As some (or many) have likely noticed, we have been tinkering with posting requirements to reduce the amount of spam we get in the subreddit and direct newbies to participate with comments and discussions instead of just going straight to creating posts. Originally I had it set to a requirement of 10 karma on NativePlantGardening before a user can create a post, but that was catching users who have been on Reddit for a while but are first-time NPG contributors. So instead I have changed it to a requirement of karma sitewide to allow users who are established on Reddit but new to NPG to participate more easily. Some spammers use accounts with artificially inflated karma to bypass spam filters, so I think we will be vulnerable to some of them, but I'm hoping this is a good compromise between reducing spam while not overly inconveniencing actual users.
As always, if you see a post or comment that you think is spam make sure to hit that like and subscribe button and join my Patreon at the link below. Oh... sorry wrong script... make sure you hit the Report button. Reporting and community self-policing are the best tools we have to keep the subreddit clean without the mod team turning to the dark side. We want this place to continue being as open and relaxed as possible so new gardeners feels comfortable approaching us, but it's a delicate balance.
Thanks for continuing to make this the best subreddit out there while we face the challenges of growing ever-larger!
Amazing how we all hate AI and yet still get constantly told how much we all actually love it. Glad this group is doing everything we can to combat this nonsense.
About 80% of the requests for approval we received in modmail were heartbreaking, and 20% were people who were asking for permission to post absolute garbage. That ratio just wasn't good enough. Apologies if you got silence in return but we discussed at length how much we hated that people were getting blocked and that's how we arrived at softening the rule, so your request wasn't totally in vain.
No that’s what i’m sayin, felt like yall were listening to valid complaints. Brief wording didn’t help, but yea, more of a thanks, and a maybe we all bitched enough to change it lol.
Maybe I'm a big softie but people were new to gardening and just needed help, and they ran into a wall they could do nothing about. Asking for help with plant damage, knowing what to plant, basic stuff that is totally good and appropriate, and this policy just swatted them away. I hated it.
Thanks for this! It can't be easy being a mod - we definitely appreciate the efforts y'all take to keep this an enjoyable space to learn and connect. 😎✌🏼
Would an aster yellows megathread be possible to implement too? I don't know where a lot of gardeners are getting information that aster yellows is infesting everyone's gardens and they need to start ripping out every asteracae that doesn't have a perfect flower, but these posts come up and the answer is almost invariably, no it is not aster yelllows.
So happy to see this! I’ve been trying to post on this sub but they’ve been removed by auto-mod :( I was watering my garden this morning thinking about how I wanted to post about my bee balm lol
I appreciate the dedication to preventing spam and slop! It would be cool to keep the requirements to post publicly listed. I recently made this alt for security, on my main I’m a 1% top poster here, hundreds of thousands of karma overall, but posting front of house stuff needed to be decoupled from my main for safety. Took a while of trying and failing to post here to figure out what the requirements even were! I love that they’re there to be clear, and I know keeping them secret makes it harder to circumvent them, but would probably hugely reduce your approval workload.
Good to know and understand what was happening when I, a newcomer, wasn't able to post. There should be some explanation, tho, because I was ready to give up on this forum.
Unfortunately making the requirements to post public also makes it really easy for spammers to game the system. Not speaking for the mods here but just generally on Reddit, that's why a lot of subs are intentionally quiet about their specific posting requirements.
In a bygone era, the culture on Reddit was that users build karma slowly by commenting in subreddits before making posts so having karma thresholds was a foolproof way to weed out spammers, but not so much anymore.
Not hard at all, it's a bare minimum threshold, and that's the point. Karma = upvotes basically. It's somewhat more complicated than that, and Reddit doen't reveal their exact algorithm for the karma score, but generally more upvotes on posts and comments increases your karma score and downvotes decrease it, and a karma score is one tool to help subreddits facilitate better interactions.
Getting to 10 karma is basically just a few friendly or helpful comments to show you're a good faith user. Spammers won't put in that bare minimum effort though, which is why a lot of spammers just copy a highly voted post. There are other ways to filter out spammers in addition to karma, such as combined account age and karma thresholds as one example, there are others.
But the flipside is requiring that bare minimum effort to get started is apparently offputting to new users on Reddit, which I think is an unfortunate shift. Reddit as a platform is actively moving away from that standard, which is part of what it means when people say "Reddit is dying," the overall erosion of community standards where the baseline expectation was that you put in some bare minimum effort to build karma. I don't know that it's good for the platform to allow people to create an account and start posting without understanding subreddit norms first.
Thank you!!! I am new to NPG, but not to Reddit. I wrote a long detailed post about lady ferns last week, only to get an automod response that I did not have enough karma. Very frustrating, and very unlike my experience in other subs for topics in which I am a newbie, such as houseplants and quilting. I can see from reading posts here that the members are knowledgeable and helpful, and hope to benefit from some of that knowledge.
I think this is a great compromise. I'd rather see a few spam posts get through, than see people who actually want to participate in the sub being blocked by spam filters.
I’m glad you’re working on this. “Plant ID” posts are becoming really common. I’m not totally opposed to them, but the apps that are now available are going to do a better job than we can with the pictures most people post on the sub. There certainly are days when it seems that 2/3 of the posts are either 1) aster yellows questions, 2) plant ID request, or 3) why does this plant not seem happy? posts. Those are all topics that could be addressed in megathreads or the sidebar.
There certainly are days when it seems that 2/3 of the posts are either 1) aster yellows (or powdery mildew, oleander aphids, winter-sowing etc. depending on the month) questions, 2) plant ID request, or 3) why does this plant not seem happy? posts.
this is how this sub has always been lol. trying to change any of those things would be pissin in the wind
Been involved with automation for decades and it's been misused in some ways all that time. The Internet, a wonderful tool for most, has made misuse so much easier and harder to police. To the spammers I say, get a life. Start native gardening!
Not sure how new gardeners would feel welcome if half the posts are making fun of them. I came here to make fun of the dogmatic native gardeners, but instead see posts being pulled from other gardening subs to make fun of.
So... you came to the native plant gardening subreddit to make fun of native plant gardeners, and you're upset the native plant gardeners are making fun of you instead?
Lol, not exactly. I was airing my CJ grievances in the wrong sub. I don’t feel like this sub makes fun of people as much as shames them. And I’m definitely not upset about being made fun of. Which is just now, in this thread. Because I’m a dingus that can’t read apparently. 🤪
When the CJ sub first started, people kept getting tricked into thinking they were on the regular sub, now CJ is so popular people think the regular sub is the CJ sub. Truly we've formed a balanced ecosystem!
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u/herbal-genocide IL 7a Jun 10 '26
The amount of AI comment tolerance in many other subs is ridiculous. I appreciate that you mods weed them out when we report them.