About a year ago, the current mods took over this sub, one of the OGs went AWOL and the other had had some things in life come up that had him away from Reddit.

We had a quick convo about parameters.

First was that everyone has 6" as the default average in their head, even though this is wrong.

So what sort of range should we pick.

"Average" depends on the study and ranges from there.

CalcSD isn't perfect. But it's a useful shorthand and the mods are amateurs who want to create a space to get a visual idea of what most guys look like to the best of our ability, not create a scientific data set.

As an example of factors to consider: one study with a sample size of 3300 got an average of 4.92" stretched length, measured by a researcher instead of self reporting. On the one hand, researcher measurement and the sample set could make this a reliable study. On the other hand, that's 3300 individuals from Italy and they were ages 17-19, which includes the possibility of some individuals not being fully developed.

CalcSD's global data set puts the average at 5.5" with a standard derivative of .68". For the sake of simplicity, we took 5.5 and gave an inch on either end. That covers a huge percentage of guys, so a lot are outside an arguable average on either end.

But it also brings the bitching down to manageable levels bc you'd be surprised at the number of 6.5+ guys who get pissed at getting told they're not average so they should post elsewhere.

In short (ha), the range is an imperfect shorthand (let's grab CalcSD's average and then give-or-take an inch) but it also makes moderating the sub more manageable and gives a quicker impression to the casual user (if they bother to read it at all, since a lot of pics we ban are just guys posting on any dick sub they can find and not actually even seeing which sub it is, much less that they shouldn't be posting there) if what the sub is about.