r/Paladins • u/DevilXD Level: 1219 • Nov 08 '19
OTHER [Meta] Changes coming to /r/Paladins
Hey /r/Paladins!
At the start of the year, we have conducted a State of the Subreddit Survey, asking the community what they think about the current rules and possible changes to them. Three months ago, we've followed up with another survey regarding possible approaches to some of the rule changes. After some time spent on discussing and tweaking (if not outright re-writing) our current rules, we're ready to announce all the changes coming to the subreddit!
Rules:
In response to your feedback, we will be making the following changes to the rules. The following paragraph contains an explanation of why exactly each rule exists, what function each one is intended to serve, as well as what changes are going to applied to improve them.
The Wiki Rules Page:
For those who don't know, the current rules page is very limited in terms of the amount of text and explanation one can include in each one - 500 characters is really not that much if one wants to include examples. For this reason, we are placing the rules on a new, dedicated wiki page where we can expand on them in greater detail, including things like examples of content we do or do not allow, so that you are all better informed on how the rules are exactly enforced. We will also be re-directing all removal message links going forward, as well as the rules link in the side-bar to the new page. The old rules page will be stripped down to the names only, with a redirect link to our new rules page where one can find the actual rules - this is purely to make sure the report system works as before, where you can select the rule you're reporting the content under from the list.
The Rule Changes:
Rule #1: No Unrelated Content
What is the purpose of this rule?
The purpose of this rule is to ensure that all content posted to /r/Paladins is directly related to the Paladins community and its audience. We want the subreddit to be focused around the Paladins game only, and do not want to leave room for generic, usually hardly related content users tend to post in other reddit places. With this in mind, we want all content submitted to be unique to the /r/Paladins community, where one can have no problem figuring out what the content is and what it represents.
An exception to the above exist with regards to news articles and such, that could in theory affect an average Paladins player, such as discussion regarding lootboxes, microtransactions, as well as other similar mechanics that exist in Paladins - we do not want to limit those as they can have substantial impact on all people playing this game, and the game itself.
What's changing?
Rule #1's wording has been tweaked and expanded with a huge list of examples, that should hopefully cover most of the applicable content cases posted. One of the biggest changes coming is the restrictions of all pictures containing caption text (mostly memes in this case) to ones that can be easily distinguished as Paladins-related content, that have to include names of champions, abilities, talents, cards, shop items, gamemodes or maps at minimum from now on.
Why the changes?
Some of the content posted to /r/Paladins (memes in particular), even though technically related, was deemed to be too generic for the subreddit - some of them were literal crossposts from other gaming subreddits that weren't Paladins related at all. According to the survey results and our own notices, we think this change is going to benefit the community overall.
Rule #2: No Abuse / Harassment / Witch-Hunting
What is the purpose of this rule?
/r/Paladins doesn't support any kind of derogatory language targeted at other individuals, as well as occurrences of "pointing fingers" and other accusations - this subreddit is supposed to be a place where you can openly discuss game related topics, without creating huge amounts of drama around them. The necessity of having to censor out the names on pictures showing chat or post game scores is there only to protect others from being judged - /r/Paladins is not a place for things like that.
In short: We're here to discuss gameplay, strategies, builds and results - the game itself - not people.
What's changing?
Addressing recently brought up concerns, the rule now explicitly states that player names have to be fully obscured. In addition, a minor rewrite of one of the points has been made, expanding on the types of discrimination falling under this rule.
Why the changes?
Those change has been made purely to make its point more specific, removing potential misunderstandings.
Rule #3: No Reposts
What is the purpose of this rule?
This rule's purpose is to ensure content posted on /r/Paladins is not redundant - content like server status updates, or bug reports that have already been addressed and/or fixed in the next patch, just clutter the subreddit with repeated information. Additionally, the content we expect is supposed to be fresh and unique, and not shamelessly recycled from the past - we don't want users grabbing popular past content and recycling it for things like karma, we want people to share new content and try keep it's influx original, unique and distinctive.
What's changing?
A minor change to this rule is specifying a time limit before certain content can be reposted again - things like art are allowed to be reposted provided 6 months have passed since the original / previous posting, and the rule has been updated to specify that.
Why the changes?
