Hello everyone,

It has been just under a month since we reorganized the moderation team and took significant steps to address the ongoing spam and bot issues affecting the subreddit.

Since then, we have made strong progress. We have invested a lot of time and effort into improving our moderation workflow, including tools that help us detect bots, filter spam, and prevent off-topic or low-quality posts from reaching the subreddit.

Looking back over the past month, I am happy to say that bot posts have noticeably decreased. We have also been able to stop a large number of spam and off-topic submissions before they became public.

Moderation Recap

To give some perspective, the moderation team has taken:

• 2.700+ combined mod actions
• 2.000+ mod actions in the first two weeks alone
• around 1.000 posts removed
• around 1.000 comments removed
• many bot and spam accounts banned

Because we removed such a large amount of content, the subreddit did experience a significant drop in views, totaling more than half a million. This was expected, but still worth acknowledging openly.

However, despite that dip, we are happy to report that the community has continued to grow, with nearly 6.000 new members joining. To us, this is a strong sign that we are moving in the right direction.

Thank You for Your Patience

I also want to thank everyone who has been patient with us while we manually review posts before approving them. We know this can slow things down, but it has been an important part of keeping the subreddit cleaner and more enjoyable.

I also want to thank everyone who took the time to appeal removals or bans when mistakes happened. Those appeals help us correct errors, improve our process, and treat members fairly.

Once again, my thanks to the entire moderation team for the work they have put in, and thank you to the community for sticking with us through this transition.

Posting and Appeals

We hope to get more posts rolling again and bring more activity back to the subreddit. Please feel encouraged to share pictures, posts, and discussions.

Our moderation team is approachable, and while we do make mistakes, we are willing to review them, correct them, and work with the community in good faith.

Feedback Wanted

Now we want to hear from you.

We would like to know what the community thinks about the recent changes, how you feel about the current state of the subreddit, and whether you have any feedback for us as a moderation team.

We are also interested in hearing your ideas for future community activities.

Some possible ideas include:

• Polls
• Q&As
• Discussion threads
• Community chats
• Themed post days
• Contests
• Feedback threads
• Showcase posts

If you have thoughts, concerns, suggestions, or ideas for how we can better engage with the community and make the subreddit more active and enjoyable again, please let us know in the comments.

Thank you all again for being part of the community.

Hello everyone,

We are coming to you with some good news.

The mod team has made significant progress clearing the moderation queue, and we are now at a point where we feel comfortable reopening the subreddit to the public.

That said, we want to be transparent about the current state of moderation. For the time being, we have enabled very strict filtering settings. This means that some legitimate posts may be automatically filtered even if they do not break any rules. If your post ends up in the moderation queue, please do not assume it has been removed permanently. We will continue reviewing queued posts manually as they come in.

As part of our effort to reduce bot activity, repost spam, and AI-generated low-effort content, we have also introduced two new moderation bots on a trial basis. Their main purpose is to help detect suspicious bot accounts and bot-like repost behavior. Some of these flags will still require manual review, so please bear with us while we fine-tune the system.

We have also revised and clarified the subreddit rules, especially regarding what is considered on-topic. Some users were previously banned for off-topic posts and later appealed those bans. After reviewing those cases, we decided to grant those appeals, as the previous rules were too vague and did not define the expectations clearly enough.

Going forward, however, the updated rules will be enforced according to the new definitions. Please take a moment to read them before posting. If you have any questions or are unsure whether something is allowed, you are always welcome to reach out to us through modmail.

Finally, we would like to introduce the current moderation team:

• u/totorbanana — OG mod and current head mod, supporting the cleanup effort.
• u/More-Training6681 — OG mod, now granted full permissions as 2IC, and one of the main contributors to the cleanup.
• u/John_Icarus — New moderator, whose comment helped get things moving again.
• u/hazedndazedgirly — New moderator and motivated supporter of the cleanup effort.

We may still add additional moderators as needed, but this is the team currently working to stabilize and improve the subreddit.

Thank you for your patience while we worked through the backlog. We appreciate everyone who stuck around, appealed in good faith, reported issues, and helped us get the subreddit back into a better state.

We hope for your continued support and involvement in the community and reporting content.

EDIT:

Before I forget it, we also want to draw special attention to Rule 5, which will now be enforced more strictly. Posts must make a reasonable effort to provide the original source of an image. A Danbooru link or similar repost/archive page by itself will generally not be considered sufficient. Please try to find either the original image post or the original artist/source.

Tools such as SauceNAO, Google Image Search, Yandex Image Search, TinEye, and other reverse-image search tools can be very helpful for this. We understand that not every source is easy to find, but users are expected to make a good-faith effort before posting. Repeatedly posting unsourced or poorly sourced content may result in removals or further moderation action.

Hello everyone,

As many of you may have noticed, the subreddit has recently been affected by a wave of reposts, bot activity, and spam. We are also aware that moderation has been lacking for some time.

After being made aware of the current situation, we have taken steps to restore active moderation and remove inactive members from the moderation team. We have also implemented additional AutoMod measures to help slow down spam and repost activity going forward.

Due to the current state of the subreddit, we have temporarily placed restrictions on posting while we work through the backlog of unmoderated posts and clean up the community. We ask for your understanding and patience during this process.

Given the size of the subreddit, and the fact that the remaining moderation team has been more passive than active in recent times, we will also be looking into bringing on additional moderators to help maintain the community properly in the future.

If you have any concerns, suggestions, or feedback regarding the current situation, please feel free to comment below or reach out to us directly through modmail. If anyone is accidentally affected by the restrictions or moderation actions during the cleanup, please contact us so we can review the situation.

We also welcome any suggestions or opinions on how the subreddit should be handled going forward. In any case, we sincerely apologize for our lack of involvement up to this point. We recognize that the community deserved more active moderation, and we hope to make up for that by restoring order, improving the moderation structure, and being more present going forward.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.