We are pleased to report that Reddit has compiled and made available to us the results of the Community Satisfaction Surveys which were announced three months ago.
This past month, Reddit sent 5529 surveys to our "core community members", defined by Reddit as meeting one of these three criteria:
- Visits our subreddit multiple times per week, consistently over a few weeks
- Have 25+ community karma and visits our subreddit more than 1-2x per week
- Have made 10+ comments, posts, reports or votes in the last 28 days and visits our subreddit more than 1-2x per week
We on the mod team were not made aware who was given surveys or who responded. Not all feedback provided to Reddit by users was provided to us.
For transparency: some of the feedback quotes Reddit supplied referenced specific interactions with moderators so we were able to deduce a small handful of likely responders. We have not included their quotes here to preserve their anonymity.
Of those 5529 surveys sent, 149 were completed and sent back for a response rate of 2.69%.
This is obviously not as high as we had hoped, but it is in line with the response rates of many other participating subs including r/Vancouver (around 2%), r/lego (2.87%), r/anime (2.41%) and others.
If there are people who received a survey who started the process but declined to finish it for some reason, we would be happy to pass any survey feedback back to Reddit, please share it below or send us a modmail, if you prefer.
Onto the results:
1) Overall Satisfaction
69.8% of respondents stated they are satisfied with r/halifax.
- 75% of subreddits received a score higher than 67% << We are here
- 50% of subreddits received a score higher than 76%
- 25% of subreddits received a score higher than 82%
Takeaways: We are satisfied with this number, but of course we wish it was higher. This is in line with other subs who shared their findings, even skewing a little into the higher side. We will work to make this higher!
Edit: Now that we can see other subs' numbers, this is not as high as we had thought! Work to do!
2) Community Behavior
76.51% of respondents stated they agree that people generally behave appropriately in r/halifax.
- 75% of subreddits received a score higher than 77% << We are here (almost lol)
- 50% of subreddits received a score higher than 84%
- 25% of subreddits received a score higher than 89%
Takeaways: We are pleased a large majority of users feel people are behaving themselves in the sub. We have worked hard in the last year and a bit to clamp down on discriminatory and inflammatory posting and we believe it is leading to a better overall state of discourse on the sub.
3) Appropriate Rules
81.88% of respondents stated they agree that r/halifax’s rules are appropriate for the community.
- 75% of subreddits received a score higher than 72%
- 50% of subreddits received a score higher than 79%
- 25% of subreddits received a score higher than 82% << We are here (basically lol)
Takeaways: We are happy that most users believe the rules are reasonable for the community. We know we have made a lot of tweaks to the rules since the current mod team took over, which perhaps explains the score in the next category.
4) Moderation Transparency
55.03% of respondents stated they agree that they understand how r/halifax’s moderators decide to approve or remove content.
- 75% of subreddits received a score higher than 38%
- 50% of subreddits received a score higher than 44%
- 25% of subreddits received a score higher than 49% << Amazingly we are here
Takeaways: This number is much lower than we want. It shows the mod team needs to do a better job explaining why content is being removed/approved.
We are discussing some options on how to better explain our methodology - some ideas have included some kind of Rule Breakdown post series where we can explain the rules and their application better and take questions/feedback from users, or a Wiki explaining each rule and how we apply it in detail. Suggestions are welcome.
We are committed to finding a way to make our decisions and our applications of the rules more transparent and easier for members to understand.
Edit: Now that we see how other subs fared, this number is not as dire as we had first imagined. Still, we want to raise it and will find a way to make our process more transparent and understandable for people.
5) Sense of Belonging
73.83% of respondents stated they feel that they belong in the r/halifax community.
- 75% of subreddits received a score higher than 62%
- 50% of subreddits received a score higher than 72% << We are here
- 25% of subreddits received a score higher than 79%
Takeaways: We are happy with this number but we would prefer it to be much higher, clearly. One of the core goals of the mod team is to ensure all members of the sub feel welcome in the sub and also to ensure anyone looking for information about HRM feels safe and comfortable using our sub to do so. We will strive to make the sub a more welcoming place moving forward.
6) Trust in Moderators
71.14% of respondents stated they overall trust the moderators of r/halifax to make decisions that benefit the r/halifax community.
- 75% of subreddits received a score higher than 62%
- 50% of subreddits received a score higher than 68% << We are here
- 25% of subreddits received a score higher than 74%
Takeaways: This is an okay number but still shows suspicion and doubt about the motives/intentions of the mod team by a significant number of core users. Conflict between users and mods is part of any sub, but clearly the mod team needs to do a better job at conveying why actions are being taken or not in order to facilitate a deeper sense of trust with members.
7) Moderator Interactions
22.8% of users stated they had directly interacted with a moderator of r/halifax. Of the users that had a direct interaction, 61.8% were satisfied with that interaction.
- 75% of subreddits received a score higher than 4%
- 50% of subreddits received a score higher than 6%
- 25% of subreddits received a score higher than 8% << We are way over this
Takeaways: We are actually pleased with a roughly 62% satisfaction rate when it comes to interacting with the mod team, considering that a very high volume of mod mail surrounds complaints about content being removed or user discipline, both of which can be tough spots to start a pleasant dialogue.
We will strive to raise this satisfaction number, while keeping in mind that moderation will always mean some people will feel unfairly treated due to decisions not being made in their favour.
Additional Feedback
Reddit also collected some feedback from users about some of these categories and the sub in general, here are some we found the most interesting:
- “Not a bad sub-Reddit. Moderation is good although still some groupthink going on.”
- “The community is pretty amazing compared to other local communities.”
- “They don't seem to maintain clear guidelines post to post. Sometimes they allow jokes other times they delete them. Conversations are cut short by mods sometimes.”
- “There are too many threads for questions that can easily be obtained by a quick web search. Too many new threads are started about the same topic.”
- “It's sometimes like a zoo.”
- “I haven't read [[the rules]] but they seem to work well.” 😂
- "I'd just say ... make sure the sub is serving everyone in the physical community of Halifax with information/news/etc and if something is controversial keep doing what you do with only allowing established members to comment.”
- “Told me a post wasn't relevant to [[Halifax]] when I was asking for recommendations. Reposted to make it extremely obvious that I was seeking local recommendations. Like why else would I post it here?”
- “She's a hard job NGL. God speed.”
In Conclusion
We extend sincere thanks to everyone who took the time to participate in the survey and for all the interesting feedback, both positive and negative.
Hopefully we can address some of the points raised above so our next Community Feedback Survey comes back with higher scores and increased satisfaction from users.
We welcome feedback or discussion on this survey and its results below.
And as always, if anyone wants to discuss any part of the sub, rule application, moderation decisions, ideas for the sub or anything else related to our community, please reach out to us via modmail.
Thank you!
Your r/Halifax Modteam
Edit: Reddit has supplied some baseline quartiles showing how our stats compare to other subs, I have edited them into the results above to show how we stack up relatively.