Dealing with off-topic posts, spam, etc.
https://www.reddit.com/r/ArtFundamentals/comments/dg9e2w/dealing_with_offtopic_posts_spam_etc/
2019-10-11 03:33
Uncomfortable
A quick announcement this time. We've always had issues with off-topic posts, and to a lesser degree spam, and more recently some really awful videos involving a man and a horse that have been posted to the subreddit. While I try to clear the subreddit of chaff, I can't always get to the posts quickly.
On top of that, I go through them anyway to add the appropriate tags as needed, so I'm going to turn on a feature that sends all posts directly to the spam filter. I'll periodically go through them throughout the day as I have been already.
The only difference is that your post will not show up immediately anymore - it may take several hours, especially if you post while I'm sleeping, but since this will be applied equally to everyone, it shouldn't really be much of a problem.
So, if when you post you find that your submission is not immediately visible, don't worry about it.
oronbz
2019-10-11 07:16
If you need help in moderating, I dont mind helping. If you sleep in the US Im awake at this time (:
polite_alpaca
2019-10-11 11:39
I definitely don't have the time to help mod like some of the other people here are offering to do, but I'm sorry people are being so shitty :/
Thank you for helping keep our sub clean and on topic!
Uncomfortable
2019-10-11 16:20
Haha, no worries. This doesn't actually increase what I've had to do thus far.
deskportal
2019-10-11 12:00
So you're also going to use this to filter content that isn't related to the drawabox website and method?
[deleted]
2019-10-11 14:07
You're already not supposed to post stuff in this sub that's not related to DaB. It's literally the only rule in the subreddit rules.
deskportal
2019-10-11 14:25
Why on earth is this sub called Art Fundamentals?
It's like saying r/cars can only talk about a specific make, model, and range of production years.
That's absurd?!
[deleted]
2019-10-11 14:33
God help you if you ever stumble into /r/trees.
aprefabofaperson
2019-10-11 15:31
You're getting downvoted but i agree with you tbh. Too late to change now i guess.
Uncomfortable
2019-10-11 16:31
You're right about it being too late, though I do have a more elaborate explanation as to all the reasons this is the case in my response to deskportal
aprefabofaperson
2019-10-11 18:37
Thanks for clearing it up. I kinda guessed it was a reason along those lines. Don't get me wrong, you're not gonna go and create a new subreddit that already has a ton of subs just because the name is a little bit misleading. It's just weird that this guy gets heavily downvoted when his point is a valid one.
Uncomfortable
2019-10-11 16:30
Yes, this'll help me avoid any off-topic posts from getting out and accidentally encouraging others to make more off-topic posts.
As to your question about why this subreddit is called ArtFundamentals, it's because this subreddit came first. Back in August 2014, I wanted to create somewhere I could share what I had learned regarding the fundamentals with others. Those fundamentals were more narrow and focused than those others might consider, though the only reason at the time was because they were the elements I had learned in a particular class that had a huge impact on my skills.
It wasn't until March 2015 that I created drawabox.com, and you can't rename subreddits once they've been created. All this time, the subreddit didn't allow others to submit posts, and all the interaction was based on students posting their homework to the individual lesson threads, and me responding with critiques.
Once I finally was no longer able to do free critiques for everyone due to the workload and had to put up something of a small paywall in October 2016, I decided to open the subreddit up to posts so people could view and critique each other without being restricted just to seeking critiques from me. Additionally, at this point the focus of Drawabox was more cemented in terms of the topics we were covering - no longer just because that's how I had learned, but because there were concrete reasons as to why it was a good subset to focus upon. We were sitting at 27,000 subscribers at this point, so creating a new subreddit just for the sake of the name would have been a very bad idea for the growth of the community.
As the lessons and my grasp of what I've been sharing has developed, I've come somewhat full circle. That is to say, /r/ArtFundamentals is a fairly suitable name for what we're doing here. It's true that we're foregoing a lot of the common things people treat as the fundamentals - especially rendering/shading, colour, etc. What we do focus on however, specifically confident and accurate mark making, capturing the illusion of solid form and building up complex objects from simple components (constructional drawing) are truly at the core of what someone looking to draw, or communicate visually, should learn. It comes before all the others.
Though I suppose it's fair to say that maybe DrawingFundamentals would have been a better choice - but when it comes to off-topic conversation, people don't tend to come here talking about composition and colour, the former of which is something I intend to cover in a future drawabox lesson (and have actually covered in a past lesson that has since been set aside for the time being).
deskportal
2019-10-11 19:10
Thanks for the reply, and thanks for doing what youre doing. The net result is that more people are drawing and with the support of others. Not worth trying to please everyone I suppose.
1enigma1
2019-10-11 13:25
As a suggestion and perhaps a better use of your time I believe you could use could use the automoderator to clear up some of the spam. Just require that each post includes a keyword which would keep it from being tagged as spam.
Uncomfortable
2019-10-11 16:34
That's certainly something to consider, but in my experience when it comes to communicating to people that they need to use a specific tag or keyword on their post, they're more than likely not to have read that instruction, then get frustrated when things don't work as intended. I have to flair posts anyway to mark them as questions/full submissions/partial submissions/single exercises anyway (and I don't really trust users to do this correctly on their own, especially since the intent is to draw more attention to full submissions over singles), so this isn't actually any extra work. In some ways it makes it easier, since it all goes to the spam filter.
1enigma1
2019-10-11 16:36
At the very least it would mean that you wouldn't have to moderate those that actually read the rules. And it may be able to do the tagging for you (although I'm not certain)
Uncomfortable
2019-10-11 16:40
The main issue here is that people have been able to post really offensive material and it's been visible in the subreddit for a few hours. So if it just takes a person understanding how the subreddit works to be able to have their post visible to everyone, that's too big a risk to take.
Jackson622
2019-10-11 23:29
What is the status on the drawabox website based community portal mentioned some time ago?
Uncomfortable
2019-10-11 23:37
I've been working on it periodically, and I'm hoping to be able to release it as this year's big end-of-year/christmas update, but I can't guarantee that it'll be ready by then. Either way, it is progressing.
J0sL
2019-10-11 09:03
Yeah, same here. Willing to help and not based in the US.
Uncomfortable
2019-10-11 16:49
Much appreciated! As it stands it doesn't actually increase my workload since I was tagging peoples' posts anyway, and when it does become a bit much I'll probably just tag in one of my existing discord chat server moderators.
It's very nice to see all the people willing to help out though.
Uncomfortable
2019-10-11 16:18
I appreciate the offer! For now though it doesn't actually increase my workload since I've been going through and tagging posts anyways. When required, I'll probably deputize my discord server chat mods as subreddit moderators, but I don't think that'll be necessary.