We'd like input whether we should allow news aggregator sites as link posts. There are pros and cons to this:

Pros:

• Depending on the aggregator, can present a more well-rounded and potentially less biased view of the news (such as Ground News)
• Can update as the event progresses - ie if someone submitted a post about a hurricane, the aggregator could update with new updates (depending on the post title/discussion, mods would either allow or remove future posts as duplicates)
• Convenience of several sources in 1 place

Cons:

• Less visibility on the actual source (ie need to go to the article to determine where it's sourcing)
• The sheer volume of articles can be overwhelming, making it hard to discern important information
• The quality of articles can vary greatly depending on the sources included in the aggregator
• Aggregated articles may provide a surface-level overview rather than in-depth analysis.

We don't get many of these posts but wanted the community's pulse on approach to it. Let us know your thoughts in the poll and/or comments

View Poll

Title change: What are common arguments against collapse, and how do you debate these?

Any question/point is allowed that has some relation to collapse! It could be about collapse itself, granular topics of it (overshoot, climate change, inequality, technology, politics, energy usage, peak X, EROEI, economic and social resilience and adaptation, innovations, urban design, car dependency, etc), observations of it (climate change, inequality, etc), whether it'll occur, how it is occurring, when it will end, what post-collapse might look like it, etc. If it's a question you've heard, have hypothetically considered, or think could occur, we want to hear (and debunk) it

To help define 'collapse' visit our common question on it

We have started off the thread with some caricatures and their questions. Please add more, and add your own thoughts on why these caricatures are wrong :)

---------------------------------------------

For those familiar with the excellent podcast Breaking Down: Collapse, this would be similar to their "why we're wrong (or so they say)" type episodes. We'll use 'caricatures', like "Aunt Martha" or "Uncle Joe", to animinate questions or arguments we'd like to debate

• The intention of this post is to learn more about collapse and brainstorm ideas and responses against various (sometimes bad faithed) arguments of collapse
• The intention is NOT to change anyone's mind or actually argue if collapse is going to happen, but rather learn more about collapse, build out the wiki, and have a more comprehensive understanding to debate easier when they do arise
• We're amongst friends: please come up with Aunt/Uncle scenarios and play devil's advocate. If someone makes a counterpoint (like "Humanity has always had issues"), assume they're doing so from that standpoint. Animating with "Aunt/Uncle" might help. If anyone does seem trolly, don't respond further, just report for the mods to review
• Ask and answer your own caricatures just so you can share information others can learn from, and others can respond as well
• "Don't engage" could be an answer to many of these questions, and whilst that's a fine response, please don't overly meme with this response

Reminder to please mind our rules, in particular Rule 1: Be respectful to others. The idea here is not to attack eachother, but attack their (caricature's) arguments. Let's keep things good faithed. We will not remove comments for misinformation that are presented as counterpoints/caricatures, but if anyone appears to be trolling, we will action accordingly.

---------------------------------------------

Some examples of caricatures and arguments against them are: (shamelessly asked/answered by chatgpt):

1. Aunt Beth says "I don't get it, why should I care about a few degrees of global warming?"  (linked post)
2. Uncle Bob says "Human ingenuity has always found a way. We'll innovate our way out of this crisis too, just like we always have."
   1. Debate Point: Discuss the limits of technological solutions and the unprecedented scale of current challenges like climate change and resource depletion.
3. Aunt Linda says "Civilizations have collapsed before, and life always goes on. We'll rebuild and be stronger for it."
4. Debate Point: Highlight the differences between past collapses and the global scale of today's interconnected systems. Discuss the potential for a much larger impact on a global scale.
5. "Artificial intelligence and automation will solve our productivity issues and lead us to a new era of prosperity."
6. "Climate models are unreliable. They can't predict the weather next week, let alone the climate decades from now."
7. "Free markets and capitalism will adjust to any challenges. Economic growth will continue indefinitely."
8. "Renewable energy is the silver bullet. If we just switch to solar and wind, all our problems will be solved."

We would like to ask the community for feedback and advice on moderating Twitter content and would appreciate your comments and poll votes

The mod team has consensus that these Twitter posts do not belong in r/collapse:

• Content that breaks other r/collapse rules, such as low quality, memes, not collapse related, etc
• Content which has a non-Twitter source (for example, an article)
• Content which is not in-depth, such as simply posting an image with no description

We also recognize the benefit of some Twitter content, particularly for credible users and scientists who use the site for updates, where banning it could result in us missing out on relevant and important discussions here

With that in mind, do you have any thoughts on how you'd like to see Twitter content moderated here?

View Poll

Please vote if you're interested in us trialing designated posts for topical and casual chat. What this would look like:

• All posts would be linked in our normal "Weekly Observations" post, which would serve as both weekly obs post and also a "directory" for these posts - just a list of the threads with their links
• Comments in these threads should strive to stay on-topic, but is not required to be collapse related (however very appreciated!)

Some topics we could consider: (for starters just casual chat and questions?)

• Casual chat (no topic)
• Questions (such as questions you want to pose to r/collapse but not necessarily collapse-related nor post-worthy, such as "have we passed peak oil")
• Climate
• Energy
• Global politics
• Society and inequality (such as discussing cost of living, etc)

Some reasons to try this:

• Reddit is inherently post-based - they do have a chat function, but for several reasons we aren't very interested in using that. Submitting a post can sometimes be difficult, so conversations worthy of discussion can be missed if they aren't part of a post or mentioned in comments
• Discord is great (check out the collapse discord!), but has its own issues, primarily that chat is non-threaded (they have this function, but it normally leads to decreased discussion) and there is no way to sort comments beyond time
• It may reduce the barrier to learning about collapse and the nuances of it, as you can ask simple questions or quickly discuss something without a fancy post on it
• It may increase community engagement, as people can just talk about whatever they want in these posts

Some reasons NOT to do this:

• It will likely spread conversations across multiple posts, which the mods currently prevent through the "no duplicate posts" rule
• It may give bad faithed individuals, such as deniers or disrespectful, more avenues to abuse the community, however presumably the same would occur in normal posts and they would be promptly dealt with via mod actions
• It may "compete" with the discord for casual chat: we're not looking to compete with anyone, just bridge a gap in the reddit ecosystem of discussion, but it could take away from there as people find places to discussion these topics
• The mod team may not have resources to moderate it. We would either add tooling, expand the mod team, timeout people, lock, remove, etc as needed

​

We'd just trial it for starters, probably just a couple posts like "casual chat" and "questions", and can expand to other topics as candidates become clear (ie lots of discussion on that topic)

View Poll

Collection of all r/collapse subreddit updates

Please see below for subreddit changes since the last update, and use this post for open feedback on the sub.

