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Amazingly terrible update. As expected. I wish I could get a job where I'm getting paid for ruining things.

@EnaJane Since it’s not locked, you’re free to reply

so this was the maintenance update eh well im trying the new conversation view now so far im neutral about it

Another mid update. Forums are really the only thing MAL has on AniList at this point and they're tryna ruin that as well lol.

Wait, where's the quote option???

Wow so now I have to manually highlight the text and quote it. Probably won't work on mobile.
Edit: I have no idea how this thing works.

ok guys, congrats on this wholly unnecessary change, but can we please get comments on peoples (va, authors etc) pages back already? or is that gone forever

Well, I've been posting less and less as of late and I've considered leaving MAL forums and this is yet another reason for me to just abandon these forums entirely. We had a good run boys, goodbye forever. Fuck MAL.


I think the dark mode extension makes this look weird lol.

I don't use the forums nearly as much as I did back in 2014-2017 but man this change is really fucking bad lol. Why make changes that NOBODY asked for

😳👆 A bot finally used some damn image BBcode? I've seen a million bot posts here but this is the first I've seen them use pics on MAL. If they all start doing this, the spam is about to get real...

ROFL someone on the staff made a bot to try to cover up the shit show created. No one talks like this and it's a brand new account with no list entries and only one post.

just another thing. Sort messages by their latest reply, so we can see what is the current active message in the thread.

the current "Newest" option is fine, it'd be good to add the third option which says "Active" so it can sort the way i mentioned above.

@Klad I guess this one won't come back any time soon, if ever. I think it was a good decision to disable the ability to comment under VAs and authors pages. Sometimes you could see really toxic stuff happening there. I noticed it myself, and I wasn't even browsing those comments sections very often when they were still on.

@Adnash Well personally I do not know much about the toxicity which prompted the staff to remove the feature, if it must've been bad then okay, but to me it seems like a lazy way to deal with it. The report button exists, or if you want to take an even more rigid approach then maybe limit comments to daily or something like that. Just so many ways to deal with that but they decided to remove a fundamental feature which connected user opinion to industry people.

They not only made it impossible to comment but also removed every single comment altogether. I guess spending your resources and effort on the "much-needed and requested" forum overhaul was more important.

Because a "reply" automatically quotes the users entire post now. In order to do a simple quote you have to:
1. highlight what you want to quote
2. click quote reply
3. copy the bbcode to the clipboard
4. click "new reply" at the bottom of the page
5. paste the bbcode into a new reply

So basically they overcomplicated what was once a simple click. I'm not even sure if this method notifies the person you are quoting though.

@Narmy

Yes I got a notification from your post. I'm way too lazy to do all that tho. I already have to click away two different error messages whenever I make a post on mobile which is still not fixed 3 months later. Next update we need a whole PhD to make a post here.

A new bug that I don't know if anyone else has mentioned:

Before the update, when I would click on a post link, the forum page would load and then immediately jump down the page to the specific linked post, where the blue header bar of the post was at the top of the window. Very convenient, no scrolling required.

After the update, it has become inconsistent. The most common problem is that it no longer jumps down to the post where the header bar lines up with the top of the window. It jumps down to where the post is around the middle of the window. However, even this itself is inconsistent; half the time, it doesn't even jump down to the correct post. It'll jump to a few posts above the correct post, and I have to scroll down to find what I was looking for. (And just to clarify, I turned off all scripts I use with MAL to make sure they weren't causing the issue. I even opened the links into a new incognito window and the same thing was happening.)

I've tested this with all four post link formats, and the issue happens with all of them. Here's an old post of mine to use as an example:
https://myanimelist.net/forum/message/68999042?goto=topic
https://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=2087496&msgid=68999042
https://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=2087496&goto=post&id=68999042
https://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=2087496&show=0&msgid=68999042#68999042

I know this isn't directly related to the topic of the thread, but it only started happening after this feature dropped, so hopefully someone sees it.

@dierubikdie
It correctly goes to the right post. It just loses it's place after more of the page loads after several seconds. Yes it takes that long for a page to load now. My assumption is the posts get loaded first then the reply boxes get loaded and expanded which is what is making it lose it's place.

@traed

ppl were already done with MAL forums when they released rule 7(iirc) and killed CE. The forum is really not what MAL should focus on, I think they should focus more on discord. I dont know. I think the old MAL pre-rule 7 was better, if I could ask devs to rollback to that patch I'd still be prolly enjoying my morning coffee whilst browsing MAL.

devs, you had the fucking power to nuke all the boards like CE when you had the chance, why not do it? I'd want it to be. This shithole is just not worth it.

wait you cant manual quote ppl now with their own message? MAL, my expectation when I was active on 2017-2019 was so fucking low that even to this day you outstand me with how much you can make it even lower. Good job y'all deserve a raise.

@_Ako_

Actually most that which you mentioned was done by the mods and admins not the developers. Mainly the rule changes but also the developers actually did some things at request of these like the character requirement to make a post they added by request of someone i think. Shutting down boards I think was something moderators or the admins always had ability over since MAL over the years has had various boards removed due to inactivity and restructuring of the site. I am unsure if this conversation view is also something that came from the moderators request or if it came from someone on the development team with instructions from above.

I pretty much have a good idea of what it would take to improve the community experience to be better than it is now but I have no power or influence and someone like me likely cant just ask to be an admin i dont think and even then im unsure how much influence admins have over the development of the site beyond forum rules. Being just moderator isnt enough influence because it's one among the many who already shat up the site or didnt experience what it was like when it was better so they dont know what it can be and are resistant to making it free from too many rules that squash any discussion of anything interesting and worthwhile.


Yes you cant quote anyone anymore only quote-reply which has a different functionality. As you can see here this is what quote reply does by default. Only way to quote a user like you could before is to manually copy and paste their message into a different box to send that isnt a reply to a user.