Photocritique Rule Changes

Hello everyone. First, I just want to say thanks for all the interest you have shown in the subreddit and your interest in both improving your own photography and helping others improve theirs. We are implementing some new rule changes that will be important for everyone to read, both for people posting images and for people leaving critique for others. This post might be a bit long, but please read it over.

Whats the point?

We are closing in on 400 thousand subscribers and have been and continue to be growing very quickly. However, with this growth comes some growing pains. Our main goal here has always been to ensure that this subreddit is a place where anyone of any skill level can come and get some honest, genuine, and most importantly, constructive feedback on their photography. To this end, we want to avoid becoming just another place for people to share their images and get patted on the back. But, it becomes harder and harder as we grow between a combination of new users who just dont know the rules and jokesters who have no intention of following the rules.

Previous rule changes

There have been a few major changes to the rules in the past with the thought being that if the person posting a photo puts a little effort into their images, they will be more invested and more likely to return and follow, and it would signal to others that they are serious about their post and actually worth spending the time giving a critique. The very first change was to request specific feedback in the title of the post. This was a good first step but it was realized very quickly that it just took too much time to moderate properly as it seemed that most people just wouldnt take the time to read the rules and follow them properly. Then about 7 months ago the decision was made to expand the rule to require categories in post titles. This was something that could be moderated automatically. The quality improvement was noticeable, but it had the drawback of requiring that we define the categories before hand. Which led the unfortunate side effect of a few categories that were used essentially as a crutch. It has been working well, but we felt a replacement was needed.

New rules for posting photos

Now, when you post a photo for critique you will be required to post a follow-up comment. You will have to state your intent and/or goals for the image and do some self critique. Explain what worked and what didn’t. What you like and what you don’t. If you want a good critique you have to ask good questions.

The process for posting will work as follows. When you post your photo it will held for approval. You will receive a message with instructions on creating your follow up post. Once you have followed the instructions and meet the requirements, both the image post and the comment post will be approved and displayed in r/photocritique. Please be advised that there is a minimum character count for the followup comment, so please at least try to put some effort into your followup.

The reasoning for this is reduce drive-by posting and get you more engaged with the community. If you ask for someone to critique your photo the least you can do it take two minutes to give them some basic information about what you were trying to accomplish. Our hope is that this will also give you the chance to do a little self reflection on your photo. If you can't do this, why should others take their time to critique your photo if you refuse to do it yourself? This is also a great place to include any other relevant information about your image. If it is a composite it is usually a good idea to say so as this can guide the critique you receive (also some people seem to get irrationally angry about composites). But in addition, this is a good place for EXIF data and any other information. These things can all be very helpful to others who are taking their own personal time to critique your image.

Because of this new rule, we have decided that the old rule 3 requiring categories is redundant and it has been removed. To reiterate, categories are now no longer required. You can still post a category if you desire, but there is no longer any restriction on it or on your title and they will no longer be used for any kind of post approval.

We expect there might be some growing pains with this rule change. We have been testing the automod rules for this behind the scenes for a while and are hopeful things will go smoothly. But if things dont quite work right please let us know and we will be happy to adjust and change things as needed.

New rules for leaving critique

As you may have noticed recently, we have begun removing comments that do not attempt to leave a critique. This change has been added as rule #5, requiring that all top level comments must be an actual critique. Since we now will require all posters to leave a followup comment, any questions or general discussion/praise of the photo can be left as a reply to the original followup. Just posting a comment that says something like “Man, I love that photo!” is not a critique.

Some of you may have noticed in the past that we also have an automod rule that automatically removes suspected "low effort" comments. This is being expanded a bit to require even longer comments now. We feel its long enough that comments will have to have some substance, but still short enough that it shouldnt be a burden to leave a critique. If you cant write at least a few sentences, is it really worth the effort? To clarify how this works, this only affects top level comments in image threads (not discussion threads or announcements). Shorter comments can still be left as replies to other comments or directly to the original followup comment.

The rules have been reworked, both to include these new changes and reword some of the existing rules to make things clearer. We strongly recommend taking a few minutes to review the changes. There is shorter version in the side bar but the full version is in the WIKI located at https://www.reddit.com/r/photocritique/wiki/rules.

Keep in mind r/photocritique is not a Photo Sharing Group but a Critique Group While we all love praise in order to grow as a photographer we need to hear what others see, both good and especially the bad. The purpose of a critique should be to help you make your next photo better.

We also understand that we are making it a bit more difficult to post images now, but the hope is that this will improve quality and participation to get people better, more targeted, critique. We are also always open to suggestion and will consider everything, even if we dont act on everything.

Thanks!

Edit: Having some technical issues with this, hopefully itll be up and working properly soon.

Edit 2: Ok, should hopefully be working now. There were posts getting approved that should not have been. Will continue to monitor.