There has been a large uptick in complaints about the quality of /r/Nintendo lately, and I’m inclined to actually agree that the subreddit is worse, but maybe not for all of the same reasons that you feel so.
This is my personal opinion on what I think is going on.
**Please refrain from commenting on this post until you have read the whole thing. All comments that are low effort quips or ask questions that are answered in this post will be removed.**
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# It’s our fault
## The burnout is real
We’ve burnt out on Reddit. Many users have blamed the API protest for this, but the truth is that collectively as a team, we’ve lost the spark. For me personally, this is not the first time I’ve lost the spark and then later regained it. Interest and dedication to things ebbs and flows, especially when you’re doing it for free.
## I’ve been slacking
By far, I’ve been the most active mod on the team lately. Recently, I’ve been off Reddit a lot more. Partially due to life changes and partially due to the fact that I can’t check Reddit as much as I used to due to the mobile changes. Also, I live in Japan and most of our users live in the US and Europe. When it’s night for me, it’s day for you. That’s why you see posts get left up “all day.” That said, I’m trying to put in a little more effort than before. It’s difficult, but I’m picking up a lot of slack.
## So why don’t you just get new mods?
We’ve tried. No one even slightly qualified wants to do it. Many users want to complain about how the mods run the subreddit, but no one wants to do it themselves.
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# It’s Reddit’s fault
## Reddit is getting worse
Even before the aformentioned API changes, Reddit has been going downhill. The mobile app is garbage. The redesigned mobile browser site is even worse than it used to be, and it keeps prompting you to try to use the app which is even worse than the mobile site. Maybe you “use the app just fine,” but I and many others absolutely can’t tolerate it.
## Reddit’s users are getting worse
Reddit’s mobile push is inviting more and more users who don’t “get” Reddit. Reddit used to be a site focused primarially on the comments section. Now it’s about who can post the most memes and get the most upvotes for them. The lowest effort image post gets a magnitude more upvotes than the most well-thought out discussion post, and these days neither of the posts get very many comments.
## The whole damn internet is getting worse
Cory Doctorow coined the term [Enshittification](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification) in 2022 to describe how the internet is becoming. Through GPT text generation, image generation, and a push to monetize every aspect of the internet, every single site on the internet is experiencing a rapid decline in quality. I have seen several posts on Reddit that were obviously just written by ChatGPT, with comments replying to it which were also written by ChatGPT.
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# It’s Nintendo’s fault
## Nintendo is getting safe
Nintendo discussion is just kind of boring right now. The Switch sells incredibly well, almost everyone has basically the same exact opinions on what they’d like to see in the future for Nintendo and the future is too uncertain to speculate.
In fact, the majority of the speculation and wishlists for Nintendo boil down to “Nintendo should keep doing what they’re doing but do more of it.” which is an incredibly safe take for an incredibly safe company.
## We’ve seen this before
I don’t know how long you’ve been around, but back in the 3DS and Wii U days, Nintendo discussion got stagnant just like this around the end of the consoles’ life cycle. Don’t worry, it’s coming back.
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# It’s your fault
## Users trying to use Reddit as Google
Something that the majority of users here do not know or understand, the vast majority of posts that get submitted to this subreddit are people who are looking for help with their Nintendo consoles. We have an extensive automoderator filter that’s designed to weed most of these out, but it’s not perfect and some slip through. Part of why the submission count looks so low here is because the majority of attempted activity is rule-breaking.
## Reports vs the rules
Speaking of the rules, the report button is massively misused by users on this subreddit, much more than other subreddits I’ve seen. The majority of reports submitted are on posts that do not break the rules, and the majority of rule-breaking posts submitted do not get reported.
One thing I want to stress on this topic: **It is not against the rules of /r/Nintendo to be stupid.** Many reports on /r/Nintendo are targeted at posts made by kids who have bad opinions. It is not against the rules to have a bad opinion.
