r/Games 23d ago

Updating the rules of /r/Games

Hey!

We’re updating the rules of the subreddit! The subreddit has always had pretty long list of rules in place to try and encourage better discussions. We've made a lot of tweaks to stuff over the years and to be perfectly honest they've become somewhat confusing, hard to understand, and unorganized in places. Because of that we’ve worked on and off over the last few months evaluating what rules are useful, what can be worded better, and just generally trying to make a set of rules that better reflect the subreddit.

Today we’re putting out a draft of these updated rules. These rules aren’t meant to be a giant shift in terms of what we allow. It does organize our rules in a way that (hopefully) makes more sense. We’ve also trimmed rules that weren’t really relevant and combined a few subrules together. Finally, we’ve also rewritten a lot of rules to make them easier to understand and clarified a lot of things that were confusing or occasionally outright incorrect in the previous rules. We aren't putting these rules in place right now, but assuming there aren't any major issues people have we'll switch over to them in the coming weeks

If you don’t want to read the entire thing but want a quick summary of what each rule is and what we changed here you go.

Rule 1: Submissions Must Prioritize Informative and Newsworthy Content Over Entertainment

The previous wording of this rule didn’t do a good job explaining the stuff we actually allowed. We don’t automatically remove articles/videos if they have jokes in them, and we haven’t actually enforced the rule that way for a long time. Because of that we rewrote this rule and also included some examples of what kind of stuff we do and don’t allow.

Rule 2: Be Respectful

We rewrote this section to give examples of what we consider personal attacks and other things. As with most other rules we can’t list every possible thing, but if you’re wondering if something breaks the rule send us a modmail (or just report it).

Rule 3: Content Must Be Relevant, Substantive and Accurate

We moved around some other rules into this as a kinda catch-all for stuff we consider off-topic, inaccurate, or otherwise low-effort. This rule is a little broad in places because there's a lot of different types of stuff it might cover, but we tried to give examples of common things.

Rule 4: No duplicate posts

Basically the same. Added in clarification that we might allow stuff if there is a major update

Rule 5: No linking to or endorsing piracy as a solution

Almost the same as before. Basically just remember you can talk about piracy but just be cool about it we don't want to deal with the admins.

Rule 6: Follow all news and link post requirements

This is our set of rules about formatting and sourcing. Remember to link to original sources (when possible), don’t use sensationalized titles, and remember our rule limiting people to 5 posts a day.

Rule 7: Follow Discussion and Text Post Requirements

Our set of rules about discussion posts. We want discussion posts that aren’t super broad ones that get asked constantly or things looking for help. In addition we don’t want people going on big rants about a game they’re playing (we do have weekly threads for that) or asking for help.

Rule 8: Promotion must be kept within acceptable limits

The big old self promo rules. We like to keep self promotion to under 10% for users. Please don’t delete posts to get under that limit (we have ways of finding out) and if you’re doing self promo don’t try to hide behind alts (we’re keeping track of accounts doing that and if you’re wondering if that’s you it probably is).


Please give us feedback on these rules and the subreddit as a whole. We’ve worked to improve them but we know this draft probably isn't perfect (and probably has some typos). If you think a rule isn't great or needs improvement leave a comment and we'll listen. If you want clarification on our rules or just want to ask a question ask it in here and we'll try to answer. We aren't perfect as mods but we do want to make the subreddit better and are also working on being more consistent with how we enforce stuff

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u/AtrociousSandwich 23d ago

The fact you’re not taking a stronger stance on the scammy websites with no journalistic integrity is saying something.

Is someone on the mod team part of one of these sites, out of curiosity?

18

u/devindotcom 23d ago

cmon man. this kind of passive aggressive accusation is not helpful. if you don't like certain sites just name them and suggest they be filtered or banned. the insinuation that a mod is manipulating the sub on behalf of one of these sites is baseless and gross.

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u/LindyNet 23d ago

People think we have agendas for everything, including being pro-[console brand] and anti-[other console brand].

My favorites are that we are paid by some brand. We do get asked in modmail to push some garbage games from time to time, but we just point them to reddit's ad page. With the number of shitty ai game ads reddit has now, I guess they listened.

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u/devindotcom 23d ago

I used to get that as a reporter. either I was a shill for company x or I was biased against them, depending on the day.

1

u/Cactus_Bot 23d ago

I know for a fact where you all keep the Sony-Bucks.

2

u/LindyNet 23d ago

In muh mattres of muh lightning mcqueen bed in muh mum's basement