On the removal of the Jr Idol club

[MrTimscampi]

Since the announcement thread was locked and there is no way to discuss this, I thought it would be fine to make a feedback post like this.

Firstly, I (and I'm sure others do too) understand that it's the admin's rights to remove any section of the forum. However, both the way it's done (Not opening the thread for comments, not polling the userbase and giving what are, at best, tenuous reasons for doing so, at least warrants some discussions, I would think.

The reasoning for the removal is given to us as such:

When it was first created, Jr Idols were very much a part of the Idol industry, and well represented in the real Akihabara. That, if you've been paying attention, is no longer the case. Certainly not in the same way.

From a purely logical standpoint, this makes absolutely no sense. The same logic can be applied to countless idols, both in the Gravure and JAV parts of the industry. All those idols who are not active anymore aren't well represented in the real Akihabara either. The few VHS rips in either the Gravure or JAV sections are not well represented in the real Akihabara either.

Removing an entire section of the site (And an historical one, as noted in said post, as it even predates Akiba-Online itself), because of "relevance" is purely and simply preposterous, if we take the reason given at face value.

I think all the members of the forum who frequent the Jr Idol club would like a proper explanation, or at least some community consultation on this decision.

If there are legal issues involved, why lie about it? Why hide it from the community? If it is truly a question of relevance, why now? Why does this decision not extend to other parts of the forum (Old idols aren't relevant either, by this same logic, as stated above)?

And if the removal is truly a done deal, why don't you lock the forum and give us a dump of all the messages and files associated, for archival purposes? Plenty of community knowledge will be lost in the blink of an eye, all because due diligence wasn't done, in the name of "relevancy".

Or, at least, give us more than a 24 hours advance notice, in order for archivists (like myself) to properly archive the contents of BOTH the regular Jr Idols club, and the DDL/Torrents subforums.

Edit(2023/02/22): I have completed a mirror of the JI Club. I'll clean it up a bit, then package it as a torrent. It's around 26GB, do it may take a while, but all the data is safe and browsable.

 

[drkfire666]

Agreed. If the forum is getting pressure to remove the content, we can understand that. If you are acting ahead of time in the best interest of the site as a whole, we can understand that. But please do us the courtesy of giving it to us straight.

 

[Immergeil]

My take is there have to had been a warning given (probably by the hosting company) that makes it so urgent, so I understand that it has to be done.

A little longer notice would have been nice though.

 

[dredwood]

we need to know the truth. the real truth and not some made up excuse.

 

[st1402]

Came as a shock to me when I launched my browser and got hit with the "you do not have permission to view this page" thing, was wondering if I had been banned or something, this is a pretty sad day for people who have been around for as long as I have, and for everyone else I would imagine, definitely would have appreciated more of a notice than 24 hours.

 

[JinSun09]

My heart is broken.

 

[RedSea5]

Did anyone manage to get a archive of the DDL/Torrent/Free Download Section?

 

[Danryo]

There were lots of new videos uploaded last night too, i was just about to hop on to get one and this...

 

[megatroll]

I messaged chompy, saying the exact same thing. He didn't give any explicit reasoning for this decision and it therefore appears as a malicious act to close a part of the site which isn't just relevant to AO, but a monumental part of internet history. He then added the part about 'pressure from the host' which, while possible, seems so temporally disjointed given the fact the site has sustained for 2 decades this way. Also, regardless of the situation, it's so harsh to freeze all threads/replies and not give people a longer grace period to at least build a life boat, coordinate to stay in touch and possibly rebuild somewhere else. There will be tons of people logging in this week not even knowing what happened. Feels like a punch in the face to the oldest and most loyal AO members from the early days.


I mean why would the host all of a sudden put a death-hammer on it? Why not migrate the forum to a freedom-respecting host? Junior material (both old and new) is probably more frequently found all over the web than ever before. There are countless sites posting new junior photo sets or even streaming videos. It seems very unjustified and unlike the original spirit of AO to 'give up' like that on a supposed concern from a host. I was one of the original members who witnessed the migration of the junior forum to Akiba Online, because it didn't fit the theme of the forum it was originally part of and AO was a place which welcomed it (yeah,... I'm actually that old...) so there's a big irony in the current scenario.


The whole statement of 'junior idols no longer being part of the culture' is plain wrong. Just last month I've watched 2 mainstream TV shows with Hinako, Sarina, Seia or Asami as guests. Akane, Maaya, Ayane & Co are doing live shows. Imouto is constantly adding newcomers and they form idol groups doing dozens of concerts and whatnot. How is that not 'part of the culture' ???? Also there are many dedicated fans to vintage media of all kinds older than 40 years, so why can't we have threads about junior idols from 10 years ago? Very strange...


This is definitely the saddest day in the history of AO and a tragedy for everyone who frequented this site for the last 20 years.