Another thing that I want to stress is that **YouTube videos are not against the rules.** YouTube videos are not rule breaking so long as they are posted with the original title of the video and they are a video that at least makes a modicum of an attempt to be informative. Stream highlights, reaction videos and comedy videos are basically the only types of videos that are *not* allowed on /r/Nintendo. All video essays and reviews are allowed. **Stop reporting videos.**
## Be the change you want to see in the world
There are a handful of users who I won’t name but you know who they are. They post a snarky comment on almost every post that they think is bad or low effort. However, interestingly, I’ve never seen these users *contribute* a post that’s high effort. Why not set a good example instead of complaining about everyone else’s posts?
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So there you have it, these are the factors affecting the quality of /r/Nintendo from my perspective. I’m speaking for myself here, but I’ve run these points past the team at large and they agree with me.
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**tl;dr**: No, you don’t get a tl;dr. Go back and read it. And don’t post a comment unless you did.
by razorbeamz
19 Comments
> There are a handful of users who I won’t name but you know who they are. They post a snarky comment on almost every post that they think is bad or low effort. However, interestingly, I’ve never seen these users contribute a post that’s high effort. Why not set a good example instead of complaining about everyone else’s posts?
I think this is a huge factor as to why this subreddit has become a less pleasant place to be. It’s hard for the community to feel welcoming to newcomers – and in general – when so many of the comments any given post receives are snarky or mean.
Most discussion posts don’t go anywhere, and this sub just feels like a low-engagement newsfeed as a result. Which is disappointing – if that’s the case, what makes people *want* to engage in this community in particular as opposed to, say, the Nintendo Switch subreddit? r/Games?
> Now it’s about who can post the most memes and get the most upvotes for them. The lowest effort image post gets a magnitude more upvotes than the most well-thought out discussion post, and these days neither of the posts get very many comments.
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I’ve been here on various accounts for 13 years, people have been saying this for like 10 years. I just think with a a sub with appeal this broad, there’s gonna be a lot of kids and low effort posts. I immigrated to lemmy this summer, and came back because lemmy isn’t big enough to be niche very well yet, and I’m not in many big reddits.
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I think reddit can and will be saved, as it always has by its users.
[deleted]
I’m gonna be speaking bluntly here, as someone who has largely left this sub due to the actions of both the users *and* the mod team. I’m not going to try and pick a fight, just call it as I see it with this sub, because it’s the only one I have ever had a problem in. I do not see the problems in this sub as recent. This place was on a downward slide ages ago. I don’t mean for any of this to be antagonistic, there is a part of my little black heart that actually misses the first few years when I used to come here, when it was fun and the mod team was on fire and on point to a fantastic degree.
>Reports vs the rules
I feel this section was a bit dishonest. That might not be the right word, or intentional on your part, but there are and have been several posts that are blatant, *against the word of the rule* posts that are still up. If people report a post that is literally against the written word of the rule and you leave it, how are people supposed to judge rule breaking posts in the future? Therefore they just either report nothing, or report whatever. And I’m not going to go and list them off. Anyone can go read the actual sub rules in the wiki, not just the sidebar, and then see the offending posts. I already played that game with the mod team in the past, I’m not gonna do it again. I moved passed it.
>It is not against the rules of /r/Nintendo to be stupid.
But maybe it should be, as you know I have said ages ago. There’s a reason every large sub has a rule against low effort/quality posts. Granted, you could install an auto remove from anyone with less than 1000 karma and/or has posted in /r/teenagers or any meme reddit recently and 95 % of these problems would go away, but that’s not realistic, obviously (relax, its a joke). Negative, repetitive, poor quality posts only serve to hurt the sub. People get sick of it, and after a while they turn into little assholes in the comments because the problem of the posts isn’t being dealt with. I admit when I was using this sub much more frequently, sometimes the stupidity would bring out the worst side of me, but that happens to all of us.
>So why don’t you just get new mods?
IIRC, you guys tried for about a week and then took the post down, never to try again, and that was what, 2 years ago? Granted I don’t come around much anymore but I don’t recall you guys trying anything else after that. You yourself even asked me to apply to be a mod with you guys once. I already had too many negative interactions with the mod team at that time from a user standpoint to want to be a part of it.
>Be the change you want to see in the world
Well, I did. That’s why I left and that’s why it feels a large percentage of your base of active people left, too. I admit it’s purely speculative, but there’s *a lot* of names that I used to see in here now active in other subs and a lot of the common posters for a while are relatively new.
