So back in 2017, I made a thread where I included statistics taken from the site then (https://forum.novelupdates.com/threads/how-to-expand-nuf.51812/). According to the thread the site had a total of 11,182 users at the time with 856 members, 10,286 guests, and 40 robots. 3 years later, these are our current statistics: Total: 7,867 (members: 1,924, guests: 5,897, robots: 46) As you can see, we have more than doubled our members online, but the amount of guests have almost halved. Now, this may be because the time period novels were most popular had passed. But the amount of members of the NUF community has doubled, which should mean that the forum itself should be more active. However, the forum, as mentioned by various older members, is slowly dying. Even if one disagrees with this statement, it is undeniable that the site itself is not as active as it once was. In the past, it wouldn't be uncommon to have dozens of alerts when you wake up as long as you participate a little. Reacting to a single profile post could lead to 30 alerts within the span of 2-3 hours. But that is rarely the case nowadays. A new thread in General Chat used to disappear off the front page in only a few hours, but now a new thread could stay on the front page for a day or two. Why is this the case? Even though there are less guests and more members online, why is there less activity? Even the games forum, which used to be so active, is only visited by a few regulars daily. In the end, I can only put the blame on passion. People used to have so much fun talking with everyone, playing games together, and just messing around. But that doesn't seem to be the case anymore. Most prefer to have an account for convenience and the community is just an add on used to answer questions. As time has passed, we have lost our older, more passionate members and gained many fresh faces who only use the reading list function and ignore our forum entirely. There have been new members who are just as passionate, but there aren't enough. This is a sad truth, and there is little to nothing that can be done about it. No more are the days where baka-tsuki was a source for Rise Of The Shield Hero. Where spcnet.tv was where Ren and He-man translated the first popular fan-translated novels. We can't go back to the days where the Four Heavenly Kings of manga were One Piece, Naruto, Fairy Tale, and Bleach. Back when the Adventurer's Guild common room thread had a dozen pages of talk every time you came back to it. Really, the passing of time is something to be melancholic about.
I've never been a forums-type of person, nor had I been here back in 2017 but... forums tend to be specialized in terms of what audience they attract, right? And for NUF, that should technically be for readers? In that case, activity should mostly be centered around the relevant section,,, Or perhaps even more specifically, to the specific LCDs of novels people are reading? I'm just of the idea that it's difficult to popularize a forum if its audience tends to be the sort that does more reading than mingling? The fact that members have increased implies that NU is expanding, doesn't it? The forum is affiliated but not the principal use?
What NUF provides is not just novels. If it was an aggregate site just to read novels, then it would easily fade away like mangaupdates. What NUF allows you to do is talk with others who share the same interest. You can socialize knowing it’s a given that everyone reads novels and will speak the same language as you. It’s been established as the most official site for novels, and it’s community has developed in a much more personal direction. The environment allows people to make genuine connections, and is not just a board where you just ask and answer questions about novels. At least in my opinion, I came because I had a question but I stayed because I was charmed by the community.
It's been over 15 years since I stopped being into heavy forum use. As for this forum, I usually look at the two forum topics at the top when I hit the front page to find a new piece of reading material. I'd post more if those links were also on the reading list page, because I don't ever go to the forum directly.
Wow, that makes me feel old! Someone calling the "Four Heavenly Kings of manga" as the 'old days'? I remember how it was just One Piece, Naruto, and Bleach. People called them the Great Three or the Big Three. Also, account-wise, I only got an account when I couldn't remember a novel even after a couple years. There was just no reason to get one for NU.
It is more of the case of people getting busy irl, atleast that is what I got from asking around. Most people on nuf were around ~20 so now they have jobs and stuff. Many just transition to being lurkers and this new generation of nuffians is just not as wild as the older generations.
