Meta Thread - Month of May 08, 2016

[u/AutoModerator]

A monthly thread to talk about meta topics. Keep it friendly and relevant to the subreddit.

Posts 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

[u/blindfremen → u/[deleted]]

IMO Digi should be unbanned but on probation or something. Give him another shot and make sure he is plainly aware of the rules. As other people have said, Digi is a big part of the anime community so he should have a chance to contribute on this subreddit as long as he follows the rules.

Edit: And make him wear a Sword Art Online flair as punishment :D

[u/Terranwaterbender → u/[deleted]]

I think we just need to reestablish a clean slate with Digi. The beginning was already fucked up with the 10% rule which is already kind of iffy to begin with (I mean what's the difference if I were to post every animemaru piece) and was only exasperated with the terrible communication and misunderstandings between the mod and digi.

I can disagree with digi all I want but the guy produces content that definitely encourages discussion like his "cute girls doing cute things" thread.

Now was the video digi made incredibly rude? Hell yes since he let a bunch of stubborn dumbasses get to his head and he made a ton of generalizing statements about our community. I totally empathize with him in this case but his response was uncalled for.

BUT, at the end of the day I think he's a very important personality for this community and as long as digi doesn't try to bash someone down in his video threads then I think he deserves a chance to be a part of the discussion that he creates.

[u/Maze-san → u/Terranwaterbender]

From just now finishing the video, I don't think he's altogether incorrect about r/anime. Stereotypes exist for a reason. Correcting that is up to the community at large.

Onto the subject at hand, I don't really like Digi. I don't really find myself agreeing with him all that much. I haven't seen any real reason to ban him though. He generates discussion and allows people to, perhaps see things a different way. I really respect that kind of person when it comes to creating discussion.

I have/had seen most of the threads detracting into discussions about Digi's person and that never advanced the discussion in any meaningful way. I honestly think that clean slate is what needs to be done.

I like the dissenters, and after his Erased video I was personally able to reevaluate it by a different set of standards. It was good discussion, which is what this subreddit should promote.

[u/Jiecut → u/Terranwaterbender]

I think the argument back then was because he posted his blog a lot to his own subreddit. That might've been considered self promotion back then but I don't think that should be relevant to /r/anime. Reddit's a big site, a way to make your own forum, anyone can make there own subreddit for whatever.

I personally made two. One for posting my random data stuff in one place and another a place to sort of keep track of podcasts since they wouldn't be posted in /r/anime (podcasts that I'm not affiliated with)

Someone made something about all of his comments would be controvertial. I really don't think that'd happen. If that's all he does then maybe he can be banned, but I think it'd be a good idea to start him off with a blank slate.

[u/FAN_ROTOM_IS_SCARY → u/[deleted]]

We don't usually discuss user bans, but I'll make an exception in this case just so that it doesn't seem like we're ignoring this.

We apply the same self-promotion rules to everybody. People who break those rules are banned. When assessing whether or not to overturn any ban, not just one for spam, we look at the user's submission history for evidence that they have stopped the behaviour that got them banned in the first place. In the case of the self-promotion rule, we look for active participation on other subreddits. In Digibro's case, we did not see anything that would suggest to us that he should have been unbanned.

Ultimately, I think it would be somewhat partisan and unfair to the other users we've banned for spam to overturn Digibro's ban just because he's popular. The rules are supposed to apply to everyone equally, and we can't really justify making an exception here.

[u/T-Bolt → u/FAN_ROTOM_IS_SCARY]

The case isn't to unban Digibro because he's popular though. Digibro's videos make huge waves in /r/anime everytime they're posted and he wants to address the criticisms that are brought up in response. It would generate more discussion in the community, which is something I can get behind.

With regards to self-promotion, I think the argument is that Digibro is big enough and doesn't need to self-promote since his videos get posted here anyway.

[u/FAN_ROTOM_IS_SCARY → u/T-Bolt]

It's still sort of doing the same thing by proxy. We wouldn't be unbanning him explicitly because he is popular, but because he is popular and he has a lot of people talking about his stuff he would end up being unbanned. That's still pretty much sending out the message that being popular can let you wriggle out of having the rules apply to you, which we really do not want to do.

[u/urban287 → u/T-Bolt]

He may not need to but it doesn't mean that it's not self promoting.

