reddit and self preservation

But first, an analogy. The RTR use to be meetup where Rubber Tramps (nomads) could Rendezvous and be around their peers for a bit. Then Bob blew up the RTR by handing out the GPS coords. It turned into a place where the clueless congregated. So one went from being surrounded by competent peers to surrounded by the ignorant / incompentent.

The reddit van-related subs in general and /r/vandwelling in particular have had similar shifts. The subs are flooded with confused, unrealistic, entitled wannabees that want to be spoonfed answers. Much like what happened to the original CRVL forum.

On to the post.

helping on Reddit, v1

~2015-2023

Help everyone on my areas of admittedly-limited expertise. Start the RVwiki project so I can link to answers instead of typing out the same responses to FAQs. Having a wiki that can be updated also allows past answers to be corrected in the future, so to speak. When people click the old link they see the newest version.

Worked ok until /r/vandwellers suddenly spiked to >2 million subscripers in 2018. I’ve been struggling since then.

helping on Reddit, v2

2023-present.

Help everyone on areas within my expertise, excepting the completely lost, the subliterate, the inexcusably low-effort.

Better, better. No reason to devote my energies to lost causes.

helping on Reddit, v3

April 2024 going forward

Help only a select few in areas within my expertise:

• people who ask answerable non-FAQ questions in legible English. Paragraphs and punctuation for longer posts.
• who provide enough info for helpers to understand the problem
• who interact with threads they’ve created
• who demonstrate some level of motivation toward getting their problem solved

I will give v3 a couple months to see if I think it’s worthwhile.

helping on Reddit, v4

Giving up.

Focusing on more serious venues like Will’s DIY Solar Forum. I’d like to grow the /c/houseless community over on lemmy but the numbers are so small there is little network effect.