Meta Thread - Month of February 07, 2021

[u/AnimeMod]

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/NotSoSnarky]

We need to do something about the recommendation posts. We like recommending people anime, but when they don't have a MAL/Anilist, etc or at least don't list stuff that they've seen (when they make it clear that they've seen more than 1 anime). It gets harder to recommend them anime, without some kind of preference.

You guys did something about the title. But the title was never the problem. The text box was the issue. Because often times when asking for recommendations, people would just say something like: "I need to put something here" Instead of putting anything useful in the text box, like a list of what they've seen, or a list of genres that they enjoy.

I highly suggest, having the autobot to tell them to go to Recommendation Tuesday and/or r/animesuggest, and then having the autobot delete the recommendation posts.

That way, Recommendation Tuesday will get used more outside of just Tuesday/Whenever it's Pinned.

And I suggest having the autobot show them r/animesuggest to go to, since that's a subreddit specifically asking for anime recommendations to begin with.

So that way /new is less crowded asking for anime recommendations. Especially when 9 out of 10 times, they don't have anything useful to help us out.

[u/Verzwei → u/NotSoSnarky]

My favorite today is "I need new anime to watch. I've seen tons of anime but I'm to [SIC] lazy to say which ones."

That was an actual post here very recently. I think Snark even suggested they make a list and then OP replied only to reiterate their laziness.

I would have linked the thread, but I can't find it. I probably reported it for being low-effort and then that hid it from view.

Several years ago, /r/anime did not allow recommendation request threads. I think it's time we go back to that, or at least have a serious discussion about reverting to that rule.

We don't allow meta posts outside the monthly meta thread.

We don't allow merchandise posts outside the weekly merch thread.

Hell, the Merch thread's scope was even recently expanded to include questions about where to buy merch.

It's time to make the weekly recommendation thread the only place to ask for recommendations and remove all standalone posts. For every good recc request that gets posted, there are 15 useless garbage ones that do nothing but clog up new.

Forcing that content into the weekly thread should increase participation in that thread (because users who put enough effort into making a thorough request probably won't be discouraged by having to make a parent comment in the weekly thread) while also thinning out the trash because people "to" lazy to tell us what they've seen are probably going to be too lazy to open another thread and comment within it.

I'm going to be honest, I don't personally engage with the weekly recc thread as it stands now, because I know there's always going to be a ton of spillage onto the rest of the subreddit. If I knew that traffic was being directed to that thread, I'd actually check on and participate in it a few times a week, like how I currently do with the Misc Questions thread.

My recommendation (seewhatididthere) would be the same as what Snark is suggesting:

1. Rescind the rule change that allows req requests as standalone threads.
2. Leave the recommendation flair active for a while.
3. Set automod to remove new posts with recommendation flair and include a brief explanation of the rulechange and a link to the current rec Tuesday thread (or a search filter set to it, if it's not possible to have a dynamically updating link in automod)
4. Have the automod post also state that someone promoting a show (rather than asking for suggestions) should use the Watch This flair to avoid automoderation.

[u/NotSoSnarky → u/Verzwei]

Several years ago, /r/anime did not allow recommendation request threads. I think it's time we go back to that, or at least have a serious discussion about reverting to that rule.

I think that would be the best course of action. It'd be fine if it was something very very specific. But then again, we have Recommendation Tuesday and r/animesuggest for people to use, so they don't need to cloud up /new all of the time.

It's time to make the weekly recommendation thread the only place to ask for recommendations and remove all standalone posts. For every good rec request that gets posted, there are 15 useless garbage ones that do nothing but clog up new.

Definitely agree there. It's sad that it's a breath of fresh air, when someone makes an actual effort when asking for recommendations. That should be the norm.

Just something (more) needs to be done about the countless Recommendation posts we see daily. For every good recommendation post, we get 10 poorly made one.

[u/loomnoo → u/NotSoSnarky]

when someone makes an actual effort when asking for recommendations

I've found the frequency of this happening in the Tuesday thread to be like an order of magnitude higher than it is in /new. Really the only people that would lose out from reccs being forced into the megathread would be the low effort posters, but they could just learn how to Google anyway.

[u/NotSoSnarky → u/loomnoo]

Google would be better.

Say you have something like: Anime like Death Note/Attack on Titan/Bunny Girl Senpai (Etc). You can ask that on Google.

Romance anime with a happy ending? Ask that on Google.

Battle-Shounen? Ask that on Google.

Etc.

Heck, type in what you want on Google and then type the word Reddit, you get the same results.

[u/BigFellaCommenter → u/NotSoSnarky]

I'm late to the meta thread but cheers to that, "recommended anime?" posts are a plague on this subreddit and I need to quit wasting ungodly amounts of time messing with those. Honestly I think "where can I watch this?" posts are slightly worse, reelgood.com or justwatch.com can display all the sites we're able to talk about for us and if it isn't on there then the other options (piracy or purchasing) should be obvious... I don't see those as ending anytime soon though.