It feels like basically everyday we get a post trying to invent reasons for avoiding guns in someone's world, or at least making them less effective, even if the overall tech level is at a point where they should probably exist and dominate battlefields. Of course it's not endemic to the subreddit either: Dune and the main Star Wars movies both try to make their guns as ineffective as possible.

I don't really have strong feelings on this trope one way or the other, but I wonder what causes this? Would love to hear from people with gun-free, technologically advanced worlds.

Sorry if the rant is a little incoherent, I'm jaded.

Few subs go out of their way to define such a thorough set of overly zealous rules as r/worldbuilding. Basically, any visual post that is not thoroughly cited, described, and original goes against the rules of the sub.

I've seen people's well meaning posts deleted within minutes for trivial rule violations (such as "characters are not worldbuilding"). Even though they show originality and the implication of good worldbuilding behind them.

Yet, at the same time, I regularly see promotional content that is only marginally related to worlbuilding, low effort memes and screencaps, and art galleries with no worlbuilding effort whatsoever reach the top of the sub and stay there for hours. This is in a sub that has over 20 moderators.

This attitude and rule/enforcement dissonance has resulted in this sub slowly becoming into a honorary member of the imaginary network: a sub with little meat and content besides pretty pictures and big-budget project advertisements. (really, it's not that hard to tell when someone makes some visual content and then pukes a comment with whatever stuff they can think of in the moment to meet this sub's criteria of "context").

The recent AI ban, which forbids users from using the few tools at their disposal to compete against visual posts seems like one of the final nails in the coffin for quality worldbuilding content.

This sub effectively has become two subs running in parallel: a 1 million subber art-gallery, and a 10k malnourished sub that actually produces and engages with quality content.

And this is all coming from an artist who's usually had success with their worldbuilding posts. This sub sucks.

(EDIT: Sorry mods, the title is not really fair and is only a small part of the many things I'm peeved by)

Why do people hate Furries so much in here? i have seem multiple post on things like "how do i add anthro races in my world without being a furry?" "are my anthro races too furry-like? how do i fix that?" and the comments are usually filled with malicious disinformation about furries.

like i get it, "haha furry bad" but that was at it's peak back on 2016, it's been almost 8 years, i think that is time to let it go.

so worldbuilders, tell me, why do you hate furries? or in general, what's your opiinion about them?

I just got permissions from the admins to post this,

For those not in the know, Wizards of the Coast; the owners of Dungeons and Dragons, are in the process of changing the rules concerning original content. This means any content made using there system and broader universe.

https://www.cbr.com/dnd-ogl-changes-restricts-original-content/

The biggest of example of this would be Critical Roles books.

As there are ALOT of D&D world creators on this subreddit I wanted to give a heads up.

Many subreddits are planning to go dark in response to Reddit's API changes. Participating subs here: https://www.reddit.com/r/ModCoord/comments/1401qw5/incomplete_and_growing_list_of_participating/. Is r/worldbuilding planning to participate?

Edit: People have been asking some questions; will answer them here.

What are the API changes?

Third-party applications will need to pay exorbitant amounts of money to continue using Reddit's API. This effectively means they can't continue on anymore, as they do not earn enough from Reddit to pay the amount required.

How long is the blackout going to last?

The blackout was planned to be from June 12-13, but it will last longer if Reddit does not listen.

Do I have to do anything?

No, it's done by admins of subs, or if you own a sub. You can shut down your own sub, but the main idea is to hit reddit with the big subs. Since many of your favorite subs might be closed, people are suggesting alternatives.

What can I do during the blackout?

You can use alternative Reddit sites, found of r/RedditAlternatives

What's your opinion?

I think we should participate. We need to stick it to Reddit that we're not tolerating this, and that their site is shit without third-party apps.

It is the ideas that make a piece of worldbuilding good or inspiring, not the writer's art skills. I'm not trying to put down those who post their art on here. Art is an excellent way to worldbuild, and I greatly admire those who put so much effort into the beautiful images posted on here. However, images are far from being the only good way to worldbuild.

