Community Update & Moderator Recruiting
Hello runners!
A few updates here. We've just reached over 47,000 subscribers! Yet another huge jump in the last year. You can basically track the Running Boom by looking at our subscriber count.
But now that the spring races have mostly passed and we're nearing the start of marathon training, it's time for (potentially controversial) rule change. We've been hinting at this in the past, but feel the need to implement it before summer really begins.
No "running etiquette" rants.
At least for the near future until we can boost up the mod team. Again, this may be controversial, but we're about to be overwhelmed by them as the running boom and marathon training make the parks filled with thousands of runners. Last fall we had at least one of these posts a week, beating the same dead horse.
At a minimum, all these posts do is rile up the negativity while preaching to the choir. At it's worst, it turns into suggesting violence as a solution, witch hunts, or doxxing and online harassment - all of which have actually happened in the last 6 months. The resolution is never helpful, educational, nor does it inspire change.
From a moderator position it is very difficult to monitor, hence the need to at least pause and reevaluate. From a community position, it makes many active and helpful users here ready to leave, and can make this sub feel really toxic.
I have ideas for how to promote good running etiquette in the city, none of them great (like a Wiki link pinned to the sidebar), but IMO better than a rant 2-3 times a week.
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Part 2 is that we're looking for additional mods, likely 2-3 more.
https://sh.reddit.com/r/RunNYC/application/
There's a short questionnaire to fill out if you're interested. We've hit a level where additional level-headed eyes are needed to keep the community a positive, informative, and welcoming place.
The main ask is that any new mods should have access to reddit during normal business hours -- there is no expectation to be online all the time, but the bulk of our activity happens during the day, which is where we need some help.
But also we'd like someone who is passionate about making sure to keep this community a great and positive resource for NYC runners.
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Feel free to discuss, give feedback, ideas, criticisms, etc in this post. We do our best to make this a positive, welcoming, and useful community, but recognize there's a lot of judgement calls and nuance that don't always work out 100%.
- u/blood_bender, u/RCD123, /u/NY10001NY