Rule changes:

1. Rule 3 (Posts must be on-topic, focusing on collapse) updated for election content
   1. Added subrule: 3b. (01/2024-12/2024) Posts regarding the U.S. Election Cycle are only allowed on Tuesday's (0700 Tue - 1100 Wed UTC)
   2. This change is from the recent sub poll on how to handle election-related content
   3. As a reminder, all content must be related to collapse (including Tuesday election content)
   4. To minimize political content when viewing r/collapse, use this method to filter out the "Politics" flair
2. Rule 7 (Casual Friday enforcement) updated to allow in-depth image posts all days
   1. Previously: On-topic memes, jokes, short videos, image posts, polls, low effort to consume posts, and other less substantial posts are only allowed on Fridays
   2. Now: On-topic memes, jokes, short videos, image posts (excluding academic, scientific, or related content with a link to its reliable source), polls, low effort to consume posts, and other less substantial posts are only allowed on Fridays
   3. No functional change to the sub, as the mod team was largely already approving in-depth image posts on all days - this rule change aligns the rules to enforcement
   4. If you don't like Casual Friday or want to avoid the content, minimize this content by using the same filter flair method above on "Casual Friday" and "Low Effort" flairs

Subreddit changes:

1. Welcome our new moderators!
   1. Full mods: u/blackcatwizard, u/nephilim, and u/genericusername11101
   2. Comment mods: u/rocket_fuel_4_sale
2. We increased crowd control enforcement on comments - please ensure you're subscribed to the subreddit to prevent crowd control actioning your comments
3. Check out the collapse wiki changelog for changes there, and if you want to contribute, send us a modmail!
4. Sidebar changes
   1. Linked u/lastweekincollapse - everyone knows LWIC provides fantastic weekly (and ANNUAL) updates on collapse. They also highlight collapse and collapse-adjacent content on reddit (something the community wants!)
   2. Linked a new wiki page documenting all subreddit surveys (survey summary post coming soon!)
   3. Linked new Italian collapse subreddit: /r/collassoallitaliana/

We welcome any feedback or questions you have regarding these changes and updates.

Additionally, what are your thoughts on the state of the subreddit overall?

Herein are three sets of proposed clarifying and substantive changes to moderator removal process governing language. Current version at: https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/wiki/moderationguide#wiki_removing_moderators

1. Proposed: This is almost always a group decision

Current: This is almost always a consensus decision

2. Proposed: When possible, removal of a moderator should be a consensus decision made by the current active moderator team and should be approached with great care.

Current: Generally, removal of a moderator should be a consensus decision made by the current active moderator team should be approached with great care.

3. Proposed: If there is a majority in favor of removing the moderator, they will be removed. A majority is calculated by a threshold of 51% or more of those votes cast for or against, not including abstentions or those not casting a vote.

Current: If there is a majority in favor or removing the moderator, they will be removed.

Hello all,

We have realized our current rule 10 regarding the requirement for submission statements is vague when it comes to AI-generated content. While there is a requirement for text that is "original," using AI to write the statement is not currently explicitly banned. We are seeking community input on what standard to set.

While it can be challenging to determine which content is AI-generated, there are currently giveaways in the writing that make it fairly clear when the submission is generated by AI and not edited further.

Options include:

1. No restrictions on AI-generated statements
2. AI-generated statements must be disclosed
3. Partially AI-generated statements allowed, but do not count towards the requirement for 'original' content, similar to how direct quotes are treated today. (See proposed text below)
4. Forbid AI use in submission statement writing entirely.

Option 3 proposed text that would be added to rule 10: "They must not be entirely AI-generated, and the requirement for original content means the statement must have at least 150 characters written by the person posting to the subreddit. Statements with some AI-generated content must disclose that AI was used."

[Poll: Options 1-4]

No functional change to the rule, just expanding its description to help users understand when content is relevant to r/collapse vs another sub. The ones which have specifically been asked in the past are support and politics, but I included other questionable ones as well.

Current:

Posts must be focused on collapse. If the subject matter of your post has less focus on collapse than it does on issues such as prepping, politics, or economics, then it probably belongs in another subreddit.

Posts must be specifically about collapse, not the resulting damage. By way of analogy, we want to talk about why there are so many car accidents, not look at photos of car wrecks.

Proposed (changes in bold):

Posts must be focused on collapse. If the subject matter of your post has less focus on collapse than it does on issues such as prepping, politics, or economics, then it probably belongs in another subreddit.

Posts must be specifically about collapse, not the resulting damage. By way of analogy, we want to talk about why there are so many car accidents, not look at photos of car wrecks.

Further examples of specific topics and when they are vs are not related to collapse (related subs):

- Support ( r/CollapseSupport ): individual support (struggling with concept/knowledge of collapse) should be posted in r/CollapseSupport. Commentary on society and their support (such as systematic issues, research, most support-related news articles) are generally appropriate in r/collapse

- Politics ( r/politics ): must have connection to regional or global collapse, potentially via destabilized politics, social safety nets (such as loss of abortion rights, low income support, etc), increased inequality, decisions which perpetuate or exacerbate overshoot, etc

- Economic ( r/Economics r/economicCollapse ): generally same as politics

- Science and Research: provided there is a collapse relation, all is relevant to r/collapse

- Prepping ( r/preppers r/CollapsePrep ): *MUST* be collapse related to post here. If it's more general prepping, it should be posted in r/preppers. Please consult common questions ahead of posting

- Adaptation ( r/CollapsePrep ): posts about adaptation and resilience to collapse are generally allowed

- Low Effort and Casual Friday ( r/collapze ): Only allowed in the sub on Fridays

​

edits:

- removed "local" in "regional or global"

- removed extra line about making sure related to collapse

- separated prepping and adaptation

​

Thank you to the 1131 people who responded to the community survey! There were many takeaways. We'd like to share the results with you, but you're still welcome to take the survey as well.

