Hello all,
The breadth of questions we receive on AskUK is one of the defining strengths of the subreddit. Many of these questions are insightful, sparking great discussions that are often the highlight of the subreddit on any given day. We're proud of this and recognise that it has significantly contributed to our growth over the past few years, continuing to drive our community's expansion.
However, not every question posed is suitable for the subreddit. We receive thousands of posts each month (7,849 in July alone!), and unfortunately, some of these require moderator intervention. This may be because the question was asked in good faith, but a small subset of users derails the discussion, seizing the opportunity for vitriol or trolling.
These issues are particularly prevalent in posts that touch on protected characteristics. These include (but are not limited to) religion, race, ethnicity, disability, etc. Often, these questions are repetitive, elicit similar answers, or attract problematic behavior.
As a result, we are enforcing a ban on certain types of questions that involve protected characteristics, subject to moderator discretion.
Moderators will have the final say on which posts remain and which are removed. While there may be exceptions, the moderation team has a clear understanding of what we consider unsuitable, and we will enforce this accordingly.
For example, questions like "Why do <X> people…" or "Why does the <Y> community…" will almost always be removed.
We don't take the introduction of new rules lightly—we haven't done so in a long time. However, we believe this step is necessary to maintain the quality of discourse in the subreddit.
And if anyone attempts to skirt around these rules, we won't hesitate to take action, including issuing bans.
We welcome your comments and feedback, so please share them below, and we'll do our best to respond.
16 comments
Can we have an exemption for BMW drivers please? They do it to themselves and it’s fair game.
Fully support and good idea.
Sounds good. If you have a question about people with a protected characteristic, it’s probably better to go to a relevant sub and ask them politely, anyway.
For the specific intention of this particular sub, I don’t see why not.
Overall I think the mods do a great job here. A glaring hole though in my view is the number of commenters that get away with contributing little to a thread other than nit picking Americanisms.
The sub’s stated blurb is to be the “#1 subreddit for Brits **and non-Brits** to ask questions about the United Kingdoms life and culture” and yet threads in which the OP uses Americanisms are often magnets for top level comments that serve not to answer the question asked but to patronise in an attempt to “correct” the asker.
Such comments break by my understanding sub reddit rules one 1, 6 and 9 all the while contributing nothing to the sub. Unless you count turning people of posting here as a contribution.
In fairness often when I report such posts they are removed and this is clearly an issue the mods are aware of as there is a bot set up to ask people not to turn this sub into an anti American echo chamber and yet the same people are over and over again making these kinds of comments.
I guess what I’m asking is for is that such posters are more effectively handles so that this ever increasing issue does not continue.
Good idea, these questions are almost always politics by stealth and a lot of them are bait
What about gamers?
Is “why do British people” acceptable?
Normally this would concern me because of the backfire effect. Most posts on United Kingdom have a “three dots” on most threads about immigration, trans people, travellers, etc which only serves to entrench prejudice against these groups. I know it’s simply unpoliceable if they don’t do it and it’s in good faith, but that’s the end result.
I have every faith the mods on this sub can manage it well though. One of the fairer and most unbiased mod groups on Reddit. Not saying the UK ones aren’t btw.
Aren’t age and sex protected characteristics?
I think it would be better to spell out the characteristics as people from abroad aren’t going to know what they are
> The breadth of questions we receive on AskUK is one of the defining strengths of the subreddit. Many of these questions are insightful, sparking great discussions that are often the highlight of the subreddit on any given day.
Are these ones posted when I’m asleep or something?
Pretty much everybody has a protected characteristic under the Equality Act 2010 though. Even cis straight white middle aged males hit four protected characteristics.
You might want to add a list of the protected characteristics specified in the Equality Act to the rule so people are aware of what counts.
It’ll be nice to see the back of ‘boomer bad’ posts though.
I stopped engaging with this sub when any time I made a comment about my experience as a disabled person (in reference to a question where that was relevant or even explictly talking about disabled issues), I would either get downvoted into oblivion or I would get really nasty comments. I’m glad to see that mods taking action on this and I hope it makes for a nicer atmosphere.
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Does this include questions about marriage and pregnancy?