This page is divided into sections, the first containing our expanded rules and the second containing tutorials on how to submit. If you are wondering about a specific topic, please use the navigation to the right, or ctrl+f to find it. If you still have questions, please message the mod team

Expanded Rules

General Rules

Do not post, link to, or ask for personal information

Reddit's official global rules prohibit the posting of personal information, also known as "doxxing". Violating this rule will likely result in losing your account. On reddit, doxxing usually involves trying to find out the real life info of a user you see here like their name, place of work, and phone number. It also involves trying to find their accounts on other websites like facebook profile, twitter, gmail address, etc. Sometimes, a user on reddit will post this information themselves. Reddit's official global rules are unclear about if it is okay to trawl through a user's history, collect all the personal info, and post it. On SRD, we are very strict of anything that even smells of doxxing, stricter than reddit's global rules.

Do not extensively stalk through someone's post history looking for quotes to post and shame them with. This isn't doxxing, but it's pretty creepy.

No trolling, hate speech, or using slurs

Obvious troll accounts will be banned on sight. Users behaving as trolls may be warned or banned.

Our definitions of slurs and hate speech are pretty standard, but note that ironic usage of slurs is not okay. eg. "OP is a faggot" and "I blew a tranny today".

Do not insult other users, make personal attacks, flamewar, or flaimbait

A subreddit that links drama is bound to have drama its own comments. However, we try to maintain a reasonable level of discourse. No matter how passionate you feel about an argument or how wrong and awful you think the other user is, it is unacceptable to insult or attack them. Communicate your ideas, but don't be a dick. For example...

Extremely not okay:

Putting a chicken breast between buns does not make it a burger. I'm not sure if your mom took drugs while she was pregnant or you just like showing everyone how stupid you are, but your constant willful repetition of the same fucktarded argument has worn on me. If you're too stupid to see reason, then fuck off. Ass.

Still not okay:

Putting a chicken breast between buns does not make it a burger. You keep saying it, but it doesn't make it true. Repetition is only a substitute for an argument if you're too dumb to actually formulate thought. But really, what should I have expected of someone who came right out of the gate being so hilariously, willfully wrong? I'm begging you, keep going. Show me your brilliance. Say the same damn thing again

Okay:

Putting a chicken breast between buns does not make it a burger. You think this as argument-ending evidence, but I'm not convinced. No one uses your definition of "burger". I don't think you've sufficiently proven your position, and you repeating the same point is wearing on me

Flamewarring is when users argue in a way that incites long chains of hostile replies, often containing boderline or full-on violations of our rules about personal attacks and insults. If you get into a heated, never ending argument with another user, it may be removed. If you are constantly getting into flame wars, you may be warned or banned.

Flamebaiting is intentionally trying to rile someone up or draw them into an argument.

Do not try to call people out with username mentions, especially if they are the people in the linked drama.

Do not vote or comment in threads you've found through SRD

If you vote on a linked thread in SRD, you have participated in a brigade, and you may be shadowbanned for violating site rules. Commenting in the threads of the linked drama is against our rules, and it will get you banned from SRD. Being part of the linked community doesn't necessarily exclude you from our rules on brigading. Commenting on days-old threads will make it obvious to us that you found it on SRD.

PMing or otherwise harassing the people you see in the drama is absolutely wrong and may also get you shadowbanned

Novelty accounts are not welcome in /r/SubredditDrama

Even if your novelty is "high-effort", you will still be banned. Accounts made to impersonate other users will be banned. Most bots are banned

Off topic grandstanding will be removed

Politicized drama, agenda pushing, and pet issues have also had a huge change on the comments people make on SRD. Usually the most circlejerky type of drama has the most circlejerky comments. However, agenda pushing will show up in places that are quite off topic. For example, drama about steak is linked, and the top voted comment in SRD has somehow made it about gender wars.

If you talk about surplus-drama topics (which are listed in the sidebar) on submissions that have little or nothing to do with surplus drama, your comment is off topic and will probably be removed

We enforce the spirit of these rules, not the letter

Especially in regards to personal attacks and flamebaiting, one can be nasty and hostile without technically breaking SRD's rules. Mods have discretion to determine what is flamebaiting, flaming, and personal attacks.

Linking

Submissions must use the No Participation domain. The only exceptions to this rule are when you link to /r/me_irl and /r/AdviceAnimals.

For a tutorial on how to use NP or questions about what NP is, skip here

NP the links in your submissions and in your self posts. Using NP in the comments is not required.

r/me_irl and r/AdviceAnimals must be submitted with the "www" domain because their NP stylesheet was modified to be unreadable. If you see other subreddits doing this, report them to modmail.

Do not use [brackets] in your titles. The only exception is for [Meta] posts, [Classic] posts, and [Recap] Posts. Everything else will be removed.