View the Results

(Or Take the Survey)

General Observations : 2023 % (2021 %)

• 29% (27%) of respondents are based outside North America.
• 27% (27%) of respondents identified as female. 4% identified as non-binary.
• 21% (15%) of respondents identified as religious.
• 23% (26%) of respondents identified as anarchists.
• 52% (50%) of respondents think collapse is already happening, just not widely distributed yet.
• 60% (66%) of respondents think collapse is catabolic or a 20yr+ decline.
• 88% (81%) of respondents are satisfied with the overall state of r/collapse.
• 33% (41%) of respondents are satisfied with the overall state of Reddit.
• Rule 1: Moderators are fairly aligned with community expectations (could be 1% more strict).
• Rule 3: Moderators are fairly aligned with community expectations (could be 1% more strict).
• Rule 7: Moderators are fairly aligned with community expectations (could be 3% more strict).
• Rule 10: Moderators could be approximately 13% less strict when enforcing submission statements.

​

General feedback:

• Community would prefer fewer posts on news, politics, covid, individual support ( r/collapsesupport shoutout!) and more on academic, ecological, food, water, climate, energy, and adaptation
• AMAs: the most requested were Nate Hagens, William Rees, Daniel Schmachtenberger, James Hansen, Paul Beckwith, and John Michael Greer. All except Hansen and Rees have been approached previously. We'll reach out to Hansen and Rees, and potentially others recommended
• Book club: the most requested were Limits the Growth, Overshoot, and The heat will kill you first. If you're interested in facilitating book club, reach out to us! (it definitely needs a revival!)
• Your feedback on subreddit series (collapse series, skill series, etc) and resources was very helpful in prioritizing our efforts. There was also some interest in custom responses for more topical days, such as "Common Topic Tuesdays", "Resilience Thursdays", etc. It would likely be similar to Science Sundays where science and research are encouraged, though no difference in moderation: all posts allowed on Sunday, science posts allowed all days. Before/if we go ahead with this, we'll ask for sub permission, as always
• Survey participants dropped notably from 2021's version (1585 vs 1131)
• Sub growth was highest during peak pandemic and has since slowed (compare to subreddit stats)

A reminder Rule 3 states: "Posts must be specifically about collapse, not the resulting damage. By way of analogy, we want to talk about why there are so many car accidents, not look at photos of car wrecks." r/collapse is not r/badnewsoftheday and each post must relate to collapse through the submission statement. Help us keep a clean sub and enforce rules by reporting potentially rule breaking content.

The full 2021 survey results are here. Please continue to give us feedback on the survey with recommendations for new questions, removing questions, adding options, etc!

Collection of all r/collapse subreddit updates

Please see below for subreddit changes since the last update, and use this post for open feedback on the sub.

r/collapse and Reddit's recent issues

• r/collapse currently has no plans to migrate off reddit, and appears consensus that regardless where/if we migrate, we will maintain r/collapse for existing community here
• The mod team and several members of the community are engaged on potential alternatives we can foster, promote, or even migrate to, such as Lemmy, a custom website/forum, etc
• Please feel free to share your suggestions in this post!

Changes:

1. Science Sunday (potentially Causal Sunday)
   1. As a reminder, we are trialling "Science Sunday" in the sub, where Sundays are a designated day for in-depth research, science, etc content. Functionally, there are no changes to the rules of the sub. All normal content is allowed, and indepth content is allowed on all days.
   2. This has not made a huge impact to increasing in-depth engagement, but also arguably doesn't hurt it either. So for now we are opting to keep it
   3. Any feedback please engage on this post!
2. Requesting feedback: Common Topic Tuesday
   1. A proposal to curate posts outside Tuesday on topics which the mod team believes is over-represented in the community, but ON Tuesdays, allow these posts
   2. Details in this post
   3. Example: heatwave posts overtaking r/collapse content, so we temporarily add it as a "Common Topic" where mods will more strictly curate this content on all but Tuesday
3. New series: "Change My View"
   1. Similar to Common Question series, this series seeks to deepen our understanding of collapse, understand counterarguments, and debunk them
   2. See r/changemyview as examples of what we'd aim for
   3. Details in this post
   4. If you have ideas for topics we can debate, please feel free to propose them! (either in this post, that post, or by modmailing us)
4. New common questions
   1. What are your thoughts on the notion of hope?
   2. What are the most relevant perspectives of the future?

Highlighted wider Collapse community:

• r/collapse "Science and Research" flair and other content we want to highlight
  • Discussion: Reducing Personal Climate Risk to Reduce Personal Climate Anxiety
  • The Titan sub tragedy is a perfect allegory for our civilization and it's future
  • Great overview of AMOC
  • Many posts on recent ocean sea surface temps - such as this one

​

Lastly, it's been a trying last few months for the r/collapse team as reddit overall is impacted by the API decisions. Overall mod engagement is arguably down, but we still remain committed to our community, no matter where what platform we're on. We are working offline on these initiatives:

• New sub wiki
• New survey

We welcome any feedback or questions you have regarding these changes and updates.

Additionally, what are your thoughts on the state of the subreddit overall?

I am proposing a "change my view" series, otherwise known as "why we're wrong or so they say" (a few episodes from BDC), which highlight common counterarguments to collapse and debate them. The intention is for the community to debate against this view point, and also encourage the community to play devils advocate for the claim to further discussion and of our collective knowledge our predicament and debate against it

This may be used to build our wiki. We could also decide whether to crosspost (with mod permissions) in other communities who may be interested in formally taking the counterargument's side and actually debate it. Of course, any engagement in the post would need to respect sitewide and r/collapse rules.

