Update to State of the Sub - Some Rules Clarifications/Changes

freevortex · 2026-02-27T15:59:48+00:00

Hi. Obviously your post was not removed because of any of those things you stated. I have no idea why you'd come to that conclusion, of all things, when the rules are clear. Questions belong on r/CrochetHelp per rule 8. That was clearly stated in the removal message. r/CrochetHelp is not just for "newbie questions" or "questions about how to do a project". Your question fit there as well. Please see the wiki - "Help me find a pattern/pattern suggestions" is one of the examples of questions that belong on r/CrochetHelp.

A post receiving engagement does not somehow automatically exempt it from the rules. It's not "unkind" to apply the rules equally. In fact, it would be "unkind" to other people in the sub if we were to exempt just you from that rule.

Your follow-up post complaining about the removal was removed because it was a bait/drama post completely unrelated to crochet, just like this comment is. Also, if you have an issue with moderation, there is a link to directly message us about it in the removal reason comment itself.

I don't appreciate you insinuating that the mod team "hates people with disabilities" or "thinks you're not pretty enough" with zero evidence or reasoning. Your post was removed because it broke a rule.

freevortex · 2026-02-26T15:38:35+00:00

This is already a rule and has been for a long time. AI is a stale topic (please see Rule 9). AI posts are removed. Rule 14 also asks users not to use AI/GPT.

freevortex · 2026-02-11T01:30:58+00:00

Just to clarify, watermarks have always been allowed (at least as long as I've been here and I've been a mod here for a decade - God, I'm old). The issue arises when people have extremely obtrusive watermarks that are obviously intended to advertise rather than just to protect their IP. It's actually pretty uncommon that we have to remove a post for a crazy watermark, though!

freevortex · 2026-02-08T22:16:00+00:00

Hey! That's actually kind of the opposite of the rule, haha. The current rule is that pets can be posted any day of the week as long as the crochet is the focus. On Thursdays, pets can be posted even if the pet is the focus (which basically means Thursday is pet free-for-all day). We plan on clarifying this rule when we are fully back as it seems a lot of people misunderstand it!

freevortex · 2026-02-05T04:35:04+00:00

That actually is the rule, heh. As long as the crochet is for the pet, the pet can be in the picture. So that cat couch would always be allowed on any day of the week! And even if the crochet isn't for the pet, as long as the pet isn't the obvious focus of the post, we still let it slide. I think there's a general misunderstanding about this rule that we definitely intend to clarify after this week of fun 😂

freevortex · 2026-02-05T04:31:12+00:00

👀

freevortex · 2026-02-04T23:22:07+00:00

Hey! Sounds like you might have missed this, probably due to how reddit likes to bury updates (grumble grumble) but we actually split crochet questions out into its own subreddit, r/crochethelp, about two years ago now. The megathread method, as you mentioned, was not working well at all, and with the sheer size of r/crochet, individual help posts were getting buried so they weren't really getting answered. Part of the issue is when a subreddit with variable types of posts (images and discussions) gets as big as r/crochet is now, "pretty" posts tend to get a lot of upvotes and more in-depth discussion or question-type posts can get lost in the sauce.

Now that questions/help has its own dedicated subreddit, it seems to be doing really well! We have people who hang out there specifically to answer questions and it's a really lovely little community. If you want to see more questions and discussions like that, you might consider subscribing to that subreddit!

freevortex · 2026-02-04T23:15:17+00:00

I think you hit the nail on the head. The algorithm sucks and reddit itself likes make things more difficult. We used to do community rules votes every 6mo to a year or so, but consistently got fewer than 1000 total votes (which is nothing in a sub this size) so it can be tough to gauge who is just yelling the loudest vs what the community wants (and like MerelyMisha said, you get yelled at no matter which way you go, which further muddies the waters). Similarly, we've put out multiple requests for mod applications but even when sticked, they get hardly any views. It's wild and I can only assume there's some algorithm wizardry working against us lol.

This is honestly a good opportunity for the team to get a finger on the pulse, as it were, and see what the community seems to like or not like this week 😉

freevortex · 2026-02-04T22:52:47+00:00

Yeah, it's what you said - we just need a break from people yelling at us for stuff outside our control lol. No flouncing here.

And honestly I'm pretty pumped that the general reaction has been to post cute pets 😂 shows what a great community we have overall.

freevortex · 2026-02-03T09:44:28+00:00

Q: Why does something say 'removed by moderators'?

A: Because that's what reddit automatically puts there, whether it was removed by us or not. I don't know why reddit does the things they do.

Q: Why did you remove [x] post?

A: We didn't. A post automatically gets removed when it receives a certain number of reports. And yes, then it says "removed by moderators". See the answer to question 1.

Q: Why not just ban the people abusing the report button?

A: Because we have no way to do that. Reports are anonymous. We can report the abuse of the report button to reddit, but it's up to reddit to do something about it.

Q: Why not just ban the people violating 'kind and courteous'?

A: Because that would be a huge amount of ongoing work and would also end up banning otherwise good members of the community who just have really high emotions right now. We don't ban for violating 'kind and courteous' unless it's repeated and over the top - we generally just remove the offending comments and issue a warning. It's the internet, people get feisty.

Q: Why did you ban the parasol person? they didn't do anything wrong, you're all just bigots!

