I’d really like to see the culture outside of the DT develop nicer compared to the sub. I might get dovoted into oblivion for saying this, but everytime I dared to step foot out of the DT, it felt like stepping into a toxic hell hole. I know that’s not always something mod can influence/control, since intonation can be just as important for the vibe as what’s actually being said. Also, there seemed to be some resident bridge trolls that would downvoted literally everything initially. Even the most popular and upvoted posts were initially downvoted. That can be discouraging for newbies to see their post being downvoted in droves, even if the score does pop back up later on.

I also think that reposts shouldn’t be gone after as hard as they were. I mean, I get it with things like sunset posts and major events (earthquakes, etc), but to be honest, people asking for advice on what suburb to move to is just half the point of a forum such as this. You can go off as much as you want at the people that were too lazy to do the most basic of searches, but two thoughts on that: firstly, it’s a bit of confirmation bias. The people who did search before posting no longer need to post because their question was answered in previous posts, even if you go hard out and completely ban anybody who doesn’t search before posting, that still won’t fix it. And secondly: if absolutely nobody ever reposted anything, the sub would probably be empty and boring. Plus, some people that do read posts will think their situation is somehow unique or different. The last post may be asking whether Fitzroy is a good place to move to as a family with two kids and two incomes, but then the other person doesn’t feel confident in that answer because they have four kids, not two.

Again, this isn’t necessarily something the mods can change since it’s often the community itself being a bit toxic, but I think if that’s the sort of community the mods try to build and foster, and they lead by example, it could work out really well