Rule 14 Poll
Hey everyone, for just over 2 years we've had Rule 14 in place. This rule makes it so that the discussion of new episodes has to be put into the discussion megathread for 2 days, after which the episode can be discussed freely. The main reason that this rule was put in place was to protect people from spoilers, however as time has went we feel like this rule has outlived it's usefulness and just stifles overall discussion within the subreddit. For all of the Helluva Shorts we didn't enforce this rule since these were shorter episodes, and we also didn't enforce rule 14 for the latest episode release. From what we observed people were happier to discuss the episodes freely, and there was some great theories and posts being made. Below we've brainstormed a couple points both for and against the rule.
Points for keeping the rule:
- Stops some low effort discussion, people noticing the same stuff for the first couple days etc
- Protects people at work etc who haven't watched the episode yet
- Gives people 2 days to collect their thoughts and create more meaningful posts
Points against:
- Basically locks off the subreddit for 2 days after each episode release. You can use the comment section of the discussion post but it's a lot clunkier and isn't as good as making a standalone post.
- It's up to the people who want to avoid spoilers to restrain themselves. If you don't want spoiled, then stay off social media until you can watch the episode.
- Hinders analysis and discourse. It's interesting to see people's thoughts immediately after the episode release, vs in a couple days when everyone has calmed down. As mentioned before we trialed out not enforcing the rule for several short releases and 1 episode, and it worked well. Discussion was up and the quality of posts was great as well.
- More work for the mod team since we have to remove all these posts, whereas if the rule was gone we'd only have to remove ones that break the frequent topics rule.
- I run r/thedigitalcircus which is the main subreddit for another indie show called The Amazing Digital Circus and moderate it similarly to r/helluvaboss, but without rule 14. There's some really good discussion and theorycrafting that happens in the first couple days of an episode release. This is unfortunately lost on r/helluvaboss.
Those are the main points I think that can be brought up. Below is a poll, so feel free to vote on if you'd like to keep or remove the rule. You can also leave your thoughts in the comment section down below.