Haha same, at this point I feel like the only super active old member who have never taken a break or vanished is me, @Blitz and the mods.
is not how "the passing of times" went on or maybe you could really call the passing of time!, don't know BUT for me is not much about time but about ENVIRONMENT more about the community itself, in the past there was NuF, nUF, NUf, and NUF to check out about novels and updates and everything else now is different, ah ok to be real there was also baka-tsuki and animessuki that is a little older but they really never had embraced novels as NUF have done because they are more or less limited to Jp novels, hell this is even my second or third nuf account, i remember that my first one was very old , created really at the beginner of everything when the site launched but everyone "playground" was in fact animesuki's forum or baka tsuki so i barely logged in Nuf that it even got deleted-vanished somehow, but soon enough Baka-tsuki had it's own cleanup by publisher and some problems, later on animesuki also had one too with hackers and most important Cn novels started to pop up in the fathom and this more or less killed both sites forum since they are mostly JP novels. After that we had the "AGE OF NUF" (if nuf was a gundam history timeline) but you already wrote about it so i will skip!! we are NOW at the "AGE OF LICENSING"(again with the gundam reference), the environment is complete different now the ones who really rules is the own "translation group" with their official translation website or some asking for paid premium chapter where a lot of big sites came out, some with their own licenses and translation that asks for views and other things to keep it up, this shifted the population, where in the past we had pretty much one island in the community to talk about and check when something was released so we could go read in the group website, now we have more than one, some of them became a lot bigger, as big as NUF island used to be and have formed their own "ecosystem" with a complete cycle, there is no need to check up Nuf anymore to "know what's going on" and thus there is people out there that i bet that is reading some novels and never "knew-know" what is NUF, something that earlier on when everything started was pretty much impossible because we only had so few places to checkout-talk about with others. yeah, also agree with you on that, people never called fairy tail that in reality there was some delusional people doing it but it was never worth to be put together with the big three, and i even had to go google and check it now to refresh my memories because maybe i had made some mistakes in one of the best times of my life but after cheeking i'm happy to say that i'm sure: fairy tail is not even on the top 20 more selling mangas of all time, it did not even sold more than "attack on titans" and "demon slayer" that is both post 2000 launch manga with less than a decade of running time , hell i don't like demon slayer and i know it's a little too "young" to be called one of the big three since this is also a tittle of the "past" because "only" one piece is still running but if some manga deserves to be be called "big 4 in something" in recent times and compare it with the big 3 is without doubt demon slayer since is the shorted manga to reach 100million more copies sold, with only 4 years of running, this thing is a beast, at least if the numbers says something about it's quality, again i don't like it and i even liked fairy tail more but numbers don't lie, numbers could not means that something is a master piece but without doubt shows that thing is worth somehow, after all is number of sales, not number of someone who said something about the work. edit: also just to point out, the big three was called the "big three", because they have/had been in fact the only 3 running mangas with the biggest sales in current times and running in jump and by current times i mean earlier 2000, all of them was pretty much the only 3 who had sold more than 100million copies past 2000, outside of course of the two ones i mentioned before, attack on titans and demon slayers that is very "recent-new" and this was where "the big three" title had came from, because their sales figure. in some sense, you could even call the "new" big three; one piece; attack on titans; demon slayer, because again they are the only "running" mangas with more than 100million sales currently, but they are not all from shonen jump so i don't think it would be correctly too. edit2: the little google research about best selling mangas to write here made me see again what i already knew, i don't want to piss on the people who loves attack on titans and demon slayers, i'm not here on this edit2 to judge it's work, i just want to point out the "value" that a good "anime" could bring, without doubt for anyone who read this msg and read attack on titans or demon slayers, or both, or just watched the anime for now and have not checked attack on titans-demon slayers manga but only watched the anime can see that both of them where really well made, to use simple words, it was not a garbage of adaptation like we see most of the time(even more when talking about novels) and this was really reflected in sales just check this monstrous sales figures after the anime went on air for demon slayer: As of February 2019, the series had 3.5 million copies in circulation worldwide, over 10 million copies as of September 2019, over 25 million copies as of December 2019, over 40 million copies in February 2020, and as of May 2020, the franchise recorded over 60 million copies in circulation, including digital copies. the anime was launched April 2019. holy shit man, too bad that not every publish see it's like that and they like to blame the work for not gaining sales after the shitfest of adaptation they thrown at