Rule 7 does not improve this board, proper modding does.

TsukuyomiREKT said:
MAL rarely makes a good/smart change. That should be common knowledge. They also do not give a single shit about any opinion their user base has on said changes.

DateYutaka said:
this is way tho cenor the left as i see it most of mal are right-leaning atlest

Railey2 said:
So not only did the mod team give up on doing actual moderation where they single out posts and users and punish them individually, they also don't enforce the destructive rules that they set properly.

dehuman said:
one rule im in favor is the use of reliable sources though, there are lots of fake news sources out there thats for sure

Noboru said:
Am I the only one, who understands "Moderation" as "guiding a Discussion" like with TV-Mods and not just deleting/altering existing Postings? I mean, as long as there isn't extreme or graphic Content, I don't see a Reason for censoring Things. If anything's needed, then Users being capable to guide a Discussion away from being "toxic".


What makes a Source "reliable"?
Shouldn't we expect enough Media Competency to analyze Sources for potential Biases (including: Science Articles in Science Mags) and be able to think about whether or not something sounds even credible and plausible in the first Place?

Noboru said:

What makes a Source "reliable"?
Shouldn't we expect enough Media Competency to analyze Sources for potential Biases (including: Science Articles in Science Mags) and be able to think about whether or not something sounds even credible and plausible in the first Place?

Yomiyuki said:
where are you seeing this?
that's not true lol. maybe centrist, but definitely not right-leaning.

inb4 locked for chatting.

DateYutaka said:


centerisim is not a real ideal its just fence sitter who refused ti take a stance and thye bakc the right on most thiing look athe center party in germany in the 1930's just saying

Seiya said:
Then we'd better get rid of CE and CD, because last time I checked, we're not supposed to talk about Anime in those sections.

Kagami said:
I have mal supporter and am a mod on their discord and if I mess up, my superiors will tell me and I have zero doubt if I posted hentai on this forum @Ardanaz would ban me.

traed said:
@Ardanaz

The rules are written in a way they are difficult to follow, some cases impossible to follow and all encompassing enough any mod can apply the rules to just about any thread they please.

The rules for CD say to post controversial topics in CE but CE says you can't do that it has to be a current event. This means every current event will turn into a debate about the larger topic. While this already happens it's not an issue because you could always make a more general thread in CD buy noy anymore. This means all discussion will revolve around a single event even a single person even if people try to expand it the discussion will always go back to the one event and one person which does the total opposite of what you claim these rules do. It makes it so more people will generalize based on anecdotes not less. The threads will be longer too so instead of one thread in CD to moserate you will have 28 in CE. You can't even make a CD thread about something like asking about historical events like the Holocaust and who shared the most responsibility. Apparently MALs official stance is saying the Holocaust is bad is controversial. You can't do such a thing in CE either because historic things are not current events. This is just an example.

The new rule for CE..
"b. use the title of the sourced article"
...contradicts a previous rule
"Please use titles which factually and neutrally describe the event. Topics with clickbait/sensationalist titles will either be edited, locked, or removed."

Even if it's from a reliable source they still can use vague or misleading titles. This rule makes it so you can't change the original title if you want to and can't use the reliable source at all because of the title alone without breaking the rules. It's poorly written and not thought out. This shouldn't be two seporate rules but a single consistent rule that combines the two so they don't contradict.

As for that older new rule for CD the no sex threads rule although it started to be enforced in such a way that psychological and sociological or anthropological or biological discussion of sexual related matters are allowed in practice much of the time so long as it didn't get graphic but no written form of this exists as it should to show there can be exceptions which means some mods usually new mods enforce the rule too strictly on threads that clearly aren't sex threads but psychological and sociological and anthropological and biological threads with some focus on sexual things. For example someone asking how fetishes are formed is a bannable offence despite not breaking the original intent of the rule.

Also the old NSFM rules need to ad NSFW as also acceptable because no one gets punished for using the common term that is used on all the internet and the written rules should reflect that.

