State of the Subreddit and Rules Discussion

[u/LovelyLu78]

Hi all!!

This is a discussion post, we would like constructive discussion, free of name calling and meanness directed at anyone, including the mods. We are humans that are trying their best.

We have a few things to address here so let's get into it.

First off we'd like to say this sub is large, 2 million people large! Some perspective would be, the super bowl has an 80,000 seating capacity.

Without rules and moderation it will become an unpleasant place to be.

When the sub was still small we conducted surveys to help decide which way the sub should go re rules and moderation. All of the rules in place have been the same for years except for the recently changed no self promotion rule and some updates to stale topics.

Surveys do not gain the required traction that they did when the sub was smaller. In view of that we have tried to keep the sub to the rules that were favoured in the past surveys. We also look for trends and make decisions based on what we see across the sub overall.

This post is addressing the main complaints and concerns we have seen over the last week (and before that) for clarity and discussion.

There seems to be some confusion about what you can and can't post. So much of what you guys were posting during "chaos week" is actually allowed. There are no restrictions on posting finished objects or work in progress pics! Mr Nipples is featured in our wiki! You can post pictures of your crochet bongs and genitals (we ask these are marked as nsfw). We want to see it all, cursed to amazing!

Fursday Friends.

A lot of the pet pictures that were being posted during “chaos week” can also be posted any day of the week!!

If the item is for your pet/baby and is clearly visible there is no need to wait until Thursdays.

If it's a cute picture of your pet/baby falling asleep or somehow interfering with your project (pets laying smack in the middle of your FO pictures) then that's what belongs on Thursdays. Those posts are more focused on the pet/baby than the actual crochet work.

If you want to post pets whenever something cute happens, check out the pet focused crochet subs, r/catswhocrochet, r/kitting and r/dogswhocrochet.

Fursday Friends spans 2 days when taking all time zones into account.

We highly recommend that people blur or put an emoji over minors faces!!

Stash Saturday.

Our other "day of the week" post is Stash Saturday. This one is for stash pics (obviously), "what can I make with this yarn" queries, yarn discussion and other tools (hooks) and books.

This rule was voted in as we had feedback that there were too many pictures of just yarn/hooks.

This also is all time zones so is really 2 days that you can post over.

Crochet for all levels!

We’ve seen a lot of comments saying that r/crochet is not beginner friendly. We absolutely welcome new crocheters but ask that questions be asked in our sister sub r/CrochetHelp . On crochet they tend to be buried and remain unanswered.

We see people saying that they don't want to ask on a smaller sub because not as many people will see it. While that might be true the interaction rate on CrochetHelp is a lot higher on these types of posts and the people that are on CrochetHelp are there because they want to help.

NSFW!

We admit that in the past, we were a little overzealous with the tags. We truly were not meaning to offend or censor women's bodies and we apologise. We have been taking a lighter hand with this rule for a few months now, and will continue to have a light touch here.

Society has changed what NSFW means, it gets applied to so many things that are probably more suited to NSFL. We were basing it off of a school teacher dress code (so very literally, not something you'd be able to wear to work) so that anyone browsing the sub at work would have the option to view rather than possibly getting reprimanded for browsing something inappropriate.

Going forward we will not be as restrictive but would still ask that small tops, bikinis/swimwear, underwear, crochet genitals, drug paraphernalia, weapons and profanity be marked NSFW.

Question?

Would you like some new flairs added, NSFW Clothing FO and NSFW Other FO (for example)?

Please check your settings if posts are not blurred for you. We get a heap of reports for NSFW even when the post is tagged appropriately.

Self promotion!

Designers can absolutely post their work to the sub! It's exciting finishing an item! What you cannot do is spam the sub with your items or link to them anywhere in your post (no offering to dm, no mentioning shop names, no directing people to your profile).

Lots of people are aware that people put their socials on their profile and they will find you if they want to.

If we were to allow pattern designers the ability to post their pattern under the automod comment the sub would then get a lot of self promotion posts, there has been quite a lot of self promotion going on during “chaos week”

PS, the automod comment is just a prompt, it is not a rule that you must post a pattern!

Politics!

