On /r/adhd, we have a significant problem that we don't currently have the proper tools to solve. We are absolutely inundated with negative venting posts, and have been for a number of years since we exploded in popularity. It's almost to the point that they drown out positive content like posts sharing coping mechanisms and tools for reducing the burden of ADHD in your life. The trouble is that we don't want to remove these posts and alienate people who are hurting. People complain about us all over reddit and the whole fucking internet for letting /r/adhd be negative, and even accuse us of seeking to inflict harm, but it's because we don't have the tools for dealing with this in a way that doesn't risk further upsetting people who are already hurting. It's a real shit place to be, let me tell you.

For now, we've got a weekly megathread for this kind of content, and I'll be working on some AutoModerator rules to remove vent posts and redirect people to the megathread, but frankly, not only this is a really shitty hack that's going to be a pain in the ass to implement and keep up-to-date, but for many users, post removal, even when we explain that they're just being redirected to a more appropriate place to post, inflicts a sense of being punished and they get really upset and/or angry and we end up bearing the brunt of that. It sucks and it shouldn't be this way.

What we need is a way to exclude posts from the subreddit feed in a way that doesn't remove them. NSFW filtering already exists on reddit, this could be an extension of that system. The MVP of this feature needs to be able to allow users to opt in or out of seeing posts tagged with specific flair, and allow subreddits to set default filters. RES's search filtering functionality might be a good place to look for inspiration.