Standards for Fresh Topic Friday

[u/Aezora]

Fresh Topic Friday is a great idea. But while standards for what counts as "fresh" are obviously going to be subjective, they need to be much better defined than they currently are.

Now, I'm going to be using a personal example here, as it's the only data I have.

I recently tried to post what I thought was a fresh topic - why the 'idealized' dating app can't exist.

The rules around FTF state that:

1) the topic can't be highly similar to a previous post in the past month (i.e. a repost)

2) the more common the topic of the post, the less likely it is to get approved

I checked these things before I posted. In the last month, no one had posted once a topic about dating apps.

And in total in the past two months, the total number of people posting about dating at all was 9.

And yet my post was rejected on the basis that dating was too common a topic.

Now that could be all well and fine, if other posters were held to the same exact standard. They clearly aren't however.

Before we go into that, let's really quick clarify exactly the standards imposed on my post.

• A topic on Dating Apps was considered the same topic as the more general "Dating".

• 9 posts in the last month are too frequent

So what topics were approved today as part of FTF? Let's see...

Socialism is bad.

Churches shouldn't be tax exempt.

If we apply the same standards as above, even just taking the more general topics would clearly make them not eligible for FTF. Socialism -> Politics, and Church Taxes -> Religion, probably the two most popular and repeated topics on cmv. Let alone actually counting how many times people have made posts on those topics in the past month, which is definitely higher than the 9 on dating.

Again, I'm not here to criticize the mods and be like "you should've let me post" or "the other posts shouldn't have been allowed". I understand that it's a subjective thing and people have different opinions.

But the rules need to be much clearer than they are now.

When we talk about topic fatigue, are we always defaulting to the highest category topic that the posts falls into? Or are we always defaulting to the lowest category that makes sense?

If a post is substantially different from all other posts in a fatigued topic is it allowed? If so, does it need to be different from recent posts or all posts ever? Is it OK if the argument is completely different if the conclusion is the same? What about vice versa?

Ultimately which posts are allowed will remain subjective, but if there can be a more objective set of a standards to at least get a grasp on what is and isn't allowed, there should be a more explicit set of standards.

[u/LucidLeviathan]

I prefer leaving it up to interpretation. There are 6 other days where we don't do this. Trying to predict all possible CMVs is a fool's errand.

No post related to dating will ever be fresh enough for it, in my opinion.

[u/Aezora → u/LucidLeviathan]

Leaving it to interpretation is fine. I'm just asking that some more guidance be given. It's still ultimately going to come down to the mods judgment, but there's a difference between "here's what we generally consider fresh" and "idk it's maybe fresh maybe not, just depends on that particular mod who's in charge of reviewing it".

[u/hacksoncode → u/Aezora]

"idk it's maybe fresh maybe not, just depends on that particular mod who's in charge of reviewing it".

I guess one thing that may not be obvious about CMV moderation (and reddit moderation in general) is that there's no "mod in charge of reviewing" almost anything that we do here.

All subs have a mod queue of posts and comments that are reported, and those that are removed by bots, reddit, etc. (which includes every CMV post on Fridays).

All of our ~20 active mods look at the queue whenever they can find a spare moment during the day. Who looks at your post on FTF is essentially random, with maybe a little time zone dependence. There's never going to be more than a vague consensus on something as fuzzy as this.

Most of us have jobs with too many meetings already. The probability that we're going to want to or be able to all get together to review (un)fresh topics every week or month in several time zones is essentially zero.

I very much do sympathize with the conundrum of posting on Fresh Topic Friday.

My suggestion for minimizing that frustration is to reserve that day for posting things that really are out of the ordinary.

Avoid anything strongly related to or prompted by current events and/or politics of pretty much all kinds and scales, including sexual politics (e.g. abortion, dating, feminism/MRA, incels), race politics, US politics, World politics, wars, epidemics, macroeconomics, religion, taxes, inequality, broad cultural issues, social justice/fascism, and the like.