These guidelines are at the interpretation of the mods and admins of the site. Ignoring any of these guidelines may result in content being removed, locked, or even your account being banned from AniList.

We may alter these guidelines from time to time without an announcement. However, in most circumstances, any changes will be announced to the community beforehand.

If you have any questions please refer to this thread for frequently asked questions. For any additional questions or suggestions regarding our guidelines, please create a topic with the “Site Feedback” tag or ask in the #site-support channel on Discord (or direct message a community mod for private matters), and we will get back to you.

A list of planned additions to the site and a changelog for the site can be found here and a list of identified bugs can be found here.

General Site Guidelines

• Copyrighted content: Linking or guiding others to illicit copyrighted content is prohibited. This includes streaming websites/apps, torrents, direct downloads, etc.

• Mature Content: Media classified as “Ecchi” must be shared in spoiler tags and must be labeled as such outside the tags. Media classified as “NSFW” is outright disallowed from being shared on the site.

• Ecchi images contain pantsu, lingerie, underwear, or other questionable content. The following list is not all-encompassing but should give you a general idea:

  • Underwear or lingerie, both fully or mostly visible. A tiny glimpse, such as the top of a bra cup, bra straps, or the top band of underwear, is generally fine.
  • Clothe outlines that can not be distinguished from nipples.
  • Fetish content such as bondage, latex, armpits, feet, etc.
  • Sexually suggestive poses/framing.
  • Undressing to nude or mostly nude.
  • Excessive “sideboob”, “underboob”, or cleavage.

• NSFW images are considered NSFW if they contain real graphic violence or explicit nudity of any kind. The following list is not all-encompassing but should be a general idea of what to avoid:

  • Detailed Clothe outlines such as cameltoe, areolas that can be distinguished from nipples, or a crotch bulge clearly distinguished as a penis and balls.
  • Depictions of sexual acts, regardless of nudity and including partial/cropped images, even if no genitals or other erogenous zones are shown.
  • Bodily fluids such as semen, precum, vaginal discharge, fetishized lactation, fetishized blood, realistic feces, realistic vomit, or realistic urine. Any fluids meant to be intentionally mistaken for the others and used in a sexual context will be treated as the liquid they are attempting to imitate.
  • Nudity such as exposed pubic hair, pubic regions, exposed female nipples/areola (even if only partially exposed areola), bare breasts (a thin strip of cloth will typically still trigger this rule), or bare buttocks.
  • Clothed crotches that take up the majority of the frame.
  • Sexual or sexually implied images of child-like characters. Given the age of a character, the stated age should be immaterial; what is important is the visual design of the character in that image.
  • Real graphic violence such as extreme amounts of blood, gore, or violence.

• User Behaviour:

• Trolling, harassing, or abusing users will not be tolerated. Context will always matter around a possible infraction. Conspiring with others or harassing an underprivileged class may result in harsher punishments than the reverse. Some examples of what can be considered harassment are as follows:

  • Repeatedly sending insulting messages.
  • Dogpiling.
  • Any statement that is prejudiced against a group of people, such as but not limited to race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, or religion.
  • Evading another user's block regardless of the reason for blocking.
  • Telling another user they should kill themselves or that they should die.
  • Sending another user intentionally disturbing images or sending them intentionally disturbing statements.

• Posting racist, homophobic, transphobic, ableist, xenophobic, religious discrimination, or illegal content is prohibited.

• Making light of or glorifying non-fictional violence is prohibited.

• Doxxing another user is prohibited. Doxxing can include publicizing private or identifying information such as, but not limited to, names, addresses, phone numbers, work information, imagery, etc.

• Accounts must not impersonate other people or users.

• Offensive user names, bios, avatars, and banners will be removed. This typically is just an extension of our current rules against various forms of bigotry.

• Graphic and overtly sexual conversations should not be had in public spaces (forum posts, public statuses, public messages, etc.). It’s not something we want minors stumbling onto, so keep it private. This does not give any allowance to images, that would otherwise not be allowed, to be shared or linked to in these private conversations.

• Spoilers: All spoilers should be contained within spoiler tags and state what work they are a spoiler of (unless as a comment on watched/read activities, where relevant spoilers should be expected).

• Spam

• Any posts or statuses deemed as spam by a mod will be removed. Some examples of what may be considered spam are below. Please note this is not an all-encompassing list:

  • Copypastas.
  • Posts made to be excessively long by including purposeless content or padding.
  • Repeated posts of the same or similar message with little value or the intent to annoy (this can be from one or multiple users all sending a single message each).
  • Making many posts in a short time span.
  • Sending the same message to many people.
  • Pinging an excessive amount of people.

• Don't make accounts solely for posting (statuses, replies, forums, etc) unless permission has been given by a member of staff.

• Do not repost activity to skew the home page feed.

• Advertising:

• Any unsolicited text intended specifically to promote/generate traffic to external websites will be removed. Occasional status posts to share one's blogs, videos, twitters, chat servers, etc are not a violation of this rule. However, more platformed portions of the site, such as reviews and forum threads, will have lower tolerances for what is permitted and should not be used for advertising one's own work in nearly any way. An exception can be granted to users who create something related to AniList.

  • Please use the Content Creators General thread if you've like to show off something you've created.

• General:

• Do not abuse AniList systems or features (manually or automated via scripts). While users are permitted to create plugins/extensions that modify various aspects of the sites (userstyles for example), such extensions must follow the following rules:

  • They should not interfere with general expected use of site features.
  • Should not obfuscate what is and isn’t allowed on AniList, such as removing any links to the rules on the site.
  • Should not interfere with site advertisements.
  • Must comply with API Terms of use.
  • Must use a uniquely identifiable header per plugin for API requests.
  • Should not create large amounts of API requests or create exceptionally long-running API requests.
  • Should not interfere with or degrade the value of donator-only features.
  • Should not allow shared custom scripts or advanced custom styling that may allow for XSS, compromised authentication, personal data leaking, or other vulnerabilities.
  • Should not allow shared unrestricted custom styling that may interfere with normal use of the site (e.g. custom profile CSS that makes the entire or large parts of the screen black or flashing colors).
  • Should not have noticeably adverse effects on the client-side performance or general loading times of the site.

