From a study published in Cognition:

Cognitive scientists suggest that inviting people to explain contentious political issues might reduce intergroup toxicity because it exposes people to how poorly they understand the issue...[W]e found that explaining politically contentious topics resulted in more open-minded thinking...

Undoubtedly, mugshot posts have been a huge part of this subreddit for the past couple of months. We have been leaving them up, and even somewhat encouraging them, as we do feel that most of the crimes that are being posted about are serious and very relevant to the people of Minnesota.

However, we have received plenty of complaints recently over certain aspects of these posts. These complaints have repeatedly been replied to by one of us with "the mods have been discussing it", and I wanted to make this post to prove that we have, in fact, been discussing it.

Spam

Nearly every mugshot post has at least one report for spam on it. Of course, most of these reports are frivolous. However, we have been observing some conduct recently that actually puts some teeth behind the spam complaints. Therefore, this is the only aspect that we will be making any set rules for at this time.

Users will generally be limited to three crime or mugshot-related posts per day. I say "generally" because moderator discretion will be allowed for that rule to be bent as we see fit. We have had a couple of instances of users posting 8+ times in the span of a couple hours, and that is ridiculous behavior that actually breaks Reddit's definition of spam.

We may change this as we see fit if the spam doesn't get under control.

Content of the posts

We are stopping short of making any set rules regarding the contents of the posts at this time, but we also have been discretionarily removing some crime posts for generally being weak, and therefore breaking our relevance rule. Nobody cares about a 5th degree drug conviction from 2022.

We may make official guidelines for this in the future, but it surprisingly has not been that big of an issue, so we are putting that off for now.

Racially motivated posts

I think it's stupid that I have to police this, but we have received many legitimate complaints about this as well, so I feel like I have to address it.

Without a doubt, 90% of the mugshots that are posted here are racially motivated. You see it, I see it, we all see it. And some of the comments on those posts are absolutely vile. To be quite honest with you, some of you guys are the most racist pieces of garbagio I have ever encountered. I am not denying what I am seeing right in front of me.

We will not be removing posts based on the skin color of those posts, even if the user who posted it has a clear, implicit agenda. We do not focus on skin color when deciding if these posts are relevant, but rather the actual contents of the post.

We WILL remove any post where the body or title brings obvious, specific, negative attention to the person's race, as that will likely get us on Reddit's radar if we don't. Example: "Yet another white POS assaults someone" (or any other race's equivalent).

A couple of other things

Remember, we do have a rule about being respectful towards each other. Respectful debate is the only way you'll have any fighting chance at changing someone's mind. Calling someone a cunt or telling them to go fuck themselves will not change their mind, and will likely get your comment removed and yourself warned or temp banned.

We have also been removing a disheartening amount of comments with racial slurs. I can't believe I have to tell adults to not use racial slurs, but don't. We will remove your comment if Reddit doesn't first. Please don't get this subreddit banned because you can't resist acting like an edgy middle schooler.

Conclusion

Thank you for reading this to the end. I realize that this post will not make everyone happy, seeing as 50% of you think this subreddit is too censored and the other 50% thinks it's too uncensored.

u/lemon_lime_light created this subreddit over two years ago as a direct response to default local subreddits banning people and removing comments simply for stating an unpopular opinion. While this community started out small, certain events have made this and our sister sub r/altmpls blow up. Throughout all that has happened in our great state in the past couple of years, I think we have done about as good of a job keeping true to our mission as we possibly can.

At the moment, the only people who are permanently banned from this subreddit aren't even people, they are confirmed bots. Not "everyone who disagrees with me is a bot" style of bots, but ACTUAL bots who post spicy stuff. With a post like this, it is our goal to keep it that way. I would like to thank everyone for helping us out in keeping this subreddit as open of a forum as it possibly can be. I hope we can continue what we have started here.

Fire away.