January 1st, 2017 - /r/SubredditOfTheDay: A retrospective of 2016 and what's new here. Also, you can turn the CSS here back on!

SROTDroid · 2017-01-01T13:00:42+00:00

/r/SubredditOfTheDay

128,162 subreddit explorers exploring for 5 years!

Happy New Year's day, everyone. There are some big changes at how Subreddit of the Day works. So this felt like a really good time for us to feature ourselves as Subreddit of the Day so we can go over those changes with you. I know what you're thinking. We could've just made an announcement as a sticky post. And I probably will sticky this post for a while. But we don't want to take away any attention from the sub that we'll be featuring on any particular day by making a second post. That never goes well and it's really not fair for the featured sub.

New CSS

Everyone's been complaining about the CSS on this sub since we released this version. We now have brand new CSS that is a lot more easy on the eyes. It's still a work in progress, but we hope that you see it as an immediate improvement. I would like to invite you all to turn your CSS back on and see for yourself. You can give your feedback in the comments. Please let us know what you think. Also, special thanks to /u/hatefullyemployed for designing it and also to /u/kate_4_president for lending a hand.

Changes to how features are written

Here's the old way that Subreddit of the Day (hereinafter referred to as SROTD) works. Our writing staff find a sub that they like, interview that sub, write an article about it, and then post it. This is a very time consuming process. It often takes days or weeks. It's a lot of effort for very little payout. We know from our last survey that few people read wordy features. We had to be honest with ourselves too. It turned out that we don't even usually read them. What most people do is read the headline and then click the link, and then maybe they'll read the rest of the feature.

Anyways, although SROTD has never missed a day, we've come very close to missing days in the past where there was no post ready and everyone's scrambling to find a sub, interview them, and get the post up.

We've streamlined the feature process to do basically this: Summarize the sub, say what's good about it, and show what's good about it. Some still have mod interviews. We know you all like those. But some don't really need it. We've done away with character limits. Posts will be as long as they need to be in order to capture the essence of the featured sub.

Special Guest Writer Program

This is the change at SROTD that I am most proud of. It really is. It's another that we've been doing for months but have made no official announcement.

It used to be that only mods and staff wrote the features. We allowed nominations, but those were often ignored if no one here was familiar enough with the topic of the sub, or if no one here even liked it.

The special guest program lets the person who nominated the sub write the feature. Usually these are the mods of the sub, but sometimes they are also fans of the sub. So far two of my favorites to come from this program are the TOTALLYNOTROBOTS and EnoughTrumpSpam features. Both are fantastic, and are better brought to life by people who actually are members or mods of those communities.

This program has been so successful that in December 16 of the 31 features that we did were special guest features. You may have noticed that the byline on of the posts said "written by special guest writer." This month's calendar is already filling up with guest features as well.

Part of this was a response to mods complaining that they made nominations which were ignored. They weren't wrong. So we're giving everyone a chance to tell us about their own community (or their favorite community) in their own words.

Same restrictions apply as always. The community must be about a month old, have at least a few hundred subscribers, and must have an active user base. That's it. There's also our sister sub, /r/TinySubredditOfTheDay, for the really small ones. So, check that out.

SROTD Archives

Some of you may have noticed that we've been running archive features. Over the years several people have joined the intern program and left us with interviews and incomplete write ups of a number of subs. We're finishing, updating, and editing these to get them ready to go. It's unfair that some mods have been waiting for years for their features to get done. This is part of our effort to turn that around.

Mission Statement

We've changed our mission statement. It used to be "bringing the awesome." The problem was that not all subs are awesome to everyone. Some are in particular disliked by a number of people. So it had to change. Our mission is now to explore unique reddit communities, to spotlight them, to discuss them. Reddit, to me, is the most awesome collection of communities on the planet with a great diversity of viewpoints. So ya, when we feature GunsAreCool or TheRedPill some people will find those to be awesome and might be upset that we're talking about them at all. But they are a part of reddit culture, and are fair game.

Nominating a Sub

Turn on the CSS for this sub. You'll see a big, beautiful "nominate" button. This will give you a "form" to fill out. The more complete it is the faster it will get posted. We have a new commitment to customer service. While you'll get an automated response, just reply to it and a real human will help you. If you're a mod of the sub the feature will get scheduled very quickly. If you're not a mod, then SROTD staff will need to obtain permission from the mod team before moving forward.

Write SROTD

Check the link in the sidebar to join the intern program. That's the path to becoming a permanent writer and eventually a mod here. You will be expected to meet some quotas. Or, you can use the aforementioned nominate button if there's only one sub you'd like to write about.

subredditoftheday

Subreddit of the Day

Nominating a subreddit

Other Excellent Resources

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