>The burnout is real
I get that, you are only human and that can’t be helped. But shit or get off the pot, as the saying goes. If you can no longer be a moderator, give up the position and move on. This applies to any of them, not just you. Some of this damage to the sub *has* been by the mod team. You guys injected your personal politics when it was not appropriate to do so. Your team *publicly* has mocked users, including myself in the past. You guys often do not return legitimate mod mail questions and concerns.
If I had it my way, you need to clean house, get rid of anyone not willing or able to return to moderation duties within the week, parse out and re-write the rules to make them more specific to what rules mean and what you want this sub to actually be, and abide by them. The sub will only be as good as the quality of submissions you allow, and the team running it. When you leave posts up for 15 hours and sometimes days, you are telling people that those posts are perfectly fine to make.
It’s a common theme for people to find a reason to complain about stuff without offering help or suggestions, having said that.. I wouldn’t have wasted time writing this. Sounds like some personal stuff is bleeding into your reddit presence. Every subreddit ive been on has people complaining. Absolutely no reason to care. None.
To me, honestly it just boils back to how this is the “serious” subreddit and r/casualnintendo is the casual subreddit. The issues here just don’t exist in places like r/truezelda or r/games because the casual reddit is r/zelda and r/gaming, large subreddits that soak up the casual users.
Like for example, if I’m a random Zelda fan and I want to see how many people think Princess Ruto is hot vs. not, I would probably go straight to r/zelda. People who are more “power users” and are looking for more in-depth discussion may seek out alternatives, like r/truezelda.
But here, it is the opposite. This is the main tentpole Nintendo subreddit where most casuals are going to funnel to, but it is actually a place for “serious discussion” and it is the casuals who have to seek out alternatives, which they aren’t going to do.
With that said, modding is a thankless job. Thanks for doing it for free, OP!
Most of the subreddits I mentioned have auto-moderator bots that do much of the heavy lifting. For example, even r/zelda auto-deletes anything that is not tagged with the game it is about. Can something in that vein be incorporated here?
I think you mods need to relax. It’s the same in every sub I go to “ ok guys let’s get it together you’re not having conversations properly” and “I’ve deemed your conversations to be low quality so I’m sticking them in a mega thread” this kind of stuff makes it so places are not fun to be or most insulting “this is the official low quality post thread, I permit you to have all of your bad conversations here”
This isn’t a place we spend our entire day, it’s a place to visit for two minutes while I poop or I’m on my commute or in bed. The vast majority of people are not bothered by any of the stuff you’ve listed.
I’m sorry we weren’t all here for the Nintendo subreddit in the good old days of 2004 but new people come and go, deal with it.
> Another thing that I want to stress is that YouTube videos are not against the rules. YouTube videos are not rule breaking so long as they are posted with the original title of the video and they are a video that at least makes a modicum of an attempt to be informative.
Rule #2 says this:
*”All content must be either Nintendo news from the original source or discussion about Nintendo games, systems and products.”*
On the report button it says this:
*”Fan content/entertainment OR Non-original-source news OR Content unrelated to Nintendo”*
It’s a little vague IMO. Especially with the Fan Content/Entertainment bit that could basically be anything not called a discussion or news.
This rule needs a rewrite or split all those factors into separate rules that make them more clear.
> Stream highlights, reaction videos and comedy videos are basically the only types of videos that are not allowed on /r/Nintendo. All video essays and reviews are allowed. Stop reporting videos.
But that doesn’t change the fact most videos posted here fall into this category.
“We couldnt find anyone nearly qualified enouh” yeah by *your* standards. There are hundreds of people who would be down for it. Lets be real yall dont want to give up your power EVEN if you baey use it
Was expecting this to be more defensive. But yeah, agree. Especially with that point about the site already being in a downward state BEFORE all the shit last year.
Seems like the tldr is it’s not going to get better until the userbase suddenly gets better. When there’s no actual new Nintendo news, this sub seems to devolve into mad speculation, complaining, and questions to type into Google.
This entire comment section really pushes that “the internet is getting worse” narrative. Man, I just hate 99% of reddit now since its just kids making the worst posts and they just don’t know better.
