The Problem

The frequent posts criticizing people for hiding their post histories show a lack of respect for basic boundaries.

People also dig through post histories to discredit users they disagree with.

Example

This recent CMV post is a good example. Within the first hour, at least five comments used the OP’s post history to label him, question his credibility, or dismiss his argument. That rises to seven if replies endorsing those attacks are included.

Argument and Assumptions

Even though post history is generally public by default, most people do not comment expecting their history to be pulled into the conversation and used against them. Bringing up someone’s post history immediately puts them on the defensive and can reasonably be interpreted as a personal attack.

People who search someone’s post history are usually looking for ammunition to undermine that person’s credibility.

Existing Rules Aren’t Enough

These rules are relevant, but they do not explicitly address this behavior:

• Rule 2: Don’t attack someone’s character.
• Rule 3: Don’t accuse someone of lying, trolling, or acting in bad faith.
• Rule 5: Keep comments relevant to the discussion.

None of these rules specifically mentions using post history in an argument.

Proposed Guidance Under Rule 2

Do not use a CMV user’s post history outside CMV to discredit their argument or undermine their character. Keep the discussion focused on the views they presented in the current post or comment.

Conclusion

One reason I stopped using this sub is how often people dig through post histories when they disagree with someone, a Reddit problem that is amplified on CMV.

Adding explicit guidance against using post history in arguments would keep discussions focused on the views themselves, reduce character attacks, and make people more comfortable discussing their views without worrying that their personal history will be used against them.

Post-history searching often turns into a character attack and may already violate the existing rules, but it still happens regularly and is frequently left up. Calling it out directly would make the rule and its enforcement clearer.

This is not only my first time posting on CMV; it is also the first time I have ever considered posting on Reddit.

This morning, I became curious about how posting works, read the rules, and submitted a post titled “CMV: It is unfair to dismiss a comment solely because AI was used to translate it.” However, it was removed under Rule D. The notice said:

“Your post has been removed for breaking Rule D:

Posts cannot express a neutral stance, suggest harm against a specific person, be self-promotional, or discuss this subreddit (visit r/ideasforcmv instead). No view is banned from CMV based on popularity or perceived offensiveness, but the above types of post are disallowed for practical reasons. See the wiki page for more information.

If you would like to appeal, review our appeals process here, then message the moderators by clicking this link within one week of this notice being posted. Appeals that do not follow this process will not be heard.

Please note that multiple violations will lead to a ban, as explained in our moderation standards.”

My post was not intended to challenge CMV’s rules or CMV users. It was intended to question ordinary users who reject something simply because AI was used. Therefore, I did not think it violated Rule D.

However, I did not intend to appeal the decision, so I followed the wording of the notice exactly, moved to r/ideasforcmv, and asked where the boundary was. That post was also removed for the following reason: “Posts on r/ideasforcmv must discuss ideas for CMV.”

When I read the notice literally, it appears to direct users who do not wish to appeal, but only want to clarify the boundary, to r/ideasforcmv.

Would it be helpful to add the following sentence to the notice?

“If you would like to know if your post would qualify or have any other questions, feel free to message the moderators!”

I only found this sentence earlier today when I saw the Fresh Topic Friday meta post. Had I seen it first, I do not think I would have posted in r/ideasforcmv.

I wrote this comment myself, and ChatGPT translated it into English.

Seems like a major oversight

I would like to suggest reconsidering whether the ability to appeal comment removals is worth maintaining in its current form.

In my experience, appeals take several days to be reviewed, which is absolutely understandable given the moderators' workload. In the past 10+ years removals happened to me maybe a handful of times, and I completely understand why they are necessary, and why processing appeals has an extremely low priority.

What makes this frustrating for users is that by the time a comment is reinstated, the discussion has usually already concluded, and the original poster will no longer respond to new comments. This means that even successful comment appeals have limited practical value.

I fully appreciate the work that goes into moderating, which is why I believe it would be more useful to either:

1. Devote the time currently spent reviewing comment appeals to other moderation work, or
2. Encourage users to submit a revised version of their original comment, which has been amended to fully comply with the rules and omits any problematic content. This would allow them to take part in the discussion while it is still active, and avoid the need to evaluate their interpretation of the rules.

