Hey there,
we have received a lot of feedback lately on various topics and one of them has been the rigorous moderation of advertising on the sub. We have seen different processes and also a huge growth in the community, as well as influx of app development in the freediving world to help you improve your training at home.
This ranged from ads unrelated to freediving, to opening the sub and looking at an endless stream of new apps at some point, which led to feedback that members were having a hard time finding actual training advice or discussion topics.
For that u/BotGivesBot came up with the Megathread "App Advertising and Research Requests" to create a central place where you can specifically go, if you are looking for a new trainings app or participate in a research request related to freediving. This has helped tremendously in steering the flood.
They are also working hard to setup the new Signal channels, that will also provide an avenue to post ads for courses & retreats.
We also were trying to find a process how to manage Advertising for Freediving Professionals, because courses, retreats or gear are directly tied into participation in our sport and it has been admittedly really difficult to walk the line on not having to approve each ad single-handedly and at the same time making sure they maintain a minimum standard of info and not just spam the sub for coverage.
Rule Changes
The community rules can be found here
Rule 5 - Advertising for Freediving Professionals:
Instructors / Diveshops / Divetrip-Organizers can create standalone posts with the postflair "Ad" to advertise courses, trainings or trips, events and must include: dates, location, schedule, pricing, business-link/socials.
Product can be advertised as standalone post the postflair "Ad" and must include: description, pricing, product-link.
You are encouraged to use pictures for your ads.
Ads will be removed at discretion of being found spammy, info missing or if the ad is freediving-unrelated.
Rule 6 - App advertising goes in the Megathread
If you'd like to advertise your application, you can post them into the Megathread "App Advertising and Research Requests" Because of a strong influx of app development we do not allow single-post app ads currently. The Megathread description shows the required info that your post must include, failure to include the necessary info will result in removal from the Megathread.
When in doubt, message the mods.
Rule 7 - Research requests need mod approval
If you're looking for research participants, you need to get permission from the mods prior to posting.
Approved research requests go into the Megathread "App Advertising and Research Requests".
All requests can be forwarded to the mods using modmail.
Because it hasn't seen a lot of action since its inception - it will still be there, it will just be unpinned and the updated rules on Advertising for Freediving Professionals take precedent.
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We try to create and remake the processes based on your community feedback, as well as the resulting workload that we receive as reports or messages. So if something's not working for you, we rely on your help that you let us know about that.
And we try to make it better
Thanks a bunch - 3 mods and a modbot in a trenchcoat
