r/Spokane • u/No_U_Crazy Nine Mile Falls • 23d ago
News Karma and Account Age Rules for /r/Spokane - now permanent
All,
(TL;DR: Going forward, you'll need BOTH 60 days and 100 comment karma in order to participate in r/Spokane. Comment karma, not total karma. If you don't meet the criterion and urgently need to post then send us a modmail. )
It's been a wild ride these past few months. The traffic on our subreddit jumped several hundred percent from August through November and every second post seemed to be political in nature. At first, we believed the traffic to be a symptom of a larger trend in the country. We hoped this would all die down with the election. Unfortunately, it only got worse. We were faced with thousands of offending comments a day, dozens of bans, and posts about national politics that violated our rules.
After your lowly 3 moderators did some investigation, we discovered that most of the offending user accounts were new and posted to multiple city/local/state/place subreddits. These were not locals. Their comments, when plopped in to a search, would appear word-for-word in other subreddits from a myriad of other usernames. In other words, most of this traffic was artificial and was being manufactured elsewhere.
Last week, we temporarily instituted karma and age rules to cut down on this traffic. The effect was immediate. The moderator queue became manageable. Bans were down. Engagement was healthier. At the time we had discussed peeling back our restrictions completely as our new moderators (hi u/aleasangria and u/sadbrontosaurus !!) were brought onboard, but we were once again assaulted by a HUGE, brigaded post.
The new karma rules and account age restrictions saved the day. We were slammed by traffic on this post that garnered more than 10 million views! 5000+ comments made it to the post, but almost 8000 were trimmed back by our rules.
We understand that these new rules will be inconvenient for new users. We understand that there'll need to be some responsive moderating when new users need to post, like in this instance. With our new moderators officially engaged I believe we'll be able to do that.
We appreciate all of you and we do hope that the additional rules and moderators make this a better place for you to interact with your neighbors.
Thanks all!
No_U_Crazy
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u/amishgoatfarm Newman Lake 23d ago
YES. Its pathetic that this needs to be done, but the brigading from Leon stans and Krasnov bots is getting really bad.
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u/taterthotsalad North Side 22d ago
Their use of title format should have been a dead giveaway to any mod really.
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u/OwOlogy_Expert 23d ago
Crazy that such astroturfing has hit the level of even subs for mid-size cities. It must be everywhere right now.
I wonder who's paying for it all...
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u/Adventurous_Big5686 North Side 23d ago
As a long time lurker but fairly active participant as of the last year, thank you mods for keeping everything good. It's deeply appreciated. Too much hate on our beautiful City. We have our problems but he'll who doesn't. Cheers fellow Spokanites!!!!
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u/chromatictonality 23d ago
Good. I'm glad we can keep private equity out of our free exchange of ideas.
Now if we can just be nice to each other...
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u/bristlybits 23d ago
you can tell me to fuck off. this is Spokane.
kicks you into the goat
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u/chromatictonality 23d ago
That won't be necessary
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u/sablewing Garland District 23d ago
Good for you and do whatever you need so your job is easier. Moderating can be taxing work as the sub grows. Appreciate the good job you have done so far.
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u/Kalimac18 23d ago
Ugh, that's so frustrating. Thanks for trying to keep this a safe and supportive place!! ❤️ I support people having their own opinions, but the amount of harassment and vitriol is terrible and not ok.
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u/Schlecterhunde 23d ago
I'm glad you did it. I'm used to having conversations with folks of differing opinions here, it was on a whole different level. Now the conversations are more civil. It was kinda unhinged for a minute there.
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u/Master_Reflection579 23d ago
Love the new rules! I appreciate how hard you mods are working to protect our community space and that you are helping to keep us informed about how bad the astroturfing has been. I knew it was happening but those numbers are eye opening. I'd be curious to see other statistics that demonstrate how much corrupting influence is being directed against us.
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u/hereandthere_nowhere 22d ago
Soooo, can we talk about tacos now?
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u/avboden 21d ago
No, we have to complain about bad drivers more first
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u/Bookandtealover23 23d ago
Honestly, I try to avoid most of the junk. I find if you don't give someone the attention they crave they eventually give up. However, there are some outliers to that logic and theory. Good luck to you!
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u/Smooth_Record_42 21d ago
Yes desperately needed 🙏 can’t have any republicans posting anything in here or anyone saying anything positive about Trump or DOGE.
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u/JeezyCreezee 22d ago
I really appreciate your efforts! There seems to be an uptick in hate and vitriol on many sites. The rules seem like a good idea.
I have never been very active on any sub, and I have no idea what many of those rules and words mean. I lived in Spokane for years and still visit friends often. Hope I don’t look suspicious!
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u/diceeyes 15d ago
I hope you're still considering tweaking them. Have encountered several accounts posting here now who are seemingly shadowbanned in other local subs still able to post here.
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1d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Spokane-ModTeam 1d ago
The mods reserve the right to ask for a legitimate source to back up your claims. If you repeatedly assert demonstrably false information, you will be removed at our sole discretion.
This includes but is not limited to:
health related issues (COVID, vaccines, etc)
political issues (2020 was stolen, pizza gate, J6 was antifa, etc)
social issues (gays are groomers, doctors are sterilizing children, etc)
climate change / science topics (Jews control the weather, the aurora borealis is manufactured, etc)
Again this is not an all inclusive list.
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u/genesis214 16d ago
Sooo this sub is Authoritarian? Now different opinions just get punished?
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u/No_U_Crazy Nine Mile Falls 16d ago
Is your position that different opinions can't get karma elsewhere on Reddit? Or is it that different opinions can't get 60 days? Because that's a really weird position to take.
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u/genesis214 13d ago
Seeing as mods on here allow hateful rhetoric (towards police for example) and anyone that replies to them in disagreement gets downvoted into oblivion, yes that would affect the karma of said person. If this is the only page they use, that would matter.
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u/No_U_Crazy Nine Mile Falls 13d ago
Karma can come from any subreddit. /R/conservative, for example. Your argument doesn't hold water.
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u/genesis214 12d ago
Well spokane is 50/50 on politics, but on reddit its Lib central so i can understand why you chose that page to suggest 😂. BUT serious question here, does the Karma wall just prevent people from commenting, but they can still join the page?
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u/No_U_Crazy Nine Mile Falls 12d ago
That's correct. Anyone can join. Anyone can read. Anyone can contribute if they meet the sub's minimums. Minimum karma requirements are Reddit site-wide, so you can get those karma wherever else you please.
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u/fdader 23d ago
Thanks for your efforts