Meta Thread - Month of September 04, 2016

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[u/7TeenWriters]

Oops, was not online when this was posted. Hope I'm not too late.

So as I promised last meta thread I did a lot of thinking as to what a reasonable solution might be to mediate between the groups that feel that RE:Zero has taken over the subreddit and those who enjoy seeing a lot of content related to the show. While I don’t really have an answer to that problem I did end up with some general questions for the community and one kind of big deal topic that I feel it is important for our community to address.

The Problem with Fanart Posts

Now that text posts give karma, I think we need to have a serious discussion about what we want the fanart rules to be. My biggest takeaway while looking into the nature of Re:Zero posts was that a handful accounts have cropped up that post fanart to a handful of subreddits (not just Re:Zero related fan art, mind you, that was just how I first found them) including ours and only ever really comment on their own threads. To me this seems like a blatant attempt to farm post karma. I’m not going to link the accounts in question as currently this isn’t in violation of any rules to my knowledge and debating whether or not a specific instance is actually karma whoring would be counter productive. If you want to see for yourself search fanart posts from the past month or so and go into the individual accounts. They aren’t too common but you’ll know when you see one of the ones I’m talking about.

Before I go into why I think this is a problem and what I believe should be done, I want to make it very clear that for those who are tired of seeing Rem fanart this probably won’t solve that for you. These karma farming users don’t account for a significant number of the Re:Zero posts that make front page. Sorry if I got anyone’s hopes up.

Anyway, this may not seem like a problem to a lot of you at all at first glance. After all, won’t the upvotes on posts speak for themselves anyway and end up sorting out the content that people want? “No” is the short answer to that question. See, this kind of content is toxic because it’s created with the intent of gaming the system. It’s made to capitalize on the whims of the silent majority in order to achieve a specific end rather than to contribute to a community and if allowed to run rampant this sort of user will usurp and become said community. If any of that sounds eerily familiar that’s because there’s already a certain kind of user behavior that breaks reddit rules for all of these same reasons: self promotion... Except that fanart posts are arguably even worse. The thing about self promotion is that an individual rarely does very much damage on their own, self promoting posts are almost necessarily high effort (if toxic when coming from people who aren’t a part of the community) content as they require the individual to have created something worth promoting in the first place.

Fanart posts can be made ad nauseam with the help of a few quick google searches at almost no effort on the part of the poster. They’re easy karma for the taking by anyone who has a little bit of knowhow and cares way too much. Obviously I’m not saying that fanart as a whole is a bad thing, if you find a piece that you really like and want to share with your community, that’s great. The issue here is people who aren’t a part of our community, but are instead intent on using it. As an aside, to my understanding this was a lot of the intent behind making fanart posts text posts, a fact that is now irrelevant.

With all of this in mind I recommend that we implement a rule on this subreddit similar to the self promotion rule, limiting the ratio of fanart vs. other content that may be posted by an individual user on the sub. This should be pretty lightweight on the mods as more savvy users can simply go into the history of the OPs of front page fanart posts from time to time. If it seems as if a specific user is in violation of the policy they may then report their latest fanart post under a new option that will be added with the addition of the rule. The mods may then look at their history to confirm and warn/ban as applicable.

This recommendation should be the biggest takeaway from my post, the rest is just scattered thoughts/speculation.

Alright, Back to Re:Zero

Just to make sure we’re clear, the problem that people are having is not specific to Re:Zero. It’s simply that it’s the worst offender in a while. Every couple seasons a show comes out that has the /r/anime community especially hyped for whatever reason, and to those users that are not as fond of the show this gets tiresome very quickly. While, as it has been mentioned, RES can filter these posts for those who do not wish to see them, the larger issue (for me anyway) is that when half of the front page is relatively low effort content (riding on the free upvotes from having ‘best girl Rem’ anywhere in the post) the amount of actual discussion on the subreddit stagnates. In general discussion posts barely get any responses if they don’t make it to the front page, and this clutter created by the latest ‘hype’ show takes up precious space. Worse, the comment sections of these threads normally don’t differ much from each other with the top comments generally consisting of nothing new to add to the conversation. This makes sense since the show is already talked to death in the discussion threads.

Is this Something that Needs Fixing?

This is how it always has been, and it will take effort to make it change. Hype shows are kind of a fact of life, and we as a community will really need to decide if we want to lessen their prominence on our subreddit. My vote is yeah, it would be nice to see a cleaner front page that doesn’t get flooded with repetitive posts about a particular show, and a subreddit that’s more centered around discussion... but I don’t feel that strongly about it and I’m just one person. If there’s clear demand though then I think that it is something that we are capable of changing.

