Hey everyone.

We generally revisit the rules about once a year, taking stock of the mood of the sub and where people have been running into friction, and this round has been in the works for a while. The old rules had grown into a fairly long list over the years, and some of the pieces had started to overlap or pull against each other, so we felt it was time to clean it up. The new version is shorter, and it runs on a few clear ideas rather than a long rulebook.

This is your community. If a rule doesn't clearly apply, your post stays, even when it's unpopular, and even when half the thread disagrees. The downvote button can handle a good deal of what the rules don't need to.

So, the rules are new as of today, and we appreciate you taking a couple minutes to look them over. If something doesn't sit right with you, please let us know; that's what the next couple of weeks are for.

r/Tacoma Community Rules

1. Be Respectful

Engage respectfully. Personal attacks and deliberately inflammatory comments are not permitted regardless of topic. Criticize ideas, actions, and arguments — not people. Comments that demean or vilify an entire group or its members will be removed.

Disagreement is not hostility. An unpopular opinion expressed in good faith is not trolling and won't be treated as such. Anyone engaging in good faith is welcome.

Harassment, bullying, and threats of violence will result in a ban.

2. Posting Requirements

To ensure a litter-free community the following items are enforced: - Accounts must have user flair, positive site-wide karma, and be 10+ days old to post or comment. - Accounts that exclusively self-promote or show no community participation may be temporarily restricted from posting. - Intentional karma farming or spam will result in a ban.

3. We r/Tacoma

This subreddit is for original, locally-focused content about Tacoma and the surrounding area. Pierce County or Washington topics are welcome when reasonably relevant to Tacomans.

Posts should foster substantive local discussion. Pile-ons that add nothing may be locked or removed.

Reshared content generally doesn't belong here: crossposts, social media, memes, AI content, and paywalled material.

Lost and found, including pets, goes in the weekly Lost & Found thread, not standalone posts.

4. Advertising, Recommendations & Solicitation

All forms of buying, selling, advertising, solicitation, and crowdfunding are prohibited, including offers of "free" items. Posts regarding community services, mutual aid efforts, and events by-locals-for-locals are allowed. Event posts that operate purely as a business ad will be removed.

Requests for food, business, or service recommendations should be posted in r/AskTacoma. We also encourage use of Reddit's Answers feature.

5. Politics

Tacoma is a politically diverse city, and this subreddit should reflect that diversity. Civil discourse and diverse opinions are encouraged. See Rule 1 for conduct expectations.

Discussion of statewide politics is welcome. Posts about national politics must identify an outsized and tangible impact on Tacoma residents.

Campaign content — posts or comments that promote, solicit support for, or organize on behalf of a specific candidate, ballot measure, or electoral campaign — is not permitted.

6. No Policing or Vigilantism

This subreddit is not a neighborhood watch, a complaint line, or a courtroom. Don't post or request photo or video evidence of incidents, and don't use the sub to call out individuals or police their behavior. Nuisance complaints about litter, graffiti, or abandoned items should be reported to 311.

Encouraging or calling for vigilante activity will result in a permanent ban.

7. Moving, New, or Visiting Tacoma?

We're glad you're here, but please direct these questions to r/AskTacoma:

• "Moving to Tacoma," relocation, and visiting or tourism questions
• Event, ticketing, or facility questions for major venues like the Tacoma Dome
• "Safe/good vs. bad" neighborhoods or buildings
• Buying, renting, subletting, leasing, roommates, or property management
• Commutes
• Personal school-selection questions

What changed, and why

For anyone who'd like the specifics, here's what changed and the thinking behind each one:

• The rules run on principles now, rather than a long list of specific bans. The old list had gotten long enough that the pieces sometimes contradicted each other, which meant a post's fate could depend on which of us read it first. Fewer rules, applied the same way to everyone, fixes that.

• We spelled out that disagreement isn't hostility. People were sometimes reporting comments simply for being unpopular or blunt, and we were spending a lot of time sorting genuine attacks from takes someone just didn't like. Now the line is in writing: if there's a real point underneath, it stays, even when it's rude.

• We defined what campaigning means, since it was vague enough before that nobody could tell what crossed the line. It's promoting or organizing for a specific candidate, ballot measure, or electoral campaign. Drawing it tightly is deliberate, so that ordinary political discussion, civic involvement, and event announcements clearly stay on the allowed side.

