"Fansubbed" Forum: Should discussion be limited to fansubbed episodes?
 

The purpose of this thread and poll is to seek opinions only. In other words, I don't expect anything to change on AnimeSuki forums as a result, no matter the results of the discussion or poll. It's only to solicit opinions on the subject.

As you know, AnimeSuki's popularity is such that it attracts English-speaking anime fans with all sorts of various backgrounds, even those who don't watch English fansubs. Whether watching the raw episodes, Chinese fansubs, or others, these fans often begin discussing episodes long before the English fansubs are released. This often comes in the form of large spoiler posts, brief hints/spoiler images, and/or advertising for one's personal blog where more info can be found. In the case of threads in the Fansub forum (where there's only one thread per show), this often splits the discussion in two -- those who discuss the raws, and those who discuss the same episodes again once the subs are out. This isn't a problem per se, but there seem to be a few other side-effects: an increase in complaints about "slow subs" (i.e. "if you're discussing episode 13, why are the stupid subs only at 5?!"), and a bit of general antagonism towards those who are watching ahead (i.e. "you people and your damn raws..."). I've also seen it mentioned a number of times that some people avoid the threads entirely when discussions get too focused on raws/unsubbed episodes (though exactly how much that happens, I don't know). Are we unwittingly fracturing the community and discussion this board is here to promote?

So, since I'm one of the people who will sometimes post comments before the subs are released based on the raws (and so have been noticing some resentment of it), I'd like to know what the people of AnimeSuki Forums think about it on the whole. Is it annoying? Is it useful? Do you not care one way or the other so long as spoilers are clearly marked?

Again, I'm not suggesting anything necessarily change, or any new rules be made. I don't actually know if there is a good solution, even if a problem were identified here. But, depending on the opinions posted, I may change my own posting habits to reflect (and perhaps others might do the same if they knew how others felt about it).

NOTE: This is not referring to cases where a show is popular enough to get its own forum and by-episode threads. In that case, it should be pretty self-evident that the discussion in that thread will be about that episode, regardless of how you watched it.

NOTE 2: I also realize there are exceptions, such as MFI series, where discussion of fansubs are not permitted, making the question irrelevant.

Edit: This should go without saying, but please also post your reasons why, as applicable.

Been spoiled too many times. I know it is a selfish reason but it is an English speaking forum afterall.

I distinctly remember episodes of AIR and School Rumble being completely ruined for me at times.

Edit: Yes these were popular and both had their own forums but that was the most infuriating part. By the time an episode was subbed the discussion was 2-3 episodes ahead. Pissed me off!

Well anyway. Sorry if I have responded inappropriately*.

But this means there should be 2 treads for each series? One for the fansubbed eps and another for the raws?
I think there is no problem as long as all the risky content is in spoiler tags...

As long as people use spoiler tags I dont care. I watch some anime raw and others I wait til the sub. If an anime is being subbed slower then the raw, I just skip all the raw talk epis and post about the fansubbed. I havent really had a problem with people not using spoilers in the fansubbed threads concerning raw anime.

Actually, yeah, I'm not sure if there really is a "solution" that'd be practical. I'm just mostly interested in seeing how people feel about it. It's mostly because I've been seeing some posts indicating people are annoyed by it, so I'm curious to see how widespread the opinion is. (Sometimes a complaint is really just one person's complaint, but other times a lot of other people feel the same way but aren't saying anything.)

So you speak Japanese? If so then it is easy for you to say "skip all the raw talk" And if you don't speak Japanese, then I say wtf?
Yeah, post about the subbed ep for what? The thread has already moved on. And people like me, will not be there to respond to your post because we don't want to risk being spoiled. And if not being spoiled you get people just jumping in on a convo saying something like "lol, just wait and see, you are so wrong" etc…

I know NSW runs the Bleach forum well, but I have to be truthful here. I am scared to enter many a forum. Death Note for one. I made one thread in there and by something like the 3rd page I was distraught with a spoiler. NightWish swiftly dealt with it but nevertheless I was still caught unawares!

Sucks to be afraid to click on threads on an English speaking forum. If you speak Japanese and watch RAWS or whatever, go to a Japanese speaking forum!