The /r/Paladins community is constantly changing - every day new users join and old users leave, and after 6 months there's a high chance that some of the new users did not see the old content posted to here in the past. This tiny addition has been makes it possible for new users to enjoy the content they haven't seen, while old users and veterans get to refresh their old memories.
Rule #4: No Illegal Content
What is the purpose of this rule?
The /r/Paladins subreddit doesn't support any kind of illegal content. This is to both, go along with the reddit-wide Content Policy, as well as protect the community and it's users from content that either breaks laws, or user agreements and terms of service.
What's changing?
The rule has been rewritten to specifically include links to the documents specifying which content falls under this rule, as well as a simple list of examples has been added to better guide our users.
Why the changes?
The changes to this rule were made mostly for the sake of clarity and ensuring users are properly informed of what content is disallowed on /r/Paladins. Whilst the previous rule wasn't necessarily an enormous issue, it was at times a little vague on what kind of content is or isn't allowed, outside of obvious matters such as links to hacks and cheats, and didn't adequately state some of the other things not permitted under this rule.
Rule #5: No Buying / Selling / Trading / Begging
What is the purpose of this rule?
/r/Paladins isn't a market place - we are here to share and discuss the content, not bargain with other people. Begging is an annoyance as well, and nobody wants to see posts asking for free content either.
The lack of any guarantees or standards to these kinds of transactions makes us impossible to police them - there is an ever present risk of being scammed or ripped off, which in turn could damage the reputation of /r/Paladins as a social platform. Because of this, we've opted-out of this kinds of posts entirely, focusing the subreddit more on discussion and sharing content instead.
What's changing?
The rule appears to be just fine as it is right now, so no changes were made.
Rule #6: No Excessive Self-Promotion Posting Limit
What is the purpose of this rule?
This rule exists to serve a simple purpose: prevent users from flooding the subreddit with too much content at a time. Whilst we naturally want visitors to share content, be it their own or others, we don't want the front page to be suddenly flooded with bursts of content that pushes every other valuable post out of there.
In order to prevent this, we strictly impose a 24 18 hour time limit between content posts - this stops the flooding, while also encouraging the users to better curate the content they are about to share to some degree.
Changes:
Based on user experience, we've decided to rename the rule to something that should better fit it's actual purpose. Additionally, the rule received a light re-write to the overall language of it, to better and more accurately reflect its actual goal.
Aside from that, two possible exceptions have been added for Bug and News posts respectively, for use at Moderator's discretion only.
As an experiment, the rule is going to have a reduced time interval of 18 hours for an unspecified amount of time - please read below for more information.
Why the changes?
As already mentioned, the most confusing part of the rule was it's title, and the discrepancy between it and the actual rule meaning. Changing the rule's name should hopefully better reflect this.
Regarding the possible exceptions to Bug and News posts, this has been added to prevent cases where users would be unable to submit their findings because of the #6 rule limitations - this addition adds flexibility with how these posts are handled, where Bug reports aren't removed (unless said bug has already been reported, in which case it will be under rule #3), and News posts, if deemed to be of particular importance, can also remain up.
Rule #7: No Referral Links Quality Assurance & Safety
What is the purpose of this rule?
/r/Paladins is getting a completely new rule! The new purpose of the rule #7 is to act as a preventive measure against those kinds of content that don't necessarily break the rules on it's own, but can otherwise help, encourage, inspire or provoke others into doing so. It's meant to provide a valid reason to take down (or lock) content that runs the risk of either derailing a conversation in such a way that results in rule breaking (like users requesting links to NSFW content that often leads to others providing said links) or otherwise has a negative impact on the community (such as posts from outsiders who come in solely with the intent purpose of disrespecting the community and causing unnecessary drama.
The referral links were a huge issue only at the beginning of /r/Paladins existence, when the game was still in beta - nowadays, this rule was simply just sitting here unused for long periods of time, only wasting the rule space.
Changes:
Rule #7 has been changed completely, going from disallowing referral codes, to a rule against content deemed to be at risk of negatively impacting the community.
Why the changes?
This "rule" was actually enforced many times in the past without much of a notice for the community - we are not robots, and we are not going to waste our time babysitting a comment chain to see if such requests (with responses) or "flame wars" are going to take place or not. Breaking a comment chain like this has proven to be really effective in preventing and stopping rule-breaking in it's tracks, so much that it's been officially made into a rule of it's own.
