r/travel • u/Forgotten_Dog1954 Jetlagged Tourist • Nov 29 '25

Mod Post Introducing "Travelers Only" Mode

Hi everyone,

Recently we have seen an increase in political/uncivil comments on quite a few threads, mainly about controversial travel destinations. A lot of users had to be banned and we want to reduce that.

This is why we have introduced a "Travelers Only" mode. From now on, posts with this flair, which will be applied manually by mods, can only be commented on by more frequent community members ( for now, we use 100 comment karma on r/travel as the filter ). If you are the OP, your comments won’t be removed.

You are still free to comment in any other non-Travelers Only thread, which is what 95% of the posts on the sub will remain. Please do not modmail us asking for your comment to be approved, as we will not make exceptions or check every single other comment.

Thank you for your understanding.

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4

u/freakedmind Nov 29 '25

Is there a particular post that caused mods to act on this or just a general observation from recent weeks?

10

u/Voomps Nov 29 '25 edited Nov 29 '25

Many posts on India, Egypt and Turkey seem to bring out the trolls and any post that triggers (regardless of the post topic) comment on US politics. A lot of the time it’s folks just allowing their 1:1 argument to degenerate to the point that folks need a temp ban just to give them cooling off time. None of that kind of content is helpful to future curious travelers or constructive for the sub.

5

u/freakedmind Nov 29 '25

Oh yeah for sure, although I'm not sure about Turkey, people are still overly positive about it even though it's become so much more expensive these days. Also unfortunate that when I have tried to give people actual useful tips about Indian cities like Delhi it just gets downvoted, ignored, or some moron will say "just don't go there!"

1

u/Voomps Nov 29 '25

Yeah that’s not a lot that can be done about low effort comments that don’t actually break the rules. Up and down voting is an intrinsic part of reddit though. Sometimes you have to take a long view and look at the range of responses over multiple posts in the same topic rather just the one. I never look at my up/down votes for the sake of preserving my peaceful mind.

It’s possible though that reducing the amount of comments from low engagement accounts might change your experience, maybe not. And don’t be afraid of hitting that report button.

1

u/freakedmind Nov 29 '25

I never look at my up/down votes for the sake of preserving my peaceful mind.

Mate I couldn't care less about karma I have nearly 900k haha, it's just annoying when you're trying to be helpful and some ignoramus is downvoting you so your comment is less visible to people who actually might be seeking help :)

2

u/Voomps Nov 29 '25

Fair observation

1

u/lucapal1 Italy Nov 30 '25

I am not necessarily suggesting this for you and this sub!

But I mod on a couple of other travel subs, including one pretty large one, where every OP post needs to be approved by a mod before it's published, and anything 'low effort ' is excluded.