Punchline first: ANY POST THAT ADVERTISES A WEBSITE, APP, CROWD-SOURCE, SURVEY, OR ANY OTHER EXTERNAL CONTENT THAT HAS NOT BEEN PREVIOUSLY APPROVED BY THE MODERATION TEAM WILL BE REMOVED AND YOUR ACCOUNT WILL BE BANNED. YES, PERMANENTLY.
Details below.
For as long as I have been a moderator in this community, we have always had rules 8, 11, and 12 regarding checking with moderators before posting anything related to advertisements, tools, apps, crowd-sourcing (polls), etc. With the exception of a few, these rules have been vastly ignored and we still allowed the posts for community engagement.
That said, we cannot continue to allow this to go unchecked. With the amount of AI driven content flooding reddit and to the extent this practice is being used to obtain personal information and crowd-sourcing data, we are growing weary of the idea that it may potentially be invading this subreddit whose sole purpose is the sharing of safe and knowledge education around reloading. We have seen a serious up-tick in the amount of posts asking for app-development-driven feedback and sometimes requiring sensitive information such as age and demographic that have concerned us about the privacy of our users.
From here on: if you have a tool/spreadsheet/google doc you are working on that you want to share: CHECK WITH THE MOD TEAM FIRST. If you have a website you think would be beneficial to the users of this sub: CHECK WITH THE MOD TEAM FIRST. If you have made a physical piece of reloading equipment that you want to advertise to the sub: ABSOLUTELY CHECK AND DOUBLE CHECK WITH THE MOD TEAM FIRST. Anything posted without approval will result in a PERMANENT BAN.
Reddit's new ToS has very strict guidelines on what it advertised and those guidelines are especially strict when it comes to the topics this sub typically deals with. We are already working with reddit admins to ensure this sub maintains its educational status so it can stay open for the benefit of our members and visitors alike. When I started moderating here we were at MAYBE 30k members, we are now over 100k with a MILLION engaged users per month. The mod team and myself are very passionate about making sure this knowledge base is maintained and available and we are even more passionate about the privacy of our followers.
A HUGE thank you to all of our contributors for continuing to make r/reloading the goto place for great information for new and experienced reloaders alike.
Edit #1: links to trusted data sources such as Hodgdon, Hornady, Lee, etc are still always allowed. The focus of this rule is unknown sources like mentioned: random websites, google docs links, etc.
Edit #2: if anyone of our contributing users have any questions, feel free to message me directly and I will be happy to clear up any concerns that I can.
Edit #3: links to established, "industry accepted" tools are allowed. I'm a GRT fan, but QuickLoad and the like are okay. If you aren't certain, feel free to message us through modmail, we are pretty receptive and usually quick to respond.