Some ideas for this series: (definitely not a final list, literally just things that popped into my head we could consider)

• Technology will save us
• Humans are resilient and adaptable; we'll find a way out of this
• Humans since the dawn of time have claimed the world is ending, why is this time different?
• We can use geoengineering to deflect away energy
• Green growth will save us
• Capitalism inherently accounts for malicious practices, so the market will deliver and save us
• Governments will bond together in face of our impending crisis to save us
• Governments and the "ruling class" would never allow the entire cilivization to fail

User recommmendation:

We shouldn't care about the sea level rise. Let me explain. Since I'm a kid, and in multiple movies/fiction work, the "sea level rise" is the number 1 threat due to climate change. To be fair, that seems to be mostly US centric (but this sub is US centric as well, whether we like it or not). But, if we look into the topic in detail: sea levels will definitely rise, that's a fact. However, the speed of the rise is soooo slow... Compared to any other climate-change induced problem. We're talking, in the worst-case-apocalyptic-scenario, 1 meter of sea level rise by 2070, something like that. Sure, that's terrible, but that is in 50 years. We're facing imminent threats, like this year, next year. We could see billions of casualties during the next one or two decades. We should really not care about the sea level rise adaptation, at all. That's so overrated. And still, that's the main "danger" that people (Americans) talk about when you mention climate change. No wonder they're not in a rush to change things... "Florida will be flooded under 30 years", yeah, ok, that doesn't sound that urgent. So on the other hand, maybe, maybe, that sea level rise threat was the pushed narrative by oil industries on purpose, because they knew that's still a distant threat... But I don't have any proof to back that up.

Similar to common question series, we may sticky it for visibility

​

As proposed in comments, add a new wiki page "Heatwave Names" which is community editable so people can add new entries. The idea is to name heatwaves after corporations (or individuals) arguably responsible for our current climate crisis

It's mostly a page in jest, so might be more suitable to r/collapze, but also the idea is to actually use these names, and maybe even spread the idea and names beyond r/collapse

This post is just to formalize a community-based steering team for r/collapse, specifically with the idea of whether to migrate to another platform, and evaluating options for that. These members will have direct access to the mod team's discussions, to incorporate more community in the discussion who appear to have valuable insight

Member requirements:

1. Be in good-standing in the community
2. Be interested in community direction
3. Help evaluate if we need to migrate and/or migrate the community to another platform

Initial access includes 1 channel (a NEW #the-great-migration), with further access voted by mods.

These members are not mods of r/collapse. Adding and removing a member (such as, not meeting requirements) requires an action vote.

Around a year ago we discussed the following: https://www.reddit.com/r/collapsemoderators/comments/w4yj72/feedback_request_addressing_common_topics/ post.

Main concern around the original idea would be the maintenance and upkeep of the common topic wikis, etc.

New idea to addressing common topics:

Hypothetical Rule 14.

Common Topic Tuesday: Every Tuesday we will allow posts which are simply updates or discussions on any current common topics. Examples being: Arctic/Antarctic Ice Extent, Lake Mead/Powell, SST, El Nino Weather Records, etc. Update tweets, Simple Charts/Images, etc. which are normally considered low effort, would be allowed. Memes would not.

Posts regarding any current common topic, outside of Tuesday, will be removed unless it meats one of the following criteria:

• -New research and/or projections released on the topic
• -New significant milestone reached
• -New impact of topic
• -Law/legislation regarding topic

The following are examples of things that will be removed outside of common topic Tuesday.

• -New public statement by official, celebrity, blogger that isn't associated to the above accepted list.
• -New record high temp for a specific location.
• -Small incremental changes to data that were already in projections.
• -Speculation/What-if Scenarios on the topic without data/reasoning to back up said speculation.
• -Local Observations regarding topic, unless said local observation can be linked to cascading impacts to wider collapse.

Maintenance: Each Tuesday we will post a pinned "Common Topic Tuesday - Voting" post (in place of our local observations post), in which, we will allow our users to upvote or downvote each current common topic (and any newly proposed topics) to determine if it maintains it's status as a common topic. This would be useful for something like Lake Mead/Powell, where it'd easily be considered common a year ago, this year we'd likely have removed it from the list and it'd be a free to post topic any day of the week.

​

Thoughts?

I'll be hosting an open discussion in voice, on the Collapse Discord, this Sunday at 3PM CST (view in your time zone).

We'll be discussing the current state of Reddit and future of the online Collapse Community in light of recent events. We'll also invite discussion regarding Reddit alternatives and answer any questions related to the state of moderation on r/collapse and across Reddit in general.

If you have any questions and are unable to make the call, feel free to let us know in the comments below.

##Join the Discord Here

Reddit is changing how clients can use their API, which is expected to result in the end of all unofficial mobile apps. This will have a large affect in almost all users, and some are understandably worried how it might affect our community. r/collapse is not migrating to another platform at this time, as currently there are no viable alternatives in our opinion

For anyone not planning to visit reddit anymore after these changes, please use this post to discuss alternatives to r/collapse, such as places to doomscroll, appreciate what we have now, be a collapse-minded community, etc. One place we can certainly recommend for this is the Collapse Discord, which is a lively place to discuss all aspects collapse. Also check out and contribute to our common question "What online community alternatives are there to r/collapse?"

At r/collapse, we are no different than many subs - most of our traffic is from mobile, so also noting, don't be surprised if you see less engagement in the sub with these changes

Pageviews per Platform

​

Uniques per Platform

​

For more information, please visit:

• Sign a petition
• Discussions:
  • https://www.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/13xh1e7/an_open_letter_on_the_state_of_affairs_regarding
  • https://www.reddit.com/r/apolloapp/comments/13ws4w3/had_a_call_with_reddit_to_discuss_pricing_bad/

​

This is a draft proposal for a sticky post:

Meta posts are defined as any post focused on discussing subreddit moderation, proposals, improvement ideas, or questions regarding policies or moderation.

Meta posts such as this post would still be posted here in the main subreddit to ensure maximum visibility and to facilitate feedback on pending or proposed changes.

We think a metasub would serve to help consolidate feedback and proposals. Many users do not use the 'meta' flair and their posts or feedback is difficult to find over time. Our modsub (r/collapsemoderators) is publicly viewable, but users are not allowed to post or comment in it. We think this new subreddit and approach would also help to reduce low-effort feedback posts overall.

