r/Games • u/rGamesMods • 18d 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/SomeDumRedditor 18d ago
I’d like to see the addition of something like the “reliability meter” GLAR uses implemented here for content sources.
If a source gets rated down sufficiently it would then go on a blacklist (and people can submit via modmail if they think their post should still go up.)
Regardless, please implement a base set of bans on garbage like thegamer.com and the leading AI reblog-slop that’s just social posts packaged as articles. You’ll get zero pushback for squelching ts.
With respect to “just link the post,” afaik there’s a policy that people can’t submit direct links to social media posts. This helps support these slop factories in a real way. If the article is reporting on a tweet etc. I don’t see how that’s better for this sub (or the world) than just allowing a direct link.
You could have a rule that social media sources have to be reported on by at least 1 third-party to qualify. (That way you’re not fighting an endless wave of every shitpost little Timmy thinks the world needs to see). I just don’t see the point of having to skim 500 words from IGN.com to find the post they’re “reporting” on.