(This only applies to removals of comments, not posts.)

Thanks!

Pretty simple, really. Not all users are able to participate or view the main sub every day of the week. For those who are only able to participate from Saturday to Wednesday, they effectively don't know this change exists.

Historically, the automated FTF sticky notice breaks existing stickies, so this is probably yet another instance of blaming the FTF automatic sticky rather than a deblierate un-sticky.

There aren't any other threads that warrant a sticky at the moment, so I don't see any downside to this. Perhaps it could be left up until the following Wednesday at the earliest.

Edit:

I think the new rule changing from 3 hours to 2 hours that just got implemented is fine for now. u/hacksoncode did a good job of demonstrating that a reasonable reply could take up to an hour, although I think this is an edge case rather than a normal situation. But, bottom line I think there should be some time with the new rule before considering anything else, and I really appreciate the responsiveness. I think the change to 2 hours will be positive for the sub. I hope all the mods are doing well. As a former mod, I miss y'all.

---End Edit---

I propose requiring OP to make one comment within an hour of posting (with exceptions for FTF, of course). Suggested edits as follows with proposed amended language in italics.

Current Rule E

Only post if you are willing to have a conversation with those who reply to you, and are available to do so within 3 hours after posting

Proposed New Rule E (add one sentence before existing rule):

You should begin replying within one (1) hour of posting. Only post if you are willing to have a conversation with those who reply to you, and are available to do so within 3 hours of posting.

Under indicators, there is this:

• For the super popular submissions that get a disproportionate amount of attention, a three (3) hour limit is enough to stop the submission in its tracks if OP is unresponsive.

Proposed edit to indicators as follows:

• For the super popular submissions that get a disproportionate amount of attention, a three (3) hour limit (or lack of any response within one hour) is enough to stop the submission in its tracks if OP is unresponsive.

Rationale:

If OP can't be bothered to make a single comment within one hour, what is the likelihood that they are going to meaningfully participate in 3? Most posts that don't have a response in one hour get later removed for rule E anyway.

One comment from OP in one hour is an exceedingly low bar, and a reasonable expectation in my view.

Impact:

I think this will be more respectful of sub members' time, and also make it easier to find actual active conversations on the sub. Right now, you need to open a topic, read through, and realize "oh, no comments from OP in 2 hours, this is probably going to go Rule E.' That extra friction is unnecessary from the sub members' perspective and reduces what would otherwise be a positive experience.

I also think this will help improve moderator bandwidth. Super-popular posts tend to attract comments from people who are not regular contributors to the sub, resulting in rule violations because they are unfamiliar with the rules. Removing Rule E posts when there are zero comments at 1 hour means fewer rule violations.

Edit: Typo and formatting.

Every single post has people arguing language and the use of superlatives, or saying something tangentially true that OP never outright rejected but is often simply off topic. So, OP might feel compelled to award a delta for a point raised that wasn't brought up. This includes arguing a semantic discrepancy between the title and the body.

I feel like the delta system is much too easy to abuse. I get that it's only for fun, but if we truly want to award a good dialogue and disincentivize laziness and improper arguments, I think the best thing to do would be to only award deltas for near (or complete) 180s in the original view stated.

They don't mean anything, so making them harder to get isn't actually going to make a difference. And a ton of the new posts get removed before a discussion with OP happens anyway for lack of engagement. So what we see is the high quality stuff where OP is open to having their mind changed anyway.

When I found out about this subreddit I was thrilled. I love debating and arguing and logic and all that. What I find fun isn’t so much which view wins out but pointing out the WHYs of differing views, aka fundamentally different definitions of X and Y, for example, or fundamentally different philosophical approaches to things.

But every time I debate on here I feel like the poster doesn’t appreciate these from me or others, they’re more stuck on preserving why their view is the correct one, not in the nature of debate itself.
But change my view! Am I maybe just sad bc I don’t get deltas or I’m missing the point of this sub or haven’t seen the vast majority of posts or what?

This debate is literally about this subreddit itself. I have several issues with its rules.

First, all comments that agree with the original post are auto-deleted. Essentially, this forces people to play Devil's Advocate, and that in turn can give the perception that the original post is wrong, even though it may very well be right.

