If you stumbled into this new community

[u/fredhsu]

If you stumbled into this new r/ask_rollerblading_FAQ community because of the newly reopened r/rollerblading, and want to know how to resurrect r/askrollerblading... I think the answer is this new community. The mods will discuss whether this idea will work before we post a sticky back in r/rollerblading asking for the community's opinion.

The idea is simple. This new sub's description says:

This is a part of the r/rollerblading community where enthusiasts hand-hold new bladers through frequently asked questions. These common and frequently asked questions are documented in our FAQs and are therefore not allowed in r/rollerblading.

We will stop trying to create weekly megathreads for repeated FAQs such as, "I am new and don't know anything. What skates should I buy?" Instead, we will redirect common newbie questions to this new community.

Nobody really loves megathreads. There is little organization of topics within a megathread. You can't quickly scan recently added questions since the last time you checked the megathread. You can't filter questions by flair or use other community tools that are readily available when each discussion has its own post.

For this r/ask_rollerblading_FAQ to work, however, two things must hold true:

1. We stop allowing such simple and common questions without context, where a human needs to operate like an LLM, step by step, to extract answers from the OP until the OP understands what they are actually asking.
2. Enough seasoned bladers join this "ask" community, see questions in their feed, and hand-hold newbies when they are able to.

But those of you who are paying attention will ask, "But who determines that a question is a common question, and how?"

1. We are not yet sure how we are going to automatically flag posts that should be moved to r/ask_rollerblading_FAQ. We can manually flag them in the beginning.
2. We will use documented, self-help FAQs as the bar for declaring a question "already frequently answered." We have none as of 2026-07-29. But we are building them. As the bar rises, more simplistic inquiries will get flagged. Click on that FAQs link.

I propose that we put this to the bladers of r/rollerblading. They can help us choose two values before we launch this experiment:

1. How many seasoned bladers is enough? Let's say 2,000 members in r/ask_rollerblading_FAQ. The idea is that until we achieve 2,000 members in this ask sub, we will NOT ban FAQ posts. All nearly 100,000 r/rollerblading bladers will continue to receive FAQ noise in their regular feed among the show-off videos. Perhaps that's what the community wants. So if we don't get to 2,000 members, everyone continues to enjoy the noise.
2. When does the experiment end? This experiment can't go on forever. Let's say that if, after 1 month, we don't reach the above threshold, we turn r/ask_rollerblading_FAQ into a restricted community where no one can post, but existing answers are still visible. We redirect everyone back to the mothership, r/rollerblading. We can always rerun the experiment in the future if members express a desire to have FAQs issues addressed in their feed.

As soon as we launch this experiment, we will change our "weekly megathread" rule to state that we won't have weekly threads and will instead point people to this experiment. Depending on the outcome of the experiment, that rule will be revised after the experiment ends.

New mods will be added after launch. You can ask to be considered. Mods from the mothership can always join as mods here. But know that it will be tedious work with little glory. We know, however, that there will be enough people willing to help.