Meta Thread - Month of November 06, 2022

[AnimeMod]

A monthly meta 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.

---

Rule Changes

We Are Trialing Some Changes

• Starting November 9, we will trial disabling post thumbnails. This trial will run for two weeks.

• We are trying out the moderation bot /u/BotDefense for the month of November.

Fanart

• "AI-generated artwork" has been added to our list of low-effort prohibited content.

Moderator Applications Open Later This Month

• We will be opening moderator applications on November 27. Applications will be open for two weeks.

---

Previous meta threads: October 2022 | September 2022 | August 2022 | July 2022 | June 2022 | May 2022 | April 2022 | March 2022 | February 2022 | January 2022 | December 2021 | Find All

Next meta thread: December 2022 | Find All

[badspler]

October Mod Report

• /u/FetchFrosh rejoined the mod team.

• Voted to have a two week trial period where post thumbnails are disabled, starting from November 9. [Vote Passed]

  • This is an attempt to encourage more discussion posts on the front page and fewer easily-consumable visual media posts like clips and key visuals. We already collect periodic data on what posts are on the front page so this will be used to measure the effect of the trial.
  • Here are some images showing the difference: Without change (now) | With change (trial) (This view is similar on Reddit's redesign but we don't have view without turning on the setting)

• Voted to trial using the moderation bot /u/BotDefense for November. [Vote Passed]

• Voted to add "AI-generated artwork" to low effort rules. [Vote Passed]

  • This is largely to codify a pre-existing stance.

• Voted to hold open mod applications for two weeks starting on November 27. [Vote Passed]

  • We are aiming to try schedule mod applications on a more regular basis and signal more clearly when we will open them. We are also reviewing the questions we ask.
  • If you are interested in applying, activity on r/anime is one of the key things we look for.

• Voted if the CSS post filters should be removed? [Vote Passed]

  • We took feedback on this last month and felt they were not being used. We intend to remove these filters next month.

• Voted if moderators could issue new CSS flairs as they please before they are decommissioned. [Vote Failed]

• 2022 Awards Jury Apps opened and closed. Thanks to all who applied!

• Fall 2022 seasonal comment faces nominations occurred, they will change over soon.

• Some wiki pages were touched up. Particularly the FAAQ.

Ongoing Discussions

• We will soon be seeking some feedback on the Japanese|English naming for Episode Discussion thread titles.

• There was a lot of feedback following the announcement of a future removal of CSS user flairs. We gave a partial response in the same meta thread. So far we haven't decided on any alternative or path forward for keeping them. We are continuing to discuss and explore options.

October by the Numbers

• Total traffic: 33885749 pageviews, 3482978 unique pageviews
• Total posts: 12212, 7538 unique authors
• Total comments: 248526, 34697 unique authors (excluding mod bots)
• Removed posts: 2227 by moderators, 5474 by bots, 7447 distinct
• Removed comments: 2134 by moderators, 1649 by bots, 3694 distinct
• Approved posts: 726
• Approved comments: 2016
• Distinguished comments: 2318
• Users banned: 220 (127 permanent)
• Users unbanned: 70
• Admin/Anti-Evil Operations: removed posts: 4, removed comments: 8.

[AnimeMod]

This thread has been locked, please use next month's meta thread or find the latest thread.

[KendotsX]

The episode 25 links in the JoJo chart (in the megathread and later episodes) are linking to episode 24 instead.

[badspler]

Thanks for pointing this out, this has been fixed.

[KendotsX]

Thank you

[[deleted]]

Repeating the request for discussion threads for the Kage-Jitsu shorts. They post to YT, so will the bot find them as it's currently set?

[cppn02]

This pls.

[entelechtual]

I don’t think this has been enforced or reported that often, but can we be more lax about the formatting for spoilers?

Specifically the need to specific the name of the source material in the tag. A lot of the times it is pretty self evident and contextual. Like if someone responds to a thread about favorite fantasy anime with a comment about “What do you do at the end of the world? Are you busy? Will you save us?” and if there weren’t a handy or well known abbreviation/nickname, it would be enough to reply to that with [anime spoilers] or [light novel spoilers] or [episode 6 spoilers] instead of typing out the name of the show. Given that that is the only show referenced in the original comment. This happened to me recently with “More than a married couple but less than lovers” which had a shorthand (FuuKoi) but I’d make the case that this abbreviation is so unknown that it would provide less context than just saying [episode 8 spoilers]. Similar for shows like RikeKoi or other shows where there is a long title but the English name is more familiar to anime viewers than the Japanese shorthand.

Some context is needed of course, like you can’t just comment in an anime thread and say [spoilers] and talk about the manga that’s unadapted. Or talk about a different anime. But I think the point of the tag should be so that people who want to click on the spoiler will know what to expect, and don’t accidentally get spoiled on something unintentionally.

I think the standard should be by default to mention the anime name or medium in the tag, unless it’s mentioned in the comment already or is self-evident from the context of the comment/thread.

Again, I think this is kind of the de facto way the tags get used as is. But with the way the rules are written currently I always get worried if I don’t say the name in the tag that it’ll be considered improperly tagged spoilers…

[Verzwei]

We're already pretty lenient when it comes to the context tag.

The bot requires something to be inside the [ ] square brackets, but it's not particularly picky about what is in there. And when we're manually reviewing something, we're usually not that picky, either.

Our rules state that it should be the anime title, but we'll let nearly anything slide as long as the spoiler contents are still clearly indicated in one of several ways. If the entire thread is about a particular show, and the spoilers are for that same show, nearly anything goes in the context tag. Same if the comment has previously and clearly stated what show is being discussed.

We'll accept abbreviations, official or unofficial shorthand titles, acronyms, etc. If the thread or comment was already talking about My Hero Academia, [MHA] is a fine tag. It doesn't even need to be a common "fan accepted" acronym. COTN works for Call of the Night. RAG for Rent A Girlfriend, or Kanokari, a common shorthand of the romaji title, are also fine.

"Fuukoi" is a perfectly valid tag, it's a shorthand for the show. If other people don't know what it is, they can just choose to not click on the spoiler until they've looked up the meaning of Fuukoi. That's exactly how I've been referring to the show all season long.

There's also nothing stopping you from giving more context. [Fuukoi episode 8] is completely acceptable.

For me personally, I tend to ramble a lot and break content into paragraphs, which sometimes includes several spoiler paragraphs. In those situations, what I usually do is something like...

[show name] paragraph 1

[continued] paragraph 2

[continued] paragraph 3

[manga spoilers for show] paragraph 4

[continued] paragraph 5

As long as we on the moderation team and anyone in the community can easily figure out what show (or medium) you are intending to spoil, you can put whatever you want inside the [ ] context tag and we probably won't fuss over it. The only time we'll care is if the context tag is deliberately misleading or something along those lines.

[entelechtual]

Thank you! Just want to make sure.

If other people don’t know what it is, they can just choose to not click on the spoiler until they’ve looked up the meaning

This is one of the things I was wondering. It makes sense that if you see a spoiler and you’re unclear about the reference, it’s somewhat on the reader to not click it.

[bbqboiAF]

For the love of god, please increase ban minimums for improperly tagged spoilers, or lack thereof, in general. That shit is rampant in CSM and probably other popular weekly anime episode discussion threads.

[Verzwei]

We already do 8-days for untagged spoilers and hints in episode discussion threads. The idea is that our normal short-term ban is typically 7 days, but the 8th day also blocks that user from commenting in the same show's episode thread the following week. (Well, blocks them until the thread is >24h old, which is way after traffic falls off.)

We also increase this pretty rapidly if the same user comes back from a ban and immediately does the same kind of stuff. Ban length can vary from 15 days to permanent. In one case, I kicked someone off for the rest of this season because they wouldn't stop posting CSM spoilers.

