Proposal: Anime & Manga
You know it';s going to be asked, so I had to put up a discussion.
Example Questions:
Where can I watch Baka to Test to Shokanjuu online free?
Where can I download Sailor Moon in English?
Proposal: Anime & Manga
You know it';s going to be asked, so I had to put up a discussion.
Example Questions:
Where can I watch Baka to Test to Shokanjuu online free?
Where can I download Sailor Moon in English?
I think it was discussed before, but I believe it should not be allowed unless there's an official site that publishes it (which there usually isn't).
Subbing groups and online manga translators, while found in abundance, are in fact, illegal. And we should not support it.
Why not have a meta page with links to the few legal streaming sites?
I think this would be better than having potentially one "Where can I watch Show X online legally?" for every single anime. Many anime do not have a free and legal method, so these would probably be closed if it's decided that illegal releases shouldn't be discussed.
And the remaining ones that do have a free and legal method would probably be from one of only a few sites - CrunchyRoll, Funimation, Hulu, Youtube (yes, for at least one anime I know, the show was legally uploaded to Youtube with subtitles within a week or so of airing). There may be a few more that I don't know, but I highly doubt there are even 10 such sites.
Instead of linking to these same few sites over and over, I think it would be better to advise users to look at each site to see if the anime they are interested in is available free and legally.
Edit: A similar idea is now in use at Japanese Language & Usage SE. In the meta, there is a resources "question" and each community wiki "answer" is a different type of resource. I personally think that it's great. You can check it out for youself though: https://japanese.meta.stackexchange.com/questions/756/
As Truth mentioned, unless there's a legal site. I know Funimation shows at least a few episodes of stuff they've licensed, if not the whole series in the case of some older items.
I vote that it should be a topic that's carefully watched, but not entirely disallowed because of sites like Funimation. Legal companies are fine, fansubs and downloads are not.
This kind of issue is usually resolved during the beta period, preferably based on questions actually asked on the site (naturally or as a test).
Here, signs point to no:
I'm not familiar with Anime and Manga communities, so I don't know how different they are, but I've been participating in Science Fiction & Fantasy since the private beta, and this issue was never prominent. We had a couple of “where do I find X” questions, which were about legal sources, and which were closed, and the issue of illegal content didn't come up in a big way. The only relevant meta thread I can find is Subtitles/Translations On or Off topic?