I understand why images are the most popular. They're attention-grabbing, and I'll admit I'm more likely to glance at a visual post than one that's a block of text. Though I personally think that we're missing out on a ton of great ideas and inspiration in this sub because it feels like a waste of time to make any post that isn't an image or a visual. The best and most inspiring pieces of worldbuilding I've ever seen have been poems, short stories, or even just explanations. Some of them had images and visuals included, and some of them didn't. The inclusion of a visual art piece in a piece of worldbuilding does not automatically make it better IMO.

The saying goes that a picture is worth a thousand words, but I don't think this is true all the time. Some images are worth ten thousand words, and others are worth only a couple sentences. Sometimes, a considerable amount of worldbuilding can be conveyed in a single line of dialogue. Everyone has their own way they prefer to worldbuild, for me it's through writing songs, poetry, and short stories. There are many fantastic worldbuilders out there who can't draw worth a bean. However, even sorting by new on this sub only seems to give images, questions, and discussions.

I don't know what (if anything) should be done about this. Maybe there could be no-image wednesdays or something similar. If you've read this far, thank you. This'll probably get buried, but I just wanted to share my concerns and what others thought. Whatever your preferred method of worldbuilding is, please know that you have just as much ability to create fantastic worlds as does anybody who uses different method. What are your favorite ways to worldbuild?

Are you building it for a book, game etc.

I downloaded Obsidian to find a better way to organize worldbuilding notes and I looked up some quick Youtube vids on "how to use".

Every video is like "DON'T BE INTIMIDATED", "HOW I CREATED MY ZETTELKASTEN SECOND BRAIN FLOW MAP IN OBSIDIAN AND TRANSCENDED THOUGHT", AND "LEAST SCARY OBSIDIAN GUIDE: BEGINNERS ONLY GUIDE TO HACKING YOUR MIND WITH THE MOST COMPLEX NOTES NETWORK KNOWN TO MAN".

I wasn't intimidated but now I am.

It feels like every single day here I see another post that is asking “is it ok to use ChatGPT”, “why do you oppose using it”, “can I use AI in my worldbuilding” etc etc. It’s exhausting how much this particular question seems to be spammed.

Can we get a ban on this particular question on this subreddit? It’s just getting ridiculous, and I don’t think anything is being gained by having a 200th thread on the topic, asking the exact same question every single time.

I remember when I first joined like five years ago. Everything seemed so prestigious and 'wise'. I felt like a young child in a library surrounded by old professors. That's the only way I can describe it really.

Like I don't think theres been a bad change but why does the subreddit now feel so young?? What happened?

Hello all,

As you have probably noticed, over the past several days, r/worldbuilding has been set to Private as part of the Reddit-wide Blackout protests against the API changes being implemented by Reddit's administration in advance of their expected IPO.

Why Did r/Worldbuilding Go Dark?

In short, Reddit is DRAMATICALLY hiking the costs of their API (the functionality that allows third-party apps to scrape Reddit for data) on July 1, resulting in the shutdown of numerous apps used to access Reddit, including:

• Apollo
• RIF
• ReddPlanet
• Sync

This will force mobile users to use the Official Reddit App to interact with this community. The Official Reddit App lacks many of the features used by these third-party apps, mainly accessibility functions and moderator functions. It will now be far harder for visually impaired members of this community to participate, and it will be far more difficult for our moderation team to moderate this community.

In addition, even third-party apps that play ball with Reddit's new pricing will not be able to access NSFW posts and apps, effectively shutting them out of that segment of this site. We do host academic discussions of NSFW content regularly on r/Worldbuilding, such as on sexuality within fictional civilizations, speculative reproductive systems and gender systems, and creation myths which include graphic elements just like many real-world myths do (see: Zeus).

These changes follow on the back of numerous other broken promises of support from Reddit Administration, as chronicled by Ask Historians in this through thread.

So why did we go dark?

#1 Accessibility

One of our highest goals as the moderation team of r/worldbuilding is inclusion and accessibility. This is one of the primary reasons we joined the Reddit blackout.

People of all backgrounds and abilities should be free to join the worldbuilding hobby, and that includes members of our community who are blind or visually impaired. We have a rule requiring all posts, including infographics, have some measure of worldbuilding context with them, so that members of our community who cannot view images for whatever reason, be it physical or technical, can still participate in the discussions surrounding the worldbuilding of the piece.