us for some novels or others mangas. i'm not gonna go search for attack on titans sales after the anime came out because is 2 am here, but holy god, it went from 3,5m to 20 times that in 1 year for demon slayer, and if the previous search is correctly now is already past 100million. edit3: first pardon me i can not stop, the rage is fulfilling me to write even more on this Spoiler: forget it, the rage pushed for a extra search and i discovered that they dropped it soon after the first few volumes but hey, who thought it would go anything different is beyond salvation no one would accept a series like that in their lives with a release rate like that so i still don't understand who thought it was good idea at all. super wall text so i'm sorry but i can not stop it. Now: please someone hold me because this rant is coming hard: when cheeking the previous search, i went a little deeper and discovered that in 2010 the main manga publisher in my country started to release the manga who is on 3 on the list of most 100million+ sales, and this is exactly why i want to kill them all and ultimately stopped to support the local industry, people the manga on the 3 list is golgo13; this is the longest running manga in JAPAN, with 191 volumes, the publisher here takes up to 1 month to 3month to launch a new volume, if the series is really well sold it takes 1 month, if not up to 3 or more, to give a example: boku no hero academy have a 2 month per volume and is really well liked, after all it is selling well worldwide but even so sometimes we have 3 or even 4 months per volume because of delays. So now tell me: how can i buy a series starting from vol 1, that have fucking 191 volumes like golgo13, that is being sold in japan since 1969? let's say that they will launch one vol-month that is the fasted they ever launched in their lives and the series really sells well, it will take up to 16 years just to reach the 191 volumes, and in those 16 years the series will keep being released, since is a running series for at least 48 extra volumes (if we consider a 3 volumes year) volumes since golgo13 is going with a 3-4 volumes per year since it started in 1969, giving it a extra of 4 years, closing the gap in 20 years to caught up with the series (i know that in those 4 years there is still gonna be more releases if the series is still running, but i will stop here i think you guy's already understand what i'm saying). i don't understand who is the one in charge of this mess, in reality i even know who it is because it have been for decades like this, every now and then we receive a pearl like this one in the industry and in the last few years, we have more and more news about how the entire local industry is going downhill because the manga "BOOM" is already over, but they still keep doing shit like this man, it kills me inside with rage.
Yeah, the Big Three is a thing of the past. Both Naruto and Bleach have ended now. Sales-wise, Attack on Titan and Demon Slayer both benefitted from having an anime adaption. However, One Piece, Naruto, and Bleach all suffered from their anime adaptions. To milk the series for more money, vast amounts of filler material was injected into their anime. Bleach, the shortest of the three, had about 5 filler arcs. One Piece had one good filler arc, one original arc padded so much anime viewers thought it was filler and hated it, as well as having an ever increasing amount of filler material being added even now. Finally, there's Naruto. The Naruto anime is why my family HATES filler. After the original Sasuke vs Naruto fight, there are three more dvd box sets WHICH ARE COMPLETELY FILLED WITH FILLER. These sets used to cost over $40, but had absolutely no material from the manga. They were a complete waste of money, time, and space. Of course, there's even more filler in Shippuden too.
Life is tiring, I got a burn out from reading novels, now I’m back in manga and currently waiting for the new anime season. Eventually everyone will be back cuz we’re all degenerates and need a escape. btw I haven’t seen this chicken in a while and this Chicken is handsome af!!!
I say Big Four not because of sales or anything like that. It was because when you go to a manga Reading website, as long as it wasn’t licensed, the 4 most popular were those 4. Ofc naruto, bleach, and one piece had already been there for a looong time, but fairy tale stayed fourth for almost the entirety of its series.
Hmm. I haven't had an account on here for long but I've been lurking since 2016. Ever since I did get an account though I've been on the forum almost every day. I get most of my human interaction from this site (more than IRL which is kind of sad but okay).
I had account way back (this is my second acc) but only searched for new novels for a long time without checking the forum. I only started to see the forums because of boredom in quarantine now I feel I should have checked in earlier.
Seasons will come and go. The clock will never stop ticking. Don't fret for what has yet to come, reminiscence blithely over the fact of NUF happening to be there for you to form those joyous memories. For it is what it should be remembered for instead.
When I joined 2 years ago this place was definitely more active. Another thing I noticed is that old users are posting less compared to their usual habits, which confirms the thesis here.
*pat pat* Yeah, the forums used to be more active for sure. Games section in particular was definitely a LOT more active. I mean, geez, we're having trouble getting 14 people for Mafia... Times have changed. That said... We're stil here, we can still do our things and have fun~
I got tired of reading novels, and would honestly rather read manga or watch anime in most cases. So I just find it kind of unnecessary to show up at this forum, unless I'm really bored with nothing better to do with my time.