I would lose my mind as a mod since I would just be deleting posts that should be reddit searches all day. So many people use this website since they are friendless. I do something cool and I share with friends, these people share with reddit since they got nobody.
That is sad but I don’t want to see your BS facebook crap when I just want good discussions and game news.
I feel for the mod team and I would have quit after the API bullshit. I don’t even use the trash reddit app at all (you can use firefox mobile and get a new extension to force reddit old on all links, it rules)
> We’ve burnt out on Reddit. Many users have blamed the API protest for this, but the truth is that collectively as a team, we’ve lost the spark.
This is interesting to me, because I’m a mod on a few subreddits, and it’s a topic that comes up quite a bit lately. On top of that, when I talk to mods of other subreddits they express similar concerns. This seems to be extremely widespread at minimum if not how the majority of mods feel.
Also in terms of blaming reddit and the internet as a whole I agree. Both are getting worse, and there isn’t any social media site that I actually *like* anymore. I’m just here out of boredom and hope to see some informative stuff, but the algorithms that are used here and everywhere else tend to be terrible. There’s not a social media site that I use that is even functional on a basic level anymore without using some browser plugins (not just to block ads but to do things like hide suggested posts, put things in a chronological order, clean up useless whitespace, etc.)
That being said, I think it’s generally global culture in general. We’re in a phase where everything kind of sucks lately and I think it has a lot to do with the pandemic and other social issues. However, humans are resilient and hopefully we’ll pull ourselves out of this slump at some point in the near future.
I uninstalled the app just so the website would stop asking me to open it
> It is not against the rules of /r/Nintendo to be stupid.
Why not? No, seriously. Why not?
Many of the best subreddits have rules against being stupid. They have rules against low effort content. They have rules against low quality content.
I think reddit itself is more the problem, and it’s not really its fault. This site used to be the wittiest place on the internet. Threads were hilarious to scroll down and even the arguments were in good fun. But since so many sites changed rules and owners over the years, a lot of new personalities joined reddit. All the tumblr, imgur, twitter, etc. people came here. Not saying they weren’t allowed here, but they came to reddit, not understanding reddit and bringing the culture of their old sites. Reddit is now heavily triggered on almost every corner. The second there’s a whiff of nontolererance of some new ideology, people are up in arms calling everyone nazis on both sides. I’m not in this sub as much anymore, so I’m not sure if this is as relevant here but very much across so many subs.
The Eternal September has only multiplied as well. There’s literal children on this platform now, and that makes it a weird situation with the culture of reddit. This sub would be a main attraction to the younger audience, which is why you probably see a bunch of “stupid” posts. Because it’s a kid who is just trying to engage with the 30 and 40 year old bitter dudes missing the glory days lol. I think the internet is dying like said about AI generation and the ever proliferation of ads. Most YouTubers are retiring and thinking they can just pass down their channels. That’s not going to work, and in the hyper sensitive world, there’s not going to be much to talk about without somehow offending someone.
Speaking as a former moderator here (and semi-retired everywhere else), I can understand the issue with burnout.
It is tiring to manage a subreddit of this scale after a long enough time without enough consistent manpower. I consider myself lucky for how things went on /r/WiiU back in the day because it was a much smaller subreddit to manage – it was only in the higher 10k-low 100k range during its peak, only reaching a million in 2017/2018 after the Switch was properly established. Compare that to something like /r/NintendoSwitch which grew exponentially from the start and demonstrated the need for a very well-rounded, consistent modteam.
I don’t have much to offer in the way of a solution because honestly, things are getting shittier with Reddit in so many ways, it’s far from the site we knew it as years ago. Coupling that with too many mod horror stories (dealt with one myself recently), and public opinion shifting further to denigrating moderators outright as unnecessary power-tripping shills/janitors, it’s just a lot of stress to deal with that level of responsibility coupled with the general thanklessness.
In regards to seeking out mods, maybe it would be better to do it again and for a longer period? I don’t know what the standards are, but based on what you said, it seemed like the applicants couldn’t clear certain benchmarks you were looking for. I don’t think you’d want to run this place forever, but if no one’s good enough to run it, then what’s the future like?
All I can really say is good luck, and it sucks where things are now. Enshittification is definitely something.
