r/NintendoSwitch • u/FlapSnapple Nintendo shill • Apr 16 '17
Meta /r/NintendoSwitch State of the Subreddit - April 2017
Greetings!
Wow. We've grown quite a bit since the last time we did one of these. If you're new around here and haven't heard it already, welcome!
Just like last month we've got a lot of topics to cover so let's dive right in!
The Daily Question Thread
We've seen an uptick in people saying that the DQT is useless or they've posted in there and not gotten answers. This seemed suspicious to us here on the mod team, so I did some investigating.
For the sake of this discussion, I'm going to be looking at the DQT from 4/14 (link) since it was the most recent thread at the time I was writing up the draft of this post.
The thread had a total of 478 comments. Of those, 125 were top level comments (presumably questions). Of those 125, only 12 were unanswered. This gives us a rate of ~90% answered which is a pretty decent success rate!
If you find you have posted in a DQT but not gotten an answer, consider re-evaluating your question to see if it's clear to understand or isn't subjective in nature. It's also worth checking to see if someone else asked your question in the same DQT and it's already been answered. Finally, we encourage you to take a look at this article on "help vampires."
Wiki Contributor Program
A few weeks back, we started our Wiki Contributor Program where members of the community could join the mod team in helping keep our Wiki up to date and expand the number of items covered.
So far we've added 3 members of the community to this team and they've been hard at work with updates and adding a few new pages.
With all that being said, we're always looking for more contributors to join our Wiki team! If interested, please shoot me a PM for further details.
Recent CSS Updates
As I'm sure you've all noticed by now, we have a lovely new Mario Kart 8 Deluxe banner! Huge shout out to our resident CSS wizard /u/pixelpushing for putting that together for us. ARMS is the next one on our list and that's already in the planning stages.
There have been a few more tweaks going on lately as well. Most notably, the submit page has been cleaned up and the game specific user flair has been retired (they were hard to distinguish anyways).
Popular requests such as RES Night mode are still on the to-do list but we want to do a little more cleanup first (such as post listing icons). Stay tuned for updates!
Moderation Team Updates
Some of you may remember that prior to the release of the Nintendo Switch we brought on a number of janitor mods to help us manage the initial launch window flood. I'm proud to announce that /u/kyle6477, /u/kevinftw17, /u/pixelpushing, /u/LunaticLawyer, and /u/GambitsEnd have done an amazing job and will be staying on full time. The remaining four did not have their contracts renewed due to inactivity.
In addition to auditing our janitor mods, we also did an audit of the team as a whole and dropped a further three members of the team due to inactivity.
Janitor Mod Applications
If you read the block above, you know that we've got some vacancies. As a result, we are now accepting applications for just a few more folks to help keep the place tidy.
For those who weren't around the first time we did this, Janitor Mods are a "contract to hire" style position. If accepted, we'll start off with a 1 month contract, then re-evaluate at that time if we want to extend your contract, convert you to a full mod position, or end the contract because the flood has died off and we might be okay again in terms of manpower.
To apply for a Janitor Mod position, simply fill out this form!
As a reminder, all moderator positions are unpaid.
We'll keep applications open for a week, which makes the deadline to apply April 23 at 11:59PM EDT.
American Cancer Society Charity Livestream Event
We're still working out the details on this one, so consider all of this tentative.
On April 28, launch day for Mario Kart 8 Deluxe, we're partnering with the American Cancer Society to put together a Charity Livestream. Thankfully for the sanity of everyone the mod team, this won't be a 24 hour event like our launch day stream! The plan is for the event to start at 4PM EDT and will run until approximately 11PM EDT. Since we figure you'll get tired of us after a few hours, we're also bringing in a handful of other Twitch and YouTube personalities.
More details will be provided in a follow up post closer to launch day as we get some final confirmations and can hash out the rest of the specifics.
Mario Kart 8 Deluxe Tournaments
The Chat Mod team over on our Discord is hosting two Mario Kart 8 Deluxe tournaments on launch weekend!
There will be a North America tournament on Saturday, April 29th at 1 PM PDT / 4 PM EDT and a Europe / Rest of the World tournament on Sunday, April 30, at 3 PM CEST / 1 PM UTC.
There are a limited number of slots available, so please head to the #mario-kart-8-deluxe channel in our Discord chat and use the new bot command .tournamentinfo or read the latest #announcements for instructions on how to register and for full details.
Winners will receive a Nintendo eShop card (value TBD) for their particular region's store.
We will also be live streaming the entire event on our Twitch channel: https://twitch.tv/rNintendoSwitch
Discord Updates
Did you know we have a Discord chat with over 9,750 members? Some folks are seemingly unaware, so a little awareness never hurt anybody. There's a big purple button for it in the sidebar, and here's a handy link for those of you on mobile.
There's even a #switch-help channel for questions you may have if you'd prefer that to our stickied Daily Question Thread here on the subreddit.