Heh. I have complained about this before the forum hack. Even made a few threads IIRC. And I know I'm wrong. If people have watched and undertood a RAW episode then they should not have to sit in silence. they have the right to discuss. However, that doesn't mean I have to be happy about it.

well i dont really mind tbh ~ but i do keep up to date with the raws as i hate the feeling of being left behind...and also a rewatch with the subs doesnt bother me ;) ~

well normally when i watch a raw i note a summery of the ep as a whole and post it in spoiler tags...i dont know if people actually reads them but for me its just a way to express myself and my feelings towards the ep ~ a lot easier when i intergrate it with the ep summery ~

but for others like kanon which i want to fully enjoy first time i wait for the subs ~ this usually mean me avoiding the entire kanon thread until the subs are released which can be somewat of a pain in the arse but oh well ~ cant really stop people from talking about the raws imo especially when some subbed series are at a snails pace...and the problem with banning the raw talks would cause the whole thread to go into shut down mode as nobody has anything new to talk about ~ which its bad imo...

so i sit on the fence :)

Ahh, but we would have new things to talk about. Everything would be new! It's only not new because people are ahead by basically watching what AnimeSuki frowns upon. RAWS.

I live in the UK. I know the episodes of Smallville aren't bran new, but do I care? NO! Because they're new to me. But no one is knocking at my door telling me what Clark is doing ten eps from now. And if they did I would punch them on the nose.

Err, what I'm saying is the chat would not shut down at all. It would continue on a regular basis, as regular as the subs came out. But I'm also saying you're right. Speech cannot be prohibited. As shitty as it sometimes is. Lol

spoiler tags are your friend... what we should be doing is tarring and feathering people who persistently abuse the etiquette.

I agree. However, I really don't think the talk of spoilers is the issue at hand. I believe relentlessflame's thread concept is something different. He is sort of asking whether it is ethically correct/polite to talk about unsubbed anime.

What help does a thread three pages long of spoiler tags do? ASuki values say unsubbed anime is a no-no, whether it is soon to be subbed or not.

As he stated, there is no answer, and there is no acquisition. He just wants to know what the general consensus is so he can either tone down his comments or more openly express them. Which, IMO is a noble mannerism.

I dont speak Japanese but alot of time you can get what's going on based on the epi. I dont watch alot of raw espc if the series is subbed weekly but some series like I said arent subbed fast like Ghost Hunt so I watch the raw to see what is happening.

So youre saying that if the thread moves on then the people who sit and wait for the sub shouldnt post? Most people put spoilers around raw epis that havent been subbed yet or wont be subbed for a while. LIke the Death Note forum since its subbed weekly, most things arent covered in spoilers unless they're huge. Forums like La Corda or Irohan normally still use spoiler tags for raw epis but I still post there even if I havent seen the raw

Then whats the point of this forum? Just cuz people watch and understand Japanese doesnt mean they shouldnt post about it here. If you dont want to read a spoiler dont click it.

I do the same since sometimes I just have to find out what happens :D

Two threads seem like a good idea for people who can't wait to vent their anger on viewers who watch and understand RAWs (Gosh, people...That's what spoiler tags are for. You only get spoilt when you click on them).

Personally I have nothing against RAW watchers, so most of my comments on how quickly they managed to get several episodes ahead are made in jest. I trust they know whether they should post something pertaining to the RAW or not; whether they think it will offend most people if they do so or whether the spoilers are made subtle enough. This is a forum to for your own expression of opinions, after all. If you think it's alright to post a spoiler, go ahead. Sometimes it does irk me a little, since I get left behind.

That being said, I feel that there should be a degree to which fansub watchers should get spoilt. Perhaps RAW watchers should simply try to tone down a little on the spoilers if things get a little too nasty from some angry, apathetic users.

I voted for option 3. I never watch raws except for counted occassions because my understanding of them is less than ideal, so I usually wait for the fansubs. As long as spoiler tags are used, people are free to discuss whichever episode they want. Moreover, when I do rarely watch those raws myself (though nowadays I'm not watching much anime at all), I want to participate in those discussions, or at least read them.

I also voted #3.

Personally, I've only watched two RAW episodes. Yes, I find it annoying when someone doesn't use spoiler tags and part of the story gets ruined for me. Yes, I find it disconcerting when there are a large number (as in about half) of posts on any given page that I can't read because I only watch subbed episodes.

