Discuss the anime rule here

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Re: Discuss the anime rule here

Post by fett0001 »

It doesn't matter what the **** happened to it. It shouldn't have been touched by the moderation staff at all.
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Re: Discuss the anime rule here

Post by Cheynem »

Mike Hundley: Just in case you don't see the edited post upthread, the DBZ Tournament locking thread was a mistake. It will not happen again and the board's admin and moderators have repeatedly said this.

Eric: I think there is a difference based on what I said above, in that anime is more niche and specific than the other topics.
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Re: Discuss the anime rule here

Post by Sima Guang Hater »

kroeajueluo wrote:For example, I-O Psychology is important , but I've certainly seen no class about it.
http://dartmouth.edu/pbs/sites/dartmout ... v_8_07.pdf
Page 1 of the Above Link wrote:44. Psychology and Organizations. White, 9L.
Look harder.
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Re: Discuss the anime rule here

Post by Sima Guang Hater »

Cheynem wrote:Eric: I think there is a difference based on what I said above, in that anime is more niche and specific than the other topics.
I'm certainly willing to grant you the fact that its more specific than sports or television, but it's not very clear to me why that warrants a specific rule. Among quizbowlers, there seems to be a sizeable number of anime fans, and as long as they keep it civil and contained I don't see why they shouldn't be given the same deference as sports fans.
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Re: Discuss the anime rule here

Post by fett0001 »

As usual, Eric states things somewhat more eloquently than I.
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Re: Discuss the anime rule here

Post by The Kirk Store Called »

The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote:
kroeajueluo wrote:For example, I-O Psychology is important , but I've certainly seen no class about it.
http://dartmouth.edu/pbs/sites/dartmout ... v_8_07.pdf
Page 1 of the Above Link wrote:44. Psychology and Organizations. White, 9L.
Look harder.
I stand very corrected.

In retrospect, that specific argument was pretty bad to begin with.
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Re: Discuss the anime rule here

Post by Angry Babies in Love »

The Quest for the Historical Mukherjesus wrote:
Cheynem wrote:Eric: I think there is a difference based on what I said above, in that anime is more niche and specific than the other topics.
I'm certainly willing to grant you the fact that its more specific than sports or television, but it's not very clear to me why that warrants a specific rule. Among quizbowlers, there seems to be a sizeable number of anime fans, and as long as they keep it civil and contained I don't see why they shouldn't be given the same deference as sports fans.
This is generally my objection with the rule, especially since this thread has shown that the moderator staff as it stands has no baseless vendetta against it. I understand the goal to keep bad posts to a minimum, but I think that it looks bad to call out a specific group of people.
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Re: Discuss the anime rule here

Post by t-bar »

Disclaimer: By linking to example posts and threads below, I'm not trying to call out the posters themselves. In fact, the point I'm trying to make is that most of the examples below are products of an outdated culture that the board used to have, rather than the inherent tendencies of the posters themselves.

While people seem to have reached a middle ground on some parts of this issue, there are two repeated sentiments in this thread that I'd like to address: (1) requests for specific examples of the harmful effects of unfettered anime discussion, and (2) proposals to allow anime discussion in a probationary manner and/or allow it only in the Off Topic section. I'm not a moderator, nor do my interpretations of the rules carry any enforceable weight, but I've been reading the boards for about five years now, and I hope that I can provide a somewhat informed historical perspective on these points, one that expands on the allusions that Andrew Hart and others have been making to the purpose of the forum. I'd like to make my point by analogizing anime discussion to the old AHAN subforum.

Longtime (well, not that longtime) readers of the forums will remember when AHAN was an open forum that people actually posted in. It was very much an "internetty" forum, with lots of short, content-free posts and animated GIFs (examples taken from recent brief re-openings because I don't feel like trawling through shit from a long time ago, but there was a lot more like my examples). It also had some pretty uniquely awful stuff, like a thread where people voted on the "worst" program of all time and a 1,526-post Mafia game where the twist was that the rules didn't apply to Andy Watkins (remarkably prescient, but decidedly not in the spirit of levelheaded discussion of quizbowl). This "internettiness" wasn't just limited to AHAN, though--even in more nominally on-topic sections of the board, we had extended, pointless threads like this one, and the general level of discourse and maturity was much lower even in threads that were otherwise germane to quizbowl discussion. AHAN set an example for a certain mode of discourse that spilled over and infiltrated the rest of the forum.

