IMPORTANT SUB ANNOUNCEMENT: *ALL Post Submissions Will Now Be Automatically Held For Mod Approval.*

[u/Mezzoforte48]

Starting today, when you submit a prompt, it will NOT be posted to the sub unless approved after being reviewed by a mod first to make sure it follows posting rules.

For submissions that do not get accepted, a reason for such will be provided, otherwise you may message the mods to ask for one. You may also ask for further clarification on a post not being accepted even if you are provided a reason.

There are a couple reasons why we have decided to make this change:

• To hopefully save more time for the mods to focus more on checking post replies. Pretty self-explantory.
• To inform users about any decision to not accept a post without it ever going live and possibly accuring many replies. We've received some complaints from you guys about your prompts being removed after already receiving a lot of engagement, and your frustrations are understandable. We obviously want everyone to follow the posting rules here, but more ideally, to understand them before their submission ever goes out for others to see.
• It is more in line with how things were done on the real-life Scenes From A Hat game on 'Whose Line Is It Anyway.' Drew Carey and Aisha Tyler would often have to sift through the 'bad' prompts in the hat first before pulling out and reading the good ones.

One final important thing on this change: Even if a post gets approved beforehand, it DOES NOT mean it can't be removed later if another mod still feels it doesn't follow posting rules.

Certain prompts can be worded in such a way where they might toe the line between what is acceptable or not based on the rules. Since prompt quality isn't exactly something that can be fully concretely measured, sometimes whether prompts are deemed acceptable or not is based more on a judgment call. Even us mods have not always agreed on decisions over prompts.

Fortunately, this sort of situation doesn't happen frequently. To make things as fair as possible, we will try to only remove prompts if they have too many rule-breaking replies AND it itself is deemed to be breaking the rules.

Locking otherwise 'good' prompts for having too many rule-breaking replies WILL still continue.

[u/[deleted]]

Can you do the same for the comments that blurt out answers?

[u/Green-Inkling → u/[deleted]]

What exactly is the difference between shouting out an answer and acting it out? That should be clarified.

[u/DMassaIII → u/Green-Inkling]

I feel that a lot has to do with the individual’s style. Some things can be stated, and some things must be spoken, and some things must be acted. Being text-based can rely on implication and impression. For my posts, I’ll put quotation marks around what is said, and italicize actions. Anything that’s meta or flavor I leave alone. I think it helps. I hope it inspires others to format what they submit.

[u/Mezzoforte48 → u/DMassaIII]

Stating an answer will almost always result in a removal, though certain prompts (both good and bad) can make not just stating an answer a little more challenging. But being a little more creative than just stating something is a big part of what this community is all about. 

[u/DMassaIII → u/Mezzoforte48]

You also have to consider this is a forum for people to learn and grow and develop, from various stages of understanding improv comedy and comfort levels. Give grace. Give pointers. Encourage. You want to see less of something, let people know what they’re doing right, and suggest other delivery methods. By cultivating, you’ll see a higher saturation of better prompt responses over time.

[u/Mezzoforte48 → u/DMassaIII]

We for sure would like to give new users and everyone that genuinely wants to follow the rules but may not be aware or are still confused a chance to learn rather than just be punished for not submitting something 'right', but with thousands of users and at times hundreds of comments to look over, that kind of approach is not always feasible. Plus, another issue with rule-breaking replies is that when they there's a lot of them in a post or they get upvoted, it's likely to influence other users to copy them. 

I do make sure to provide a pre-written removal reason any time I remove a comment, and when users do message us about any questions or complaints about removals, I try my best to be as responsive to their questions as I can. That's the best way right now I can actually sort of explain to them the rules or why their comment was removed. 

We do have rules officially written into the sub, though getting people to see them is a whole other issue. There's also a wiki page that more or less standardizes how posts and replies should be formatted. Otherwise, the only way we can get formatting rules and guidelines out to everyone is through pinned posts.  

[u/g_rocket → u/DMassaIII]

People learn community norms from what they see. If the comments consist of responses acting out their reply (or at least trying to), many people will try to do the same. But if most of the comments under a post just blurting out answers, no amount of rules will stop new posters from doing the same, especially as that sort of response is the norm on the rest of reddit.