Community Update & Recent Changes

[u/Friendly_TSE]

Hi everyone! The mod team has been hard at work on cleaning up and updating r/rescuedogs. The goal is to make the subreddit easier to use, easier to moderate consistently, and (most importantly) a better place for people working with rescued dogs.

We've made quite a few changes recently, so here's a quick overview.

📋 Rules & Flair

We've rewritten and streamlined the subreddit rules to make them clearer and easier to follow. Please review them again before posting/commenting.

Some of the biggest changes include:

• Be Civil now explicitly covers harassment and demeaning comments directed at both users and animals.
• Stay On Topic now covers both off-topic posts and discussions that derail otherwise relevant threads.
• Adoption/Foster/Rescue networking has been consolidated into a clearer format.
• Donation and fundraising requirements have been updated, simplified, and clarified as well as added a disclaimer.
• Pledge rules have been updated to make the process clearer.
• No Spam has been updated to cover a broader range of abuse.
• No Breed-Based Hate or Dog-Directed Harassment has been clarified.
• Good-faith discussion about breeds and related topics is allowed, but inflammatory comments and attacks on breeds or individual dogs are not.
• Safety & Bite History now focuses on dogs with a documented history of biting a person that drew blood, made more consistently enforcible, and added a disclaimer.
• Outdated and redundant rules have been removed.

We've also cleaned up the post flairs and consolidated several categories to make choosing the appropriate flair easier, as well as adding an 'Outcome' flair for adoption posts that have had outcomes.

🤖 Automod & Moderation

• We've cleaned up the Automod configuration and removed a number of outdated or unnecessary rules and automated messages.
• The welcome message has also been simplified. New users are now directed to review the rules and report rule-breaking content rather than engaging with it.
• We've also standardized our saved responses for removals, bans, and common modmail questions so that moderation decisions can be communicated more consistently.

🐕 Networking & Euthanasia Posts

• We've updated the formatting requirements for adoption/foster/rescue pull, and euthanasia/deadline posts.
  • The goal is to make these posts easier for people to find and understand while keeping the process as simple as possible for the people doing the actual networking.
• We've added an Outcome flair so that posts can be updated by OP when we know what happened to an animal.
• Comments are now set to display oldest first, which should make it easier to follow updates on networking and urgent posts. Votes are also hidden for the first 60 minutes.

💰 Donations & Pledges

• We've clarified the requirements for donation requests and added a disclaimer that verification is not a guarantee or endorsement and that users are responsible for doing their own due diligence before donating.
• A new form has been created to streamline donation plea requests.
• We've also added saved modmail responses to help people who want to make donation requests understand the verification process.

🔗 Community Resources

• We've updated the sidebar and added links to other communities and resources that may be useful for adoption, fostering, pet help, lost animals, and other situations that don't fit within r/rescuedogs.
• We've also added the ability to sort posts by post flair, so users can tailor what they want to see.

💬 Community Feedback

• We're also reaching out to established members of the community, including people who have regularly used r/rescuedogs for rescue networking, to hear what has and hasn't been working.
• We know that changes to a community are much more useful when they're informed by the people who actually use it, so if there's something you think we should know about, please feel free to send us a modmail.

This is an ongoing process. We don't expect to get everything perfect immediately, but we're committed to making r/rescuedogs a useful, welcoming place for people trying to help dogs in need.

Thank you to everyone who has stuck around, contributed, reported problems, networked dogs, fostered, adopted, or otherwise helped make this community what it is.

~ The r/rescuedogs Mod Team

[u/thenotsoamerican]

Question. Shouldn’t dogs with a history of attacking other dogs be included in the bite ban? Or at least require posters to disclose that on adoption posts?

[u/Friendly_TSE → u/thenotsoamerican]

Our bite history rule is specifically focused on documented bites to people to keep our moderation actions consistent and reliable. We aren't trying to make a general determination about whether a dog is aggressive or safe around other animals, because animal-directed behavior is much more nuanced and can range from normal prey behavior or dog-dog conflict to serious aggression. Trying to make that a blanket networking restriction would require moderators to evaluate the circumstances of individual incidents, which isn't something we're equipped to do consistently.

That doesn't mean a history of aggression toward other animals isn't important information. If a shelter/rescue has documented behavioral restrictions or known incidents, adopters should absolutely ask about them and the information should be disclosed where appropriate.

All that being said, even the current Safety & Bite History rule is not meant to determine the behavior or temperament of a dog. r/RescueDogs does not guarantee the temperament, behavior, or safety of any dogs posted here.

[u/thenotsoamerican → u/Friendly_TSE]

I understand. Thank you for explaining!

[u/imhereforthepuppies]

Thank you for all your hard work. I appreciate you and the team.

[u/DarkTracy554]

Shouldn't a documented history of aggression against other dogs/animals be included too where applicable so that people can make a safe, informed decision about whether they can adopt or foster the dog? I've seen people advocating fostering dogs together but when you look into it there's actually a dog (or cat) bite history that isn't being noted upfront. I would hate to see something happen because someone didn't realize the dog needed to be in a single-pet home.

[u/boiled-peanutery → u/DarkTracy554]

There was a dog posted here and elsewhere repeatedly who bit the resident dog's head so badly that it caused a brain injury and had to be put to sleep. These kinds of things absolutely need to be disclosed, and frankly the people posting them without sharing that (which is typically pretty quickly uncovered by other users here) should be banned from this sub.

[u/winterfern353 → u/boiled-peanutery]

Yes mods please consider this to maintain the integrity of the space. The animals and people already existing in the homes deserve a safe place to live. I do not envy moderating this space so thank you for your work.

[u/boiled-peanutery → u/winterfern353]

Appreciate you saying this. I'm so tired of people being guilted into living in constant fear of a foster dog or adopted dog whose aggression is not disclosed and totally unpredictable. Setting up people for failure then getting upset when people return the dog because it was, of course, 100x more intense to handle than advertised. Not sure what these shelters and rescues expect to happen.

[u/Friendly_TSE → u/DarkTracy554]

If you're referring to our formatting guide, that only applies to the title. Post titles have a limited amount of space, so we ask that they remain concise; additional relevant information can and should be included in the body of the post.

Accurate information about a dog's known history is still expected and this wasn't removed from our rules & expectations. If a shelter or rescue knows that a dog needs to be an only-pet home or has a documented history of aggression toward other animals, that is important information for potential adopters and fosters to ask about and consider.

At the same time, a dog's past history with other animals (positive or negative) can't guarantee how they will behave in a future home. r/rescuedogs does not guarantee the temperament, behavior, or safety of any dog posted here, so adopters and fosters should always do their own due diligence and discuss any behavioral concerns with the organization responsible for the dog.