[mod] Reminder of the r/Favor rules

https://www.reddit.com/r/Favors/comments/1kw9su/mod_reminder_of_the_rfavor_rules/

created by zomboi on 22/08/2013 at 20:05 UTC*

109 upvotes, 18 top-level comments (showing 18)

/r/Favors exists as a place for redditors to offer and ask neighborly favors of the community. As the curators of what is essentially a regulated free-trade zone for generosity, we feel it is important to regularly re-assess the methods by which we preserve this community and the standards by which we assess its content. The rules value the health of /r/favors first, the health of the Reddit community second and the satisfaction of the individual redder third. Any changes to these rules will reflect these same core values.

*How we moderate /r/favors**

The overwhelming majority of the work performed by the /r/favors mods involves interacting with the filter. More often than not, posts to /r/favors land in the filter first. Once there, it is up to us to decide whether we consider the post to be appropriate to /r/favors. Sheer luck will occasionally play a role in allowing posts to bypass the filter. Everybody wins if these posts are appropriate. If they are not, the moderation team is not always going to remove a post, particularly if it has points and comments, but this is not a guarantee of immunity for popular but rule-breaking posts. We recognize that this is a less-than-ideal system but we also recognize that Reddit offers a less-than-ideal architecture for dealing with the problem. Realistically speaking, it's the best we can do. If you are curious why we do not set rules and allow user voting to care for the health of the frontpage, here[1] is a lengthy and detailed explanation using art requests as a specific example.

1: http://www.reddit.com/r/Favors/comments/lfvkj/mod_hey_rfavorites_your_mod_team_has_rewritten/c2sduse

A post is judged on many criteria. These criteria are different for requests and offers. Offers are granted more latitude - someone offering to draw something, for example, is demonstrably more altruistic than someone wanting something drawn. If a post is offering something with no glaring strings attached or blatant problems, it gets through. While holding relatively strict criteria to people who want things seems reasonable to prevent abuse, we have no reason to prevent someone from giving something away. *Posts that are looking for trades or sales are held to the [REQUEST] standards, because the recipient is asked to risk something of their own.*

Please tag posts appropriately. The team doesn't necessarily ban un-tagged posts, but appropriate tags help everyone and properly tagged posts have been consistently more successful thus far.

*Requests are judged by the following criteria:**

**No financial requests.** The community has repeatedly asked that we keep all "panhandling" requests out, no exceptions, regardless of content. This includes charity drives, donations, "good causes" and any and all "a-thons." Our readership enjoys being generous, but loathes assessing whether someone is worthy of their generosity - therefore, that task falls to the moderators. As we have the exact same tools to judge trustworthiness as you do, we refuse to do so. Since we can't judge who is "worthy" and who is not, we do not judge at all. This rule includes requests for gifts, cards, postcards, letters, postal mail, knick-knacks, and/or general swag.

**No selling.** If money is involved then it most likely doesn't belong in this subreddit. Art designs offers where a donation is required isn't allowed. Trading your giftcard for a paypal amount is basically selling and not actually a "trade".

**We do not do custom art or design work on request.** The community has repeatedly chosen to disallow all forms of "please draw me a thing." This extends to logos, photoshop, photo restoration, picture coloring, video editing, and design services of any kind. We recommend /r/picrequests instead. The team permitted requests such as this for a weekend before and within 72 hours "draw me a thing" requests dominated the front page. We serve the community - and while the thing you want drawn is of keen interest to you, it is of near-zero interest to the community. This does not exclude offers of custom art or design, and the /r/favors community strongly encourages such posts. Logos for thriving reddit communities are the only art request not banned under this rule.

**We do not pad your numbers.** /r/favors is not interested in rigging contests, nor do we consider padding numbers, providing viewers, adding followers, Facebook "likes," Google+ "+1"s, or any sort of attention exchange to be a "favor" per se. Post elsewhere and allow your content to stand for itself. /r/shamelessplug may serve your needs instead, be sure to check their rules before posting. If you want to plug your new subreddit, check out the sidebar of /r/modhelp for tips.

**Referrals and invites are out.** Referrals, invites, and the like all have their own places on reddit. Those places can be found in our sidebar.

