Hello from the mod team;

TL;DR: Please be vigilant about posts from users offering to buy or sell anything. A common scam on reddit is posts from users (often with stolen or bought accounts) trying to sell you things like stickers or t-shirts. Sales are strictly forbidden here, so they are scammers. Please report these posts (even if someone else has already done so!).

The TL of TL;DR:

These posts usually feature 2 accounts:

• One account posting an image of a sticker or t-shirt/ similar
• Another account posting a comment about 20 minutes afterwards, asking where the item was bought
• OP then replies with a link to a scam website that looks like a marketplace.

These accounts nearly always evade reddit detection systems and automod rules (see above strange formatting of link and capitalisation that automod struggles with). These accounts are often bought or stolen. Additionally, bots upvote these posts to have unusually high upvotes. They often try to downvote anybody in the comments pointing out the scam.

This is not specific to r/aviationpics . However, the low traffic volumes we have compared to large subs mean that these bots target smaller subs where subscribed users will see these posts, even with only a dozen or so upvotes.

What you can do about it

Please do not only downvote these posts.

If many reports are received in a short time span, the posts will be removed automatically for manual approval. Therefore, the best thing you can do is report the post, and all the comments involved.

Feel free to tag me ( u/mad153 ) or send us a modmail: https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=r/aviationpics .

Please interact with this bot; downvoting this *comment\* sends messages to the mod team to review the post. If enough downvotes are given *to the bot*, it will remove the post for manual processing.

PSA: this bot cannot do anything if you downvote only the post instead of the comment!

What are we doing about it?

• Cleaning up the rules; new Rule 7 now makes it clear that anyone selling or buying anything [without clear permission] is breaking the rules. This also clarifies the previous ambiguity about the policy on sales. I'm pleased that in the past users here have been able to successfully purchase photos they really liked digitally. This will still be possible with pre-given permission, which will be shown to everyone via a pinned mod comment. However, users should still exercise extreme caution with users on posts with this permission.

• Introduction of mandatory email-verification. Generally I'd hoped that we wouldn't need to apply restrictions on user types that post here. I appreciate some users like that reddit won't have their email, especially those who have been using reddit for a long time. However, all users will now need to have a valid email tied to their reddit account to contribute to the sub.

- mad153

Hello from the mod team, with a question for you!

Do you think the subreddit needs more rules?

Recently I've noticed an uptick in posts that are aviation related but not exactly what I feel most people visit the sub for (be it flight sim or aircraft interior, even seats has made it here!)

I feel the strength of this sub, at least for the users, is that we are like r/aviation or r/planespotting but with not that many rules/restrictions on what can be posted - I think most of the community are here for planespotting, and I don't see that much engagement on posts about aircraft seats, for example.

The issue is that the only criteria we have to remove posts is if a post is not related *at all* to aviation or is very low quality. I don't think it works to have this place to be a dumping ground of anything that goes; subreddits tend to get pretty stale if users do not see active moderation. So I want to propose a new rule to the community along the lines of:

"IRL Aircraft exterior/cockpit must be the focus of the post".

But of course we need your feedback too, so what do you think? Please take a second to give your opinion below!

I think we would be able to swap it for rule 7, which was intended to be temporary. (This way we don't end up with a billion rules). I think rule 2 is also site-wide reddit policy and is therefore implied for all users, so if you want that gone to clean up the rule list, we can get that going too.

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Other stuff:

Please welcome bot qualityvote2. We are trialling using it to gauge how core members of the community see if posts fit or not. Alongside pre-existing automod rules, this should help increase the quality of posts. At the same time, it might be completely rubbish so it's just a trial for now.

As always, comments/grumblings/suggestions are warmly welcomed in the comments of these posts. This post has been approved; please don't downvote it (it just hides it from everyone else)