Reddit's changes are going to make it harder for our fellow worldbuilders who are blind and visually impaired, and that goes against our values as a community, simple as that.

#2 Mod Support

In addition, previous changes to Reddit's API have made moderation even more cumbersome for our team. Our last round of moderation recruitment saw only ONE of the five mods we recruited stick around past the 6-month point, as the workload of moderating this subreddit was more than many of our new recruits signed up for. This, coupled with regular attrition, means that we're at 13 moderators (plus one bot, /u/DivisorFluminum)--which is less than half the size our team was during the 2016-2020 period when I first joined the moderation team.

If you're wondering why rules-breaking posts are staying up longer, why ads and spam and hate-speech are slipping through, or we're taking days or weeks to respond to mod mails, it's for this reason: we're having difficulty recruiting mods, and even those we recruit burn-out after a few weeks. Our team would like to do much more to build, grow, and support the /r/worldbuilding community, but right now, we're firing on all engines just trying to keep it going as is.

A depressing fact of the matter is when I first joined this team back in 2017, most of the team was made up of bright-eyed, busy-tailed university students able to dedicate hours of time to volunteering to run a subreddit. As someone working full-time, I was the odd one out. Today, well, to be frank, most of the moderation team is like me, in our late 20s and early 30s, with jobs, relationships, and life commitments. We still love this community and are passionate about its future, but we no longer have dozens of hours to dedicate to this task--we might have a dozen. And, without the robust moderative support third-party apps offer us, this is going to be cut down even further.

Reddit's proposed changes will make our jobs as moderators even more burdensome, meaning the quality of moderation on this sub will drop even further.

As for the inevitable comment of "just recruit new mods," let me inform you last time we opened up for applications, we received a mere 10 applications. In 2021, when we had 200,000 fewer members, we received 12 applications. There is a declining interest in being a moderator on Reddit, and Reddit Administration's repeated broken promises on that front make this job an ever-less appealing task. So we'd love to recruit more mods, but there are not a lot of people who want to be mods.

#3 Support for an Open Internet

Finally, this decision was made on principle. Third-party apps were key to Reddit's early growth, and many of Reddit's usability and functionality improvements were initially proposed by, or implemented in, third-party apps. Third-party apps have done a yeoman's job in making this platform a better place for all of us, and they don't deserve being shived in the back to make Reddit's numbers a tiny bit bigger during the upcoming IPO.

Supporting third-party apps is supporting an open, inclusive and accessible web that values your choices, as users and as consumers.

What Was Reddit Administration's Response?

As of June 18, Reddit has made some vague promises not to implement their new API pricing on accessibility-focused apps like Reddit for Blind, Luna for Reddit, Dystopia and BaconReader, but we will see if this actually pans out.

In addition, Reddit Administration has also promised to reinstate an oft-used API feature called Pushshift, used by mods in many communities (including ours) to help keep our communities safe, inclusive and welcoming. Restoration of these features have been pushed back to the end of next week, and our team will be watching to see if Reddit Administration actually follows through with these.

At the same time, Reddit Administration has threatened NUMEROUS subreddits' moderation teams, including our own, with the removal/replacement unless we immediately reopened. Several communities have already had their moderation teams replaced.

We didn't spend the past 12 years building this community of 1.1+ million worldbuilders just to have it handed off to random Reddit Administration sycophants with no care for our community's culture, history, or inclusivity. We're the largest worldbuilding community on the 'net, and we're not about to let Reddit Administration ruin this incredible thing we have. You deserve far better than that.

Reddit Administration has now demonstrated it doesn't give a damn about us, or you. We're all just figures on a spreadsheet to make them look good in advance of their upcoming IPO.

To quote u/hoyfkd in their great post on r/modsupport:

Reddit was formed, and thrived as a tool for building communities. The relationship between Reddit and these communities has always been, where legally and ethically practical, one of service provider and user. This is no longer the case. The fundamental relationship has ended, and without it, reddit simply cannot be what it was.