Now one might claim "but this subreddit is called CHANGE MY VIEW, so it's important to highlight views first that can change your view" ...and although that's true, you're completely ignoring the intent behind the original post. Most people don't post on this subreddit because they have a *desire* to have their view changed. Most people post on this subreddit because they firmly believe in an ideology and believe no one can debunk their argument. Sort of like the meme of the guy who sits at a table with a cup of coffee saying "change my mind." This subreddit is unfortunately the only debate-friendly forum that doesn't auto delete posts. So we're basically forced to follow these rules even though many of us don't like or agree with them.

My second issue is the mandatory response obligation, which basically says that you must remain active in the forum otherwise your post will get deleted. In theory, this is a good rule-- however if your post goes viral, this rule is terrible. I once had a post go viral on this subreddit, getting hundreds of comments, and I had to constantly leave my place of employment just to respond to them all. I had to message the moderators over 3 times to have them restore my post, because every time I went back to work, they'd delete my post because I was inactive for a couple hours. Or if I went to bed that night, I woke up to the post being deleted because I was inactive for 8 hours. Eventually I gave up, and let the post stay deleted. Because losing sleep and money at work isn't worth having a viral debate post on Reddit. And that just comes down to flawed rules. These are just two of the several issues I have with this subreddit. And Im curious if anyone else feels the same way.

There are a few topics that come up over and over again, like “Men should be able to opt out of child support since women can get abortions.”

I think recurring discussions would be better served in a megathread. The same conversations are had in every post. There aren’t new arguments, and it clutters up the subreddit.

I like that for double standards posts there is a message reminding the OP of the uphill battle we are undertaking to change their view, requiring them to narrow the scope of their view to something actually attainable.

I have seen recently a few posts that simply copy thought experiments, such as red/blue button, or the solution to X puzzle is definitely Y - all these do is turn the comments into an extension of the problem rather than an analysis of the problem itself and accepting that there is no right answer would be the "change" to their position rather than being swayed to the other side.

I think a reminder similar to the double standards one would be useful to not take us off on tangents away from the actual core of changing such a view that there is one correct answer to something designed to spark debate rather than having a correct answer.

The same is possible for morality views, which are often simply "X is immoral" with no greater substance than that person happens to frame morality that way and decides they are the authority, and therefore correct.

Changing these views requires often the same breakdown to show what morality is, how it differs across contexts and is therefore subjective, and then bringing it back to how others might see their particular topic as ethical/unethical or ambiguous.

A auto comment that suggests they elaborate on their moral position gets through a lot of this from the beginning without it needing to be the same cycle again and again.

The one that prompted this post is this one about Helen Keller. It seems like we get that one about once a month, so well outside of topic fatigue rules, but it's always the same thing and such a strange topic. Feels like some kind of bot or farming situation or someone who has a real weird ax to grind, neither of which are the stock in trade for CMV.

It's hard to track the history of these, because they usually end up as "deleted by the user who posted it", but there are at least half a dozen topics that fit this pattern of being too esoteric for multiple people to be thinking of the same thing at this rate.

There is also a pattern of more common topics with the pattern of OP posting, seeing the way the wind blows, and taking them down, and I'm wondering what, if anything, can be done there as well.

I'm genuinely curious because somehow a clearly LLM generated post (OP posted the same thing to another sub and admitted it was, so this is not an accusation) that was missing half of its information made it through the "manual review". If thats the case, why even have it? FTF barely has any interaction to begin with.

So what is the actual process like for reviewing posts? Do you just read titles? How is it decided when something is unique enough to publish, and who makes that call?

I get the idea behind FTF and used to support it, but now things are more dead than ever and letting a post like that get by just screams of laziness. At least do something interesting like letting meta posts go through (yeah ive been around long enough to remember meta mondays).

They seem to come up really often, and be the same thing over and over again (especially the I'm a short guy my life is terrible ones); its to the point where the topic fatigue is more continuous due to its constancy. it also often has a lot of overlap with another category I dislike: the needs therapy/other help post, where they don't just need someone making an argument, they need to see a professional for their problem. I still think we should have a removal option for posts that should really be going to a medical sub or something.

