1y ago

[META] Should we allow bot posts of chapters?

For a while the Mahoro-chan bot has been posting titles, but they're often not well upvoted or viewed and seem potentially more spammy among the titles that individuals are posting themselves out of interest. The bot was fine when this community was still pretty low on subscriber count but I'm thinking it might be past that time as engagement has gone up, and there were already other voiced concerns from members that even individual manga discussion posts were spammy.

I'm not a moderator anyhow so we'd either have to contact the bot creator (mentioned in the bot's profile) or have a moderator do so depending on the decision.

Edit: I think @man_zonder_poespas summed up what I was thinking in a much better and concise manner in his comment: "Personally I like the idea that the chapter is posted by a fan of the series so that they’re relatively likely to respond to comments on the chapter. Y’know, have the idea that at least one person is invested in the thing being posted."

I know we have engagement issues due to being new and very limited in size or if people are being scared off by just discussion posts. I do think that the larger the community, the better the chances of more discussion and more non-chapter posts since lurkers are always a majority.

Having some sort of pinned discussion posts as others have wanted, or a pinned awareness post to help drive more engagement I think would also at least be a sign for newcomers.

30 comments

The bot is probably the same bot used on /r/manga to automatically post chapters from Mangaplus and similar services. This is usually a burst of activity during the weekends and a few submissions over the week.
It's just a quiet place when no one really wants to comment on anything really.
Given it's basically a direct port of the bot I don't particularly care. Really the "problem" is the real content of communities like these are the discussions but there's been absolutely no concerted interest or activity to drive people to visit and participate. Taking out bot updates for some series won't change this.
- I agree with your statement. The bot is more of a tool, and it's up to us to generate the discussion to get new users to come over here.
  But I think we should still have it here regardless. Even with minimal discussion, it still helps to show that there are people here who want this to be a good place to discuss Manga.
  
  The current bot isn’t doing a very good job tho. I see some random, old manga chapters. If it can properly create discussion posts for new chapters then I’m for it
- I try to post a discussion post every day but I don't want that to feel like spam so I don't want to do more myself, but I do try to comment on every single non chapter post I see

Personally I like the idea that the chapter is posted by a fan of the series so that they're relatively likely to respond to comments on the chapter. Y'know, have the idea that at least one person is invested in the thing being posted.
Edit: in addition, if I wanted an overview of every single new chapter, I'd just go to mangadex. I'd like an overview of chapters that people are actually interested in discussing, instead.
- This is a great comment and along what I was thinking. Thank you for summing this much more clearly than I could.
- I really like this idea, even if it's not a rule it should be common to post a comment with your chapter discussion post so that it can show someone is willing to have a conversation.

I think we should. If anything, I'd say it should post more of the popular mangas like those being posted by people like you right now.
People just aren't very likely to make a discussion post even if they're an avid reader; they'd rather discuss it in an existing post, and not do anything if there isn't one.
There's too much to worry about like the formatting and timing (posting it even a few hours late will probably miss alot of comments) of it for most people to bother making one.
- At the moment, the source code of the bot seems to look at only mangaplus and takes some sort of catalogue of what might be at the top of the release day, which often includes some less popular releases at the moment. This does miss out on a lot of other popular titles that aren't mangaplus, though of course new bots could be brought in to fix this.
  I do agree that not having a super timely bot to post immediately upon a popular title drop release can result in some missed comments, but I actually think that the majority of user posts here so far are fairly timely. I don't speak for everyone but I used to actually use r/manga for all my updates rather than an aggregator or tracking site since I liked seeing the discussions at the same time, so it wasn't as paramount for me that the posts were immediate upon availability.
  This comment here and that I've also added to the body of the main post I think better sums up my original post's intention as well as to what I think could help with actual user engagement. Having chapters being posted by one actually invested person could give way to better engagement.
  
  What I don't understand is that the post must be up inmediatly or else some people will miss the conversation. Why? People can still comment on it after having read it and it being posted hours later doesn't make people not want to talk about it.

