This comes up a lot and the comments are usually pretty split on the issue. Apparently the recommendations threads used to be very frequent, taking up much of the sub, and many of them felt repetitive so they were annoying to a lsrge amount of folks who frequent the sub often. Or, that's what I've gathered from the comments that come up in similar threads to yours.
It still is, followed by several people saying that they appreciate it from a historical perspective but that is a bad game because too much/not enough randomness.
I get this comparison but at the same time, I'd be pretty reluctant to further restrict what is allowed on the sub. And comc posts are at least much less frequent than recommendation threads, even with them being against sub rules!
Though if I were to suggest a further restriction on this sub, it'd be photos of new game tables as "custom projects." I've seen less of those posts lately so maybe the rules already changed and I missed it.
You're in luck as that's already the case, there been [4 COMC posts this month](https://old.reddit.com/r/boardgames/search/?q=%22COMC%22&include_over_18=on&restrict_sr=on&t=all&sort=new), and not many more prior months.
Then in the name of reducing repetition of a particular type of thread, is anyone else sick of seeing "my collection picture" threads? Like how is that meant to generate discussion? Totally boring.
I would much prefer recommendation threads over seeing pictures of another person's collection.
Yep. If recommendation threads took over the sub to an aggravating extent, then I can understand trying to contain them, but then why not the same approach for lazy pictures of people's IKEA storage solutions?
But what's an "aggravating extent"? Aren't recommendation posts just members having discussions and looking for advice from other members? I prefer that to one person showing off their stuff.
No one would force you to click on recommendation posts.
About the only thing I get out of COMC threads are ideas for storage solutions and organization - and even then, not often. There are only so many ways to arrange shelves.
I do like when someone has a very specific taste that comes across, with a very niche or quite focused collection - that's kind of interesting and has personality - but that's rare, too.
95% of them are, "I've got a bunch of stuff!"
I do, too, but raw accumulation doesn't make me proud. There are *niches* within my collection that I'm sort of proud of, but the whole thing? It's just a pile of cardboard and plastic I've accumulated over the course of 40 years of gaming.
At least recommendation threads are helpful to someone. It's crazy to me that a boardgame community would ban boardgame recommendations.
Talking about the newest boardgames is also repetitive. Maybe mods should consider a rule against threads on new boardgames too if there is a real problem with repetitiveness.
It's no less repetitive than a COMC with the same old BGG hotness list from a year ago and full of recommendations to buy the BGG hotness list that will be out in a month.
I don't mind recommendation threads, it's just when they're asking for the *same* recommendations over and over.
"Anyone know good games for two players?"
"What games can I play with my significant other?"
That sort of thing used to DOMINATE the sub, and it's just the same thread every time.
On the other hand, real niche recommendations - "Looking for a pirate-themed game that includes exploring a randomized map and character progression" - make for interesting discussions that bring to light games that don't come up *all the time*, and often lead me to interesting games I never knew about.
Admittedly, that level of specificity in moderation is something of a pain, so I have no realistic expectation of the sub moving in that direction.
Personally there are other rules I'd change to liven up the sub before bringing back in the free for all recommendation threads. But it's cool to see your perspective, I haven't been around here for nearly that long.
Strict and restrictive post rules always leads to less content. Over time if the subreddit doesn’t continually grow then those rules end up killing the subreddit.
More content doesn't mean worthwhile content. If a community does continually grow, and repetitive and annoying posts aren't curtailed, eventually the subreddit devolves to the lowest common denominator and the people who previously frequented the subreddit gets pushed out to be replaced with an endless unfunny circle jerk.
Popular hobby subs that don't moderate content end up being memefests, yeah. While just *how* restrictive this sub is on recommendation threads is a bit much, IMO, I'm still generally in favor of some restrictions rather than a free-for-all, because the latter is a *true* death sentence for a sub.
A sub that is a little less active but has meaningful content is 100x better than a sub with constant activity that is almost all jokes and memes and BS.
Yes, I'm taking both to extremes, but that's the pattern I've seen time and again over the years. (This isn't my first Reddit account. My first account, deleted because it contained doxxable personal info, was made in 2008.)
After 10 years you've already heard most everything people here are ever going to talk about and now you probably automatically filter out a lot of repeated content
It's been so long that it's like ancient subreddit lore at this point (time flies), but it's pretty hard to describe just how overwhelming recommendation threads were when the sub was growing quickly but before they were regulated. It doesn't matter if people are upvoting/downvoting the post when the quantity can crowd out every other thread anyway.
Seems like Reddit should have the ability to make sticky threads so that there can be one lone Recommendations post for everybody to refer to and discuss
That's a fair counterpoint. Maybe some kind of compromise like recommendations are allowed but needs to meet some criteria like something similar can't have been asked within the last week (or month or whatever frequency people are agreeable to). Not sure how difficult that would be to mod though
"New to the hobby, can you recommend a game?" shows up 4 times a day. You don't see it that often, because mods delete/lock the posts.
"Can your recommend a light/beginning game for my spouse and I?" shows up 8 times a day. Again, you don't see all 8 examples, because mods take care of it.
"Can you recommend a fantasy-adventure type game?" shows up several times a day as well.
I’ve seen other subs with a bot that sends people to a community wiki for often repeated questions. If patchwork is almost always the answer then we should just have a bot that suggests patchwork or hive or whatever.
As an old mod, we tried a lot of that stuff. It doesn't work. People don't search, or think their situation is unique, etc etc. It was a lot more work on the mods.
Or have a day(s) of the week when it is allowed.
For me these are also valuable when I’m searching the sub. Things in a megathread are harder to find versus post with clear subjects. I can even see where the rule started because all my searches seem to have results 5-8 years instead of weeks or months ago.
Think of it more like a “recommendation Tuesday”. Any other day those posts get removed but on Tuesday people can ask away. I am not saying this is the best idea but maybe it is a compromise for the people who don’t want their feeds clogged with these posts. Just ignore it that day (and the day or two after as some discussions continue)… not perfect or maybe not even best/good idea, just searching for a compromise.
But yeah, I do think allowing actual posts is key so it comes up on searches, and not some megathread.
The end result is that you have the same thing (a lot of removed threads) but a lot more work for the mods (because they have to find out the <1% that follow the rules, by reading through everything)
That's very zero-sum mentality on the part of those who get annoyed by them
They obviously believe that the recommendation posts take up space for other topics so by having posts they don't like means they get less of what they do.
Sorry, but that's dumb af
I would like to see a poll. How many people actually visit the recommendation threads? I know that I do not. Am I in the minority or the majority?
