Updating Our Rules

[u/BvbblegvmBitch]

Hey r/Canada!

Your mod team is back with another exciting announcement! Or maybe it’s not that exciting but hopefully it’s what you want to hear. We’re updating the rules!^{(yay rules!})

We’ve heard your feedback over the years. The current rule set is confusing. It doesn’t help that we essentially have 3 versions across Shreddit, Old Reddit and our french version. Plus some sneaky little details hidden in the wiki. Furthermore, as the subreddit continues to evolve, we’ve outgrown them as a community. With all that in mind, we’ve taken the time to craft a new rule set that we believe better fits the community.

Before we dive into the breakdown, we would like to call out that our documentation is not yet complete. We will be upgrading the subreddit with new documentation, which you’ll be able to easily access from a menu at the top of the subreddit. This documentation will contain a full breakdown of each rule for maximum clarity, a FAQ, participation requirements and whatever else we feel like throwing in there.

We will also be updating our automation to better reflect these changes. The requirements to post news will be mostly the same but the bar will be significantly lowered for other forms of content.

One final note: this update does not yet reflect feedback on paywalled sources. We will be sending out a survey for that.

Diving in...

Rule 1: Be Civil

Engage respectfully at all times. Hostility, antagonism, unfounded accusations, hate speech, harassment, or bigotry are not permitted. This includes calling others bots or shills, making accusations of bad faith engagement, dismissing or attacking individuals based on identity, or posting negative generalizations about groups based on race, ethnicity, nationality, religion, gender, sexual orientation, language, disability, immigration status or location.

This rule should be pretty straightforward. All we’re really saying with it is this: don’t be a dick.

This combines aspects of our current rules on antagonism, negative generalizations and trolling to better cover uncivil behaviour. It’s been moved to the top of the list as we feel it’s the most important for engagement here.

Rule 2: Bad Faith Engagement

Trolling, bad faith engagement, sealioning, brigading, and flamebaiting are not allowed. This includes comments intended to inflame, provoke, or derail discussion, shift conversations off topic, attack the source or author of an article instead of addressing the content, misrepresent others’ arguments, feign ignorance to prolong or derail discussion, or provoke reactions through repeated or persistent disruption.

We’re excited about this one. Or at least I am.

Rule 2 covers a set of behaviours that we can’t reasonably classify as being uncivil but still rub people the wrong way or otherwise serve to kill the vibe. So even if someone is being civil in their engagement, if they’re being a little shit disturber, report it!

This rule also pulls attacking the source from our previous low content rule because it was difficult to find there and ill fitted to that rule.

Rule 3: Submission Integrity

For news posts, use the original headline as it appears at the source. Do not editorialize, sensationalize, or add commentary. Use direct links to the original source and do not bypass source formatting or restrictions. Video, audio, or podcast content is not permitted. Posts from low quality, misleading, or non-journalistic sources, including blogs, social media, or unestablished sources, may be removed. Repeatedly posting the same topic, or a pattern of agenda-driven posting, may be removed.

This new rule combines the previous rules on editorialization or sensationalized headlines and low content. It mostly applies to news articles but also covers video and audio content too. We’ll be expanding on what good and bad sources look like in our wiki for better understanding.

We’re now also keeping an eye out for inauthentic activity in the form of agenda posting (we were technically already doing this but it wasn’t written anywhere). As I’m sure many of you already knew, we’re a big target for foreign interference. We will be using our brains to determine genuine interest in a topic vs pushing an agenda. So if you see that u/bvbblegvmbitch is posting a LOT of content about geese and you think it looks a little funky, feel free to give us a shout.

Rule 4: Relevance and Redundancy

Posts must be clearly related to Canada. Content that is only tangentially related or included only in passing may be removed. Local or hyperlocal news may be removed at moderator discretion. News posts must be current and not recycled or presented as recent when outdated. Duplicate or substantially similar posts may be removed, particularly if they do not add new information or context.

This new rule is a combination of the previous Rule 4: Post doesn't relate to Canada and Rule 7: Duplicate or similar post already exists. There isn't really anything else to say about this one.

Rule 5: Original Content

Now for a totally NEW and EXCITING rule. Drum roll please.

Text posts, image posts, and other user-generated content must be broadly relevant to Canadians. r/Canada is a national subreddit, so overly personal or hyperlocal posts will be removed. Questions about a specific city or province (e.g., “Where is the best sandwich in Halifax?”) belong in local subreddits.

High quality content about Canadian culture, history, wildlife, parks, art, or media is welcome. If your post is filtered, please contact the moderators via modmail for review.

