Over the last 6 months, r/MensRights has seen a lot of changes. Kloo2yoo decided that he needed to put more time into his personal life and is no longer a mod. In his place, AnnArchist has stepped up to the task of helping moderate the subreddit.

AA and I still run r/MR very much the same as it always has been - a focus on free speech, and allowing dissenting opinions. We stand by this ideal very much. And in our desire to follow this ideal, we decided to try out a new method for dealing with trolls. As you all know, the moderation policy has been to use Flair to label trolls, rather than removing the offending passages. This was a very controversial change, and we wanted to give it a fair chance.

However, with the rapid growth of SRS and AMR, and the near universal understanding that flair can be turned off by the flair-holder, it is clear that this is insufficient to deal with the day-to-day trolls.

In light of all that we have learned, we are re-writing the moderation policies for r/MensRights, as follows.

NSFW Links: NSFW links are defined as those with images, video or large font text that is a manner that might cause a person to get in trouble if viewed in a public place. NSFW links are acceptable on r/MR, however they must be labeled. This includes links in comments.

Personal Information: Personal information is defined as information about a person or a user that is not easily accessible via a Google search. This type of information is not allowed as per the global reddit policy, and we plan to enforce it on r/MR as well. If you are posting information from Facebook, all names should be blurred or obscured in some way. When it comes to MRA sites revealing personal information about people under claims of justice purposes, we will address these on a case-by-case basis since that information does become easily accessible via a Google search. If it appears that people will be abusing that information for vigilante purposes, it may be removed.

SPAM: Spam is obviously defined differently by various people on r/MR. The moderators define spam as falling into one of several categories. 1) Messages which are grossly off topic and thus have nothing to do with r/MR. These posts should be made in the appropriate subreddits. 2) Repeated messages or solicitations. For example, Copy & Paste type messages from a user who has a vested interest in making their view known, and decides to spam the same message in multiple threads. 3) Messages from people who (repeatedly) choose to post ridiculous and instigating messages purely for entertainment value. The reason these messages are included is due to the availability of such subreddits as SRS and CircleJerk that encourage such discussions.

Personal Attacks and Dissenting Opinions: These types of messages are not necessarily messages that need moderator attention. We are all adults, and can either defend our positions or else ignore the conversation. Don't like a personal attack? Ignore it. Extreme cases of personal attacks may be reviewed by mods, and may be removed.

Racism and other hate speech: This is a difficult issue to address. Messages that are purely for insult or hate purposes will be removed (e.g. "black people are lazy"). Alternatively, messages that discuss a person's opinion, or argues for a point, may not be removed. The goal is to encourage people to discuss and share their views, while preventing people from just making stupid posts (see 3. from SPAM). (i.e.: discussion of sexual preference is acceptable, a insulting statement that certain sexual preferences are universally wrong is not)

Child Porn: This is again a challenging topic. Discussion of (in)appropriate punishment for use of child porn, discussions about self produced pornography (i.e. sexting), discussions about whether cartoon images count as child porn, and discussions about mid-teen level "consensual" relationships are allowed. Advocacy for the use of child pornography, even as a way to curb pedophilia, is not condoned. Pornographic images/video of children require the abuse of a child to produce, and thus is not acceptable no matter how much it may curb pedophile urges. From the previous mod policy:

Advocacy of child porn cannot be tolerated. It is morally repugnant and socially indefensible. There is room for discussion about the over-reach of certain laws, and controversies, such as the intersection of cp laws and TSA screening of children, but none of us advocates or would want to be seen as advocating the abuse of children for any reason, including sexual gratification, either directly or through the trade of images involving children. Images of pedobear are not welcome here. Report them and they will be removed. If you should ever see cp images posted here, report it directly to law enforcement.

DO NOT post pictures of children being abused here. Do not post them with the message "see what women get away with?" or "If the (male) victim had been a female, then it would be an issue," or anything else. IT WILL BE REPORTED TO ASACP.ORG AND YOU WILL BE BANNED, EVEN IF IT SEEMS ACCEPTABLE IN ANOTHER REDDIT. [6] See this article for an exemplary reason: a charge of pedophilia would make an excellent excuse to get us shut down.

Messages that offend the above policy will be removed. In some cases, users will be banned. Any user younger than 2 months will be given a no-tolerance response. Users who get involved in a conversation that gets out of hand and violates one of the above rules will be given a warning and/or a 24-48 hour ban.

For people who think that this will have a large effect on current discussions, I would like to note that a lot of the current conversations that people are calling "spam" are not defined as "spam" under this policy. Spam is not defined as simply anything that you find offensive or disagree with.

Remember, if you find a message of yours is missing, that doesn't necessarily mean it was removed. Please message #MensRights (compose a private message with the recipient #MensRights) to find out what is going on.

As always, we welcome feedback on this new policy.

As a final note, it is never a good idea to insult a mod. It isn't a mod's job to take abuse, and a lot more goes on behind-the-scenes than people realize. If you get into a heated argument with one of us, try to take a step back and calm down - we are going to try to do the same, but can only take so much abuse. We do not have to take abuse, and you may find yourself with a 48 hour "time-out" if you choose to incessantly attack a mod. Such "time-outs" will be agreed upon by both mods before implementation to avoid abuse.