The new rules for AD make it so something as simple and innocent as "what anime have the most realistic portrayal of homosexual relationships" is a bannable offence. You could claim this is equally applied but the reality is this is a rule against LGBT users as it will likely effect them more.

Saying it's a lot of users not just a few is misleading. I majority of the time see the same handful of users that start the shit show in every thread before other users join in. If that had been banned you wouldn't see that happen so often.

Also it's not true every thread turna into flaming and all that. I in the past made a thread on religion and it never turned into that because it was asking people what religions interest them aside from their own and what is interesting. I also made an abortion thread that never turned into that because I demonstrated the labels pro-life and pro-choice don't always describe what a persons views are and demonstrated many had the exact same views. It's not the topics themselves it's how the OP is written and what the discussion is specifically about.

Thanakos said:
There are way too many shitty anime out there. If we accept your logic, the only way to get rid of those shity anime is to not produce anime at all. You preserve things based on the best they provide, not eliminate them on the worst they can do. For the worst, you find other ways, no matter how arduous, to put an end to them.

What is significant is subject-dependent. A topic that may be significant to me may not be to you. Let people discuss what is important to them, no matter how ridiculous their views may be about it. If they never put their views out for scrutiny and debate, they'll never mature. Blatant propaganda is obvious (such as in the case of Nyu) but broad-brushing certain websites for bias and accepting discussion only on suffocating terms amounts to killing decision itself. I'd like to see you ban Al-jazeera for its leftist bias as well.

This is casual discussion, and there is current events. The 'anime' parts should be limited to anime-related boards. MAL is not merely a listing site, it is also a social one. We're here to get to know some people better and make friends too, and many of us can't accept mere anime affinity as sufficient criteria for friendship.

Everyone on this forum should commit this excerpt to memory:

Give us a reason we shouldn't migrate to hummingbird, then.

This is casual discussion, and there is current events. We come here to talk about our views. Don't japanize the whole site, please.

Nyu said:
I support rule 7, the propaganda was getting to much.

Lost_Viking said:
@complice @ThrashMatto @Nas @Neane93
So are MAL's leftists and rightists going to put aside their differences and unite in a coup against the mods? Sounds like a plan!
(if you're a mod, pretend you didn't see this)

Yomiyuki said:

i sincerely doubt mal's centrists back the right, friend.

DateYutaka said:


i view left and right in pure economic terms most Liberals are right wingers

hell eeven the Sco dems bakc the right using hsitory the sdp sent the amy in to kill Karl and Rosa

rosa and karl were in afcr Lib sco they were more akin ot me than in ideals than state capitalist style Marxist

yes there very diffreing schoool of left wing

look at all the centerist Polical channels on YT thwere about as anti workers rights as hitler or stalin

note it was a union that brought down marxism rule in Poland and Lib sco is a very old idea ilder than marx by 200 or so year the first anarchist Thinker was Crudon in the 1600's

very much some even in teh modern view on t he left an com are not in fact real anarchists the whole left vs right-libertarian debate czn always be a thing but right vs left right will be be anarchist

an prim left an pas left Lib sco left an synd ancom back the very idea of hierarchy of the vertical sense very un anarchy

my idels i worker run and operated MOP not state ran

i condemn the maoists and Stalinists there not from my school of left-wing though at all but i get lumped in with them by both right winger and so called centrists ala Sargon lot

sargon is a Thatcherite simple as that hees never been left wing in any real sense back the party that bacls the rich over the poor and call yourslf moral and Principled

the so called liberaliists are right wing to there core abd zionist at that i onoy yuki your zionist eithrt ypu or nyu bot your right wingers not true left winger center modarate or far will ever back zionism and people like me will never do so for onre reason it a jewish state if they just calledit the Jewish homeland jewistan or somthing like that that is we back the kurds they want and homeland Kurdistan mean land of the kurds not state of the kurds also there lib sco any way

homeland and state mean two very different things in my views this were i disagree hugely with anti-immigrants both left and right wingers they say to defend our nation state a man made manufactured ideal

i back borders but just pure natural ones rivers mountains etc look what that idea if nin nutalk boders as dones to the middle east and afrcia borders drawn up in Imperialist times without respact of the racial-cultural Linguistic and sectarian issues a nation may have ie us iraq fir example Syria fir another Rwanda and Burundi

Yomiyuki said:
you're gonna have to give me a while to respond to all this my guy, but i'll tell you now, and i've told you many times,
i'm not a zionist. please explain why you keep saying that i am one.

