I've spent
way too much time looking at stats pages, and really all I got from it was that they score things as they say they do.
Delicious Party Precure is in basically the same boat as Shenmue the Animation (Feb 6 release, atypical user score distribution, <7 weighted score):
See scores, popularity and other stats for the anime Delicious Party♡Precure (Delicious Party Pretty Cure) on MyAnimeList, the internet's largest anime database. The mysterious, delicious world of CooKingdom, which rules over all the cuisine in this world. CooKingdom has closely guarded the...
myanimelist.net
This distribution is less unusual than Shenmue's but the average user score is actually higher (8.35). Even with an estimate of the weighted score based on the number of user scores, I got a 7.97. The weighted score is only a 6.92.
Neither case here demonstrates a typical distribution. Presumably, the average MAL user thinks these are about 7/10 shows after 1 episode, and fans of the properties believe they're 10/10, but my presumption is that the site looks at this sort of volume of outlier data and removes some from the weighted score based on account activity associated with them.
All of the other new shows I looked at were past their 4th episodes, and the user score data pretty well matched the weighted score based on the formula they give. There's also only a handful of new shows (5) in the season that are above an 8 for weighted score, and only 1 show that's above a 9 (Attack on Titan: The Final Season Part 2 at 9.15--I don't really understand how this is "new," though. Almost every part of that subtitle seems like it would disqualify it from that distinction).
Precure doesn't have a series length associated with it like Shenmue, so while it doesn't have to be the case that it applies to Shenmue also, I'm assuming that's an indication they don't start considering what percentage of the series is being rated at its start date.
Also like... it's an anime listings website, not bank fraud.
It's not really the nature of the crime, it's more about whether the juice is worth the squeeze. I'm seeing some decent evidence to suggest that just sending people over to MAL to make an account and drop a rating is a wasted effort, that potentially won't have it counted. At the very least, the scores will need to be babysit to a certain extent in order to ensure that they meet the 20% viewed criteria at the end of the shows run.
There's also potentially the consideration that wantonly storming into another community without knowing any of its rules to try to use the platform to signal boost and move on isn't a very good look, and may engender more animosity than goodwill in the target community. From the outside looking in, I feel it looks like a pump and dump, and I think that may be liable to do more harm than good. At this point, I'm washing my hands of this, though. It's not of significant enough consequence to me.