Since I've been reading the forums, AHAN has been closed as part of a general increase in the degree of content moderation.* This moderate increase in oversight has been accompanied by, in my opinion, a massive increase in the professionalism and general presentability of the board as a place where people come to discuss quizbowl in a fun but mature manner. David Reinstein and others said as much in the original "State of the Board" thread--some discussions still get out of hand, but in most cases we conduct ourselves more like a bunch of intelligent, mature people than we did five years ago. I'm not saying that you're a bad person for enjoying "internetty" content, or even for remembering AHAN fondly (as I know many people do), but rather that the board has evolved into an environment where AHAN and AHAN-like substances are out of place.

To bring this back to anime, then, allowing anime in the Off Topic section would have a similar effect to the one AHAN did when it was alive. I don't watch anime regularly, but I have observed discussions of it both online and in person, and they recapitulate many of the characteristics of AHAN described above, with actual discussion eschewed in favor of pure overbearing exuberance and excitement. I wouldn't go so far as the Hart-Weiner assertion that discussion of anime, per se, would infiltrate the rest of the board, but I do think it would set an outdated standard for discussions. That's not to say that anime is uniquely disruptive--anything with a rabid fandom, like Mike Cheyne's example of Doctor Who, might have the same effects--but if any other such fandoms gained large and vocal followings on the boards, they would be dealt with similarly.

Now, most people do seem amenable, at least in principle, to allowing discussion of anime questions in tournament discussion threads. In order to get an idea for what such discussion might consist of, I searched the boards for the word "anime." The only discussions of actual anime questions over the past three years or so that I found were: (1) the DBZ tournament thread, which has been discussed, (2) some anime packet that was read at the Jersey Shore Open, and (3) Joe Brosch's posts about MAGNI in which he declares that he watches "A LOT of manga and anime" and tries to hijack the thread with rambling about mangas that are also animes or something. Now I don't read anywhere close to all the sets produced each year, nor do I pay attention to whether they have any questions about anime, so it's possible that there just aren't many questions to discuss. But the fact remains that the only concrete example of anime question discussion that most people have in their recent memories is Joe Brosch's weird tangent linked up there. Given that, the stated policy that discussion of anime questions should be permitted is already a pretty big olive branch on the part of the moderators, and a recognition that, in the proper contexts, people will be able to discuss anime questions in a mature manner.

To close off, I'd like to respond to the two prompts I posed at the start of this post. For (1), the AHAN threads linked above exemplify what we might expect the effects of widespread anime discussion to look like--not that AHAN is anime or anime is AHAN, but that posters' responses to invitations to engage with either would be similar. In light of that and the point about spillover, I think (2) is kind of missing the point--allowing discussion of anime for anime's sake would lower the overall standards of board discourse.

Short version: Unfettered discussion of anime, even if limited to specific subforum(s), encourages a style and tone of discourse that this board has moved away from in recent years in order to present itself as a place for serious, productive discussion and promotion of quizbowl. Even a probationary or "Off Topic"-only allowance of anime would run contrary to this effort.

*That's not to say that moderation is more strict now. In fact (and I'd love for a mod to check this for me), I'm pretty sure that far fewer bans are handed out now than a few years ago. Rather, the moderators have curated a shift in community standards towards more self-control in what content is posted on the boards.
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Re: Discuss the anime rule here

Post by Cheynem »

Stephen Eltinge is absolutely right and has posted an excellent explanation of what I feel and probably many of the board's moderators feel.
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Re: Discuss the anime rule here

Post by Auks Ran Ova »

Cheynem wrote:Stephen Eltinge is absolutely right and has posted an excellent explanation of what I feel and probably many of the board's moderators feel.
Seconded.
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Re: Discuss the anime rule here

Post by naturalistic phallacy »

This post is excellent. The boards is first and foremost "a place for serious, productive discussion and promotion of quizbowl", and staff have every right to limit certain activities to make that possible.
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Re: Discuss the anime rule here

Post by fett0001 »

Fair enough. I think that changing the rule to avoid calling such things out would be preferrable, but I don't see that this discussion can progress further.
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Re: Discuss the anime rule here

Post by fett0001 »

I'd like to apologize for getting so heated upthread. I certainly overreacted to the issue at hand, and want to make it clear that I hold no ill will towards the moderation staff. I plan to reduce the hyperbole in the future, and work on tempering my posts. Yall do an excellent job. Sorry.
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