[Meta] On community tone and discourse as we grow

Hey everyone,

Our community has grown tremendously in the last year. One year ago in March 2018 we were at ~500 subscribers and the number of pageviews in that entire month equals our daily pageviews now on popular days. The moderation team is incredibly happy that so many people come here to have discussions, chat, and make it a community of their own.

But as we've grown, and especially in the last couple months, we've also noticed a coarsening of discourse - that is, there is an increasing number of comments and posts by both new subscribers and long-time people that we've had to remove or warn because:

• Disparage or stereotype people and characters by race, ethnicity, or gender identity, including the use of slurs
• Use vulgar or offensively explicit language about people and characters
• Advocate for illegal or unethical actions
• Say or post things just to shock or disgust others

Thankfully, there isn't a lot of this kind of content and it's a minuscule percentage of everything, but it is popping up more.

Here's the thing: This sort of stuff is not going to help keep our community a welcoming, comfortable, and friendly community. Obviously there will be challenges as we grow, but we want to remind everyone about the values what made r/Choices the place to be, and that we want to keep in mind. If you see content like that, please report it to the moderation team, and we will remove it and politely warn the person to knock it off, among other things. And if you've posted stuff like this in the past, please don't.

Cheers, and hope everyone is having a happy start to March!