MOD POST: State of the Subreddit Summer 2026 - Rules, Stats, & Balds! Oh My!
Hey, everyone – It’s about just a little over a year since I joined to help wrestlegirl mod the sub, and what a year it’s been!
We thought it’d be an appropriate time to do another “State of the Subreddit” update post. We’re going to go over some rule updates and clarifications we’re making (spoiler alert, most of them aren’t really big changes, just providing clarity and nuance to existing rules), and also will share some year-over-year stats from a year ago to see what our growth has looked like!
The Heel Stuff – Rule Clarifications & Updates
As I mentioned above, the baker’s dozen set of rules we have isn’t really changing all that much, with a couple of exceptions. With growth has come some growing pains, and while I’d say the vast majority of our regulars are absolutely fabulous (Truly, you all are some of my favorite people on the web!), we’ve seen an uptick in certain rules getting a little more bent and broken, and we just wanted to re-iterate our stance on keeping this place “the most positive space on the IWC as it can be” while not being too draconian about it:
Some reminders and clarifications about some of the rules I wanted to highlight are below. Again, most of these aren’t new to regulars, but wanted to make sure we had some of these thoughts on paper as we move into All In Season:
Rule 1 – Spoiler Policy
We enforce the 24-hour window following Dynamite, Collision, and PPV’s for spoilers as a courtesy to everyone who might not get to see the show as it airs, and may have to catch it later on their own time.
Being spoiled sucks! We try to prevent it (and believe me, WG and I have been spoiled in mod-queue more than once) but sometimes, it seems like there is a little confusion about this rule, both in support of it, and against it.
With that, I’d like to offer two clarifications:
Number 1:
Please do not report things for spoilers outside the 24 hour window. If Forbidden Door was Sunday Night, this means it ends on Monday Night/Early Tuesday Morning. If it’s Thursday and you still haven’t seen the show, there is no need to report a thread for spoilers when discussing Forbidden Door match results. We can’t extend the window forever. If you know you’ll be unable to catch a big show for a while, please exercise a little judgment with regard to whether you scroll this sub, or Reddit, or the internet in general.
Number 2:
On the flip side, if a show had only one title bout, and you post a thread immediately afterwards with “New Champion”, you’ve effectively spoiled the result. That’s not okay, and that’s what we’re trying to prevent, too.
If someone is attacked post-match? Don’t say “Orange Cassidy attacked post match”. Because the people/group that did the attacking almost certainly plays into the storyline being built.
In the above two cases, something more general – “Aftermath of Cassidy/Knight Match” or something is more appropriate, because people can be aware that *something* happened, but not what specifically. If they choose to look after that warning, they have done so at their own risk.
We’d really appreciate the above mindfulness from everyone on the Spoiler Policy, since it seems there may be some confusion about how it operates in practice. THANKS GUYS
Rule 2 – Be Respectful
While this rule should be “self-explanatory”, we’ve definitely have seen an uptick of people using a lot of personal attacks – some of them mild, some of them pretty rude – towards their fellow posters.
Look, we get it, in the heat of the moment, when we’re all passionate about our pro wrestling, things can get hairy. We don’t expect that to go away.
However, what we’d really like to remind everyone of is that you can be passionate about All Elite Wrestling, Ring of Honor, CMLL, NJPW, etc, without resorting to insulting your fellow fans, or shitting on the wrestlers and other talent needlessly here.
If you think a match concept, match result, faction, title change, venue choice, whatever is terrible, that’s fine! You can call the object of your dissatisfaction whatever you want! That’s the whole point of having opinions and feelings.
But we really need everyone to be a little more mindful about not directing that venom towards other posters. If someone’s favorite wrestler is Orange Cassidy, and you think he’s a big ol doofus who doesn’t do it for you…that’s cool! But calling OC_Guy_Whatever a big fat idiot for liking the moron in jeans isn’t cool. See what I mean? Big difference in how those two things are expressed.
Likewise, OC Guy should be totally ‘whatever, man’ about it, and keep enjoying Cassidy as much as he wants regardless of the other poster.
So, the TLDR here is:
Please refrain from calling each other names and stuff, and keep it kayfabe. We’ll all have a better experience this way, I promise
Rule 5 – No Circlejerks
Put very simply – this space is designed to be an explicitly positive space. Pro AEW, ROH, NJPW, CMLL, and so on and so forth.
We understand there are other promotions out there that other people don’t like. We get it. We also know there are other subreddits out there that may operate differently from ours.
We just want to reiterate: Please don’t post comments that trash the other folks, whether it’s other subreddits (you know the ones we’re talking about) or other promotions. That’s just not the environment we want here.
