Introducing Anime News Network's New Forum Rules

Anime News Network's staff is happy to introduce new rules today to better serve our forum community at large and create a welcoming and thoughtful environment where we can all share our mutual love for anime, manga, light novels, and video games. Last week, our readers and staff opened a dialogue on what the site could do to discourage hateful speech and create an inviting atmosphere for all of our readers and writers.

The staff at ANN have taken these comments and criticism to heart, and after discussing it diligently with one another, we are introducing new rules in the forums starting today.

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.

We have also opened a feedback thread for any comments regarding the new rule change.

Once again, thank you for reading Anime News Network! We'll see you in the forums!