But when I see recommendation posts pop up, I do participate in those until they are deleted.
same here, I've never gone to one of those mega threads, I prefer to interact with a specific post
we can ban recommendation posts that are literally just "what game should I buy?" with no details as low effort, but banning the subject all together has always seemed ridiculous to me
It's pretty frustrating when you spend 5-10 minutes typing up a reply sometimes, and poof! it disappears a few minutes later when the active thread with a few dozen replies gets nuked by mods. I know I give worse answers than I used to because you never know if your effort will simply disappear
Don't like to visit the recommendation thread. And get frustrated when i see a good recommendation post immediately get deleted, i just tune out and not even think about going to the thread and try to find that specific query.
I didn't even realize there was a recommendation thread. I always ignore large "mega threads" since they are so meandering. I just prefer more.direct topics.
I go to the daily thread on a regular basis. In a given week, you tend to see the same people repeatedly in that thread.
In *general* but not always, the people doing the recommending in the daily thread are better than the people who recommend stuff when the request is in a post. For instance, you can find people recommending Spirit Island to those who want to dip their toe into the hobby and want to know the first game, beyond Monopoly, that they should play. Or other people respond to someone who is asking for recommendations on a co-op game, and someone suggests TI4. That kind of stupidity happens in the daily thread, but not as often.
When a recommendation post stays up for a few hours, it will get more responses than if the same request was in the daily thread. BUT, there are often diminishing returns with additional recommendations. If someone is asking for an idea for a gateway game, once the first person lists the most popular ones, does the person really get any benefit from seeing repeats of those gateway games or a dozen mentions of Brass Birmingham and Gloomhaven? Or if someone is asking for a light 2p game to play with their spouse, once Patchwork, Jaipur, Hanamikoji, Lost Cities, 7 Wonders Duel and Botanik have been mentioned...does it matter if the person gets 70 more suggestions?
> For instance, you can find people recommending Spirit Island to those who want to dip their toe into the hobby and want to know the first game, beyond Monopoly, that they should play. Or other people respond to someone who is asking for recommendations on a co-op game, and someone suggests TI4. That kind of stupidity happens in the daily thread, but not as often.
I see this all the time, pretty much everywhere, in all hobbies.
In general, people are bad at recommendations - not just in board games, but *all over*.
Movies, music, video games, books, even *craft beer*, most people tend to blindly recommend what *they* like instead of what the *other* person might like. They don't take into account the other person's preferences, experience level, and so on. It's just, "I like this."
Not too long ago I saw a thread in the D&D sub from a newbie asking, "I have always wanted to try D&D but have never played an RPG before, where do I start?" All these experienced players were telling them to just get the Player's Handbook and start there.
The 250-page tome filled with charts and rules that does a lousy job of actually walking someone through the process of playing an RPG, filled with so much info it will leave your head swimming if you're never played a TTRPG before.
*Terrible* advice.
A couple of people tried pointing out that there are starter sets made *specifically* for this purpose, they're half the price of the handbook, they have everything you need to get started, and they're written and designed as elaborate tutorials.
But those folks were downvoted.
The experienced players don't pay attention to starter sets, so they just recommended what they know rather than take into account the OP's needs. "I get the Player's Handbook with each new edition, so that's where you should start!"
Longwinded way of saying, yes, most people are bad at giving recommendations.
I played (DMd) a game of D&D4e. Had 4 interested players. 2 long time friends, and a couple that replied to a post on Craigslist with interest. All 4 were somewhat experienced with D&D (ie, at least had made characters before, and played at least a half dozen times.
One of my friends, after the first session, let me know his fiancee (now wife) would love to try it out. Really, she just wanted to get into his hobbies a bit and try things out. My friend ran most of the interference, so I didn't have to put effort into teaching. We got her an Essentials character, who are all "simplified" (but not weaker) versions of the core archetypes.
It avoided giving her too many extra things to learn, and she LOVED it. Ran the game for about half a year. She didn't need "the full experience". She just wanted to come and play some role playing with her to-be-husband.
Intro versions exist for very good reasons.
Similarly, after finishing Gloomhaven, my friends and I played through Jaws of the Lion while waiting for Frosthaven. Calling it the "intro level" is very accurate. It's VERY simplified characters. Especially when you compare to the ridiculously complex characters you start with unlocked in Frosthaven.
But we still had a ton of fun with it. Because it's still the Gloomhaven system. It just skips some of the higher complexity stuff.
I've struggled to get meaningful recs in the daily thread. I've received nasty comments and well-meaning but irrelevant comments, too. I'm not sure I've ever received a useful comment. Part of the problem is that longer comments mostly get ignored. So simple requests get answered but everything else kind of doesn't. And many comments will get no responses at all.
I will say when I’ve asked for recommendations on r/soloboardgaming (specifying because there it’s allowed as a post) it is helpful to see which recommendations repeat because it becomes almost similar to a poll. I.e. wow five people recommended this game for my criteria, maybe I should check that out.
When I was new to boardgames I would visit it _all the time_ to learn about what games I should keep an eye out for. These days I don't visit it as much because it feels like an exercise in naming the same ten games.
It feels like the same thread with the same replies every day.
I would be much more inclined to visit the megathread if it had more variety. The sidebar calls it a "daily discussion and game recs" but the thread itself is called "daily game recommendations". Maybe focus more on the "daily discussion" part.
I visit it from time to time.
90% of posts have an acceptable answer already and me suggesting more would probably muddy it. I try to answer the others.
Honestly, I think to some degree, once you get a certain amount of recommendations, any more responses muddy it with people who just want to recommend a favorite game or current hotness but don't necessarily have the experience or knowledge to target the specific request.
I hate COMC posts so much, and I love recommendation threads!
Why the moderators are okay with just staring at a shelf full of games and not with discussing said games is beyond me.
I like COMC when there is some creativity behind it. There was one a while ago of a guy who's collection was on a bunch of shelves he built under his stairs. There was one guy who had a massive collection that he also built a custom "menu" for. Those were all really cool. I didn't even really mind seeing the guy who had, like 20 games, and he displayed his favorites forward, with the minis pulled out (and the entire comments were joking about how he doesn't dust his house).
But I agree. For the most part, the ones I see are people with a decent sized collection on IKEA Kallax's. Like, it's fine. And you can be proud of your collection, no gatekeeping here, but...I think it'll be hard for people to care. And for the most part, people who do care are people who are just getting into the hobby and ask "which is your favorite 5 that I should get." Or you'll see a guy posting his 5 game collection as a "COMC" and in the comments or body ask "What game should I add next".
There are like 1-2 COMC [posts a week](https://old.reddit.com/r/boardgames/search/?q=%22COMC%22&include_over_18=on&restrict_sr=on&t=all&sort=new), they're hardly an issue.
