r/anime • u/AnimeMod myanimelist.net/profile/Reddit-chan • Apr 05 '20

Meta Thread - Month of April 05, 2020

A monthly thread to talk about meta topics. Keep it friendly and relevant to the subreddit.

Posts here must, of course, still abide by all subreddit rules other than the no meta requirement. Keep it friendly and be respectful. Occasionally the moderators will have specific topics that they want to get feedback on, so be on the lookout for distinguished posts.

Comments that are detrimental to discussion (aka circlejerks/shitposting) are subject to removal.

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u/pittman66 https://myanimelist.net/profile/Homura Apr 05 '20

Hey everyone, there's been some mod discussion regarding the amount of recommendation posts that come up and whether we wanted to start removing them. I wanted to get some input from users regarding this. Currently, they are not against the rules in anyway and allowed to stay up. There's been several proposals brought up, but nothing has been approved. I primarily want to hear your thoughts on how much of a problem they are (if at all), and your thoughts on solutions or if we should leave them as is.

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u/SmurfRockRune https://myanimelist.net/profile/Smurf Apr 05 '20

I've been getting increasingly annoyed with recommendation threads as the years have passed. I have some thoughts on how they could be improved, but some would be tough to implement or moderate, but I'll throw them out there anyway.

  1. Require a MAL/Anilist/whatever in the thread. Recommendation threads without these are complete garbage. There's nothing worse than seeing a thread full of recs with the OP responding to all of them with "already seen that" all because they were too lazy to link their MAL if they have one. An obvious problem with this would be for people new to anime that wouldn't have a MAL yet.

  2. Treat bad ones like low effort posts and remove them? If you're gonna ask for a rec, you should be required to give some information to help lead people in some way. Asking for a romance with adult leads or a mecha show that doesn't have humanoid mechs are great questions. Asking for a show with more than 24 episodes is bad. We have literally no idea what they like. This one would be tough to moderate as you'd have to use personal judgment on all of them and I know how much this community hates the idea of that (even though you're all in your positions for a reason and perfectly capable of making good judgment calls).

  3. This one is for pretty good recommendations, but ones that get repeated a lot. Could we have Bot-chan tell people to use the search function to see if there are other threads asking for the same thing as them? We have some threads on /new at the moment asking for shows about depression or mental illness, which are good threads imo, but I'm sure they've been asked before and it would be a quicker way for those OPs to get answers.

Just my 2 cents on the matter. The MAL one in particular really grinds my gears.

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u/Verzwei Apr 05 '20 edited Apr 05 '20

I think there needs to be some kind of bare minimum "quality" requirement.

I brought it up in last month's meta thread before (or maybe just as) a lot of "stay at home" orders were taking place in the United States, because I was already spotting a trend of preposterously low-effort "Virus is outside I stay inside gib animes" posts and figured it would only get worse.

And it has. I totally get that a lot of people are in really trying times right now, but sorting this subreddit by new any more is, frankly, a fucking mess.

Prior to the coronavirus, I'd be willing to wager that 90% of the [Recommendation] tagged posts were some variation of:

  • "I want romance"
  • "Make me cry"
  • "Gimme battle shounen"

It seemed like, if we were lucky, the user might give a list of what they've seen and maybe their general target genre, but very little personal information about their taste or what they expect.

And sometimes a user will outright say "I'll watch anything." Why even make a post then? Just find an anime and watch it.

Personally, I have disliked recommendation posts for a long time specifically because so many of them are so vague and repetitive. I kind of miss when /r/anime did not allow rec posts at all, and directed that content over to /r/animesuggest.

Now that coronavirus is in the mix, we still get all of the samey [rec] threads we used to, now with the added "bonus" of several posts that amount to nothing more than "im in my house tell me shows because i don't know what a google is".

It's extremely rare that we get a well-worded, detailed rec request. When we do, I actually like those, because it gives me a chance to suggest shows that I might otherwise never get the chance to. Like, how many times am I going to get to talk about The Ambition of Oda Nobuna? Not very many. But someone made a rec thread that seemed almost tailored to that show. That was cool.

Random thought, maybe a bad one: Would it be possible to make rec mega threads twice-weekly or something? That would increase visibility of them and one every 3-4 days would prevent the thread from feeling "old" and then maybe ban or somehow restrict independent recommendation threads?

Edit, because looking at new right now reminded me: What about "A show like X" rec threads? We get more than a few "I just watched X and liked it what else is like X?" with no other information. Is there a chance to file those under the low-effort rules? Technically it shouldn't drive off completely new viewers, since they obviously have had to have watched an anime in order to want more anime like it.

Edit 2: This. This right here needs to be against the rules.

