We'd appreciate everyone reading this all the way through as we have some important changes going on that we need everyone to be made aware of. Thank you!!
Happy TTPD release week! We're so thankful that so many of you chose to celebrate and discuss Taylor's new album in the sub. We're sure you all know by now the sub is growing very fast, has been featured in a number of publications (!) and with that come some challenges due to new users who might not know how we operate around here. We are going to clear some things up, offer some insight about what the backend has been like for us and offer some reminders about how we expect folks to act while engaging in the sub.
Mod Stance: We get a LOT of hateful modmails and a lot of accusations that we don't like Taylor, we're "haters" etc. because we moderate this sub. We'd like to be clear that all five mods are pretty big Taylor fans and we love her music. We geeked out along with everyone else with the release of TTPD and we all kind of love it (unpopular opinion, we know!) Our appreciation for Taylor as an artist doesn't negate the fact that we firmly believe this sub needs to exist, and we are working so hard to create a safe place for everyone to engage in. We definitely do not agree with everything posted here, far from it haha. However, we don't let our personal feelings get in the way of moderating the posts and comments in a fair and impartial way. This is the essence of why this sub is called Swiftly Neutral. The mod team doesn't need to agree with all of the content in the sub in order to have neutrality and we hope everyone understands that. We are a team of five and we make all decisions unanimously as a team. There is no personal bias. If it doesn't break a rule we have no issues with it being posted.
Sub Stats: We have been gaining more than 1k users a day since TTPD dropped. In the past 7 days we have had 15.8m views, 239k unique views, 11.7k new subs and 1.8k non subbed users. We've received 153 modmail messages and have sent 576 messages in return. We've removed 28.k items, we've published 124k items and 145 items have been reported. In the past 7 days we have had 4k posts submitted to the sub. We feel this is important information to share so that the sub can understand the sheer amount of volume the mod team has been fielding this past week. We ask for patience and grace when being modmailed. If you come to us aggressively in modmail over a decision made or about the sub in general we will ban you. We are getting tired of the harassment by users who seem to forget how to use their grown up words. Towards us and other users.
Participating in good faith: It seems like the release of the album and it's polarizing response has made an awful lot of users forget how to engage in the sub in an adult way. We have seen so many derailing comments, way too much infighting, a lot of immature name calling etc. Please, if you don't agree with someone's take don't make it your personal responsibility to try and convert them, or argue with them about why they're wrong. There is no need to police other people's content, posts or comments. Move along and engage in different content. Report comments that seem out of pocket. We are tightening our stance on good faith participation and will be banning more users who simply want to argue in the sub, complain about the sub or complain about the users. We will be buckling down on this rule.
Brigading/Trolling: We are sure you've all noticed an increase in brigading and trolling within posts. A lot of people are big mad that a critical space like this exists and they are making it their lifelong purpose to spam and shame our sub. We also recognize that other places (if you know you know so let's just call it the orange drink) love phishing for content here to screenshot so they can all complain about our sub while simultaneously expressing that we need to get lives. We are working with Reddit admin very closely about the harassment and brigading that has been going on. We have been quietly collecting evidence of direct brigading and will continue to monitor the situation and report further harassment directly to Reddit admin as long as it continues. Thankfully Reddit admin take these sorts of things pretty seriously and are working to see what actions will be taken. If you see these actions happening please report it to our mod team using modmail. If you see users incessantly arguing on one thread in 'defense' of Taylor, report it. If a user is making comments that seem off, report it. The reporting function really helps the mod team take action quickly. Even if you're unsure, report. It's anonymous and we'd rather err on the side of caution.
"Swifties did..." Content: We are making some adjustments to how we moderate content here. The most important change is how we handle the Swiftie fandom as a whole. We are trying to drastically limit posts that simply call Swifties out. We understand sometimes there are going to be valid conversations based around tweets/screenshots from Swifties, and they will be approved on a per post basis if we believe the discourse is going to be a value add. Since TTPD dropped we have begun to notice an uptick in posts that serve no other purpose but to rant about or make fun of Swifties. At this point we all know there’s a huge subset of the fandom that is over the top (to put it mildly). We try and protect our sub from having users screenshot our content and post in other subs to make fun of. We believe we need to take a similar stance when it comes to doing it to Swifties. As of now we are not sure what we will be doing, if it will be a megathread specifically for griping about Swifties or if they will be directed onto the Daily BEC megathread. Moving forward we will have a DAILY BEC/vent/off topic thread instead of weekly for those conversations.
Approval Process: We appreciate every single post that is thoughtful, well researched and well presented. We know posting deep dives or longer posts takes time and trust, we don't want to ever have to remove someone's hard work. However a lot of times there are multiple people writing very similar things and our job is to try and keep the sub as streamlined as possible. On this end we ask that post titles have searchable words relating to the content, and that when you're thinking about posting you search the sub for the "past week" to see if there is anything active already. We also want you to know that when we remove things or send them to the megathread, it's not personal against your content or you as a user.
Swiftly Neutral: If everyone who participated in the sub truly felt neutral about Taylor or her music, there would be nothing to discuss. Taylor doesn't exactly spark a lot of neutrality. A reminder to the new users and old that the sub is labeled as “neutral” because the sub allows all opinions, positive and negative, and everything in between. This has been defined in our sub description for months now. The sub often appears to be more "critical" because critical opinions are not allowed or are attacked in most other online Taylor communities. Being that this seems to be one of the only spaces right now that allows criticism makes it seem like it's all we allow. We encourage positive opinions about Taylor as well and actually welcome them in order to balance things out. If you want to see more positive content, post it!
Thank you for taking the time to read and acknowledge this post.
Luv, your mods