Railey2 said:
@Ardanaz: So remove the holocaust denial bullcrap when it happens.


I know that Casual Discussion is called Casual Discussion, but that is kind of a misnomer. CD is MALs Off-Topic board, and it fulfills the same function as Off-Topic boards anywhere else: It allows people to talk about everything they want, including all the good and spicy stuff.

I'm aware that Off-Topic boards are the hardest to moderate no matter where you go, and it might feel tempting to save yourself the work and just impose rules that allow you to shut down 1/3 of the threads on here, but that is not good moderation. Good moderation would be to go into the threads and remove singular comments that violate a sensible rule set, sensible meaning that it allows discussion for the users that know how to discuss topics without flaming each other.


I definitely agree that Nyu with his white supremacy crap can drive people away. So deal with that. Chop the bad trees, don't level the whole forest.

149597871 said:

P.S Rule 7 is the greatest thing that has happened to CD.

dehuman said:
something like this source that was posted on some CE thread is unreliable - http://emilkirkegaard.dk/en/wp-content/uploads/PifferIntelligence2015.pdf

5layer said:
I don't care either way but I thought this part was pretty bad:

"a. be sourced from a reputable English-language media outlet (e.g. New York Times, Wall Street Journal, BBC, Scientific American)"

Yomiyuki said:
not to mention there's things the "reliable" sources won't really report on.

Ardanaz said:

If it were up to me CE would've been removed entirely :^)
CD is for Casual discussion. So not politics and what people think of the latest kkk rally or whatever.

Ardanaz said:

Our hope is that the rules will bring back the Casual in discussion. Do you really want another holocaust thread? If you want to talk about holocaust denial, just do that on another website.

Ardanaz said:

No, it doesn't contradict. You only need to use the source's title for the controversial threads, because we have lots of users who like to make threads and change the title into something extremely clickbaity or biased. The lesser threads about someone who saved a dog or whatever you can name however you want, as long as it describes the article.

Ardanaz said:

The rule states: "sexually explicit" and even gives some examples, so what about it isn't clear enough? New mods start off by asking for permission from a senpai before actually removing/locking, so don't blame them please. If you disagree with a mod decision, you can always ask for a second opinion.

Ardanaz said:

Do you mean that we should replace NSFM with NSFW? Or that we should allow people to tag stuff as NSFW instead of NSFM? Because the answer to the former is that we include stuff in NSFM that most wouldn't expect to see in NSFW. The answer to the latter is that that's perfectly fine.

That's a good example of a thread that you could consider to fall under the new rule, but should be fine. So far we discuss the threads we lock for the new rule to try and be as consistent as possible and possibly make adjustments to the rules.

Ardanaz said:

That's fair, but like I said, it's often borderline or not really breaking rules, so that makes it tough to deal with. I've seen more than just a handful though.

Ardanaz said:

Then you did a really good job of making a thread. I don't recall seeing those threads, but I hope you do understand that that's a rare thing to not get out of hand quick.

Ardanaz said:
MyAnimeList isn't the only forum though. If people are desperate to discuss these topics, they can do that on another platform.

Ardanaz said:

Not trying to do that, but I wish people would stop treating this as some politics forum to spread their shitty views...

traed said:

You were the one doing it. They should have just banned you. You derail every thread you post in trying to turn it into about race and immigration for every topic.

traed said:
CD was never all that casual. The largest most popular threads were often controversial threads because they require the most interaction in discussion.

