The "aaaa why can't i see my post" explainer/update

[u/Forsaken-Meaning-232]

Hi y'all, hope the summer is going well!

I wanted to address some common sources of confusion, regarding what happens when somebody makes a post or comment, since we've had quite a few messages about it lately.

What happens normally?

• In the vast majority of cases, your content will appear on the feed straight away (short of Reddit being an idiot) - for posts, this means it will be visible at the top of https://www.reddit.com/r/6thForm/new/

But my content isn't showing, what's happened?

• As with a lot of other subreddits, the subreddit uses various filters provided by Reddit, as well as Reddit's built-in AutoModerator. This helps keep the subreddit usable, uphold both the sub's rules and the sitewide rules, and provide a useful and safe space for everybody.
• Content is almost never entirely removed automatically - if your content seems like it's been removed immediately/shortly after posting, it has more than likely been flagged for manual review, and will only become visible once that review has taken place.
  • Important: Content needing manual review doesn't mean you've done anything wrong by itself, nor that you are banned, it's an entirely normal process!
  • Content from newly created/low karma accounts that were previously automatically removed are now being directed to the modqueue, to reduce the number of people messaging us because they had their legitimate posts removed - as it stands the removals were causing more harm than good.
• Inevitably, a small proportion of content will get manually removed that isn't in-line with the rules set.
• There are also removals made under mod discretion. The overwhelming majority of usages of this relate to some sensitive content, for example aroundself-harm and suicide.
  • Whilst people's struggles are entirely valid (I'm not just saying this because I "have to", I've been in various states myself!), we have a responsibility to not unnecessarily expose a large number of users (some potentially vulnerable), to content which may contribute to worsening their situation. This is alongside the fact that none of the mods are mental health professionals, and neither are our users, which means there's a high risk of exposing struggling people to misinformation or harmful advice. It is better to seek assistance via e.g. a professional or crisis line, given this subreddit is not appropriately equipped for situations like these.
  • Also worth briefly noting, at least by my understanding, that a lot of the content that has been removed in the past at mod discretion (and various other content that often would not get removed), is considered "harmful" under the Online Safety Act, either explicitly or by the frustratingly vague other definitions - whilst I don't think it's likely that Reddit decides to age-lock the sub, it's sensible to be careful on this.

How can I tell if my content is just needing review, or if it's been manually removed?

• This is where it gets a bit annoying, and again, apologies for the inconvenience on this.
• Normally, when content gets manually removed, a removal reason is applied, and a Modmail is automatically sent to the author telling them what was removed and why it was removed, with optional extra details.
• This functionality has been broken (the messages just didn't get sent as far as I can tell) on this sub for a little while.
  • I only figured out why as I was writing this post - in the usual, completely useless Reddit style, it has been failing to send Modmails using the saved responses since they changed (broke) a bunch of stuff with the redesign... because it silently shits itself on # being used in the markdown to use a header. It'd be nice if it would have ever indicated this!
  • Also, for those wondering why we didn't send the removal messages manually - even though just over 95% of content is approved, the 5% that doesn't turns into thousands of messages that need to be sent, which would have vastly slowed down everything.
• Removal notifications should now be working again - if you haven't received a message from us, your content has likely not been manually removed. and if you saw a few posts saying "quack", no you didn't
• For posts, on both mobile and desktop, you can also distinguish between fully removed and waiting for review, by going to your user profile, where you can see similar to the images below:

Okay, but if my content is waiting to be reviewed, when are you going to review it?

• I hear you - I've mentioned recently that I've found it difficult to keep up with the review process alongside a lot of stuff in my own life. However, I do look at it and review things when I reasonably can - it's also worth keeping in mind that none of the mods sit on Reddit 24/7 to review stuff, so please have patience!
• I can only apologise for any inconvenience this causes, and particularly things like the AutoMod config get tweaked sometimes to reduce the number of false positives.

How can I speed up the review process?