If Google said “use your email account to promote our stuff or we will give it to someone who will,” it would fundamentally change email.

If your phone company said “don’t use our phone number to criticize our company,” it would fundamentally change telephone communication.

Reddit telling moderation teams that they will play ball, or be replaced fundamentally changes what reddit is, what subreddits are, and the relationship between them.

Subreddits WERE communities developed, fostered, and run by volunteers around a subject for which they had enough passion to donate their time.

...

Unless the board reigns him in, please understand how fundamentally what he said changes your relationship to your communities. How fundamentally he just changed the admin / moderator distinction.

What Now?

As of now, r/worldbuilding is reopening, and being set to Restricted (no new submissions, just new comments.)

This state will last until 11:59 PM Pacific Time (UTC -7:00) on Tuesday, June 20.

After this, the subreddit will reopen, with the following caveat:

From 12:01 AM Pacific Time (UTC -7:00) to 11:59 Pacific Time (UTC -7:00) every Tuesday going forward, r/worldbuilding will be set to Restricted Mode

This means no new posts and no new comments every Tuesday going forward.

We are doing this for two reasons:

• As a point of continued protest against Reddit Administration for both their API changes, and their actions during this Blackout
• To provide our moderation team with time off for their mental health, and minimize burnout, so we don't lose even more team members to the increased workload Reddit is forcing on our team.

Our Discord will still be fully functional during these restricted periods, so please feel free to visit us at https://discord.gg/worldbuilding.

In addition, we're also looking into whether or not r/worldbuilding should be reclassified as an NSFW subreddit. After all, there sure do seem to be a lot of guns and swords and lasers and other weapons around these parts, and plenty of depictions of violence, profanity, blasphemy, and sexual topics.

Anything Else?

We'd love to say we have additional plans in our pockets, but, as noted above, we're stretched thin just keeping this Sub, our Discord, r/Worldjerking and r/NSFWWorldbuilding running smoothly.

Right now, we're just trying to minimize the damage. We're hoping to hold another round of moderator recruitment shortly, and we'll see if this year's recruitment proves more fruitful than 2022's. Once we are more well-staffed, we can begin proper discussions on the next steps for this incredible community.

Again, we have a bustling Discord we encourage you to visit if you want a place to discuss next steps and future plans away from the oversight of Reddit Administration. Join us at https://discord.gg/worldbuilding.

Please keep an eye on r/modcoord and r/save3rdPartyApps to keep abreast of this evolving situation.

In closing:

Fuck Spez, long live John Oliver, and Watch This Space,

• u/the_vizir, on behalf of the r/worldbuilding team

I found r/worldbuilding because that's exactly what I'm currently doing. I'm trying for the first time to flesh out a fictional world for a fantasy story I want to write. I figured this would be a good place to get feedback and advice. Or maybe just a place to talk about the world I'm building.

The welcome has been less than warm. Most comments I've left have gone totally unanswered. I've even had a comment downvoted for no explanation whatsoever. Are we not all here for the same reason?

I also came across a post about low-quality art, and how a poster shouldn't bother unless their art is of high quality. I'm a writer myself with no real artistic skills, but I felt like I was being discouraged from even trying. What if I wanted to post a map I had drawn, would most in here disregard it due to my less than perfect artistic skill?

I wouldn't go as far as to call this attitude gatekeeping, but it feels adjacent to it. I would like to know exactly what you wish to get from this community. Are newbies like myself truly unwelcome?

Let me say that I understand if this gets downvoted or gets taken down but frankly I don’t care, I wanna get this off my chest, and emphasize none of this is coming from personally getting this treatment. It’s seeing it nonstop every time I look at this sub.

Unless someone asks you for advice, please do not make suggestions or tell them what they should or should not do.

Please guys. That is just straight up very rude to people who are just trying to make something creative/silly/artful.

And I see it on every map post that don’t even specify for advice. Every single one has somebody saying “well I dunno about those archipelagos being there I feel like geographically that wouldn’t be yadah yadah yadah”.

I totally get if they are asking for advice, I totally get if they are asking especially for realism based advice. But I see people just straight roasting peoples creations, or just bluntly saying something is “wrong” geographically.

