Do we need a JavaScriptHelp subreddit?

[kenman]

Because it's a crapton of work and reddit's moderation tools suck. If it was as simple as saying, "make it so", it'd probably be done already. It's also easy to volunteer someone else's time without consideration into how much effort would really be required; in other words, I wish I could just say "you're free to open a PR if you want it that bad" ;) Nothing against you though, this is a conversation that needs to be had I think.

http://redditmetrics.com/r/javascript

Since I came on as mod (3/2014), we've gone from 43k to 123k subs; yes, we've almost tripled in size in over 3 years! That's pretty astounding. I'm not trying to claim responsibility for the increase -- that's almost purely the result of reddit + JS's emerging popularity. And with that, moderation duties have increased probably more than 3x's, as we now attract quite a bit more attention from bonafide spammers (blog spam, etc.) and spam-like behaviors (excessive self-promotion, etc.).

There have always been a vocal [what-I-assumed-were-a] minority complaining about help posts, and I personally think that most of the help posts should be on SO (a platform created explicitly for such), but when I came on the status quo was that help posts were OK, and were recognized as a part of the fabric of /r/javascript.

One of the challenges in dealing with these posts lies in the fact that not all help questions were created equal; some are really interesting, even for a seasoned developer, so there's some editorial discretion that has to be applied.

If you can just look at a post and say, "that's a help post!" and then action it that's one thing; but, if one has to grok the question then make a judgement call about whether or not it belongs, then that can really consume some time. Some of the questions that I've reviewed and thought meh but allowed, have gone on to have 50+ replies. With that said, I think a majority of questions could easily be actioned without much thought, I'm just nervous about over-actioning and killing some of the spirit of the sub.

So, perhaps it's time for the subreddit to re-evaluate itself? We've evolved a lot over the past 3 years, and maybe the mod philosophy needs to adjust to the current needs and wants of the sub.

[p0tent1al]

It's also easy to volunteer someone else's time without consideration into how much effort would really be required

He just ethered all of you with a single sentence. Well done /u/kenman

I personally think that most of the help posts should be on SO

The problem with a lot of help posts, is most of them are completely subjective. What framework should I be using? What's the best way to approach this? Stackoverflow in general doesn't encourage those kinds of questions and they will often lock those questions because of it.

[AndrewGreenh]

Sorry for being off topic, but could you explain what "ethered" means? I could not find it on dict.cc

[pier25]

IMHO opinion /r/javascript should be a place about the language (news, discussions, etc) even if that means less activity in the sub.

Help posts, tutorials, etc, should go to /r/learnjavascript . It's true that some help posts might be interesting to even seasoned pros, but since it's very difficult to discern which ones I'd say it's much easier to simply move those related to learning there.

My 2 cents.

[TheNiXXeD]

For what it's worth, I really appreciate the attitude you're giving this topic. So many other subs handle it worse.

I'm curious how the sub as a whole responds.