**Titles must be honest, and include any relevant price information.** A good example of a dishonest post is one titled "[OFFER] Free Webdesign*" with "*if you sign up for my hosting service" in the body. Posts that suggest one thing in the title and something else entirely in the content are removed. We contact the OP in marginal cases and suggest they try again with greater clarity. Further, prices offered in trades/work for hire arrangements must be stated in the title. "Am willing to pay" seems to have become "I'll pay if you ask, but want it for free". We want our artists to be able to decide if a request is offering enough to make it worth their time to bid. We further wish for any negotiations that begin at /r/favors stay as transparent as possible.

**No "buy me a NEW game" requests.** Reddit has /r/gameswap, which has enacted a good system to keep scammy shit to a minimum. We don't, and don't have the manpower to set one up and manage everything else /r/favors related. This rule also includes DLC content. We wish to note, however, the "new" aspect of this request: Moderator Anomander has given away CD keys to most of his old, now unplayed, games here to folks requesting them. We propose that only games over four years old are legit to request, because the long-average update/expansion cycle is three years long. A four-year-old game is more likely to be sitting unplayed somewhere than Minecraft is.

**No ditch-digging.** Requests for others to perform tasks that require no skill, knowledge or experience beyond the ability to log onto Reddit are not considered to be a "favor." If your task could be performed by Amazon's Mechanical Turk service or a studious application of Google, you are not looking for neighborly help, you're looking for free labor. This includes vectorization of images, finding long-lost reddit posts, letter-writing campaigns, answering easily google-able questions, etc.

**No asking others to do your online shopping for you.** This subreddit is not a search engine and is not to save you time on google.

There is a large grey area not specifically covered by the above formal rules that may still pose the community problems.

**Obvious "joke" posts get removed.** "[REQUEST]: Harem," for instance. Or "[Offer]: Meaning of life"; body text is just "42". These posts do not contribute anything meaningful. Contrast this to the chap offering nicknames, which while silly and somewhat inane, at least led to some really amusing conversations.

**Posts not containing a concrete favor or offer get pulled.** "[Request] I has a sad, make me feel better" are either better suited to any number of "discussion" communities, or they're thinly veiled panhandling requests ("send me messages to make me feel better, here's my steam ID").

**We also judge posts by the account posting them.** /r/favors exists as a place for redditors to do and ask for awesome stuff from each other. We require a clear demonstration that an account is a redditor first, and asking for things second. An account with high karma and age has more to lose and is more vulnerable to naming and shaming. New accounts with little activity are far more likely to be looking for a handout and far less likely to be participating in the community. We are far more likely to bend the rules for an account over 100 days old. New accounts with over 1000 karma are considered to be active contributors. Old accounts with no (or questionable) use may also be questioned.

**Surveys are still permitted, but with conditions.** The survey cannot result in financial gain for the OP or potential harm to users. This will be assessed on a per-complaint basis.

*Exemptions are never granted on request.** We're not judging you as a poster, we're judging the content of your post.

*Please report problem content.** We try our best, we really do. Sometimes we miss stuff. If you catch something we miss, report it. If you report something, it's super awesome to also message the mods[2] and let us know about the reported post and why it's problematic.

2: http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2FFavors

*These rules are not letter-of-the-law, but to illustrate the spirit of our moderation and provide guidance on marginal cases.** Just because a specific thing is unmentioned does not exempt it, nor does specific mention preclude a mod exemption. Our core values are: /r/favors first, reddit second, individual redditors third. We will use our best judgement to curate the community with these values to guide us.

Comments

Comment by Intact at 23/08/2013 at 21:07 UTC

3 upvotes, 0 direct replies

A quick suggestion: around the time of various conventions like gamescon, pax, etc, there are usually posts asking for game codes or free things from the convention by people who are unable to attend. You can see quite a few on the front page now. While I don't mind seeing them, I feel like they take up too much space. What do you think about the mods making one single thread for these posts around the time of each con, which then serves as the hub for those requests?

Comment by [deleted] at 22/08/2013 at 23:48 UTC

4 upvotes, 0 direct replies

I don't have anything to add, just that /r/Favors is awesome and you guys are awesome. Keep up the good work.