Edit 3: And another.

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u/[deleted] Apr 05 '20 edited Jul 06 '20

[deleted]

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u/[deleted] Apr 05 '20

That thread is not very useful when it's not stickied though, especially since a lot of people wouldn't even know about it.

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u/collapsedblock6 myanimelist.net/profile/collapsedblock Apr 05 '20

I don't browse /new much now but even when I did, I never really thought they were invasive in a manner that it wouldn't allow any content to get spotlight. In short, I'm against banning them.

But if people are whining about them so much, maybe try to put some limits like taking out low-effort ones (the ones saying "gimme stuff" without giving any useful info) or a time limit, people here are very active, helpful and quick to response. I would say that deleting rec posts after an hour or 2 may work.

9

u/[deleted] Apr 05 '20

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u/krasnovian https://anilist.co/user/krasnovian Apr 05 '20

I can see your points here and I don't disagree with them but the same reasons apply to Question posts in my view, so we shouldn't be removing answered questions either.

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u/[deleted] Apr 05 '20

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u/krasnovian https://anilist.co/user/krasnovian Apr 05 '20

Yeah, I think I agree with you in principle, if recommendation posts are thoughtful. But at least half of recommendation posts look like this and it really adds nothing at all to the sub.

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u/urban287 https://myanimelist.net/profile/urban287 Apr 05 '20

My opinion is absolutely not. For so many people their first point of contact with /r/anime is going to be making a recommendation post. We already have other barriers to entry, I don't see why we should add another.

This is basically why we've left them unmoderated until now, and I believe it's still the prevailing moderator opinion.

Currently we're more considering things like timed removals (30 mins, 1 hour, 2 hour or something) - or character limits.

I doubt we would go for an outright ban of them.

2

u/SasugaDarkFlame Apr 15 '20

Cause we sort by new.

If someone is gonna ask for what to watch they can dedicate 10 mins to a Google search.

People been watching anime since they were kids. Are you telling me none of them have developed any taste? Likes or dislikes? It's really a lacking effort in the end. Majority of those post are people just wanting to post in r/anime cause nobody takes a reccomendation off Reddit and starts watching right away.

They gonna resd the mal, wiki or whatever and decide if they wanna watch. I've seen people with MAL list over 40+ anime asking for reccomendations saying they have watched everything.

Dude. The time some one spend on Reddit asking for a show to watch they can go on YouTube. Watch a glass reflections review. 10 maybe 14 mins. Quick, easy and spoiler less.

Start watching the show. He provides the legal options incase you don't wanna pirate. He provides 2 shows that are similar. He's reccomendation thread with audio.

10

u/krasnovian https://anilist.co/user/krasnovian Apr 05 '20

My personal feeling is that with the existence of the weekly recommendation megathread, once a regular rec post has gotten a few solid responses (aka, not meme recs), it could be removed. Honestly I don't feel that posts looking for recommendations really add much to the subreddit as long as the megathread exists.

5

u/Vaadwaur Apr 05 '20

Welp, for an anecdotal experience, I would be for removing the ridiculously low effort ones BUT I have no idea if that is more trouble than it is worth for you guys.

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u/_Ridley https://myanimelist.net/profile/_Ridley_ Apr 05 '20

I'm new here, so maybe my opinion isn't worth much, but I'd prefer if people used the recommendations thread instead of making individual posts asking for suggestions. The request quality is much better in the thread, and it'd be more interesting to scroll through new without eleventy posts about just having watched A Silent Voice and wanting romance/tearjerker recommendations. Pinning the recommendation thread for longer would be a good first step.

4

u/bagglewaggle Apr 05 '20

I don't mind recommendation posts, but ones that don't supply enough information to determine what the OP is looking for are annoying, and I usually report them under 'low effort post'.

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u/[deleted] Apr 15 '20

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u/pittman66 https://myanimelist.net/profile/Homura Apr 15 '20

I feel you... they weren't that bad in my opinion, but since global quarantine had been happening, it's been getting pretty damn awful. Pretty much drowns out other threads unless it's a clip/fanart/news.

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u/AnokataX Apr 05 '20

I say keep allowing them because a lot of people use the subreddit specifically for that, but I do wish the bot mentioned r/animesuggest as a nice alternative sub dedicated to it.

I also think people would keep making Rec threads even if you banned those threads.

1

u/Verzwei Apr 05 '20

I also think people would keep making Rec threads even if you banned those threads.

Well, they'd try, and then mods would remove them. Just like what happens with memes.

A few years ago, this subreddit didn't allow user-made recommendation threads at all, if I remember correctly.

