[MDL Writers] Article Ideas & Discussion

 Badass Bunny:

Ji-N replied to me that he doesnt deal with these "internal" issues, only technical issues. 

I wonder what classifies as a technical issue since the masses have not been able to write their own articles for some time now lol 

 Badass Bunny:

Ji-N replied to me that he doesnt deal with these "internal" issues, only technical issues. 

It's quite hard to know who is managing MDL right now, since no official statements can be found (as far as I know) and even the MDL staff page can only be accessed manually, by adding /staff to the MDL url. 

Both Ji-N's and Skye-N-Rain's profiles are managed by "official Community Manager" whoever that is (I guess Aoi?). Yet when you ask Aoi you also get no clear answer regarding editorials. 

Honestly, it's like being on a ship and no one knows who the captain is... 

 Ari:

I wonder what classifies as a technical issue since the masses have not been able to write their own articles for some time now lol 

It's said, that it's a technical issue, but honestly no one believes that anymore. Any technical issue like this should have been solved by now, since this "bug" is there for at least 2 years. So yeah, they obviously don't want new writers for some unknown reason. 

There can be valid reasons for not allowing new writers but at least it would be nice if they actually told us why, instead of saying it's a technical issue that caused new writers to hold their hopes up that it could be resolved some day. 

 Badass Bunny:

that Aoi isn't in charge of it and that we should ask the two admins, so I did and Ji-N gave me the answer I said before and Skye didn't respond.

Great system. Party A directs you to party B, that to party C and then back to party A. It's basically no one in charge, so who is running the site non-technically? If no one does, maybe they should hire someone. I'm sure we have enough trustworthy, reliable, motivated and also active users in the community. 

Yeah, but I wonder if those minor things get truly fixed. Ji-N spoke about temporary fix when I got error messages whenever I tried to post comments or messages. Temporary is not permanent. lol

MDL is quite buggy. Feeds and custom lists pretty much always have some bugs and what I've heard they're quite different. ^^' 

 Suzy:

MDL became a joke or what? We get a drama recap of Queen of Tears after 2 months of airing? And all our articles that we wrote way back isn't published yet.... I mean 

It is definitely weird, since next article is mine and it's among the newest ones...the ones from January are still in queve :D 

Dear fellow writers and editors,

Although I am not active in this forum discussion, I have quietly observed the MDL Articles situation since I wrote articles on MDL in September 2020. This is the chronology of my observation of this feature and my thoughts on its decline.

It started way back then by the end of 2020. Before, one editorial article was published almost daily. Voluntary writers like us wrote news articles. In one day, readers could select to read any 12 articles to their liking. MDL showcased the 12 recent editorial articles back-to-back as a slideshow on the top home page. One editorial article stayed in circulation for a minimum of 12 days. When a new article was added, the oldest (the 13th article) was taken off the slideshow. 

By the end of 2020, MDL stopped the slideshow and replaced it with the stationary screen we see today. [Change 1].

Moreover, MDL hired a writer in December 2020 to write exclusively Korean entertainment news. [Change 2]. How do I know the person was hired? The date the person joined MDL was also the date the person's first article was published, and on the same date, the person also got the "Writer" role. As per MDL Article Guidelines, someone's account has to be at least 6 months old to be allowed to write articles [LINK], and the "Writer" role is given to a writer who has written at least 4 articles the main author in one year [LINK].

Since then Korean entertainment news articles have flooded the top home page. Many editorial/volunteer writers complained about Change 1 and Change 2 and voted for a suggestion for the Admins to fix the feature [LINK]. MDL responded by creating the Featured/Recent/Editorials tabs. How effective is that feature, I wondered? Towards the end of this post is my observation of the effectiveness.

By the end of 2021 (November to be exact), there had been a glitch that the Editors could no longer assign drafts to new writers [LINK]. It hasn't been fixed till now. Yes dear, THAT long ago!

