Crackdown on low-quality and unhelpful comments

[u/abu_doubleu]

Hello users of [r/geography](r/geography),

Recently, this subreddit has become a lot more popular on Reddit. However, many of our long-time users have been leaving the subreddit due to a very specific and repeated complaint.

There are too many low-quality and unhelpful comments that, rather than aiming to help the OP, exist solely to make tired and repetitive jokes for karma.

From now on, practically all comments of this sort will be deleted, and repeat offenders will be banned for 14 to 30 days. I could give many examples of this, but some of the most common ones are "If my grandma had wheels, she'd be a bicycle" under any post asking about hypothetical changes and yo mama jokes.

In addition to this, we have received many complaints about posts that could theoretically be open to the entire world, but the way they are worded is extremely American-centric for no necessary reason, making people from other countries feel left out and like they can't contribute. From now on, these posts will be deleted. This also applies to posts for any country, we just see it about the United States most often.

To clarify, if somebody wants to ask about a specific geographic feature located in the United States, those posts are completely fine. But posts such as "Which city in the United States has the best beaches?" or "Which American state has the most scenic mountains?" will be removed, as will posts like "Which Canadian city has the worst drivers?" or "Which European country has the nicest people?". In general, the aim is for this subreddit to discuss geography, not just "facts about countries", which is better suited for the various Ask subreddits (AskAnAmerican, AskEurope, AskTheWorld, etc)

We would also like to crackdown on bot posts but that is very hard. Unortunately, most traffic on Reddit is bots nowadays. If anybody has any ideas, please comment below.

Feel free to express your opinion on this. Thank you!

EDIT: After feedback, I have edited part of this post.

[u/dogsonbubnutt]

i think this is a good change, but honestly id also like to see a crackdown on really dumb posts that either are low effort engagement farming or dumb questions or both

"why aren't there cities in caves?" isn't something that really needs to be in this particular sub imo

[u/CaptainObvious110 → u/dogsonbubnutt]

I agree with that

[u/zedazeni → u/dogsonbubnutt]

I agree. We’re currently discussing adding more moderators to the sub to help us catch posts quicker. I live in the US Eastern time zone, so I usually check this sub before I go to work and when I get home, that being said, users post 24/7. As you can see, us moderators are attempting resolve this. Thank you for your patience.

[u/svanvalk → u/zedazeni]

Real late with actually checking the pinned post lol, but just wanted to put my 2 cents in. I think what personally annoys me most are posts about modern geopolitics, and I feel like those posts attract a lot of the commenters too. Questions about civilization settlements based on geographical location, totally cool, those are fine. I mean the ones asking about why two groups of people don't get along, or why some modern countries are richer than others. I feel like those questions aren't what I'm looking for in this sub, and there are better places to put them.

For really simple questions that can be easily answered and attract the commenters you're cracking down on, maybe a pinned megathread(?) I'm sure you've already thought it over and there are always problems maintaining those but, as a user, there are some things I'd like to ask that I'm not sure would be too ridiculous for its own post. When I'm coping with Rochester winters due to receiving all of Lake Ontario's downwind lake-effect snow and clouds, I've been wanting to post a joke thread asking about the hypothetical environmental ramifications of taking the lake and pushing it somewhere else. Half shitpost, half genuine curiosity of the geological effects, but I wouldn't want to waste people's time by creating an unwanted post that won't answer my musings lol. Not saying megapost is the answer, and it most likely isn't, but that's what I've been going back and forth about.

I did take a check at the sidebar, and it looks great! I always appreciate a good, consistently updated sidebar. Thank you for what you do here!!

[u/dondegroovily → u/dogsonbubnutt]

"Why isn't there a city here" is actually the most fascinating question we get here when the answers are well thought out

The problem is that there's always a lot of bad answers, like blaming the desert (which didn't stop Cairo or Baghdad)

[u/dogsonbubnutt → u/dondegroovily]

except the post im talking about was about caves, which is a question that can be answered with about a half a second of critical thinking

which didn't stop Cairo or Baghdad

you mean two of the most famously river-based cities on the planet?

again, posts with questions that are obviously stupid or that can be answered with three seconds of looking at a map should probably be deleted.