Do not use brackets to apply the sort of things you'd see in a flair, ie

[RACISM DRAMA] redditors duke it out over a claim that Asian culture is superior to black culture

Do not use [BREAKING]

For more info about our flair and tags, and when you can use brackets, see here

Avoid bias and do not submit drama you have commented in. Only post links if you are not the source of drama or directly involved in the drama. Remain as neutral as possible; biased titles/self posts are grounds for deletion

When our moderators check a submission for compliance, we open up the drama and ctrl+f for the username of the person who posted it to SRD. If he/she has commeted anywhere in their linked thread, even if it was just one comment, even if it wasn't engaging in an argument, the post will be removed. If you have one-off comments in something you want to link, delete them before you do so. If you are heavily participating in the drama, you cannot post it at all.

We remove a lot of submissions for having biased titles. A good title catches attention without making false statements or implying one side of the drama is in the wrong. Think of the careful way in which newspaper headlines are written so no blame is assigned. It's all right to have fun with your title, but don't make a biased one in the pursuit of that. Cirlcebroke-esque titles and titles that say things like "Guess who is arguing about male rape in r/videos" will be removed.

SRD is not a call-out subreddit. If your post points out bad behavior more than it does drama, it will be removed.

You can imply "bad behavior" in the title, or the stuff you link itself can fit the bill. One person saying shitty stuff, being downvoted, and getting a lot of replies does NOT automatically equal drama. There have to be chains of arguments.

If your submission would be a better fit for circlebroke or SRS, it will be removed and you will be asked to post there

When submitting drama do not link to the full comments. Instead link directly to the comment tree containing the drama. Use ?context when appropriate. Submit a self-post when appropriate

If you do not know how to use "?context" or how to do writeups, please jump here

?context links are very useful for linking to the parent comments that led up to the dramatic comment. Use it properly. Linking too few parents will make the flow of drama confusing, and linking too many may eliminate other parts of the chain

Occasionally, linking to the full comments is warranted. Usually this happens when a controversial self post is made and all the comments on it are drama. Ideally, the full comments section you link will have less than 100 comments. However, if you must link to the full comments, you cannot submit a link. You must submit as a self post, then put the full comments in the body of your self post.

The purpose of this is not to be a lazy submitter. Don't make people hunt for the drama! You should find the juiciest bits and link them, and provide explanation when necessary

Surplus Popcorn

Current Surplus Popcorn: racism drama, gender wars, gamergate drama, rape drama, pedo drama, trans drama, and SJW drama,

Certain kinds of drama are political, and therefore unduly popular, and therefore get upvoted at the expense of other posts. Even if only half the stuff in the new queue is stale popcorn, the front page will look like it's almost all stale. Posts in this category can be submitted as a self post only. Direct links will be removed. Posts in this category will face greater scrutiny, like a harsher version of the rules that apply to to posts normally. Some things we will look for

• "Just right" amount of children: not too many, not too little. Most of what is linked does not consist of peripheral off topic replies. Normally we look for a minimum of 15-20 children, but for surplus popcorn it could be double that. 150+ children probably means you linked improperly

• Participants are not trolls or possible trolls

• Legit back and forth and nesting of replies. The drama is not hard to follow. The drama is not just a few reviled comments being piled on by detractors

• Discussion is not calm, reasoned, or anywhere near reaching a consensus

• The title and the write-up do not contain a shred of bias or lead the reader to think a certain side is in the wrong

• The drama comes from the harsh words being exchanged- not from SRDers trying to call out bad behavior

NOTE: if surplus drama has some sort of special X factor that makes it notable and special, it won't be considered surplus drama. for example, if Ellen Pao did an AMA and started slapfighting with redditors about gender imbalances. A good test of if drama might meet this exception is that the topic of argument is playing second fiddle to whatever the X factor is, and the surplus topic is barely worth mentioning. This will require a great deal of mod discretion, so modmail to ask. No, your post is probably not special.

Tutorials

Submitting with NP

How-to

After you paste your url, backspace the "www" part and replace it with "np". So

http://www.reddit.com/r/NoParticipation/comments/10mqi3/how_to_install_noparticipation/

becomes

http://np.reddit.com/r/NoParticipation/comments/10mqi3/how_to_install_noparticipation/

In image form:

See how the "www" part has been REPLACED with "np". Do not add "np" into the domain to make something like

http://www.np.reddit.com/r/NoParticipation/comments/10mqi3/how_to_install_noparticipation/

Doing this will break a lot of stuff, including RES

Info about NP

A subreddit can display a certain stylesheet based on what kind of language domain is used. In this case, linking to np.reddit.com instead of www.reddit.com will cause the subreddit to display the No Particpation stylesheet. It’s a read-only mode where users linked through the NP domain cannot vote or comment. This works only if the subreddit has installed the NP CSS. If not, linking to the subreddit with the NP domain will cause to display without the subreddit’s custom CSS, and voting and commenting will still be possible. This way we can still watch drama as it develops, but if the subreddit wishes to preserve its own culture by discouraging popcorn pissers, they have that option.