Since then the MDL Articles situation hasn't gotten better but worse. MDL hired the second news writer by the end of November 2022, who besides writing news also writes editorials exclusively for Korean dramas/movies. Moreover, the editorials from voluntary writers were pushed back to only be published on the weekends.

At the beginning of 2023, suddenly we could not search for old articles anymore in the Article Search feature. The oldest could be search is from February 2020 [LINK]. MDL's oldest article was actually from as early as August 2012 [LINK]. I finally found out in May 2024 that the Admins hid them because of too many invalid images [LINK]. The only way that we can find pre-2020 articles is through the writer's Article tab on their profiles as I showed you on the above link.

MDL hired the third Korean entertainment news in February 2023. The person is no longer active on MDL after October 2023.

End of my detailed observation. But in general, the MDL Article situation keeps getting worse, here are my un-dated observations:

• Editorial articles are sparsely published even on weekends. 
• Some editorial articles were featured on the top homepage only a few hours before were placed by non-urgent news articles. I have experienced it with some of my articles.
• Some articles were never featured on the top homepage and thus were published quietly. Example: Cryssy Anne's news articles.
• Some editorial articles, after being featured initially, were not put in the "Featured" section that gets a chance to be displayed again on the top homepage on rotation.
• Some news article drafts written by voluntary writers were changed to "editorial", thus undergo editing and publishing queue, causing the fresh topics to become obsolete. 
• "Writer" roles are taken away from writers who haven't written articles for a while. 

WHERE WILL WE GO FROM HERE ??? 

Please read this post and think carefully... [LINK]

I wonder if an online platform can be created by anyone to publish editorial articles. Moreover, the editorial articles are written by anyone for everyone for the love of Asian dramas! Therefore, the MDL Article issues below will be resolved, and such editorial articles below can be written:

• New writers who cannot write MDL editorials due to the first-writer glitch can write their articles independently or as the main writer.
  
• Articles with LGBTQ sole/main topic.
• Drama/movie-related articles from any Asian country, not just from the 7 countries added on MDL.

     Thus to the title of this post: Maybe we should take these MDL Article issues to the next level !    

PS. When replying to this post consider not to quote in its entirety, because this is a long post.

PPS. Since not everyone, even writers, subscribed to this forum thread, feel free to share this post in your feeds, clubs, DMs, and socials, especially with fellow writers. Because this site is a community-driven platform, I believe we can also resolve these MDL Article issues as a community.

Darn it, writing this post is like writing an article! 😁

This is the best idea I've heard since the beginning of the whole MDL downfall!

I am absolutely and wholeheartedly ready to support it!! Thanks, Cho Na<3

I haven't been MDL for long as and active user, but really the editorials are so shallow, if they are being churned out to fill the slot its really explains it, they are like cut and paste of an interview from another outlet.

I watch a lot of critique on Youtube, and what often come across is the serious 'fan' will often have a deep understanding of their subject and bring out references to other projects that you may not of heard of. You may not always agree with their opinion, but there is serious thought behind it.

I think there is untapped information and talent from non paid contributors, and surely the paid editorial team  should be using them as a resource, fact checking ,editing and selecting the best.

TBH I use MDL as more of an information resource, as a forum it works poorly and with no proper search facility and poor moderation  it becomes a slanging match sometimes.

The concept of reviews. Even with well known sites like Rotten Tomatoes there are always the problems of pile ins, where fans give low or high scores depending  not really on an objective quality of the work, but I hate or love X, so its either a 1 or a 10. If the major sites have problems, and often the reviews are weighted by the volume of watchers it's difficult to solve, but it makes some review scores worthless. Perhaps having to write a minimum amount of words that cover key points is better than a tick box, and also cutting the amount of almost word or word description of the plot,  has no one heard of the phrase less is more, would encourage more people to give balanced informative views?

There are somethings that MDL are pretty good at, mainly finding information, and lets not forget that for most users that is free, which is amazing. Those users create ad traffic that help fund the site, I go on forums where there static ads banners on the forums for associated products that do not detract from the function of the forum.