My Background:

I have been visiting loseit since it started, a few months ago I stopped visiting loseit daily because I got frustrated with the number of NSVs that were just absurd (someone smiled at me today! a random stranger said hi! my left pant leg slightly looser!") and got sick of progress pics that had no information. When Jillitha asked for new mods, I was actually in the process of creating a new sub for weight loss because LoseIt had just become as bad as /r/fitness. I decided to see if I could help turn loseit back into the information source it was when I started reading it and not the place it had become. Jillitha made me a mod, so I put my other sub on the back burner to see if we could just make this place better.

Both Progress pics and NSVs would be fantastic things if they actually helped me achieve my goals, but on there own I hated them (still do). I don't care if your belt is now looser unless you are going to tell me how you did it so I can too. There were days were I would come and there would be a dozen NSVs with no information at all about how they were done, and buried beneath those were 1 post where someone was asking for help and getting no answers. Most people happily upvote the NSV or the progress pic, because they are victories, great. But it seems unless people know the answer to a question they don't upvote it at all. So it just sits - not getting attention as it gets forced down the page by people who just want karma. How fair is that?

People keep telling us as mods that the community up/down votes will fix these problems - but this has proven to not be the case, unless what you guys are trying to say is you have no interest in helping people and the interest is in only sharing your victories. If that is the case, that is fine, I will leave loseit and go start a sub for actually helping people achieve their goals.

The lack of traffic in those threads seems to prove that people are just upvoting the NSVs because they are there and they want to join in on the victory, not because they actually care about the post itself (or they would go find it). The links are in the sidebar, easy to access - why don't people go to them if that is the content they want?

Side note: NSVs and Progress pics are still allowed in their own posts - people just need to put info on how they got to achieve that goal or victory. This has been the case from the start and we have released numerous NSVs and progress pics once that info was added. The only ones we ask to be put in the threads are the ones with no information to go along with them. Is that not clear in the guidelines? How can we make that more clear?

With the new system, people who want to share the information they have gets to the front page, questions get to the front page, people who just want to share their pictures have a place to do that that wont burry actual questions and information.

So that is why I like the new system. It was the best method we could think of to ensure posts that are making the front page are either informational or the people asking for help.

If people have ideas on a better way to handle this, PLEASE SHARE THEM.

Here are the goals:

1) Make sure people asking for help aren't buried by people just wanting karma and not providing information.

2) make sure the majority of the posts (that aren't questions) have information that can help others.

3) make them easily searchable by others in the future (so they don't have to ask the questions if they don't want to

How can we accomplish these goals?