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New Forum Rules 06/29/2018

Anime News Network Forum Mission Statement:

Anime News Network is a community brought together by our love of and interest in anime, manga, and video games. All people regardless of their age, religion, race, ethnicity, nationality, culture, gender, sexual identity and sexual orientation, and physical and mental ability are welcome to come here and enjoy fandom together.

Towards these ends, we do not allow hateful speech that denigrates an individual, or group of individuals based on their identity. This includes, but is not limited to, any speech that suggests that any person or group is in any way inferior due to their age, religion, race, ethnicity, nationality, culture, gender, sexual identity and sexual orientation, and physical and mental ability. We also consider hate speech to include any suggestion the rights of an individual should be limited due to the above mentioned identifiers or that their personhood is in some way unethical.

Our rules already forbid hateful speech, so we would like to remind you that any attack on any age, religion, race, ethnicity, culture, gender, sexual identity or sexual orientation will be immediately dealt with by our moderators.

The Anime News Network forums operate under These Simple Rules:

•Don't be a jerk. Anime News Network's staff and moderators reserve the right to remove anyone from this space that cannot conduct themselves in a respectful, courteous manner.

• Posters' contributions should not create an atmosphere that is unwelcome to marginalized peoples. The moderators and staff reserve the right to remove anyone actively creating an unwelcome environment at their own discretion.

• Post relevant, thoughtful responses. Consider if what you are writing is relevant or important to others. Engaging in bad faith arguments is not allowed. If you are not interested in what the other party has to say, you are not discussing the topic; you are soap-boxing.

• Moderators have full discretion to enforce the spirit of the rules. Moderators have the right to lock, delete or modify any post at any time if they feel it negatively impacts the forum. If a thread is locked, that means the subject may not be brought up again.

• Stay on Topic: Discussion should be related to anime, anime news, Anime News Network, the forum topic, or in some way relevant to this website. Excessively off-topic ("OT") posts will be locked or deleted.

• Write clearly: Please attempt to write your thoughts as clearly and concisely as possible. We understand our readers come from all over the world, so please attempt to discuss topics in English to the best of your ability.

• Report, do not engage, rule breakers. Save yourself the headache and let a moderator take care of it.
• Self-promotion is only allowed if it has value, is relevant, and creates discussion for this forum. See here for additional details.

• No Commerce is allowed outside of either the Retail or Subscriber Personal Sales Forum (see rules for Subscribers here).

• No bootlegs, fansubs, scanlations, or counterfeit items may be sold or linked here.

• Remember your spoiler tags, watch out for excessive quoting, and don't “necro-post” super old threads. No one's responding there anymore.

The very broad and vague definition of “hate speech” here as well as the “marginalised people” rule could I fear lead to the censorship of viewpoints, especially conservative ones, that don’t align with the political viewpoint of this forum’s moderators. I’ve experienced similiar things as a student. I hope there can still be fair and open debate despite this.

The very broad and vague definition of “hate speech” here as well as the “marginalised people” rule could I fear lead to the censorship of viewpoints, especially conservative ones, that don’t align with the political viewpoint of this forum’s moderators. I’ve experienced similar things as a student. I hope there can still be fair and open debate despite this.

Manami-san wrote:

The very broad and vague definition of “hate speech” here as well as the “marginalised people” rule could I fear lead to the censorship of viewpoints, especially conservative ones, that don’t align with the political viewpoint of this forum’s moderators. I’ve experienced similar things as a student. I hope there can still be fair and open debate despite this.

This is a concern to me as well, especially dealing with an international audience.

I've seen people here sometimes flip out at foreigners for saying things that are perfectly acceptable in their cultures but don't line up 100% with whatever U.S. college campuses keep deciding for us is acceptable speech.

It could be especially problematic because of the subject matter often depicted in anime and manga, which is very often at odds with current Western progressive thinking.

The forums seemed like they were fine already and I am wary of fixing what isn't broken.

So I guess the question is, do you trust the people here or not? If you've been here for any length of time and haven't left, it stands to reason there is at least some. So I'd say give it a chance for now and react to what happens, not what might happen.

The very broad and vague definition of “hate speech” here as well as the “marginalised people” rule could I fear lead to the censorship of viewpoints, especially conservative ones, that don’t align with the political viewpoint of this forum’s moderators. I’ve experienced similiar things as a student. I hope there can still be fair and open debate despite this.

The forums seemed like they were fine already and I am wary of fixing what isn't broken.

The "spirit of the rules" is something that really should be taken into account no matter what. All they've really done is (re)state principles and phrased rules so that they can deal with bad actors based on common sense moreso than technicality for those bad actors to dance around, which is what people were complaining about before.

So I guess the question is, do you trust the people here or not? If you've been here for any length of time and haven't left, it stands to reason there is at least some. So I'd say give it a chance for now and react to what happens, not what might happen.