Let us know your thoughts on this proposal and the notion of a metasub for /r/Collapse in general.

We are going to trial "Science Sundays" in the sub, with the goal to encourage science and research discussion in the sub. This is from the recent feedback post

What does Science Sunday look like? Functionally, there are no changes to the sub. All normal posts are allowed, science posts are not treated specially. However, this gives users who want to have these discussions a time where there may be more of these posts live. Science posts are still allowed during all times, including outside Science Sunday

We will aim to put up a sticky on Sundays for a while to remind everyone, but otherwise it will be noted in the sidebar

Please feel free to give us feedback on this change, or anything else in the sub!

This is a draft for a common question. It's not necessarily a 'common question', but one I'd like to ask to help build the basis for a page and item on the wiki. I wanted to run it by everyone first, since there are many ways of formulating it.

What might you add to a chart such as this? Have you seen anything similar?

The r/Collapse community encompasses a variety of frames for the future, ranging from survivalism, the transition movement, Deep Adaptation, NTHE, to others. There are also many contrasting perspectives in communities such as r/Futurology, but they are far less present here.

With an awareness of this spectrum, how would we best go about creating a map of these various frames, strategies, ideologies, and/or social movements, positive or negative (towards a likelihood of progress or civilization collapse). Ideally, this could be used as the basis for a page on the subreddit wiki which outlined some of the most relevant approaches and perspectives.

The Y-axis isn’t currently used, so the placement is not indicative of anything. Anyone is welcome to add to or edit the chart directly with this link as well

EDIT: maybe we could make the post a poll post, with 6 options: the 4 mentioned below, "Other (please leave a comment or upvote community ideas)", and "Do not make any changes for this" for an easy way to see what people prefer

​

The mod team would like feedback on some ways to revive the presence of research-based content in our sub. We've received feedback from some of you over the years how the sub has changed as its grown in popularity, to the detriment of this content, and hope to find ways to change that. We acknowledge the value of such content, but we understand that it often gets drowned out by other types of posts, such as bad-news-of-the-day.

Some ideas below, however, we would like to hear from you and get your thoughts on how we can better approach research-based content. We may trial various options depending on feedback.

1. Stickied post for research-based content: Similar to the weekly observation post, create a stickied post in the sub specifically for research-based content.
2. "Science Sundays": Similar to Casual Fridays, designate a specific day of the week (e.g., every Sunday) for research-based posts only. This would increase visibility of these posts.
3. Promote r/collapsescience: Encourage crossposting from r/collapsescience. This doesn't change content visibility in r/collapse (it could still not reach top), but may have more visibility and divert discussion to one spot, r/collapsescience
4. Separate flair for research posts: Create a new flair specifically for research-based posts. This will allow users to filter these posts themselves and easily find the type of content they're interested in. However, we would lose the topical flair ("climate", etc)

We're open to other suggestions and ideas as well. We want to create a sub that is informative, engaging, and relevant to our community. We believe that research-based content is an important part of that, and we hope to see more of it in the future.

Ultimately, the community largely drives the subreddit they want to see (mods do have an impact, but just to enforce our agreed rules). You can help drive that, see this comment from u/letstalkufos for how you can help.

https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/wiki/claims/

Suggesting to add some more climate misinformation claims to the misinfo guide. Disclaimer, I literally just asked ChatGPT to suggest some new stuff, but I agree with all the recommendations and have made minor edits (really to the provably false vs unproven part)

​

1. "The earth has a constantly changing climate."
   1. Provably False (Half-truth)
   2. Earth's climate has changed throughout history, with fluctuations in temperature, precipitation, and other climate variables. However, the current warming trend is happening at a rate that is unprecedented in human history, and is largely attributed to human activities [1, 2]. When presented as a refutation of anthropogenic climate change, this claim is a falsehood.
   3. Source: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). (2021, April 27). Climate Change: Vital Signs of the Planet.
2. "The sun is causing global warming."
   1. Provably False
   2. Scientific consensus is that changes in solar activity are not a significant factor in the current warming trend. While solar output does fluctuate over time, satellite measurements show that it has not increased in recent decades, while temperatures have continued to rise.
   3. Source: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). (2020, February 27). The Sun and Climate.
3. "Climate models are unreliable."
   1. Unproven
   2. Climate models are important tools for predicting future climate change and assessing the impacts of different mitigation and adaptation strategies. While no model can perfectly simulate the complexity of the Earth's climate system, multiple lines of evidence support the accuracy of climate models, including their ability to reproduce past climate changes and their agreement with observed climate trends.
   3. A more complete answer comes from Skeptical Science (complete with peer-reviewed papers, charts, etc. to back it up): "While there are uncertainties with climate models, they successfully reproduce the past and have made predictions that have been subsequently confirmed by observations."
   4. Source: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). (2021, March 31). Climate Modeling 101.
4. "CO2 is not a pollutant."
   1. Provably False
   2. CO2 is a greenhouse gas that traps heat in the atmosphere, contributing to global warming. While CO2 is a natural component of the Earth's atmosphere, human activities such as burning fossil fuels and deforestation have significantly increased its concentration, leading to changes in the Earth's climate.
   3. Source: United States Environmental Protection Agency. (2021, March 8). Carbon Dioxide (CO2) and Climate Change.
5. "Climate change is a hoax perpetuated by scientists for funding."
   1. Provably False
   2. There is no evidence to support the claim that scientists are perpetuating a hoax about climate change for financial gain. The overwhelming majority of climate scientists agree that climate change is real and primarily caused by human activities, and their work is subject to rigorous peer review and scrutiny.
   3. Source: Cook, J., Oreskes, N., Doran, P. T., Anderegg, W. R. L., Verheggen, B., Maibach, E. W., Carlton, J. S., Lewandowsky, S., Skuce, A. G., Green, S. A., & Nuccitelli, D. (2016). Consensus on consensus: a synthesis of consensus estimates on human-caused global warming. Environmental Research Letters, 11(4), 048002.
6. "CO2 is good for plants."
   1. Provably False
   2. While plants need carbon dioxide (CO2) to grow, it is only one of many factors that influence plant growth. Increasing CO2 levels can have both positive and negative effects on plants, depending on the species, nutrient availability, and other environmental factors. However, the primary concern with rising CO2 levels is their contribution to global warming and climate change.
   3. Source: Kimball, B. A. (2016). Crop responses to elevated CO2 and interactions with H2O, N, and temperature. Current Opinion in Plant Biology, 31, 36–43.
7. "A warmer Earth is better for humans because we can farm more."
   1. Provably False
   2. While warmer temperatures may lead to increased agricultural productivity in some regions, they also bring a range of negative impacts, including more frequent and severe heat waves, droughts, floods, and other extreme weather events. These can disrupt food systems, reduce crop yields, and threaten the livelihoods and food security of millions of people, particularly in vulnerable regions. Additionally, global warming also poses a range of other risks to human health and well-being, including the spread of diseases, sea-level rise, and more frequent and severe natural disasters.
   3. Source: Lobell, D. B., & Gourdji, S. M. (2012). The influence of climate change on global crop productivity. Plant Physiology, 160(4), 1686–1697.