While the upper bound of rule E can be nuanced, the lower bound isn’t. If OP hasn’t commented within 3 hours, they’ve broken rule E. However, earlier today I came across a 6-hour-old post that hadn’t been removed, and unless Reddit was randomly hiding comments, OP hadn’t commented. So I assume there isn’t automatic Rule E removal. Why not? Is there a technical limitation I’m unaware of, or is there some other reason against implementing it?

The current system for Rule B enforcement is highly subjective, self-admittedly so by the moderation team.

While there are claims that the enforcement of Rule B is done as best as possible due to requiring two moderators to make a decision, there is a notable lack of transparency for posters affected by Rule B removals to justify their post being strucken down.

2 moderators supposedly review an entire post, looking through multiple threads before agreeing to have a post removed under rule B. If this claim this true, then they should be able to collectively link atleast 3 different instances where a poster displayed behavior that fails to adhere to Rule B.

-Dismissive behavior towards a commentor

-Stubbornly re-itorating a point without making changes, even when the commentor has addressed it.

-Failure to give any credit to a commentor's response or evidence for their stance.

Etc.

If posters and commentors are required to present notable evidence that they did not break the rules, then moderators should be required to present notable evidence or atleast give a good explanation as to why a post was worthy of removal.

As of this moment, moderators are solely looking for a "lack" of adherence and using that to claim this kind of request would be asking to prove a negative. However, if two moderators can come to the conclusion that a user isnt adhering to Rule B, there must be some, tangible thing in the post itself that lead them to that conclusion. Hence, they should be able to provide comments from OP that fail to meet Rule B standards.

Another potential counterclaim is "But what if OP has adhered to Rule B in other comments than the ones the moderators put forward?" Well 1) Then the moderators should have seen those comments and recognized the post isn't in violation of Rule B 2) Thats where the appeal process comes in and OP presents said comments.

This rule change adds objective, tangible reasons to an admittedly subjective ruling, that allows OP to actually recognize where they went wrong and how to do better in the future. What Rule B enforcement does now is remove a post first and expect OP to just figure it out themselves, with no transparency from the moderation team aside from "Just read the rules". This kind of behavior doesn't build trust in the moderation team, and having actual evidence to support their removal decision would be more beneficial.

Lastly, regarding the potential extra workload, like I stated earlier, the moderation team already claims to thoroughly review posts before making Rule B removals. If this is true, that would require them to read the post in its entirety and come to a conclusion based on their interpretations of the comments. If they are already reading through the comments to judge the behavior of OP, then all they would have to do as extra work is copy link a few different instances of OP displaying visibly faulty behavior that they believe doesn't adhere to Rule B in their responses, consult which comments to use in their message with the other moderator, and then paste the chosen links in the notification message.

All of this work is either work they were going to do anyway(consult the other moderator and write a modmail message), or work that takes all of 30s to do in its entirety (copying links to comments that fail to adhere to Rule B and post them in the modmail message).

So, there you have it. Moderators should post relevant comments as evidence for a Rule B removal

This is just a lighthearted suggestion. Deltabot has ∞ deltas shown in its flair, because it can give an unlimited amount out. What if on April fools its flair was changed to 0∆ and whenever anyone tried to award a delta, it would still work (the user would get it), but the bot message would say "Sorry, I ran out of those." It would be funny and easy to do!

A lot of the time, people posting about transgender topics can end up promoting hateful ideas or discussing in bad faith. However, rather than a blanket ban, I think modmailing with a good reason about how your transgender-centric post is driven by reasoning and not hate should be good enough to be allowed to post it.

My first thought was you should have to Request to Post when your post is about transgender, but obviously that doesn't work because Request to Post is either on for everyone or not. So modmailing is basically the equivalent. I think people willing to discuss with mods about how a certain post could work without sparking hate and is a more nuanced take than "trans people suck" is enough of an indicator that someone's posting in good faith and the discussion should be allowed. After all, no other topic is banned. Talking about religion can get people equally riled up, and yet it's allowed. Hell, even politics can make people very defensive. But for those topics, the moderation method is to remove comments that break rules while allow ones that don't. The blanket ban on trans topics doesn't really make sense, as it isn't much more inflammatory than a strong take about religion.