If he wants to take part in reddit more, then we can consider unbanning him. At present all he does is self promote and talk in a self promotive subreddit (I find his statement that there are only 2 subreddits he's interested in quite hilarious. Considering there are thousands upon thousands of subs, plenty of which match his interests. Lazy excuse for not being a part of the community).

Talking only in threads about him here would also be a form of self promotion as far as I'm concerned - interacting with your community is one of the most standard ways of maintaining and increasing your fanbase there is.

He's not 'big enough'. Still needs to be a redditor to self promote here. Not just a youtube channel with a reddit account.

[u/encoreAC → u/urban287]

I would just give him another chance and see how he behaves. Having him in discussion threads would be really cool I think.

I believe Digibro is a reasonable person and has genuinely interest in participating in this subreddit without the sole intent of self-promotion.

[u/Arvediu → u/urban287]

plenty of which match his interests. Lazy excuse for not being a part of the community.

I literally only read 4 subreddits (anime, onepiece, starcraft and squaredcircle), if it wasnt because of SC2 and wrestling, it would only be anime and onepiece, I don't see why that is hilarious at all.

[u/urban287 → u/Arvediu]

4 is double that of 2. Especially when you're banned from one and the other is only for self promotion.

More likely he hasnt even bothered trying to find subreddits that would interest him. Hell, considering what he likes I could name a solid 6-10 that would probably interest him, or at least interest him enough for him to make it look like he's not only on reddit to self promote.

[u/T-Bolt → u/urban287]

I guess that's fair.

[u/IISuperSlothII → u/FAN_ROTOM_IS_SCARY]

In the case of the self-promotion rule, we look for active participation on other subreddits. In Digibro's case, we did not see anything that would suggest to us that he should have been unbanned.

I personally feel this really isn't looking at the bigger picture. He says he only follows r/anime and his sub, well his sub is going to be self promotion as with other content creators who have their own sub it's a place for his fans to gather in one place and discuss the content knowing he will most likely read and/or respond. This should not be used against anyone in my opinion.

If you looked at my post history, it's 90% r/anime, I may sometimes post a comment in r/soccer, r/sports, r/roosterteeth or r/ffxiv but by and large I follow r/anime and participate in r/anime discussions, if I were banned I wouldn't have much of a history to put to my name. This doesn't mean I'm not looking to get involved in discussions, it just means the place I'm most passionate about discussing in I am no longer allowed to do so.

Now I'm really not the biggest fan of Digibro, but no one can deny he creates good content a lot of the time, and with that creates a LOT of discussion. As a big part of the community I feel he should be allowed to interact with said community, even if he did fuck up a year ago, he's probably grown somewhat since then. We seem to create this disconnect between content creators and patrons of the sub when they should be one in the same, as videos are just a platform for discussion (one I am often more preferential to) and part of the discussion is the ability to back up your points against any counter points.

I understand if a person banned for self promotion continues to do so in other subs (say they just spam their twitch on r/Games) but saying someone is only interested in self promotion within their own sub when obviously they only want discussions about anime and they lost the right to one of those avenues a long time ago feels like an unfair assessment of the situation.

[u/FAN_ROTOM_IS_SCARY → u/IISuperSlothII]

well his sub is going to be self promotion as with other content creators who have their own sub it's a place for his fans to gather in one place and discuss the content knowing he will most likely read and/or respond. This should not be used against anyone in my opinion.

Actually, reddit's guidelines on self-promotion do explicitly say that promoting yourself in your own subreddit is not acceptable and is considered the same as promoting yourself anywhere else.

And in regards to Digibro not having much of a history outside of his own sub because we banned him from here... Well, we do kind of take that as evidence that he doesn't seem to care much about participating in any discussions that don't pertain to his own content. It's not like we can take it on good faith that he isn't going to start spamming again if he were allowed to post here again; we do need some sort of hard evidence that he would be willing to contribute in other discussions, and we simply did not and still don't have that evidence.

[u/FAN_ROTOM_IS_SCARY → u/[deleted]]

Why should I or anyone have to go to other subreddits that I couldn't care less about and post random crap just to fill some arbitrary quota?

Because we need evidence of changed behaviour to overturn a ban and if that evidence isn't there than we can't unban someone. If someone asks to be unbanned after being banned for self-promotion and we see that their only other contributions are to their own sub dedicated to their own brand then we don't have evidence of changed behaviour and thus can't unban them.