For a more detailed breakdown of these, and other mistruths around climate science, please refer to 218 separate climate change myths

Edits:

• to dover's recommendations
• to steve's recommendations

Changes, specifically to subpoints under point 1 in the mod guide. Also addded point "The mod in question's vote is not considered as part of "consensus". Emphasis the inactivity process is to minimize security risk of inactive mods with permissions

https://www.reddit.com/r/collapse/wiki/moderationguide/#wiki_removing_moderators

Removing Moderators

Sometimes it unfortunately becomes necessary to remove a moderator. This is almost always a consensus decision. Only in very exceptional circumstances will this decision be taken unilaterally and then it must only be undertaken as a last resort.

Removing a mod can be done for several reasons including but not limited to:

1. A long period of inactivity. After a moderator becomes inactive for a period of several months or even years, they may be removed from the moderation team. An inactive moderator poses only potential threat in that their account may be targeted for hacking, while providing no benefit since they do not do any work.
   1. "Inactive": far fewer mod actions than the average mod, not active in the moderator community (e.g. Discord, advice, special mod duties, etc)
   2. Inactive mods with no moderator permissions do not need voted on for "general process" inactivity, as they present no security risk. The mod team can restore their permissions when requested, and the mod can participate in team activities despite the "no permission" status
   3. The general process for removing inactive mods with permissions:
      1. Review inactive mods (recommendation: notably fewer actions/activity than other mods, such as <100 mod actions in 12 months)
      2. Action vote reaching out to the inactive mods on changing their status due to inactivity
      3. Reach out to individual mods with options such as: no change (same permissions), remove permissions (remain a mod), change to comment mod (fewer permissions, if they intend to mod as they visit the sub), or demod
      4. If no response from mod, use "Other methods of removal"
   4. Other methods of removal, if the general process is not sufficient (such as, mod wanting to stay around, and mod team disagrees with that outcome)
      1. Normal demod process, but the team might consider intermediate options to demodding (such as permissions changes)
      2. See example for inactive mod justification
2. A serious instance of misconduct and/or a pattern of misconduct. This can range from a serious abuse of power (unilaterally removing a fellow moderator without just cause or consensus is considered to be a serious abuse of power), or it could be the result of many smaller instances that build up over time and are not resolved in a manner which indicates the mod in question will follow the rules in the future.
3. Posing an imminent threat to the well being of the sub itself. One example could be: a mod goes rogue, kicks all of the mods below them, starts mass banning users for no reason, starts mass removing threads for no reason, etc. Another could be any clear indications that a moderator’s account has been hacked. These are some of the few situations wherein a unilateral banning is warranted. After the initial incident is over, a review process will be initiated to ensure that the unilateral ban was warranted.

Generally, removal of a moderator should be a consensus decision made by the current active moderator team should be approached with great care. The mod in question's vote is not considered as part of "consensus". All parties should attempt to remain civil and straightforward through the discussion period. Once it’s agreed that a removal process is warranted, a discussion on this matter should happen in a specially created Discord group wherein all the currently active moderators and the top moderator are invited to participate. The moderator whose removal is being discussed is not invited to this group, but rather will be engaged with by appropriate members of the team. After the discussion period a vote is typically tallied. If there is a majority in favor or removing the moderator, they will be removed.

In the case of a unilateral removal that was made under emergency circumstances, if the decision is later contested, a similar process can be undertaken.

​

EDITS:

• grammar
• added that mod in question's vote isnt considered
  • The mod in question's vote is not considered as part of "consensus".
• change:
  • from
    • discuss with team and action vote whether to remove mod or remove permissions
  • to
    • If no response from mod, use "Other methods of removal"
• change:
  • from

1. Discuss or present thorough justification the mod should be fully demodded (as opposed to one of the options in general process)
2. This removal process should be voted on either in #action-votes or in r/collapsemoderators

• to

1. Normal demod process, but the team might consider intermediate options to demodding (such as permissions changes)
2. See example for inactive mod justification

​

​

​

What are your plans for the far future? This could include retirement plans (how much to save, whether to invest, whether to use retirement accounts, etc), preparations for collapse/climate change/resiliency, where you might live, who with, etc.

Comments suggesting suicide as a plan will be removed, as it is not the purpose of this post. Our guide on suicidal content: guide on suicidal content

Please keep all discussion "far future" (10+ years) - if you are or will be retired soon, please indicate that timeline in your comment (or better, comment in the "near future" post), as someone retiring soon will probably have different plans than someone retiring in 20 years

For near future, please contribute to this common question: What are your plans for the near future?

This is the current question in our Common Collapse Questions series.

Responses may be utilized to help extend the Collapse Wiki.

Have an idea for a question we could ask? Let us know.

Should we begin a new series of monthly sticky posts which would serve to announce various subreddit changes and invite general feedback?

The initial suggestion would be to sticky these posts on the first day of each month for just two days. If this ends up to be too often or too much work we could shift to quarterly posts.

These posts would be scheduled in such a way that any moderator could add to the post contents throughout the previous month before it went live. A standard footer inviting general feedback would be included on all posts.