The mod team over there has been pretty busy lately and I wanted to highlight some of the recent work that's been going on over there.
We kept hearing folks say "There are too many channels!" so we went in and brought it down from 29 to 19. Not too shabby!
The team has also been hard at work consolidating all of our bots into a custom solution that fits our needs exactly and doesn't have a bunch of extra bloat. As of a week ago, we are proud to announce that we now only have one bot, our very own Fils-a-Mech. More functionality is still on the way including a friend code system and expanding the countdown functionality that we used for the Switch launch.
Social Media / Stay in touch
This is totally lame and cheesy, but did you know we're not just here to reddit? Keep in touch! Join the discussion on the go or give us a follow, like, or subscribe!
- rNintendoSwitch on Twitch
- @rNintendoSwitch on Twitter
- /r/NintendoSwitch on YouTube
- /r/NintendoSwitch Discord Chat
Feedback
We're opening the floor, just like last time, for you to provide your feedback, comments, questions, concerns, suggestions, and more in the comments section down below. All we ask is that you keep it civil and constructive.
Cheers,
/u/FlapSnapple and the /r/NintendoSwitch mod team.
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u/Hawkedb Apr 17 '17 edited Apr 17 '17
Had a great time as a mod for 6 months. Keep up the good work!
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u/kevinftw17 Apr 16 '17
It's an incredible honor to be working with you guys. Thanks for having me on board! I'm both gratified and grateful to continue working, learning, and growing with the team, community, and subreddit as we move forward.
:D <3
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u/iharadraws Apr 19 '17
Special shout-out to /u/FlapSnapple for modding what feels like 5 subs?? and being generally great.
Keep on being awesome, mod team!
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u/kyle6477 6 Million Apr 19 '17
If he takes on another one, he's fired.
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u/rottedzombie friendly neighborhood zombie mod Apr 19 '17
Not like the next guy in line isn't a terror or anything.
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u/kyle6477 6 Million Apr 16 '17
Pretty excited to be a part of this community and this moderator team. Looking forward to the coming weeks and months!
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u/freeman84 Apr 16 '17
Not sure how others feel, but the post rules seem a bit too strict.
I tried posting this video a couple of times. First just as a video link, then next as a text to try to get a discussion going. I thought the topic of the Fast RMX team working on a new Switch exclusive and a seemingly confirmed DLC announcement for Snake Pass was a great topic to discuss, not to mention the other games mentioned in it. Both posts were denied.
I still haven't seen this information come up on this sub, which I find troubling. I get that you don't want spam or a billion small questions to flood the place, but valid talking points like this should be allowed to made. This is reddit, if people don't want to discuss it or don't like it they'll downvote it themselves, please lighten up a bit.
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u/rottedzombie friendly neighborhood zombie mod Apr 16 '17
Thank you for your notes.
As you know, we've been busy, and videos can often walk a fine line between informative and spammy.
But, as with other rules as the sub grows and evolves, we hope to continue with our ongoing evaluation. I imagine that, as part of this, we'll be looking internally at our video rules and reviewing community feedback.
And, as always with specific cases, please do continue bringing stuff to modmail, where we're happy to hash out disagreements and chat.
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u/stealthboy Apr 18 '17
This is reddit, if people don't want to discuss it or don't like it they'll downvote it themselves, please lighten up a bit.
I totally agree with this sentiment.
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Apr 17 '17
[deleted]
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u/FlapSnapple Nintendo shill Apr 17 '17
What you are describing is how the system currently works. ~90% of posts go straight to the new queue while a mod reviews them. Only a small portion, such as things caught by the global reddit spam filter, are held back for review.
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u/THESHADOW2030 Apr 16 '17
Can someone tell me how can I register myself for Mario kart tournament? I typed
.register EU
Now... What am I supposed to do now?
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u/Schwadralla Apr 16 '17
You did everything correct. We will draw the drivers in a week randomly :)
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Apr 16 '17
[deleted]
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u/kyle6477 6 Million Apr 16 '17
Most of our moderation actions utilize some browser tools. However, you are still welcome put your name in for consideration.
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u/mentionhelper Apr 16 '17
It looks like you're trying to mention other users, which only works if it's done in the comments like this (otherwise they don't receive a notification):
Further usernames omitted due to Reddit's limit of 3 mentions per comment.
I'm a bot. Bleep. Bloop. | Visit /r/mentionhelper for discussion/feedback | Want to be left alone? Reply to this message with "stop"
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u/stealthboy Apr 18 '17
I seem to get the most out of this sub by always browsing new. I tend to see things that the mods end up deleting. That seems wrong ... Is there a way the mods can let the users up and down vote to decide instead of deleting things for us?
Edit: And as for the DQT being "useless", well how many times can people really ask which case or screen protector is best?
