Alright, popping back in here after a busy day and wanted to thank everybody for their input. I will do some thinking on it.
In the meantime, considering the feedback here, I will not be adding rules against posting full-length, legally accessible episodes to this community. As I see it, there are a couple different acceptable reasons to post these:
- Posting episodes to discuss them when they have recently aired
This would essentially be in place of a normal discussion thread created by the bot. The bot doesn't let users request episode discussion threads that aired more than 30 days prior, so a similar rule should apply to full episodes posted to discuss that episode. Note that if you do this, let me know so that I can make sure these threads get included in the wiki of episode discussion threads.
- Posting a first episode of an older (> 30 days) series that has finished airing in order to foster discussion of the series/genre/staff/visuals/etc.
This would be similar to a recommendation thread (or a Watch This! thread from the subreddit). The basic rule here is that in addition to simply posting the link, a user would need to include some other content to contextualize or explain why they are posting the episode. This could be either in the post body or as a top level comment.
- Posting an episode as part of an organized rewatch.
I have on my to-do list over the year-end holiday season to write up rules and guidance on organizing rewatches. If you want an already written guide, here is the subreddit wiki's page on them. Basically, it would be a user-led effort to gather a group of interested parties to all watch through a series together. If a series that was being rewatched had full, legally accessible episodes, then those could serve as the rewatch threads.
So, with this set of guidelines @[email protected], I welcome you to resubmit the episode you posted. I just ask two things:
- That you make the title more informative/relevant rather than the autogenerated wall of kanji that most people in this community can't read.
- That you also write up a bit about the show and why you are posting it to line up with the #2 point above. It doesn't need to be long, but just something more than simply the link so that people know what they are watching and why you wanted to share it.
Hopefully this can serve as a middle ground that allows posting of full-length episodes that are legally accessible as well as fostering discussion and community involvement.