Here's an initial draft for such a post for January:

##Title: Subreddit Updates: January 2023

Hey everyone, we've decided to start a new series of monthly posts where we provide general updates regarding any subreddit changes and invite general feedback in terms of the state of the subreddit and moderation here. We plan to sticky these posts on the first of each month for a couple days each time. If this turns out to be too often or too much work on our end we'll consider shifting them to quarterly posts. Let us know your thoughts on this idea in general as well as the changes and format below.

##Changes:

1. u/phd_in_awesome have been added as our newest Full Moderator.

2. u/blackcatwizard, u/SadRavenSmiling, u/TopSloth, and u/Vorat have been added as our newest Comment Moderators.

3. A link to the Unofficial Collapse Discord has been added into the subreddit sidebar.

4. We've made a few other updates to the sidebar items:

• Removed Club Orlov
• Removed Doomstead Diner
• Added Power Hungry Podcast
• Added Post Doom to Resources
• Added An Inconvenient Apocalypse - Wes Jackson, Robert jenson (2022)
• Added Greenland ice melt - why climate communication is conservative - Jason Box (2022)

We welcome any feedback or questions you have regarding these changes and updates.

Additionally, what are your thoughts on the state of the subreddit overall? Let us know what's on your mind in the comments.

Titles are hard: [Subreddit Promotion Day] r/collapse - a sub exploring the potential collapse of global civilization

​

What is collapse?

r/collapse description:

Discussion regarding the potential collapse of global civilization, defined as a significant decrease in human population and/or political/economic/social complexity over a considerable area, for an extended time. We seek to deepen our understanding of collapse while providing mutual support, not to document every detail of our demise.

Summarized predicaments our society faces:

We believe that the world is experiencing the confluence of crises in four interrelated systems — energy, ecology, economy, and equity. We call these the “E4 crises,” and they can be summarized as follows:

The age of extreme energy. Declines in the amount of affordable energy available to society mean far higher environmental, economic, and social costs.

Overshoot abounds. Across the board—food, population, water, biodiversity, climate change, etc.—we are hitting biophysical limits.

The end of growth. As a result of the limits within and outside the economic system, we are experiencing the end of economic growth as we’ve known it.

Increasing inequality. Rising domestic and global inequality could lead to tremendous socio-political unrest (and ultimately economic and environmental disaster), as a growing population struggles to share diminishing economic and natural resources.

​

Why might someone from r/fuckcars be interested in collapse?

As r/fuckcars describes in their subreddit description, there are "harmful effects of car dominance on communities, environment, safety, and public health." Cars are a result of cheap energy and materials, both of which are not sustainable and continually being depleted at ever increasing rates. Car culture is one symptom of our society overshooting the carrying capacity of our world.

Scientists have identified nine biophysical limits, and it's worth noting the strain cars put on several of these boundaries - aerosols, climate change, novel entities, land-system change from city sprawl, biosphere integrity from the same plus oil. Cars also exacerbate inequality in some cities by being nearly inaccessible without a car and nearly non-existent public transportation.

As collapse progresses, complex technology such as cars are expected to decline as the material, infrastructure, and societal requirements to sustain them decline. It may start with increasing energy prices (whether fuel or grid), to supply chain issues, to resource shortages, to societal strains.

​

Learn more:

• http://www.letstalkthis.com/collapse/
• https://www.postcarbon.org/the-big-picture/
• Visit our subreddit
  • Community wiki (Sidebar > Collapse Wiki)
  • Common questions (including posts for collapse-related books, podcasts, videos, etc)
  • Unofficial discord (Sidebar > Unofficial Discord)
  • Weekly observation threads for how collapse is playing out in our daily lives
  • Regional subreddit community (Sidebar > Regional Subreddits)

​

Some examples of r/collapse posts on the car predicament (though most posts would interest a r/fuckcars subscriber):

• EVs won't save us
• EVs won't save us Casual Friday (a day we allow memes and low effort posts) MEME
• Jevons Paradox applied to cars
• Lithium mining's (for EVs) effect on environment
• Post detailing upcoming car shortage due to economic complexity
• Criticism of a car industry executive's love song to car industry
• Post discussing ICE car bans (CA) and why this won't save us
• EVs won't save us 2
• Economic loss of an EV

This is a draft for a sticky post. Let me know your thoughts.

We’d like to remind everyone to be mindful of their mental health going into the holiday season. Our community is poised to be hyper-aware of the various predicaments humanity is presently facing. As a result, we think having a strong mental support system and set of resources in place is important. Here are some of the general resources and groups we would recommend. Let us know if there are any others we should include here.

r/CollapseSupport

Forum community

A dedicated place for thoughtful discussion about the state of the world as it stands today and how we are coping.

Collapse Support Calls

Weekly online calls

Hosted by the r/collapsesupport on their Community Discord, these are open calls for thoughtful discussion. There is no obligation to speak, but you may interact in text as well.

Safe Circle

Weekly online video calls

For people who desire companionship in the often lonely world of the Collapse-Aware. These online video support calls are for people who enjoy the authentic presence of kindred spirits as we face our predicament-laden world together.

Good Grief Network

Online programs and groups

Offers 10-step programs to help individuals and communities build resilience by creating spaces where people can lean into their painful feelings about the state of the world and reorient their lives toward meaningful action.

The Work That Reconnects Network

Events, Webinars, and Conversation Cafés

Based around Joanna Macy’s work, aims to help people discover and experience their innate connections with each other and the self-healing powers of the web of life, transforming despair and overwhelm into inspired, collaborative action.

Deep Adaptation Forum Events

Online Calls and In-person Events

An online community focused on building supportive communities to face the reality of the climate crisis. Originally created in response to Jem Bendell’s academic paper published in 2018.

CPA Climate Cafés

Online Calls and In-person Events

Adapted from the Death Café model, climate cafés are a simple, empathetic space where fears & uncertainties about climate & ecological crisis can be safely expressed.

Warmlines

24/7 Support Lines

Warmlines allow are free call lines for mental health support. They’re different from crisis lines which are more focused on getting you connected to crisis resources as quickly as possible. They’re still confidential and staffed by trained individuals.

Helplines

24/7 Crisis Lines

International directory of crisis and support lines. Here’s a guide on what to expect when calling a crisis hotline.

