Transparency Report December 2018

It’s been a while since we’ve done the last transparency report. That was mainly because the person who did those, /u/allthefoxes, left the team. We want to take this opportunity to thank /u/allthefoxes for everything that they have done for this sub and wish them the best on their journey forward.A few things have changed since then. The biggest shift was the ban of progress pictures, which the community was very vocal about. We heard you loud and clear, and the existence of /r/progresspics has helped, too, because we are able to redirect people there.Prior to that decision, we started a comprehensive review of all of our rules. Big props to /u/n_reineke, who keeps running after us to get results. We’ve already modified a couple of rules to make them simpler or easier to understand:We clarified the “No pictures with added/superimposed digital text” rule and how we handle it.We added “Missing/Found property” to rule 3.We ended the verified flair program, as it wasn’t being used as intended.We updated and/or removed many of our titles guidelines, leaving a few concise rules. We haven't fully hashed out the details of how the title guidelines should look in the future, but we are making progress on that front.More change is sure to come in the next months.Understand that we are listening, but we don't believe that rules should be thrown together on a whim. We also do our best to limit how much moderator discretion and personal opinion goes into enforcing those rules.Finally, we started a search for new moderators. During the initial phase, we got around 200 applications. We’re still sifting through them, but we should have news on that front soon. The process has been a bit delayed because we wanted to get a better handle on the rule updates before training new moderators.Now to the main part of these reports, the numbers(all numbers exclude the automod actions):DecemberDataDifferenceCommentsTotal Moderation Actions20,700-about averageSubmission Removals5,164-including spamComment Removals5,924-including spamPosts Approved3522-only reported posts get approvedComments Approved2,597-only reported comments get approvedBans1764-permanent and temporaryUnbans184-doesn't include temporary bansReports Ignored1277-please keep reporting anywaysPosts Locked4-Mostly for overwhelmingly many uncivil comments and one time for a threat of violence via /r/pics http://bit.ly/2AWB7id