CD stopped being casual the day years ago when listing threads were banned and even less casual with the rule banning sex threads and further less casual with the character limits.

The point of that example is even having basically basically a vast majority standard opinion that just about everyone agrees on is called controversial. These rules are written in a way too strict that defends and shelter the very users that should have been already banned for repeated rule violations of what rules already were in place.

If it's a controversial subject and the article is from a good source but uses a clickbait or biased title that makes it violate the older rule which also applies. Usually it's not that bad but still there is a contradiction in how the rules are written. The wording just needs to be tweaked. This isn't easy to follow because it's not clear if all clickbait or biased titles is banned or just user generated clickbait or bias. Biased is a pretty arbitrary word almost no news sources are without bias so its a matter of how biased but that's an arbitrary scale and would have to be detailed what counts as bias because a source can be 100% factually true and still be biased.

Also there is no explanation of what is actually allowed sources just examples. I know it seems media bias fact check or Wikipedia or something is being used but the rules don't say that so not everyone knows what counts.

Well only the person who made a thread has a copy of the threads though. I say this because I've seen a thread a few months back some user made get purged entirely deleted despite not being filled with spam and not posting anything graphic in it and there was no flaming or derailment only thoughtful answers and the whole discussion revolved around psychology asking if pedophilia can count as a sexuality and they specifically stated they weren't condoning it and weren't talking about morality and if I recall right stated they weren't compairing it to homosexuals. It wasn't written in a way that sounded like trolling or baiting at all. This stuck in my mind because I wrote a long thought out reply which I lost because the whole thread was deleted and I couldn't recall the user who made it to just message them the reply I wrote so it didn't go to waste. This can get very frustrating to write a reply to find it all gone. So yes some mods can go overboard.

I always thought NSFM was just someone rule writing trying to be cute since a lot of users don't have jobs. So it does have a purpose and I wasn't impying there wasn't one but anyway I was just saying many people still use NSFW and never or rarely NSFM so rules should state NSFW is also allowed as a warning tag along with NSFM. Also I forgot to check does it still say it has to be above the spoiler? That was written before spoilers could be labeled so if it hasn't been added to the rule it maybe should say it alternatively can be written on the spoiler label. Although that may be a bit difficult to put to words so youd need an example maybe...idk just a thought

That's basically what I was saying is if these rules stayed in place they need to be tweaked but easy enough to understand on what is and isn't allowed. Part of what might help is examples of what is allowed.

Also jumping from AD back to CD. I wasn't sure where to say this. The current change in rules could actually ban threads about Japanese nationals because it would be generalizing a nationality because of their culture. Seems odd for an anime site to ban Japanese things.

But what about the ones who aren't borderline? Nyu takes any topic and turns it into a race and migrant thread almost every time and doesn't even relate it to the thread except on the first post he makes but once it gets beyond that it goes full off topic for pages and pages. Same arguments posted in nearly every thread he enters. This has always been a rule violation of derailment. Or is persistent consistent intentional derailment that disrupts the entire board not bannable and only gets threads locked? Because he never at any point stopped doing it and shit up CD and CE but still able to post all the time. It's not that mods haven't seen it either I've seen Nexu merge Nyu's double posts once before and countless times mods locking threads for derailment he started and kept up. I don't see how anyone could see that as borderline rule breakinga when it goes to such an extreme.

Search function doesn't work well so CBA to link them atm.

Well what I see usually is threads get cleaned but some of the people that messied them up still able to post even if they seemed to actually break some rules. Wouldn't it make more sense to give a short ban so they can chill ? I know they sometimes get banned but without any indicator it's hard to tell.

But their views will remain shitty or get even shittier if they get pushed into having to use groups dedicated to those topics and don't have their views chalenged because those kind of sites have even more people with those kinds of views. More general places helps balance people out hearing otjer views outnumber them and in turn balances out forum communities as a whole if such person changes any although slow process. Point is politics and religion are a staple of pretty much all forums I've seen. Don't have to toss out whole subjects just those that are particularly hateful in presentation.

