Ctrl-A Forum

Since this wasn't settled at the meeting, I think that the forum might be an appropriate realm of discussion.

First of all, to clarify:
Dependencies occur at CTRL-A shows when, in order to maintain continuity, the member must have been present the previous term (external dependency) or the member must have been present at the previous show (internal dependency).

During the meeting, there was no consensus on what to do regarding these dependencies, or whether or not they exist (given the level of debate, one could argue that there are dependencies).

My view:
I'm fairly ambivalent to fixing internal dependencies; rather, I don't know the best way to deal with them.

External dependencies are much more straight-forward in my mind. UW is very much a co-op school, and as such, classes and clubs tend to work in 4-month cycles. From a CTRL-A survey in the Summer term of 1998 (admittedly a while ago), 88% of respondents indicated that they were co-op students. Assuming that this is representative of the club, that means that under the status quo, we're effectively alienating as much as 88% of members every four months.

Fixing external dependency is easy: either don't show long series, or stop showing long series at the end of term. If the club only showed things which it could obtain easily, then it wouldn't even be a problem stopping shows at the end of term, because members could still access the series to finish it (and volunteers could easily obtain it to show it, marathon it, etc.).

In summary, with regard to external dependencies, lets stop having them by limiting shows to 4 months, whether that be by not showing long shows, or by stopping long shows at the 4 month mark.

One slight hitch: when you say "don't show long series", how long is "long"? Traditionally we try to keep the individual shows moving by not showing too many episodes of one series in a single block. This coupled with the number of shows of one type we generally can fit in a term (4-6) limits us to series with no more than 13 or 18 episodes.

This places the magic number of anime episodes -- 26 -- out of the reach of one term's showing schedule.

This can be easily visualized by the DVD release process. Most 26-episode series are released on 6 discs in a 5-5-4-4-4-4 pattern. This naturally suggests showing 4-5 episodes of a series at each of 6 shows. Scheduling 6 shows around holiday weekends, anime conventions, and exams is rather difficult. Say we go back to 4. That raises the bar to 6-7 episodes per show...

So, we could always cut it short. 13-episode series are often released on 4 discs in a 4-3-3-3 pattern, so for 4 shows in a term we could get away with 3-4 episodes per show... and leave half of the series on the floor. I suppose all we're doing is bringing to the 'perpetually-here' part of the membership the feeling of being on co-op. I'm not sure that's a good thing.

Imposing an artificial limit on how many episodes of a series we'll show, regardless of its quality, seems a little heartless to me.

*thinks a moment* Alrighty, how 'bout this...

We show 13 episodes of something, then show the next 13 episodes the following (or skip-one) term, but at a different show. Returning members can be mustered to shows more quickly than new members, so we could get in a few shows while the club is still waiting for FedS to set up Clubs Days. Can pick up a few more Fridays during the term, perhaps, or switch to another day of the week (could ask Adam if he'd be willing to take on the latter half of the 3-or-so series that tend to span terms for his Saturdays, or start a new show on a Thursday or something)...

I'm just spitballin' because I don't think that imposing a limit will get us any more happiness...

A couple points:

1) While I do not deny that this problem does exist, I personally do not feel affected by it. Heck, I saw the last episode of Mai-Hime as the first episode I saw of that series and I still didn't mind even though I had no idea what was going on.

2) The fact that Haruhi was so well-received is proof that this issue isn't as large as it is made out to be. Haruhi is shown completely out of order, so the continuity is completely lost. Why wasn't there a general coup d'etat over that?

3) If necessary, I doubt Adam will have a problem if we tell him what to show. He won't have to buy his own anime if we get it for him, we get to get the shows done, and we can show longer series. Problem solved?

4) From talking to people about CTRL-A, the general consensus seems to be that CTRL-A's problem isn't the dependency issue, it's the fact that we're not showing series as quickly as the fansubs are coming out. The dependency issue is almost always second on people's lists, but the #1 complaint is that we're not showing new enough stuff. I doubt we're planning on changing policy with regard to this.

Personally, I'm not seeing the issue. I think this would be a good exercise: Nick, at AN, ask people what they think about the dependency issue? Arguing about it amongst the exec who all go to shows regardless of dependencies or age or anything else is kind of useless since we're pretty much all of the opinion "I don't care".

When I say "don't show long series", what I really mean is, "whatever we're going to show, make sure it fits in four months". If we really want to show something 'long', maybe we should offer more shows. The emphasis is on fitting things into four months, and not 'how long is long'.

Unfortunately, such an idea still creates dependencies. That being said, we can't rely on the volunteers to finish up shows.

Removing dependencies also gives the benefit that CTRL-A can stop worrying about how to schedule terms that have old shows. Each term, the club could debut X series, and the next term, it would show another X series.

Something to keep in mind is that making sure things fit into four months has few consequences and many benefits. Thinking of the first year students, many come to campus looking forward to CTRL-A. Those that manage to stick around through the fall term, but go off on co-op for the winter term come back in the summer term to find that what we were showing has long finished. That's pretty discouraging for first years, and we do it every year (every time we disappoint a first year student, we've lost them for the remaining three-five years).

I don't exactly know what you mean. First of all, Haruhi is a bizarre case in general (I cannot name any other series that has two viewing orders). Second of all, despite being shown 'out of order', the 'broadcast' order still provides information that could be useful to viewers if they missed earlier episodes. That being said, I don't want to dwell too much on this point, as its certainly an exception.

I would imagine that Adam wants to show what he wants to show. My understanding of volunteer shows was that we allow volunteers to do as they please. If we want to do something like have longer running shows air on Saturdays, then I think the club needs to take back Saturdays (unless of course Adam wants to show continuing series, but again, I imagine he'll want to show what he wants to show: it's his show).

