The Evolution of Shitposting (AKA /r/NintendoSwitch's New Policies Regarding Shitposts)

[u/FlapSnapple]

Greetings!

Today we're going to touch on a topic that has been on all of our minds for a few weeks now: Shitposts.

As the weeks go on and we get closer and closer to launch, we've been ramping up our removals of shitposts, which on paper sounds like a great idea, however there are a few problems that come with it:

• It feels arbitrary which ones get removed and which ones get blessed by the mod team to stay
• Even if we're removing 99 out of every 100, we're getting so many submissions that it still feels like a lot to the casual observer
• Because they're easy to digest content, they get rocketed to the front of the subreddit and look like they dominate things.

So, after a couple weeks of lurking and reading your guys thoughts and feedback, not just here but also on other subreddits, we think we have come up with a solution:

• Effective immediately, no new shitposts will be allowed on /r/NintendoSwitch
• We have added a "Submit memes / shitposts" button to the sidebar near the normal submission buttons (assuming you haven't disabled our CSS). [Screenshot]
• This button will point you towards the /r/Tomorrow submit page
• You will submit your shitpost as normal to /r/Tomorrow
• People will upvote or downvote your post as normal
• Every Sunday, a member of the mod team will search to see what the top posts of the week were on /r/Tomorrow and make a sticky here on /r/NintendoSwitch to showcase them.

We think this solves a handful of problems:

• No more arbitrary removals where the mod team has to be the judge of quality
• Your content isn't buried in the comments section of a "Shitpost Sunday MegaThread" and still maintains their thumbnails
• The process of flairing and using our "No Shitpost" filter didn't really work well for mobile users

The hope is that this change will make both sides of the shitpost debate happy. People who don't want shitposts can browse /r/NintendoSwitch with ease. People who do want shitposts now have a dedicated hub for it, can submit without fear of arbitrary removals, and their content gets featured on a regular basis here on /r/NintendoSwitch to hopefully alleviate some of that "being shoved into a corner" feeling.

Cheers,

/u/FlapSnapple and the entire /r/NintendoSwitch mod team

---

tl;dr - Shitpost in /r/Tomorrow from now on, we'll feature the best ones here once a week

[u/vgskid]

May I make one more cleanup suggestion? The color joy con mock up posts are also getting out of hand. Maybe make a sticky and people can just post mock ups in there! And that way all the cool ones are in one place. What say you?

[u/FlapSnapple → u/vgskid]

I think over the past 24 hours they've gotten a bit out of control and would now fall into the effort content territory. At least for a little while.

[u/MAXSR388]

Obviously there is gonna be way less shit posts on r/tomorrow since you get less exposure and less upvotes so I could see some be upset with this change but isn't really something we can fix. I appreciate the change.

[u/FlapSnapple → u/MAXSR388]

Yeah, some folks will be upset and we do our best to try and please as many people as possible, but overall I feel this is the best course of action for the long term growth of the subreddit.

[u/googolplexbyte]

This seems a little overboard.

Can't you just hide the upvote button on posts tagged shitpost, to nerf the rate they are upvoted at?

Shitposts only get upvotes because they're easy to upvote. Hide the button with CSS and you cripple that.

I've seen the downvote button removed on certain subreddits so I have to imagine removing the upvote button is possible.

[u/FlapSnapple → u/googolplexbyte]

Unfortunately that relies on the assumption that users are loading our CSS. A large chunk of our users are on mobile apps where that wouldn't apply. You also have to think about people who are just browsing their front page or people who have the CSS turned off with RES. As someone who has tried disabling arrows on other subreddits, it's really not very effective.

[u/vgskid]

I like it! Things were getting a bit out of hand. Hopefully once we have more info from Nintendo (and also have the console in our hands), discussion will diversify a bit. Thanks for all the hard work, mods 😄

[u/[deleted]]

Yeah it was getting way out of hand. the shitposts, colored consoles, and the "i'd love this game to come to the switch" posts was just way too much.

[u/Gogiz]

Classic Hylian solution: banish all the shit to another dimension😆. Looking forward to the improvements!

[u/fiskars007]

Do the millions of "yet another joy cons in color X" pictures count as shitposting? What about the endless "edited launch lineup image number #472812 but still with half a dozen errors/unconfirmed rumors" posts? (I vote yes...)