Still I want to express my deepest gratitude to everyone who came along on the journey. I've met some great people on here in the last 2 decades, some of whom I will stay in touch with for (hopefully) the next 20 years. The forum may die, but the memories will live forever.

Take care everyone!

 

[st1402]

I messaged chompy, saying the exact same thing. He didn't give any explicit reasoning for this decision and it therefore appears as a malicious act to close a part of the site which isn't just relevant to AO, but a monumental part of internet history. He then added the part about 'pressure from the host' which, while possible, seems so temporally disjointed given the fact the site has sustained for 2 decades this way. Also, regardless of the situation, it's so harsh to freeze all threads/replies and not give people a longer grace period to at least build a life boat, coordinate to stay in touch and possibly rebuild somewhere else. There will be tons of people logging in this week not even knowing what happened. Feels like a punch in the face to the oldest and most loyal AO members from the early days.


I mean why would the host all of a sudden put a death-hammer on it? Why not migrate the forum to a freedom-respecting host? Junior material (both old and new) is probably more frequently found all over the web than ever before. There are countless sites posting new junior photo sets or even streaming videos. It seems very unjustified and unlike the original spirit of AO to 'give up' like that on a supposed concern from a host. I was one of the original members who witnessed the migration of the junior forum to Akiba Online, because it didn't fit the theme of the forum it was originally part of and AO was a place which welcomed it (yeah,... I'm actually that old...) so there's a big irony in the current scenario.


The whole statement of 'junior idols no longer being part of the culture' is plain wrong. Just last month I've watched 2 mainstream TV shows with Hinako, Sarina, Seia or Asami as guests. Akane, Maaya, Ayane & Co are doing live shows. Imouto is constantly adding newcomers and they form idol groups doing dozens of concerts and whatnot. How is that not 'part of the culture' ???? Also there are many dedicated fans to vintage media of all kinds older than 40 years, so why can't we have threads about junior idols from 10 years ago? Very strange...


This is definitely the saddest day in the history of AO and a tragedy for everyone who frequented this site for the last 20 years.

Still I want to express my deepest gratitude to everyone who came along on the journey. I've met some great people on here in the last 2 decades, some of whom I will stay in touch with for (hopefully) the next 20 years. The forum may die, but the memories will live forever.

Take care everyone!

This post actually made me all teary-eyed, couldn't have said it better.

 

[granatnik]

How are we supposed to use a "a grace period for anyone to read or save any threads for reference purposes" with such little time? There are still 37k messages even after reduction, this gives probably 2500 pages with a lot of images. Even a crawler already adjusted to specific structure of XenForo would fail simply because server would not deliver quickly enough, even if it would not refuse at some point due to perceived DoS attempt. This sounds like "GTFO and lose everything, little sh1ts". As a longtime member I'm also not going to think kindly of a community that degraded me to a newbie after I have spent multiple workdays on research and careful posting.

As I see, the most valuable part of junior idols after all these years is not content, but information, that puts that content into context. Videos on their own aren't worth sh33t nowadays for a big part being 480p or less, they are increasingly memorial items, so that's a cunning move, delete the context to make the images and videos look like random, disconnected trash.

 

[MrTimscampi]

I'm not sure how this will be received by the admins and mods (I tried to make an announcement post a while ago and it wasn't approved, nobody answered my message to staff afterwards), I have been building a database for U-15, gravure and JAV for the past couple months. It's not available yet, but I fully intend to keep the U-15 stuff around.

I didn't really plan to add forums to it or downloads, because it was more of a "TheMovieDB" for JAV/IV/U-15. Though since it's community-led, nothing prevents it from going that way.

It's fully open source, multi-language, community-run and with fully editable data and an API for integration with whatever.

GitHub is here and has links to the Discord: https://github.com/kanojo-db

Edit: Direct link to the Discord: https://discord.gg/chg5KzTHHp

 

[Immergeil]

GitHub is here and has links to the Discord: https://github.com/kanojo-db

The discord invite seems to have expired.

 

[MrTimscampi]

The discord invite seems to have expired.

Apologies, I updated the invite link, should be good now.

 

[Thunderstruck]

Caught me totally unaware. Does anyone have any good alternative sites for jr idol u-15 material? I've always tried to share everything I have for those looking for it. First thing I do when I see a request is see if I have it.

 

[bigfrog]

The loss of the jr idol section is.....well damn it just sucks. I've always viewed Akiba and the jr idol section as going hand in hand. And yeah, all the info in that section disappearing is a real kick in the nuts.

This is a sad day.

 

[godgundam10]

What will happen to all the files that were on FileJoker? Are they still available or are they gone too?

Sucks that this is happening.

