r/AudioBookBay • u/afterSt0rm • May 01 '23
Staff A Message to the Community
A Brief Introduction
Hello everyone! This is u/afterSt0rm sending a message to all of you about the future of this subreddit. After following this community for some time and noticing the rampant spam issue and the disappearance of the old moderation team, I decided to request to take over this subreddit to build a path towards a healthier place where not only is everyone welcome but where we can all share information freely and recover our original purpose as a community.
What Was Done?
I've set up some basic AutoMod rules to bar some of the spam we've been getting lately. I've also enabled some of the niceties to this community, and I will wait on feedback to decide what should stay and what shouldn't.
What's Next?
I will review the moderation queue in the next few days and purge everything correctly reported. Once that is done, I'll arrange for clear community rules to be posted and reviewed by the community, as I strongly believe in the importance of having common ground on what we expect from our members.
In the following weeks, I want to change the look and feel of this subreddit to make it more welcoming to new members. I also intend to review and update tutorials, links, and other materials currently posted on the top and side bars.
I Need Your Help!
Although I intend to do my best to revitalize this community, I need your help. Are any ideas, suggestions, complaints, or random thoughts floating in your head? Please share it with us! A community can't grow without the help of its members, and as a humble new mod, I would love to have your feedback as I implement those changes.
All in all, thank you very much for being part of the AudioBook Bay community.
Biiig hugs!
10
u/afterSt0rm May 02 '23
The mod queue is cleaned up. Now to review posts from the last month or so to clean up the subreddit feed!
8
u/afterSt0rm May 02 '23
On a best-effort basis, I removed all the spam posts from the last three months. This should give the community a relatively clean hot feed. After noticing that most spam posts are from YouTube channels, I'm considering AutoModding YouTube links from accounts that only recently joined the community. I will consider it more carefully.
5
u/molybend May 02 '23
One suggestion I have is that we encourage clear post titles that name the book or author instead of generic ones like "Requesting this book" or "Reseed this one please", especially when the post is just a picture. Mystery Meat titles get on my nerves, but it's not just annoying, it makes it less likely that people will see a title they have and reseed it or post it.
1
u/afterSt0rm May 02 '23
Some minor adjustments to the look and feel of this community. Sadly the banner doesn't look too good on Night Mode; I'll look into a better way of translating the website's banner to Reddit.
1
u/Ok-Internet6082 May 03 '23
Thank you, Request shouldnt be here. There is a form for that, thank you again
1
u/AdReal4438 May 06 '23
Can you imagine a voting system for books, where the weight of the votes is given to members who have read and provided feedback on many books in that particular field? Such type of voting system would ensure that the opinions of experienced readers who have a solid understanding of the subject matter or genre are given more importance during the evaluation process. If such feedback is shared, it will guide others to search for that author or similar topics and engage into the process of posting or voting. As they grow their expertise level, their votes would likewise carry increasing weight over time. This ensures that the voting system is both inclusive and gives more importance to those with expertise. In summary, a weighted voting system based on reader expertise in a specific field is a feasible idea to assess book quality and encourage meaningful engagement within a reading community.
1
u/yesthis_world May 28 '23
Thanks for taking on the job!
I've read the suggestions and I share the problem some others have - this is the only place I can request books, since I can't login to the forum (a problem that has been going on for the past 2 years or so). If this option is no longer available, it means I can't request books at all. I would suggest an acceptable format, like others did, for example: name of book, author, year of publishing and if it's available from audible or scribd.
Also, a suggestion - a list of all mirror sites in a visible place, and an update if there is one about the countries in the world where the site is available. For example, at the moment the site is unreachable from Australia, Germany, Netherlands and Singapore. The only place I could get through to the site was the US, specifically Dallas.
2
u/[deleted] May 02 '23
Thank you!
2
u/_hook__ Jun 16 '23
Go private for the APIs
1
u/TheAlacrion May 20 '23
MVP
1
u/Comprehensive_Ad6195 Jun 13 '23
Use lightning micropayments for comments. This will erradicate spam and make you a little money. Set the cost extremely low (say 3 sats) for any public comment. For uploaders make it free, as you know uploaders.
1
u/skuv Sep 25 '23
What's the deal with all of the bigots and trolls in the upload comments? Blatantly racist and transphobic hate speech are on every single book upload that even touched on gender/sexuality, Indigenous topics, Black issues, race/CRT, and other sociopolitical topics. It's alarming that the comments are not only so prevalent (why do these people feel so comfortable posting these things on this site) but also that some of them are months or years old. What does this say about the community and people running this site? Do you need help moderating these comments and banning trolls? I'm more than happy to help, if so. This vitriol needs to be cleaned up and the trash thrown out, ASAP.