State of the subreddit – Early 2019 Edition

How do you do, fellow kids.

As is tradition around these parts, we like to do a little state of the union in the early part of the season, where we briefly discuss how the sub is doing, what we're planning going forward and get your input on the sub in general.

Overall

So let's start out with a little recap. We reached 500.000 subscribers members not too long ago – A major milestone in the history of this place.

Formula 1, and by extension this sub, is growing faster than ever, and that growth will inevitably mean changes. Both in demographics and in posting guidelines. Of course, we're not just going to make changes out of the blue, so we'd like to hear your opinions on future changes. ^{Less moderation? More? Or less and more moderation?}

The growth also means a heavier workload for the mod team in general, as more members naturally means more content to keep an eye on – and some of you have noticed response times dropping a bit at certain times of the day.

We're still talking about how best to solve this – and adding more mods is an option – but we haven't reached a conclusion yet.

Spoilers

This always comes up in the first few races, so let me just reiterate the mod team's position: We're not going to institute a no-spoiler rule.

It's our position that the majority who watch races live are not and can not be held responsible for making sure the people who do not watch races live can avoid spoilers.

If you're able to avoid facebook, twitter, snapchat, instagram, news outlets and whatnot, you're also able to avoid Reddit. And if you can't, we suggest you unsub from /r/Formula1 and block our posts from appearing on /r/all and /r/popular.

Edit: Turns out you can't block subs from popular.

Voting

We can't police votes (nor do we want to), but we'd like to remind everyone that you shouldn't downvote because you disagree with something. They're not agree and disagree buttons. If you think something contributes to conversation, upvote it. If you think it does not contribute to the conversation, downvote it.

Well written and interesting content can be worthwhile, even if you disagree with it.

Flairs

Flairs are coming, and hopefully before China. We'll post when they're available for you all to select from.

Source ratings

Our initial version of the source rating system isn't working. Simple as that. The ratings themselves are solid and the system for displaying the ratings worked well, and we did see a decrease in submission made from lower rated sources, as well as some media reaching out to ask how they could improve their ratings.

But the behind the scenes process didn't work. So, we're changing it to a more streamlined, simpler one. One that also lets you have a say.

We rate sources on two parameters: Quality of the content and effect on the sub. Quality is the more objective analysis, which might mean a source which frequently uses clickbait titles, runs unconfirmed rumours or is just plain gossip will be rated low. Effect on the sub is how users normally would react to submissions from a certain source. Is it positive, neutral or negative?

You get the idea.

So, the new system is a weighted vote. The source rating team submits a score, the mod team submits a score and a score is submitted by public vote. The average score will be the final rating.

It's also worth noting that the system is an evolving one. It will change as we work through the sources, until we find the best formula and process.

We'll be talking more about this in a separate post when we're ready to roll out the new system.

Toxicity, generalising, baiting

We'd also like to remind everyone that we're still clamping down on these things. Users are being banned and comments are being removed, and we're fighting it as best we can.

We've had a number of situations where we've banned toxic users, but have also been forced to ban regular users who've replied to these users.

Two wrongs don't make a right.

It is important to remind everyone that the proper response to this sort of thing is NOT to respond in kind and/or escalate the situation. The correct response is to report it and walk away.

Also a reminder that generalising groups is not allowed. This is especially prudent at the moment, with an influx of more veteran members complaining about the new fans coming in, who don't have years of experience to draw from and naturally have a learning curve, both in terms of the sport as a whole, but also about participation on the sub.

As veteran fans of the sport, we should be welcoming of new people – not treating them like plunderers stealing our karma treasures.

Reporting

On a related note, please use that report button. We need to know about posts and comments breaking the rules, before we can do anything about it. And remember that reporting a post or comment doesn't mean instant action. Depending on the queue size and the number of mods online, things can stay up for a little while before action is taken.

When you report something, make sure you pick a reason. 99% of the times we come across a reported post or comment that just says <no reason>, we're going to ignore it. You need to help us out with a bare minimum of information – so please pick a reporting reason.

When reporting duplicates or reposts, please include a link to the original post. We can't expect /u/F1RepostPolice to do that on every single post.

We've also seen an increase in users calling out other users, verging on stalking them. Don't do that. Nothing good comes from it – You might even get a ban because we consider it harassment.

If you feel a user is breaking the rules, report the post or comment, and send us a modmail instead.

The Reddit redesign

We're still not at a place where maintaining the redesign makes sense in terms of effort. This means flairs, standings in the sidebar, weather reports, etc.

The main issue here, is that we still don't know "the final form" of these things, and that all of these things on Classic Reddit is automated. Standings are pulled and updated automatically whenever the F1 site is updated. Flairs are generated and pushed automatically from a source library. Weather reports are gathered from an external API. Etc. All of this isn't yet possible with the redesign.

We'd rather spend our time working through the queue and trying to bring you new content – at least until a more final version of the redesign is on the table, and we know where it's going.

Curated content

Speaking of new content… We're still working with representatives from Formula 1, the teams and the organisers to bring you more curated content. We're working in a few different directions, but we're confident that we'll be able to bring the sub closer to the sport than ever before.

If you have any questions or comments, shoot.

On behalf of the entire mod team: Enjoy the season!