Once again, a subreddit installs the NP stylesheet so links to it using NP will display differently. SRD moderators have no control over if the subreddits we link to actually install this stylesheet. Many don't. NP is used for all links so that moderators of other subreddits have that option.

We recognize NP is a very imperfect solution to brigading. The admins are working on tools, but it will be a long time before they are ready. We thought NP was better than doing nothing and better than going screenshot-only

Using ?context

"?context" allows you to show the parent comments of a certain child comment. It is useful for seeing what someone is replying to or isolating chains from irrelevant replies. Look at this example link

https://np.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/3d2hv3/kn0thing_says_he_was_responsible_for_the_change/ct1bb0y

The big drama here is that yishan talks shit about kn0thing, and kn0thing replies. If you link this, people will have to hunt for the drama, but they will understand how the comment chain propagated

Look at this second example link

https://np.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/3d2hv3/kn0thing_says_he_was_responsible_for_the_change/ct1fsoi

the dramatic child has been isolated, but the parents that lead up to it are not shown. If you link to this, people will be confused

The solution is to decide which comment to highlight, (in this case the second link), and to then determine how many prior comments you want to show (in this case, 2).

if you add "?context=2" to the very end of the second link, you will have linked with context, making the new, proper link

https://np.reddit.com/r/TheoryOfReddit/comments/3d2hv3/kn0thing_says_he_was_responsible_for_the_change/ct1fsoi?context=2

Submitting self posts and write-ups

When you go to the "submit" page, there will be an option for a link, or for a text post. (Labeled "text"). In order to submit as a link, you must link to a particular comment, as opposed to linking the the entire comment section. We typically look for at least 15-20 child comments of arguing. So what happens when your drama falls outside this?

Types of cases where self posts are needed

• Several chains of drama

Lets say a controversial link is posted on a subreddit, and more than one comment on that link contains chains of arguing. Read the comments to find the best threads, then submit as a self post with a link to each thread. It will help to give a description of each one. If some of your threads don't have the normal 15-20 children but are still pretty dramatic, it's okay. If all the links in your self post are dramalets, your post may be removed

• One controversial comment spawns massive amounts of arguing

Scenario: An askreddit thread recieves a highly upvoted comment where a poster talks about why they cheat, and the comment has hundreds of child replies. Some of those child replies are people arguing with OP and each other, and some of those child replies are non-dramatic discussion. If you link to the parent comment, you'll get the drama, but you'll also get a lot of stuff that isn't drama and SRD users will be forced to hunt for it among all the off topic replies. The best way to handle linking a comment with hundreds of replies is to find the best subthreads yourself, and link them in a self post, much in a similar manner to what was talked about above. The ?context trick is very useful here.

• ALL the comments are drama

If the total number of comments on the post is 100 or less, then you can submit as a self post with no need for a writeup or to pick out dramatic subthreads. However, if we think that the non-drama comments have a majority, you will be asked to resubmit linking only to dramatic comment threads

• A dramatic happening that isn't exactly like the material that gets directly linked

Most of our fare is a link to a dramatic comment, but we do welcome other types of drama. Some common examples are shadowbans, subreddits going private or being banned, a dramatic self post in another subreddit, and modmail screenshots. The first two scenarios ALWAYS require a write-up, and links to dramatic comments are almost always needed. For example, if a user or subreddit is banned, you can explain the lead-up and then link to supporting comments. The last two scenarios don't always require explanation and context but can use it.

Other FAQ

Banned subreddits

Automoderator is set to remove mentions of certain subreddits. The most common reason for being added to this list is a subreddit tried to manipulate SRD to advertise itself. Some of those subreddits are:

r\guns, r\gunsarecool, r\progun: the subreddits used SRD as a battleground and spammed their drama in an attempt to undercut each other. they would argue so much that drama featuring them would have 400+ comments of arguing where they were all reporting each other.

"shock" subreddits and troll modmails: subreddits that were created to get attention through controversy, like r\philosophyofrape, and subreddits that are moderated by trolls who use modmail to chat, like r\dickgirls

racist subreddits: examples are r\coontown (now banned) and r\greatapes

Not all subreddits banned are listed above, since it would defeat the purpose of not advertising them.

Mental health and support subreddits, such as r\suicidewatch and r\rapecounseling, are not allowed, and are deemed inappropriate for SRD.

What is drama?

coming soon