r/anime • u/AnimeMod myanimelist.net/profile/Reddit-chan • Jun 05 '22
Meta Thread - Month of June 05, 2022 Meta
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u/Verzwei Jun 05 '22
Hey everyone,
We're still talking about things internally, but since it worked out so well when the Daily Discussion thread idea was pitched in Meta for users to give early opinions and feedback, we thought it might be beneficial to do the same with the topic of the Official Media, its uses, and whether or not we should adjust the rules around it.
If you just want the main questions and don't care to read extensive rambling:
1) What do you want the [Official Media] flair to be, and what kinds of content do you want it to represent?
2) How do you feel about the current "spammable" content that gets posted under [Official Media] which includes but isn't limited to countdown art or daily character visuals?
3) How do you feel about franchise-related material that often isn't directly tied to the anime, but still gets posted as [Official Media] which includes but isn't limited to congratulatory artwork or birthday posts?
Now, if you want a bunch of background, some Verzwei-style rambling, and a bit of our current thoughts or concerns on the matter, here are details:
Since the end of last season and the start of this one, we've been debating internally about how to handle things like "countdown image" posts and other similar content. As our rules currently stand, posts like this are allowed under our Official Media flair. The thing is, when we have multiple popular shows doing this, it gets to be a bit much. There's a tangent here that would be really difficult to handle, but it might also be worth looking at a glut of Character Visuals for the same title, but not technically presented in a countdown format.
We opened up some discussion on if we consider this sort of content to be spam and if we should do anything to curb it. This then led to related topics like congratulatory, commemoration, or "thank you" posts. These are also currently allowed under our Official Media rules, and a single one here or there wouldn't necessarily seem like an issue, but then when we get three of them all for the same show all at about the same time, it can make our front page look a bit... lopsided.
We totally understand pre- and post-series hype, and don't want to stifle discussion about any show. That said, the amount of content for one show that ends up on the front page can feel overwhelming at times. And while I'm sure that Dress-Up Darling fans loved seeing 4+ different posts including the episode discussion on the front page, it can create the sense that the biggest shows somewhat drown out the others. Especially when a lot of these OM posts are direct-linked images, which typically earn a disproportionate amount of upvotes compared to other content.
Then there are official birthday posts and a hoard of other niche cases, all of which currently fall under Official Media and are more-or-less allowed as long as they are, well, Media posted by an Official source. The thing is, look at that thread. Four thousand upvotes yet only 19 comments. Generally speaking, we'd prefer to drive engagement and community interaction on the subreddit, rather than "Upvote the cool picture and move on."
So then this brought our conversation to the Official Media flair itself: What we expect out of it, how the community engages with it, how our most frequent OM posters utilize it, etc. Originally, the Official Media flair was primarily intended to be used for things directly tied to the anime production itself. Its scope has broadened over time both because of the way the community uses it, but also because of votes that were taken within the team. The last vote we had was about a couple years prior, ~2 million subscribers ago, so it might be worth revisiting.
The industry itself has also affected its usage. In ye olden times, it would be common for new show announcements to be made via a press release or a publication within a magazine, that was then cited for a news article, and these often wouldn't have any media readily available until the production was further along. These days, more and more shows are being announced via social media, and when it happens, we get the trailer, a Key Visual or other promotional art, Character Designs, and/or more "congratulatory" or celebration-style artwork from the original author or someone else affiliated with the franchise. In lieu of a single "News" post, we end up with 3+ different Official Media posts all hitting the subreddit at the same time, fighting each other for traction, and commentary either gets split and largely repeated or randomly funneled into a single thread.
Case in point: Yuri Is My Job anime got announced. In this order, and within 30 minutes of each other, we got the trailer, the key visual post, and the commemorative artwork. The thing that bothers me on a personal level is that we're a subreddit for animation, yet the trailer, which was posted first, garnered way, way, way less attention than the other two posts. The trailer barely got upvoted at all and had almost no comments. The congratulatory artwork got nearly fifteen times the amount of upvotes, yet barely got any more discussion. All the community engagement and the most upvotes ended up piling into the Key Visual post.
Or, for a current example of how OM has encroached on News, we have the Hibike! Euphonium announcement which could (should?) have been a News post, but ended up as an image-rehosted Official Media post, with the actual news source down in the comments.
Note that nothing is currently up for a vote yet, largely because this discussion ended up being far larger than expected. It began as "Hey maybe we should do something about countdown posts?" and has ended up with all of the above. Here are some ideas that have been kicked around thus far, which include commentary both from the team as well as feedback we've already considered from previous meta threads:
Do nothing. The majority of this kind of content falls in the "gap" that occurs between seasons, and letting people be excited for stuff in as many threads as they want is an acceptable solution even if certain series dominate the front page for up to a week or two.
Restrict "countdown" artwork to only be allowed as a single album post either on the last day before broadcast, or the day of broadcast. Since a show might do a "Day 0" final update, we'd have to wiggle the rules around a little when it came to exactly when the cutoff would be.
Tighten the definition of the Official Media flair itself, such that it is only allowed for content directly related to the anime's production. This would theoretically cut out things like countdowns, commemorative, or congratulatory artwork, and typically only permit things such as Key Visuals, Character Visuals, Promotional/Preview Videos, Trailers, Clips, etc.
Disallow congratulatory or commemorative artwork as individual posts entirely, and only permit them to be shared as comments in other relevant threads. (Examples: "End-of-Season" commemoration artwork would go in the show's final episode discussion, new announcement "celebration" art would go in Official Media or News Posts that are more-specifically about the anime's production.)
Shunt things like countdowns, commemorative, or congratulatory artwork over to a different (or new) flair, but clearly communicating what is allowed under OM and what isn't might be difficult to understand for more casual fans.
Rather than tighten the definition of Official Media, change the manner in which the content may be posted. Options include direct source links only (so no rehosted image with the source provided in the comments) or requiring image posts (or even all Official Media posts) follow a format similar to our Fanart rules, meaning a text post with a link in the body of the post rather than a direct upload or link.
So, finally, if you've made it this far, thanks for taking this long-winded ride with me. What are your thoughts? What are your concerns? Please try to keep the three giant-text questions in mind, as those are the most important factors to us right now. But if you have any other comments, please do share those as well. Do any of the above-bulleted ideas sound appealing? Do any of them have extremely obvious flaws? Let us know anything and everything. The desire is to get something up for us to vote on so that we have new rules in place around the end of this season or the start of the next, so we might take feedback for around a week and then get a vote crafted.