Hi everybody,
The mods have discussed the post entitled What happened to this subreddit more or less constantly since it came up yesterday. We hear you and agree that there must be some changes made to the rules to benefit the community.
Last night, we went back and forth on rule changes, on how to survey the sub to ask what should stay and what should remain, and where we stand on certain issues like post removal, frozen topics, daily and weekly threads, and other content rules.
This made something very clear: there is currently no single rule that doesn’t have both pros and cons. Admittedly, we think some of these rules are better than others, but making changes that comprehensively and fairly address the concerns that have been brought up will be challenging. Second, it is difficult to perfectly assess how to move forward with taking everyone’s opinions into account. We want the community to prosper and do well, and it’s clear that the current rules aren’t furthering that aim. Something needs to be adjusted.
Thus, I can now announce that for the month of September, all posts in the sub will be allowed through moderation as we experiment. All rules regarding posting, commenting and what is allowed and not allowed will be effectively on hold, aside from these:
We agree this is a big change, and our thinking is along several lines to do this. First, it’s hard to know which content rules are legitimately impacting the vibes of the sub that were brought up in the post (is it frozen topics? Post vs. comment rules? Weeklies and dailies?). Second, as we mentioned in comments, engagement on the sub is down in June and July. Is it Covid? Maybe. Are our rules too restrictive? Also maybe. This is the only way forward we can see if our rules are impacting engagement. Third, a ‘reset’ of the rules is an effective way to test them the other way – what rules do you want to see enacted to help manage content? If we remove things, it’s hard for you as the community to see what is the spectrum of content that comes onto the subreddit to better adjust the rules.
At the end of the month, mods will review the traffic stats, sub engagement, overall pacing. THEN, we’ll do a town hall / survey with the whole sub how you’d like to proceed in adjusting the rules. We will share our engagement statistics pre and post change, and discuss what we saw from our moderation perspective. We think this will be an effective ‘reset’ button on the rules and see what ones the community values. After September, we’ll make a call on what stays / what remains after this experiment.
We think this is the best way to truly put all the rules to the test and give them a fair shake of being evaluated, in the strongest community-driven way we know of. This means that for the month of September, the r/xxfitness community can communally test out whether the voting system works for organising content, which Weekly or Daily threads make sense, and if we want medical advice to come through, among others. We would like to see the users who voiced strong concerns in the last thread use this as an opportunity to show us that they can actively participate.
Users may also repost the posts that mods removed in the past, in fact I would like to encourage this. I want to see that people are taking active steps in making r/xxfitness the place that they want it to be.
I would also like to encourage users to provide full answers to questions and not link or direct anyone to the FAQ; we understand that this has been found by people to be dismissive and in some cases condescending. If a question comes up, please provide answers yourself. If you would like to link to external sites for information, you may of course do so.
We anticipate that the community will calibrate to what’s working and what doesn’t, and we’ll have a set of rules that really works for the community. At the end of the day, we want this to be a great place for you and we’re looking forward to trying this with you, and making r/xxfitness as good as can be!
The mods have discussed the post entitled What happened to this subreddit more or less constantly since it came up yesterday. We hear you and agree that there must be some changes made to the rules to benefit the community.
Last night, we went back and forth on rule changes, on how to survey the sub to ask what should stay and what should remain, and where we stand on certain issues like post removal, frozen topics, daily and weekly threads, and other content rules.
This made something very clear: there is currently no single rule that doesn’t have both pros and cons. Admittedly, we think some of these rules are better than others, but making changes that comprehensively and fairly address the concerns that have been brought up will be challenging. Second, it is difficult to perfectly assess how to move forward with taking everyone’s opinions into account. We want the community to prosper and do well, and it’s clear that the current rules aren’t furthering that aim. Something needs to be adjusted.
Thus, I can now announce that for the month of September, all posts in the sub will be allowed through moderation as we experiment. All rules regarding posting, commenting and what is allowed and not allowed will be effectively on hold, aside from these:
- Be respectful to all folks on the sub
- Tag NSFW posts / comments
- Must be related to fitness and health in some way (completely orthogonal content will be removed)
We agree this is a big change, and our thinking is along several lines to do this. First, it’s hard to know which content rules are legitimately impacting the vibes of the sub that were brought up in the post (is it frozen topics? Post vs. comment rules? Weeklies and dailies?). Second, as we mentioned in comments, engagement on the sub is down in June and July. Is it Covid? Maybe. Are our rules too restrictive? Also maybe. This is the only way forward we can see if our rules are impacting engagement. Third, a ‘reset’ of the rules is an effective way to test them the other way – what rules do you want to see enacted to help manage content? If we remove things, it’s hard for you as the community to see what is the spectrum of content that comes onto the subreddit to better adjust the rules.
At the end of the month, mods will review the traffic stats, sub engagement, overall pacing. THEN, we’ll do a town hall / survey with the whole sub how you’d like to proceed in adjusting the rules. We will share our engagement statistics pre and post change, and discuss what we saw from our moderation perspective. We think this will be an effective ‘reset’ button on the rules and see what ones the community values. After September, we’ll make a call on what stays / what remains after this experiment.
We think this is the best way to truly put all the rules to the test and give them a fair shake of being evaluated, in the strongest community-driven way we know of. This means that for the month of September, the r/xxfitness community can communally test out whether the voting system works for organising content, which Weekly or Daily threads make sense, and if we want medical advice to come through, among others. We would like to see the users who voiced strong concerns in the last thread use this as an opportunity to show us that they can actively participate.
Users may also repost the posts that mods removed in the past, in fact I would like to encourage this. I want to see that people are taking active steps in making r/xxfitness the place that they want it to be.
I would also like to encourage users to provide full answers to questions and not link or direct anyone to the FAQ; we understand that this has been found by people to be dismissive and in some cases condescending. If a question comes up, please provide answers yourself. If you would like to link to external sites for information, you may of course do so.
We anticipate that the community will calibrate to what’s working and what doesn’t, and we’ll have a set of rules that really works for the community. At the end of the day, we want this to be a great place for you and we’re looking forward to trying this with you, and making r/xxfitness as good as can be!
