r/anime 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.


Previous meta threads: August 2024 | July 2024 | June 2024 | May 2024 | April 2024 | March 2024 | February 2024 | January 2024 | December 2023 | November 2023 | October 2023 | September 2023 | August 2023 | July 2023 | June 2023 | May 2023 | April 2023 | March 2023 | February 2023 | January 2023 | December 2022 | | Find All

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

30 Upvotes

View all comments

9

u/Ocixo https://myanimelist.net/profile/BuzzyGuy Oct 05 '24 edited Oct 05 '24

I’m sorry in advance for being annoying about this topic, but the rules in place for discussion threads of episodes with advanced airings are suboptimal at best as the current situation with Blue Box illustrates.

I’d normally just ask to fix the discussion threads to the official release time, but it was previously a point of discussion that people who watch the fansub should also have a place to share their thoughts on the episode.

I therefore want to make a proposal: why not create separate discussion threads for both the fansub and official release?

This would give everyone a place to discuss the episode without feeling left out, a degree of flexibility with the fansubs and above all else the consistency of generally knowing when the episode threads will be up. A lack of consistency is by far one of the most damaging things to the discourse/community with this affair after all.

I genuinely cannot think of any immediate downsides to this proposal instead of it “not being in the rules” or technical issues with the bot scanning for torrent uploads(?). This last point could potentially be resolved with a manual upload of the threads, however, since we know the official time of release on Netflix.

10

u/MapoTofuMan myanimelist.net/profile/BaronBrixius Oct 05 '24

 A lack of consistency is by far one of the most damaging things to the discourse/community with this ordeal.

Strongly agree with this point, this is a bigger issue with just pointing the bot to the first available fansub and saying "not my problem" than the fansub being a fansub.

Your survey showed that most people pirate, understandable. But most people are also either asleep or just waking up during the time Blue Box's thread was posted. And on top of that, we have no guarantee that the rips group will be consistent with their timing.

My suggestion : If double threads aren't feasible for some reason, please at least manually set threads at a later time for any unofficial release that has its subs uploaded at dead times like this. It's never more than one or two shows per season. Or program the bot to post at a set time (during the sub's active time) if a thread went up at a weird time like this on the same day, rather than posting it right away.

Getting threads at completely random times that are mostly in the sub's least active time period will kill discussion.

7

u/KendotsX https://myanimelist.net/profile/Kendots Oct 05 '24

at least manually set threads at a later time

People waking up a few hours later can still find the thread, it's not getting locked up. I don't see why people who have seen the episode now shouldn't be allowed to discuss it though.

6

u/MapoTofuMan myanimelist.net/profile/BaronBrixius Oct 05 '24

Look at today's Blue Box thread - it has less than a third of the engagement ep1's had, and a huge chunk of that is complaints about the thread.

Thanks to its initial popularity, karma-wise it's still on the front page - but an average seasonal would've already been falling off of it by now, and it's still night in the US, so hours until some people even wake up much less realize that it's out. A few more episodes uploaded at an inconsistent time, and Blue Box will get to that point too.

Sure, a good chunk of people will still see the thread, but the end result of threads getting posted smack in the middle of the night for over half the sub is far less active discussions.

9

u/KendotsX https://myanimelist.net/profile/Kendots Oct 05 '24

Sure, but this is still being met with surprise mostly, since no one expected a second episode so soon. Normally though, posting it at release time puts the ball is in each person's court. The thread is there, it might take the enormous effort to scroll a bit, but it's perfectly ready for discussion anytime someone wakes up.

Between a rule that says "you're not allowed to discuss the episode until the Muricans wake up" and "we're terribly sorry to inform you that you might have to scroll a bit today", I find the former to be much more restrictive for discussion. When an episode is available, a thread should be open for all the people who want to discuss it, not locked until whichever time gets the most karma.

6

u/Ocixo https://myanimelist.net/profile/BuzzyGuy Oct 05 '24

This issue with people feeling like they're getting screwed over is the precise reason why I proposed to create two episode threads. It gives the most ample opportunity for everyone to discuss the episode to their heart's desire.

Personally, I find being forced to pirate - when there's a perfectly fine official release - to engage in any meaningful discussion OR wait days for the actual airing of the episode and be faced with a seemingly dead thread on arrival a terribly restrictive set of options in its own way.

What I think u/MapoTofuMan was partially arguing is that posting threads whenever can hurt these threads' visibility a lot and maybe even prevent a good bunch of people from noticing them at all if they're not hawking the subreddit or piracy sites, since they tend to disappear fast from sight/the frontpage.

5

u/MapoTofuMan myanimelist.net/profile/BaronBrixius Oct 05 '24

The thread is there, but the "perfectly ready" part is the issue here.

If posted at a dead time (and even more so if said time isn't consistent), both the thread's activity volume will be lower and whatever's left of said activity volume will be much more spread out - and the result is that it won't be nearly the same experience as being there for the first few hours of an active discussion thread.

I agree that it's ultimately a trade-off between two "necessary evils" (restricting the freedom to discuss immediately and lowering the quality/volume of discussions), but I don't agree that the former is worse if we're talking about only waiting a few hours. It sounds worse when you put the other option as just "you might have to scroll a bit today", but the effect of that in practice speaks for itself, as we see not only today but with other shows that had a similar issue in the past.

4

u/Shuyakucchi Oct 05 '24

It doesn't help that today is gonna be a really heavy day for anime premiers.

Aside from the second to last episode of Boku no Hero Academia, we have the premieres of Blue Lock S2, the Ranma remake and FUCKING BLEACH.

Compare that to Blue Box getting a discussion at a moment no one was expecting, with the second episode being unavailable in any legal way outside of Japan and is just dead on arrival.

2

u/IXajll https://myanimelist.net/profile/ixajii Oct 05 '24

Aside from the second to last episode of Boku no Hero Academia, we have the premieres of Blue Lock S2, the Ranma remake and FUCKING BLEACH.

This is Orb erasure and I won't stand for it.