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The list of off-topic things on our tour page is extremely long. There are eleven items on the list; no other Stack Exchange site has more than eight (Server Fault, WebApps, Programmers, and Apple lead the pack). The total amount of text we have is also crazy long, at 1721 characters (vs. just 774 characters on the next runner-up, Apple). (cf. raw data on pastebin)

This is kind of absurd. Now, granted, people don't often read the tour page, but if they do, they will see that we are a bunch of angry internet soup nazis who hate fun. While this is probably true to some extent, we don't need to throw that in new users' faces.

As such, I propose we remove the following items from the list of off-topic things:

  • Questions about the Japanese language, which should be on Japanese Language
    • People do ask these questions occasionally, but they're easy to deal with - we can just edit it to make it on topic if feasible; migrate to Japanese.SE if it's otherwise a good question; or close it if it isn't. I don't think this merits a spot in the list on the tour page.
  • Questions about the gameplay of anime-related and/or manga-related games, which should be on Arqade
    • We don't have issues with people asking this sort of question, as far as I know. This seems to be a relic from early 2013 or so.
  • Questions on making your own anime or manga, as they involve specific expertise outside the scope of this community. See: Are Questions about "How to make Anime and Manga" off-topic?
    • These questions are rare enough that I doubt this item needs to be in the list on the tour page. Its presence on this list probably stems from an early-beta fear that people would be overrunning this site with questions about how do I drawed manga; thankfully, that never came to pass.
  • Asking for the lyrics of a piece of music
    • This has never been a major issue
  • Questions about fansubs or other fan-translations: When is X group going to do Y release for Z series in Q language?
    • Nor has this.
  • Shopping recommendations/discussions: Should I buy X or Y? or Where is the best place to buy X? See: How should we deal with questions asking for where to buy, watch, anime or manga media or such related merchandise?
    – Note that there are plenty of questions about anime figures and other merchandise which are acceptable, but anything asking us to compare products or vendors isn't constructive.
    • This also doesn't seem to have ever been a major issue.

The following reasons, then, would remain:

  • Anything not directly related to anime and manga: What's up with that weird emblem on Japanese mailboxes?
    • This is kind of redundant, in my opinion, but it seems to be conventional across SE sites to have a line saying basically "things that are not on-topic for our site are off-topic", so I guess we can keep this.
  • Questions calling for out-of-universe lists: What are all the anime that feature X? What are all the manga by Y? See: Good List vs. Bad List and How do we deal with out-of-universe questions?
    • I'm not 100% sold on keeping this one, but it seems useful enough to keep around.
  • Reading or watching recommendations: I liked X, what should I watch next?
    – You're welcome to use our main chat room to ask about such topics
    • This one definitely needs to stay, since we get lots of these questions.
  • Questions requesting illegal or copyrighted information: Where can I watch anime X online? Where can I download chapters of manga Y?
    • This is also useful to keep, since we get a fair number of these questions.
  • Questions about unannounced/speculative future events in regard to anime or manga production: Will manga X get an anime adaptation? Are they going to make a Nth season of Y anime? See: What do we do with questions about future events/releases?
    • Same as above; we get a fair number of these.

Thoughts?

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    Make sure to update the list in the help center as well if you do this.
    – кяαzєя Mod
    Jul 13 '15 at 11:26
  • @ʞɹɐzǝɹ Should we do that? I think it makes more sense for the help center page to be comprehensive and list all the things we don't want, and for the tour page to be brief and only cover a few major things we don't want.
    – senshin
    Jul 13 '15 at 17:20
  • I agree that our off-topic list is a bit long, so cutting it down on both pages makes senses if we wish to be consistent. Previously, we wanted to be more specific due to a lack of precedence on how to handle certain questions (current and prospective). The original intent of having all those points was to have an easily accessible place to refer to certain (recurring) meta topic discussions (w/o having to dig through search).
    – кяαzєя Mod
    Jul 13 '15 at 20:14
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    Other anime sites on the internet already had a certain culture which clashes very strongly with the Stack Exchange principles, which is probably why we have to be such fun-hating soup nazis to keep the site up to standard--we're trying to go against an entrenched culture of "anything goes". While it does seem that some of these items have outlived their usefulness, I don't think we should be afraid of making it very clear to new users that we have strong standards, and that if they can't live with those, they should go somewhere else.
    – Torisuda
    Jul 14 '15 at 6:47
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Personally I think there's no real harm having many off-topic rules in the tour page. That's what that section is there for - a broad overview on what's off topic. If I was a new user I'd probably scan there before asking my question if I knew it existed.

That being said I think we can remove:

  • Questions about the gameplay of anime-related and/or manga-related games
  • Asking for the lyrics of a piece of music
  • Questions about fansubs or other fan-translations: When is X group going to do Y release for Z series in Q language? (this falls into illegal copyrighted information anyway)
  • Shopping recommendations/discussions (mostly because it's not super clear which questions are acceptable and which aren't to new users viewing the page)

And in regards to:

  • Anything not directly related to anime and manga: What's up with that weird emblem on Japanese mailboxes?

This could be used as an encompassing rule for the Japanese language reason above.

  • Questions calling for out-of-universe lists: What are all the anime that feature X? What are all the manga by Y? See: Good List vs. Bad List and How do we deal with out-of-universe questions?

I've never been fond of this phrasing, but I think it's definitely one we should keep.

  • Reading or watching recommendations: I liked X, what should I watch next?

Stay

  • Questions requesting illegal or copyrighted information: Where can I watch anime X online? Where can I download chapters of manga Y?

Stay

  • Questions about unannounced/speculative future events in regard to anime or manga production: Will manga X get an anime adaptation? Are they going to make a Nth season of Y anime? See: What do we do with questions about future events/releases?

Stay

So, actually, it seems I'm only opposed to the 'making your own anime or manga' one being removed. I think this is an important one to keep.

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  • A off-topic reason for "making your own anime" was one of our first close reasons when we got started. While there have been a few that cropped up, they've since died down. The "anything not directly related to anime and manga" is an attempt to deter specific Japanese culture centric question that watching anime don't understand. The line admittedly is thin, but it's supposed to note that if you take out anime or manga from and the question still makes sense, it's probably off-topic
    – кяαzєя Mod
    Jul 13 '15 at 20:27
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    @ʞɹɐzǝɹ I think it's still relevant though, whereas the other reasons get nearly no questions or have become unneeded or are unclear.
    – Toshinou Kyouko
    Jul 13 '15 at 21:25
  • Anything not directly related to anime and manga: What's up with that weird emblem on Japanese mailboxes? The out-of-universe list close reason does not (and is not meant to) cover this.
    – nhahtdh
    Jul 15 '15 at 6:43
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    @nhahtdh I phrased that badly, I meant that Japanese Language questions can fall under the 'anything not directly related to anime & manga' rule
    – Toshinou Kyouko
    Jul 15 '15 at 7:07
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The list has been pared. I still don't think we need the "making your own anime" reason, but Toshinou Kyouko wants it, so it's still there for now.

I left the help center page as is for the time being.

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