Above is what we are referring to when we are talking about posting reports.

You'll see that a user posted a WIP. Another user reported it, citing a rule four violation. A moderator posted the report and responded to it.

We do this because Reddit does not tell us who makes a report. The only thing we see is what the report says, and the original post that is being reported. We do this in order to begin a dialogue, either with the reporter themselves, the original poster, or even the subreddit community who may have comments or questions about the report and the process.

There were a lot of comments regarding "anonymity". Being that Reddit doesn't tell us who makes the report, no action can be taken against the reporter because we have no idea who they are - hence the public posting to hopefully have the reporter come forward if we find we don't agree with the report or need more information in order to take action. Because of this everyone should feel to report anything they see that doesn't follow our sub or Reddit rules. There is no repercussion we can take against you and if anything it creates a good dialogue among users and mods about the rules.

Many good discussions and tweaks to rules have come from posting reports such as this and since it appears many of the subscribers feel the same way we will continue to do so. If you have any more comments, questions, concerns regarding this, please modmail us.

Comments, Concerns, Questions

We'd like to take this chance to respond to some of the comments, questions, and concerns we received regarding the Mod section of the State of the Sub Survey.

"Just.. be nicer lol. Most of the time the mods come off rude even when its clearly not intended. The public posting of rules on someones post is impersonal, shames the user, and could be handled in private!! "

I will warn you - what I'm about to say will come off rude, but hear me out: If you're looking for roses, puppies, and rainbows - maybe the internet isn't the place to hang out. If you truly believe the mods are coming off rude MOST of the time - maybe the issue isn't necessarily how we're presenting what we're saying, but how you're interpreting it. We are a very nice corner of Reddit. Everyone shares their work, everyone has a good time - but when it comes down to it we are all still people. Are there days that we aren't the nicest? Yes. Are there days we just want to connect with our user base and just chat? Absolutely. The mods are going to say stuff that upset the users, users will say stuff that upset the mods, and at the end of the day we can all either move on or dwell on it.

As for "Public shaming" we tend to believe: A learning experience for one is a learning experience for all. To us, it makes more sense if someone uses a wrong tag, to post on the thread because instead of targeting that one user, maybe now several users who wanted to post something similar saw it and know the correct way to do it. We never want to shame anyone or make them feel bad for their craft or sharing here - we are not in the shame game at all. Looking at the way some other mods handle things like this on other subs I think we're still pretty nice about it all - snark and all.

"I would just say consistency. I know it's difficult because there's been some changes in management but when one moderator says something, it's probably going to be relied upon so those things should be communicated. I don't think this is anything the mod team is doing wrong though, since these are issues that any group of leaders will face. "

Agreed! We're constantly trying to figure out our best practices and trying to nail down a concise order of operations that we'd like to follow and stick with so if we add any new mods they're able to jump right in at where we're at :) It's a constant work in progress!

"Be nice about comments about rules and when broken. Facebook mods seem to be a bit too blunt"

We agree! This is the reason we have template responses that we use when someone breaks a rule. The initial post gets the point across and every person gets the same response which helps keep consistency.

"I feel at times certain mods are slightly arrogant and you can 100% tell they enjoy the "mod" status over others. Be cool, collected and enjoy cross stitch like the rest of us. I would also like to see the other mods work regularly. "

We hate that we're coming off that way! I wonder if some of this interpretation is due to our "slow mod times" where we haven't had a mod check in on posts in a little while so it seems like one of us is just all over the place doing Mod duty. As for the working regularly - remember, we volunteer our time and don't get paid for this. We do it because we love cross stitching and Reddit. Many of us are hard at work behind the scenes making sure this place stays great and pretty for all of you!

"Too modern. They doesn't give enough room for more traditional stitchers in their views. Too strict in their tag and source requirements. I've also seen more than one post when someone innocently asks about cross stitch software. It seems quite passive aggressive to me. The mod will be like "you need to look at our faq before posting this" and the op will be like "Oh, sorry, I didn't know" and the mod will be like, "that's ok", but really it isn't ok, is it? I mean, it's not a big deal if someone asks in a post. Lighten up. Just because it's in the faq doesn't mean they don't want some other input. Besides, Reddit has lots of space for whatever. Just let it roll a bit. "

Before all of the blame gets thrown on the mods - rules such as the tags, posting a source in an FO, making people check the FAQ before posting questions - were ALL user requested throughout different SOS surveys through the years. The tags exist to help make the sub easier to navigate and use. Lately we have also changed our verbiage to "Hey! Check our our FAQ for information on XXX, we even have a full page dedicated to it!" That way we're not telling people to shove off and not post, we're just providing another useful tool.

"Moderator questions in this form need a n/a. Only dealt with the mods once, on a relatively trivial issue, so can't really comment. "

We'll be sure and do that for next year's survey!