Hello Digital Artist!
After taking in data, gathering feedback from the community, and discussing ideas with you all, we have made some organizational changes to this subreddit. I'd like to lay out those changes here while also giving some insight into what we have planned for the future.
The Changes:
Rules:
Our biggest change has been to restructure, clarify, and simplify the rules. We wanted to make the rules more accessible and easier to read while being clear with the expectations of the sub. The language itself has been simplified assuming most of us are responsible and able to interpret beyond having to write a legal document. Our aim is to treat you all like adults and expect everyone to act like one.
NSFW:
Most of our energy was spent trying to understand the dynamic of NSFW content on our subreddit and on reddit overall. We determined that the community likes having the ability to share NSFW content but find it frustrating that certain content 'finds their eyes' more than others. The issue with NSFW content on reddit is as much a reddit issue as it is one for our subreddit. Like all social media, NSFW content tends to get upvoted more, thus finding itself in your featured feeds more. This can give community members a sense that said content dominates this space. We've monitored the content of this sub since being given moderation perms and this is far from the truth. A vast majority of content is amazing SFW art that gets little attention.
As a result, we have clarified our rules for NSFW but added a heavy moderator discretion section. You may not personally like what we moderate or don't moderate, but our goal is to balance freedom of expression with the safety of the community as well as combating algorithmic imbalances.
Wiki Section:
The wiki section has been cleaned up to be more concise and cleaner.
Take down notices:
We have added clearer takedown notices that reflect our rules. Notices allow you to review the rules while encouraging you to contact us if you disagree.
Community Moderation:
One BIG thing we'd like to encourage is empowering community members to help keep the community safe. One big thing we notice is when a post is suspect of being AI, comments flood said post. If you suspect any post breaks any rule, please report the post. Reporting does more to help us moderate than flooding the comment sections. Enough reports auto trigger a moderation action if the rule break is serious enough. Moderators see themselves as stewards of the community, not owners. This space is nothing without your involvement.
Flair:
We have simplified flair to allow you quicker access to tag your artwork appropriately. Although flair isn't required (unless the work is NSFW), we encourage its usage as it helps people find your artwork.
Discussions:
The previous rules disallowed various topics of discussion. We have moved away from those rules and encourage the community to share ideas, tools, techniques etc. However, if a post is deemed to be self promotion or promoting something else in disguise, the post will be deleted. There is a difference between sharing ideas and selling ideas.
The Future
Now that we've tightened the space up, we have some goals for the future that we'd love to hear feedback on:
Not another Discord!
We are developing a discord to give digital artists a place to relax, kick back, share art etc. We see the pattern on why art discords fail and want to avoid those things. We won't gamify the chats, disallow cliquey language, harassment, etc. We want to create a welcoming, professional, educational, and safe space to network and enjoy content and knowledge.
Weekly Posts:
We are open to the idea of creating a weekly post cycle surrounding various topics. One big one is opening up a section for self promotion; allowing community members to post their socials and other links. Disallowing as normal posts isn't there to keep you from growing, but to keep the community healthy. We understand artists want to connect with each other and this can help that.
Community Competition:
We are in need for a new community avatar and banner. Stay tuned to a community competition that will allow you all to create the those items for this space. Winners will win a permanent shout out in the description!
Thank You!
Since becoming moderators for this community, its been a pleasure seeing the absolutely amazing talent here as well as the comments clearly showing a care for this space. Although the noise and controversy often gets the most attention, in aggregate, the regular day to day content and posts are beautiful, encouraging, and fun to be a part of. I'm personally honored to exist in the same space as the talent this community projects. Feel free at any time to contact mod support with your thoughts or comment here.
