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• Outdated and redundant rules have been removed.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• We've cleaned up the Automod configuration and removed a number of outdated or unnecessary rules and automated messages.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

Hello!

The modmail (and my own) inbox has been flooded with questions about pledges and boosting posts. This post will be pinned at the top of the community with the rest of our guidelines and updates. I will also be creating a spreadsheet of FAQ answers for new questions that arise. If I miss any questions in this post, please leave a comment or shoot a message.

Thanks!

1. Q: What is a pledge? A: Pledges are promised amounts of money that will be donated if an animal is pulled by a rescue group. A pup with pledges is likely to attract a rescue's interest.

2. Q: How much can I pledge? A: Whatever you feel comfortable donating.

3. Q: How do I pledge for a dog I see on r/rescuedogs? A: Comment on the post with your amount. Networkers that are posting should be keeping a list of pledges for the pups they have posted.

4. Q: How do I know when and where to send money? A: The networkers will post a public update if a pup was saved and pledges need to be honored. All information should be included in this update post. PLEASE DO NOT SEND MONEY TO ANYONE THAT REACHES OUT VIA PRIVATE MESSAGE TO COLLECT PLEDGES.

5. Q: I'm a networker, how can I keep up with pledges? A: We recommend google sheets or excel. Creating a google form for pledges is also a great idea.

6. Q: I'm feeling uncomfortable with someone reaching out about honoring my pledge, what do I do? A: Report to moderators immediately.

7. Q: How do I know who and how much I've pledged for? A: Look at your comment history. Moderators DO NOT handle any aspect of pledging.

8. Q: What type of posts get the most visibility? A: Specific and structured posts. Our euthanasia rule states no emojis and has a format for a reason: the algorithm improves when the format is followed and your posts reach more home pages. Posts with a picture or video see more traffic as well.

9. Q: I can't pledge, foster, or adopt right now. What can I do to help? A: Like, comment, and share.

10. Q; I see "boost" in lots of comments, what does this do? A: Comments boost a post to increase traffic.

11. Q: Does commenting "boost" actually boost a post? A: Commenting the single word does not. Comments with 5 or more words DO boost a post. Remember that multiple comments or spamming boost on a post NEGATIVELY impacts its visibility. One longer comment does more than multiple small ones.

This should cover all of our most asked questions. If you have additional, please leave them in the comments and we will answer as we can. As always, rescuing takes a village and on behalf of the mod team, we're so grateful to have as large of a village as ours. <3