Reactions, Interests, Episodes and Chapters, oh my!
Ladies and gentleman, today’s update is a big one. Depending on your general disposition, I would suggest purchasing one of the following products (with expedited shipping) before reading further. You have been warned.
Okay, I’m going to give it to you straight — we’re getting rid of reviews. For those of you that have previously written reviews on Kitsu, they’ll remain archived on your profile but new reviews cannot be created.
For many of you, this is one of those stories about someone doing something absolutely unspeakable, like harming children or animals, or unironically using “YOLO” and “bae”. You’ll think, “How awful! That person is a monster!”
If you’re that person, then as a member of the Internet, I’m here to officially inform you that the Internet Justice Committee (IJC) relieves you of your duties. You can stop reading now. Feel free to used this saved time to put your outrage on public display.
For the rest you of, I’d like to show you the new system that will be replacing reviews.
Introducing Reactions
What’s strange about our industry is that we tend to go a little overboard with the reviews. Instead of throwing our opinion out there, we often feel the need to clear our evening, lock our door and prepare our scientific dissertation on why this cartoon in particular was or wasn’t garbage. Here’s the thing though…
Nobody gives a shit.
Yep, it sounds harsh. If you listen carefully, you’ll likely hear the visceral screams of angry weebs from the basements of parents across the nation. The data doesn’t lie though. Long reviews simply aren’t read, nobody cares that much about the opinion of a stranger on the internet. Don’t get me wrong, there is value in analytically deconstructing the medium, and those that do it well generally build an audience and that audience follows them to their own personal blog or youtube or whatever.
Those people account for less than 1% of our community. The rest either attempt to do the same and are uh… bad at it OR they simply don’t bother giving their opinion at all — due to the barrier to entry being so high that any opinion that isn’t a thesis seems intimidating.
Reactions are our attempt at giving everyone in our community a voice. It’s a way to ensure that when you’re looking at an anime or manga you’re seeing the summarized thoughts of many individuals in the half the time it’d take to read a lengthy review by one individual.
For those ready to take the deep dive, you’ll find a helpful little message on your library informing you how many completed library entries you have that are missing reactions. You’ll be able to go through and add reactions for each without ever leaving your library page.
Interest-based Feeds
Folks, we’ve got a problem. We’re a social network for anime and manga fans… but discussing anime and manga on our platform is difficult. For that reason, we’re introducing what we’re calling “Interest-based Feeds” these are global activity feeds centered around particular interests. In this case, anime and manga.
If you’re venturing into the anime feed, you’ll see posts and activity from everyone in the community talking about just that. Same deal for manga.
B-but Josh, I don’t want to be inundated with the ramblings of the casuals
Don’t worry, we’ve considered that. In the case of tagged posts, you’ll only see content that is related to what is in your library. For example, If you’ve never watched Cowboy Bebop and someone in the community posts an image from the scene where Spike Spiegal goes on a killing spree in a shopping mall, you won’t see it, at least — not until you watch Cowboy Bebop. Your interest feed will remain relevant to the things that interest you.
Episode and Chapter Feeds
A common complaint we’ve both felt and received is how difficult it is without the old forums (rest in peace) to hold discussions around particular episodes and chapters. Today we’re unveiling our episode and chapter feeds. If you browse to the episodes tab on an anime or manga page, you’ll see a lil somethin’ like this:
Clicking into any one of those episodes will take you to discussion centered around that episode in particular. Any posts made there will also be shown on the activity feed for the anime or manga it belongs to, as well as the appropriate interest-based feed.
No need to worry about spoiling others! You won’t see episode or chapter discussion unless it meets the following criteria
- The anime or manga in question is in your library.
- You’ve seen or read up until that point.
This means that the episode or chapter discussion that does show pop up in your feed will be something in which you can relate to.
An Update to Groups
We’ve now opened up public groups a wee bit. If you’re not yet a member of a group, you may still like and comment on posts from that group. This is an effort to make engaging with groups a little more frictionless, and it’s admittedly a bit experimental. If it sucks, we’ll revert and act as if this was all just a bad dream.
We’ve also updated NSFW groups so that all content posted to them are marked as NSFW, but it’s no longer necessary to click each individual “NSFW Gate” to view the content of each post. All posts will be completely visible while viewing the group, but remaining behind the gate when they hit your regular feeds, protecting your power level from accidentally leaking out when you’re in public.
Squashing a Few Innocent Bugs
Favorite sorting is now a bit more reliable than previously. MyAnimeList Syncing now functions as intended, including resolving a nasty bug that occasionally caused your start / finish dates to get confused — like an old person at a furry convention. Actually, like anyone at a furry convention.
That’s all for this week boys and girls! Give these updates a shot, if you enjoy them — you’re welcome. If you hate them, none of this was my idea. Also, be sure to stop by and give Nuck, Vevix and MatthewDias some love — they’ve put a lot of work into building what turned out to be some pretty complicated functionality.