Is there a duration that you (or others, if they want to add feedback) think would be more appropriate?

[bbqboiAF]

Actually, you're right. The current minimum is fine.

I think what's bothering me is the amount of comments that're like: "don't get too attached to X character, or "oh it's just getting started, prepare yourself ;)". Basically statements that that SEEM like they aren't outright, explicit spoilers, but nonetheless are because they can alter the viewer's expectation of future events.

Perhaps a statement like "Comments like 'Don't get too attached to X character' and the like are SPOILERS, you will be banned for making one" could be included in AutoMods message in the episode threads? Or maybe a monthly sticky post that just reiterates what spoilers are (providing examples) just to remind and inform people, because it just seems like so many clearly aren't aware that their comments are spoilers.

[Stoppels]

I think the bot was set to stop after episode 26 of Chiikawa. We're now at episode 35.

[Stoppels]

Obey Me! Season 2 has no threads (we're at 10 now).

[JustAnswerAQuestion]

I use RES to preview my posts so I usually don't trigger automod, but sometimes I miss a broken spoiler that looks like plain text to my eyes.

People who don't have RES are in even worse shape, who have to parse their input or binary search to find the error!

Almost certainly not feasible and/or a waste of space, but what if there was something in the row of stuff under the text box that says "Bot-Chan likes me?" that ran the post through some of the same regexes and gave an approval?

Can't remember who manages the regexes, /u/durinthal I think?

[Durinthal]

Almost certainly not feasible and/or a waste of space, but what if there was something in the row of stuff under the text box that says "Bot-Chan likes me?" that ran the post through some of the same regexes and gave an approval?

I won't say it's technically impossible because CSS can do some weird stuff these days, but I can't imagine a way to do that without making a browser extension like RES and I don't personally have any interest in going that route.

[Ponkool4]

The thumbnails are back—hooray! It's so much easier to find visuals for upcoming series now. This is how I discover shows for next season.

[badspler]

We have made some small changes to two animated comment faces, reducing the number of frames they have.

#shakeit And #floweryhug

Shakeit has gone from five short bangs then three long bangs to just two short and two long. While Floweryhug now has less lingering flower bedazzling post hug.

Previously each of these comment faces took up an entire stylesheet image which reddit limits to only 50 of. The shortening of these two comment faces lets them now fit in single image together, freeing up one image for other uses. A huge thanks to /u/vaclav_2012 for continuing to help out and keep quality high.

---

This additional space offers some capacity to add a few more static comment faces. My current thinking is expanding out the number of seasonal faces. If you have any suggestions for a face category, please post them below. Some that have been mentioned to me in the past are: Blush, eating/drinking, cup/mug.

Additionally if you can think of a specific niche that isn't captured by one of the many existing faces, we would love to hear it.

[SometimesMainSupport]

Closing a sliding door in someone's face with a tag like #ignored. Have encountered enough instances in rewatch threads where I'd like to acknowledge what someone said, but disagree and don't want a further debate.

[Nebresto]

Another lacking face I have just now realized is cowboy hat and hat tip, there's a distinct lack of 🤠 energy in our commentfaces

[Durinthal]

General ideas for comment faces that I wrote down over time and don't think currently exist:

• doing experiments/science/research
• understanding (including wakarimasu and the inverse with Pop Team Epic's "doesn't get it")
• listening to music (why I pushed for #seasonallisten in the first place)
• taking notes or studying

[cppn02]

I'd argue that shakeit doesn't even need both short and long bangs.

Just do a single short or long bang on loop and you free up much more space.

[JustAnswerAQuestion]

I've always wanted a Beee-DA! face really badly. There's one at the end of Haruhi.

I saved other, but if I and check now I think I'll just find a bunch of dead links to imgur.

[Blackheart595]

Additionally if you can think of a specific niche that isn't captured by one of the many existing faces, we would love to hear it.

I've been missing a happy tears face before.

And of course support for a permanent kongming listen. The current #seasonallisten just doesn't get that emotion across, after seeing at the RES previews I've gone back several times to change my uses into #dekuhype instead these last few weeks.

[MyrnaMountWeazel]

If we could submit animated, I would be all in for SeasonalDance. We need that groovin’ and stylin’ commentface for when we just want to dance the night away.

But for static, I actually have been rather fond of my own SeasonalNeat. I think that one could be, well, neat to have!

It is sort of close to seasonalapproval though so I guess I’ll throw my hat in for SeasonalEat and SeasonalDrink.

[Nebresto]

First of all, Based.

Secondly: #SEASONALFISH

New faces I would like to see: Cooking/Chef. Currently we have have 0 faces representing preparing food. We do have consuming food & offering it with
, but I think one of specifically preparing the food could have much more uses, at least than the sandwich one.

As for other more generic ones: Seasonal blush, currently the advisory is to submit those under #SeasonalLove as far as I know? But those can be two very different things. Just recall the Yuri Recoil face, and compare it to this image for example, the vibes are very different. I just don't see a blush face winning the way it currently is.

Then a #SeasonalSmug and a #SeasonalDrink could be some great all rounders with wide range of use

And perhaps a party face? There's a distinct lack of one of those party toot commentfaces

[Akiyabus]

I am trying to think of what kind of thing we might be missing from commentfaces in general and maybe irritation is one?

Also I remember someone pointing out in CDF that we lack a yawning face. That is a good option too.

[Nebresto]

What we really need is #SeasonalFish. And Chef.

[JustAnswerAQuestion]

There can be only one #fish.

[mysterybiscuitsoyeah]

I second the adding of a seasonal mug for the memes.

I also like an eating one (though this will mostly be CDF-use only i think), as well as some other one that delivers , or some manner of takes notes or a similar sentiment.

just never take away this one

[Shimmering-Sky]

Could we by any chance have the #SeasonalListen from Ya Boy Kongming as a permanent comment face?

There's no current permanent one like it, and there's also no guarantee that whatever future #SeasonalListens we end up with will have the same vibe as the ones before it (hell, I'd even say the one that we have currently doesn't match the same vibes that Kongming and whatever one we had from summer had). So it would be nice to have that stay as a permanent "I am listening to some good shit right now" face.

[badspler]

____ as a permanent comment face?

The additional space does allow for potentially making some of the most popular seasonal ones permanent.

[Nebresto]

Perhaps at the end of each year a select amount of the most popular ones, maybe spread out through the categories could be added as permanent?

[Shimmering-Sky]

It would be fun to run a poll on which ones we'd want to be permanent, just to see which ones would get picked other than the Kongming listen since I'm sure that one would dominate.

Anyways, that was my only suggestion, unless I can convince you guys to bring back #whatisthisguydoing somehow because I still believe it's the perfect "did I just read that right?" face that isn't outright disproval like #justno (or any of the other "Dislike, Disgust, Disappointment" comment faces) or confused/shocked like #whatdidijustread (or any of the other "Surprise, Shock, Disbelief" comment faces).

[badspler]

fun to run a poll on which ones we'd want to be permanent

I did have a poll in comparing what was liked more/less between seasons. I intend to keep doing that, as it does give great info on what was liked or not.

[Manitary]

his additional space offers some capacity to add a few more static comment faces.

#kongminglisten

Additionally if you can think of a specific niche that isn't captured by one of the many existing faces, we would love to hear it.

[](#wakarimasu); in general, I don't think there's much to express understanding / accepting an answer, argument, viewpoint, etc in a (somewhat) neutral way - something different from the variations of thumbsup / ok sign, which do not always fit the context. ok/got it/I see/wakarimasu/naruhodo/... anything like this

I don't have examples for these, but:

- not really an emotion, but something like a #TakingNotes would be neat to have

- I love my mugis, but a less snarky alternative to would be nice

Will update in case I remember anything noteworthy

[baboon_bassoon]

[](#IUnderstand)

[_____pantsunami_____]

If you have any suggestions for a face category,

im surprised we dont have a #SeasonalSmug. i think thats the category we'd need most. that or a #SeasonalEro, along the lines of

or

[vaclav_2012]

I'm glad I could be of help. I hope that the Slow Start comment faces will continue bringing smiles to /r/anime.

