of something instead of behind. Like trying to properly format a word document, is website coding XD

[Suuper-san]

once more, MR rises from the ashes.
that was a scary downtime

[Operative13]

Likewise. I've never seen MR down for two weeks. Sometimes I wonder if it's because we're no longer paying for server upkeep... 

[Coryn]

Alive again!

@Operative: Never fear, we are definitely paying for upkeep. The recent issues have been more external. The last big downtime was caused by a power failure, which was more to do with Sri Lanka's infrastructure. This most recent one however happened because our host was subjected to a massive cyber attack.

In all cases, remember that while Hasith doesn't hang out much anymore, he is still looking out for us.