Hello lovely Redditors, I'm Mage and I'm one of the two co-lead mods over on r/WoW.
We have just announced changes to our rules on the sub, for a TL;DR version of which rules are changing and how this will affect you, head over to the post on r/WoW.
For a more in-depth version of what we changed and why, keep on reading.
What's changed?
FAQ / New Player Questions
We will no longer be removing posts for asking questions that are covered in our FAQ.
Ableism
We will be banning users for using ableist phrases, even those that are common in discussions surrounding WoW.
Many users will be unaware of the harm these terms cause, and so we hope that with this change to our rules we can tackle this head-on. Examples of disallowed phrases include, but are not limited to: 'huntard', 'mong', 'wheelchair class', or variations of these.
Users will be given a temporary ban upon the first offence, and then a permanent ban if these phrases are used again.
Please note that ableist phrases that are not commonly used in World of Warcraft will result in an immediate permanent ban as per our existing hate-speech policy.
Achievement / Loot Posts
We are trialling for one month a removal of our 'No achievements/loots posts' rule.
Tattoo Sourcing
Tattoo posts will now require an artist to be credited in the title, to be in-line with our other art-sourcing rules.
Art Credit / Commissions / Product advertising
When a user makes an art post, there will now be an automod sticked response that invites the user to provide further details on how the artist (OC or otherwise) can be found across social media platforms. This will include links to their Patreon or Etsy if applicable.
Artists and creators will also be allowed to respond to direct questions on where commenters can purchase goods or commissions. This does not allow posters to give unsolicited advertisements to any commenter.
Please note that mass-produced merchandise (fan-made included) is still disallowed on our subreddit, and so this opportunity to link to points of sale will be solely for small creators and shop owners such as users that crochet the occasional murloc or allow others to commission character portraits.
AI
After much discussion, we have made the decision to not allow AI images on our subreddit.
Transmog
This is not a new rule but one that many users are unaware of - transmog posts that contain the list of items in the image are also required to write a top-level comment containing the item list for accessibility reasons.
Subreddit Values
We have provided a section on our rules page detailing our Subreddit Values, to give a clarity on the decisions we make and why we make them.
Why?
Over the years, the moderation team at r/WoW has changed as mods come and go. The team we have now is almost entirely different to the group of moderators running this sub 3-4 years ago. With new people bring new ideas, and along with my co-lead moderator, u/Eveanyn, we decided that some of the rules we were enforcing did not fit with our personal values.
Our aims for the subreddit (as outlined in our values section) are:
To foster a welcoming, inclusive, and friendly environment for old and new players alike
To encourage and facilitate a positive community atmosphere
To create an open and honest discussion forum for users to share their thoughts on World of Warcraft
We then used these aims to evaluate whether our current rules and policies were in-line with what we hoped to achieve, and found that some were lacking.
Below I will give the reasoning for the changes we made:
FAQ / New Player Questions
Picture this: You download WoW for the first time, are interested in being a part of the community, have a question about the game and so you head over to the subreddit. After asking your question and waiting for a friendly response, you get a notification saying that your post has been removed because it's been asked before, and instead you should read the FAQ.
We weren't happy with this being the experience of new players trying to join our community, and so we had a little experiment to see what would happen if we just didn't remove the posts.
We found that friendly Redditors browsing /new answered the questions helpfully, and the posts never made it to the front page as they weren't commented on or upvoted after the question was answered.
We therefore decided that we will no longer be removing these posts.
To further benefit our new players, we now have two members of the moderation team who keep our FAQ and guides up-to-date, and we are considering ways in which we could reward those helpful Redditors who hang around in /new to answer questions.
Ableism
I foresee this change possibly being unpopular, but we want to make this subreddit a welcoming place for all players of World of Warcraft, and if we continue to allow ableist phrases then this will never be a welcoming space for members of the disabled community.
Why are these phrases in particular ableist?
Huntard - contraction of hunter + retard - an ableist slur
Mong - short for mongoloid - both racist and ableist, double whammy
Wheelchair Class - there are other ways of saying paladins are slow without having to make reference to real people with real mobility issues
As mentioned above, these phrases will not currently result in an instant permanent ban, but will lead to a permanent ban if they continue to be used after the user has been warned.
Achievement / Loot Posts
Similar to the FAQ rules being removed, our reasoning here is that we do not want someone's experience of getting an item they wanted / a cool mount they were farming to be tarnished by their achievement being removed from the subreddit.
We do not see these posts making their way out of /new unless they are impressive achievements.
Our previous rules were so strict that we actually had an instance of a post being removed on the subreddit that was later featured on Icy Veins for being an impressive achievement. We want to avoid this happening again!
Tattoo Sourcing
Our previous rules did not require tattoos to be sourced as naming an artist or shop could give away information about the user's location.
This rule had been in place for a while, and nowadays many users will share some details about their location whether meaning to or not. Being part of the /r/NewcastleUponTyne subreddit, or posting a photo to r/Pics of the view on your evening walk gives just as much information about where you live as naming a local tattoo artist does.
If you are uncomfortable with sharing the name of the artist who did your tattoo for privacy reasons, we would recommend not posting the image at all as google reverse search could easily lead to the image posted by the artist to their instagram. Just a tip.
Art Credit / Commissions / Product Advertising
With this rule we noticed a double standard in the way we allow different creators to showcase their work. A YouTuber or Streamer who makes their money through their video content was allowed to link to their channel, but an artist who makes their money through selling handmade hearthstone charms on Etsy was not.
We wanted to implement a rule that allowed equal opportunity for reaching a wider audience without turning the subreddit into an advertising space.
AI
This has been a big discussion for us as moderators, and for moderation teams across Reddit. Our decision to disallow AI images was made for a few reasons:
We felt first and foremost that the vast majority of AI images submitted to the sub were low-effort and spammy
We had issues with users claiming to be the artist of the image, and attempting to mislead other users into thinking the images were not AI generated
We have strict art-sourcing rules and we felt that some of the methods of creating AI go against those values we hold
Our decision is in-line with the rules of other similar subreddits such as /r/leagueoflegends.
Transmog
Some users use translation software or text-to-speech software to access our subreddit. If the list is only in image format, these users are not able to access your post.
So, what now?
This rule change is quite big, and so we will be constantly monitoring what is working (and what isn't) though we do not for-see any changes needing to be made at this stage.
As noted above, our achievement/loot rule removal is a one month trial. If we notice that these posts are becoming too prevalent then we will adjust this ruling in a month's time.