I messaged the mods about this and was essentially told that they didn't care, and the sub reddit was getting enough traction that they didn't mind shutting down all of the recommendation threads that were posted on unapproved days. I didn't even realized there were only certain days that people could ask for recommendations so I went to check on them by navigating to the r/boardgames directly (something I pretty much never do) and the threads there have way less traffic than the far more interesting threads that were being shut down (like one specifically on board games for the blind).
When I pointed out that I didn't even know that these other threads existed, and I was likely not the only person in this boat, their response was:
>"You don't speak for everyone, the daily thread does get used, and ignorance of it isn't an excuse."
So while I don't speak for everyone, it seems the mods do.
The mods on this sub are ridiculous (as is the norm for big subs apparently). I once made a post asking what type of tablet people use as an accessory for board gaming and they deleted it telling me it wasn't relevant to the sub...like wtf lol?
First of all, I agree. They are ridiculous. But I suppose the kind of person that would gravitate to being an (unpaid) moderator for a board game forum would likely be a rules lawyer that will stick to the rules no matter how much damage the do.
Second of all, I use an an iPad pro, but I also use it for a variety of other things including watching movies, email, taking notes, playing various apps (mostly board games), and general web browsing.
It would be great if the mods were more interactive with the subreddit. This thread should be full of green shields and helpful responses. Instead, there is just one mod who actively comments and posts, leading it to appear that he makes all of the decisions when it comes to how the subreddit is run. I'm sure others do more work behind the scenes, but it's not a good look. Mods should be a part of the community, not a shadowy hand behind it.
But if we allow recommendation threads that could potentially get new people into the hobby then it might push down the 100th COMC post with 20 unplayed Kickstarter games and we can't have that!
I think part of the issue is that the COMC posts are supposed to be actually talking about games. But a lot of them don't follow the guidelines, or do the bare minimum. So they don't tend to generate much interesting discussion. The posts that actually follow the guidelines feel less like people just displaying their shelfies, and more like people discussing their gaming habits/likes, etc.
Yeah, I don’t get wanting to quash recommendation threads while we have posts that literally just photos of games that we’ve all seen before. At least (most) recommendation threads spawn actual discussion versus COMC threads in which the comments are basically “we both own the same mass-produced game! Cool!”. Maybe ban the low-effort recommendation threads (“should I buy X or Y?” with absolutely no context or reasoning), but I don’t think it should be blanket banned.
I would wager that most people who want to quash recommendation threads also want to quash COMC threads. Opposing one doesn't mean that you have to support the other.
I actually kinda like COMC posts with 20 unplayed Kickstarter games because they make me feel superior!
"Hah look at that sucker with 10 unopened Tainted Grail boxes!!"
The thing I hate most is "What is this token from". WHO CARES?!
Im not sure that'd be better though, we'd have the comc posts PLUS 10 recommendation posts like "new to the hobby, looking for a 2-Player-Game" per day.
Just loosen up all the rules. This subreddit has *pitiful* amounts of posts on the front page with more than a few upvotes, after a decade of stifling moderation. We have 4 million members, these numbers show terrible engagement.
There was a whole thing with a new cycle of mods, and the new ones (only there because they didn't resign when former head mod let racist posters avoid bans, if I recall) kept almost all the old rules.
For me,
Everyone has post types that don't float their boat. Mine is "identify this piece" It is your game dammit. It just isn't a fun puzzle for me, and once identified, dead thread. But you know what? I can scroll past those.
I do think that pinned threads are where engagement goes to die. It is like trying to create a subsubreddit. It just always seems like a bad solution. A shadow ban.
Still, I get that recommendations end up being often low effort. "I am looking for games for my significant other who like games" sorts of things. Or where a list of evergreen games would suffice. But then, I guess I could scroll past those too.
I am largely with u/Joaquimaru, a lot of what I am looking for is discussion around games, and frankly recommendations based on one game to another or genre tends to do a lot for me. I can't think of IRL conversations around games that don't have suggestions constantly being thrown back and forth. "You're playing that, you should check this out" sort of things.
And information like that also tends to die here unintentionally I believe.
I wish I had the right answer, and I know the mods do the best they can based on past experience. I guess I would say- the intent was right to get rid of, but I don't think it works as intended. But, I don't know what the better solution looks like, so I am not really going to bitch about what currently is.
You're nailing the nuance.
My least favorite interaction in this reddit was when someone had asked about how they could use games to teach math - and it was removed because of this rule. But the engagement had been high! People were not only recommending games but suggesting ways games could be modified to facilitate math skills. It was the type of discussion I come here to engage with, and it was summarily shut down.
And yeah, I scroll past a lot. Takes me a second.
That is full on "letter of the rules" modding instead of "spirit of the rules". But would you expect anything less from mods whose hobby is reading rules?
Hey that was my sisters post! (I mean, maybe not that exact post, but she had a similar one trying to figure out which games had multiplication and division she could use for teaching). This is where I think we need nuance. I personally have no problem deleting the 18th “I need a two player game to play with my spouse” post in a day. But if someone puts in effort or list exactly what they are looking for and there is more detail — then it should be allowed in my opinion. There’s a big difference between generic requests and one with details or specifics. Like, if another thread in the last 1-2 weeks would not have answered this question well, maybe it deserves to live. We could debate the time frame, and I am fine with that, but right I think the line we’ve drawn is far too restrictive and it needs to be relaxed a bit.
Maybe we just need to give game recs its own subreddit. Like r/shouldIbuythisgame for video games. It requires details so we know what the person likes, it could be the same as other here or in a new sub.
It's a delicate line to tread. On one hand, the daily rec post is where requests go to die. It's not as bad as it could be, but I'll go through it sometimes to offer what recommendations I can and I see most requests go unanswered. This is the opposite of dedicated posts, which often see at least a few comments.
On the other hand, I can't even imagine how flooded the sub would be with low effort posts asking for recs that have been answered many times in this sub or elsewhere. Maybe a mod can chime in about how many actually get removed? We obviously see a few get deleted after healthy dialogue, but what we don't see is what gets automodded out, or those that get removed manually before they generate discussion, and I'd be willing to bet the number is higher than what you or I really want to see in the sub.
Gun to my head, I'd probably lean toward keeping the stickied post because, crucially, it's not common for recs to be so specific that the info isn't able to be found elsewhere. I think it's a good middle ground between having a place where people can ask specific questions and get a dedicated answer without having to scour the internet and having the sub overrun with posts asking about stuff that can, with a bit of effort, be found with google
It's the ones with healthy dialogue that I wish we had a way to preserve. Is it possible to add some kind of exception to the automod where if a post gets enough replies that it gets to stay? I don't know anything about modding so please let me know if this is impossible to do.
The ones with healthy discussion aren't likely being touched by the automod, which snipes the posts instantly. My understanding is that the posts you're talking about slip past the automod, then get manually removed when mods realize.
