Hello, everyone!

It's a party here now.

At the verdant age of only three months, this subreddit is up to 1500 subscribers. It's growing steadily; one day there were 100 subscribers within 24 hours, but usually it's a steady trickle of a few each day.

I do wonder how many people browse or even post an ad without subscribing; certainly, one need not subscribe for a post to do its job. Nonetheless, I think subscriber growth is a good sign.

Feel free to spread the word, since this place is still quite new in the big picture! (I still see the question of where to find people into GFD posed multiple times per week on other subreddits....)

We have a new title format.

This should help with two issues:

1. People who like to mention multiple locations and aren't sure how to best display those.

As for locations, I've tweaked the rules to clarify that only one location should use the hashtag (pound sign) and that should be your main location. So instead of trying to put "#Ontario #Canada" in your title, just use "#Ontario" in your title and use "Canada" somewhere in the body of your post so it'll come up in a search or you could put "#Ontario Canada" in your title.

2. Gender tag formatting.

I was very thorough and careful to tweak the regex to be inclusive of any gender tag I could think of that someone might want to use, and I had zero issues with that for about three whole months, yet somebody finally wanted to use something that Automod couldn't parse.

In the meanwhile, we've been relying on flairs the entire time anyway, which are more standardized and therefore easier to search. This was experimental on my part at first, yet it's been working perfectly the whole time and I have had precisely zero complaints about it.

The solution:

You don't need a gender tag at all any more!

You can, however, use one if you want. This allows people to more easily elaborate on their gender in their title any way they might wish. You also might want to include one just to make it more clear; do pay close attention to the new order in the format, though (Rule #2).

In other news:

Looking at the mod log, there are over twice as many removals as successful posts. That might be better or worse compared to other personals subreddit; I really have no idea.

While I don't have the bandwidth to generate exact numbers at the moment, most of the removals lately seem to be for karma requirements, to my surprise. I tried to make the part about that in the rules more noticeable.

Also common as a removal reason is seeking shame in some form. I've tried to be more clear in the language here that this is intended as a safe space for people who aren't into pain or shame.

I've only had three or four reports this entire time and virtually no spam yet! I feel like we're off to a great start.

Overall, while it takes a long time for a subreddit to develop its own culture—probably much longer than this place has even existed yet—I really like the vibe that's developing here and I'm often very proud of the thoughtful and well-crafted ads I see people post.

As always, comments are always welcome. (Is the new title format a bad idea after all?) In any case, thanks for reading this far, stay awesome, and have a lovely day! 💚