So, you don't want your comment removed? Guidance on how to write good comments on LAUK.
Approaching nearly 300,000 users, our community has more people than Belfast or Southampton. As a result, we get around 1,000 comments each day, and last month we removed over 3,000 comments.
These comment removals vary - a lot of the removals are carried out by automod (51%), the and rest removed after human intervention. We rely on the amount of helpful reports from our user base, so please keep reporting comments.
We know that not everyone is going to read this, but we wanted to provide interested new joiners to the subreddit some information about how to avoid getting your comments removed and navigate the moderation team.
###General Rules
- AutoMod removes comments from new accounts
- AutoMod removes comments from low karma accounts
Sometimes these are reviewed and approved, but not often.
###Comment Length -
Contrary to popular belief, or whatever my mum told me, longer is broadly better.
- AutoMod will remove top-level comments less than 100 characters in length
- AutoMod will remove comments that only say "this", "I agree", or similar, that have less than 20 characters
This means that when you leave any comment, it should contain at least a sentence or two worth of analysis, explanation, or practical direction. Short comments are almost never approved or reviewed.
###Unhelpful, Off-Topic, or Not-Legal Advice
We expect all comments to -
- Be helpful to the needs of the poster; AND
- Be relevant to the topic and discussion; AND
- Contain mostly direct legal explanation, legal commentary, or practical instruction
As a general rule, if your comment does not meet these three criteria, it is at risk of being removed.
As is tradition, there are exceptions to these three criteria.
- At least 60% of your comment should be focused on what the law is; there is some light wiggle room for non-controversial casual comments or opinion in addition to an otherwise helpful comment to OP.
- Your own experiences can be acceptable, where you tell an OP what you practically did to resolve a situation - just saying "I spoke to my manager about it and they changed it" isn't practical advice; what did you say? did you speak face to face or in an e-mail? Did you provide any supporting documents or evidence? Tell OP what they need to know to fix the situation themselves.
- Sometimes OP doesn't need only any legal direction, and in that event, you can refer OP to a more helpful service (e.g., refer them to their GP, with an explanation).
- A comment which only says something such as "Speak to ACAS" or "Speak to Shelter" or "Get a Solicitor" is helpful because it sign-posts a user to get more professional assistance, but it is not legally helpful as it does not contain any helpful commentary or explanation for the situation OP finds themselves in. These will just get removed in nearly every eventually, except for very niche topics where very specialist advice is needed.
- Casual related discussion in the comment section can be okay; for example, another user may want to ask a follow-up question or add some general, non-controversial commentary - this is okay as long as it stays broadly on-topic. Replies to OP should always meet the main three comment criteria, however.
- You don't HAVE to comment - if you're not sure what the right thing to do or say is from a legal perspective, just don't comment. "I think the law is.." is not going to be considered helpful. What you think the law should be, rather than what the law actually is, it also not going to be helpful.
- We will remove comments which only contain gestures of best wishes, or sympathy; it is unfortunate, but OPs are here for more than that.
###Comments Moderated Threads
- Automod will set the flair automatically (based on keywords) to "Comments Moderated"
- Sometimes mods will manually set the flair to "Comments Moderated"
- Nearly all comments in that thread are automatically removed until a mod can manually review them
- Extra attention is given to the quality and helpfulness of comments in the thread
- Rule breaking comments left in these threads are significantly more likely to result in a ban
The mods, of course, reserve the right to exercise their judgment and discretion.
These are just meant to be helpful guidelines for regularly community members.
Ultimately, our main focus is on making sure OPs get actually useful help when they come to us, and as long are you primarily helpful within the scope of the subreddit, you'll likely be okay. If you're even in doubt about if you can or should leave a particular comment, just message the mods and ask - we're often occasionally very a bit friendly tolerable.
Questions, comments, feedback, etc welcome below.
Posted Jul 27, 2021, 12:00 PM UTC
Mind=blown.
If it’s on my feed then it’s directed to me, it would be rude not to reply surely?
Not gonna lie. I laughed out loud at this, considering how often I’ve replied to you recently.
Sometimes, I need telling.
.
Sometimes I just need the attention.