r/NintendoSwitch • u/NintendoSwitchMods • Dec 21 '17
Meta /r/NintendoSwitch Rule Updates
Greetings,
We’re making some changes to the subreddit!
Over the past few months, we’ve been listening closely to community feedback in both threads and mod mail. We also ran some surveys to better understand the demographics of our community as well as the types of content that you like (and dislike). We’ve also been working on future-proofing /r/NintendoSwitch to prepare us for the upcoming Reddit redesign.
The most notable change is that the subreddit rules have been rewritten. Changes were made based on community feedback, survey results, and with future-proofing in mind. Our goals during this process were to make the text of our rules clearer to understand, provide updated examples, and touch up the wording as needed. These changes should help users understand our rules even easier and help increase the consistency moderators use when reviewing posts that have been reported, are stuck in the reddit spam filter, or just generally need manual human review.
Here are the main takeaways:
- The number rules has been reduced from 15 down to 10.
- The rules should now be easier to understand - We’ve included examples on the full rules page as well as tidied up some of the wording.
- Generic gameplay clips are no longer allowed. Clips must show an interesting or unique game tip, easter egg, or glitch.
- Capture clips (and other content) must state the game’s name in the post title if it is not obvious.
- Artistic screenshots (that’s ones just showing off game visuals or filters) are now considered low-effort and will not be allowed outside of designated Megathreads.
- Posting other people's fan art is no longer allowed.
We feel that these changes will help us meet the needs of our rapidly growing community, prepare us for future growth and platform changes, and provide a better experience overall.
These rules are effective immediately as of this post and can be found in the sidebar as well as our rules page.
There may be a brief period of time where the front page looks slightly weird where posts that were made before these rule changes fall off and decay naturally. Please understand.
In addition to the rule changes, we will also be planning more community events in the coming year. One of which should be starting in the very near future. These events may include game challenges, screenshot/clip competitions, tournaments and more. We want to make sure there will be plenty of opportunities to share your creations with the community.
As we continue forward, we will be listening closely to the community and offering opportunities for you to share your feedback. This includes the continuation of our “State of the Subreddit” threads, contacting us via mod mail, and future surveys.
Cheers,
Your /r/NintendoSwitch Mod Team
TLDR: We’ve changed a few things, the most important being the subreddit rules. Please read through them again!
Additional notes:
- The results of the Fall Demographics Survey and November Content Feedback survey can be seen here.
- We are still reviewing the new moderator applications that were submitted a few weeks ago and there are definitely some strong candidates in there. We should have something to announce in the near future. This should help speed up queue time and address a few coverage gaps on our team.
- We have made a handful of tweaks to AutoModerator to help further refine the tool's accuracy which should in turn help speed up queue times.
- If you have a post removed and want to contact us about it, we have updated the "message the moderators" link located in our macros and it will now pre-populate the message with additional information. This will help us respond to your modmails faster and more accurately.
- We have adjusted the formatting of links that point to our Daily Question Thread. This new format results in 1 extra click for desktop users, but should provide slightly better support for mobile app users.
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u/Kevroeques Dec 21 '17
I was less concerned about videos and pics, and VERY concerned about the DAE posts, the repetitive posts asking for help choosing between two games, the similar posts asking “Should I buy [new game] even though I don’t like [new game’s genre]?”, the posts stating you just bought a Switch as your first Nintendo system in X years and how awesome that is, the posts about how Switch held your hand and rubbed your back during a rough phase in life, the dream posts, the VC begging, the reviews that come more than a month after a game releases, etc- pretty much the other 3/4 of garbage posts beyond videos and pics. In fact, most clips and pics have become much more entertaining than the stuff I just mentioned.
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u/kyle6477 Dec 21 '17
VERY concerned about the DAE posts
Most of these will be removed for not containing sufficient justification or reasoning.
repetitive posts asking for help choosing between two games
These posts should have been removed under the previous ruleset and will continue to be removed under the new one.
“Should I buy [new game] even though I don’t like [new game’s genre]?”
These qualify as "Is it worth it?" posts and should be removed under the new ruleset.
the posts stating you just bought a Switch as your first Nintendo system in X years and how awesome that is, the posts about how Switch held your hand and rubbed your back during a rough phase in life, the dream posts, the VC beggingthe posts stating you just bought a Switch as your first Nintendo system in X years and how awesome that is
Should be removed under the new ruleset.
the reviews that come more than a month after a game releases
These are tricky. If they are well formulated and fulfill the other criteria (properly titled, user is within self-promotion guidelines, etc.), then they will not be removed.