That's a valid point, and thank you for bringing it up, but that's a bit unrelated to the issue at hand (we can start another thread about the number one concern of members). To quickly touch on the point though, CTRL-A can't compete with instant and free, so I'm uncertain as to what can be done about that (again, we can discuss this more in another thread). The fact that the dependency issue is second on this list is some indication that the problem exists.

I'll try my best to bring it up, but to be totally honest, I'll likely be busy exploring the convention, not to mention it may be hard to get in touch with folks (there's just so much going on!).

That being said, if the exec is of the opinion "I don't care" with regards to what is best for the general membership, then I think there are much larger issues to deal with.

I brought this up on the forum because this is supposed to be the place where we discuss matters; this wasn't resolved in the meeting, so I've taken the opportunity to make things better by bringing it up here on the forums, where anyone can discuss it, not just the exec.

I'm not sure much can be done about internal fragmentation; Matt suggested all marathons or all samplers, I believe, but I think we'd burn through anime far too quickly in that case. External fragmentation seems to be an easier and quicker problem to solve.

A quick note:

I don't think that there's a problem of burning through anime too quickly, even if we're just counting licensed and released stuff. There's just *so* much stuff out there right now that I don't think that, even in an all-sampler environment, we'd run out of content. We just wouldn't be able to show it fast enough to keep up. Mind you, with the US Economy looking like it's recessing and the North American anime industry looking like it's along for that ride, maybe they'll slow down and it'd become an issue.

But, as you also said, Internal Fragmentation is a problem likely not to be resolved one way or the other because the granularity's so small (and the opinions so diverse), so we can probably just skip over that.

It's pretty tough to solve this problem regardless of how we do it.

If we don't disappoint the stream 4 people, then we'll disappoint the stream 8 people. If we can't finish a series in a single term, it's going to happen regardless.


My biggest concern is that if we're trying to show series in a single term, the shows get to feel really "grindy" and would get old fairly fast, I'd think. I know that when I'm at home, I can't stand to watch more than three (usually) episodes in a row without being able to go surf the internet or do something else in between them.


In my opinion, and this ties into the "what should ctrl-a turn into" discussion, perhaps bringing forth more of a sample format would be best - we can't beat torrents, so once someone comes to a show and says "hey, I might like this series" they can get the rest that night and watch most or all of it before even the next show rolls around. Once that happens, there's no need to go back to the next show.

If we were to show sample episodes of series (which would be a nightmare for our external officer, unfortunately), there'd always be something fresh and interesting there. After all, there's only so much someone can find on their own, and if we all come together and share what we know of and love, everyone is bound to discover at least a few series over the course of a term.

If we moved to this format, we'd turn into more of a meeting ground and congregation area for Anime fans than we are now (I think). Since we're not showing full series, if someone likes what they saw, it's a simple matter of grabbing the show in a bag, some like minded people, and putting on a mini-marathon to watch the rest of the series (assuming the contributor of the disc has the whole series and is willing to lend them out).

Mind you, I haven't been here long, so I haven't had much time to see how things go over multiple terms, but I really think this might help.

Personally, I look forward to the continuity between shows at CTRL-A. I don't download a lot of anime myself, so I get most of my watching done at CTRL-A shows. If we switched to a sampler format, it would kind of suck for me.

Just my 2 cents.

Because people got to see the whole thing. The issue is that if a show is spread out among more than one term and you miss part of it, then you don't get to see the whole thing. People want to see the whole thing. Seeing it in order is nice too, but there Haruhi is a special case and we arguably *did* show it in order. The big killer is not getting to see all of it. If I miss the start then I don't want to watch the end, and if I know I'll have to miss the end then I probably don't want to watch the start either. For someone who was planning to attend all the shows this term, neither of those issues came up with Haruhi because we showed it all in one term.

There is also something of an exception in the case of a show where I only see one or two episodes - a sampler. Then I don't have the expectation of seeing it all. The real problem is where I have an expectation of seeing it all but can't because some jerk scheduled most of it for a term I'll be out of town.

I can't speak for Adam but I get the impression he strongly prefers to set his own schedule. Even if I'm wrong on that and he's happy to show whatever the club suggests, I'm not sure how much it'll help with getting through a 26-episode or longer series in a single term unless we take drastic steps like showing six or more episodes of a series per weekend.

I don't believe that there is any "general consensus," but I agree that the delay between fansubs and our showing is a big issue. It's also a big part of the reason for the claimed Death Of The North American Anime Industry. I'm not sure how much we can do about it. Even if we were willing to show actual fansubs downloaded off the Net (as opposed to our past practice of showing imported DVDs with home-made subtitles), people would complain "why should I wait until next week for the club's show when I can download this and watch it on my own computer tonight?" Even a day's delay will be claimed to be a compelling reason not to join the club.

I think the people who care about dependencies are generally staying home, so we don't hear as much from them as we might. It's certainly been a reason I haven't been attending volunteer shows much myself.

We did? I thought we came in halfway through the series... In fact, I'm certain we did; show 2 showed episodes 7-8, so show 1 was probably 5-6 (I don't have the schedule in an easy-to-find format).

Unless you're taking fall-winter as a single term, which sure isn't the case for us co-ops. >_<

Apparently we didn't. In that case, I'd suggest that it may not have been so well-received after all. (Note it was Ertai, not me, who said that we hadn't lost any Haruhi viewers.) It's hard to say how many people may have stayed home because they didn't see the start and didn't want the ending spoiled, but I'd bet it was at least a few.