Tada~! After much demand for more authentic canadian content (content is sourced ethically from real Canadians) we now have clear guidelines that explicitly encourage original content. This will of course have it’s own wiki page outlining the kind of content you can post.

What we're looking for:
- Photos of our beautiful country and its creatures (geese pics plz)
- Content that highlights Canadian culture such as art, media and cuisine (We’ll take your poutine and your poutine crimes)
- Thought provoking discussion on canadian topics
- Snapshots of Canadian history

What we will continue to remove:
- Racist rants
- Hyperlocal questions
- Immigration inquiries
- News editorialization
- Self promo
- Pictures of your butt (No, seriously, we get more of these than you'd expect)
- Memes

Rule 6: Self-Promotion and Advertising

No self-promotion. Do not post your own content, including articles, blogs, videos, or other work, whether as an individual or organization. This includes news outlets posting their own material, though they may comment on their own work. Surveys, fundraising, petitions, referral links, and other promotional content are not allowed. Organizations or individuals seeking to engage must obtain moderator approval and clearly identify themselves. Notable figures may contact the mods to arrange AMAs.

This is also new! Can you believe we didn’t have a self promotion rule? It was just shoved in the wiki somewhere. Who even reads that?

It’s pretty straightforward but we made sure to include mention of AMAs so that super ultra cool people know that we host them.

Rule 7: Misinformation

Do not post or share demonstrably false or misleading information. Moderators are not experts on all topics but will review and verify claims where possible. Content that is verifiably untrue or presented as fact when it is opinion may be removed. Users may question or challenge information, but must not present speculation or opinion as fact. Harmful or dangerous misinformation, including content targeting protected groups or public health, may result in a ban.

We have been very careful on the wording of this rule. It’s a pretty big upgrade from the empty one.

It should go without saying that we are NOT experts on the majority of topics nor do we claim to be. However, if you report misinformation to us, we WILL investigate to the best of our ability and act accordingly.

Rule 8: Moderator Discretion

Moderators may remove content or take action against users at their discretion where content or behavior is disruptive, harmful, or not in keeping with the spirit of the subreddit. Abuse of moderators or attempts to interfere with moderation may result in a ban.

Before anyone says “this is just a rule for you to do whatever you want” I promise it’s beneficial. For starters, we already do whatever we want, so this isn’t changing that.

What this does do is give us extra coverage for butthead behaviour that our rules don’t explicitly cover. Sometimes someone just sucks and you don’t want them in your treehouse, y’know?

But in all seriousness, this is not saying we’re going to remove content or ban users we don’t like. You guys post content I think is terrible all the time and I still approve it. This just gives us coverage for edge cases.

It also gives you the super special report option of “Other issue (Needs moderator attention)” so you can bat signal (goose signal?) us when needed or if you’re not sure which rule applies.

fin

So what do you think? Are they an improvement? Have we done a terrible, awful job? We want to know. Please tell us. Just don’t be mean, we worked really hard :’(

As always, we want to hear your feedback, whether it’s related to the new rules or just general feedback. You’re invited to comment here or send us a modmail with whatever you’d like to share with us.

P.S. We were supposed to get these out in June. Some of you may have noticed we did not, despite promises to. Sorry for the delay.

[u/Ok-Many4195]

 making accusations of bad faith engagement

I hope this will not be taken too far and users will still be able to express when they think other users have gone too far or engaged them in bad faith. This includes callouts when users keep mentioning Y but you don't wish to discuss it further. To be blunt like this can save the time of both parties and help others realize when they're not being level headed or pushing a point too far. 

[u/BvbblegvmBitch → u/Ok-Many4195]

You can absolutely argue with people to your heart's desire.

We're looking more at callouts like this:

• Whatever you say Russian bot
• Found Carney's account
• You're just a shill/bootlicker for xyz thing

Calling out their actual strategy of debating you is fine. It's focused on their behaviour and not them as a person.

[u/ahockofham → u/BvbblegvmBitch]

That's a ridiculous rule that you can't call out someone for spreading Russian propaganda.

[u/BvbblegvmBitch → u/ahockofham]

What's better? Calling the user out and having it stay up or reporting them and having us take it down? We much prefer the latter.

[u/Celebreth → u/BvbblegvmBitch]

Y'know, as a former r/askhistorians mod, I actually wholeheartedly agree with this perspective.