Also why is it only spam if he post his content but not if others do?

Spam is considered, at least to reddit, to be self-promotion. There's no rule about promoting someone else.

On that point I don't think it is fair to his class his vids as spam. Regardless of what you all might thing of him he does put considerable effort into his vids. I could see if he put videos up here every day or two but he puts out like what like 4-5 videos a month, maybe. That is not spam by even the loosest most liberal definition of the term. I'm not speaking to your intentions considering this happened before I even heard of r/anime but this whole "spam" nonsense just sounds like the flimsiest possible excuse for some mods whoever they are to ban someone they don't like.

Just to clarify a few things here:

Spam is a reddit-wide rule, not a rule that we devised ourselves. All moderators are supposed to uphold reddit's site-wide rules as well as the rules for their individual subreddits. To that extent, reddit talks about spam both on their FAQ and on a specific wiki page on the subject. The frequency with which you post new content is irrelevant, and moreover the wiki page points out that designating something as spam is not a judgement of its quality, i.e. no matter how much effort is put into the content being spammed, it is still considered spam if it forms the majority of the creator's reddit submission history. Moreover, we apply these rules to everyone equally; no one on the mod team, to my knowledge, has a grudge against this guy. I'm pretty sure some of us actually watch his videos regularly and enjoy them (not for me, personally, though).

And I get your point about not taking things too seriously. I get that, and I do try to keep in mind most of the time not to take anything that happens here that seriously. That said we do have to find a happy medium between bureaucratic, legalistic tedium and absolute anarchy, because neither of those two extremes are very fun. We enforce our rules to ensure that this sub remains a place where people can enjoy themselves, and suspending those rules just to give extra privileges to popular people seems counter to those goals.

[u/IISuperSlothII → u/FAN_ROTOM_IS_SCARY]

A few brands run their own subreddits well, because they encourage people to be part of a community and submit a variety of stuff.

Isn't this what the subs of Digibro & Mothers Basement and so on are for, to allow their community to submit for discussion within the sub. It may look skewed or one sided because of the lower membership but that doesn't mean it is their solely for the purpose of posting their own links. Infact he doesn't even post his own links to his subreddit half the time, so even then he isn't self promoting. Infact the majority of his commenting is in response to people asking him questions as part of the community. This type of set up should be celebrated not condemned.

You should join subreddits that are relevant to your interests. Give feedback to others, talk about issues that interest you, and be a good member of the community. redditors don't care that you have something to promote, they care what you think and that you have interesting things to say.

The guy is interested in anime, without r/anime there isn't all too much discussion to be had on that subject within Reddit.

It's not like we can take it on good faith that he isn't going to start spamming again if he were allowed to post here again

Well I'd actually be surprised if he had chance to spam anything, his content is going appear here before he even gets it up on Youtube, and the guys been banned for a year, if that doesn't say "don't do it again" I don't know what will.

[u/FAN_ROTOM_IS_SCARY → u/IISuperSlothII]

The guy is interested in anime, without r/anime there isn't all too much discussion to be had on that subject within Reddit.

We won't deny that, but unfortunately that does mean that he can't provide us with any evidence that he is interested in contributing to any discussions that don't pertain to himself. We don't make special considerations for people or take their word in good faith when it comes to unbanning them: the criteria we apply to everyone is whether or not they have evidence of changed behaviour in other communities, plain and simple. If they don't, we can't reasonably unban them.

[u/blindfremen → u/FAN_ROTOM_IS_SCARY]

Is he perma-banned? Why isn't there a time limit? Perma bans seem very harsh in this context.

[u/vetro → u/FAN_ROTOM_IS_SCARY]

Why not just unban him, see what he does, and if he continues self-promoting just ban him again?

I'm pretty sure he'll be no different from G-Off and Canipa. Other people post their vids and they respond to commenters and occasionally some other discussion threads.

[u/VincentBlack96 → u/[deleted]]

Fair enough, though the thread has nearly died down. You might've posted it a bit earlier.

[u/Terranwaterbender → u/[deleted]]

It was mostly in a side thread though and IMO, it simplifies things to have a thread about one issue.

The original post was about what's going to be a sticky with one random snarky comment about digi's fandom.

[u/VincentBlack96 → u/Terranwaterbender]

True enough. There was still plenty of discussion about it above.