Guess what guys? Most fictional worlds have hundreds of things wrong with them. The Old World in Warhammer is a perfect example. That world still has a ton of great novels set in it, great lore, whatever!

What the heck does “wrong” mean anyways? It’s not your creation, it’s theirs!

I’ve seen people wreck posts because of off putting colors, and just lay into them. But then go quiet when the OP reveals they are color blind.

Just . . . chill with the criticisms when they aren’t asked for okay? Can we just appreciate the art of a map a little bit more? We do that with art pieces that get posted, but it seems all that flies out the window as soon as a continent gets involved.

I hope you consider my post, thanks for reading.

Just curious. All I really see here is fantasy. Where are the spaceships? Robots?
Not like I'm saying I hate or dislike fantasy. I love it personally!

Not sure if the flair is alright

Like I get it that people want to see cool pictures as it's easy to intake however I am horrid at art, and definitely don't have a lot of money to start commissioning it. The only posts here of mine that can get love are of my map and I only think that happens because it has the wow-factor of being made on MS Paint. In no way am I saying it's unfair either, those of you who can do awesome art deserve the attention; I just wish my wordy posts could receive some attention once in a while haha.

I think we should have a "text only posts" day which would help out with the less artistically talented like me, maybe a down day like Sunday or Monday.

Tl;DR: Basically, aren't some world builders real lonely and have no one to talk to about their worlds?

Alright, You know that I usually post things that start discisisons here, and recently i created a new post: "tell how you got the idea for your world".

I always try to answer as much comments as possible because I thought it'd be rude to left someone hanging, but... the post drained me more than I expected.

A lot of the comments were... really big, full of details of their worlds, full of info, and... I can't spend an entire day reading a bunch of different details and giving kind words to everyone.

Anyway, I am not complaining about these guys, not telling them to shut up, not hating them, and after trying analysing why that happens and gaining different opinions, i got into a worrying conclusion.

... don't some people do this because no one hears them?

Imagine spending years and years creating something, but none of your friends or family are interested on it, and then you finally see the opportunity to show your hard work, you have a lot of things you want to tell, you're really excited y'know and...

Just... people in general who don't talk a lot about their worlds, but really would like to, to share their creations, and when they see the chance, they tell all the repressed things they wanted to tell all this time.

... it's sad ain't it? This could even turn some people off from world building.

"Why I gotta create things if no one is interested on them?"

Anyway, what you guys think of this? Have someone else perceived, or felt, something similar?

I'll probably start an argument, or get downvoted to oblivion, but I feel like this should be said.

Every day I see a lot of questions about things like plotlines, protagonists, writing styles, and other things that aren't related to worldbuilding, I even saw a couple posts about D&D.

Questions like "Who's the protagonist of your story?" or "I have this cool story idea but I don't know how to write it" just don't fit here. This sub is a place to discuss worlds, their lore, and various things related to creating them.

Not all worlds have a set plot, with protagonists and villains. Some are created just for the fun of it, with no major stories happening in them. Or they might be used in a D&D campaign, and no one knows what the protagonists will do next.

I'm not saying that you should never ask questions about your writing, just know that might not be the best place for them. You'll get much better help in subreddits that specialize in those topics, like r/writing where most members at least want to be authors, or one of the more specialized subs like r/fantasywriters or r/characterdevelopment.

Rule 3, please, that's just homogenous junk at this point

RFC

edit: I'm not complaining about such posts in general. Maybe it was just bad luck, but recently I've seen whole series of such questions here, with little to no substance, way too generic (thus repeating) or way too specific (who cares what color hedgehogs are).

I'm refering to the current trend on this sub where people post some basic info about their world and then have other redditors ask them questions. If they don't know the answer, they invent it.

It sounds good on paper and is a good way for you to focus on parts of your world you never would have. In fact I heard some editors use this method when discussing a new work with an author, and this helps flesh out the world.

But it just doesn't work on Reddit. The problem is that OPs usually give almost no information on their world, so the commenters are stuck asking generic questions that don't really help develop the world.

Even if the OP does provide a lot of information, a commenter usually only asks a single question, a couple at most. And with a lot of askers asking single questions, the OP ends up building a shallow world because nobody is actually diving into a rabbit hole.