5layer said:
I don't care either way but I thought this part was pretty bad:

"a. be sourced from a reputable English-language media outlet (e.g. New York Times, Wall Street Journal, BBC, Scientific American)"

hazecloud said:


This one. It's how people are taught to be sheep and embrace the fact that they are not white because everything comes from the white privileged people and citizens from other countries should follow them as a way to improve their IQ because civilization.

hazecloud said:
@CondemneDio Language brings people together. It's not a tool to develop a hive mind.

Polarc said:


You're the one spamming the forums with every single irrelevant action by every tiny Neo Nazi group. Imagine if someone posted a thread on every single dog show that happens.

I'm fine with spam and forum clutter like that being cracked down on, but simply posting threads on controversial topics like Nyu sometimes does should be fine. No one has to click the thread.

CondemneDio said:

That really doesn't relate to the discussion at hand,a s far as I can see, but okay.

hazecloud said:


As they burned down Syria to ashes, you people be reading how the next transgender model gets labeled as feminist, for example. Probably any Arabian news won't be tolerated anymore because them sandnibba

Selective news, being further from the truth. It's up to you to make a sense out of a non american news and determine whether it's bias or not. As far as I know, political discussions are meant to attract the people on the fence and also to support their own views. Probably not a single dollar was lost, because it wasn't america in first place.

hazecloud said:
@CondemneDio

Probably me overreacting but hey, I don't want MAL to lose it's charm. In my opinion it's stupid to lurk around reading arguments based from selected news which are predictable and less out of the box thinking. But hey at least MAL finally will live up to it's true nature now, listing anime with friends without a care for the world.

Neane93 said:
Anime fans aren't normal, 4chan was created as an anime site for anime fans and look what happened.

nicethings said:
i mean let's just face the facts

this site was, will not, and never will be a site for neonazis to sperg about their "IQ statistics" or "white genocide" or "race wars" on.

and CE was really going down that path, to the extent where any thread got derailed into a neonazi sperg because neonazis would constantly derail or create topics wherein they'd complain about things that don't even exist, and would purposely start fights with or argue with people for no reason.

like, I don't care about your hatred for nonwhite people or (((jooos))) ok? leave us normies alone. i honestly have 0 tolerance for anyone on the alt right and their ilk, i never had tolerance for them to begin with, and i never will. they're a flaming tumor on this forum and they need to stop trying to incorporate their irrational hatred and identity politics into every singular topic they come across, especially ones that are not sociopolitical to begin with.

so yes, rule 7 is more related to generalities across the board, and i do agree that it's too broad. yes, it could be more easily reduced to combat specific problematic users. but you can't really word it that way without people being up in arms about "CENSORSHIP", and people are already up in arms about "CENSORSHIP". i mean, the point it, when does it go too far? when does it cross the line from being stupid to being an outright hateful sentiment? Why should an anime board be plagued with an alt right presence that frequently tries to assert dominance and make noise, even if there's not that many of them, they're just extremely vocal? By all means, how are the mods supposed to deal with it? For awhile, they didn't, and now that they're trying to introduce a countermeasure, it elicits complaints. I don't know how to feel.

I think that the problems at their roots are what need to be severed rather than the symptoms causing the disease that's plagued MAL for awhile. The problem with Rule 7 is that while in some degrees it's spot on, in others it really does sound like it goes too far (i.e. you could be hypothetically banned for calling someone "stupid"). Contrarily the old rules were rather poorly worded, and ill defined (bait especially was not well defined and could be applicable to non-bait posts). I really don't know.

changelog_ said:

Roasted em' Ardy.

Keep politics and contreversial topics far away from MAL. It isn't what the site is for and I think that 95%+ people here don't know what they're talking about when they discuss politics. I'm a PPE student and even I am wrong sometimes, but the ridiculous crap some people can say sometimes really surprises me.

Nyu said:


Ban right wing people, but don't ban left wing people is what your post is saying.