Tezuka In English Discussion Forums

I'm interested in knowing what everyone thinks this site is missing in order to make it a more interesting place and have more discussions between fans.

A few months after I joined, I was disappointed by the inactivity and made a chatroom (see signature), as I had learned from other websites that it helped activity and subject discussions, hence in return creating more topics in the forums. Only I and (every now and then) Sevi are on it so far, but I suggest to all you guys who keep your computer on 24/7 to join it and lurk too. It never takes long to start great conversations there. If you have an IRC client or Firefox, to launch it.

I think the forum lost even more activity when putrocca reported that they were trying to fix the current bugs (which aren't that much an hassle honestly). Maybe people are afraid their posts will be gone if the forum needs to reboot from scratch? That shouldn't stop us from having discussions guys! And whenever you make an important and long post, just save it somewhere so you can repost it if the worst was to happen. Maybe a fresh new beginning wouldn't be that bad an idea anyway.

I take my assistant editor post on the site to heart, so if you have any suggestions of new features to add to the site, I'll do my best to carry them out. And that goes for everything, even creating articles about Tezuka series you are curious about.

Admittedly, I am a little surprised that the forums aren't very active despite the website being linked to via Tezukaosamu.net. Although I guess it's safe to say that the fan-site itself receives more traffic, the forums bugs are indeed scaring people away, or that the website just looks outdated and that everyone prefers to go to the official English website even though it lacks in comparison.

Site-wise, by 'outdated', I mean that the fan site just doesn't seem to keep very up to date with the news, and most of the Tezuka news I get is from going to other places, which makes things harder to locate. Not to mention that many of the pages are a bit outdated, I still come across many "Enter password" popups, and frankly, the fan site also feels difficult to navigate. Like, I once came across a page that listed the Astro Boy manga issues ordered by serial printing, not in volume order, and now I cannot find it again.

And with the forums, perhaps the bugs actually are a big factor in the activity, especially since the bugs are also causing problems with those still waiting to be activated.

Perhaps it just may be better to start out fresh and revamp some things. The website could probably use a few tune ups and reorganization, and if the cause of the forum bugs cannot be found, then the forums might very well have to be restarted from scratch again.

Not trying to sound rude or anything, just providing some critique.