Hi all. As the elections bear down on us and the subreddit continues to grow, we thought it would be valuable to check in again (last meta post here) to clarify some rules, provide some updates, and hear from you all. Offering rule clarifications, in particular, is an important goal of this post. We offer these clarifications in hopes of making as clear as possible how we, the moderators, interpret and enforce the rules — and in turn increasing the number of rule-conforming posts and reducing confusion over post removal. But before we get to that, a few quick things…

New Moderators.

As you may have seen, there are two new moderators on the prowl. The first is /u/TitoTheMidget and the second is /u/Miskellaneousness. Welcome new moderators! Thanks. No problem. And even more importantly, we’re still hiring! Read more about the application process here.

Flair.

As you may have noticed, there is now category flair for submissions. For those who come to discuss a particular topic, such as US Elections or International Politics, you can now click the flair in question to filter down to only posts flaired with that topic. Here is a breakdown of flairs by topic from Jun 28th (when flairs were introduced) until August 7th. As you can see, posts flaired US Elections and US Politics heavily dominate the subreddit. If you’re looking for ideas for quality submissions, consider asking questions pertaining to some of our less common flair topics (Political Theory, Legislation, Non-US Politics, etc).

Please also note that just because your post has a flair does not mean it is immune from removal.

/r/PoliticalOpinions.

It’s our sister subreddit and it is exactly what it sounds like. It’s new and growing, and it’s a great place for many of the more opinionated submissions that we end up removing this subreddit. Check it out!

Keep This Sub Great.

For the many who have no interest in applying to be moderators, there are still important ways you can help maintain the quality of this subreddit. In addition to making quality, rule-abiding submissions and comments, please note the following:

1) Be judicious with your downvoting AND reporting.

The goal of this subreddit is to be a great forum where folks with viewpoints from across the spectrum can come and engage each other in high quality discussion. It’s that respect and diversity that makes this subreddit valuable — and downvoting and reporting based on your personal views, not on the subreddit’s rules, can detract from that by silencing minority viewpoints and bolstering majority viewpoints, potentially leading to an echochamber.

For example, to help avoid spammers and trolls our subreddit has a minimum karma threshold. A side effect of this is that when a newer user comes in and posts a respectful but unpopular viewpoint, they can lose so much karma that they are unable to post in the subreddit thereafter.

Relatedly, we often look to the report queue to address rule-breaking comments. If you only report rule-breaking comments you disagree with while glossing over rule-breaking comments you agree with, the majority bias of this subreddit will be reflected in the moderation as rule-breaking but popular-among-the-majority comments will not be brought to our attention. We work hard to make sure this doesn’t happen, and we’d appreciate your help! Don’t silence minority viewpoints. You may disagree with them, but this subreddit will be worse off without them.

2) Respond constructively to post removals.

As you’ll see below, a high proportion of our submissions are removed for violating the rules. If you’ve spent a good bit of time on a submission and really want to have a discussion on the topic, note the following. First, the removal is not personal at all and is not a punishment — we simply seek to make sure posts comport with the rules. The first thing you should do when your post is removed is read the removal reason and review the rules to best understand why your post has been removed. If you still don’t understand why your post was removed, feel free to message the moderators (do not PM individual moderators — message us as a group so we can all weigh in), but please do not message us to argue about your post removal. Moderators are intimately familiar with the rules and if your post was removed there’s a legitimate reason.

Instead, message us either a) seeking clarification, or b) asking how you can change your post to have it reinstated. We’re highly inclined to work with you to get the submission up and running; we’re not likely to be argued into approving a rule-violating post.

News Posts.

In the last meta thread, users spoke up about their desire be able to talk about political news on this subreddit. We’ve heard that feedback, and while we won’t be making any major changes at present, we want to clarify our current policy. First off, the good news is that political news can be discussed on this subreddit. If there’s big news in the political world, you can absolutely create a submission about it if there isn’t one already. However, our rules still apply; posts must raise relatively in depth questions that guide the discussion towards thoughtful exchanges and not just jokes or vapid speculation. In our collective moderation experience, low effort news posts like “Trump just Tweeted … . How will this affect the election?” tend to result in incredibly low effort discussion that often requires heavy moderation. We understand that political news is inherently political but we want to maintain the high level of discussion we see elsewhere even regarding news and election topics.

Another piece of feedback is the idea of a daily/weekly news megathread. After some discussion, we don’t have plans to institute such megathreads. There are a number of reasons for this that won’t all be laid out here, but one important factor is that some pieces of political news are highly significant and do deserve their own threads for dedicated discussion, as opposed to being relegated to a megathread where fewer folks will see it and discussion is made a bit more difficult with comment tiers.

Some won’t find this ideal, but we think it’s best in terms of walking the line between permitting news discussion and keeping things high quality. Please walk this line with us and keep in mind that things are likely to cool off a good bit in three months. We also encourage users looking for more news-focused discussion to check out our Discord Channel and /r/NeutralTalk.

Rules Clarifications.

It’s no secret that a lot of posts are removed from this subreddit. From this factoid, take two things: first, it’s not at all personal when a submission is removed; and, second, we have exacting standards. We want high quality, rule-abiding posts. To that end, here are some additional clarifications about the rules and how the moderators enforce them:

• Soapboxing. Our current soapboxing rule specifies that submissions should not soapbox your political agenda. Many users interpret this to mean that submissions simply cannot be rants or overt campaigning. While these posts are prohibited, moderators take a more strict interpretation of the rules (in particular over the course of the election season) and require that users aim for neutrality in content and tone of their submissions. (All users are then free, of course, to express their opinions in the comment section.) This helps ensure that an open discussion can flow from the submission text as opposed to one side or viewpoint immediately being on the defensive. This interpretation also helps with consistency in moderation as it is easier to make a yes/no determination on neutrality of a post rather than a “how editorialized is too editorialized?” determination. Editorialized submissions and opinion pieces are better off over at /r/PoliticalOpinions.

• Low Effort Posts. Submissions should raise at least one highly substantial question that will elicit thoughtful discussion. As discussed, posts pertaining to recent news very often fail to pass this litmus test. Posts that boil down to “Thoughts?” or “Discuss” will be removed, as will purely speculative surface level questions like “Who will win in November?”. And although we try to be quick with our removals, even a thread that already has been upvoted or has discussion ongoing may be subject to removal if the OP is very low effort. It’s also worth reiterating that for comments, jokes, memes, quips, sarcastic one-off remarks, one-word answers to thoughtful questions, etc., are prohibited. Repeated offenses will result in a ban.

• Meta Posts. This one is simple, but there’s occasionally still confusion. Do not make comments or submissions that discuss reddit, other subreddits, this subreddit, downvotes, threads, posts, comments, or anything else referring back to this subreddit. Full stop. While not all meta posts are griping about downvotes, such posts in general detract more from discussion than they add to it and so they are simply not allowed.

In addition to these clarifications, we're hoping to come out shortly with a more in depth guide with common errors/post removal examples and remedies that users will be able to refer to to better understand how to post good. More on that soon!

Your Feedback Is Important To Us!

So let’s hear it. Please keep it constructive and keep in mind the objectives of this subreddit (quality political discussion) as well as the time constraints that moderators face. We may not reply to all feedback comments but we do read them and continually discuss feedback and proposed changes amongst ourselves.

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