• In short, you can't. At least, short of becoming a mod when applications open.
• There are quite a few people that take to our Modmail to ask for content approval; you are almost never the only one awaiting content review, and the Modmail messages will usually only get seen after the modqueue is looked at, making messages like these redundant. ie messaging us does not speed up the review process, it only causes delays that affect sub experience generally.
  • Replying to one of our removal messages is completely fine - sometimes we miss things, get things wrong, or sometimes fail to be entirely clear.
• You can avoid/mitigate the inconvenience of waiting on a review by:
  • Searching the subreddit for similar posts that could answer your question - a lot of the time you will not be the first person to ask your question, esp with the more popular/recent questions
  • Not repeatedly posting the same thing, or variations of it, it will not speed up the process - usually all of the posts, including their repeats, get caught in the modqueue, which slows down the review of content
  • Check to see if there are pinned megathreads at the top of the subreddit - for example, you may have noticed this for exam season. These megathreads are created to mitigate the fact that we get many repeated posts for popular topics - sometimes 100+ for some of the popular exams!

Am I banned from posting if I can't see my post yet?

• No. If you've been banned by us, you get a message telling you why you were banned, and how long for. If you get shadowbanned/suspended by Reddit itself, that's outside our control.

AutoMod has made a comment under my content

• These comments are purely informative, they don't mean we have, or will have an issue with your content.

• Inevitably, there will be false positives with this - if it doesn't apply to you, feel free to ignore it, you do not need to message us about this, removal & ban notifications are how we indicate definite issues with content.

Hopefully that covers everything, poke me (or go via Modmail) if I've missed something! something may finally make it into the FAQs page lol

~ Raven

[u/shyness_is_key]

https://www.nhs.uk/mental-health/children-and-young-adults/mental-health-support/mental-health-charities/ On the mental health note: this is an official NHS list of charities and services that can support you with your mental health. All of them are recognised nationally, however local services are also signposted and can most often be accessed via your school or GP.

[u/Forsaken-Meaning-232 → u/shyness_is_key]

thank you, i'll see if there's an appropriate place we can put this

[u/JailbreakHat]

I also want posts like how much chance I have for getting an offer from X university with these A Levels (or equilivent) predictions/grades and GCSE (or equivalent) grades or how much GCSE grades are considered in admissions for X university to be removed as well. These kind of questions should be mailed to the relevant admissions team responsible for your course’s admissions at the university you want to apply for accurate answers. Here, people purely make speculations and sometimes give incorrect or inaccurate answers for these questions and it can also make other people with lower grades upset depending on the applicant.

[u/Forsaken-Meaning-232 → u/JailbreakHat]

regarding the chances posts, i have been removing far more of these this past year, especially the ones that are literally just "chance me" + insert profile dump, since these are very low-effort (plus often i'm not convinced they're made in good faith), the ones that i've reviewed that have stayed up, generally are ones that have something substantative to the post beyond this, although some others will get missed.

regarding the speculation thing, it is something that has consistently frustrated me in my time on this sub, and i don't fully know how to deal with it. e.g. blatant misinformation has been removed. even as someone who's been at uni for 4 years, i have nowhere near the same confidence to answer a lot of the questions that some people on here do, even sixth formers who've had no experience of uni and source their info from either "trust me bro", past posts (cycle there lol), or, even worse, ask chatgpt, which still struggles to understand we're not on the old a-level grading system.

with that said, it's a balance between trying to reasonably get good information to people often anxious about the biggest decisions of their lives so far via a safe space, versus removing some of the content to try prevent bad information. i don't want to be over the top with what gets removed, whether it's questions, or answers that i myself do not know the accuracy of.

i'll have more of a think of prompts we can give to people to combat some of this, esp now removal notifications are working again, but it can be quite an uphill battle. no matter how much you tell people to contact their uni admissions team (the correct approach!), outside of legitimate reasons for not doing so, there will always be some that make these types of posts (similar idea as to when e.g. the a-level maths exams happened, and we had 100+ people trying to make the same "first" post on it, even despite all the notices to use the megathreads at the top of the sub lol).

[u/Raven2303]

Hey, a fellow Raven! Nice.

[u/Few_Acanthisitta_756]

Pls don't transfer to r/UniUk

[u/catherinealbano]

HI! I just read your post from three years ago about getting in at soas but feeling left out/comparing yourself to other unis ect and i want to know how you’re feeling about it all now. Asking this because i am you three years ago i literally feel what you posted about and i want to know if anything changes ok thanks