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I just noticed that some of my recommendations have been removed and wonder why. If somebody had reported to mods that my recommendations are inappropriate, is there a way for me to know the reasons for removal that the reporter submitted?

I will always remove the following:

• Recommendations not written in English.
  
• Recommendations between two related works.
  
• Recommendations where one or both works have not been released.
  
• Recommendations that go out of their way to insult a specific user, fanbase, or another work in the database.
  • "If you liked Naruto you'll like Bleach because both of them suck ass."
• Recommendations that are stupidly short.
  • "Both ecchi."
• Recommendations that only reference similarities that can easily be found by comparing pages.
  • "If you liked Code Geass you'll like Gundam because they're both done by Sunrise."
    
  • "If you liked Haruhi you'll like Gintama because Sugita Tomokazu voices characters in both of them."
• Sudden floods of recommendations between two series. These are often coordinated efforts by groups of users who are trying to be funny. They're not funny.

Note that these are guidelines only and they are my own guidelines. That is, we don't have a universal set of rules. Everything reported is still judged on a case by case basis. Usually, if I remove something that doesn't fall under the list above, I'll PM the user about it. It doesn't happen very often though.

Looking through your current recommendations there are a lot that I'd remove. They mostly fall under "stupidly short". PM me if you wish to revise them. Otherwise, I'll get rid of them within a few days (72 hours or so from this post).

First and foremost, thanks for the long reply. I appreciate your time.

However, I cannot agree with you regarding "stupidly short" recommendations. It is true that sometimes I only use several keywords to describe similarity. Yet they are to the point and sufficient. Take the similarity between "Dracu-Riot!" and "In Bura!" as an example. The keywords I use are "Vampire heroine", "Harem" and "School". Nevertheless I can also put them in the following way. "In each series, the female lead is a vampire. Both stories have a school setting. What's more, in either manga the protagonist is always surrounded by female characters. " The description above is significantly longer than the current one. However, the content does not change essentially.

As I have written quite a few recommendations, I also read about a good many recommendations written by other users. Many of them are also concise either in count of words or meaning. However, I seldom want to report those recommendations for the following reasons. First, what they said is true. Second, they are not done by a simple copy-and-paste. Third, there are some catogories that don't live up to the definition of a genre but are deemed popular fetishes among otakus. Maid is a case in point. The presense of a maid heroine can be the sole reason for watching/reading a series for many maid lovers, regardless of the actual genre of the series. Fourth, I believe that most recommenders are out of good will in recommending series they like to other users, although occasionally there are exceptions such as the last case you mentioned. Removal of recommendation is prone to cause the recommender to feel frustrated, and the recommender would be reluctant to make further recommendations due to previous removals. Therefore, unless the recommendation in question is nonsense or misleading, I won't choose to report them. (Actually I've reported only one recommendation so far. ) The last reason is also why I wrote a post regarding the recommendation mechanism on MAL. (See http://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=466315.) It went ignored by the mods, though.

After all, it is up to the mods to decide on removal of a recommendation. None the less the feelings of users should be taken into account before actions are carried out. It would be great if explanation on removal could be sent to the recommender should a removal occur, whether the removed recommendation is "stupid" or not.

I and others follow similar guidelines when removing recs. I've removed a number in the past few days and perhaps zapped yours. Looking at some of what's left, it's very possible.

I'll add that listing two similar genres with no further explanation is not an appropriate rec. Advanced search will give you the same result.

Just listing a few key words with no context is not useful. You like maid heroines, regardless of genre? Okay:
http://myanimelist.net/manga/25006/Seme_Chichi
http://myanimelist.net/manga/729/Emma

Or maybe you like idols?
http://myanimelist.net/anime/8654/I%E2%98%86Can
http://myanimelist.net/anime/10278/The_iDOLM@STER

...hmm, it's not really working out. Those are troll recs. More context is needed. So when you make the rec, how else are your two maid heroine works similar then?

If someone is getting frustrated that their recs are being removed, then they really need to think WHY they are being removed. Clearly their approach needs altered if the mods can't find any redeeming value in them. Without changing, there's no loss on our part--we'd just have to remove the fresh round of bad recs. There is no function to notify a user when their rec is removed, so that is out of our hands. 95% are nonsense or trash and don't warrant a notification.

It's true that even if you revise them, the meanings will not change. However, that says less about my choice to remove them and more about how little content they have to begin with. Expanding your recommendations would at minimum give the appearance of a little effort but the actual content would still be poor. Basically, it might not save them. Considering most of them are hentai recommendations, I'll probably be more lenient. The sources being compared have little content to begin with.