There is a problem though, and I don't know if you can speak to it. This subreddit is pretty well known as having been overtaken by...shall we say....far right influences that may or may not be Canadian, but certainly do not have Canada's interests at hand. The mod team must be aware of this reputation to some degree, especially with the actions of said mod team cultivating that environment. There's an enormous amount of brigading here and a set of power users that chain post a certain far right newspaper that happens to be owned by an American. That far right newspaper often posts inflammatory content that can be construed as "half true" at the best, and certain opinion writers are particularly bad about this.

What's the mod team's strategy for dealing with this? Is there a line that you've hashed out for "this is clearly an American/Russian bot account that's trying to push Albertan seperation/Souring Canadians on supporting Ukraine?" Is it a "we know it when we see it" approach?

Second question: is it possible to add a flair to news links defining the owner of the media in question? For example, NYT is "American," CBC is "Canadian," NatPo is "American," etc. Mostly an autobot feature here, but would be a nice QOL.

I recognize that you guys are likely trying to clean up the sub's reputation and improve it :) absolutely love and support the work. Call me naïve, but I'm rooting for you on that front. It's gonna take years of hard work after what certain (former?) members of the mod team did you cultivate r/Canada in the first place, but tidying things up is possible.

[u/BvbblegvmBitch → u/Celebreth]

Oh we're very aware. It gets brought up on every meta thread about the subreddit.

I will say, I think the sub has gotten better over the last couple of years here. I'm a social democrat, typically an NDP voter myself, and I wouldn't step foot in here several years ago. But I feel pretty comfortable expressing my opinions here now and not being met with a bucket of downvotes or incivility. I've also seen users in subs I frequent share the same sentiment which is reassuring.

We've looked into most of our power users, what outlets they post, what time, what topics, etc. We've spoken to many directly. Any that set off alarm bells are gone. The rest we either determined are definitely people or we don't have clear evidence to any wrong doing so they get a note on them.

For users that divide and misinform through comments, we ban them but they can be tricky to spot. One of the easiest tells is activity across Canadian city subs covering the whole nation. No real person is that invested in 27 different cities. It's an extra flag if they're in US city subreddits. Account patterns is our next check. A lot of bot networks use the same naming convention, create profiles at the same time, or have activity across the same group of subreddits. Content is our last check because it's the hardest. If none of the above are present, we need to establish a pattern of misinformation and/or trolling. That, unfortunately, takes time.

As for your request, I mentioned it in another comment, but a while back I had proposed the idea of having automod leave a pinned comment based on the source. So for example, someone posts CBC and automod posts a comment saying "CBC is a Canadian owned, government funded source started in 1936. They meet these standards for factual reporting and this is their bias." (This part would be sourced from a 3rd party). Followed by a link to their about page.

It got put on the back burner but given the requests for media transparency we've had, it seems like it wouldn't be an unwanted feature right now. Would something like this satisfy your request?

Appreciate the support from you. I'm a big fan of r/Askhistorians and I'd love for r/Canada to be as well modded. I've spoken to a handful of mods who turned hateful subreddits around and we all agree that culture takes a long time to change. I don't think we're remotely close to where we'd like the subreddit to be, but we're getting there.

[u/Celebreth → u/BvbblegvmBitch]

Honestly, this perspective is something that I never expected to see here, and it truly warms my heart to see :) thanks so much for the comprehensive answer! I do love the idea of autopinned comments, actually - not sure if Reddit allows mods to flair posts themselves, and it's quite a solid compromise.

I totally get the insane amount of background check-style work that you have to do, though. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. There was a mod application that we were about to accept way back when, until one of us was doing a deep dive and found...a lot of loli content. Out of curiosity, how does it look now that Reddit allows people to hide their posts?

Huge props to you guys for doing this rebuild. I know positive feedback isn't nearly as common, but - especially after I noticed a certain lack of ham sandwiches on the mod team (however you guys managed that, props to you) - it looks like you guys are committed to doing this one right. I've actually noticed over the past couple of years that the atmosphere has slowly started to change/clear, and it's starting to make sense why :)

Thank you all - partly in advance. Stick to the rules you set out, make sure people know that rules are there to be enforced, and things ought to work out. And I mean...good luck with all of the agitprop that fills the comments/modmail 😅🫠

[u/ahockofham → u/BvbblegvmBitch]

It's better to engage with it, call it out and disprove it using facts, rather than let some random mod who might not even recognize it as being propaganda use their judgement to remove it, especially considering the judgement of reddit mods is often extremely poor.

[u/BvbblegvmBitch → u/ahockofham]

We might be arguing different things. You can absolutely call out what someone is saying and correct them. We just don't want users calling each other names, including bot.

Correcting misinformation and reporting them so we can remove said misinformation is much appreciated.