However, I also don't enter the Busou Renkin or D.Gray-Man threads because I only watch episodes up to where I am in the manga, simply because I don't want to ruin the plot. Should there be a separate forum for me because of this, or because I'm several episodes behind on a finished, subbed series? Of course not. Having two threads for every anime would be a waste of time and resources. We shouldn't expect mods to come in and sweep through every RAW topic and move posts to the SUBBED topic whenever a new episode is subbed.

People who don't use spoilers tags should be dealt with accordingly. People who want to complain about lots of spoiler posts aren't having the experience hindered; they just don't want to deal with the annoyance.

edit: I realize my examples aren't exactly the issue here, but the ideas are the same. IMO the forums are fine as they are now, so long as people follow the rules and use common sense.

Or when someone posts something outside of a spoiler, which does happen. I rather thnk that's Shay's point, about being afraid to click into a lot of forums just in case they contain unmarked spoilers. Because once you've been spoiled, that's it. Selective forgetfulness would be nice but unfortunately isn't possible.

I generally avoid the fansubs forum altogether now. Why? Because I don't feel like wading through pages of spoilers and raw discussions. Mostly because you never know when the next non-spoilered post will be that will ruin the surprise.

You know, I feel it's called the 'Fansubs' forum for a reason.

Unmarked spoilers should be modded then. Repeated unmarked spoilers should be a bannable offense.

They are moderated, but it's often too late. Moderators can't be everywhere at once. Though I agree repeat offense should carry a temporary ban, followed by permanent IP ban if they come back and do it again.

Raw discussions in fansub threads is a problem that has popped in the past as well (so this thread might get merged, although I'm to lazy to search for the old thread to merge it myself right now). It's not an easy problem to solve. Essentially what's being discussed is the same with fansubs -- raw watchers are just a number of episodes ahead. For this reason it is not a good idea to create separate threads for fansub watchers and raw watchers, IMHO.

The only viable solution that pretty much solves this problem is to create a separate thread for each episode, which is exactly what we do in the dedicated series discussion forums (under "Current" and "Older"). However it's not practical to do this with every single series.

Therefore for every series which only has a thread and not a whole forum dedicated to it, I think that discussions of non-yet-fansubbed episodes should be allowed as long as they're clearly marked as spoilers (even if they hardly spoil any bit of the story), preferbly with episode number (so that you can read the posts once the fansubs catch up).

Catching people who don't use the spoiler tags is a lot of work though, so sometimes offenders are not caught "soon enough". You can help out though using the "report" button if you see a post with a huge spoiler in it that isn't using spoiler tags.

As of vBulletin v3.6 there is an "infraction" system, which allows moderators to give infractions with a certain amount of points. The system is currently set up that if you post two spoilers (without spoiler tags) in a row, you'll be banned for a few days. Excessive repeated spoiler offenders might even find themselves permanently banned. These points do expire btw, but at a very slow rate (only after a year or so).
As I mention above, repeated spoilers are a banable offense.

Actually, I think this sort of answers my second, related question on the subject. Anything shown in episodes up to and including the most recent fansub released is not a spoiler. Is that correct? In other words, you should use spoiler tags for...

• Any revelations that come from other media (manga, games, novels, etc. -- granted that extended discussion of these should happen in their own forum)
• Any discussion re: episodes that haven't been fansubbed yet

The above has always been my practice. But what about critical/major plot points, even in episodes that have been fansubbed, that could threaten to ruin the whole show for someone else? I guess I'm just thinking that there's still a risk that someone who hasn't caught up on all the fansubs might click on the thread; for example, someone who just wants to get opinion on the show once it's finished. Are unmarked plot spoilers just the risk one takes once a fansubbed episode has been released? (I can just imagine some innocent soul clicking a thread to see if a show's any good, and having "xxx dies at the end" pop up in front of them. :heh: )

Anyway, as I said to begin with, my purpose here wasn't necessarily to try to provoke any sort of change at AnimeSuki (and I agree that there isn't a good solution), but rather just to see what current opinions on the subject were (and whether there was a new trend). It seems that there's a fairly wide spread of opinions on the subject, but most seem to agree that, no matter what, using spoiler tags properly is the key (and there was certainly no doubt in my mind about that aspect in the first place).

The few times I've felt the urge to comment on some happening in a latest fansub episode, I've been driven away by the fact that the episode is old news in the fansub forum... I don't think I've ever even seen the latest fansub being discussed at the time of its release.