Good on you for writing this up! Gonna share some thoughts I have, just kinda in the order from the post. Mostly contextual agreement, as I’ll need some more time to write up more productive thoughts.
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>> It’s our fault
> The burnout is real / I’ve been slacking / new mods?
A lot of people who don’t moderate will not realize that becoming a moderator is often a sentence to stop enjoying the content space you moderate. You become responsible for reviewing and removing the bad content ranging from mundane to terrible, and often you become the target of attrition because of it. It’s really demotivating in some cases, and that can be hard to explain or relate to without experiencing it yourself. I’ve seen some co-mods take long breaks, and I’ve seen others choose to quit entirely, and it’s always in their own best interest to stop moderating. It’s a time-consuming hobby that when done right, has no tangible personal reward. It’s not always this way, but you really have to take intentional (extra) actions to go down a different (more sustainable) path. Don’t be hard on yourself for “slacking” – **you are worth your own time too.**
Something else most people don’t realize about internet communities is the [Pareto Principle](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle) / [1%-rule](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%25_rule) doesn’t just generally apply to participants on the front page, but also to participation within mod teams. I’d wager that often the case with many mod teams is that out of 10 mods on the list, only half will be active, and 1-3 of those will be doing half or more of all the manual actions. This isn’t to say the rest of the mods are lazy, but rather that the 1-3 are just in the right schedule and mind to catch the most things. Usually the rest of the mods are involved either to fill in the gaps in coverage, to provide second opinions / senior advice, or to support specific / less-regular tasks.
The API protests were a phase for most redditors, but a lot of mod teams had permanent changes. Many mods across the boards quit, and others that stuck around decided to just do less overall. It’s been a terrible time to recruit moderators because most of the great candidates have either left entirely or are busier than they were before with their current mod positions. Anyone who has stepped up to be a new moderator anywhere the past 6 months likely hasn’t had the same degree of support or mentoring from older moderators as first-time mods might have had in years past. Many people who stepped up to be mods for subreddits that were abandoned by their old teams had to immediately embrace the “welcoming committee” of old subscribers that supported their communities closing.
Speaking of which, I remember the protest discussions here, and I think the team here put in more effort to engage their subreddit than anywhere else I subscribe. And in return, the mods were harassed for not joining the protest quick enough, and then the mods were harassed for not opening the subreddit back fully quick enough. The mods put their heart into messages to the admins, and the admins gave them the same boilerplate response that most other teams got. All that effort for naught, and worse.
I recall that you had mod applications in 2021 or 2022, but I’m not sure if you had any rounds since then, maybe you did more direct solicitations. I do see that any mods added in the past 5 years have not stuck around.
>> It’s Reddit’s fault
> Reddit is getting worse – mobile app
I tried making an effort to report more bugs in the mobile app this past few months, particularly with mod tools. I’m not sure it was worth it. But as I said before, I use the app because I want to know exactly how bad most members have it.
> Reddit’s users are getting worse
Chasing growth means sacrificing quality, generally speaking. Spez himself acknowledged it as [Regression to the Meme](https://www.reddit.com/r/announcements/comments/f8y9nx/spring_forward_into_reddits_2019_transparency/fiojsv6/).
The fact that the mobile app is designed with a focus on creating content as fast as possible, means that most people don’t see what community they are in when they are commenting on a post, and that they don’t see rules until after they break them. It’s great for engagement from a business perspective, but it’s terrible for maintaining a community culture that has roots in forum etiquette. And reddit admins don’t bear the brunt of the effort to balance the growing userbase – they leave that to volunteer moderators. How do they factor the value of your time as a mod into their business decisions?
> The whole damn internet is getting worse – bots and monetization
A tangent, but worth sharing here – spambots generally try to make money doing what they do. Mods don’t. So every ChatGPT post written by account farmers is motivated by an incentive that does not apply to good-faith moderators.
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I have more thoughts to share but need to dip out for a bit. I did reply to another comment [with some more details here too](https://www.reddit.com/r/nintendo/comments/193vwx8/rnintendo_state_of_the_subreddit_2024_please_read/khe1dl3/)
And that’s why I frequent forums with smaller numbers of people. Once you age, it just feels better to chill out with smaller groups of people than bathe in the hell of mobs