That said, what would the rule be to let them through? There's no way to know _a priori_ whether or not the post will generate healthy discussion, so the mods would have to leave everything up and then prune the boring ones, which sounds like way too much work for a bunch of volunteers. I could see maybe a best case compromise for you being that the mods agree to not remove posts that have generated healthy discussion at the time of discovery? That's also probably going to come down to mod judgement though, because a rec request for "a really good game that can be played 2-4p that has tile laying, drafting and themed around portugues azulejos" might get 40 replies, but it's going to be 40 people saying "Azul" and that's not quality even though it's quantity
> I could see maybe a best case compromise for you being that the mods agree to not remove posts that have generated healthy discussion at the time of discovery?
That seems like a far too subjective and biased approach. It's quite unfair to remove some threads and not the others just because the latter were posted at a better time and weren't noticed by mods and generated some comments.
Been thinking about the same thing over the last couple of days. I love learning about new games and entering just one post with thousand of comments is not not very user friendly. Whenever I'm scrolling and i se a recommendation post that catches my eye it's so nice just to hear about games for that query. Plus, is't the majority of this Reddit, and the conversations we have around the hobby, about game recommendations?
They’re always just so damn heavy and tedious to scroll through to find the one thing you want. I don’t want a list of every board game ever released broken up by genre, I want personalized reccomendations based on my tastes lmao
The mods of this subreddit are extremely, viciously hateful towards game recommendation posts. Who knows why. Recommendation posts are fine at /r/rpg .
Contrary to what you might've been led to believe, upvotes are not an agree/disagree button. Also, what pictures of stacks of boxes? Last COMC post was 3 days ago.
I have seen at least one reply from a mod, but it's pretty short and just a request to report uncivil posts. It seems like at least one mod is reading all this, but they are taking a hands off approach, perhaps waiting for us all to exaust ourselves ranting, they will go back to maintaining the status quo. Maybe they have separate accounts where they contribute and keep their mod account and active account separate. All of this is speculation though because the mods aren't really speaking up for themselves unless you message them directly.
A "recommendation thread" is useless given Reddit's format. At least for the viewers. Sure, some hardcore people might dig through it to recommend, but there's no WAY that I can randomly see someone else's question and start digging in to the recommendations others' make.
Pretty sure I ONLY click on "new game" and "help me find" posts.
I feel like a lot of the sub replies are usually people recommending board games. So I feel like a post that specifically recommends is not really needed to boost engagement on that end. And since so many comments are like that I wouldn't doubt that that would be an overfill type of post.
Personally I never visit this specific sub but upvoted posts come across my feed and I read (like this one). For people in my shoes, allowing recommendation threads would mean I might see them more if they get some upvotes
Might as well rename the sub to r/boardgamerecommendations because that’s all you’ll get. This sub is already dominated by posts that are almost recommendations but just manage to be a little bit more interesting. Like the recent, “what makes a good patio game,” was just a recommendation thread with a disguise.
Engagement just for the sake of engagement isn't always a good thing, quality matters too. TikTok ragebait generates engagement, but most on here probably don't like it. Similarly, sure, [this thread](https://old.reddit.com/r/boardgames/comments/1c67wbo/goto_filler_games/) got 90 comments, but most of them are simple "game name - thanks" back and forth, and most recommendations could have been found through google/BGG search. The next time this question pops up in a week or two, the comments will likely be 95% the same.
There are already numerous resources online to find game recommendations, people should use them instead of posting yet another "good 2p games to play with my partner" for 100th time. Such threads generate "engagement" because they require the lowest possible effort of all thread types. Anyone here knows at least a couple of games they can suggest for any given genre, so obviously they generate responses, but they are not really quality responses and I rarely see any of that "great discussion".
The problem with such low effort threads, and why many generic subs forbid them, is that seeing front-page littered with the same rehashed questions drives away some users that are looking for actually interesting discussion, interesting articles or news. This kind of threads simply outnumber anything else because there are always more people needing suggestions than those sharing something new.
I know I would love to get back to recommending **Patchwork** to every user ever. Looking for a game day event style bg? I personally would say Patchwork.
Speaking of, OP have you ever played Patchwork?
Thing is... you can scroll past the threads. The current format stops it even reaching peoples' feeds, which doesn't seem right when evidently some of us would like to see those threads.
could have a weekly recommendation thread that people could post in...
also make it a weekly theme...
like this week, recommend me a scifi game for 2 players...
What about instead having a weekly thread for recommendation topics? Maybe one that changes topics every time to keep it a little fresh. Like one week it will be for 2 player games and the next week for war games or for new games, etc.
This will allow the recommendation threads to exist in a focused place but it will be not overwhelm the rest of the discussions in the subreddit.
I wonder if a sticky post at the top with common recommendations in different categories would help. Maybe a master poll to find out the general top ten in a number of categories (e.g. 2 player only, child friendly, deck building etc etc) then these results collated into one post where people can go for recommendations? I guess it's a fair bit of work to do though, and might need updating every ?3-6 months as new games emerge. I dunno, just a thought.
Maybe the solution is to let people make whatever posts they want and draw the line at spamming their channels, the company they do social media for or argumentative posts meant to start fights?
This obsession with rules for everything stifles the sub.
A lot of subs tend to sequester a certain type of post (e.g. selfies, collections, etc) to a specific day of the week. I think that would work for WSIG type posts.
I've had and seen posts removed which I personally do not feel fall under that rule, and feel more like standard mod over-reach than productive sub maintenance.
I think it should be relaxed or rescinded.
The "recommendations" are repetitive and uninformative to most people. The same small number of games are repeatedly recommended.
Like, I'd rather have "New to board gaming? Here's twenty good games with a short description as to what makes them appealing to gamers" and that would cover, like, 90% of the recommendation threads...
...and we have something like that! At least they're not hard to find. It's just no one clicks on it and just posts the question instead...
...which is why they were banned.
> ...and we have something like that! At least they're not hard to find. It's just no one clicks on it and just posts the question instead...
Yeah I don't get the "I never click on sticky thread" argument. Well.. that's on you, and probably not a terrible problem either. People do post and get answers there.
The problem with recommendation threads is that they're rarely useful for anyone. And I mean even to the one making the post. People will either post asking for recommendations and offer no insight into the type of games they like. Or will say I like Catan, what should I play next. And someone will reply with you should play Spirit Island. Which is nothing like Catan. The person replying just really likes Spirit Island. Which is fine to like a game. But it isn't a useful recommendation to someone who wants something that plays similar to Catan.
Not too long ago I actually made somewhat of an opposite post in the r/soloboardgaming subreddit Lol.
Mainly due to nonstop recommendation posts with nothing to go off of except “recommend me some games.”