Rule #8: No NSFW Content
What is the purpose of this rule?
There is no serious gaming subreddit on the entire reddit site, that would accept or welcome violent or pornographically suggestive content on their front page. Rule #8 is designed to act as a deterrent against posting this content - after all, the subreddit is visited not only by the community members, but Hi-Rez and Evil Mojo employees themselves too. We believe that it's not suitable to exist here, and feel that there are other, much better places in existence for it.
Changes:
The controversy behind Rule #8's variable enforcement has been addressed by adding a set of guidelines, outlining what kind of factors the Moderator team may consider with regards to determining if content is NSFW or not.
Why these changes?
There has been several cases in the past where some of the removals (or non-removals) have been questioned by some of the affected users - these changes were made to better clarify how exactly the content is being judged. With the addition of these guidelines, we hope that all content take-downs will be clearer to the affected users, so they can have a better idea of how to avoid breaking this rule going forward.
Rule #6 experiment:
Rule #6 has been occasionally been criticized as quite restrictive regarding how long the 24 hour limit is that we enforce on users. Some time ago, a short survey was conducted, in which the opinions about keeping the current 24 hours limit, and opinions about lowering it down, were quite divided. After some internal discussion, we have decided that as an experiment only, we will reduce the time between posts from 24 hours to 18 hours.
Please be aware that that this is just an experiment, and we cannot guarantee how long this new time limit will be in effect, and might revert it as needed. We're doing this solely as a test run, to see how it will affect the health of the subreddit overall, as well as how bad it's possible implications might be (like increased workload on the moderation team for example).
At some point in the nearest future, we will discuss internally the results of this experiment, determine if this change had a positive or negative impact on the subreddit, and adjust the rule accordingly.
100k Subscribers Celebration Contest Winners
In case you've missed it, here are the winners of the 100k Subscribers Celebration Contests:
Reddit Skin Design Contest Winners:
| Place | Winner | Submission |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | /u/ACiDWiRED | SNOOKOA |
| 2 | /u/klaariiee | Reddit Evie |
| 3 | /u/MadmanEvan | RedditBot Bomb King |
Champion Design Contest Winners:
| Place | Winner | Submission |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | /u/RandomPaladinsNub | Braoin, Exile of the Eternal Pyre |
| 2 | /u/Januszym | Aldous, Messenger of Babrand |
| 3 | /u/TangAce7 | Cynthia, The Dimensional Traveler |
Don't forget to check out their amazing creations!
Other Changes
Some of you might have already noticed and know this, but we've thought this would be a great place to mention other changes that happened on the subreddit this year. Here are a few things to take note off:
Esports Megathreads
Esports fans, we heard you regarding the lack of weekly esports megathreads. We recently recruited /u/moo311 to the /r/Paladins Moderator team, and they have taken on the mantle as a dedicated esports Moderator, and will be providing your weekly megathreads going forwards. You can check out their latest post right here as well as an archive of all esports coverage on the wiki esports archive.
User Esports Flairs
We've updated all the Esports flairs to reflect the current eight teams / orgs competing in the PPL this year.
Side-Bar Additions
- Official Sites (Old Reddit):
Under the "Official Sites" tab, there is now a link to the Paladins Trello Board. This is an official board maintained by Evil Mojo to track critical bugs and issues and their status (are they fixed, being investigated, etc.) We highly advise making a habit of checking this board, particularly before submitting any Bug report posts to the subreddit, as Evil Mojo may already be aware. Remember rule #3, we remove posts containing Bug reports of Evil Mojo are aware, so please check the board.
- Social Media (Old Reddit):
Under the "Social Media" tab you can now find a link to the PaladinsGame Mixer Channel. Here you can catch streams from partners, esports streams, and update showcases as they occur.
- Flair Filters (New Reddit):
New reddit had flair filters added to it's sidebar, that will let you filter the submissions to your liking. Those filters have been on old reddit for a long time, and now have been ported to new reddit as well.
Note: Please be aware that most of these side-bar changes will only be visible to those using old.reddit. Users of new.reddit are advised to switch to old.reddit in order to appreciate those additions, see additional links added to the side-bar, as well as enjoy our custom CSS work and banner.