Unless a recommendation is blatantly false (Aria -> Kanokon because they're both sexual in nature), it doesn't matter. If anything, I value opinions over facts more in recommendations because facts are easily searchable. I want to know why you wish to recommend <x> to me because I liked <y>. The end goal of a recommendation is to be persuasive.

Do you honestly want to use this as a point while your recommendations are still sitting there unedited? I mean really, I don't even need to scroll down that far.


Yes, that's a good point. However, it shouldn't be just that and nothing else.

As for the rest of what you wrote:

I don't want you to take this the wrong way but frankly, if I had to care for the sensitivity of every user's feelings, I wouldn't be volunteering my time for this job at all. Our job as database moderators is to ensure the site meets a certain level of quality. If we have to be assholes while doing so, then so be it. It's the forum mods' jobs to wipe up tears (and funnily enough, some are even more ruthless).

I have never thought of myself as unreasonable. I've given you a chance to salvage them. It's up to you at this point. If you really want me to be intrusive, I have the ability to edit them myself. I feel that would be a bigger offense than removing them, however.

Well, thanks for the reply first of all.

The removed recommendations I referred to at the beginning fall under "stupidly short" category. So I wouldn't ask you to recover them unless I get a statement from you saying that short recommendations are allowed.

Regarding "Advanced search will give you the same result", it is not always the case. Sometimes genres are missing. For example, Shukufuku no Campanella (http://myanimelist.net/manga/16381/Shukufuku_no_Campanella) only has the genre "Shounen". Actually a lot of other genres are possibly applicable, such as supernatural, adventure, romance, harem, fantasy, just to name a few. Put another way, genres are not always precise. In addition, chances are that not everyone agrees on genres of a certain series. For instance, KuroDubZero and I had a little debate on whether "Happy Project" falls under "Game" and "Psychological". (See http://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=60876&show=3100. ) Although some other mod was persuaded by my arguments and added the two genres, KuroDubZero still didn't agree with me. Hence, genres are not always objective. Sometimes the subjective impressions of users work better.

Regarding "regardless of genre?", I concede that I didn't put it in a well-rounded manner. What I want to emphasize is that sometimes a single element can draw the attention of some fans and therefore a good recommendation need not involve many factors. Sure I will consider more than one element when making a recommendation. For series featuring maid, I will not connect hentai with non-hentai. Nor will I connect comedy with tragedy. Unsually I wrote at least two aspects of similarity in a recommendation. Please also note I didn't use extreme words such as "any", "all", etc. Therefore your counterexamples, no matter how many of them, won't qualify as strong rebuttals. Again, I concede that they are useful at least in pointing out that I failed to state my opinion in an all-round way.

Regarding "then they really need to think WHY they are being removed", it does make sense somehow. But what if the user arrives at the conclusion that it is a bug of MAL and add the recommendations once again? The mod "Luna_", to my mind, is doing quite a good job in this aspect. Recently I received a notification message from her. Please see below.

Thread Removal
I have removed your thread because the problem has already been addressed in the Support Board Rules thread:
http://myanimelist.net/forum/?topicid=246143
Luna
Forum Moderator

She not only notified me of the thread removal but also told me how to solve the problem. Of course I didn't imply that you are not doing a good job. (Your long reply in itself is proof of responsibility. ) But there is centainly room for improvement. Notification of removal is among them. Althogh you are not in a position to add the notification function, you can at least report them to the techical staff. If it would turn out to be technically impossible, you could also add it to some FAQ. If nobody would like to think of way for improvement, more people would probably post simiar question in the forum in the future, just as I did.

Regarding "95% are nonsense or trash and don't warrant a notification", I have to say that it is a problem of attitude. Although it is your right not to send notification, using words like "trash" as a mod is not a good practice to my mind. Also, please understand that I didn't earn anything by making long comments or making a good many recommendations. All I wish for is that MAL would be a better site.

Finally, I hope that manga recommendations are only evaluated by manga mods. Actually I was a bit surprised that Xjellocross, an anime mod who reads only a few manga, was about to remove many of my manga recommendations. (No offence. I was judging the number of manga Xjellocross reads by the list on his profile. Please forgive me if I were wrong.)

Now I understand that your standard is higher than I expected. I am afraid I can't live up to your standard of being persuasive. As a result, I will refrain from making recommendations in the future. Hopefully it would save time and trouble for both of us.


Not always the case. Not to mention the cases in which facts are incomplete. (See the Shukufuku no Campanella example I gave in a previous post in this thread.)


First, there is a misunderstanding. I was referring to recs I don't want to report when writing that paragraph. I believe I have made this clear by starting a new paragraph for my comment on others' recs. Second, by simple copy-and-paste I mean duplicating information that can easily be found by comparing pages. (e.g. Your example of Sunrise.) Please feel free to remove any of my recommendations whose words are completely taken from anime/manga pages.

