Authors, please see an important edit just for you all the way at the bottom.

Reddit recently sent out surveys to a bunch of you as part of a new feedback program. I signed /r/MilitaryStories up for this so we could get a feel for things. I'm going to share some of the data, and address some of your concerns about rules and whatnot that you expressed. You may feel free to ask questions of anyone on the mod team here, or via PM if you don't want to talk to us here. All of your responses were fully anonymized - we have no idea who said what.

Number of surveys sent: 921

Number of surveys completed: 217

Response Rate: 23.78%

Benchmark Response Rate: 12.11%

So, higher response rate than average by almost double. Incredible. Only two of the response returned were removed for harassment. (Negative comments were not removed, only those deemed harassing. So we didn't see those two.)

94.93% of respondents are satisfied with your community.

Very Satisfied: 63.13%

Satisfied: 31.80%

Neither satisfied nor dissatisfied: 3.69%

Dissatisfied: 0.46%

Very Dissatisfied: 0.92%

Benchmark overall satisfaction: 75.94%

Holy shit. Almost 20% higher satisfaction than the benchmark. Thank you. We love you all too.

0% reported seeing harmful content a few times a week or more.

That says a lot, especially when some of our stories are so gritty. A lot of that is thanks to you for helping to report it. On top of that, only ONE person reported not feeling safe to share in this community. (Whoever you are, please share if you have something to say! I hope no one is afraid.)

94.21% agree that the rules are appropriate for this community. (Benchmark: 81.90%)

90.32% agree that the rules are clear and easy to understand. (Benchmark: 79.99%)

The rules revisions didn't go up because this data wasn't available. They will be up soon after the mod team talks a bit and we hear anything else y'all have to say.

90.08% feel that the community moderator team appropriately and consistently enforces the rules of this community. (Benchmark: 67.77%)

70.69% agrees that the community moderator team takes feedback from the community into account when making decisions. (Benchmark: 46.18%)

94.44% trust the moderators to make decisions that benefit the community. (Benchmark: 72.62%)

16.43% have interacted directly with a moderator (Benchmark: 15.31%)

88.57% that interacted directly were satisfied with that interaction.(Benchmark: 68.34%)

74.06% have observed interactions between moderators and other users. (Benchmark: 43.15%)

So, some takeaways:

• The biggest gripe was with our three day rule. So let's talk about that. We put it in initially because we had some VERY prolific authors that were putting up multiples posts per day. Our front page was literally the same folks every day. So we slowed it down a bit. Having said that, we can always make exceptions. Example: You have one story to tell in two or three parts. We could let someone post that in consecutive days. We just don't want the same one, two or three people posting every day.

• /u/BikerJedi is the only one who got called out by name, good and bad. So, the bad: THIS IS NOT MY SUB! I don't think it is, and I'm sorry if anyone felt I was running it that way. I just happen to have the most free time in my life to devote to /r/MilitaryStories out of the mod team. Because of that, I am the most visible. NOT MY SUB! Also, I repost once a month because I have fans who want to read my work. That's it. I post once a month for my personal content (unless I have new stories) and I post most moderator announcements. The other mods all work more than I do, have younger children, or have something else going on in their lives that doesn't allow them to be here as often is all. That is also why we invited /u/fullinversion82 and /u/FluffyClamShell to help moderate here - to provide some variety.

As we continue to grow the mod team with the subreddit, I personally want to try to get someone from a foreign service or another service besides /r/Army and /r/Marines to be a moderator. But I think we were very progressive and forward thinking (and brave!) to take such a huge risk to hire a Marine anyway. (Sorry, /u/FluffyClamShell knows I'm just giving her shit)

To all of you who said such nice things about me...aaawwwwwww. :) I love you all too. Again, I'm the most visible, but I promise, the other mods do a lot around here as well.

• Other than the three day rule, almost everyone agrees our rules are appropriate. The will be slightly tweaked soon to be more clear and concise.

• Most of you felt that /r/MilitaryStories has improved over the last year. We sure do try.

• For the few that were worried about heavy handed moderation: We are trying to curate a very specific experience here, so it requires heavy moderation. The vast majority of our users understand that. Sorry, not sorry.

• Some of you were upset about being in trouble for calling out an author. Again, you may feel a story is BS. The entire mod team is made up of veterans, some of us combat veterans. We are not the end all be all of that, and we don't claim to be. We HAVE banned bullshit authors. We have removed bullshit stories. We will continue to do so when we think we need to. We actually had to deal (again) with a user today. If you feel a story is BS, PM the moderation team and explain why. Downvote it, then move on and forget about it. We will handle it as we see fit. Don't get offended if we don't remove it - we aren't saying you are wrong, we are just saying it doesn't violate our rules as we see them. To be clear, Stolen Valor is bullshit and we will not allow it.

If you have anything to say or ask of any of us, have at it! Otherwise, just use the space to bullshit with each other, and it will stay up for a few days to give folks a chance to see it.

4/20/22: 120,994 subscribers

4/19/23: 130,023 subscribers

4/20/22: Mean daily page views: 19,062

4/19/23: Mean daily page views: 44,600

EDIT: Forgot to add AUTHORS: Please, try to include glossaries for any and all acronyms, and slang terms unique to the military you are using. It really helps out our civilian readers. Thank you so much. :)