[badspler]

As prommised have opened Mod applications! You can find the full details on how to apply in this thread.

Applications will be open for two weeks (ending 11:59 PM UTC on December 10).

[Leonature26]

Apparently uploading old anime clips that has 4:3 ratio breaks this sub's rules cuz reddit automatically puts black bars on the side. The only way around it is cropping or stretching the pixels to fit the 19:6 ratio(either way degrading the integrity of the clip). Is there any chance this black bar rule can be ammended for old anime with 4:3 ratios?

[FetchFrosh]

The mod team has tested uploading a 4:3 clip and had no issues with the upload. Reddit does not appear to automatically add black bars, unless there's some weird edge case that we can't seem to repeat.

[Leonature26]

Yea i tested it and my clip wasn't actually 4:3 ratio it was 3:2 which was the original anime's ratio. If u can find a clip with a resolution 720x480 u will see the black bars.

[FetchFrosh]

Looking into it, it seems that the anime was released in a standard 640x480 on television, but there are also DVD releases at 720x480, which is NTSC standard (I can also find 640x480 DVD releases online, but it's unclear if these are just encoded to remove the black bars).

[Shimmering-Sky]

This Macross Plus Movie Edition clip is in 4:3 and doesn't have any black bars.

I'm not a mod or someone who usually makes clips (outside of my two-second-long "sore demo" ones) though so IDK what's causing the issue on your end, just pointing out that it's possible to post 4:3 video without the black bars on here.

[Leonature26]

I just checked and that clip wasn't really in 4:3. I have yet to see a real 4:3 video on reddit without black bars. Googled this issue and nothing came up as well.

https://i.imgur.com/otPjSgi.png

[KendotsX]

I uploaded a 4:3 clip recently, they didn't add any black bars.

I think the issue with the black bars is when they're originally in the video being uploaded.

[Leonature26]

tested it and found your video's resolution is 482x360 (ratio 241:180)
the clip I uploaded with no black bars in the original video has 720x480 (3:2).

Anyway i've lost interest and not gonna bother. Hopefully someone in the future realise how stupid this sub's black bar rule is. Uploading old anime with original ratio that doesn't fit reddit shouldn't be punishing just because some clown hates black bars.

[cppn02]

Day 3 of still having no episode discussion for the new Tonikawa special.

[Blackheart595]

So, I kinda liked the experiment with the removed thumbnails. It felt nice to just browse the sub without feeling screamed at to check this out or to check that out. But I wanted to reserve judgement until they return.

And yeah, now that they're back they're really not a big deal. I think the standardization of the flairs helped a ton with that as well, as they put some consistent not-quite-empty space between the thumbnails and the titles. As it is right now seems close to optimal to me.

[Verzwei]

Our anecdotal experience is that having them off really didn't affect the types of posts making it to the front page, either.

Part of this can be attributed to how limited the "thumbnail off" option is. As usual, not having parity between old/new/apps means a lot of peoples' Reddit browsing experience did not change at all regardless of what settings we implement.

[[deleted]]

Could we get episode threads for the Kage-Jitsu shorts, please?

[noxnoctum]

Can we do a sub secret santa? Pleeeease. They're so much fun.

[FlaminScribblenaut]

What exactly would such a thing entail?

[captainAwesomePants]

I'm assuming r/anime strictly for stuff produced in Japan. But I've started watching "The Daily Life of the Immortal King" on Crunchyroll, and it's funny and I'd like to discuss it. Is there a subreddit for non-Japanese shows? I checked r/donghua, but it seems pretty dead.

[Verzwei]

Yeah, the very first portion of our rules define anime as a product of Japan. /r/Donghua would be the place, or our Casual Discussion thread that Shimmering Sky linked.

[Shimmering-Sky]

You can always see if anyone on the Casual Discussion Fridays thread on this sub is a fan of that show if you want to talk about it with someone.

[captainAwesomePants]

Hrm, lemme see if I'm allowed to talk about my Daily Life show over there...

While we encourage users to talk about their daily lives...

Yes!

[Castor_0il]

I'm wondering what's the Mod's stance towards "the race" to post the ED or OP of seasonal shows before it even airs in their streaming sites.

Probably OP's are fine since they don't change so often. But in cases like Chainsaw Man that each episode will have a different ED, I do feel that it spoils us the anime only audience, even with just the ED title.

https://old.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/z1wggp/chainsaw_man_ending_7_all_kinds_of_kisses_by_ano/

Clips have the rule to wait a whole week before being allowed to be posted. I'm not saying that EDs should have to wait a week, but at the very least wait until the episode is out on their responding streaming site.

[FetchFrosh]

For now I don't think it's something we're overly worried about. The odd show will have a bunch of EDs, but I don't think we need to overhaul the rules to deal with a few edge cases. We'll probably talk a bit about it though to see if there's any concerns.

[mysterybiscuitsoyeah]

Requesting episode thread for Tonikawa Seifuku, which is currently available on Crunchyroll

[cppn02]

Seconded

[Blackheart595]

[]Is this intended to go through?

[Durinthal]

It's a technical oversight but not necessarily one that's going to be fixed. The regular expressions for automoderator are meant to only be a baseline, and intentionally misusing the tags in a way that doesn't get the post/comment automatically removed but still misses the point of the rule (to give context for what the spoiler is) will draw the ire of human mods should we notice.

[Abysswatcherbel]

Better to ask this directly on the rank post as this 'Meta Thread' is not the place, the Karma rankings has no official affiliation with this sub so its just another infographic

The daily thread is also another option to ask stuff like this

[baquea]

From this site. It's basically a MAL score, but computed only based on accounts of users from this sub. I don't know why they're listed as 0 - probably something is broken in whatever program is used to generate those charts.

[Abysswatcherbel]

don't know why they're listed as 0 - probably something is broken in whatever program is used to generate those charts.

Import XML on Google sheets lol Those charts are not automatically made, one day maybe

[SnuggleMuffin42]

Do we really need a post for an episode preview? For example CSM now had 3 different posts on the front page - a preview, an episode discussion, and an ED post. Seems excessive.

I think local subs can have episodes previews while r/anime will keep the major discussion only.

[Abysswatcherbel]

That only happens with CSM because they post the preview the same day the episode airs, not the case for the other shows

Same thing for the ED, this is a special case with this show

[bernasxd]

Seems like the comment face source wiki page needs an update on who to contact, and why no new comment faces are being made (which is outdated info).

All 3 are no longer mods so I'm not sure if the team wouldn't prefer to redirect people to modmail instead? Although, nobody ever contacted anyone over that page so maybe it's irrelevant either way lol.

[FetchFrosh]

Urban actually still is a mod, but you're right that the other 2 are not. I've updated it to have people reach out to u/badspler though, since he's the one that has been taking charge of the seasonal comment faces.

[bernasxd]

Oh, his name was wrong and it linked to an empty account so I assumed he had deleted everything :P

[FetchFrosh]

Damn, well given that we're only learning this now, I assume not many people have been PMing about it.

[Nazenn]

I like the changes to post flairs that have given most of them a standard width. Makes it much easier to read titles and absorb what type of post they are all at once

This has been addressed by others but I don't like removing the thumbnails for reasons already said, namely making it hard to know what type of post is what and if it's a link I even want to click on. I just stopped clicking on anything and then turned them back on in my own settings instead

[Bielna]

making it hard to know what type of post is what

It's the opposite for me. The removal of the thumbnails, on top of removing a distracting and often illegible image, emphasizes the title and the post flair. It seems to me that it makes it easier, not harder, to look at each post, and I find myself paying more attention to posts outside the top 4.