Comment by stoopkidsafraid2222 at 17/09/2013 at 05:46 UTC

1 upvotes, 1 direct replies

i'm trying to flag a post as [Request] but it's not registering that i flagged the title. did i do something wrong

Comment by No_Improvement6487 at 09/05/2024 at 13:48 UTC

1 upvotes, 1 direct replies

I requested upvotes so I can post on subreddits and it got taken down? I don't see any rule against it

Comment by thedreadedlock at 12/09/2024 at 19:20 UTC

1 upvotes, 1 direct replies

Quick question concerning financial requests, can I give money away to people? Not asking for anything in return, but I saw a post from a person who just gave money to one person a while back and it was meaningful to me. Thought about doing it myself sometime.

Comment by nasrzain4444 at 21/12/2024 at 23:39 UTC

1 upvotes, 0 direct replies

I need a favor feom my Russian komrads in Moscow

Comment by Expensive_Chapter_27 at 30/01/2025 at 20:02 UTC

1 upvotes, 0 direct replies

Hi mate,

I’m looking for someone in the U.S. who could help me order and ship **Packwood Vapes** with THC to Croatia. I’d cover all costs (product + shipping) via PayPal, Wise, or another method.

If you’re willing to help, let me know! I’d really appreciate it.

Thanks!

Comment by [deleted] at 29/12/2021 at 17:01 UTC

1 upvotes, 1 direct replies

[deleted]

Comment by SuperHellFrontDesk at 12/02/2022 at 00:19 UTC

1 upvotes, 1 direct replies

So asking for help through referrals to apps is not allowed? Genuine question.

Comment by [deleted] at 23/02/2022 at 21:28 UTC

1 upvotes, 1 direct replies

[deleted]

Comment by Researcher565 at 13/09/2022 at 09:24 UTC

1 upvotes, 1 direct replies

Hi guys,

How would I go about posting an academic survey on here?

My post has already been rejected, so I was just wondering if there was something wrong with it. I've gone through the rules but I can't seem to find the reason.

Thanks!

Comment by accountforquickans at 01/02/2023 at 22:37 UTC

1 upvotes, 1 direct replies

Where is the sidebar?

Comment by Minimum-Flamingo-151 at 15/02/2023 at 04:42 UTC

1 upvotes, 0 direct replies

Hey friends, I have no idea if this belongs here or not. I am a makeup junkie. An item just launched in the uk but it’s not being sold in the USA. Is there a way I can get some to help me procure the item and have it sent to me?

Comment by Interesting-Bath-848 at 21/02/2023 at 15:09 UTC

1 upvotes, 0 direct replies

I applied in Northern college at pures campus in Toronto for September 2023 intake but i haven't received offer letter its been two months. So can anybody help me that why the college is delaying ? please help you anyone of you know someone in Northern college office department please help me.🙏🏼

Comment by Available-Giraffe546 at 29/05/2023 at 01:21 UTC

1 upvotes, 0 direct replies

Hi there, I'm trying to add a post to the group (I've just joined Reddit) and it's automatically removing my post and I'm not sure why. It doesn't appear that I"m breaking any rules.

Comment by jackofalltrades_67 at 24/11/2023 at 19:14 UTC

1 upvotes, 1 direct replies

Auto mod bot pulled my post and told me to resubmit with tags. The only thing that comes up when i try to add a tag is spoiler...... What am i meant to do? Im very confused to be honest

Comment by [deleted] at 08/12/2023 at 22:45 UTC

1 upvotes, 1 direct replies

[removed]

Comment by Shinler88 at 19/12/2023 at 06:03 UTC

1 upvotes, 1 direct replies

Hi. I know asking for online shopping isn't allowed, but my situation is kinda different so I would like to know if I'm allowed to post about it before doing so. I'm located outside of the US and trying to access an online shop only available on the US, tiktok shop specifically. There's great deals there and I've tried everything but I just can't get access to it. I would like to know if it's allowed to ask for someone to buy me something there and send it to a international courier post box . Obviously I would pay for it, I would just need for someone to make the purchase for me since I can't. Thanks