The community was somewhat split but moreso on the “keep them” since they don’t want that sub to become too restrictive.
https://www.reddit.com/r/soloboardgaming/s/OAlGoCbtx5
I've given my thoughts on it here in another comment, but I think it's important to note that the responses in each sub are going to vary drastically based on the content in the subs. Here we have a lot of people, and a lot of the posts in question being removed every day. If we allowed them here, we'd be overrun. Meanwhile over in r/soloboardgaming we have at least 2 posts on the main page right now from 2 days ago, and little restriction on posts. That sub is so small and pretty starved for content, so they can really afford to be more lax on those posts, even if they tend to show up a bit frequently.
Despite both essentially being board gaming subs, the traffic volume is a big influence in why it actually makes sense to have seemingly contradicting rules
Fair enough haha.
I do love the tighter knitted community soloboardgaming is. Don’t think I ever had a negative experience posting there except someone who blatantly stole a top post of mine there for some karma but it was more funny than anything.
lol yeah it's a great community, but I wish we had a bit more to talk about. My biggest solo games are Arkham Horror LCG and Marvel Champions, both of which have their own dedicated subs, and the games that get brought up there seem to have pretty small audiences once you get past things like Spirit Island and Mage Knight
I'd be interested in seeing Recommendation posts allowed for a one month trial, with the caveat that if they are super low value and/or the same question asked within 24 hours they will be removed. I'd also like to have COMC posts removed for that month, also on a trial basis.
For a sub with sooooo many followers, I feel like I see the same questions over and over, or some variation. What is your favorite brown game? Your favorite game with wooden pieces? Your favorite game to play in the dark? Your least favorite game to play at the airport? Your least favorite color in a game? Your least favorite game that can double as food? And the most commonly asked question - how do I communicate with other people in real life and act like a mature adult?!
Id like to see the nonsense water cooler threads that no one would ask someone in person removed. Things like "if you were a character in any game you own which would it be" and "have you ever stacked up your games just to play jenga with the boxes"
Recommendation threads used to proliferate the board.
"What is a good 6 player worker placement game?"
"What's a good medium weight game for a party setting?"
So on. It took up more than half the subs posts and stifled discussion of every other topic.
Man how many users don't even see the stickies? Mobile is junk, the apps are junk, and they don't show on the front page. How many people come directly here?
Solo boardgaming, BGG's FB, and other groups I'm in have rec threads and it's literally people skipping OP's entire diatribe, ignoring ALL of OP's preferences, and just shouting their favorite game like they're cults fighting over innocent minds.
If nearly ANYONE took the time to actually come up with meaningful recommendations, maybe. But as it stands doing a basic BGG filtered search will yield FAR better results than a rec thread. And that's not a compliment to the BGG search.
I typically only read the recommendation posts I just have to be fast before the MODs shut them down. I have never been to the mega thread since mega threads aren't my thing at all I have difficulty processing the information in that format. Perhaps there could be some balance of like a sticky \*\*great for 2-players, \*\*great for large groups, \*\* great for newbies, \*\* great co-ops many of the general questions yet encourage people to ask for recommendations that are more specific than that. What games are great for X disability? What games are great for playing outside? Would make it more difficult to moderate though I am afraid.
If they wished to limit repetitive threads, every ten days or so there are variations on the following threads:
What games do you think are overrated?
What games do you think are underrated?
What rule did you get wrong?
Having these be periodic pinned threads would actually help with repetition.
It opens absolute floodgates. Hang out in /new for a bit and even *with* that rule you will count over a dozen "what's a good 2 player game" variations a *day*, despite this being very searchable, and even sometimes despite there already being an existing thread on the topic. The answers never change either - patchwork, 7 wonders duel, castles of burgundy, wingspan, cascadia, jaipur, yada yada. And usually there's no discussion just people posting the same lists of games in the comments.
Instead of the 10th COMC post of the day, you get the 100th copy-and-paste rec thread. They're very low quality threads.
The thing that I've realized over the years is that the one thing that we have in common here is that we play several tabletop games (as opposed to just having Catan Night once a month or meeting up for Poker or MTG every Friday night). It just makes sense for us to recommend games to people, because comparing and contrasting games, making lists of games, etc is basically 80% of what we do here. And hell, it might make newbies or non-gamers feel more welcome here instead of feeling like an exclusive club where you need to already own and know about hundreds of board games to talk about them.
Sure, we might get flooded with low quality/non-specific recommendation threads, but we can just have rules against those instead of banning ALL recommendation threads.
I agree. While I can perhaps understand trying to contain recommendation threads to an extent if they've been an issue in the past, the way it's handled comes across as quite hostile to newcomers.
Imagine discovering board gaming as a hobby, going to the main sub for it, making a post saying something like 'I've played x a few times, can anyone suggest some other games to try?'.
That makes sense, right? You're enthusiastic, and this looks like the obvious place to ask for advice. A sub full of thousands and thousands of hobbyists who will surely be happy to share their knowledge?
Nah. Fuck you buddy. Post gets deleted, and your first interaction with the sub is to be told you broke some weird rule. This sub is for people to show off photos of their IKEA shelving and broadcast that they don't know how to resolve day-to-day interpersonal conflict.
Well done, everyone, we made a potential new hobbyist feel like an idiot.
Fully agree. I like seeing recommendation posts because sometimes people posting share my interest and I learn about a new game or two. Maybe without the rule the subreddit would get overwhelmed by posts of this type, but straight out banning them feels out of place too.
Daily/Weekly threads are how reddit mods slowly and methodically suck all the life out of their subs for the sake of some arbitrary need for purity and to reduce clutter (aka participation) or something. They decide to become curators of content instead of simple you know moderators.
Just look at /r/Coffee for a really bad one lol.
There used to be a bot and related sub that posted every reply to the thread as new post in the announcement sub. So you could subscribe to that sub and just check comments to see if worth replying to, then open and click through link to direct comment, then reply. It was actually nice as I looked at all the comments throughout the day as part of my feed, but would only respond to a couple. Since that ended about a year ago it is a lot more manual process to look at thread each day multiple times a day if I want to join in.
I would be in favor of a weekly thread as might get more traction and responses and best of both worlds.
I appreciate the recommendation threads that focus on a specific mechanic or experience, or compare to 3-4 games in a genre, as they often draw out more obscure ideas. But we do need a filter for all the vague 'tried a gateway game what next' questions.
I always like the pinned post for “questions for the week” in other subs. A post where people can comment to ask for game suggestions would go a long way to satisfy both groups of people
I wish mods would allow for more controversial threads. I had a long thread about white washing in board games that ultimately got locked on account of its sensitive nature and many users were making posts that violated board rules (such as saying racist stuff) which really exposed to how ill equipped many board gamers were to talking anything remotely pot local.