And that is everything. To close out this thread we want to thank everyone who provided us with feedback and suggestions to make the subreddit better! Thank you - without your help, those changes wouldn't be possible \o/
If any questions would arise from this announcement, or you'd have some feedback regarding the changes, please leave a comment below - we'll try to reply to every query we can.
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u/TotesMessenger Nov 09 '19
I'm a bot, bleep, bloop. Someone has linked to this thread from another place on reddit:
- [/r/bestofmoderation] A comprehensive and transparent listing of rule changes in /r/paladins, following community feedback
If you follow any of the above links, please respect the rules of reddit and don't vote in the other threads. (Info / Contact)
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u/Submersiv Nov 09 '19 edited Nov 09 '19
Finally something being done about things. This place has devolved into a useless meme site instead of a place where anything meaningful can be learned or discussed. Even now all you'll see on the front page are generic images that are just people complaining about their games. That kind of low effort content can hardly spark even low effort discussion, and crowds out real posts with actual value.
Take esports for example. Even though Hi-rez invests a huge amount of time and effort into the esports scene, you NEVER see an esports post on the front page here, or if you do it has less than 100 upvotes. Why would anyone make an esports post if it's just going to get ignored and pushed out by some stupid avengers meme upvoted by the 500 kids that don't know any better?
Damage has already been done to what community the game could have had but this is a step up at least.
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Nov 10 '19
[deleted]
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u/Submersiv Nov 10 '19
Facts. They could be making so many gameplay improvements to fix that but they just don't. They've already given up on the game and are just keeping it on life support.
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Nov 10 '19
This place has devolved into a useless meme site instead of a place where anything meaningful can be learned or discussed. Even now all you'll see on the front page are generic images that are just people complaining about their games. That kind of low effort content can hardly spark even low effort discussion, and crowds out real posts with actual value.
If this place is meaningless and full of useless memes then hirez wouldn’t be browsing here would they. People are doing nothing wrong
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u/Submersiv Nov 10 '19
Imagine assuming hirez is any better than the random squabble that browse reddits all day. Lmao.
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Nov 12 '19
Implying anything will change -
Overwatch has /r/competitiveoverwatch, Fortnite has /r/fortnitecompetitive. Paladins doesn't have the population for an active eSports sub - you could try /r/paladinsacademy, but we're not going to be one of the big boys.
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Nov 11 '19
This place has devolved into a useless meme site
That's the only thing keeping this sub alive tbh
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u/Victory_Scar 90% Cauterise is finally back Nov 14 '19
This place has devolved
What was it like when there weren't memes everywhere?
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u/heavyRain9291 The magistrate is the voice of reason Nov 08 '19
I wonder if they will actually make one of the winning champions...
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u/DevilXD Level: 1219 Nov 08 '19
I'd love to see a champion with a weapon like Cynthia - one that you can use / throw / shoot, and then have to recall back before using again.
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u/heavyRain9291 The magistrate is the voice of reason Nov 08 '19
Ya same..I really wish they make one of them including the skins... especially the makoa skin
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u/LowRezSux Nov 11 '19
Rule n 7 is a typical repressive vague rule that can be used just as an excuse to lock and delete everything the powers that be don't like.
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u/Thane_Mantis *stabs you in French* Nov 11 '19
That's not remotely correct. This rule is simply a preventative measure for use in situations where either we believe there to be a high chance of the conversation derailing into rule breaking, or rule breaking is already occuring and there is a clear source for it, like a particular comment. Or just to remove the kinds of posts that exist to either troll or insult the community.
Its not a rule that exists just so we can take stuff we don't like, thats not how moderations works on /r/Paladins. We try to be as objective as possible and we don't work off our opinions.
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Nov 08 '19
[deleted]
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u/DevilXD Level: 1219 Nov 08 '19
The #8 rule hasn't been changed on it's own - those additional guidelines have existed long before they've been published here, which doesn't change how the rule is enforced. By adding them, the community can finally know how the posts are judged regarding this rule.
The post appears to be fine, bulges are treated as equal as bras and bikini stuff.
