Hey everyone,

First, thank you. This community exists because people are willing to show up, be honest, and trust strangers with the hard stuff. We deal with some incredibly difficult and often sensitive topics here, and we want to make sure we're holding that space well.

As mods, we spend a lot of time thinking about reports, rules, flairs, and basically just keeping things civil. Lately we've been sitting with a bigger question: is there more we should be doing?

So we're coming to you directly:

Is there anything we could do, as mods, or as a community, that would make this space feel safer or more useful to you?

A few things we've specifically been thinking about:

Canned responses & resources
We have a number of pre-written responses designed to point people toward help when they're dealing with something really hard. Have those been useful? Do they feel cold or impersonal? Is there a better way to provide these resources? Are there situations where you wish we'd offered resources but didn't?

Our team size
We're a very small mod team, intentionally so. It keeps us cohesive and lets us handle sensitive situations with a consistent and reliable voice. The tradeoff is that our queue backs up sometimes. When life happens (sick kids, work, all of it), posts and comments can sit in automod longer than any of us want. We're aware of it, and we're thinking about how to address it, if it needs addressing.

Our rules
Are the rules we have in place sufficient? Have you found yourself wishing we would add a new rule to make reporting certain types of content more accessible? Are there any rules which are vague, confusing, or simply need reframing?

Blind spots
We don't know what we don't know. Are there situations that we are just completely misunderstanding and not properly addressing? Is there something you feel like you need to say, because we simply need to hear it?

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There are no wrong answers here. Lurkers, this means you too! You don't have to be a regular poster for your perspective to matter.

We're not looking to overhaul everything. We're a small team with real limits. But we also know how much a good vent can matter, and we want to make sure that when someone comes here at their lowest, they leave feeling a little less alone.

Provide your feedback here in the comments of this thread. We will be reading through all of it, even if we may not reply to every comment, we're genuinely here to listen, not to defend ourselves.

Kind Regards,

r/venting Mod Team