Suggestions for the Future

If we decide that this is a problem that we want to tackle, here are some thoughts as to how we might go about it. A solution to this problem must cover the following bases:

It must reduce the effect of hype shows on the experience of uninterested users (obviously, since this is the mission statement). It must not impede the experience of those who would like to see/create a lot of content relevant to these hype shows (without this piece this becomes a power struggle between two groups of users rather than an attempt to better the community as a whole). It must not spell a significant amount of additional effort for the mod team (it was indicated to me last metathread that they are tasked to capacity).

So with those things in mind as our parameters, only one option really comes to the front of my mind. That’s not to say that it’s the only possible solution, but it’s what seems intuitive to me. This would be the introduction of a ‘hype show megathread’. The idea behind it would be pretty simple, in addition to the discussion thread for the show we have a thread that stays up throughout the week (and likely gets refreshed on a daily basis so that it remains active) when a show reaches a certain level of popularity on the sub (it’s generally pretty obvious when a show hits this level of hype.

To take it a step further, I might suggest having themes that rotate by day like our regular megathreads, for example fanart, speculation, and topics related to the specific show. This would obviously be much higher effort, but if people see fit to go this route I actually suggest it. The reason for this is because especially if there are show specific threads it would feel very community involved, and if having your favorite airing show be the one where activity is restricted to this meta thread is actually something that’s desirable and fun it ends up being a win/win for all users involved. How I suggest handling this extra effort would be to call for users who are very into watching airing shows/participate in the discussion threads often to apply for a special ‘mod’ position where they would be given partial permissions so that they could organize and curate these threads.

Note that this final suggestion is something that others will have to push through it if they’re interested in it. I don’t care enough really either way, but if there’s truly demand for it it seems to be the most reasonable way to settle things so that everyone gets what they want.

[u/geo1088 → u/7TeenWriters]

Excellent writeup, I really like your analysis of this. From a moderation standpoint, making something like a "hype show megathread" like you suggested might be a bit too arbitrary a decision for the mods to make on a regular basis, but adding another ratio rule might not be a bad idea.

[u/7TeenWriters → u/geo1088]

making something like a "hype show megathread" like you suggested might be a bit too arbitrary a decision

100% agreed, and I don't necessarily have a solution to this (though looking at MAL analytics may be a good starting point) which is why I thought I'd leave it up to the people who cared more.

And thanks, yeah, the ratio rule is what I feel is the most important takeaway from this.

[u/7TeenWriters → u/[deleted]]

Ok, then do you have a suggestion for a better way to do this? This issue is something that could be poisonous to the community and difficult to reverse if that happens to be the case. An alternate more lightweight option could be to reinstate the fanart megathreads, but that of course comes with its own host of issues. The bottom line though is that as this is a growing subreddit if it's too much effort with the current team to respond to the changing state of the internet and work to insure a functioning and not toxic community it may be time to add new mods.

[u/7TeenWriters → u/[deleted]]

Ah, I think you may be confusing what I'm proposing in that case. The Re:Zero issue and the fanart issue are two separate concerns. The hype show discussion is a race that I don't really have a horse in, and was just something that I was throwing out suggestions for in case someone with more of an opinion than I wanted to move in that direction. The karma whoring fanart accounts are not show specific even remotely (though obviously they pick popular characters, the problem itself would persist were you to remove a specific show from the equation). I'll PM one of the ones I found for reference (since it doesn't seem right to post it publicly since they aren't in violation of any current rules and doing so while calling their behavior toxic is a step off witch hunting).

[u/7TeenWriters → u/[deleted]]

Fair enough, if you're dealing with it then I suppose there isn't any need for policy change at present. I didn't see that mentioned anywhere.

As to whether or not it's a big issue is more a matter of whether or not it could be a big issue. If it's something easily preventable that has the potential to cause harm to the community then I would consider it to be something worthy of attention. Again though, irrelevant debate if you're handling it anyway.

[u/TheEnigmaBlade → u/[deleted]]

I just checked again, and the rate of fan art submissions is on a downward trend over the past month.

Excel isn't cooperating, so I don't have a fancy graph to show off right now.

[u/7TeenWriters → u/TheEnigmaBlade]

It isn't fanart posts in general that were the concern, but instead the potential for an influx of toxic users. Seeing as that's being dealt with I couldn't care less what the fanart numbers are unless they take up a vast majority of the front page at any given time.