tl;dr:
- The machines take over today!
- Wiki link to bot user guide (also in sidebar)
- Wiki link to past episode discussion threads
- Don't abuse the bot
Hi fellow purveyors of anime! Today marks an important day in this community. Namely, the day that our resident bot took over all the duties of episode discussion thread creation. You might have noticed that rikka has been making more and more posts over the past week or two as I have slowly let her take over a couple shows. I have added a link to the sidebar about how to use the bot for episode discussion posts, so hopefully it can be a fairly smooth transition.
I have also enabled her ability to create the summary post that is pinned to the community of the most recent discussion thread for each show (sorted in reverse chronological order of when she made them or I manually entered them into her database). Currently, I have set it up so that a show will stay on that post for up to 8 days. If it has been >8 days since the last discussion thread for a show, it will be dropped from that post. I am open to feedback about whether this time is ok. It means, for instance, that if a show skips a week, it will be dropped from the summary post for ~6 days leading up to the resumption of airing.
Something else about the bot I wanted to disclose is what I am setting as the initial engagement metrics to determine whether an episode discussion thread has enough activity to warrant the next episode getting a discussion thread. To start this new paradigm, I have set the limits very low. Namely, I disabled the upvote threshold and set the comment threshold to just a single comment. So, that means that as long as an episode discussion thread has a single comment by a user, then, when the next episode airs, a new discussion thread will be created.
I am hoping that, if people stop watching a show, then they will simply not post in that show's discussion threads. So, if there are no comments for a show's episode, then the show will simply be disabled when the next episode airs instead of having a new thread created.
Something to note is that thread creation by pm'ing the bot is not subject to this kind of engagement thresholding. For example, let's say a show's episode 2 thread has zero comments. This means that when episode 3 airs, rikka will simply disable the show instead of creating an episode 3 thread. However, a user is always able to pm the bot and get an episode 3 thread created that way.
I will be monitoring this because it is prone to abuse if users simply spam the bot with tons of requests for shows that they are not watching or engaging with. So, if you request a thread from the bot, please at least constructively comment in the thread that is created. Otherwise, what was the point? It is just a roundabout way of spamming the community.
In any case, please enjoy the Spring season as the new shows get started. Thank you everybody for all the contributions you make to the community (even you lurkers!). Looking forward to the new era of the community as we continue to grow.