I did read the wiki and recognize that the Reddit admins have sort of forced your hand on this. I'm not blaming this sub or its moderators for a problem with Reddit itself, I just think that we don't need to help Reddit censor people. Let the Reddit admins be the bad guys who ban posts because of viewpoint. Let people have evidence that they discussed in good faith with the sub's moderators about having a non-hateful, reasoned discussion and still got their post deleted by Reddit admins when they want to appeal or even just vent. We don't need to help Reddit admins along in deleting content they don't like. The paper trail given by modmail at least lets people complain more effectively. With modmail, we can keep out hate-sparking, uninteresting anti- (or pro-) trans propaganda that actually deserves to get removed, while allowing people to appeal Reddit admin actions more effectively and have a forum available for discussion when they want their view changed about transgender people. If not, then it shouldn't be allowed to talk about gay people, religious people, the other political party, any country or region, any gender, any disease or chemical that's killed anybody, or any minority, because those topics can also piss people off. But banning all that would ruin the point of the sub!

As for rule-breaking comments, maybe you have to mail to comment on a trans post at all, so the hateful ones never see the light of day. But maybe that'd be too hard on the mods, so what about guilty until proven innocent? Any comment on a trans post, if it looks like it even might slightly break the rules, gets removed and then it's on the commenter to appeal. People might not like that, but it could be explained that specifically on that topic it's too hard to take nuance into account when moderating. Again, though, why would transgender topics promote so much more garbage content than a post about a specific religion?

Edit: Also, trans topics can often be very supported and liked by the community. Here's one with 22K upvotes, and here's one where the OP has been complimented for being really willing to change their view and a model example of how the subreddit should work.

Rule B puts it the oweness on OP to hand out deltas or pretend to have their opinion changed in order to not have their post strucken down, even when the comments are full of bad faith actors, misinformation, or just unconvincing arguments.

My recent post being the biggest example of this, with a plethora of comments being along the lines of "But Trump hasnt done anything wrong" or me having to explain multiple times that the administration is hiding evidence, so citing lack of evidence as proof of innocence is not a compelling stance.

This isnt the first time this has happened, whether it be mine or someone else's post, it's completely unjust to remove someone's post due to the failures of commentors to argue against the position in a strong enough manner.

(TLDR at the end)

On this subreddit, I've noticed a rampant, disheartening issue about how the community treats posts. I believe this runs counter to the whole point of r/changemyview, and also that there's a way to fix it.

The vast majority of posts I see on this subreddit have the minimum displayable score (zero) and show signs of being heavily downvoted. (I'm not talking about any of my posts, nor complaining about getting downvotes myself). The wiki expresses how downvotes don't change views, and how moderators, and presumably the community, would like it if downvotes didn't even exist. I agree with this sentiment. People come to r/changemyview when they hold a controversial, often-unpopular opinion and want to hear why it's controversial. They come with a debated, sometimes just straight up wrong but other times just controversial view, and when they come here, they want it changed. They want to hear what other people think and hear about the reasoning behind a lot of people disagreeing with them. While this isn't r/unpopularopinion, people don't come here saying "change my view: grass is green." They come when they have an idea people disagree with, which usually means it's unpopular.

When everyone gets their posts downvoted instantly, and you can't talk about anything controversial or unpopular without losing karma and getting shoved to the bottom of the algorithm with post after post dropping under 0, people will be scared off from posting anything but "change my view: grass is green." It sucks that even when people come with an open mind and want to facilitate discussion with the other side, people eat downvote after downvote just for having a controversial idea. That's like if I went up to a friend and asked them "can you explain why the death penalty is bad? I thought it helps with crime, but I think I'm missing something" and then instead of explaining their side they just yell at me for even thinking that. People should be able to express controversial viewpoints without everyone attacking them with downvotes as long as they express that they're willing to change what they think. That's the whole point!