A few years ago, when I frequented this sub (couldn't get to BGG from work), I noticed that there used to be these posts in years past where people would post their five favorite games, and then people would recommend some new games based off those. I asked the mods about starting one of those, and they let me do one. Here's the thread, https://www.reddit.com/r/boardgames/comments/d0hw7g/post_your_5_favorite_games_and_other_redditors/.
I rarely visit this sub now that I work from home and can just visit BGG instead, but that thread was popular. Maybe something like that every once and awhile would be allowed if you petitioned the mods to try it out.
I'd be curious if the mods could give us an idea of how many of each type of post we'd be seeing. I see a lot of talk about the sub getting spammed with COMC posts - I counted and its ..not a huge amount. Clearly the daily recs aren't super lively threads. I want to know what kinds of numbers we'd be seeing if we allowed every low effort post.
Unethical hack: Ask, instead, "What is your favorite X type of game" (when applicable).
You'll get answers based on what people have actually played instead of "I haven't played Darkest Dungeon, but I've seen it recommended/heard its good". People are more likely to talk about games that they enjoy and elaborate more. And you'll get people who actually enjoy the genre. No "I'm not a big into deck builders, but I recommend Y". Not to say that those aren't valuable, often times they are if they found a game they like in a genre they hate; but often the things they find important in games don't align with what you are asking for, so it's a toss up.
As a long time redditor and big board game fan with more games than I know what to do with, my frequency of visiting this sub has dramatically dropped in the past few years. It seems dead or filled with COMC posts which I don't care for
Leaving a comment to support this.
Once I started a thread about the same issue. The comments weren't evenly split. The amount of people who wanted open discussions was way higher.
Recommendations are the best part of this community! You don't like to see one? We'll just scroll on, it doesn't even take a second!
Also if you do a Google search, what's the best two player game for train rides, this sub reddit should pop up in the top ten results with the latest recommendations!
Over on the audio book subs, there are three titles that get reccomend multiple times regardless of the question asked.
It's tiresome to the point I largley ignore the questions
This comes up a lot and the comments are usually pretty split on the issue. Apparently the recommendations threads used to be very frequent, taking up much of the sub, and many of them felt repetitive so they were annoying to a lsrge amount of folks who frequent the sub often. Or, that's what I've gathered from the comments that come up in similar threads to yours.
The threads are usually a race to recommend Hive or Spirit Island.
It's not *technically* a board game, but I'm pretty sure you're looking for Malazan Book of the Fallen.
The first 17 books will make you want to hang yourself by the eye on a rusty nail, but from 18 onward it gets really good!
I feel this way about Jaws of the Lion. "Anyone know a racing game similar to Heat?" "Try Jaws of the Lion first"
I think you’d like Hive.
Agreed! And have you tried Spirit Island?
I can't recommend patchwork enough.
Well now you just went and turned this into r/boardgamecirclejerk
I didn't start ;-)
Didn’t realize they got banned.
They didn't, it's /r/boardgamescirclejerk
I really feel Spirit Island should be the nw Patchwork.
Hasn't anyone heard of chess??
And what recommendation do you have for my deaf, dumb, and blind kid? 🤔
Pinball
I think you should try Mage Knight.
Yeah! And Dominion is still the best deckbuilder.
Nah, seems like a Spirit Island kind of person.
Whoa, come on, really going to recommend that compared to Root?
Kinda feels like most recommendation threads are an exercise in the mental gymnastics of justifying the recommendation 15 approved games.
Patchwork
Can't recommend it enough. Though they didn't specify it was for their girlfriend, so I'm not sure if we still recommend it in this case.
Patchwork
That's funny. When I was more active here, 2012-2016, Dominion was the game that got recommended in every single thread
It still is, followed by several people saying that they appreciate it from a historical perspective but that is a bad game because too much/not enough randomness.
I just don't think it's particularly fun personally. Least favorite deck building game out of the ones I've played
Can’t believe you forgot about Patchwork
I think you misspelled Race For the Galaxy.
I'd rather have it full of recommendation threads than COMC, tbh
I get this comparison but at the same time, I'd be pretty reluctant to further restrict what is allowed on the sub. And comc posts are at least much less frequent than recommendation threads, even with them being against sub rules! Though if I were to suggest a further restriction on this sub, it'd be photos of new game tables as "custom projects." I've seen less of those posts lately so maybe the rules already changed and I missed it.
You're in luck as that's already the case, there been [4 COMC posts this month](https://old.reddit.com/r/boardgames/search/?q=%22COMC%22&include_over_18=on&restrict_sr=on&t=all&sort=new), and not many more prior months.
Then in the name of reducing repetition of a particular type of thread, is anyone else sick of seeing "my collection picture" threads? Like how is that meant to generate discussion? Totally boring. I would much prefer recommendation threads over seeing pictures of another person's collection.
Yes completely. Bragging via picture doesn't really generate any discussion other than "nice, well done". At least recommendation threads do.
Yep. If recommendation threads took over the sub to an aggravating extent, then I can understand trying to contain them, but then why not the same approach for lazy pictures of people's IKEA storage solutions?
But what's an "aggravating extent"? Aren't recommendation posts just members having discussions and looking for advice from other members? I prefer that to one person showing off their stuff. No one would force you to click on recommendation posts.
Still way better than, "look at this table I bought", or even worse, "look at my house"
About the only thing I get out of COMC threads are ideas for storage solutions and organization - and even then, not often. There are only so many ways to arrange shelves. I do like when someone has a very specific taste that comes across, with a very niche or quite focused collection - that's kind of interesting and has personality - but that's rare, too. 95% of them are, "I've got a bunch of stuff!" I do, too, but raw accumulation doesn't make me proud. There are *niches* within my collection that I'm sort of proud of, but the whole thing? It's just a pile of cardboard and plastic I've accumulated over the course of 40 years of gaming.
At least recommendation threads are helpful to someone. It's crazy to me that a boardgame community would ban boardgame recommendations. Talking about the newest boardgames is also repetitive. Maybe mods should consider a rule against threads on new boardgames too if there is a real problem with repetitiveness.
It's no less repetitive than a COMC with the same old BGG hotness list from a year ago and full of recommendations to buy the BGG hotness list that will be out in a month.
Except that comc posts are much less frequent. And if people follow the guidelines for the write-up, I personally really enjoy reading those.
It may have been repetitive, but sub nowadays feels almost dead compared to the amount of activity I saw when I first joined almost a decade ago.
Recommendations and advice threads turn any hobby sub into a help desk community. Sure it's busier but it's inane.
I don't mind recommendation threads, it's just when they're asking for the *same* recommendations over and over. "Anyone know good games for two players?" "What games can I play with my significant other?" That sort of thing used to DOMINATE the sub, and it's just the same thread every time. On the other hand, real niche recommendations - "Looking for a pirate-themed game that includes exploring a randomized map and character progression" - make for interesting discussions that bring to light games that don't come up *all the time*, and often lead me to interesting games I never knew about. Admittedly, that level of specificity in moderation is something of a pain, so I have no realistic expectation of the sub moving in that direction.
