title says it all. usually its only like 50 people per anime who do this but it's weird
Define "Mark". You mean mark as seen?
As the title says:
mark ... as completed?
I can see the confusion, a long clarifying phrase was added to the object(?) which made these parts seem less connected to each other, right?
Maybe they're trying to cheat on challenges, though the mods would find out regardless. But who knows, there are people on letterboxd who rate movies 5/5 Stars because "It's going to be peak" and all those terms people with bad brains say.
trying to cheat on challenges
...What?
Anilist has anime challenges which require finishing anime with specific requirements to get official badges.
One, those aren't official, they're community run.
Two, even if someone wanted to cheat at them, which is unlikely, using unreleased series is obviously not going to work ^^'
For example, Dandadan 2nd Season still has "Not Yet Released" on its page, but I've watched the first three episodes at the cinema a few weeks ago.
The first episode of Shikizakura was shown at Anime Expo something like three months before the TV broadcast and official release date.
So some of these marks may be from people who had a chance to watch anime before official release, and some of them may be accidental (wrong title, accidental tap on smartphone). And of course some of them the majority of them do this to vote up or down the title they love or hate or to piss off somebody. Not always such actions have a meaningful reason...
For me, the unreleased shows are ones I'm looking forward to. Like on a waiting list. Getting ready to be watched somehow. Along with watching the first episode, I have two options: watching the same show back-to-back, and/or being held or dropped due to personal enjoyment or lack of interest in the show.
Yeah I don't get it either.
The only time I ever prematurely change the status is for stuff releasing in the current season to "Watching" because Anilist won't notify you when the first episode airs otherwise.
...It does though?
You do get notifications for the first episodes of stuff on your planning, it's subsequent notifications you only get for watching...
...it doesn't though?
It hasn't notified me for the past year, so unless there's some setting I'm missing that I haven't seen, something's up if you say it's supposed to.
It definitely does... here's a screenshot of airing notifications I got back in April. Some of the shows (Hana Doll, Princession Orchestra, etc.) are still on my planning and have only ever been such...
I tried my best to capture the two adjoining Wind Breaker s2 notifications, but they were just barely too far apart... but I got ep1's notification when it was on my planning (you can barely see the top of its image at the bottom) and then nothing until ep5, which was when I caught up to it/had it on watching.
I don't see any settings that would affect first episode separately... double check the notification settings and the airing notification setting under lists, if those are all checked, then maybe make a bug report thread?
I doubt every airing show that piqued your interest for the past year would be so popular that known mass notification issue would be the cause...