I agree. Please see the clarification in my previous post in this thread.


Actually I am volunteering my time on several other forums as well. I understand that you can't care for everyone. But usually I send a notification when doing "dirty" things. Maybe your workload is much heavier than me, which hinders you from doing that.


Frankly I am a bit disappointed at your attitude. You are probably reasonable, but by no means friendly. Now I understand that mods are mighty. Please go ahead and edit/remove anything you want. Sorry for my stupid recommendations.

I want to point out that what shinkeikaku and xjellocross has brought up is perfectly reasonable.

Genres can easily be found via advance search. Sure there's going to be series that may have elements not listed, but that's bound to happen. If there is a problem with a genre listed under a series, I'm sure you could ask for additions/subtractions to it (provided enough evidence warrants for the change).

Fans of character archetype? MAL has so many fanclubs for different character archetypes that you could easily join one and find related characters and series. I find it almost pointless to say someone should watch x because both x and y has a specific character archetype as the main hero(ine).

Overall though, you should not be concentrating on the fact of whether you can recommend by genre and character archetype as much as almost giving no insight to why I should watch something because I liked another thing.

The similarities within your recommendations can easily be found out through some minor searching. If you want to convince someone to watch something, at least give a persuasive recommendation. It doesn't have to be amazing, but at least show that you put in effort and really want someone to watch said y show if they liked x. Not to mention, your short recs (especially those 3 one-word bursts) make it seem like you do not have any motivation or patience to help someone find a new show.

For example: I enjoyed Nanoha and Madoka and believed that both of these series have done something outside the norm of the mahou-shoujo genre. I would not write a recommendation like: "Mahou-shoujo. Drama. Loli-protag." Instead, I would concentrate on the fact that it moves away from standard mahou-shoujo monster-of-the-week and happy-go-lucky feel to a more serious and dramatic overtone. Madoka is probably best known for Urobuchi Gen's dark setting while Nanoha is more of extreme action and character struggles. So-on and so-forth.

In regards to the notification; not every mod is the same. Some may go out of their way to notify you in regard to any and every question and problem. Many will probably not. Try to keep in mind that MAL has a huge userbase and is growing. They are not going to hold everyone's hand in everything they do. If they deem it is necessary to remove something, they most likely will go ahead and do it without any notification. I feel the fact that you are getting answers in regards to why they are removed in this post already more than enough.

You can say that others will come to the board with the same problem just like you and I'm sure they will. People will always complain and question even when the answer is right under the nose. This does not mean a system such as rec-removal-notification will be implemented.

Also, I doubt people will think MAL exploded and killed their recommendation or that it didn't go through. You are brought to a page saying your rec has been posted and you can eve see the recs you've made. Once it's up, it is up until removed.

Finally, if your recommendations warrants a removal, it should not really matter which mod does it. There's already two mods in this post who has stated their guideline on recommendations that are removed. If anime recommendations and manga recommendations were evaluated by their respective moderators, it would take a lot longer and give them more work. The allowance of mods being able to work with recommendations allows for the work to be spread.

Now, I don't think they want you to stop writing recommendations nor do I think you should. What they are asking is not completely unreasonable. Just put some time and effort when recommending something and this problem won't happen. Otherwise deal with it if you don't feel like changing a bit.

TL:DR
- Your recommendations are short and don't add any feel
- They were removed on the fact that they were short and copy-pasted.
- Mods are not entitled to hold your hand through everything
- Mods will do things that may or may not be acceptable to your liking
- Some time and effort can go a long way.
- Deal with it.

As I mentioned, it takes some time and effort to add a genre (i.e. debate with a mod). Again I didn't make money by doing that. Consequently I won't bother to do that any more.


Again, not always the case.
http://myanimelist.net/clubs.php?cid=4988
The club of maid above has 785 memebers and has many recommendations of maid series. Yet you can find much more in my lists with the tag "maid".


I will answer that with what you said. Please see below.

I'm not even a mod.



Again, please add it to some FAQ.


A bug need not occur right after rec creation. Data loss can happen at any time.


As I suggested earlier, it would be bettter to implement a helpful / not helpful system for recommendations and removals are hardly necessary any more. Bad recommendations don't have a chance to be displayed. Not a single mod has responded to me regarding that suggestion so far by the way. And now I don't expect to get any answer for that.


Not writing recs saves time for both you and me. Problem solved.


For similar reasons, I will not read or reply to any further post. Besides, I am tired of repeating things again and again. I noticed that Darkdragon500 was getting too tired in replying because he was making contradictory statements like:

and

Go get a good sleep man. I won't trouble you any more. The problem is indeed solved.