 

[zakurabu]

Is anybody coordinating archiving the forum to any degree? I asked chompy to make it public (no login) so it could at least maybe be archived by the Internet Archive. I also suggested to him putting its contents on IPFS or some other decentralized data store, making a torrent/magnet link of a backup of the forum from the database (possibly even an I2P torrent if anonymity is preferred), multiple different sites that host content of younger girls and still have hosting, etc., but it looks like no dice. The amount of information that is going to be lost is unimaginable. Even a text-only backup which could not possibly offend any host given that it would have no even potentially illegal content would be immensely helpful, but chompy doesn't seem to be providing anything so far.

Overall it is very bad form and etiquette. Even if he *were* being pressured by his host for a while, surely that pressure didn't just start today. He should have given us all warning that the section was on shaky ground. In any case, if this goes through without any backup/archive being provided, that's the end of this place for me. Good riddance.

I sincerely hope that chompy will change his mind and provide *something* for the many loyal posters over the years who apparently wasted their time contributing to this site. 24 hours is not enough. We deserve better.

By the way, does anyone want to post some good alternatives/sources of JI content? I'll nominate idolpixels.net for photosets. Also, not sure if he wants the shout-out, but I recommend joining the Matrix room available to join by messaging megatroll. It'll be a good place to coordinate and discuss.

Edit: Also, I think chompy should consider potentially providing the forum database dumps/info to K15 and see if they'd be interested.

Edit 2: A newer user who can't easily post would also like to remind us all that https://sukebei.nyaa.si/ has been a long-time host of many junior gravure torrents and still has much content available.

 

[ReiMyMiya]

Is anybody coordinating archiving the forum to any degree? I asked chompy to make it public (no login) so it could at least maybe be archived by the Internet Archive. I also suggested to him putting its contents on IPFS or some other decentralized data store, making a torrent/magnet link of a backup of the forum from the database (possibly even an I2P torrent if anonymity is preferred), multiple different sites that host content of younger girls and still have hosting, etc., but it looks like no dice. The amount of information that is going to be lost is unimaginable. Even a text-only backup which could not possibly offend any host given that it would have no even potentially illegal content would be immensely helpful, but chompy doesn't seem to be providing anything so far.

Overall it is very bad form and etiquette. Even if he *were* being pressured by his host for a while, surely that pressure didn't just start today. He should have given us all warning that the section was on shaky ground. In any case, if this goes through without any backup/archive being provided, that's the end of this place for me. Good riddance.

I sincerely hope that chompy will change his mind and provide *something* for the many loyal posters over the years who apparently wasted their time contributing to this site. 24 hours is not enough. We deserve better.

By the way, does anyone want to post some good alternatives/sources of JI content? I'll nominate idolpixels.net for photosets. Also, not sure if he wants the shout-out, but I recommend joining the Matrix room available to join by messaging megatroll. It'll be a good place to coordinate and discuss.

Edit: Also, I think chompy should consider potentially providing the forum database dumps/info to K15 and see if they'd be interested.

Edit 2: A newer user who can't easily post would also like to remind us all that https://sukebei.nyaa.si/ has been a long-time host of many junior gravure torrents and still has much content available.

I've been getting it all from BT4G as well and other sites and I am still seeding the stuff that I have. Been over several terabytes uploaded now and will keep on doing it. I've been around in AO for years and now seeing it die off to whatever it is forcing the admins to close it is killing me inside. This was THE place to get info and chat with other members and find new communities. But now I hope there will be new communities popping up elsewhere, hopefully we can keep eachother in the loop to not let this sharing and caring die off

 

[lifeisgook]

That forum was my only source for decent covers of JI dvds, does anyone have an archive of those?

Also for anyone who is a serious collector/archivist for JI, I think you should get in contact with me, I'd like to create a network of buyers and funders so that we can buy all of the harder to acquire DVDs from the golden age. And if your into the current stuff I can make it very simple and cheap to get all of your 4K content.

Currently I and one other member are the only buyers, with the larger part of the group supplying the funding, If there are any others out there who have been building collections through importing and solo buying please link up with me.

With the jr idol club forum closing and maybe a full scrubbing of JI content from the rest of the forum, this may be my last chance to find like-minded individuals.

If your looking for a small community for file-sharing and discussing JI content I do have an matrix chat that is linked up with my discord

you can join the matrix chat here
edit: no longer taking new members since people cannot control themselves
and the discord here

Before anyone joins please understand the rules, Discord is OK only for discussion of junior idol, no images or links to it are to be posted.
The matrix chat on the other hand is free for you to post whatever you want granted it is on topic (no western content)

Matrix is a decentralized platform with end-to-end encryption

Both chats are linked to each other through a relay bot so regardless of which one you join it is a unified community, discord users simply cannot see that channel where you post Junior idol.

I also have channels where I and other members will post free content from time to time.