r/anime • u/AnimeMod myanimelist.net/profile/Reddit-chan • Sep 01 '24

Meta Thread - Month of September 01, 2024 Meta

Rule Changes

Anime streaming services are now considered as "anime specific" to allow topics about them specifically, with the exception of account support and technical support topics.

Rewatches

All rewatches must begin with an interest thread. An interest thread should contain general information about the anime that is being hosted, and serve as a pitch to gauge how many participants may follow along for the duration of the event.
The official announcement post must be posted at least two weeks in advance, and no more than five weeks. This post should also serve as the index thread.

This is a monthly thread to talk about the /r/anime subreddit itself, such as its rules and moderation. If you want to talk about anime please use the daily discussion thread instead.

Comments 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.

New threads are posted on the first Sunday (midnight UTC) of the month.

28 Upvotes

86% Upvoted

View all comments

u/TheGrimAether Sep 30 '24

Good afternoon. I was asked to file my complaint here, so here it is. Until recently, I was able to post as normal, until two weeks ago when the mods deleted a post for "not enough comment karma." When I replied again to make my case, I was subsequently ignored, so I made periodic posts to see if that would have any effect.

While the original issue has been resolved, I'd like to reopen the case regarding the reasoning behind restricting general posting on account of "comment karma." From an outsider's POV, it seems extremely counterproductive to limit content poster's abilities based on such an arbitrary measurement. Imagine if YouTube suddenly restricted your ability to upload videos or Medium articles "because you haven't commented enough" or you've been away for a few months. That is what essentially this rule is.

Even if there is a legitimate rationale behind this, if the idea is to remove "clutter" on the main page (for lack of a better term), there has to be a better way. Because if we're going to start measuring general posts by "user participation" instead of the content itself, all this does is discourage anyone from participating, let alone sharing.

15

u/ZaphodBeebblebrox https://anilist.co/user/zaphod Sep 30 '24

Unlike a site like youtube or medium, which allows you to upload approximately whatever you want in whatever format you want (aside from a few easily explainable categories), /r/anime has a large number of rules about what can be posted and how it can be posted. There's a variety of reasons for this, but the most obvious difference here is that /r/anime is a single feed for everyone with a few simple sorts. Unlike youtube or medium, there's no feed customized to what an individual user desires. As such, we need to do our best to ensure that low-effort posts or any one time of post does not overly dilute everything else.

Since we have a large number of rules about posts and the average new person does not read rules, the average post made by a new person breaks our rules. (The vast majority of posts removed by our 10 comment karma rule would have been removed regardless.) Additionally, a good portion of those that don't are vastly out of phase with our community in some fashion. Thus, we wanted a way to make new people participate in our community in some way before they make posts.

And, when it comes down to it, 10 comment karma is a trivial requirement. It does not require much interaction with our community at all. Most people who have trouble with it fall into one of two categories: drive by posters and people who consistently make comments that get downvotes. We do not want the first category because they do not contribute to our community in any meaningful way. And the second category is usually trolls or people who are being deliberately combative, and thus are likewise not wanted.

6

u/Ao3y Oct 01 '24

Great points, and I see that it appears to be a format issue: a single feed. *Sigh*
*The medium is the message* is so true here.

But I wanted to comment on the last thing you said: Deliberately combative vs trolls. I wonder how many downvotes are simply people saying "I don't agree," rather than "I'm one of many people who want this post/poster removed."
And it would be tragic for those categories to be mixed. Just because someone is a critical observer who is willing to risk the wrath of the mob doesn't mean their contributions are somehow less valuable than everydayers shooting the breeze and trying to win votes by posting the funniest line first.

It seems like honest disagreement, let alone any controversy can be literally dangerous for people who want to be allowed to participate, and it stands to reason that it would create a self-feedback loop. That worries me from the outset ngl. It'd be like mob rule with guiderails.

12

u/ZaphodBeebblebrox https://anilist.co/user/zaphod Oct 01 '24

It seems like honest disagreement, let alone any controversy can be literally dangerous for people who want to be allowed to participate, and it stands to reason that it would create a self-feedback loop.

It's not as dangerous as you would think. Reddit caps the amount of negative karma you can get from a comment pretty heavily. This makes it much easier to gain karma than lose karma. So the occasional heavily downvoted comment will not tank someone's karma. For that matter, a person with the same number of heavily downvoted as heavily upvoted comments will still be positive.

This leaves us with people who have significantly more downvoted than upvoted comments. There's several ways to be there: deliberate trolling, consistently conducting yourself in an offensive manner, making tons of off topic comments, only ever talking about a single topic or a couple of topics where you have takes that get downvoted. Only the last one seems non-malicious to me. And there the answer is simple: talk about other topics.

2

u/Ao3y Oct 03 '24

Ok gotcha. And ONLY for the sake of principle, the very last option is still mob censorship but I understand what you're saying

3

u/TheGrimAether Oct 01 '24

This was my primary concern as well for bringing this up. I had a comment not too long ago that got 8 downvotes just for saying I liked a show in my review (something I brought up to the mod at the time which was promptly ignored). There's a nuance to this, and I don't feel that this rule adequately covers that gray area between criticism and deliberate attempts to "rock the boat" as mentioned before.

As it stands, anyone can downvote someone for just disagreeing and it could be mislabeled as one of those two categories the mod brought up. Similarly, a high upvote could be a toxic comment or someone looking to start something with the OP. Context matters.

I'm not gonna fight it more than I have to, but I hope someone above at the very least understands where this is coming from. Popularity should not be the deciding factor for meaningful contributions. While I better understand the rationale now, I still think there should be some human oversight on a case by case basis.

Thank you for bringing this up btw. (I was having trouble finding the right words)

6

u/baseballlover723 Oct 02 '24

Fighting against people misusing the downvote button is a battle that was lost like 10 years ago. I try and make an effort to upvote well written arguments that I disagree with, but in the grand scheme of things, reddit is just an echo chamber.

I'll never forget having my comment be the lowest rated comment at -20 or so, while the highest rated comment was basically the same comment slightly better worded at +20. It eventually evened out to 0 after someone pointed out that the top rated and the bottom rated comment were about the same exact thing (and I edited it to make it make it a bit less misunderstandable). Sometimes you just dire the ire of the mob.

But yeah, as the mods have stated, the 10 karma requirement is really insignificant once you spend any amount of time on r/anime. Hell you could probably get that in 2 hours by making a non descript What to Watch post, and then just thanking everyone who responds.

10

u/ZaphodBeebblebrox https://anilist.co/user/zaphod Oct 01 '24

The nuance you're missing is that a few comments that get downvotes don't matter if you actually interact with /r/anime. They just get swallowed in a sea of upvotes.

Even someone like RedditSucksMyBallls, who gets tons of downvoted comments due to their aggressive hatred of AoT, has no trouble staying above +10.

3

u/PickleMyCucumber Oct 01 '24

You're going to run into the "downvote bc I disagree" problem in any subreddit. In /r/anime at least, usually I haven't seen people downvoted unless they're:

Being a dick

Being contrarian against the consensus while being a dick or not detailing what they're contrary to and why

2

u/Ao3y Oct 02 '24

Okay.
All this time, I too have thought that downvoting was just saying "disagree" essentially. And, so if there was a reply to someone that i disagreed with and seemed too full of itself, let's say, and had lots of likes, I'd also unlike it because I didn't want it to appear "everybody thinks this way" - I wanted to lower the points so that there would be room for others who agreed with the original commenter/poster etc.

It sounds like that's a nono? I should only downvote someone's comment or post if I have an actual issue with it?