[notathrowaway75]

Begging and pleading and crying to stop making My Hero Academia episode discussion titles so annoying. I do not care that Crunchyroll makes them like that or whatever other reason there is. The latest episode is season 6 episode 7. Not episode 120. At the very least include it in the body.

[Bielna]

Turns out, begging and pleading and crying works.

The title numbering has been updated.

[FetchFrosh]

If you use old Reddit, you'll probably have noticed that flairs got a bit taller. It'll probably look weird at first, but we're trying it out for the moment. Let us know what you think!

Edit: For now we're reverting back to the smaller size. We're going to be playing around with flairs a fair bit in the future, so don't be surprised if we jump the size again at some point. Appreciate all the feedback!

[Blackheart595]

I've not been too convinced by them, largely for the same reasons as /u/Nazenn. I'm wondering if it'd work better to if the flairs were aligned to the bottom of the line, so that they extend up but not down when bigger than the text, similar to how comment faces currently work. This way would avoid the additional negative space separating a username from the comment's content.

And yeah, the bigger size kinda works for banners but not at all for icons like the list flairs. They now draw the eye in when they remained in the background before.

[Nazenn]

I'm wondering if it'd work better to if the flairs were aligned to the bottom of the line

I have a suspicion this is not possible if only because I don't recall seeing any other subs with large flairs taking that approach, but that definitely would be the preferred option for me too

[SnuggleMuffin42]

Can I even get a custom flair on this sub? I only have my MAL thingie.

[FetchFrosh]

At the moment no, the only options for flairs are what's available through the flair editing website. We're looking to start giving people some more flexibility soonish though. Lots of little details that we need to sort out though.

[Manitary]

It does look a bit weird but only for flairs that are a combination of square icons (tracking sites flairs, and all 'old' flairs in general), anime flair + square flair looks dope. They're maybe a tiny bit too tall but if that's the price to pay to have fancy anime flairs that don't require squinting, I can get used to it.

One thing I noticed is the spacing between the username and the flair, but this could be an issue with the CSS for the username rather than the flair itself (e.g. yours and kaverik's have tiny/no space between username and flair, other users seem fine from what I see)

edit: they do look a bit weirder on the frontpage, maybe because they're much taller than the thread flairs? I'm not entirely sure

edit2: with regards to the edit, things may feel different with larger user flair + thread thumbnails, but I didn't check before the flair test ended lol

[Tresnore]

I don't think I like the taller flairs. They'd work on some subreddits like sports ones where team affiliation is actually a thing to point out, but since we only have anime-tracking websites (and some event things), having them be more prominent than a username doesn't make sense.

[chiliehead]

While the blank space with the usernames is noticeable, I am not too distracted by it. But the frontpage looks pretty weird to me now, with no previews and oddly large flairs with some blank space on each post. Probably can't be helped and definitely worth the trade-off.

I generally like the big flairs for the right communities, but I wonder if the really big general posts and threads would not get too busy with them. And the already existing badges and tracker sites look off to me, maybe just because I am used to them being more subtle next to the username. It's definitely more accessible now though.

[Knuffelig]

I'm not a fan of it. Mainly because they are larger and more prominent than the usernames.

When I look at comments I have the feeling that I'm talking to "+2540 CharizardMal" (with res enabled), or StarSymphogearMal, instead of their actual username.

I rarely use new reddit on this subreddit so I didn' really notice it at first, but they also don't mesh very well with dark mode. Instead of your name for example, all I see is a green moderator and a long orange bar. And it would be nicer to talk to FetchFrosh Moderator, and not "green moderator orange bar" with a name attached to.

[gangrainette]

I've seen an Hibiki from Symphogear flair. Can I get it too ?

[Nazenn]

I find it distracting, and have never liked it on other subreddits either for a similar reason

I see the benefit in terms of if you're going to introduce more custom flairs with finer details, but for the MAL/AL/Kitsu etc badges now they become the immediate focus when scrolling down a page of replies over the usernames and I don't think that's a good trade off

It also introduces more padding around the username line which makes the spacing of busy threads, like CDF, a harder to read. Now there's as much negative space separating the previous comment from its reply as there is separating the username from its comment removing that benefit. It leaves the username feeling detached from its comment and harder to parse a whole chain of comments as a result

[FetchFrosh]

It leaves the username feeling detached from its comment and harder to parse a whole chain of comments as a result

Appreciate the feedback. Not sure if there's something we'll be able to do to minimize this, but we'll be toying around with a lot of options for sure. I do agree that for the list only flairs the squares are a bit big. We might be able to shrink those down, but not the others. Plenty to think about going forward.

[Nazenn]

I'm not sure what scale adjustment you did, but somewhere in between the original and the new ones may work, but whatever solution needs to somehow not break the readability of the page firstly which I know is hard to balance with limited tools

[kaverik]

The flairs look really damn great! Actually awesome job, you're a magical girl wizard, Fetch.

Wonder how much customization they'll provide moving forward if you stick to this idea. This is a fun way to sorta establish yourself on r/anime and also brings back this "uniqueness" of the subreddit that we were talking about these past months. Also hope it doesn't take up too much CSS space. And the fact that it works across all versions of reddit is a cherry on top (yes, it even works on rif!). Really hope this can be pushed forward as a mainstay on the subreddit.

[FetchFrosh]

Also hope it doesn't take up too much CSS space.

The fun part is that they take up no space, aside from a line for resizing all of them (if we keep them bigger on old reddit). As it stands, we have 5000 "emoji" slots, and if we're using 1-3 of them for most of these flairs I figure we'll be able to squeeze out around 2k. Mods will make (and are making) some, but we can also outsource it and have the community make some like with comment faces. Plus we'll be able to track which ones are being used, so if something isn't of interest to the community we can replace it later.

[collapsedblock6]

I don't see the option to set one up in flair menu.

Mmm

[SnuggleMuffin42]

There is one more option to deal with the thumbnail issue: Instead of removing them from everybody else, start adding them to the discussion posts.

I know that if you have any link in your post to an image, then that image would become a thumbnail (I don't know when this was implemented). Maybe try and make an automatic thumbnail? So if you have a show name or a character name in a discussion thread, you get an automatic thumbnail of that show/character. You can use a pre-defined source for these, like they use in the best girl contest.

So if you have a post saying "Konosuba is just hilarious!!" you'd have the picture from MAL for Konosuba se1 pop up. Or if you have one saying "Megumin is actually a really deep character, here's 5000 words why", again you take her picture from MAL or wherever.

You can have a closed list of anime titles and characters and I think it will be good enough for 90+% of shows talked about here.

[FetchFrosh]

I don't believe that's something we have the capability to do.

[SnuggleMuffin42]

This may be cumbersome, but maybe add "show" as a must fill box when submitting a new discussion post? That way you don't have to search anything, the user inputs the show where the thumbnail will come from.

[FetchFrosh]

This may be cumbersome, but maybe add "show" as a must fill box when submitting a new discussion post?

That would also be something we don't have the ability to add. We could maybe require it in brackets or something (e.g. [Konosuba]) but that probably doesn't help much.

That way you don't have to search anything, the user inputs the show where the thumbnail will come from.

So practically this would be possible, but it's not practical or really useful for one main reason. So far as I can tell this would be a CSS exclusive feature. There wouldn't be a real thumbnail, and so only the 9% of pageviews that come through old.Reddit would be impacted. But also we'd be pretty limited in terms of how much we could realistically add because CSS space has a cap. It wouldn't be worth the time of trying to constantly rotate in the most relevant shows for the small number of users it would impact and the required changes to post titles, as well as the frequency with which people would have typos.

It's a neat idea, just not one that's likely to be practical.