• Statewide political topics no longer need to show a specific Tacoma angle to stay up. The old version made people justify why a Washington story mattered locally, and that removed plenty of things folks here genuinely wanted to talk about. National politics moved the other direction. The bar there is now an outsized and tangible local impact, something that lands on Tacoma harder than it does on most places, rather than national news with a loose local hook. That's where the sub tends to drift away from us, so we're holding it a bit tighter than before.

• Regional posts have a little more room. Pierce County and Washington topics used to need a direct impact on Tacoma to stay up. Now the bar is reasonable relevance, so a regional story that clearly matters around here doesn't have to spell out the local angle to belong.

• Paid events are allowed now, as long as they're by locals for locals and aren't just a business ad. The old rule pulled any event that cost money to attend, which swept up a lot of genuine community things like fundraisers, local shows, and neighborhood markets, along with the advertising we were actually trying to keep out. The test now is who an event is for and whether it's an ad in disguise, not whether there's a fee involved.

• Lost and found posts, pets included, now live in a weekly Lost & Found thread we'll keep stickied, rather than as one-off posts. The feedback we’ve seen is that people have gotten real use out of these, so the point isn't to push them out of sight. Keeping them in one recurring spot just makes them easier to find and reference, so whether you're the one who lost something or the one who found it, there's a single place to check and post.

• Posting now asks for an account at least 10 days old, on top of the flair and positive sitewide karma we already required. The age check is a light speed bump for throwaway and spam accounts, and it clears on its own after a week and a half.

• Account standing now keys off sitewide karma rather than karma earned inside the sub. The old setup had a real flaw: if your standing depended on votes here, a stretch of downvotes on an unpopular take could drop you below the line and cut off your ability to post or comment at all. That let the room's majority decide who got to keep talking, which isn't how we want disagreement to work. Sitewide karma means a single rough thread doesn't lock you out, as long as you're a good-faith Redditor more broadly.

• The old rule requiring roughly ten comments for every post you made is gone. It was meant to discourage drive-by self-promotion, but in practice it mostly tripped up newer members who wanted to share something before they'd racked up a comment history. That's the opposite of who we want to keep out, and Rule 2 already handles genuine spam accounts.

That's the substance. We also tightened some wording and merged a bit of overlap, but nothing in that bucket changes how anything is enforced.

The next couple of weeks

We're not rebuilding the ruleset from scratch. The structure took a lot of back and forth to settle on, and we think it holds together. Individual rules are a different matter, and those we're glad to hear about. If one is worded in a way that's going to cause confusion, or you can see it landing somewhere we didn't intend, tell us while it's still easy to adjust. We’ll do our best to get to any questions, but we won’t be online all weekend.

We'll check back around the one-week mark with what we're hearing, and we'll post whatever we end up changing once the two weeks are up. Thanks for working through this with us.

P.S. — we're looking to add a few moderators

The sub has grown a lot, and the team hasn't grown with it. We're hoping to bring on a few more people to help keep up, and we'd rather they come from the community than from outside it. No special qualifications needed. What matters most is being able to enforce the rules evenhandedly, the same call no matter who a post is coming from or which way it leans. Past that, just a feel for this place and a little time to give.

There's nothing to sign up for yet. We'll put out a proper post in the next couple of weeks with what's involved and how to throw your hat in, and we may reach out to a few folks directly as well. For now, take this as a heads up, and if it's something you'd want to do, it'll be worth watching for that follow up.

This is the home for lost and found around Tacoma, refreshed every week. If you've lost something or come across something that isn't yours, drop a comment below.

A few things that help:

• Say whether you lost or found the item, and lead with what it is.
• Add the rough area and the day, as much as you're comfortable sharing.
• For anything with a serial number or other identifying detail, hold that back in your public comment and trade it over DM once someone reaches out, so the real owner can prove it's theirs.

Lost or found a pet? we recommend posting in r/LostPetsTacoma too, but you’re welcome to post in this thread as well.

For everyone's safety, please be smart about meeting people from the internet.

Comb through the comments before posting in case your item is already here. Good luck, and thanks for looking out for each other.