Hi Everyone,

There isn’t an off-topic topic this week, because we wanted to have a word with you about reporting and reporting of circlejerking in particular.

We also want to remind you that reports are anonymous, we don’t know and can’t find out (even in theory) who is reporting others, or downvoting others for that matter.

Also, we’ve been getting a lot of reports of circlejerking lately. I don’t know if thats one person going mental with it or several of you. Most of these reports are in situations that’s can’t be circlejerking how we define it. I’d say at the moment I am modding dozens of circlejerking reports every day, 95% of which stay up for one of three reasons.

First, circlejerking is allowed under automod. So if people are jerking away under there we won’t remove it.

Second, by definition a circlejerk has to be a poster agreeing with the previous comment or OP. It’s no good reporting people arguing against you or others as circlejerking, no matter how much of an asshole they’re being. They may be breaking another rule but they can’t be circlejerking if they’re disagreeing with the person they’re responding to. They’re debating. Thats what we’re here to do.

Finally, if it’s adding something to debate... presenting more information, or another view, or in other ways making a new point it can’t be circlejerking either. They’re adding to the debate even if they are in agreement with another poster.

I’d say roughly 20% of circlejerk reports are for comments under automod, 60% are people disagreeing (often like an asshole, but not agreeing/circlejerking), and 15% are agreeing and so could be circle jerking but are extending/deepening the debate.

So please keep reporting comments for other rule breaks, but if you’re thinking of reporting others comments for circlejerking please consider first...

1) Is it under automod ? If so, we won’t take it down for circlejerking.

2) Is it in disagreement with the other poster ? If so, we won’t take it down for circlejerking.

3) Is it making a new point or expanding on a valid point in the context of the debate ? If so, we won’t take it down for circlejerking

In general we welcome your reports, but they’re not a “super-downvote button”.

We’re only going to remove reported posts for rule violations (which we do for about 45% of reports) so please only report if someone is breaking the rules and not just because you find them super-annoying. That doesn’t get their stuff removed. It just sucks away the reddit time of our mod team to no effect on the annoying person. We don’t mod annoyingness, no matter how often some of you want us to do it just this once.

If any of you have no idea what circle jerking is I’d recommend this ELI5 post.

I look forward to being able to browse reddit in the evening again without having to approve 40 posts reported for circlejerking even though not 1 of them could be circlejerking even in principle.

That is all.