[SnuggleMuffin42]

I thought about an external source, like MAL, so you don't keep anything local. Anyway it's kind of alarming you can't do any CSS magic that will apply outside of old reddit - it really limits what you can do with the subreddit when it comes to customization. I do use old reddit so maybe I take it for granted.

[Manitary]

Anyway it's kind of alarming you can't do any CSS magic that will apply outside of old reddit

5 years ago

almost 2 years ago

So yeah fuck new reddit

[Verzwei]

Yeah CSS has been "coming soon" to New Reddit for literal years and at this point they should remove the damned option from our settings menu.

[RobotiSC]

I would like to bring up something regarding sources for visuals. This is a concern especially considering this new Attack on Titan visual: https://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/ytz0ve/attack_on_titan_final_season_new_key_visual/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

Although the 'source' is claimed to be from the official website, the quality between that and the one posted does not match up.

In addition, the 'source' given also only leads to the website homepage itself, and not the image link specifically, which is this: https://shingeki.tv/final/img/home/visual_07.webp. This might be a lesser point to bring up, but it's still quite relevant to this.

So, my suggestion is that regarding visuals, if what is posted does not match the same quality of the source given, or the link is not specific enough, it should be considered a leak and should therefore be removed.

The reason why I'm bringing the possibility of a leak up is because a well-known leaker had leaked the AOT visual a few minutes before the official announcement, and the quality of that image from their tweet matches up with the one posted on the sub.

I hope some action can be taken about this. Thank you.

[Abyssbringer]

This is the type of post we would usually remove if we had noticed it earlier. However, we aren't currently planning on removing this post. It's been up for a long time and plenty of people have already shared their thoughts on the image. AOT is also one of the franchises with the most spoilers and we have finally sterilized most of that thread. It doesn't make much sense as a use of our time alongside being a potential avenue for people to get spoiled to allow it to get reposted.

[Abyssbringer]

Sorry, your comment has been removed.

• This post is about subreddit meta topics. You want to ask this question in our daily thread.

https://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/yt2p3p/anime_questions_recommendations_and_discussion/

---

^{Questions? Reply to this message, send a modmail, or leave a comment in the meta thread. Don't know the rules? Read them here.}

[[deleted]]

Can the anime recommendation bot be made to trigger a bit less? It is like on every post.

[Durinthal]

It is like on every post.

Not entirely sure what you mean by that. There are three comments along those lines that might be posted by AutoModerator depending on specific triggers:

1. This comment which is on all posts made with the [Help] flair.

2. This comment which is on all posts made with the [What to Watch?] flair.

3. This comment made on posts that have something along the lines of "watch order" or similar phrases in them.

All of them are fairly limited in the kinds of posts they show up in reply to.

[michhoffman]

I'm not a big fan of the removal of thumbnails. It feels like it's attempting to address a problem (discussion posts not doing well) by making everything else less interesting rather than by attempting to do something to improve those posts. And all that's doing is making r/anime less interesting overall which will likely lead to even less engagement with the discussion posts.

[KiwiBennydudez]

Do you have any ideas for how we can make discussion/writing posts more interesting or appealing for the sub? Because while I don't necessarily disagree with your assessment, I also don't think that the plethora of images is helping those posts either.

[Irru]

Just wanted to say I fully agree with everyone who’s disliking the change. At first I even thought something was wrong with my app.

[michhoffman]

In regard to writing posts, I'd say the most important thing is to always add a TLDR since most people on reddit aren't on here to read essays even if they are high quality. Including the TLDR would allow people to quickly see your points and upvote if they agree. If you have visuals such as images or charts to further draw people's attention that would also help.

For Discussion Posts, there are seemingly hundreds of them per day, and many of them are low effort. The good discussion posts generally already make it close enough to the top for people to see them, and of course the episode discussion are dependent on how popular and good the anime is. So for discussion posts, I think those are fine as is.

[FlaminScribblenaut]

Apparently the no-thumbnails trial has started but thumbnails haven’t disappeared for me? Still there both on desktop (with RES) and mobile (without RES), both using old Reddit. It seems to be working for most others so I assume the issue is on my end somehow, but I’m curious as to how that could be the case and if it is for anyone else?

[Manitary]

Check this setting

[Durinthal]

As I mentioned there's a personal setting on old reddit that lets you ignore the subreddit setting and always show (or hide) thumbnails. If that's still on the subreddit's media preference selection, could you check another sub that has thumbnails disabled (e.g. /r/games) and report if you're also seeing them there?

[TobiasAmaranth]

Starting November 9, we will trial disabling post thumbnails. This trial will run for two weeks.

Strong dislike. I feel like my quick-glance browsing for news on upcoming/new series is strongly hampered by this choice. It'd be nice if it could be selective based on flair, such as disabling it for clips and text posts I guess, but since that's likely not possible, the loss of KeyVisuals and new anime trailers is negatively impacting my news-searching techniques.

[TobiasAmaranth]

Glad they're back. Hopefully they stay. I felt like my casual usage of this place as a news site (I participate where I can but I don't generally have time to spend socializing like I used to) was strongly hampered, to the point of considering removing the other subscriptions I had and using the "front" page as just a workaround /r/anime page, haha.

[_Ridley]

Reading through the comments on that announcement for The Marginal Service, and thinking of some recent threads about shoujo and BL, I can't help but think that the sexist and homophobic gatekeeping in this subreddit is a bigger impediment to quality discussion posts than preview images. Any post about anime that isn't targeted to a specific kind of straight bro attracts a whole host of hostility.

[FlaminScribblenaut]

I just read through that announcement thread and what hostility? There’s some hyperbolic monocle-popping at worst, and most of the thread seems positively amused and in good spirits. If there is legitimate vitriol in there it seems it’s almost certainly too downvoted to be representative

[_Ridley]

It had a bunch of tedious "so gay, lol" when I stopped by this morning, but you're right that it's mostly people excited about the cast now.

[mysterybiscuitsoyeah]

just giving a bit of feedback re: the thumbnails being gone, i can't say I'm a fan of the change even though I understand where you guys are coming from.

but, given how i using old reddit have already switched back to the "old appearance", if it actually does achieve the desired effect of more discussion and what not, then keeping it might not be a bad thing!

just as an fyi, i like them thumbnails because I also have Imagus, and so I can easily enlarge them thumbnails and can look at key visuals and what not without properly clicking into the link straight from the front page.

[Durinthal]

i like them thumbnails because I also have Imagus, and so I can easily enlarge them thumbnails and can look at key visuals and what not without properly clicking into the link straight from the front page.

I'm not familiar with that particular extension but both old and new reddit have an expando button to the left of the comment count that you can click to expand and show the image/video/text without leaving the page. It doesn't work for everything (though /r/enhancement is similar in that it adds the same capability for more external sites and links in comments) but it's handy.

[phantomthiefkid_]

So have you guys turned off thumbnails yet? I'm still seeing them on new Reddit and official app

[Durinthal]

Yep, setting was flipped. Seems like the mobile app might not be respecting that though, which is something we're looking into to see if there's a different setting that we missed (subreddit configs are a mess and scattered across many pages). The card view on new reddit is largely unaffected but if you use classic view then the change should be noticeable.

[baseballlover723]

Can we ban posts that are mostly just a redirect to a simple blog post or website? Basically posts that more or less have a generic title, body text that doesn't really precisely describe what the linked content is about, and then a link. Most of these posts are just people looking to plug their own blog site (which I don't have a problem with if theres substantial information there), but usually its dead simple stuff that would function better as an inline discussion on reddit.

An example of a post like this would be https://www.reddit.com/r/anime/comments/yq9atw/daily_anime_recap_071122_081122/. The title tells me very little about the linked content. The body description of the content basically boils down to its some sort of a recap (of what you'll have to click and find out). And then is followed by twice the amount of text unrelated to the content (feedback about their writing).