Well, as it stands now, in majority of cases i visit the Fansub subforum is when i am interested in reading some RAW spoilers about what happens 5 episodes in the future (from SUB POV) :eyespin:

Wether that is good or bad...i don't know. It certainly is inconvenient that the thread is littered with spoilers... sort of ruins the mood for discussion when the things you are posting is old news.

If raw dicussion was banned I wonder what would happen to the activity levels in the forum?

As it stands, there's a lot of activity with people discussing raws. However, as has been said by a couple of people now (and I include myself too), people feel less inclined to post what would be considered 'old news'. So that's a lot of activity lost because of fansub watchers who don't feel like posting.

So by banning raw discussion, while it would initially cause a drop in activity, I could also see an overall rise in activity as people who don't bother posting currently are drawn back into active discussion.

Yay for the fansub watchers, but now the raw watchers are out in the cold. Heh, can't win this one. Allowing discussion within spoilers and hoping people honour the rules seems to be the only realistic way forward without alienating a large portion of the people who visit the site.

i definitely felt the need to avoid the NHK ni Youkoso forum for a while because raw viewers were way ahead of the rest of us. Many of the raw viewers had also read much of the manga, so there were discussions swirling around the anime vs. manga issue as well. There were many polite participants who used spoiler tags liberally, but the occasional impolite contributor can really ruin a story with an inadvertent revelation. Also it gets tedious to see a discussion with a dozen consecutive posts in spoilers and know you don't want to read any of them.

I also felt something of the "old news" problems in this forum as well. By the time those of us watching subs caught up, the raw viewers were discussing issues three to four episodes ahead.

I don't really see how it would hurt to have an "unsubbed" category along with subbed and licensed. I don't know if every series would end up in both categories, but we're really only talking about a few dozen threads at any one time. Given the speed with which threads come and go in these forums, it doesn't look like we'd be adding a lot of overhead by setting up a locale for people to discuss raws.

I'll often resort to spoiler tags even for series that have finished because I'll want to discuss critical events that someone new to a series hasn't yet seen. (See my discussion of Blood+ for an example.) Most well-intentioned contributors here do the same. But then there are the people who complain that they can't figure out how to insert spoiler tags. I observe in passing that the "quick reply" box does not offer the spoiler option, so we're relying on participants' willingness to delve into the advanced composition form to use spoilers. I think that's asking a lot of infrequent or new contributors. Adding a spoiler option to the quick reply form might help in this regard.

In the fansub section shows thread which I frequent I can say all for all raw ep discussions spoilers are used . But the only drawback ragarding raw ep discussion via spoilers is once the subs do get released the discussion on that ep is non exsisitant as its already been done when raw comes out . Thats a tad bit irritating for a sub watcher .

you mean lurkers would be more inclined to post? but tbh it depends on how far behind the subs are...sure if its 1 or 2 ep behind that fine...but when a massive delay happens and it turns into a 5-6 ep delay then theres a problem...because the same thing is being circulated over and over again there is a danger of the topic progressing either at a snails pace with hardly and useful talk after a certain point or completely stop at all as nobody has anything good to say...while all the time the RAW watchers are sitting back and holding everything in that might have happened in the next ep par say ~

Well, at some point AnimeSuki will have to decide who gets the priority on this issue (fansub or RAW watchers), and while everything could continue the way it is, we'll never know what would be like with extended forum options/posting instructions if we never try them out.
There's probably no best solution to this issue, however there's evil and there's lesser evil. I have no doubt in my mind that choosing the lesser evil, i.e. prioritizing fansub watchers since they are still the majority of potential participants, would be a better solution. I remember a few years ago, the "news community" or, if you want, the "spoiler community" wasn't even remotely as big as it is today. It consists of rare individuals who have the ability to follow episodes in Japanese (or indulge in other media such as manga, novels, games of the same franchise) and post summaries through their blogs, or on forums, and groups of people who enjoy spoilers and/or watch raws just for the heck of being the first to watch something (and have very limited or no japanese language skills). The "fear" of deprioritizing and, most likely, offending this minority stems from the fact that this group is far more progressive than the other; it's striving to be the first, to deliver the latest news and insight with their language/data mining abilities. It's definitely a gain to have such people around. But fansub watchers heavily rely on fansubs, however they are still the majority.
I do feel the same, as others have expressed already, that fansub watchers are most likely less inclined to discuss a series if they feel that there's high possibility that their insight would offer nothing new to the discussion. And while I have the ability to follow raws in a decent manner I can understand their frustration.