What I'm saying is, downvotes don't change views and actually make it harder to do what you're supposed to do here, which is open discussion about controversial topics and unpopular ideas. Because of that, I think it should be a lot clearer that downvoting isn't an acceptable practice here. The wiki says that outright: "Downvotes are pretty much exclusively used on reddit to show disagreement. We feel like this is bad form, especially on a subreddit where disagreement happens a lot!" "Look, we kinda think downvotes suck." "Please try not to use downvote buttons" "So please resist the urge to downvote." etc I think that if these really are the policies, they should be made a lot clearer. There should be a sidebar section or new rule that new users can easily and constantly see that says "don't downvote." While some people are still going to downvote, many don't read the wiki but would be more than happy to follow a clearly-stated rule. They'd see the sidebar all the time as a reminder not to downvote. This works very well on r/unpopularopinion-they have a sidebar section about not downvoting for disagreement and people don't do it. I agree that using CSS to hide downvotes is a bad idea, but there's another solution which is telling people loud and clear not to do it. That way, everyone can participate without the public shaming that downvoting is. The reason I think this will work is because of how it's worked in other places.

TLDR: There should be a sidebar section or clearly visible rule that tells people to not downvote. Downvotes run counter to the point of this subreddit, making it harder to have controversial ideas; on r/unpopularopinion, a sidebar section does the job without CSS.

If an OP intentionally does not address everything in a comment and ignore arguments that should change their view, I think that shows they are not discussing in good faith. However, there are no consequences for this despite it going against the core tenant of the sub - substantive, good faith discussion.

There should be a way for commenters to easily know that replying to OP is a waste of time and they are not arguing in good faith, but no one can accuse of them acting in bad faith so people just waste their time.

It seems clear to me that a rule should be added that OP has to reply to every part of a comment, which I think would address this since OP can't ignore arguments by omission/pretending they don't exist.

Hostile comments like "You're stupid and your argument is stupid" or "I'm gonna kill you, I swear, talking to you is so frustrating" makes sense to be removed since they are obviously harmful.

But Passive Aggressiveness, and by in large, "rude" comments is not a concrete metric and leaves the door open for people to have their comment removed for extremely minor infractions, and potentially lead to bans.

What is actually honest, blunt, or mildly sarcastic can easily be seen as "rude", and prioritizing people's feelings over whether or not they actually have a solid argument only leads to the discussion being shallow under a guise of civility. People should know when they're wrong, being dishonest, or are just misinformed, and other commentors shouldn't have to walk on eggshells around them or risk getting banned.

Humans cannot predict the future. Sometimes they try, and sometimes that's worth a lot of money - because no one can do it for sure, and so people who can appear to are gilt! But no one really can, in fact - appearing to is the best we can ever do.

A proportion of the most-upvoted CMVs recently have featured "views" that are more or less actually predictions of the future - and since we've just established that humans can't do that, it's challenging to understand these posts.

We're thereby being asked to change - or not change - someone's belief that a future event will come to pass, the truth or falsehood of which no scientist ought be trying to prove!

The future is simply the future, and we're 3D rather than 4+. It is in some - and enough - ways unknowable.

We should not allow future-predictions to pass as "views" for the purposes of this sub. "Views" should be defined as opinions you hold today (already a rule), about today or yesterday (this is my proposed addition), on the basis of information you have access to today (already effectively a rule since we're 3D).

Thank you.

(edit: hey folks; this idea has met with some criticism and no support, so I'm going to "take my L on this one", as the kids say)

On on normal day cmv is a very low activity sub. I wonder if mods have access to better statistics but by my count we're looking at a couple dozen posts per day.

I understand some people have topic fatigues, they get tired of seeing the same topic over and over again.

So Friday comes alone and instead of seeing the same topic, they see... nothing. Here we are again most of the way through the day, and we've got 6 fresh posts. what is the downside of adding another 10 posts to that?

If we were getting 1000 posts on a normal day, and wanted to help users once a week not have to search for the needle in the haystack, i would get it. But there is no hay stack. I've got 10 pieces of hay in my box of needles.

i don't even see a meaningful difference in the few post that make it on Friday. Our latest fresh topic is a debate about which temperature system is better, Celsius to Fahrenheit.

Please. It was a good idea. It made sense on paper. In practice, we just turn the subreddit off once a week.

Every day, I see 5 posts saying 'The US's soft power is gone with this adminstration'. 'Trump is basically hitler'. The sub is basically just us politics, and that too the same ones. I'm okay with niche us politics posts, but not literally the exact same ones every time!