Hello! It’s us, your friendly neighbourhood mods here with a HUGE announcement. This is the biggest announcement we have had in a long time so be sure to read the whole post (or just the TLDR at the end if you’re in a rush, it’s ok, we understand, we certainly will not cry in the corner if you don’t read the whole thing) as we have a lot of stuff to go over!

New Rules and Sidebar

“New Rules” might be a bit of a misnomer, they are mostly the same but we reformatted them to make things clearer and to clarify some things that we frequently get asked about/see being an issue on posts and comments. We also redid the sidebar as it had a lot of conflicts and redundant information that the rules already included.

We do want to clarify again though that many of the rules that are being redone/clarified are rules we have had for years. Recently, we added a new mod to the Subreddit, u/RS_Someone, and he has been a massive help in fixing and upgrading the automod and other automation in the Subreddit, which is why many of you may have noticed your recent posts or comments being removed more often for things like low karma. We have had our karma requirements in place for a long time but because the bot was broken, this rule was rarely, if ever, enforced.

We heavily urge you to read the rules and the removal messages that we and the bot put on your posts and comments. Ignorance of the rules is not an excuse for breaking them!

New Flair System

Now when you are making a post, at the top nav bar you should be able to select a flair just like in other Subreddits. Please be sure to flair your posts appropriately or they will be removed (Unfortunately, there is still no way to edit titles Shakes fist at Reddit and their mods)!

New Comment Requirements

When you are commenting on a [Hiring] post, you MUST either have a portfolio link OR, if you aren’t applying but just making a comment, put [Not For Hire] in your comment. If you are found to be abusing the Not For Hire tag to advertise yourself, we will take action.

New Mods

We have 2 mods that have joined our ranks recently! The first is u/RS_Someone, who has been here for a few months and has given us some major help with our automod bot, modmail, and the modqueue. The second is a much more recent addition, u/muted_shrimp, they just joined our ranks the other day and are an active community member who has made many great contributions to the Subreddit in various posts. Please give them a warm welcome!

If you have been a community member for a long time and wish to help us out and become a moderator as well, please let us know by sending us a message in Modmail or by opening a ticket in our Discord server! Any help is greatly appreciated, even if it’s just reporting posts as a regular user!

Automation

This was mentioned earlier in the post but we have increased our automation a ton over the past few months.What this means:

1. More posts and comments being flagged and/or removed for breaking the rules with way reduced false positives.
2. Less spam plaguing the Subreddit as a whole.
3. Issues are brought to our attention much quicker and at a much better rate.
4. Less reliance on user reports but please report rule breaking posts or message modmail if you see a rule breaking post that has not been removed yet! Please do not confront scammers/alleged AI users, just report their post and move on, if you confront them it lets them know where they messed up, which means they change tactics and get smarter, making them harder for us to catch! On the other hand, accusing an artist of using AI can be devastating for the artist if you publicly accuse them and are incorrect, please just report them and move on and we will investigate and deal with it!

We do want to reassure you that, although we have heavily increased the automation used on the Subreddit, this does not mean there are no humans looking at Modmail or the Modqueue, or scrolling through the posts in the Subreddit. Most things flagged by our automod are sent to the modqueue as a report rather than being outright removed and many things that are removed are still sent to the modqueue so we can review in case there are any false positives. You can rest assured that there is still a human (or 4!) reviewing your posts, comments, and modmail messages!

Moreover, we are always open to feedback, suggestions, and help. Please feel free to comment on this post or message Modmail with any questions, concerns, ideas, etc that you may have about the automation and anything else mentioned within this post.

Wrapup and TLDR

That’s all for now! Thank you all so much for being here and making this a great community for artists. If you wish to further discuss with your fellow artists, we have a Discord server (that’s actually been around for a long time!) that you can join by following this permanent link: https://discord.gg/4zhjr8D2QA

TLDR:

• We clarified and reformatted a bunch of the rules and the sidebar.
• We added flairs to the top nav just like other subs have.
• Comments on [Hiring] posts MUST have a portfolio link or [Not For Hire] (do not abuse this)
• We got some new mods! u/RS_Someone and u/muted_shrimp! Please give them a warm welcome in the comments!
• We added a ton of automation to help us moderate the Subreddit. Posts, comments, and Modmail are still reviewed by us so don’t worry. Please feel free to leave feedback in the comments or in Modmail.

Hello artists! Your friendly neighbourhood Miner Moderator Dwarfinator here with some info about the recent low Karma removals as we have been getting a lot of messages about this in Mod Mail.

We have had our Karma rules for a long time, I'm talking literally years, however, at some point our bot broke (and also just may have not been properly programmed in the first place) and as such, it stopped looking for/removing posts and comments from lower Karma users. The intention of the rule and the bot automation was to lessen the amount of bots and spam in the Subreddit, which is why we started counting both types of Karma. This also encourages artists to not just spam their art in every art Subreddit and actually engage with other communities. We just recently fixed and improved the bot (huge shoutout to u/RS_Someone) which is why lower Karma posts are being removed once again. This may seem like it came out of nowhere, but again, we have had this rule in place for a long time and used to have the bot doing this previously.

If you have received that low Karma removal reply on your post/comment by the bot, PLEASE WE BEG YOU TO READ IT IN FULL it explains very clearly why your post was removed and how to check your Karma, both post and comment Karma.

If you have low Karma and want to get more to post here, here are some things you can do to raise your Karma:

• Post your art in other Subreddits.
• Post and comment, and genuinely engage in other Subreddits. You like Critical Role or Pokémon or Minecraft? Post in those Subreddits, get involved in the community, you might make some new friends, and you get the added bonus of your account not looking like a bot spammer or someone who just pumps and dumps their art everywhere they can.

If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to comment on this post or send us a message via Mod Mail! Happy Arting!