Currently, we allow users to assign their own user flair on the subreddit and around 700 users have assigned themselves something. Here's the list.

We experimented with manually assigned (mod only) flairs for a period, but it was underutilized and not received well by the community.

I 'd like to propose we experiment with a third or hybrid option: Automated Flairs.

Automated flairs would involve using InstaMod, a bot which would automatically assign user flairs based on a set of custom criteria. The best example of how this can be used is in /r/CryptoCurrency, which has five million members. You can read how they describe the system to their mods here. Here's the FAQ page they have for helping their users understand it.

Here are some examples of what we could use it to place into user flair:

###Account age

For example, user flair could include "3 months old" to denote a user’s account age. This could optionally be removed after a user's account reaches a certain age, such as one year (as it works in r/CryptoCurrency). Many of us are skeptical of younger accounts, but this information is not readily visible when browsing comment threads.

###Number of Quality Comments

Quality Comments (QC) would be defined by a set of custom criteria. For example, we could say QCs are any comment over 50 words and/or with three or more positive karma. We could also separate criteria for negative QC. For example, a comment with -3 or more negative karma could add -1 QC to the users QC score. We could use logical operators for both forms of criteria. This has the potential to encourage users to comment more and make more worthwhile comments, in addition to making seeing how much a user has contributed in r/collapse much more visible to other users and moderators.

###Progression Tiers

Progression Tiers can be based on multiple custom metrics, such as QC score, total comment karma, total post karma, ect. They can also be made in comparison to other users, meaning tiers could be set (as they are in r/CryptoCurrency) to indicate what percentile a user is in (e.g. Platinum tiered users are in the 10%-1% of users there). These have the potential to drive incentives towards commenting, making worthwhile comments, and gives users to ability to easily identify top commenters.

###Custom Flair

Specific tiers can be given the permission to set their own custom flair. For example, users at a Platinum level in r/CryptoCurrency can set their flair to whatever they’d like. They can keep the automatically assigned flair, add to it, or replace it entirely. Presumably, users at higher tiers are the types of users we would trust to set their own flair and this would be an added incentive for users to comment more and make more worthwhile comments.

#Considerations & Limitations

It looks like we wouldn’t need to host this bot ourselves, we would only need to write up the configuration in a wiki page and then contact the creator to have it added. It sounds like the bot would only update flair every few days or longer, since it has to poll a very large amount of users to do so. Any of our criteria related to flairs could be kept private to prevent users from attempting to game the system.

The most significant limitation seems to be how granular the settings are and the decisions we would have to make and agree on before proposing the system to the community.

Does attempting this seem like a good idea in general? If it does, I’d suggest we have a modchat specifically for discussing the granular aspects and shaping an internal proposal for us to vote on. If and once it was approved, then we could discuss how best to propose it to the community so it makes sense to them and they can effectively weigh in on if they’d like to see it used.

This is a draft for a sticky to post Monday. Let me know your thoughts on the idea:

I'll be hosting a Reddit talk with Kory from the podcast Breaking Down: Collapse this Wednesday, November 23, at 6PM CST. We'll be having a casual discussion regarding his most recent work, our general thoughts on collapse, and current events.

Reddit Talks are a new form of reddit post where users can listen to or participate in a live audio conversation. It requires using New Reddit or the Official Reddit app. We'll be inviting people to chat with us if they'd like to at some point during the talk. The talk will be recorded and accessible after it's finished in case anyone can't make it, but would still like to listen to it. We hope you can join us.

This is a proposed update to our 'Decision Making' section in the Moderation Guide. This is intended to more fully outline how action-votes work and best to use them. Let me know your thoughts.

Decision Making

When a rule, change, idea, or revision is suggested, the person who proposed the idea generally has 'dibs' on writing up the change in r/collapsemoderators. If they do not wish to do so, another mod can request creating the proposal or draft. Once a proposal is written, it is then discussed for a period of a few days to a few months, however long feels necessary, or until a consensus is reached. Proposals are voted on either in the modsub thread or in the #action-votes channel in the Mod Discord.

We recommend having votes from at least half of the active moderators before considering a vote to be passed, but be mindful of the amount of time you give for others to weigh in. If you are unsure what this number should be you can reference the most recent action votes or do a generalized ping in the channel (e.g. "How many moderators are actively voting these days?") to check in. If a change is made too quickly, other moderators will be left out and potentially deprived of a voice. If something is not time sensitive or significant, you should feel comfortable leaving it for at least 24 hours on the modsub and/or in #action-Votes until moving forward. We suggest giving 72 hours for significant changes.

If someone or something is moving too quickly before you are able to vote yourself, feel free to let everyone know you would like more time to weigh in as well. Some votes may sit for over a week without action taken, which not unusual and gives ample time for votes.

If a matter is time sensitive, you should post in #action-votes and ping @everyone in the Mod Discord. If you must act urgently with limited, use your best judgement. It is rare, but other moderators will be understanding if something requires immediate action and a significant amount of votes are not raised immediately.

Keep in mind any time you make a decision to act with any amount of votes, it may still later be challenged by other moderators. Keep an open mind to these challenges and try to not get upset or defensive if they arise—this is where a lot of learning occurs. Please also accept that you may need to reverse or alter your decision if the majority are in favor of doing so. These instances are rare, but when they arise all parties should try behave in a consensus-oriented manner and strive for the best outcome.

If you feel like you’re not sure where the line is on a particular issue, feel free to ask in the #questions channel before proceeding. If you feel like not enough people have responded to your action-vote, try asking in #questions for clarification. Alternatively, you should try rewording your vote to something shorter or simpler if the matter is not easy enough to weigh in on.

If moderators are significantly divided and feel strongly on a specific vote or issue we have regularly translated the discussion into a sticky post to ask the community for feedback and work through our proposals there. We work to propose most changes to the community first in general, but this is also consistently helpful for complex or contested issues.

This is a set of suggestions to include on our Rules page to outline how to handle multiple offenses of individual rules and give new moderators a better idea of how long to apply subsequent bans for various offenses.

I’ve broken down each rule into a top-level comment below to make providing feedback on each individually easier.