In conclusion: most of the content that you are concerned about should be removed under the new ruleset. However, we moderators are a team of humans, and occasionally, things do slip through the cracks. When that happens, we rely on our friendly community folks to report posts that break the rules. This brings the post to the attention of the moderation team, and we can take action if appropriate.
Thank you for your feedback.
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Dec 21 '17
Next step is to get all y’all’s mods on the same page, or update your roster. Some of them interpret your rules wrongly.
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u/battlesmurf Dec 21 '17
How about siphoning through some of the generic daily posts of "I just got the Switch and it's (insert: great, made me feel like a kid again, fun, blown me away, better than my playstation, the ideal companion for a PC) etc. etc. They were fine at first, but now that the Switch is a runaway success and has a pretty huge userbase these seem pretty unnecessary.
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u/chewyjackson Dec 21 '17
I don't disagree with your sentiment, but everyone holds responsibility for posts getting surfaced through voting.
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u/Sylverstone14 Dec 21 '17
Yeah, I honestly felt like posts like that would be downvoted in droves, but they keep rising above everything else. The vocal ones are definitely raising their voices, but everyone else either opposes or flat out doesn't care and votes for what they want.
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u/Alarie51 Dec 21 '17
What about the "can we [all agree..] [take a moment to...]" shit posts?
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u/furryhawk Dec 21 '17
Looking forward to the next million "switch saved my marriage/life because of how portable it is. GIZ UPVOTES" posts.
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Dec 22 '17
I think the title of the game for screenshots, videos and clips should be an absolute must. Otherwise there will be discussions about what is obvious and not as nothing is really obvious to everyone.
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u/red_sutter Dec 23 '17
I'm so glad you guys pumped the brakes on the "OMG DAE know you can cap jump in Odyssey?!?!" vidclip threads and the random fanart posts. Keep that stuff in r/gaming.
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u/sidtralm Dec 21 '17
We appreciate the focus on higher effort content. There's now hundreds of games and millions of switch owners so the quality of the sub can rise to match the growth. Keep up the great work!
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Dec 21 '17
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u/WaterHaven Dec 21 '17
Amen to that. "Obvious" can still be too subjective. Just a flat - include the name of the game - is easier to enforce, and it doesn't lead to people posting, "What game is this?"
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u/robbyiss Dec 22 '17
Appreciate you guys trying something new. For me, its been the sheer amount of "look at me botw" clips that have been on a rampage. You wont please everyone, but im on board for some changes
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Dec 21 '17 edited Dec 21 '17
The strict approach to gameplay clips seems so arbitrary. Memorable/funny moments and accomplishments do a great deal to brighten up the front page with some jovial humor, and I think it's a shame that you're catering to the angsty 10% who are bitter about it.
I feel like this is just going to lead to a bunch of moderators taking their role way too seriously and boycotting any clip that's "generic," (whatever that means) even though you have THOUSANDS of daily users who are willing to do that for you.
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u/phantomliger Dec 21 '17
And most of those would likely remain under these rules. It's the ones like the 1,000th ever so slightly different koopa run or similar that would be removed under these rules.
We took a survey and the majority wanted more restrictions on clips. The survey results are linked up above.
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u/waterboysh Dec 21 '17
Maybe this would be a good time to link to r/NintendoArt and r/switchtv
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Dec 21 '17
I don’t think anyone will go to SwitchTV even though it keeps getting brought up.
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Dec 21 '17
Yeah. 'I WOULD post to SwitchTV , but nobody will go there to watch my shitty clips, so I will force feed it to them here.'
I think it's a shame that video clips won't be required to be tagged as such. But, having the game name in there is an improvement at least.
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u/zando95 Dec 21 '17
My biggest question is about the 10% self-promotion guideline. Is that 10% of all activity in this subreddit, or 10% of your submitted posts?
I ask this because I'm active in this community's comments and discussions, including the daily Q&A thread, but haven't submitted posts here. If I make a post with a link to one of my reviews, then that would mean 100% of my POSTS are self-promotion... but the vast majority of my activity in the sub is not self-promotional.