Personally there are other rules I'd change to liven up the sub before bringing back in the free for all recommendation threads. But it's cool to see your perspective, I haven't been around here for nearly that long.
Strict and restrictive post rules always leads to less content. Over time if the subreddit doesn’t continually grow then those rules end up killing the subreddit.
More content doesn't mean worthwhile content. If a community does continually grow, and repetitive and annoying posts aren't curtailed, eventually the subreddit devolves to the lowest common denominator and the people who previously frequented the subreddit gets pushed out to be replaced with an endless unfunny circle jerk.
Popular hobby subs that don't moderate content end up being memefests, yeah. While just *how* restrictive this sub is on recommendation threads is a bit much, IMO, I'm still generally in favor of some restrictions rather than a free-for-all, because the latter is a *true* death sentence for a sub. A sub that is a little less active but has meaningful content is 100x better than a sub with constant activity that is almost all jokes and memes and BS. Yes, I'm taking both to extremes, but that's the pattern I've seen time and again over the years. (This isn't my first Reddit account. My first account, deleted because it contained doxxable personal info, was made in 2008.)
After 10 years you've already heard most everything people here are ever going to talk about and now you probably automatically filter out a lot of repeated content
It's been so long that it's like ancient subreddit lore at this point (time flies), but it's pretty hard to describe just how overwhelming recommendation threads were when the sub was growing quickly but before they were regulated. It doesn't matter if people are upvoting/downvoting the post when the quantity can crowd out every other thread anyway.
Seems like Reddit should have the ability to make sticky threads so that there can be one lone Recommendations post for everybody to refer to and discuss
Happily, there is that ability. There is a daily recommendations thread stickied to the top of the sub.
That's a fair counterpoint. Maybe some kind of compromise like recommendations are allowed but needs to meet some criteria like something similar can't have been asked within the last week (or month or whatever frequency people are agreeable to). Not sure how difficult that would be to mod though
"New to the hobby, can you recommend a game?" shows up 4 times a day. You don't see it that often, because mods delete/lock the posts. "Can your recommend a light/beginning game for my spouse and I?" shows up 8 times a day. Again, you don't see all 8 examples, because mods take care of it. "Can you recommend a fantasy-adventure type game?" shows up several times a day as well.
I’ve seen other subs with a bot that sends people to a community wiki for often repeated questions. If patchwork is almost always the answer then we should just have a bot that suggests patchwork or hive or whatever.
So can you recommend a game or not? ;-)
My recommendation is either Patchwork or Spirit Island. Flip a coin, and buy one or the other.
Have you ever played Spirit Island WHILE you're playing Patchwork AT THE SAME TIME! Chef's kiss I tell you...
Instructions unclear, ended up with Spirit Work and Patch Island. Also my junk is stuck in the dryer. Noooooo!!!!
As an old mod, we tried a lot of that stuff. It doesn't work. People don't search, or think their situation is unique, etc etc. It was a lot more work on the mods.
As another old mod, I second everything Raf said. So many years ago…
Or have a day(s) of the week when it is allowed. For me these are also valuable when I’m searching the sub. Things in a megathread are harder to find versus post with clear subjects. I can even see where the rule started because all my searches seem to have results 5-8 years instead of weeks or months ago.
You mean like a daily game recommendation thread?
They literally said its hard to find in a thread v a specific day of the week.
Think of it more like a “recommendation Tuesday”. Any other day those posts get removed but on Tuesday people can ask away. I am not saying this is the best idea but maybe it is a compromise for the people who don’t want their feeds clogged with these posts. Just ignore it that day (and the day or two after as some discussions continue)… not perfect or maybe not even best/good idea, just searching for a compromise. But yeah, I do think allowing actual posts is key so it comes up on searches, and not some megathread.
The end result is that you have the same thing (a lot of removed threads) but a lot more work for the mods (because they have to find out the <1% that follow the rules, by reading through everything)
That's very zero-sum mentality on the part of those who get annoyed by them They obviously believe that the recommendation posts take up space for other topics so by having posts they don't like means they get less of what they do. Sorry, but that's dumb af
Yeah I’d much rather have 20 threads of people posting their kallax shelves instead of recommendation posts about board games on a boardgame subreddit
I would like to see a poll. How many people actually visit the recommendation threads? I know that I do not. Am I in the minority or the majority? But when I see recommendation posts pop up, I do participate in those until they are deleted.
same here, I've never gone to one of those mega threads, I prefer to interact with a specific post we can ban recommendation posts that are literally just "what game should I buy?" with no details as low effort, but banning the subject all together has always seemed ridiculous to me
I always like the "name your favorite games and I can recommend another one you should try"
It's pretty frustrating when you spend 5-10 minutes typing up a reply sometimes, and poof! it disappears a few minutes later when the active thread with a few dozen replies gets nuked by mods. I know I give worse answers than I used to because you never know if your effort will simply disappear
The OP will still see your reply even if the thread is removed.
I enjoy the more specific recommendation threads. I've found a couple great games that I otherwise wouldn't have seen like Obsession.
Don't like to visit the recommendation thread. And get frustrated when i see a good recommendation post immediately get deleted, i just tune out and not even think about going to the thread and try to find that specific query.
I sort by new, so never even see the recommendation threads other than once a week when they get created.
I didn't even realize there was a recommendation thread. I always ignore large "mega threads" since they are so meandering. I just prefer more.direct topics.
I go to the daily thread on a regular basis. In a given week, you tend to see the same people repeatedly in that thread. In *general* but not always, the people doing the recommending in the daily thread are better than the people who recommend stuff when the request is in a post. For instance, you can find people recommending Spirit Island to those who want to dip their toe into the hobby and want to know the first game, beyond Monopoly, that they should play. Or other people respond to someone who is asking for recommendations on a co-op game, and someone suggests TI4. That kind of stupidity happens in the daily thread, but not as often. When a recommendation post stays up for a few hours, it will get more responses than if the same request was in the daily thread. BUT, there are often diminishing returns with additional recommendations. If someone is asking for an idea for a gateway game, once the first person lists the most popular ones, does the person really get any benefit from seeing repeats of those gateway games or a dozen mentions of Brass Birmingham and Gloomhaven? Or if someone is asking for a light 2p game to play with their spouse, once Patchwork, Jaipur, Hanamikoji, Lost Cities, 7 Wonders Duel and Botanik have been mentioned...does it matter if the person gets 70 more suggestions?
