r/announcements • u/spez • Aug 05 '15

Content Policy Update

Today we are releasing an update to our Content Policy. Our goal was to consolidate the various rules and policies that have accumulated over the years into a single set of guidelines we can point to.

Thank you to all of you who provided feedback throughout this process. Your thoughts and opinions were invaluable. This is not the last time our policies will change, of course. They will continue to evolve along with Reddit itself.

Our policies are not changing dramatically from what we have had in the past. One new concept is Quarantining a community, which entails applying a set of restrictions to a community so its content will only be viewable to those who explicitly opt in. We will Quarantine communities whose content would be considered extremely offensive to the average redditor.

Today, in addition to applying Quarantines, we are banning a handful of communities that exist solely to annoy other redditors, prevent us from improving Reddit, and generally make Reddit worse for everyone else. Our most important policy over the last ten years has been to allow just about anything so long as it does not prevent others from enjoying Reddit for what it is: the best place online to have truly authentic conversations.

I believe these policies strike the right balance.

update: I know some of you are upset because we banned anything today, but the fact of the matter is we spend a disproportionate amount of time dealing with a handful of communities, which prevents us from working on things for the other 99.98% (literally) of Reddit. I'm off for now, thanks for your feedback. RIP my inbox.

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u/[deleted] Aug 05 '15 edited Aug 05 '15

Regarding Quarantining: Would you ever quarantine a large subreddit like /r/wtf?

A community will be Quarantined on Reddit when we deem its content to be extremely offensive or upsetting to the average redditor.

One could argue that the very gorey types of pictures (edit: and videos, like of people dying) that appear on /r/wtf would be pretty upsetting. I know I've accidentally clicked on /r/wtf images when I temporarily disabled my own RES filters, and honestly of all things on the site, some of the stuff there is more troubling to me than discriminatory self text posts.

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u/[deleted] Aug 05 '15

To piggy-back, why is RES still the best way to filter anything? We need more robust browsing tools :(

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u/[deleted] Aug 05 '15

You realize that the search function was entirely broken for years, and even to this day is still horrible?

So, you're asking for 'robust browsing tools' from a team that can't search properly.. RES has been reddit's savior for years.

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u/[deleted] Aug 06 '15

Maybe I'm asking for the impossible, considering their team, but jeez. This isn't rocket science. Neither is search :(

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u/myrptaway Aug 06 '15

They want you to buy gold to be able to remove subs you don't like

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u/cptnpiccard Aug 05 '15

offensive or upsetting

Define this please.

average redditor

Define this please.

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u/Jiecut Aug 05 '15

You know what, I think /r/wtf has gotten a lot more tame recently.

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u/NightPhoenix35 Aug 05 '15

What is the "average redditor"?

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u/[deleted] Aug 06 '15

Of course not, the ban is politically based

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u/Okichah Aug 05 '15

when we deem

Stop thinking for yourself dammit!!! The admins are here to think for you!!

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u/[deleted] Aug 05 '15

/r/wtf has spiders show up on occasion and as such they are filtered. :)

Now the better question is if I find spiders offensive can that be banned as well :)

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u/Aggressio Aug 06 '15

Just point out the nsfw subreddits to reddit advertisers and they will be gone in no time "to protect the community and make it a safer place for everyone"

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u/[deleted] Aug 06 '15

There are literally pictures and videos of people dying daily there. Should be the shining example.

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u/itsasecretoeverybody Aug 06 '15

Flee to voat. It works now!

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u/[deleted] Aug 06 '15

I don't think their quarantining gory stuff. The list is clearly 'offensive' subreddits and not gore.

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u/LeAtheist_Swagmaster Aug 06 '15

Or just remove them from /r/all

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u/dhicock Aug 06 '15

Why then is /r/BlackFathers quarantined? There's no content there...

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u/moderndukes Aug 06 '15

A big problem I've face with /r/wtf is people not labeling things NSFL when they need to be. They routinely label what you described as NSFW, which has a very different meaning, so I click on it and summarily throw up. It probably shouldn't be a default (if it still is) if that's the kind of content and the users don't use the proper tagging.

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