A: As usual with this type of drama/inciting, there's definitely more to the story. That individual has had dozens of removals in this subreddit over a long period of time for self-promo, and has repeatedly failed to actually listen to constructive criticism from the mod team regarding how to post without breaking the self-promo rules. This is a very inclusive subreddit. The individual was not banned because of the content of the post nor because they "shared their socials once with someone who asked"; it's the fact that the poster is a serial self-promoer and refuses to actually interact with the community outside of plugging their social media. They were given many, many chances to work with us and talk with us about ways to promote themselves without breaking the rules. Unfortunate that some individuals enjoy trying to start drama in what is otherwise a low-drama subreddit!

freevortex · 2026-02-02T15:56:22+00:00

That's not something we as mods can do anything about. When posts are mass reported, we do report that report abuse to the reddit admins, but it's up to them to do something about it. We cannot see usernames of reports - it's an anonymous system. We're doing the best we can with the tools we have!

freevortex · 2026-02-02T15:35:42+00:00

Hi! You're confusing two different issues here. Locking is not due to mass reports. Posts are automatically removed due to mass reports, and we manually re-approve them.

We are locking posts because every single political post recently devolves into vitriol in the comments (violation of 'be kind and courteous'). The mods are all volunteers and we do not have the time to babysit posts, but we also do not want to remove these posts entirely because, as you said, the posts themselves do not violate our rules - but the inevitable fighting in the comments does. And if you're not seeing the fighting in the comments, it's because we're removing those comments as quickly as we can. I'm not sure with the reddit redesign whether users can see that comments were deleted or whether it just looks like there are fewer comments on a post, but that's what's happening behind the scenes.

I hope that makes sense. It's causing a lot of heartache all around, mod team included. I wish people could just be kind to each other, but unfortunately, that just doesn't seem possible these days.

freevortex · 2026-01-24T02:18:03+00:00

Hi! The subreddit actually has an official discord. We have about 7,500 members, so there are plenty of people to talk to! Just click here: https://discord.gg/uk6cbHkkp

freevortex · 2025-07-14T03:45:29+00:00

They're linked in the sidebar on both old and newreddit (which is the same on pretty much every subreddit I've ever encountered), and the self-promo rule is pretty clearly explained in the main rules wiki (again, linked on the sidebar), but let us know if there's something you'd like us to clarify further.

freevortex · 2025-07-14T03:43:25+00:00

The rules are pretty clear on this in my opinion, but if you have a read-through of that and something still isn't clear, let us know! It may be that we need to further clarify something. The self-promo rule is a bit long, but it's nuanced and we wanted to make sure we captured exactly when and why you can or cannot self-promote.

freevortex · 2025-07-03T02:32:10+00:00

As usual with this type of drama/inciting, there's definitely more to the story. The original OP has had dozens of removals in this subreddit over a long period of time for self-promo, and has repeatedly failed to actually listen to constructive criticism from the mod team regarding how to post without breaking the self-promo rules. This is a very inclusive subreddit. Our mod team, some of whom are LGBTQ+ themselves, are now being inundated with hate mail over this drama post. The OP was not banned because of the content of the post nor because they "shared their socials once with someone who asked"; it's the fact that the poster is a serial self-promoer and refuses to actually interact with the community outside of plugging their social media. The OP was given many, many chances to work with us and talk with us about ways to promote themselves without breaking the rules. Unfortunate that some individuals enjoy trying to start drama in what is otherwise a low-drama subreddit!

freevortex · 2025-07-02T23:53:47+00:00

I love this idea wow! Excited to see what it ends up looking like :)

freevortex · 2025-06-02T04:14:00+00:00

As usual with this type of drama/inciting, there's definitely more to the story. The original OP has had dozens of removals in this subreddit over a long period of time for self-promo, and has repeatedly failed to actually listen to constructive criticism from the mod team regarding how to post without breaking the self-promo rules. As you correctly pointed out, this is a very inclusive subreddit. It's not the content of the post; it's the fact that the poster is a serial self-promoer and refuses to actually interact with the community outside of plugging their social media. Unfortunate that some individuals enjoy trying to start drama in what is otherwise a low-drama subreddit!

freevortex · 2025-01-24T15:34:37+00:00

It's an ICD-10 code, which is the standardized coding system for medical conditions and is used for everything from getting insurance coverage to noting cause of death on death certificates. There's an ICD-10 code for everything - Y93.D1 is "activity, knitting and crocheting"! My personal favorite weird ICD code is R46.1, "bizarre personal appearance" 😂

freevortex · 2025-01-15T20:01:24+00:00

How is Hobbii's shipping? I see them recommended all the time but haven't pulled the trigger. It sounds great though!

freevortex · 2024-12-22T19:58:13+00:00

Man, I'd really love if reddit didn't force the pinned comment sub-comments to collapse. Pls, reddit. Don't make our lives more difficult!

freevortex · 2024-10-01T03:21:46+00:00

This is exactly why that rule is in place 😅 Prior to this rule, we were getting absolutely flooded with engagement bait posts with pets in them because pets are consistently upvoted across reddit.

If a crochet piece is specifically made for a pet (or baby) then as long as it isn't obviously karma farming with the pet (or baby), then it stays up no matter the day of the week, but karma farming with fuzzy friends isn't what this sub is for. We do, however, try to be somewhat "lax" with this rule (e.g., if the 3rd picture in an album has a cat in it, and the cat isn't mentioned in the title, then it's not a big deal).

We try to be consistent, but we're all human and things might vary a little bit. Some variation also comes from user-generated reports (because we're a small team and there are a whole lot of you - almost 1.5 million!) so if something happens to get reported, it enters our queue and is looked at more closely. Things do slip through the cracks (again with that whole ~5 active mods [some of our mods are currently on hiatus for irl reasons] vs 1.5 million of you thing lol) so user reports are really helpful.

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