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.