• If you share fanart of any kind, make sure you post the source of the art. An exception to this is that a source does not need to be stated for user’s avatars or banners. In the event that the source is no longer available please state such when posting. Reverse image search engines, such as https://saucenao.com/ can be helpful in finding an original upload. Some examples where users typically share fanart on the site:

  • Status posts and replies
  • Forum threads and forum posts
  • A user’s ‘About Me’
  • In ‘Event Badges’

• AI generated images are not permitted to be shared on the site. If AI imagery is shared with the intent of commentary of some sort then this will typically be allowed at moderator's discretion.

• Link shorteners are not allowed. Please use markdown instead. (Markdown guide)

• Do not post excessively fast flashing colors or imagery without hiding them behind spoiler tags and tagging them appropriately.

• Claiming other people's work as your own is not allowed. This may include, but is not limited to, art, videos, and posts.

• Ban evasion is not permitted and will typically result in an even harsher restriction being placed on your account. Some examples of behavior that may be considered as “ban evasion”, this list is not all-inclusive:

  • Using an alternative account to perform the limited actions.
  • Having another user send messages in your stead.
  • Misusing any AniList functions to circumvent the restrictions.

Forum Guidelines

• Language: For now, all new threads and replies should be in English apart from a single general discussion thread for other languages.
• Titles:
• Please don't post thread titles all in caps.
• Quality Titles: Thread titles should be descriptive and accurate to the thread's content. Users should be able to get a general understanding of the thread by its title alone.
• Forum thread titles should be free of spoilers.
• All forum tags should be relevant to the thread.
• Thread quality:
• Refrain from posting “Where can I find/watch/read...?” threads.
• Recommendation threads should be as specific as possible and replies should be relevant. If you are just wanting titles that are similar to a specific entry, please refer to the recommendation section on an entries page.
• Threads should have a clear purpose for existing and aim to incite meaningful discussion. Threads with little meaning should be posted as activity posts instead. Such threads can include, but are not limited to:
  • Arbitrary “this or that” threads.
  • One-sided threads.
  • Threads made just for ranting or to incite anger/troll others.
  • Hyper-specific threads that aren’t meaningfully different from other already existing threads.
  • Questionnaire/survey threads.
• Duplicates/Spam:
• Duplicate topics will be removed or merged with an already existing thread – use the search function before posting, and if a thread about your topic exists, please post in the existing thread instead of making a new one.
• Likewise, do not post in an existing thread solely for the intention of reviving it, otherwise known as “necroing”. Posting in inactive threads is allowed, so long as it adds meaningful discourse and continues the discussion.
• Please edit posts instead of successive posting when possible.
• Spoilers: All spoilers on the forums should be contained within spoiler tags unless it is within an episode discussion thread where spoilers for that episode and previous episodes are allowed.

Reviews

• Completed Works
• Animated works, manga, light novels, etc should have finished releasing except for the following exceptions:
  • The work must have been releasing for at least two years.
    or
  • A work may be reviewed if it has stopped releasing for at least 6 months and does not have any official announcement on it continuing.
• Partial Reviews: Reviews should only be published for works that were marked as completed by the user or comply with the “Completed Works” rule, with the following exception:
  • Reviews of works that users have dropped are permitted in the event that they have seen/read at least 75%. These reviews must still follow the other rules regarding currently releasing titles.
• Spoilers: If your review contains spoilers, either preface the review with a warning or use spoiler tags.
• Review length: The minimum character count is there for a reason, do not pad your review to reach it.
• Plagiarism: Only post reviews that were written by yourself, plagiarised reviews will be deleted and may lead to a review ban.
• This includes using AI to generate/assist in writing reviews.
• Basic grammar: Please try to follow basic grammar rules. There's no need for it to be perfect, but the average user shouldn't have to struggle to understand your review.
• Images: Images should only be used if they support the text in some way. Fanart is not to be used in reviews.
• Review Quality:
• Do not comment on fans of a work or detractors of a work, in either a positive or negative fashion.
• Do not simply summarize the work.
• Do not criticize the score or popularity of the work.
• Do not advertise any links that are not directly relevant to the text of the review.
• The review should be a review of that specific work and not for other related works.
• An exception can be made if its for a work that is released in a split cour schedule or some other delayed release.
• You are welcome to reference another review you have posted on AniList to help elaborate on some beliefs in your review.

Discord

• While not all the above guidelines will be implemented in discord, common sense and good etiquette should be used. Refer to the Welcome channel on the discord for a full rule list.
• Any users causing trouble can face temporary bans which can be a day to much longer, with it becoming permanent if justified.

Data Submissions

Submission Manual: https://submission-manual.anilist.co/
Create New Anime: https://anilist.co/edit/anime/new
Create New Manga/Light Novel: https://anilist.co/edit/manga/new

• New Characters and Staff can only be created through the anime and manga forms' Character and Staff sub-pages. This is the same whether you are submitting a new entry or editing an existing one.

• Existing anime and manga entries can be edited using the edit button at the bottom left of their page.

• Existing staff and character entries can be edited using the edit icon button at the top right of their page

Please only contact moderators to ask for questions or advice, not to ask them to add entire entries for you.

You can contact a member of the team on Discord. Alternatively, you can message a data moderator from the moderator page.

A #submissions-support channel in the Discord is now open.