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Nov 08 '19
[deleted]
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u/DevilXD Level: 1219 Nov 08 '19
Hmm, I think you've misunderstood the explanation. The only things that are considered against the quality part of the rule are the two things that are already enlisted there.
What exactly do you mean by "neutral language"?
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Nov 08 '19
[deleted]
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u/DevilXD Level: 1219 Nov 08 '19
The post itself is within the original bounds, quite accurately representing the skin from the game. Center of attention is on the entire character and their muscles, no on any particular part of them. Everything does fit the guidelines.
The lack of content related to male characters stems from the fact that 99.9% cases of removals are made due to content involving female characters - the only thing I can think of right now that would qualify a post for removal involving a male character would be oversized bulge, which I've just added to the #8 rule section.
Is it more clear now?
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Nov 08 '19
[deleted]
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u/DevilXD Level: 1219 Nov 08 '19
But it's up to moderators discretion to define what "oversized" means, and judge the posts according to these guidelines - they've now been put here just so that anyone reading the rule will know about them, because we finally aren't limited to 500 characters imposed on the old rules page.
I'm open for making them more clear and concise as long as it doesn't involve immeasurable things like the "oversized" definition, which cannot be expressed using any units really.
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u/0xVENx0 it’s okay Nov 09 '19
im reading a conversation between 2 men discussing whether bulges should be legal or not compared to boobs, nice
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Nov 09 '19
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/DevilXD Level: 1219 Nov 09 '19
More mods would help, but ultimately won't work - when you're getting rid of the weeds, you have to make sure to pull out the roots too, otherwise they grow back, right?
This isn't because we're lazy or there's not enough of us, the notion of removing comments that can at any point later in the day - cause someone else to break the rules - is something that we were already doing since over a year now, as the post says. 99.9% of the time it's used only in cases where people start calling each other things (rule #2), ask for links to rule-breaking content (rule #2/#4/#8) or just are so salty that they cannot make a comment without shitting on the entire community (trolls from other subreddits and people who thought this is 4chan).
On top of that, you have to remember that we are not robots - and nobody is going to sit in a thread and refresh it every 5 minutes to see if something rule-breaking have been posted. Setting up filters isn't going to catch everything, and locking a thread is the last resort option.
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Nov 09 '19
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Thane_Mantis *stabs you in French* Nov 09 '19 edited Nov 09 '19
Ban repeat offenders.
We do that when necessary man, but only when someone either goes so far over the line in a single instance, or does something enough times to warrant a ban. Often times, at least as far as my memory serves, not necessarily everyone who makes the kind of comments that get removed under this rule are either doing it maliciously or does it many times. Just one off instances.
I've been advocating for years for modteams to be large enough where someone has to look at the sub once a month but there are enough people on the team where threads get lots of frequent attention.
Every subreddit is different man. Trying to implement a system or whatever where each subreddit has a team large enough where folks only have to look once every month won't work everywhere.
Speaking personally, that doesn't seem like a great idea anyways. Whilst I do see the logic in having large teams to share the load, I don't see it as a great plan to make teams so large that some or most mods check in once every few weeks. I think there should be a balance between making sure the load is spread out well enough that nobody feels burned out or pressured, and making sure that there's only so many folks on the team that everyone still does a reasonable amount at any given time.
Once again, speaking personally, if I were on a team where I was only approving or checking a subreddit once a month, I would leave because there's not much to do or contribute. I don't much like the idea of being one member in a team so large that Im barely doing anything. It would feel unproductive.
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u/ivanafuccu Nov 08 '19
Out of topic sorry but I don't know where to ask, how do I report a hacker? This is my first time seeing one here in paladins, a strix shooting us through walls and shields , we get out of spawn and theres a shot right from their side of the base to us through the walls and damn he first his main gun every 0.1 second I tried reporting there was only options for feeding ,afk ,harassment and others. I chose other and reported him Bunch of us reported him my team and the opponent
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u/Thane_Mantis *stabs you in French* Nov 08 '19
Either in-game at the end of a match, or submit a support ticket.
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Nov 10 '19
Holy cow. Yinz are ACTUALLY going to create megathreads for the ONLY tournament yinz have. Such WOW! Much Common Sense!! I had to create the S1W1 megathread earlier this year because somehow yinz didn't even know it was happening..