I agree with you too. I have been spoiled on way too many of my favorite series thats its not even funny :heh: . Like About or even .

So i strongly agree with you but still i dont want to be selfish to many people who like to discuss raws too ( same as you). I think if we divide each forums to Spoiler free and spoiler allowed, Mayby we could solve this problem. I know its a hard task and requires double the amount of moderating, but if at least we can set it for the famous and popular series , its better than nothing.

With all that said, i still think animesuki is the best forums in terms of following the rules about spoilers. Most of the forums are moderated extremely well and most of the people always use spoiler tags. I Think another way we can solve this problem is by actually telling the members who dont know about the spoiler tag rules ( which mainly are the new members) about them. And this way we can keep them at the minimum.

P.S. I voted the third option.

I think you're a bit confused on the definition of lurker there. I mean people like myself who would post to these threads but don't feel like it because of all the raw discussions going on. A lurker is someone who signs up but never posts, unless they happen to need help with something ("...hi, long term lurker here, great site, need some help...")

A member who's been here a year and a half and has 1500+ posts (that's including my time before the great hack of 2005) cannot possibly be considered a lurker. I'm active in most other areas of the forum, it's just the fansubs forum (and to a lesser extent the series forums) that I tend to avoid now. I don't particularly want to avoid them, but it's incredibly annoying posting what to me is a sudden revelation, only to find that it's been discussed two weeks prior in spoilers and is considered 'old news'.

It's frustrating, but it's better than having a series ruined by that one unmarked spoiler.

^ lol soz about that i was being rather vague (and my brain isnt working :eyespin:) ~ what i mean was people that are in your situation who doesnt know whether to post or not or even go into a thread in fear of being spoiled...right got it but tbh it can be avoided ~ there is bound to be some fool who doesnt realize that he/she are spoiling things (unwittingly ive done once or twice as well) ~ and it won be fair to say banning someone for committing a wrong that they are unaware themselves...

cant say that there is a real solution here...making double threads for every series seem to be a waste of manpower (and as we know the mods are already very busy) ~ i think the only thing is for people to be more responsible when using spoilers and tag them!

I voted the third option because I too when a show really catches me, end watching some raws and then post some comments (completely spoiler-tagged of course). It happens rarely, but since it happens, it'd be unfair by my side to vote for the first option.

Yes, because lately I've become a little more upset about the raw discussions. Not totally for their spoilerous nature though. That's a thing I've learnt to handle. When a series is very close to its ending, I do not touch a certain thread, until I'm finished watching the final episode fansubbed.

It's more for the consequence they seem to have on a thread life. I'm more feeling like they're somehow restraining people from partecipating. Just as Radiosity was saying.

Good point. Somehow I'm seeing a certain tendency coming from the raw discussions. This happens when there's a distance of 4-5+ episodes from the "fansub point" (where the fansub episodes are up to) to the "raw point".

In example yesterday I downloaded episode 10 of Tokimeki and I was seeing the thread continuosly bumping, so I thought that probably there was a discussion on the new episode going. Today I watched the episode and went to the thread, to find out that out of all the new discussion, 1 post was actually about episode 10, but all the rest was a comment of events going to come from episodes 13-14.
Note that I absolutely don't care of the nature of this, since I don't mind being a bit spoiled for an harem series which is still at an early point. What I find somewhat sad, is the lack of discussion about the new fansubbed episode. Granted that it wasn't nothing special per se. Granted that the aforementioned discussion was interesting indeed.
But I wonder how big is the influence of the raw talking on this. I personally find myself discouraged from posting because .. it's like it wouldn't be interesting. And since the show is watched by a number of people, being the thread quite popular, I too, wonder.

On the contrary, when a sub is 2 episodes or less behind the japanese airing, I usually see people more actively partecipating.