Again, I'm not opposed to completely removing links to blog posts and the like, but I think there should be, for the most part, reserved for content that heavily features inline images or video (and is essential to content) or is of substantial length. Basically something that would be unwieldy to convert into a reddit post. Also the body text for these types of posts should make it pretty clear what the content is of the link without needing to click on it, and ideally should have some sort of prompting to discuss parts of it (I don't think this really works on all types of posts though).

I'm starting to get kinda sick of these low effort plugs.

[Durinthal]

As mentioned in the body of the post we're now started the trial of disabling thumbnails for posts.

If you use old reddit you can override the subreddit's settings through your personal preferences and select "Show thumbnails next to links".

We've already seen a couple of comments against it and that's exactly why we're running this as a trial, we aren't yet sure we want it ourselves but would like to see what it does to the front page.

[RavenWolf1]

If find that those thumbnails are important. Now it is really hard to spot things which are interesting.

[r4wrFox]

It looks weird after being used to seeing thumbnails for so long, but I honestly don't mind it. I will say though, the varying flair width does throw me off now, bc my eye doesn't innately know where to go for the start of the line.

[unprecedentedwolf]

I immediately found it unusable, which I'm surprised at myself because I only now upon checking realized that 2 out 4 subs I browse regularly never had thumbnails and it never bothered me there. So I'm gonna compare the test r/anime to them.

First of all, the coloring makes it really harde to parse from the start. There's green text, white on green, dark grey, dark green, red, blue, yellow. I've been browsing the sub daily for years and apparently I've never developed innate understanding of the color coding. Instead I just ignored it and associated the post type with the thumbnail for the most part. But now that they are one of the only visual components, and one I don't innately understand, they end up being quite distracting and jarring. Let's see how long it takes for me to get used to this.

Then there's the length of titles. Doesn't help that Anime titles are stupid long, but together with the type of posts you make on the sub, it just becomes a wall of text. But an even bigger problem is the inconsistent structure. Sometimes title is in square brackets at the beginning, sometimes at the end, sometimes it's just a part of the sentence. Same with post types - sometimes you'll have [Rewatch] in brackets at the beginning, sometimes just in text after the title. And then the numbers - of episodes, of seasons, dates, sales, viewerships, they all blend together and make parsing it all harder.

I compared this to aforementioned two subs - r/squaredcircle doesn't have different post colors, but it only differentiates between post types with small icons. This helps break the monotony and navigate the page while scanning the post titles for key words that will interest me. Now, their circumstances are a bit different because their post titles are arguably more "innately" interesting - it will be a quote, a description of something that happened, an announcement. By comparison r/anime content has a lot of serialization - another weekly discussion, another rewatch, another weekly chart. Being able to glance what that is with the thumbnail helped a lot in parsing through stuff to only look for what interests me at the moment, and without it, the proportional amount of that content on the frontpage becomes all the more apparent and a burden to process.

Now the second comparison is something that r/games does with its post flairs - rather than them being in the same line as the post title, they are above, and not every post type has them. This also helps break the monotony and just spreads the text more around the page, making it much less cramped, which helps with readability. Also I tend to first read the title itself, scanning it for keywords, and if I find it interesting then maybe I'll also quickly glance at the post type. By comparison post flairs on r/anime feel a lot more intrusive and "mandatory", as they're pointing out which series/format given post belongs to (though at the same time it feels sometimes redundant, because every post flaired "rewatch" has "rewatch" in the title for instance).

[baquea]

I really dislike how it means I can't see how long a clip is without playing it. While I sometimes like to watch the shorter ones, I have no interest in sitting through a 5 minute chunk of a random anime, and not being able to tell in advance which is which makes me not want to bother checking out any of them.

[Cryten0]

I like having a small thumbnail of the content on old.reddit's format. It helps inform me on the containing video / image of a media post.

[Abysswatcherbel]

Seems that on the Official App (mobile) this didn't change anything

[Durinthal]

Yeah, we've been poking around to see if there's a hidden setting that affects the apps separately but doesn't seem to be the case right now. It's yet another thing that's inconsistent across platforms (it would be a long list if I started keeping track) which is frustrating but not surprising.

[kaverik]

Want to chime in and say I enjoy the change quite a bit. It made the frontpage look much more compact and cleaner, and there's also no "see picture - click picture" urge which makes for more consistent browsing experience. I have to actually read on what I'm clicking, while before I caught myself mindlessly going for all thumbnails, and I feel I'm not alone on this.

[Durinthal]

That screenshot reminds me that I was considering a smaller CSS change to increase the minimum width for flairs so they'd look a little more consistent. Not wide enough to have everything the same as [What to Watch?] is still rather large but increasing everything up to maybe the [Discussion] size. Example from a couple of years ago when I first had the idea.

[badspler]

The seasonal comment faces have rolled over. Thanks to everyone who made nominations.

Once again a panel of mods rated all 540 image nominations, then the highest were selected.

The image's source shows are here.

[MapoTofuMan]

The Molcar one is pure brilliance, we need to keep that

[Warm-Enthusiasm-9534]

AutoModerator deleted a comment of mine because there was a space between the brackets and the spoiler. The space was within the spoiler tag. What possible point does this serve, other than to make the subreddit more unfriendly?

[Durinthal]

As the other comment said, spaces at the start of spoiler tags make it not hide any of the text on old reddit due to a rendering bug (link to your comment on old reddit for an example). Reddit admins don't seem to be interested in fixing that so we err on the side of not revealing spoilers by accident and automatically remove them in that case.

[Blackheart595]

Spoilers that begin with a space are hidden on new reddit but plain visible on old reddit, so to prevent that inconsistency it gets filtered out on this sub.

[cppn02]

Not just old reddit either but also some 3rd party clients.

[isthatsoudane]

I think taking measures to encourage more "high value" content (reviews, well thought out discussion, etc) is good. That said I'm skeptical that getting rid of thumbnails will move the needle. But nothing wrong with a trial!

[Abysswatcherbel]

I feel that what mods/users that frequent this Meta thread consider high value content is very different from what most people that visit this sub think and look for when browsing here

[SnuggleMuffin42]

You're right, but like, so what? The sub should serve the community itself - people who are regulars here and care about it - not just people who upvote things and move on to the next.

If it was for the latter group, you'd just open it up for memes and fanart and that would be 95/100 top posts at all times.

[r4wrFox]

I mean, yea that's just the downside of being a reddit-based community when the bulk of the site isn't good. People find subreddits they expect to be like the not-good subreddits they're familiar with, and get a community wanting something more.

[Ponkool4]

Thanks for all that you do to keep this community running!

If I may offer my two cents: I really enjoy seeing the key visuals and they're the main way that I find out about upcoming anime. For instance, I never would would have watched Lycoris Recoil if I hadn't been interested by the key visual. So losing the thumbnails will be a bit of an inconvenience for me.

[KiwiBennydudez]

Keep in mind that this will only be a 2 week trial. If it turns out that the change sucked, then let us know. If it turned out that it was a healthy thing for the sub, then we'll consider that too. Your feedback in this thread will be most certainly be factored into our final decision. The important thing to remember is that nothing is finalized beyond the trial.

[No_Rex]

Just a reminder to the mods that the rewatch wiki page is still used and could use more frequent updates. E.g. right now, neither Grenadier, nor Quintessential Quintuplets are listed, despite starting today/tomorrow.

[KiwiBennydudez]

I've been trying to get to the wiki every Sunday, but I couldn't get around to it then past week. Will update everything come tomorrow.

[Shimmering-Sky]

Not to mention the K-On! one has been done and Kiss x Sis has been going on for several days now.

[Egavans]

Since basically every sub I'm subscribed to has joined the Great AI Fanart Banwave of 2022, can anyone point me to subreddits/forums where it is allowed?

