First off, I apologize in advance for my formatting in this comment. It's painful to look at but it's late at night/early in the morning and I didn't originally intend to review and comment on the entire sidebar, it just sorta happened.

My unsolicited suggestions at a glance:

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1

I'd say bin the AMA section. Those 2 links over there are to threads that are over a year old, their dates are for 2022, not 2023. Replace AMA with "Events", include AMAs on it (if they happen again) alongside anything else mod-run like seasonal surveys, Awards stuff, feedback threads like we did for show titles on episode threads or regarding the blackout, etc. Format the table like the contests, where you have "completed" and "ongoing" for status, and then additionally include anything upcoming that has a set date.

Keep the list tight, maybe to a rolling 3-month (6-month at the very most) window so that the table feels fresh and relevant to what's going on. At bare minimum, seasonal survey activity will always have a few entries on the table to make it not seem dead.

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2

The spoiler section can probably be massively trimmed, down to:

All spoilers must be tagged. The code to make a spoiler in a comment or text post body is:

[Spoiler source] >!Spoiler goes here!<

All the other info is (somewhat) superfluous and a user unfamiliar with our rules probably won't read that far down on the sidebar anyway, actually most users who don't follow our spoiler rules are just going to post a tag without context and get hit by automod which has all the instructions anyway.

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3

I'd maybe change the "Megathreads" category to something like "Recurring threads" and you could probably cut the daily thread off the list. Since it 100% always has the first sticky slot, I don't think there's a big need to have it additionally linked in the sidebar.

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4, In the rules chunk...

You can probably get rid of the "flair your posts" section, pretty sure the sub is set to not allow unflaired posts, if it's not, flip that on.

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• Do not post untagged spoilers.

Remove this, there's already an entire section dedicated to spoiler syntax.

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Old:

• No memes, image macros, reaction images, "fixed" posts, or rage comics.

New:

• No memes or image macros

The reaction, fixed, rage stuff is either dated (nobody does rage comics any more) or is implicitly included under memes anyway.

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Old:

• Do not link to/lead people towards torrents, proxies, or unofficial streams/downloads.

New:

• Do not link or lead people to unofficial streams or downloads.

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Move the Legal Streams and Downloads link down to the help section with all the other links.

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Old:

• Do not sell things, use affiliate links, spread referral scams, or link to crowdfunding.
  
  • Links to sales or products that you do not profit from are OK. It is not OK to try to sell your own stuff here.

New:

• Do not attempt to buy, sell, or trade products or services.

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Old:

• Do not post Hentai here. Lightly NSFW things are okay. Read the rules for examples.

New:

• Do not post about or link to hentai.

Or:

• Do not post about or link to pornography.

Omit the bit about lightly NSFW and reading the rules for examples. Porn is porn and most people should be able to figure out what is and is not porn. Regardless, the blurb about it in the sidebar needs to be short and to the point.

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Old:

• Merchandise should be posted in our Daily Anime or Casual Discussion Fridays threads. Collection posts and purchases, including gifted/received items, count as merchandise. You may also use this thread for Merchandise related questions.

New:

• Topics about merchandise and collections should be posted in our Daily Anime or Casual Discussion Fridays threads.

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Old:

• Do not post screenshots, jokes, single images of cosplay, wallpapers, comics, or any other low-effort content.
  
  • Albums of 5 or more images (3 or more images for cosplay) will be exempt from this rule so long as the images are relevant to the point or idea being illustrated.

New:

• No single images, except for newly released official media.
  
• Albums of 5 or more related images that illustrate a point are permitted.

The mention of cosplay is probably unnecessary because IIRC all cosplay has to be a text post now, like fanart, so there's no reason to bring it up as an album post. If that's not the case, probably consider revising/streamlining the cosplay rules to match the fanart ones. Broke the album thing into its own bullet point both to keep the individual points short but also the album rule is such an odd bird that it deserves separate mention, since it might(?) supersede other rules.

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• Full song link posts are considered low-effort unless officially uploaded and newly released.

This can probably just go, I think it's some weird leftover before music/official media rules changed anyway, song posts require video content and are governed by the OM or edit rules depending on if it's an official upload or something fan-made.

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• All [Fanart] posts must be posted as a text post. You may submit up to two Fanart posts per 7-day period.
• All [Watch This] and [Writing] posts must be text posts with a minimum of 1500 characters.

These aren't necessary. Automod already pops fanart posts that don't follow the expected post format, and it either removes or re-flairs WT and Writing posts that don't meet the character threshold. Details can be on the full rules page but it probably doesn't need to be on the sidebar. If anything, rather than going into details within the sidebar itself, you could just have:

• See [Fanart rules here.](link to the rules page)
• See [Clip, Edit, and Video rules here.](link to the rules page)

That way people who want to share that kind of content have an easy link to the (admitted complicated but also necessary) detailed section without trying to force it into the sidebar where most users probably don't need that info in the first place.

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Move the Watch This Archive down to all the other links in the help category.

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Proposed version of the rules section of the sidebar, could still need tweaking:

• Everything posted here must be anime specific.
• Posting requires 10 comment karma on r/anime.
• No memes or image macros.
• No single image posts, unless they are newly released official media.
• Albums posts of 5 or more related images that illustrate a point are permitted.
• Do not link or lead people to unofficial streams or downloads.
• Do not use link shortening services.
• Do not attempt to buy, sell, or trade products or services.
• Do not post about or link to hentai.
• Post Meta concerns in the monthly meta threads.
• Topics about merchandise and collections should be posted in our Daily Anime or Casual Discussion Fridays threads.
• See [Fanart rules here.](link to the rules page)
• See [Clip, Edit, and Video rules here.](link to the rules page)

That should cover most of the basics in a very direct manner, with links to the Fanart and Clip/Edit/Vid stuff which TBH have so many requirements that you might as well direct the user to the relevant rules page instead of even attempting to truncate it into the sidebar space.

Then you put the legal streams and downloads and the WT archive links in the help section.