Returning on the thread main pattern, of course I don't see no way of splitting each discussions in two. Surely for the great effort requested to the mods. But also because I could see the discussions to dilute. I see all the elements (members) as complementary between them, so I'm not pro dividing them.
Plus, AnimeSuki was born for fansubs. Raw talking/seeking mostly is discouraged, so I really can't see how a "raw" section could arise.
That's already 3 reasons I stated here.
A nice, but not praticable, solution, was the one GHDpro mentioned, one thread for each episode discussion. But that's clearly utopia :)

So yes I'd be fine if people were to use spoiler tags properly. Unfortunately it's not something I can see always to happen.
Besides the lack of use of spoiler tags, which as said above would be penalized, there's also another little clarification I'd like to do.
It's fine to post spoiler events on spoiler tags but... I'd wish not to see anything outside the spoiler tags.
I'll explain myself better:

------------------------------------
Sample 1:

Fansubs are at episode 13. A new post appears into the thread.

Finally managed to see episode 18. Wow! I wouldn't ever have expected such a turn of events! I'm really surprised but also glad to see things going this way. I'm not going to spoiling anything, but let's say you would enjoy this episode.



Again this episode was amazing and the show is getting always better and better, I can only hope it continues to do so, because it's really becoming one of the best on its genre.

End of post
-------------------------------------------

^

I consider this formula to be wrong. While as a matter of facts there's nothing really major spoilered up there, I - viewer stucked at episode 13 - am not interested to know that the show takes an amazing turn on episode 18.
Because in my mind I may end to figure up that all what is going to come until that episode is minorily important. This shouldn't happen imho. It's a wrong influence I'm receiving.

That's why I'd like not to see any comments of the user, beside the spoilertagged spoiler. Because that user is influenced having seen more than me, and anything he says in that context is potentially "dangerous" (with "dangerous" being a metaphorical word here, heh ;) ) , to me.

So the correct formula would be, in the same case:


----------------------------------
Sample 2:

Fansubs are at episode 13. A new post appears into the thread.

Finally managed to see episode 18.



End of post
------------------------------------

^
I'd prefere this way. Of course these kind of things are nothing I wouldn't even think of reporting (also because I may be alone on the matter :heh: , it's just a sense I've raised throghout past experiences) , and there really isn't a reference to anyone here on Suki, it's just a general trend I'm sort of seeing ;)

Lastly, I wish the comments on the spoiler tags would be carefully used. I mean that line of text summarizing what's going to be onto the spoiler itself.
If in a delicate context, letting it blank may put people in difficult on whether opening it or not. And I'm betting they would choose to skip it.
Good if it was an horrorific spoiler. But if it was a ton of precious images/infos just spoilertagged for saving space? It'd be a waste! :)

Sorry for being picky on this, but relentlessflame on his original question asked how raw-watchers should behave, and I explained what I wish to see.
Which is also of course, what I do when I myself, though rarely, am the raw-watcher. :)

That's basically my biggest irk. Wading through a thread full of spoiler tags to only find like 2 posts about the newly subbed episode is shit. :(

To clarify, what I meant by the question was whether we should have to wait till the fansub is released to discuss the episode at all in the "Fansubbed" forum. In other words, if the fansubs are at episode 3 and the raws are at episode 10, you could only talk about up to episode 3 and no higher, even in spoiler tags. Most importantly, I don't think that's really an option, but the point of the question was: would you like it better if that were how it was? This ties in to my other question about spoiler tags that I posted earlier. So, I could have phrased the options like this:

• Raw spoilers in fansub threads are bad (I wish they weren't there at all, even in spoiler tags)
• Raw spoilers in fansub threads are good (I like that they're there)
• I don't care either way, just use spoiler tags

Hopefully that explains a bit more about why I phrased things the way I did. You may wonder "if you knew that one of the options was practically impossible, why ask in the first place?" And I think that's been hit upon by a number of people already: so that I, as someone who watches raws and posts about them, will know what behaviour people on the forum find courteous. That's basically what it comes down to.

Thank you -- in fact, your very practical suggestion helps me a great deal in terms of giving me something to think about (don't know how I'll implement it yet). As I said to begin with, I didn't post this poll expecting anything to change on a forum-wide level -- going to a "two-tier" discussion system would be a pretty debatable "step forward" to say the least. You got at the heart of the issue, though, which is a question of responsible behaviour in an environment that is clearly designed primarily for fansub viewers. (And, to be clear, I still do watch a lot of fansubs too, and that's what brought me here in the first place. My interests may have drifted in time to raws and R2 DVDs, but it started with fansubs.)