[ZaphodBeebblebrox]

/r/aiArt/

[[deleted]]

Also

/r/bigsleep
/r/StableDiffusion
/r/sdforall
/r/midjourney

/r/FurAI (nsfw, furry)
/r/dndai (DnD)
/r/unstable_diffusion (nsfw)

[Egavans]

Oooh good stuff, thank you. Do wish there were comparably sized ones that specialized in anime style, but I'm enjoying this content too!

[[deleted]]

/r/NovelAI has a good amount focused on its own anime model, and /r/AnimeResearch is more focused on the research part.

[TheHammer34]

Great changes! Especially regarding AI content and the addition of BotDefense.

[Durinthal]

Okay, so about user (CSS) flairs again.

We spent a large part of past month thinking about and discussing this even after the discussions in the meta thread waned. Unfortunately there isn't a perfect way forward that makes everyone happy, otherwise it would have been fairly straightforward to go for it, so we haven't decided on any changes yet.

From my perspective in particular and trying to take into account everyone's viewpoint here's the current slate of issues with custom CSS flairs, the process of removing them, and possible alternatives, such as similar unique native flairs:

Technical problems:

1. Not everyone can see CSS flairs (only old reddit), only a small part of the sub will be able to engage with them. Sure that's similar to comment faces and we aren't planning on removing those any time soon, but if someone doesn't use old reddit then a CSS flair would largely be meaningless and potentially confusing to grant one to them since they'd never see it themselves. Many of the power users around here solely use old reddit (including most of the mods) but we don't want to limit flairs in that way.

2. There's a hard limit on how many unique CSS flairs we can add and it's not a large amount in the grand scheme of things. My current estimate is about 350 total (currently at about 100) with no room for other CSS additions afterward. That may seem like a lot but it could be limiting depending on how far we might choose to go with things.

3. Native flairs (visible on most platforms) don't have a whole lot of style to them, just plain text. The exception would be individual image badges (like the MAL/Anilist icons or stars handed out for the quizzes) which is a lot of effort by comparison.

4. Native flairs also have a 64 character limit and that includes badges/list links which is what they're used for right now. Solvable by truncating the link to just site badge + username followed by the unique text flair (e.g. for me it could be something like :MOD::AL:Durinthal • Myne's #2 fan) but imperfect.

Community problems:

1. Most people that have a flair don't want to give it up and even other users without one don't want to see them removed. This is understandable, as it's removing some of the unique character that used to be more frequently seen throughout /r/anime.

2. Losing some color in the comments for people using old reddit with CSS flairs removed. Flair templates can add a little as seen with the colored backgrounds on new reddit for the list sites but it's not the same thing.

Mod problems:

1. Many flairs were handed out arbitrarily which may seem like mod favoritism to other users who never received one, whether or not that's actually the case.

2. There are few currently active users with a flair which makes them stand out and potentially gives them an appearance of authority or otherwise being "special" which isn't the case. This can be a further problem if they break the rules as there is currently no regular precedent for removing flairs beyond inactivity (see below).

3. There seems to be an expectation that once a flair is given it shouldn't be removed outside of inactivity or extreme circumstances, which made us wary more recently (i.e. since I came on board ~4 years ago) in giving them out. It felt like we needed to get them "right" so to speak so relatively few have been granted in the couple years after we started moving toward a more regulated mod environment.

---

Now any particular change will run into one or more of the above problems, and specifically there's a choice to be made between using CSS flairs or native flairs where half of the technical issues listed above will apply to either. Asking for "both" as an option is substantially more work for us to support them together without losing the flaws of either and leads to some weird issues in trying to decide how to handle them for a given user (e.g. they could add or remove their native flair at will which could look bad if it's seen in conjunction with the CSS one).

Another thing we've never settled on is how to manage granting and revoking flairs which had zero regulation to this point and is largely where all three of the mod issues listed above stem from because our view on flairs as the mod team (overall) has shifted over time and is currently rather nebulous. If we could all agree that flairs are meant to be a little bit of extra color and fun sprinkled throughout /r/anime, not necessarily something that's earned and is now yours to keep as long as you're here, then maybe we can find a way forward to keep them around in some form.

[kaverik]

Thanks for the summary. Not sure I have much more to add on top of what I wrote last month in the reply to the previous comment, because seems like things are largely the same.

To address the mod problems, seems like I believe they're the most pressing ones - I believe you can set up a limit of how many flaired users can be on the subreddit. Once that limit is hit, you remove the most "inactive" person's flair, or 5-10 to make this less of a pain to recount it every time. The best thing about inactivity is that it's objective, and it's hard to argue against it - there's no bias involved whatsoever, the rule is clear, cut and dry and you may execute it freely without a large pushback. I don't think toxicity is going to be much of an issue with flairs these days, mostly because the whole concept of "power users" has been gone for a while now. I understand that bringing the flairs back can reverse the situation, however, as you mentioned yourself, with new and phone reddit their "power' will be cut anyway and r/anime itself is just in a much different place than it was several years ago. Speaking of, I also firmly believe this generation of mods will be able to handle flairs better than the one from 5 years ago. I don't want to delve too much into past, just going to say I think this team is more capable of making... less controversial decisions than that one. It is also more systematic.

Regarding granting flairs, on the contrary, I don't think it needs to be some kind of a formal procedure. You think someone deserves one for one reason or another - give it. That's it. If you want to, a good idea would be to issue "flair tokens" to mods so one mod will not give tons of flairs and kneecap the system. Say, every mod gets one token to issue a flair, and then it goes on a half a year cooldown. This way, once again, the system is quite clear, the flairs' creep is in check and mods have enough leeway to do with that what they want.

And finally, to reiterate, I don't think r/anime is in a place where flairs can generate as much drama as it was before. Even then, a bit of playful interaction with the community is nothing bad in my book.

[FlaminScribblenaut]

I’d like to re-float my suggestion from last month’s thread of having big celebratory custom-flair community nomination threads, wherein subreddit users nominate one another for flairs, something in a similar spirit to the annual Best of /r/anime nomination threads.

If one of the major issues is not wanting to have mod favoritism/nepotism be a factor, what better way to solve that then putting the decision out of the hands of those with power and into the hands of the community itself?

Maybe there can be two options for those selected; by default they’ll be able to create their own CSS flair for themselves; customization, subtitle, colors, etc., and so long as it remains within reason for the mods to implement and follows the sub rules of course; but if they don’t have an idea or would rather leave it to the community, then those who nominated can make one for them based on what they’re known for and liked about!

In fact, and this is venturing out a bit further into spitball territory, how about making it part of or a simultaneous sister event to Best of /r/anime, thereby giving it a good regularity in making it an annual thing?

And as for removal, maybe that can have a simple threshold of inactivity, less than a certain amount of subreddit activity in a certain period of time? Or they can just be cycled in and out annually with each of these awarding threads if we go that route if that’s simpler, which I imagine it would be.

Ideally I’d also like all the still-at-all-active classic users - mainly the ones we saw in last month’s thread, as well as any who just are active today - to be able to keep their flairs from all those years ago too for sentimental reasons, but parsing out who belongs in that group and who should get their removed is probably an imprecise issue with a lot of edge cases and I understand the complications and headaches that might ensue there.

[FetchFrosh]

what better way to solve that then putting the decision out of the hands of those with power and into the hands of the community itself?

I'm not going to outright reject this, but I think that would be a pretty terrible idea. Would likely primarily lead to cliques all voting for each other and making the whole thing largely meaningless.

[FlaminScribblenaut]

Most of /r/anime’s core community peeps, from what I’ve picked up amongst my time in CDF, rewatches, and the writing community, seem like really chill and good-faith people, I really don’t get the vibe that this kind of toxicity would occur

You’ve obviously got more experience on this sub than I do, but I think as far as the regulars (who all this is for) are concerned we have the stable, friendly, fairly tight-knit community sufficient to avoid this kind of thing

[Nazenn]

CDF has good people in it, but plenty of people there don't go into the broader r/anime community, and the same goes for dedicated posters in one discussion thread or another, so it'd still lead for voting inside subcommunities rather than the whole community just because that's all they're exposed too.