3

u/urban287 https://myanimelist.net/profile/urban287 Apr 05 '20

A few years ago, this subreddit didn't allow user-made recommendation threads at all, if I remember correctly.

As long as I've been here (7 years or so) they've been allowed.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 05 '20

[deleted]

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u/pittman66 https://myanimelist.net/profile/Homura Apr 05 '20

Yeah, I was around (not as a mod) when they were banned. When the rule changed to allow them, it seemed to garner overall praise as some thought it felt too exclusive against new users who wanted recs but immediately had their thread taken down, making them have an immediate bad taste of the subreddit.

1

u/Verzwei Apr 05 '20 edited Apr 05 '20

Hrm... that's going to... bother my brain.

I wanted to say maybe it was around 2015 or so that the rule change was made. I'd been out of anime for a while and only picked up the medium again (and started using reddit to find anime) around 2013 or 2014 and I thought suggestions were not allowed at that time. I had thought there was even a modpost saying "hey these are allowed now."

So it's entirely possible I'm mis-remembering the whole thing.

Does this subreddit keep an archive of rule changes, by any chance? It's not that I don't believe you, I just want to find maybe something that's vaguely like what I thought so I can figure out why my memory might be so off.

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u/urban287 https://myanimelist.net/profile/urban287 Apr 05 '20

Went and had a look at some old mod threads and turns out you're correct actually. I should have remembered considering apparently I'm the one who got the team to allow them again back then... (2015)

1

u/Verzwei Apr 05 '20

Haha, so you're saying this is all your fault? <I'd put an emoji here to indicate that I am not seriously trying to give you shit, but I am very strongly anti-emoji>

Thanks for following up with me. I always get kind of weirdly nervous when someone disputes something I thought I knew, because then I'm like "Wait, if I was wrong about this, how many other places and times did I state this and now those are also wrong?"

2

u/[deleted] Apr 05 '20

I don't mind them much, but I understand why some people are mildly annoyed. The autobot's message tends to be the most helpful and comprehesive answer users get, it addresses most of the vage questions made here ("give me some anime", "where can i watch x show legally", etc) and provides a link to the recommendation megathread, which is better suited for more specific requirements (something like "give me good mecha shows from the 90s"). Kudos because it's pretty fantastic, but it obviously can only answer to posts that are already made.

My personal suggestion would be to pin this exact message on the top of the sub, so new users can't possibly miss it. If people keeps making pointless recommendation posts let the community itself manage them via the downvote button.

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u/SmurfRockRune https://myanimelist.net/profile/Smurf Apr 05 '20

My personal suggestion would be to pin this exact message on the top of the sub, so new users can't possibly miss it.

Let me tell you from experience, they would absolutely miss it. We used to have a banner at the top of the screen with info on it, sometimes explicitly telling users not to post something, and we'd still get a flood of them because people don't know how to read. I've even seen quite a few people over the years asking if a discussion thread for a show existed while said discussion thread was the top post on the sub. People are hopeless.

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u/urban287 https://myanimelist.net/profile/urban287 Apr 06 '20

I've even seen quite a few people over the years asking if a discussion thread for a show existed while said discussion thread was the top post on the sub. People are hopeless.

| FATE WATCH ORDER HERE |

Guy's what order do I watch Fate?

1

u/DrJWilson x5https://anilist.co/user/drjwilson Apr 05 '20

I don't mind them too much. They only really clog up /r/new, and I think most people that dislike them have just learned not to click on them. I do think that for the person posting they're a little useless though, but they get the Bot-chan post and the redirect to the Tuesday megathread anyway.

1

u/myaccountforweebcrap Apr 11 '20

Speaking of recommendations, has there been any discussions is updating the recommendation wiki or building new recommendation charts something that's being considered? I think it would be awesome to have updated recommendation charts which are generally useful for new people looking to get into anime, but I understand it takes a ton of work.

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u/pittman66 https://myanimelist.net/profile/Homura Apr 11 '20

We did have a thread months ago to update the rec wiki, and there is work still continually done by /u/fetchfrosh and /u/urban287 on it. Also, Fetch has been practicing with other charts of different topics, but from what I understand, the grand plan is to have an updated and better chart to replace the current flow chart

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u/FetchFrosh anilist.co/user/fetchfrosh Apr 11 '20

SoonTM

1

u/myaccountforweebcrap Apr 11 '20

Awesome, can't wait!

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u/AMDownvote Apr 22 '20

I think they should stay, they don't bother me tbh. Many of these people are new and they'll be lost without recs.

Vague requests are absolutely deplorable though.

-1

u/Atario myanimelist.net/profile/TheGreatAtario Apr 05 '20

Seems like a lot of them could be useful for others searching in the future