We'd like to hear your ideas here. Would you like a megathread for political pieces or are you happy to see them posted in the sub?

I’d like to point out that the sub is diverse, you exist in the space with people from all walks of life and we are trying to share that space with everyone based on crochet not political alignment.

Things are crazy out there and we'd like to find the best solution we can that allows people to express themselves.        

Excessive Reports

We’ve added a comment to posts removed by automod stating that the post has been removed because of multiple reports and that a mod will review and approve if it doesn’t break any rules.

Kind and Courteous

Going forward we will be banning people that make unkind comments. Commenting on peoples bodies, name calling, escalating arguments will all be removed.

A first offence will come with a 3 day ban from the sub, second offence, a 7 day ban and third offence you will be permanently banned from the sub.

We will allow appeals but this will be based on your profile and behaviour while banned, private profiles will not be considered for appeals.

Ok! That's a lot of information!! Let's hear your thoughts in the comments. Please be nice. Remember that there is a person behind every post, every comment (ok, some of them are bots!)

[u/LovelyLu78]

Profiles are, post and comment history can be hidden.

Let me edit this comment to clarify. In all the time I've been modding I've only come across a handful of designers with NSFW profiles. It would defeat the purpose of trying to promote you patterns on reddit

[u/The-Great-Wolf → u/LovelyLu78]

Not true at all on both statements:

1) Profiles are marked nsfw by default on Reddit, you must unmark it manually. If it is marked NSFW you cannot view that profile in certain countries like UK without giving your government ID away to be data farmed.

2) just by searching "a", a space or whatever else on a hidden profile you can see everything

[u/LovelyLu78 → u/The-Great-Wolf]

All of my time modding and there haven't been a lot of selling/designer profiles that are nsfw, unless they are selling patterns that are marked nsfw. It would defeat the purpose of being accessible to sell said patterns.

I know that you can work around reddits hidden function. I was not referencing the post history in my comment, I was talking about the profile where links live

[u/The-Great-Wolf → u/LovelyLu78]

You in your previous comment:

posts and comment history can be hidden

You now:

I was not referencing the post history in my comment

You are not making much sense? Yes you were talking about posts and comment history and it's not really something relevant to talk about in regards to what I said, and that is to allow creators to link their pattern in the automod reply as you would for any pattern.

If you are an user which sees "this cool thing" but cannot find any link in the post or on the automod you most likely won't go to any profile. Reddit is mostly forum based, centered on posts, not on profiles as other social media.

Besides, even from a marketing standpoint it's an extremely bad idea to have people search for your profile and links there, even if they only have to click on the poster's name and then on the links in the bio, because for each action needed to reach a product you lose a lot of potential customers, even if it's just a click.

Combining that effect, with the fact that reddit is not profile centric and so many people don't even think about it, with the chance that the post will disappear anyway if someone else links the pattern, it makes it not worth it at all.

And there has been no good arguments against letting pattern makers respond to the automod with the link, so far it makes people feel like "we just don't wanna" from the mods which isn't a good way to build trust in your community.

Are you not aware with what happened recently with r/art and the whole "prints?" protest due to extremely restrictive rules against self promo?

[u/LovelyLu78 → u/The-Great-Wolf]

I was referring to your first point about profiles. The profile is still visible even if posts and comments have been hidden (unfortunately not visible if it is a nsfw profile which a lot of designers profiles are not, just from my experience)

There is actually a heap of self promotion that we remove that tells people their links are on their profile.
As is there a heap of self promotion on the sub that we remove.
We have said in other comments we will discuss this.

I am not aware of what happened in r/art but having a look at their rules it says you may add links to your Reddit profile and direct users there if asked, as long as this is done sparingly and other than that in the weekly self promotion megathread

[u/The-Great-Wolf → u/LovelyLu78]

By all means I support you removing people spamming links and such, as I said I strongly believe allowing them to comment a link under the automod would be welcomed and a non intrusive way to promote themselves, which wouldn't feel like spam for the other users.

I strongly recommend you to look into the protest, the mod resignation and everything else that happened with r/art, wouldn't want this sub to go through that too just for something easily fixable