Comment on Policy Updates and Feedback (+ a few other things)
hypertown@ani.social 2 weeks ago
I always assumed that creating a community completely unrelated to anime is not something you should do on an instance called ani.social lol
Good to have this in rules.
It’s hard to define “anime” or “otaku” when anime in Japan means animation and otaku means geek/nerd. So in Japan Shrek is an anime and your local train enthusiast is an otaku. (Definitions from jisho.org)
I like “moe” because I think it best describes the kind of content we’re talking about.
Just to be clear though, an example of allowed communities (please correct me if I’m wrong) would be:
And as for example of disallowed communities would be:
Again, please correct me if I’m wrong on any of this.
Yeah that’s more or less why I’m having trouble with the terms. Because it means different things in different regions. In this case, I think I’ll emphasize moe more.
I’m also concerned with using the term “Japanese media” specifically because a lot of things produced today aren’t Japanese origin. Like Genshin and Wuwa which are Chinese, and Blue Archive which is Korean. MiSide is made by Russian developers.
It’s hard to pin down what anime and moe is 100%, but we pretty much know what you mean. We use anime and Japanese otaku culture to mean what we are saying, but Chinese games and manwah fit too.
What about Western media with anime influence?
Avatar could fit, and RWBY was on Crunchyroll. Madhouse notably has done some Western work.
I think there should be a fair amount of wiggle room because of this gray area. Cartoon network may not fit, but Toonami might.
This is famously an impossible problem to solve. For example, Scott Pilgrim Takes Off is a Science Saru anime, but MAL sees it primarily as a Netflix production based on a Canadian story. And I have to agree: if the English dub isn’t trash, is it really anime?
I think when you’re studying the contracts between different multinationals to decide whether something is anime or not, it’s better to err on the side of community and friendly discussion, making anything anime-adjacent fair game for this instance.
I just want to see a King of the Hill community on ani.social
I think inclusion is the point here.
No, I don’t believe Miraculous is anime, but it is a love letter to the magical girl genera.
I’ve been thinking about this too. I might limit it to “East Asian” works because that covers China and Korea. But that still doesn’t cover everything. Western media with “anime influence” is also really tricky too. I was watching Genius Party (collection of Japanese animation shorts) and some of the short films there don’t look anything like “anime” because they’re not very “moe”. But a lot of Western works are “moe”. There’s some disagreement between the two terms.
I could just put “anime” in scare quotes too. That might solve it for now lol
It’s definitely a blurry line. There are definite yes and definite no answers. Things like Star Wars: Visions don’t seem like anime to many Westerners at first glance, but it is wholeheartedly. I said elsewhere in these comments that I agree that Gaming as a community is too broad since it is nonspecific. I would leave it up to the communities to police their own content, and not step in unless the community appears unmoderated.
This is probably going to depend on the community a lot too. In !anime@ani.social, I have used the rule of thumb that anything with either a MAL page or an AniList page is relevant enough. So, by that metric Avatar would not be allowed in that community. However, I could totally see Avatar artwork being allowed in some of the art-focused communities.
That is a realistic measuring stick. While an Avatar (or whatever) community wouldn’t belong, content fitting a theme might be allowed. Honestly, unless someone was spamming content, I don’t see an issue with it.
I wonder what communities people put on ani.social such that there needs to be a rule about communities being related to anime. (Honestly curious!)
hisao@ani.social 2 weeks ago
Maybe someone misread that as “anti.social” and decided to create anarchist-cookbook type community 😅
hitagi@ani.social 2 weeks ago
It happens sometimes lol. The weirdest community was dedicated to a celebrity and the first post was a video of him shirtless o_o.
It’s one of the reasons why I don’t agree when people say “just pick any instance, it doesn’t matter”. It does matter!