Nothing is more sad than seeing a post of a title that you are excited to talk about only to see it that it has 0 comments. Atleast with people you'll can find some solace that perhaps the poster might've seen your lone comment.

Any post with 0 comments is a loss for the community so I'd avoid it if possible.

Edit: damn I just noticed I make some walls of text, so: TLDR: I prefer no bot posts, but I understand why they are there.
I would like for it not to be bots doing these posts, I dont really like seeing so many posts with 0 comments.
The best solution would be to make it so that people posts the chapters so that it guarantees there will always be interactions and at least a comment by the poster. But as @OtakuAltair@vlemmy.net says, people probably wont be bothered to make such posts and that is probably true so its a big point against the idea of complete removal. (Although I dont really see a reason to worry too much about format and timing, its not like there is rules on the matter for the first and for timing if people already read it they can still talk about it)
The second best solution IMO is keep the bot, but if possible restrict it to what people are actually reading weekly, so that there will always be at least a comment. I just dont think the size of this community allows to have this kinds of posts allows for having lots of posts.
I dont really like the idea of expanding it even more, most people arent reading more than a few series weekly and with the number of users participating daily here (about 25) there is no way we can sustain that, it will just fill the feed with content that no one pays attention to. Of course one can simply say we dont need interactions on each post, just the opportunity is enough and if it doesnt happen there then its not a big deal. But at least to me it gives ghost town vibes, it doesnt feel good to look at the sub and see how nobody interacts. If anything I would prefer that we increase the user made content and diversify a bit from chapter specific discussions which, while cool when people actually have something to say and discuss, dont feel good when nobody is reading.

Let's try it, but for a limited number of (extremely popular) titles? I don't want too many series autoposted since they would just sit with 0 comments, but for a few popular series why not - it should help with engagement?

I honestly don't mind. As of now, the majority of daily posts are either made by me, @Flippanteer@lemmy.world, or @Elkaki123@vlemmy.net.
Since I can only speak about myself, I know for a fact that I get my updates from Tachiyomi. The main problems I see are two:
time (right now I am on vacation and can be more active but in two weeks I will be back to work);
if I actually notice an update since I have more than 4300 entries (and growing) in Tachiyomi.
This also happened on Reddit for me. I missed the update notification but noticed the new chapter since it was posted on /r/manga.
Also for new series. It's not like on MangaRock where there were suggestions based on what you were reading. Now at least once per week I sort for newly posted and check if there's something interesting. Most of the times I will just miss it though.
About discussions I would really love for those to take off. One of the updates I have been posting constantly is Under Ninja. I still have no idea what the hell is going on and I would like for other people to give their opinions or express their views on it, even if to say that it sucks. 😅
- Nothing much to add, I just wanna say DAMN, MangaRock, now that's a throwback.
- Oh my god 4300? You’re nuts!
  
  Can't say I disagree, lol.

Perhaps a good way to handle this might be to have a single week's updates mega-post at the end of each week with top level comments starting separate threads for each released chapter in that week?
There is a slight tradeoff though, it minimizes spam but also discussion on chapter releases in the beginning of the week would have to wait till the weekend
- I’m not as fond of this option as it doesn’t as quickly notify members of new releases and garner as much engagement.

Maybe a good way would be to create a new sublemmy called manga_updates or similar and let the bot only post there. Then the "manga" sublemmy is for discussion instead.

I prefer having the bot around because it allows me to quickly filter out all mangaplus updates just by checking the bot's profile. Reddit allowed you to filter by domain, which lemmy can't. It's annoying having to go post by post to check the mangaplus updates.
I think making the mangaplus posts exclusive to the bot is even more important as the community grows lest it become a race to rep farm the moment a chapter is released.

A bit late to the party, but I agree with the post. Once the community grows to the point where every update has some discussion, we can start the bot updates.
In the meantime, perhaps we can create a standardized 'New Release' post template? Something people can just quickly plug the series and chapter info into, and provide a link.

30 comments