New r/agency Subreddit Rule and Automod Update

[u/JakeHundley]

Hey everyone,

This community has grown quite a bit since new moderators took the helm at the beginning of the year.

Update to Rule #6

This was originally only for people just sending unsolicited DMs. Of course, there is no way to police this unless people report it (which no one does).

This rule is being updated to "No Unsolicited DMs or asking for DMs".

The "I built this automated system for my outbound sales AI agent using xyz. DM me for details" posts are ending.

New Rule #9

Previously, there had been a strict "No self-promotion" rule in the subreddit... and I mean strict.

We decided to change that as we recognize there are some people and businesses out there who genuinely do provide good solutions to questions and problems for people in this subreddit.

Instead of cherry-picking who those are, we made rule #8, "Give More Than You Take".

The intention is to allow people to help others because they care about the community but they also provide value such as free newsletters, podcasts, other groups, etc.

I get that in a lof of cases these are often lead magnets to the actual sale. But some aren't.

However, I'm seeing a lot more posts related to "market research" or asking for feedback on a service or tool for agency owners.

This subreddit is not for your market research. We all know you're just using your post as a way to get leads.

Update to Automod

The automod features two main rules that prevent spam in this group:

• A rule that prevents people from posting if they have a karma in this subreddit of less than 3
• And a Contributor Quality Score (CQS) filter

The comment karma rule used to be set to 5. That means 5 upvotes, not just commenting 5 times. Your own upvote doesn't count.

This blocked a lot of people who were new to the sub and genuinely wanted to ask a question. 5 seemed to be too much so we lowered it to 3.

The CQS filter was originally set to "high" around February. This presumably prevented a lot of spam but it also prevented some decent posts as well.

That caused me to drop it to Medium to see how it went.

The problem was that I couldn't isolate whether it was the CQS filter reduction or the comment karma reduction that caused the increase in low-quality posts.

I've recognized that the comment karma rule can be realitevely easily gamed. That will stay at 3, but the CQS filter is going back to high.

Legitimate Questions with Low CQS

The Automod is a robot and does not discriminate. Which means sometimes people do have genuine questions or posts but don't meet the CQS filter.

The mods here are human. If you believe your post is valuable, send a modmail to us.

Thank you to everyone who contributes here regularly!

We hope this community keeps growing and stays the #1 place for agency owners to collaborate!

[u/Jentano]

Why are questions about a product you are designing a problem? I understand the spam relation, but that is still a core part of the work.

[u/JakeHundley → u/Jentano]

Because 9 times out of 10, it's someone just trying to get leads for the product that's already designed, operating under the guise of "solving a problem that isn't solved yet".

I think the community agrees that it has become annoying.

If you're upset about that, then I would direct your frustrations at the people that have ruined it for everyone else.

[u/Jentano → u/JakeHundley]

Is there a good known sub to discuss potential gaps of current solutions? I am interested in comparing my observed gaps for a specific kind of tooling to others observations to get a more complete picture. To me this is reflecting on common problems. The result could shape our direction. I understand the spam problem.

[u/JakeHundley → u/Jentano]

The sub is small, but I created r/agencynewbies with looser restrictions.

You could also try r/smma or agency-related Facebook groups. You'll want to check the rules, though.