VO Forum

0908998 — A snapshot of the Vocaloid Otaku Forums

Vocaloid Otaku Network

Vocaloid Otaku Network was founded by Azure Morichika (who was known as AzureSkyBalmung at the time) on March 13, 2009. It was founded as a forum for Vocaloid fans throughout the world to discuss and interact, but is not limited to just topics about Vocaloids and UTAU. Although still fairly young, it has spread throughout the world, with members from many different countries, continents, and backgrounds.

As of March 20th, 2010, VO has over 4,700 members, and has over 285,000 posts.

Although available for access worldwide, Vocaloid Otaku is a mainly English-speaking forum.

Vocaloid Otaku is hosted for free by Invision Free and powered by Invision Power Board.

Forum Layout

The Vocaloid Otaku Forums are divided into four sections. This has been done to categorize the forums into a tree-like structure, so that users can maneuver through the forum easily.

VOCALOIDOtaku.net

This section holds the Introductions, Announcements, Feedback/Help, and VOCALIODOtaku Network forums.

Introductions

The introduction forum is a place where newly registered users can introduce themselves to the community. A typical user's introduction thread receives minimally moderate attention, typically getting around 10 posts or less; however, there have been threads that have blown up to over 50 posts.

A departures subforum was added later on to bid farewell to users who planned to leave the community permanently or temporarily.

Announcements

The announcements forum is a section reserved for the administrator and global moderators. Regular users may post in this forum, but they cannot create topics. Important changes, promotions and announcements (such as user to moderator promotions, forum skin and layout changes, etc.) are updated here and members are encouraged to read them.

Feedback/Help

This forum is commonly mistaken as a place to post help regarding Vocaloid/UTAU programs, when it is actually a place to post questions and to report things about the forum itself. It is also used to submit user suggestions.

VOCALOIDOtaku Network

This section isn't a forum in itself, but more of a place to directs to the users to the community's partners. This section originally contained Vocaloid Radio the forum's two Youtube Channels:

Naturalistick - The Megurine Luka Channel

MegpoidVocaloid -The Megpoid (Gumi) Channel

Now the format has been changed to the following:

List of Vocaloid Otaku Partners

VOCALOID Lounge

This section is reserved for Vocaloid related topics and is meant to hold the bulk of the forum. (Although the Off Topic section actually holds this title.)

News

As the name suggests, this forum is meant to update Vocaloid related news. It is run by users dubbed "Reporters" who are responsible for finding and posting news and well as general moderation. The team currently consists of rihoko and Paradox.

Songs & PVs & MMDs

This is the place to share Vocaloid/UTAU songs through Youtube or Nico Nico Douga Videos. This forum is moderated by accela.

Downloads

The user posted download media provided here are only accessible by registered members.

Two subforums, Music and MikuMikuDance, were added here later.

Creativity Dump

A BETA forum created to promote and advertise user generated content on Vocaloid Otaku. It contains two subforums, Musical Corner and Writer's Den.

Vocaloid Talk

A forum for discussions relating to Vocaloid. A "Fanclub Suite" subforum was added in early December 2009 to contain all the "FC (Fanclub)" Threads

UTAU Talk

A forum for discussions relating to UTAU.

IDOLM@STER Talk

A forum for discussions relating to Idolm@ster.

Contests

This forum centers around users creating polls and providing two or more choices of songs, videos, characters, etc and having others vote of the better.

Animanga

A relatively small section reserved for anime and manga discussions.

Anime Discussion

A forum to discuss various animes.

Manga Discussion

A forum to discuss various mangas.

Off Topic

Containing a little over half of the site's topics, the largest and last section of Vocaloid Otaku. User birthdays and holidays can be celebrated in the Greetings & Celebrations subforum and games can be playing in the Forum Games subforum (Which is immensely popular on it's own.)

General Discussion

A sort of "default discussion" forum for topics that are not vocaloid-related, but are discussion worthy enough to be talked upon.

The Forum Games subforum is located here as well as the Greetings & Celebrations subforum.

Japanese Culture

A forum to discuss anything about Japan and Japanese culture.

Role-Playing World

Arguably one of the largest forums sections on VO, the Role-Playing World is used by a group of users who take interest in creating and participating in role-plays. This forum seems to have the tightest, self-governed rule system. Topics here receive hundreds of post pretty quickly and active ones can get to thousands. Due to this, many role-players can increase their post count substantially by taking part. A Plot Discussion subforum is available for users to suggest ideas, plan out, and share opinions regarding future or already existing role-plays.

Gamer's Central

A forum to discuss video games, internet games, RPGs, etc. It contains a TOUHOU subforum.