It would be much better if you had a sustained dialogue where the asker can continue building off of previous answers. That way you would build a deeper world. And I don't think you can do that on Reddit. If you're talking with an editor maybe, but I can't see this ever working here.

Sorry for being pessimistic, these are just my thoughts.

This place has fallen off the map (it feels like since a lot of subs went private during the mod protests, maybe reddit's algorithm has it out for you). But I've been scrolling through quality threads where no one even upvotes great comments and everything's sitting at 1 upvote. This can't be helping. This sub keeps falling off my feed and I have to manually come back here and upvote a bunch of shit to keep it rolling. There's almost 1.4 million subscribers here. What happened?

Do your part, worldbuilders o7

Howdy folks. Here to announce a formal addition to the rules of r/worldbuilding.

We are now adding a new bullet point under Rule 4 that specifically mentions our stance. You can find it in the full subreddit rules in the sidebar, and also just below as I will make it part of this post.

For some time we have been removing posts that deal with AI art generators, specifically in regards to generators that we find are incompatible with our ethics and policies on artistic citation.

As it is currently, many AI generation tools rely on a process of training that "feeds" the generator all sorts of publicly available images. It then pulls from what it has learned from these images in order to create the images users prompt it to. AI generators lack clear credits to the myriad of artists whose works have gone into the process of creating the images users receive from the generator. As such, we cannot in good faith permit the use of AI generated images that use such processes without the proper citation of artists or their permission.

This new rule does NOT ban all AI artwork. There are ways for AI artwork to be compatible with our policies, namely in having a training dataset that they properly cite and have full permission to use.

"AI Art: AI art generators tend to provide incomplete or even no proper citation for the material used to train the AI. Art created through such generators are considered incompatible with our policies on artistic citation and are thus not appropriate for our community. An acceptable AI art generator would fully cite the original owners of all artwork used to train it. The artwork merely being 'public' does not qualify.

Thanks,

r/Worldbuilding Moderator Team

I've been seeing a lot of posts get downvotes for no apparent reason on this sub. I know taste is subjective, but some of these posts are so inoffensive that I'm not sure how anyone could genuinely find them bad enough to downvote. I distinctly remember seeing a post that had zero karma despite most of the comments complimenting the post.

I can't really prove it, but I think there's at least one serial downvoter on this sub who downvotes posts just for the fun of it. To like, prank the poster somehow? It might sound unimportant but the first few upvotes and downvotes can make or break a post. Just one downvote can prevent a great post from ever getting successful. I've seen it happen before. Posts with beautiful art, compelling worldbuilding, etc, that never get more than a few upvotes because a serial downvoter ruined their momentum.

My suggestion: be a serial upvoter. Even if you don't think a post is particularly good, try upvoting it. It makes people happy when they get recognition for their worldbuilding efforts. The obvious exception is if the post is actively harmful or breaks the sub's rules.

Remember that if one of your posts is downvoted, that doesn't necessarily mean people think your worldbuilding is bad. It might just mean you're another victim of the serial downvoter. Or downvoters.

Edit:

I'm not saying every post with downvotes was downvoted by a serial downvoter. I'm simply making the argument that they might exist. Many people in the comments of this post have shared stories of good posts being downvoted for no reason.

Lots of people are saying I'm overreacting, but I don't think I'm proposing anything particularly extreme. It's not like I'm saying serial downvoters should be banned or something.

Also, let me clarify my point about being a serial upvoter. I think it's good to upvote posts even if they're not particularly good, unless the post is obviously lazy. If it's clear the poster didn't put much effort in, I think it's good to downvote it. But if it looks like the poster put lots of effort in, it can be nice to give them an upvote even if you think their post is lowish quality. I'm obviously not saying you have to do this or you're bad for not doing it, though.

I'm also not saying you should fake your reaction to a bad post. You can upvote a post but still be critical in the comments.

Some people are saying I'm projecting, but I haven't actually been downvoted for no reason all that often. Most of the time, I get downvotes when my posts are bad. I'm only talking about this because I've noticed other people get downvotes for no reason.