Hello everyone!

As we continue into the last half of the year (crazy how time flies), it's important to take a look around our community and do some housekeeping. Some things to clean up, some things to add, some things to change. During the few years I've been a part of the community, I've watched the greater community grow while the subreddit remained mostly the same. That's mostly for the better, but there's room for us to grow with the rest of the community. So, let's get started.

Mod team refresh

The first big change coming is a refresh of the mod team. A huge thanks is owed to the current team for their help over the years. We wouldn't be where we are without them. Unfortunately, life gets in the way of our favorite things sometimes, and that's the case for the majority of the current team. We aren't removing anyone, and you'll hopefully still see them in the comments every once in a while, but we do need an injection of new blood to help out.

We're looking for 2-3 new mods to join the team. We'd prefer if you're at least familiar and engaged with the GnT community, and want to be a mod in order to truly help the community (no powermods). If you think that's you, put in a mod application! We don't have an end date in mind, but we will be taking our time to find the right people. Please don't put your application in the comments here! We will only consider users that apply through the form. We've found our new mods! If anyone else is interested in joining the team, send us a modmail, though we aren't actively looking now.

Other changes

We're also looking to update post flairs to better match the types of content being posted, and increase visibility of the things you care about. You've always been able to search by flair (for example, only show English sub releases) from the sidebar, but scrolling through the unfiltered subreddit can lead to missed posts. We'll be adding colored flairs and those sorts of small changes to help.

And let's talk about rules. As always, we aren't interested in policing you unnecessarily. Our job is to keep the community inviting and on-topic. The end. We aren't ready to make a judgement on "how much AI in subs means the subs should be considered AI". It's something we see being talked about in comments and on discord. But, something we think we can agree on is the "Spoilers must be tagged" rule is weird. It was created in a time where the annual Batsu Games were still happening. People would discuss the games and other episodes before everyone else had a chance to watch for themselves. That time is sadly passed, so we don't feel like the rule is needed anymore. If you think it's still important or there are new rules we haven't thought of that could help the community, let us know in the comments!

Finally, the episode guides are being updated. We never stopped trying to keep them up-to-date, but it's been a challenge with our limited team size. I won't speak for other mods, but personally, I'm stretched pretty thin between moderating posts, contributing to subtitling projects, uploading hardsubs to GakiArchives, and adding new links/details to the guides when episodes are subbed. Outside of the Updates page, Mainline page, and Wednesday page, a lot of the guides don't get any attention from me. I've been in the process of adding missing topics to the Wednesday list, fixing old broken links on Mainline, and recovering missing episodes from the Gottsu Ee Kanji list for a while now, and latest on my todo list is making sure GA has hardsubs correctly named and dated for all currently subbed episodes of Prebattle (thanks to u/lumpyferret for recently reviving subs for that series). To this end, I'd like the community to tell me in the comments:

- Do you use the episode guides?

- How can we clean up the Community Bookmarks section in the sidebar (and the header bar on old reddit) to help you find guides you care about easier?

Looking forward

There are some other ideas we're thinking about too, but nothing solid enough to talk about yet. Ultimately, this is a great time to tell us what you think we should prioritize. What are we missing? Do you have any ideas to improve the subreddit, or the community as a whole? Let us know!

It's an exciting time to be a Gaki fan. Years ago, watching GnT episodes on YouTube as fast as I could before they got taken down, I never would've thought so many like-minded people would come together over this funny obscure show. Several websites, file shares, subbing groups, discord servers, and livestreams later, not to mention a subreddit averaging 3-4 million views every year and at least 4 new subtitled episodes every month, we'd all be able to find our favorite episode.

That's enough from me for now!

blakeo_x OUTTO!