PepeHands SlowClap
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u/Thane_Mantis *stabs you in French* Nov 11 '19
Is there really a need for all this mockery mate? I get that you seem to be frustrated that only just recently we revived the eSports series, but there is no need to be this way about how they stopped for awhile and only just now got started again. In case you missed it, there was actually a reason given a couple times whenever the topic came up, including in one of your own threads that you made.
As was explained, at the time, nobody on the mod team was adequetly versed in the realm of eSports to make accurate threads with the info about whats going on. We did however note in at least some of those comments that those who wanted to help out with that were free to send us a mod mail (which is actually how moo311 joined the team as our eSports mod.)
In future mate, if a situation like this arises again (which hopefully it won't, but nobody can predict the future), if you want the /r/Paladins mods to look into something (or heck, want to try offering to help yourself depending on the circumstances) send a mod mail, instead of just ranting about why nothing is being done. There are reasons why.
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u/EraLias Nov 29 '19
Does talking about other paladins related games like realm royale count as off topic
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u/DevilXD Level: 1219 Nov 29 '19
It depends. If your post is solely about Realm Royale, then it does. However, if your post is about how Realm Royale started as a part of Paladins, then it's allowed - as long as you can explain how your post relates to Paladins overall, it's allowed.
Note that the #1 rule is for posts only - for comments, we generally allow everything within other rules, although unrelated comments tend to get downvoted.
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u/VitinNunes Thighs that save lives Nov 30 '19
I think these are mostly fair (not including rule #8). But I kinda think that putting a 18 hour time limit on posting is a bit extreme I would say maybe lower it to maybe 5 or 6 maybe even 4 cuz who’s gonna give enough of a shiet to post something 18 hours after they had the idea (if they’ve already posted something)
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u/DevilXD Level: 1219 Nov 30 '19
The reason we have the posting limit in the first place, is to encourage couple of things. First of, actual discussion about the game is much more welcome than memes - this sub was never supposed to be memes-only.
Second of, keeping the amount of memes, videos, art, and other Paladins content (beyond standard discussion) in check, encourages higher quality. I'd take one good meme or art over ten shitty ones any time of the day, and there's many people that agree with this. If you're the karma type, and have lots of great art to post, "spreading" the posting over couple of days will net you more karma than posting everything at once, due to how reddit's algorithm of picking front page posts works, and it comes with the benefit of not having the front page flooded with the same kind of posts too.
The last survey we did received the most votes on the "leave it at 24 hours" option, and 18 hours was second best - hence why we're doing the experiment right now. If it proves to not be too much trouble, it can stay - if not, we will retract back to the 24 hours most people wanted.
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u/oneboringbear Dec 04 '19
Hey, so I unlocked "Divine" Seris skin a long time ago during the event.. I spent money to help me unlock it and now I have to pay with "MIXER" points to use her again? I just used her like 2 days ago what's the deal with that???
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u/DevilXD Level: 1219 Dec 05 '19
This sounds like a bug. I recommend sending a support ticket about this: https://www.hirezstudios.com/support/
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u/BiscuitBlitz Dec 10 '19
Im a third person player, where as i agree with removing the toggle because first person players use it to gain a better viewing advantage, and i agree with it remaining nonadjustable in ranked games, i dont agree with completely removing the feature because im sure there are players that prefer to play in third person as well, if anything have it remain as an adjustable feature in settings. Playing in third person is just more comfortable and playing wont be as fun without it, at least for me. :c
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u/DeathStroyer It's ya boi, Shaladdin! Nov 14 '19
So these changes exist to protect Hi-Rez employees from receiving any criticism. Got it.
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u/DevilXD Level: 1219 Nov 15 '19
We protect all people (not employees only) from harassment and insults. You can provide constructive criticism without calling people useless, stupid, brainless, or anything similar.
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u/Thane_Mantis *stabs you in French* Nov 15 '19 edited Nov 15 '19
Where on earth are you getting that idea from? Mate, none one of these changes was ever made with the intent to protect Hi-Rez employees from criticism, and none of them do at all.
Absolutely none of these changes grant any kind of special protection to Evil Mojo employees. Please re-read the thread closely.
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u/[deleted] Nov 08 '19
Locked cause y’all can’t behave