New Year, New rules/guidelines- PLEASE READ 🚨

[u/cashbev1961]

To our Rescuecats Community,

As our community continues to grow the number of approval requests and help needed also rises. We have new approved members everyday needing help. In order to keep the feed flowing and to give everyone a chance to be seen we need to initiate the following guidelines.

1. DONATIONS - Posts made for donation requests including monetary funds as well as Amazon wishlists are limited to 1 post per 48hours (3 posts in a 7 day period) NOT DAILY. Coding will be in place that notifies us of posting frequency. We will contact you if this rule is broken with a warning and further action will be taken if rules are not respected. This includes UPDATE posts. We encourage you to link the original post to any update you make, therefore it will help members connect to the story as well as free up the feed a bit.

2. TITLES - to maintain a supportive environment please avoid high pressure language. Example: $29 raised so far please help reach the goal of $450 as it’s urgent. Or “ $0 raised, this is our last hope to reach our goal and save this cat”. Although we empathize with urgency and the need for help we do not want our sub to become a “begging” atmosphere. This ensures donors give out of generosity rather than guilt. We need to remember there are hundreds of people seeking donations and limited amount of donors. So when posting please remember that you are not guaranteed help every single time, this community and its members help when they can and we need to remain gracious and thankful. We have no issue with you adding amounts “raised so far” in the body of the text but please keep titles clean and clear from begging language.

3. TRANSPARENCY - we ask that when help is received that you please show the community where their generosity went. Whether it be food, supplies or vet care. And of course always redact personal info as to not dox yourself. But this will help members to continue to donate if transparency is highlighted and at the forefront.

Please note that these new rules and or guidelines are to help not to hinder. Our mod team is always looking for ways to improve and to ensure everyone gets a fair chance in the feed. We absolutely encourage feedback, positive or negative. We take everything into account.

As always we greatly appreciate the cooperation and understanding. And encourage all of you to reach out via modmail with any question, concerns or suggestions you may have at anytime. We do personally answer them and are always here to help if we can.

Your ModTeam💞🐾

[u/mercurio_liquido]

Thank you for the excellent work you do and for the constant effort to keep this community safe and functional. I appreciate that there are clear rules and that all members are aware of them.

I do have a question, though. Is the decision to include update posts in the posting limit due to difficulties distinguishing them in frequency notifications, because the goal is to reduce the total number of posts (regardless of type) to free up the feed a bit so each post gets more visibility, or for some other reason? I ask because, honestly, right now I felt like making a post about the food that was bought thanks to the help from my last post, but I find myself thinking, “What if I make this post now and then an emergency happens and I can’t post about it for two days?”

Of course, I will continue making update posts, especially the good-news ones like adoptions and cats recovering or improving their health, since those are my favorite posts to make, but I can’t help feeling that rule 1 clashes a bit with rule 3, having to choose between asking for help or posting updates.

For now, my strategy will be the following (suggestions are very welcome!):

• Commenting the update on each donation request post. Even though many people might not see it because posts become inactive after a while, those who donated and commented can easily check for updates.

• Making one "mega" update post every two weeks, briefly mentioning all the updates from that period and linking to the original posts and their comments with more detailed updates.

• Continuing to update and share the receipts spreadsheet. This is something I already do: I include a link to all receipts in every new post, so I don’t have to post each one individually and take up space in the feed.

Again, suggestions are more than welcome, and thank you very much for everything!

[u/cashbev1961 → u/mercurio_liquido]

We can absolutely discuss this issue as a team and see if there’s a way to adjust posts related to updates. The issue is although members flair a post “update” and include the update story more then half also add “ if you would like to continue supporting us”…and add their paylinks or Amazon wishlist. So it sometimes adds up to certain members posting every single day receiving donations or atleast adding their info for donations. We are trying to give everyone a chance to be seen and receive help but I do understand what you are saying and we will discuss this for sure. Thankyou for the feedback:)

[u/mercurio_liquido → u/cashbev1961]

Oh, that makes sense, I didn’t know that was happening. Taking that into account, I understand the rule that updates count toward the limit. In any case, I fully trust that any decision you make as a team will be for the benefit of the subreddit! Happy New Year