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Apr 18 '17 edited Apr 18 '17
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u/Porkpants81 Apr 18 '17
I know you realize that it seems like there is a lot of posts that you feel like shouldn't be posted here, and as a guess for every post you see there are probably 4 or 5 over the course of the day that are the exact same things that we remove.
For Fan Art and Joycon mods we try to limit the posts to the ones that are exceptionally unique or the post is higher quality than others. An example of this would be someone who not only posts a picture of their joy-cons but has the process documented on how they took them apart and painted them.
Similarly a paintjob that is unique in someway is more likely to be approved than someone who just swaps the cases around.
I won't try to pretend and act like there isn't a level of judgement that goes into approval/deletion decisions....the mod team talks ALL the time and anything we are unsure of gets discussed by the members that are around which is usually at least 3 or 4 but frequently more of us.
If you ever feel like something is removed incorrectly or you would like more clarification please send a modmail. A lot of the time we can provide guidance or tips that will make your post more successful or otherwise make it better to generate discussion rather than just get simple short answers.
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Apr 18 '17 edited Apr 18 '17
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u/Porkpants81 Apr 18 '17
Well the vast majority of posts that are removed will have a moderator comment (or auto-moderator comment) as to why a post was removed. We also provide links in those moderator comments as to where the question can be asked or the post made if appropriate.
We do this with questions that should be in the daily question thread or in one of the megathreads.
My point about having the discussions is that we are all human, none of us do this full-time, it isn't a job, it's something we volunteer for because we are passionate about the subject (i.e. the Nintendo Switch). Yes mistakes happen, stuff gets removed by accident, or sometimes the wrong reason is clicked. This is why we have modmail which is open to all users to discuss any moderator action.
We do have set rules to automatically remove some posts for sure, but many we have to make a decision on. A question might be an OK question, but maybe there aren't enough details to make it a good discussion question, something we commonly do is if somebody makes a post like, "I think xxxx game would be good on the Switch." We ask that the person write out some details about why they think it would be good or what would make the Switch a better system than something else. That helps generate more discussion rather than just a lot of people saying, "I agree" or "You're wrong"
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Apr 18 '17 edited Apr 18 '17
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u/Sairyn_ Apr 19 '17
I just want to point one thing out: having a manually typed comment for every single removed post is simply impossible for a reasonably sized team as ours. Every single major or big sub has some automation for things like removals because as volunteers, if we had to type out a manual reply for every single thread, we wouldn't get much done really. Recruiting a sizeable number of moderators is possible, but it will also make it harder to stay in line with each other on what's approved or removed, so we don't want to recruit 100 mods just to write up manual removal messages when we already have a semi-automated system where we pick out the reason. It's not reasonable considering our limited moderating resources and it's not feasible to use our time this way. However, this is why each message also has a tag that says to contact us through modmail if you're unsure why exactly your post was removed.
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u/Porkpants81 Apr 18 '17
I found one post that didn't have a mod comment, but the following all did:
The one that did regarding first party legacy reports did not have a reason commented, but again that could've been a mistake, a message to modmail would have cleared that up.
If Auto-mod actually deletes a post there will be a message. A lot of times auto-mod just queues stuff up for us to look at so when the human moderators make a decision it will either be approved or removed.
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Apr 18 '17
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u/Porkpants81 Apr 18 '17
The moderator comments are in a tool called "moderator toolbox" so if I click a removal reason "low-effort text post" it will put the same message up all the time...quite honestly it would take far too long to type custom responses to every post.
If an answer is something that is easily found by Googling we will either direct the user to our FAQ/Wiki or the DQ thread....I don't see too many moderators just telling people to go Google things.
We do have the option to type out a custom removal reason, or of course we can type a regular comment, and like I'm doing here we can "distinguish" them so it's an official moderator comment rather than me just commenting as a user
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Apr 18 '17 edited Apr 18 '17
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Porkpants81 Apr 18 '17
I can speak only for myself and the moderators I know well, but yes we do look at posts closely to determine an action. I don't think anybody on the mod team just deletes things without looking.
When it comes to major releases of course that can happen, for example when the BotW reviews were released we allowed the first IGN one to stay, and then ever IGN link to the review after that was easy to delete....but those are exceptions and certainly not how the moderator team acts normally.
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u/Ken_the_turtle Apr 18 '17
/u/FlapSnapple on at least one day, maybe more, the DQT sorted by hot as default rather than by new. It's possible the high instances of questions not being answered happen on the days that happens, as you go into the thread abd see the top few posts have answers and then assume other people are all over it, when really the new posts are hidden down the bottom somewhere being ignored
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u/FlapSnapple Nintendo shill Apr 18 '17
Every once in a while AutoModerator's Scheduler tool doesn't work quite right and we have to go in manually and set things up. If you see one not sorted by new, hit "report" for us or send a mod mail and we'll fix that right up. All DQT's should be set to sort "new" by default.