It’s one thing when big news breaks – a big “release day” where we speculate on stuff, or whatever. Obviously there will be times when discussing “other promotions” will be relevant. But simply going “so and so bad” isn’t really adding anything to anyone’s day here.
If you do wanna CJ? Please go check out one of the multiple other subs that exist for that.
Rule 11 – Social Media Policies
This one is a bit of an update in the sense that we’re taking the old “no Twitter rule” and updating it based on my recent posts about social media posts from wrestlers, talent, etc, that should or shouldn’t be posted here.
The “No Twitter Links” rule is staying. Fuck Elon. But in addition to that, we want to include the following updates:
a) No reposting Twitter/BlueSky/IG/etc posts from wrestlers simply responding to trolls. It has no value here to see people answer “reply guys”
b) Please consider whether a wrestlers’ social media activity really belongs in this sub. Just because someone “makes a video” doesn’t necessarily mean it needs to be here. If the content isn’t related to their work here, or character here, it may not be appropriate to post.
Rule 12 – No User-Generated AI Content / No Undisclosed “Official” AI Content.
This one is a little bit of an update, and want to make a differentiation between “user generated” and “official” content:
c) If it’s something you, or another “layperson” posted using AI – whether it’s text, graphics, videos, etc – Do not post it here. We don’t support the “slopification” of content, and would prefer only quality “OC” from artists, creators, and so forth.
d) However, if something is AI-Generated that is created by an official source; CMLL using AI for their match graphics, MJF performing heel work with an AI edit of him beating Kenny or Darby or whatever – if it is relevant to the sub, and is properly disclosed “this was generated with AI by CMLL/MJF/etc” – then that can be allowed.
We don’t have to agree with those sources using AI, but if they generate a match card with Midjourney or whatever, well, that’s not our call.
We’re basically leaving all of the other rules intact, but there will be a slight reordering, and some slight re-wording to make things more concise, but the spirit of those rules won’t be changing. We’ll also open up feedback here. If there’s anything you think could be improved upon here, or feel like a change we’re making might be a bit too much of a broad brush approach, we’re happy to consider that feedback.
This is your community, after all, we’re just here to keep it tidy!
The Face Stuff – Insights, stats, growth, etc
So, to end on a positive note, I wanted to share some stats over the last year! The sub has continued to grow, and Wrestlegirl and I are hella pleased:
We’re approaching 160,000 members. When I first started here? We were around 140,000.
Our content is up, bigly, over the last 12 months, which means more people are sharing, and more people are talking about things. A *million* published comments? Truly astonishing for “only” having 157k members!
You can see the ebb and flow of visitation over the last not quite a year, including a bit of a dip during the holidays and the two months when AEW doesn’t run any PPV’s, and then picking back up as we get into the swing of the next year. It is not surprising that this year’s Double Or Nothing saw such a nice jump, as the card was heavily promoted, it was NYC’s first show, and the quality of the card was just so, so good.
Mod Actions Taken:
You all are keeping us BUSY. But we do it because we love it! The next bot performing actions after me has “only” performed 5.7k actions, so, it is safe to say between the AutoMod, WG, and myself are doing the heavy lifting here, but we're perfectly okay with that.
Past Live Thread Performance
This is a bit of an unofficial metric that we like to look at to see how we’re doing in terms of crowd participation in the live threads, since that is one of our core content activities here.
Looking at the comment count for the top 10 threads “of all time”, some of the most commented threads are within the 12-month period I’m referencing, so that just speaks *volumes* to how much the participation has really ramped up here!
For those curious, the list is as follows:
· #1 – All In Texas 2025 >10,400 comments
· #2 – Double or Nothing 2026 – 7,211 comments
· #3 – Revolution 2026 – 7,159 comments
· #4 – Double or Nothing 2024 – 7,090 comments
· #5 – All in 2024 – 6,290 comments
· #6 – Forbidden Door 2025 – 5,745 comments
· #7 – Double Or Nothing 2025 – 5,691 comments
· #8 – All Out 2025 – 5,552 comments
· #9 – Dynasty 2026 – 5,529 comments
· #10 - Revolution 2024 (Sting’s Farewell) – 5,481 comments
Anyway, I realize this is a very long post, so if you've actually stuck around to read it all, thank you!
Thanks Guys/Gals/Sickos
We really appreciate just how fulfilling it is to mod this community. It's a lot of work, but at the end of the day, we get to enjoy some of the best professional wrestling under the sun with like-minded fans.
The live threads are what we look forward to, week in and out, and the PPV cards outdoing themselves basically month-over-month, and year-over-year is just exhilarating.
The old saying goes "Without you, there'd be no us" so, again, we both thank you very much for not only your active participation, but your joining us in making this place one of the best little corners of the IWC.
THANKS GUYS.