The Artist's Grotto

Comprised of the subforums GFX Zone and the Fanfic Zone, a place for members to submit their graphics, art, photos, literature, etc. A small writer's club called "V.O.W - Vocaloid Otaku Writers" was created here, but it has been on hiatus for some time.

Teh BR⑨ L⑨UNGE

The "BR" or "BL" as most users refer to, is the largest forum on Vocaloid Otaku and is used for off topic and random discussion as well as general chatting. It should be noted that posts in the BR are not counted in the user's post count; however, it does count in the total forum post counts.

User Hierarchy

Internally, the Vocaloid Otaku forums organize visitors and logged in members into user groups. Privileges and rights are given based on these groups. A user of the forum can be promoted to a more privileged user group based on criteria set by the administrator.

An unregistered user of the site is commonly known as a guest. Guests are granted access to all functions that do not require database alterations or breach privacy. A guest cannot view the downloads forum, make posts, vote in polls, or sent private messages. A registered user on the other hand, can have access to all these features as well as the privilege to own and customize their user profiles and forum experience.

Reporters

Reporters are the moderators of a single forum, the News section. They have the options to edit, move, close, etc topics as long as they are in the respective forum. However, they are not a part of the official staff and have considerably less moderation abilities and privileges than the Global Moderators.

Reporters: rihoko, Paradox

Former Reporters: Andy

Moderators

A moderator does everything that a global moderator does except that they are limited to only one (sometimes multiple) forum(s). They have generally an equivalent level of forum access as a reporter.

Moderators: accela (Songs & PVs & MMDs)

Global Moderators

The global moderators ("mods" for short) of the forum which are granted access to all the posts and threads of all members for the purpose of moderating discussions and also keeping the

forum clean (of spam and double posting for example). Moderators also answer users' concerns about the forum, general questions, as well as respond to specific complaints

Privileges of global moderators include: deleting, merging, moving, and splitting of posts and threads; locking, renaming, stickying of threads; banning, suspending, unsuspending, unbanning,

warning the members; or adding, editing, removing the polls of threads.

Global Moderators: Kenan_UK, Luka, Alexander-After

Administrator

The administrator (short form: "admin") manage the technical details required for running the site. As such, they may promote (and demote) members to moderators, manage the rules, create

sections and sub-sections, as well as perform any database operations. Administrators often also act as moderators. Administrators may also make forum-wide announcements, or change the

appearance (known as the skin) of a forum.

Administrator: Azure Morichika

Rules and Regulations

Although the only official rule specified by the administrator is the rule against double posting, there are general forum rules that the moderators enforce.

Double posting - With the exception of bumping up and old topic or posting in the fanfiction section, double posting (or making a post right after another) is prohibited. This rule seems to be less relevant in the BR.
Swearing - Obviously, excessive cursing is not tolerated.
Flaming - A hostile and insulting interaction between users is of course, not allowed and is punishable if repeated. See Trolling.
Spamming - With the exception of the BR of course.
Sock-Puppeting - The act of creating multiple accounts to support one's status (creating "Sock-puppets" of one self.). This may be excused in cases where internet IPs are shared by family members or neighbors.
Trolling - The act of posting controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant or off-topic messages with the primary intent of provoking another user or users to give a emotional response

Consequences

A user is typically warned when one of regulations above are breached. If repeated warnings go ignored, users can be temporarily or permanently banned.

Forum Features

Anonymous Users

Users can choose to stay "invisible" when they log in. This allows them to access the forum without being visibly online.

Youtube Videos

By placing the video URL between the Youtube tags, the video itself will be displayed instead of a link.

Polls

Users may create polls and have others vote on the choices provided. The creator of the poll may allow more than one choice to be selected.

Spoiler Tags

Spoiler tags can be useful in many ways as they compress and hide a section of the post into a small box. They are typically used to post long material, large photos, profanity, etc. Some problems arise from spoiler tags as some users type them in capitals, which causes the script to freeze. A guide to using them here.

BBCode Text/HTML Colors

Bulletin Board Code or BBCode is a lightweight markup language used to format posts in many message boards. The available tags are usually indicated by square brackets ( These: "[ ]") surrounding a keyword, and they are parsed by the message board system before being translated into a markup language that web browsers understand - usually HTML or XHTML.

Users can change and alter the color (HTML color codes) and font of their text by placing them in-between the codes. Some users have gone as far as to place all of their posts between color codes to give themselves a designated "user post color." There are further options to bold, italicize, underline, and ~~strike through~~ text ot any combination thereof. Aligning, quoting, listing, coding, and linking are some other options.

Post Count and Ranking Icons

As users become more active and make more legitimate "posts," their post count rises. As such, Vocaloid Otaku has it's own custom rank icons. It is rumored that a rank for the milestone of 5,000 may be added in the future.