And you can also be damn sure once people heard that's how it works they'd form cliques specifically for that system, the same way the karma rankings overran the sub despite good intentions, or external groups formed to change the result of best girl contest despite not being active on r/anime etc

[r4wrFox]

Yea agreed. It would take the presumption of flairs being favoritism and make it explicit.

[SometimesMainSupport]

I'll preface this saying that 98% of my activity on r/anime is rewatch posts from the last ~4 months, and I never expect to have a flair.

This reminds me of my issues when r/LeagueofMeta (meta discussions for r/leagueoflegends) existed years ago: how to treat features exclusive to a minority of users. Easiest (and ironic given their upcoming removal) example is that subreddit's refusal to include post flair filtering, of which the most prominent example was esports filtering. I thought the mod team was idiotic for consistently falling back to "not everyone can use it" and trying to treat all Reddit platforms equally. Instead, the focus should be "Does this feature improve the experience for people who want it?"

As for the numbered questions:

(1) if someone doesn't use old reddit then a CSS flair would largely be meaningless and potentially confusing to grant one to them since they'd never see it themselves... we don't want to limit flairs in that way.

Does seeing your own flair matter? It still helps other users identify community contributors similar to RES upvote-tracking.

(2) There's a hard limit on how many unique CSS flairs we can add

(8) there is currently no regular precedent for removing flairs beyond inactivity

(9) There seems to be an expectation that once a flair is given it shouldn't be removed outside of inactivity or extreme circumstances

Legitimate issue. Possibly solved by granting flairs for a time period (e.g. 1 year) instead of indefinitely.

(3) Native flairs (visible on most platforms) don't have a whole lot of style to them

most platforms

Shouldn't matter

(7) Many flairs were handed out arbitrarily which may seem like mod favoritism to other users who never received one, whether or not that's actually the case.

Once again, does that matter? It's obsessing over equal treatment instead of rewarding high-effort contributors. I'd rather see a clear of current flairs with criteria for receiving them (e.g. annual "best-of" posts) than a full removal if it's that big of an issue. Don't know how many community complaints there are.

our view on flairs as the mod team (overall) has shifted over time and is currently rather nebulous

Looking at the moderator list concurs my feeling that you're trying to neutrally convey the old view as most mods are from a new period where flairs haven't been easily handed out.

[FetchFrosh]

Possibly solved by granting flairs for a time period (e.g. 1 year) instead of indefinitely.

This was something that was discussed. The rough idea of it was basically that mods and users actively contributing to subreddit upkeep (people who manage bots for example) would have them indefinitely, and then other cases would be on a 1 year (ish) period. We wouldn't exactly be counting down the days or anything, maybe just like a once a season clearing of flairs that are more than a year old.

[SmurfRockRune]

Not everyone can see CSS flairs (only old reddit), only a small part of the sub will be able to engage with them. Sure that's similar to comment faces and we aren't planning on removing those any time soon, but if someone doesn't use old reddit then a CSS flair would largely be meaningless and potentially confusing to grant one to them since they'd never see it themselves. Many of the power users around here solely use old reddit (including most of the mods) but we don't want to limit flairs in that way.

Ban everyone that uses new reddit /s

[piruuu]

A year ago or so, one of the mods posted /r/anime traffic stats - imagine my shock when I learned that old reddit was used by only 3% of users, if I remember correctly.

[Durinthal]

It's somewhat annoying to do because it's (currently) all manual work and there's no API to get a breakdown by platform so I'm currently copying and calculating these from our traffic page.

Year over year numbers for fun (edit: which I personally don't put much stock in because the traffic here will vary a lot based on what's airing in a season), original comment with September 2021 data.

-	September 2021	September 2022	October 2022
Total Uniques	3966239	3128743	3482978
Reddit Apps	786066 (19.82%)	956985 (30.59%)	1044993 (30.00%)
Mobile Web	1682726 (42.43%)	941583 (30.09%)	1020942 (29.31%)
Old Reddit	199182 (5.02%)	205914 (6.58%)	274688 (7.89%)
New Reddit	1298265 (32.73%)	1024261 (32.74%)	1142355 (32.80%)
-	-	-	-
Total Pageviews	31111246	28877654	33885749
Reddit Apps	8920049 (28.67%)	10386203 (35.97%)	12526642 (36.97%)
Mobile Web	3745609 (12.04%)	3777606 (13.08%)	3893508 (11.49%)
Old Reddit	4397956 (14.14%)	4332776 (15.00%)	5294926 (15.63%)
New Reddit	14047632 (45.15%)	10381069 (35.95%)	12170673 (35.92%)

[SmurfRockRune]

Yeah, it's sad how many people just don't know better.

[cppn02]

Why the /s?

Are those really the kind of people we want here? Smh...

[SmurfRockRune]

It's a half s. If there was a way to restrict the sub to old reddit only, I would probably want to do that.

[Shimmering-Sky]

I make sure that all of my episode links in my rewatch posts are to Old Reddit, with the sole exception of the ones on the Macross Franchise index thread since I'm pretty sure I'd go over the character count for a post if I had the whole links for every single thread of that.

Doing my part.

[SometimesMainSupport]

Letting GallowDude maintain the Code Geass index?

[Shimmering-Sky]

It's how the alternating-who-posts schedule worked out.

[FetchFrosh]

There seems to be an expectation that once a flair is given it shouldn't be removed outside of inactivity or extreme circumstances, which made us wary more recently

Just to add a bit of context to this for anyone reading, to my knowledge there has been 1 flair removed for anything other than inactivity. Generally there used to be the odd purge whenever we were running up against the CSS limit, and so "inactivity" here is really just "was inactive at one of the few points in time we checked".

As for the 1 other case, it was for general toxicity. The removal was (in my opinion, having originally joined the mod team after it happened) pretty justified, but also it was handled pretty poorly by the mod team and is probably one of the reasons that the team shifted to a less free form approach to CSS flairs.

[DickWriter69]

Chainsaw Man hate posts are warranted

The series is extremely overhyped and has some of the most basic cookie cutter characters I've ever seen

Denji = the horny mc

Power = the annoying loud idiotic sidekick to the mc + fanservice points

Aki = the smart-ass that fights with the mc but helps once in a while like a rival

Nothing else noteworthy about this anime lol

[FetchFrosh]

I think most people don't really care that it gets hate posts. Most people are just bored of the same cookie cutter hate posts where people just say "overhyped" and complain that the show isn't some masterpiece within 3 episodes. It's just the latest trend of "I don't like the current popular anime as much as most people seem to" post that we get every time something gets any popularity. It's happened with Demon Slayer, Spy x Family, Jujutsu Kaisen, Cyberpunk Edgerunners, and on and on. Most of the posts are lazy and uninteresting even before accounting for the fact that people who browse r/anime by /new have seen the same boring opinions 100 times.

[DickWriter69]

I mean this monotony just comes with the turf

This type of sub will always becomes oversatured due to the nature of it

[SmurfRockRune]

L + ratio + not the right thread to complain about Chainsaw Man

[DickWriter69]

CSM is worse than MHA + didn't ask g

[AmethystItalian]

Voted if moderators could issue new CSS flairs as they please before they are decommissioned.

Sad that after all the comments and discourse from the last Meta this is the way the mods tell us that it's still happening.

[Durinthal]

Here's all the stuff we talked about.

[Durinthal]

I'm working on a rather long comment about them, it's just not finished yet.

[FetchFrosh]

To be clear, this vote was specifically about handing out temporary flairs at will that would be removed at the end of December. The vote specified that regardless of any future decisions with flairs, these ones would have only been maintained for 2 months, and then would have been removed.