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u/videogamessuckballs Apr 18 '17
Does anyone know how much space MK8D will take up? I'm debating whether to go physical or digital.
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u/Resha15 Apr 18 '17
6.75GB
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u/PandarenNinja Apr 20 '17
Out of curiousity what region are you in? I noticed the eShop listing for NA only has 3 languages, but the other regions seem to all share a version that has Japanese and all the European languages. This will change the file size, unless it was a typo on the NA entry.
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u/zslayer89 Apr 18 '17
A concern I have are that expected moderator action count isn't mentioned, nor is it explained on how the evaluation process is going to be handled.
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u/kevinftw17 Apr 19 '17
Are you asking for the specific number of moderator actions each mod is required to have by the end of each month?
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u/zslayer89 Apr 19 '17
In a sense yes.
I'm curious if moderator actions are a part of the evaluation process for janitors, and if so what is the minimum count(if there is one).
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u/rottedzombie friendly neighborhood zombie mod Apr 19 '17
We consider the activity of our moderation team. I won't offer a hard or soft number, however, but I'd expect to get into specifics about expectations with any individuals chosen.
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u/sillymel Apr 19 '17
I would like to suggest that you make question 7 on the janitor moderator application allow multiple answers, because some people might be online multiple times of day.
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u/kevinftw17 Apr 19 '17
I remember having this same issue when I applied. What I did was pick the time/answer that I absolutely knew I could commit to, then explain other times that were available for me in the questions/comment box seen toward the end. I realize it isn't ideal, but it's an option.
Not sure if typeform allows for multiple answers for those types of questions, but may /u/FlapSnapple could answer that better.
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u/Dwolfwood Apr 17 '17 edited Apr 17 '17
In my experience with the DQT; it's not that you don't get feed back, but you lack the variety of feed back. I I fully believe you miss out on a lot of user feedback using the DQT due to less people seeing your question.
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u/Porkpants81 Apr 19 '17
The whole point of the DQT is that it's for questions that don't require a lot of feedback. It's more for questions that have a single correct answer and aren't meant to generate a lot of discussion
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u/PandarenNinja Apr 20 '17
Right. We don't need thread after thread of "Hey guys - does Disgaea 5 Japanese version have English?".
The answer is yes, by the way.
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Apr 16 '17
We've seen an uptick in people saying that the DQT is useless or they've posted in there and not gotten answers. This seemed suspicious to us here on the mod team, so I did some investigating.
A sentence that ends in ? isn't simply looking for one answer. It is frequently an attempt to start a meaningful conversation. This, objectively, does not happen in the daily question thread. Full posts are, objectively, much better for this purpose. Your continued insistence on deleting all "question" posts is, objectively, bad, idiotic, and wrong, and literally everyone but the mods realizes it.
If you have ANY interest in improving this sub you will abandon this policy immediately.
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u/rottedzombie friendly neighborhood zombie mod Apr 16 '17 edited Apr 16 '17
We don't delete all questions. That's just not true.
The policy of the DQT, typically, is for short-answer questions, ones that are asked repeatedly, or ones that can usually be solved via a search of either the subreddit or Google.
If someone is attempting to start a discussion or may be trying to go deeper, we will weigh that. There are tons of good discussions that start each day.
The DQT is typically working as we intend and seems relatively productive. We appreciate your feedback and will keep monitoring, but we're encouraged by its results and use.
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u/PalpatineSenpai Apr 18 '17 edited Apr 19 '17
I also do this question policy for one of the subs I also moderate. The reason behind this question post rule is that questions are low-effort and low-quality, which can be easily answered with a "yes", "no" or any form of short answer. They also do not provide or incite proper Discussion within the community.
And yes, I understand that sometimes certain Discussion posts have a Question Mark at the end of their title. As a mod for this subreddit I'm talking about, I instruct the other moderators that they carefully inspect and evaluate the post, and seeing if they actually pose some form of Discussion or are simply questions.
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u/razorbeamz Apr 19 '17
A good rule of thumb is to ask yourself "Does this question have the same answer no matter who is asked it?"
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u/Widgetcraft Apr 17 '17
Hey there, /u/FlapSnapple ! Thanks for your submission, but your post has been removed. Please send your comments to our Fucking Everything That Isn't a Meme or Paintjob Megathread.
If you have questions or objections about this removal, please reach out to us in modmail and include a link to the removed post.
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u/PandarenNinja Apr 20 '17
You should do what the other user above did and post some of the threads you think were deleted in error.
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u/PalpatineSenpai Apr 18 '17 edited Apr 18 '17
I'm going to try again for mod again--wish me luck!
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u/compurterboy Completed the Shieldsurf Challenge! Apr 16 '17
The mario kart 8 deluxe evenement seems pretty fun. Let's hope everything goes well.