TL;DR:
Soliciting feedback on two changes to how /r/BuyItForLife works:
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We have a pinned regular (either monthly or weekly) show-and-tell thread where people can post things that have lasted for a long time, but can no longer be easily purchased new. Standalone posts that fit these criteria will be removed, and a mod will try to message the poster recommending that they add it to the show-and-tell thread.
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Frequently-posted items (e.g. socks, thermoses) will be considered "low effort" (and therefore removed), even if they can still be purchased for the same quality as new. The exception will be if they contain some "new" information about the brand/item (e.g. different manufacturing process/location, degrade in quality, new produt line).
Hey all,
One challenge in moderating a sizeable subreddit is making sure that people can both contribute to/participate in the community while, at the same time, get something out of other members' contributions. We see the complaints about how the subreddit has shifted away from its roots of in-depth discussions, requests, and deep-dives. We also see that many of the highest-upvoted posts (past month and year) are items that have lasted a long time but aren't necessarily still available for purchase, or are posted about on a regular basis.
I'm sorry we've been slow to act on these your complaints, but we're hoping we can count on your feedback while we figure out how to best get our subreddit back to a better balance between those two categories of posts.
We're proposing two changes to how /r/BuyItForLife works:
-
We have a pinned regular (either monthly or weekly) show-and-tell thread where people can post things that have lasted for a long time, but can no longer be easily purchased new. Standalone posts that fit these criteria will be removed, and a mod will try to message the poster recommending that they add it to the show-and-tell thread. Items that can still be purchased new easily (i.e. not an unopened box from Ebay) can be posted on their on own rather than in the show-and-tell thread.
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Frequently-posted items (e.g. socks, thermoses) will be considered "low effort" (and therefore removed), even if they can still be purchased for the same quality as new. The exception will be if they contain some "new" information about the brand/item (e.g. different manufacturing process/location, degrade in quality, new produt line).
A week or so back, I went through the first 50 posts on BuyItForLife's frontpage, and came up with the following groups (some double-categorized as appropriate):
- 18: old items that would be considered "show-and-tell"; these aren't easily-buyable, or the manufacturing quality has supposedly decreased over time
- 21: requests for BIFL recommendations
- 7: posts for specific items that have proven themselves but are still easily-buyable as new and haven't changed in quality
- 4: questions (either about brands/items or meta)
- 6: in-depth discussions
It's clear from the kinds of posts that bubble up to our front page that people love sharing items with backstories and personal history. Also, given the sheer number of upvotes and comments on those posts, that they get some of the highest levels of participation. We (the mod team) do not benefit at all from having high subscriber counts, highly-voted posts hitting /r/all, or high levels of participation, but this is a very general indicator of what kinds of posts you - the subscribers - like seeing. We don't want to ban this content out-right, but we think there's a better way to accept these types of posts - one that doesn't regularly drown out the other types of posts.
We've tried something simillar to these show-and-tell threads in the past, but it seemed people were confused as to how specifically they were meant to be used. We hope this is more clear.
These new policies are not yet in effect. Right now, we're just getting your thoughts. So far as that feedback goes, we have three main questions:
- What do you think of these two new policies?
- Is there something else that you think may work?
- Are there additional rules that you think the subreddit would benefit from?
We're going to gather feedback on these changes for a week or so, then huddle back together to finalize things. Your participation in this forum about the proposed policies is valuable and appreciated, so please comment and vote!
Thanks for reading,
/u/shadowthunder and your /r/BuyItForLife mod team
Submitted October 21, 2018 at 06:29PM by shadowthunder https://ift.tt/2NZzJiw