I have to admit that one of my side-motivations in a "Type A" spoiler post (as per your example) would be because I want to encourage people to keep giving the show a chance in case they may be feeling disheartened. Then again, it'd be pretty rare to see me do the same in the event that my outlook were less positive (then I might do "Type B", if anything). That doesn't mean all other raw watchers do the same, of course; few things are more annoying to me than a "Type A" pessimistic spoiler post ("This show totally sucks once you get to not-yet-subbed episode xxx. <spoilers for why>") I realize, of course, that that's my bias, and I suppose it could be called a double-standard too (If my opinions are positive, I want people to hear them, but if they're negative, I want people to come to their own conclusions.). Don't ask why that's the case, because I'm not sure. :heh:

Anyway, thank you everyone for this useful discussion. The practically-minded may say it's useless because "there's no clear problem, and no practical solution", but I think just having the conversation is useful. We may not be able to change the big thing, but we can help improve some of the little things -- and maybe a better and more consistent understanding of "raw spoiler etiquette" is part of that equation.

I think many people who dont use spoiler tags when need to, eaither dont know about the rules completely , Or confuse where they should and where they shouldnt Or even They might have forgotten about it( at the moment).
Also Its not practical to seperate each forum to Raw and Fansub. And it wouldnt be fair to people who want to discuss the raw not be able to.

So what if we make the first post ( which states the rules of the thread) apear in every single page. That way mayby the amount of people who forget to use spoiler tags reduce.

Well threads are part of forums :).

I am not saying its a bad thing to have the Raw and fansub discussion seperated. I am actually pro that idea. But doing that isnt practical. We will need more moderators and Also there is no guaranty even if thats done people will stop posting spoilers in the fansubed section.

My opinion:
Personally I don't like when people in the fansubbed forum start talking about episodes which haven't been subbed yet. I just don't like when people start talking about RAWs, when they can barely understand what's going on (of course, it might not be the case for everyone).
However if you created another forum just for discussion about RAWs it would feel kinda strange to have two different discussions on one series, maybe you could call it "fragmented". Also, not everyone would go and change between forums just because they want to discuss RAWs, it's kinda troublesome when you look at it from the practical perspective...

So I guess that spoiler tags are here for something, but many people still don't use them since they are forgetting that some (well, perhaps the majority) people don't watch RAWs and might not even think that something trivial could be considered as a spoiler.

Well, semi-off-topic, but there are other reasons why I wish that were the case as well. Namely, to prevent the constant repetitive questions you often see in the Fansub threads (like, "how many episodes are there?" or "is the OP/ED/OST out?" or "will there be an OVA/second season?", etc. etc.) But somehow I doubt people would read it, even if it were more visible.

And for what it's worth, remember: no practical changes are being proposed here (at least, not by me). The point of the question is what you'd rather in your ideal world, not how to make it actually happen. If you get bogged down too much in the mechanics, then you'll misstate your opinion. But it is good to think through the consequences of your choices.

Having separate threads seems like an adequate solution. No one loses out there.

It'd happen much less though, and for the people who go and do that, they should be punished...that should be a good enough deterrent.

Knowing the rules is a member's responsibility. They shouldn't be banned right away for -one- mistake, just the post would be deleted and the member in question would receive a warning. Multiple offenses, though, then yes. Banning.

Again, separate threads seems like the best option, it's gonna be safer from spoilers too. You're -never- going to be 100% safe from spoilers in ANY forums, there's always the chance that some fool posted a spoiler the minute before you decided to read the thread, and moderators are not machines so they can't deal with all issues instantly. But it'd be better than the current situation. If you want to be 100% safe from spoilers no matter what...there's always the option of discussing it via AIM/MSN with one of your friends or not visiting the threads till you're done with the whole series.

And if separate threads means having to get more moderators, then what's the problem? We get more moderators. We have a lot of active users, and I know more than one that is capable of doing the job. We have a reputation system that generally shows how much a user is around and how much he contributes. If the community gets bigger then we adapt, problem solved.

I'd have to disagree. The mods would certainly be losing out there, because their workload for that forum would more or less double.

Extra moderators would work I guess, as you mentioned, but they'd have to specifically be moderators who already download and watch virtually everything raw, either that or people who don't mind being spoiled by going into active raw discussions to do their moderator jobs.

And that kind of profile is hardly impossible to find. Current moderators do get spoiled too, to do their job.

and i suppose where are you gonna get new mods that are trustworthy and are willing to do the job properly?