If you don’t know about submission statements, they were a rule introduced to r/conspiracy to cut down on the flood of bad faith, low effort forum sliding that became common place and the scourge of reddit after 2016. It was a requirement for only link and image posts, text posts were exempt. All that was required was 2 or more sentences. You could give background context, you could indicate potential avenues for discussion, basically anything you wanted.
So, I’m not suggesting the auto mod enforced 20 minute countdown to post removal, let me just start with that.
BUT I do think that submission statements achieved a handful of positive results at r/conspiracy that I think would help this place. I’ll list these things I think submission statements did well, and I invite any and all to discuss their (dis)agreements on the subject.
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separates the near zero effort posts from the rest.
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takes away one layer of plausible deniability from the shills. They can’t just post some absurdist u/magapede69 or u/theGreatOz trash at “face value”, they have to share some insights into what they think it adds to the discussion.
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gives context to posts that may otherwise be overlooked. Sometimes a post title intrigues me, but it’s just a title, potentially not very descriptive, and I’ve never seen the site before. As mentally weak as it sounds, I will more often than not skip those posts. For some subconscious reason I’m more inclined to read psychotic ramblings when they’re posted directly as text than some sketchy (seeming, to me) blogspot link or whatever...TLDR : Moar context please
Yes please. Stop this low effort shit! Content quality here is really really low...
u/the_1n-Betweener and u/PutinLovesCats I have basically the same response so no point posting twice:
This would be voluntary, and its only enforcement mechanism would be users “rewarding” posters who do give context with more “benefit of the doubt” in terms of good faith engagement with the posts
As an example, compare the quality of these two shill posts:
https://conspiracies.win/p/11SKGdGCw9/wrong-number-go-up/c/
https://conspiracies.win/p/12hRCGqkHw/jungian-analysis-of-last-nights-/c/
The added context leads to infinitely more potential for discussion, regardless of the poster’s actual intent
It’s voluntary so there’s really no price to pay unless it catches on and people start to not engage with your low effort contribution (in the hypothetical)
And re:shills, they’re like cockroaches, you can’t do anything about them. Even an IP ban on account creation, which I doubt the mods here can even do, is easily circumvented by any shill with two braincells to rub together. The shills have been here since day one, and to be honest I’d rather have the community “deal” with the shills through adaptation than relying on the god-caste of janitors to be omniscient in their unilateral actions
The only actual reward mechanism we have is up/down votes. I mean, I suppose we could have an unwritten rule or something. But, that's not much. I've been holding true to my unwritten rule of never posting YT links, but, sadly I think that is doing more harm than good. I have years worth of content from Reddit, but many of it is YT links, which I cannot find on Alternative sites like Bitchute. Even when I do, the quality of the video is utter shit for some reason.
I’m infinitely more inclined to watch a YouTube video if the poster can give even a single sentence beyond the title on why I should/what I might learn/jump off points for discussion that intrigue me/etc etc
Or, maybe collect similar videos into a post with an overarching theme.
I’m always interested in seeing the sources what inspired the people who’s ideas I find intriguing!
I hated SS's when they were introduced to r/con and I still hate SS's. So, I vote no. All they did, imo, was frustrate and dissuade participation of legit/new users. It also cause FUD and a shitstorm of: "Ermegherd, why is this sub censoring me!!!!!!" posts to clutter up the /new. Furthermore, it introduced bias to the actual content of the post. I'm pro voluntaryism, so if you wish to include one, then do so. Be the change you wish to see in the world, and hopefully inspire others to so, **voluntarily. **
PS. The shills and trolls adapted perfectly fine to them. It is in their nature to make sure they follow the rules to a T. That's what they get paid and their jollies off for, eh?
I would love submission statements and they should be mandatory.
It would curb many of the fucking memes and low-effort shitposts.
Would be nice to see that posters actually are interested to have a discussion instead of just spamming whatever they found on some other website.
u/serenade I wasn’t sure which alt of yours you would want me to ping, but I’d love to hear a “legitimate user” ‘s opinion on sub statements
That's what I'm saying! We should be doing the exact opposite of what /r/con is doing. It's like I'm taking crazy pills, lol.
just thinking this weird
Great minds think alike, and fools seldom differ
u/#desire
There's no drawback whatsoever to asking people to put effort into their threads and I think required submission statements only benefit the discourse. I don't need a front page full of link spam with no thought put forth by the OP. If you can't bother to offer up some insight on a particular topic, then why should I?
Is this 5D shilling? You say you like SSs so that I stop liking them? I’m onto you champ
I'd be happy to offer more context behind my posts if the community required it.
Your posts would certainly generate more discussion/less animosity if you presented them through a persona/lens other than “lol y’all are retards on subject X, here’s an MSM article that convinced me”, but again I’m not proposing a requirement lol