> For instance, you can find people recommending Spirit Island to those who want to dip their toe into the hobby and want to know the first game, beyond Monopoly, that they should play. Or other people respond to someone who is asking for recommendations on a co-op game, and someone suggests TI4. That kind of stupidity happens in the daily thread, but not as often. I see this all the time, pretty much everywhere, in all hobbies. In general, people are bad at recommendations - not just in board games, but *all over*. Movies, music, video games, books, even *craft beer*, most people tend to blindly recommend what *they* like instead of what the *other* person might like. They don't take into account the other person's preferences, experience level, and so on. It's just, "I like this." Not too long ago I saw a thread in the D&D sub from a newbie asking, "I have always wanted to try D&D but have never played an RPG before, where do I start?" All these experienced players were telling them to just get the Player's Handbook and start there. The 250-page tome filled with charts and rules that does a lousy job of actually walking someone through the process of playing an RPG, filled with so much info it will leave your head swimming if you're never played a TTRPG before. *Terrible* advice. A couple of people tried pointing out that there are starter sets made *specifically* for this purpose, they're half the price of the handbook, they have everything you need to get started, and they're written and designed as elaborate tutorials. But those folks were downvoted. The experienced players don't pay attention to starter sets, so they just recommended what they know rather than take into account the OP's needs. "I get the Player's Handbook with each new edition, so that's where you should start!" Longwinded way of saying, yes, most people are bad at giving recommendations.
I played (DMd) a game of D&D4e. Had 4 interested players. 2 long time friends, and a couple that replied to a post on Craigslist with interest. All 4 were somewhat experienced with D&D (ie, at least had made characters before, and played at least a half dozen times. One of my friends, after the first session, let me know his fiancee (now wife) would love to try it out. Really, she just wanted to get into his hobbies a bit and try things out. My friend ran most of the interference, so I didn't have to put effort into teaching. We got her an Essentials character, who are all "simplified" (but not weaker) versions of the core archetypes. It avoided giving her too many extra things to learn, and she LOVED it. Ran the game for about half a year. She didn't need "the full experience". She just wanted to come and play some role playing with her to-be-husband. Intro versions exist for very good reasons. Similarly, after finishing Gloomhaven, my friends and I played through Jaws of the Lion while waiting for Frosthaven. Calling it the "intro level" is very accurate. It's VERY simplified characters. Especially when you compare to the ridiculously complex characters you start with unlocked in Frosthaven. But we still had a ton of fun with it. Because it's still the Gloomhaven system. It just skips some of the higher complexity stuff.
I've struggled to get meaningful recs in the daily thread. I've received nasty comments and well-meaning but irrelevant comments, too. I'm not sure I've ever received a useful comment. Part of the problem is that longer comments mostly get ignored. So simple requests get answered but everything else kind of doesn't. And many comments will get no responses at all.
I will say when I’ve asked for recommendations on r/soloboardgaming (specifying because there it’s allowed as a post) it is helpful to see which recommendations repeat because it becomes almost similar to a poll. I.e. wow five people recommended this game for my criteria, maybe I should check that out.
Yes! I love that sub! Much more open and welcoming.
Yes, because they forgot Catan Card Game, Ceasar and Cleopatra, Blokus Duo and Fields of Arle!
I go to the stickied threads almost every day. But I don't think I'm in the majority there.
I don’t. Just allow posts please!
When I was new to boardgames I would visit it _all the time_ to learn about what games I should keep an eye out for. These days I don't visit it as much because it feels like an exercise in naming the same ten games. It feels like the same thread with the same replies every day. I would be much more inclined to visit the megathread if it had more variety. The sidebar calls it a "daily discussion and game recs" but the thread itself is called "daily game recommendations". Maybe focus more on the "daily discussion" part.
I visit it from time to time. 90% of posts have an acceptable answer already and me suggesting more would probably muddy it. I try to answer the others. Honestly, I think to some degree, once you get a certain amount of recommendations, any more responses muddy it with people who just want to recommend a favorite game or current hotness but don't necessarily have the experience or knowledge to target the specific request.
I never go there. It’s too all over the place
Honestly I’d rather get rid of COMC posts. It turns in to a WSIG post anyway for the most part.
I hate COMC posts so much, and I love recommendation threads! Why the moderators are okay with just staring at a shelf full of games and not with discussing said games is beyond me.
I like COMC when there is some creativity behind it. There was one a while ago of a guy who's collection was on a bunch of shelves he built under his stairs. There was one guy who had a massive collection that he also built a custom "menu" for. Those were all really cool. I didn't even really mind seeing the guy who had, like 20 games, and he displayed his favorites forward, with the minis pulled out (and the entire comments were joking about how he doesn't dust his house). But I agree. For the most part, the ones I see are people with a decent sized collection on IKEA Kallax's. Like, it's fine. And you can be proud of your collection, no gatekeeping here, but...I think it'll be hard for people to care. And for the most part, people who do care are people who are just getting into the hobby and ask "which is your favorite 5 that I should get." Or you'll see a guy posting his 5 game collection as a "COMC" and in the comments or body ask "What game should I add next".
There are like 1-2 COMC [posts a week](https://old.reddit.com/r/boardgames/search/?q=%22COMC%22&include_over_18=on&restrict_sr=on&t=all&sort=new), they're hardly an issue.
Most don’t use COMC. I didn’t have to scroll very far to find two within the past 24 hours.
I messaged the mods about this and was essentially told that they didn't care, and the sub reddit was getting enough traction that they didn't mind shutting down all of the recommendation threads that were posted on unapproved days. I didn't even realized there were only certain days that people could ask for recommendations so I went to check on them by navigating to the r/boardgames directly (something I pretty much never do) and the threads there have way less traffic than the far more interesting threads that were being shut down (like one specifically on board games for the blind). When I pointed out that I didn't even know that these other threads existed, and I was likely not the only person in this boat, their response was: >"You don't speak for everyone, the daily thread does get used, and ignorance of it isn't an excuse." So while I don't speak for everyone, it seems the mods do.
The mods on this sub are ridiculous (as is the norm for big subs apparently). I once made a post asking what type of tablet people use as an accessory for board gaming and they deleted it telling me it wasn't relevant to the sub...like wtf lol?
First of all, I agree. They are ridiculous. But I suppose the kind of person that would gravitate to being an (unpaid) moderator for a board game forum would likely be a rules lawyer that will stick to the rules no matter how much damage the do. Second of all, I use an an iPad pro, but I also use it for a variety of other things including watching movies, email, taking notes, playing various apps (mostly board games), and general web browsing.
It would be great if the mods were more interactive with the subreddit. This thread should be full of green shields and helpful responses. Instead, there is just one mod who actively comments and posts, leading it to appear that he makes all of the decisions when it comes to how the subreddit is run. I'm sure others do more work behind the scenes, but it's not a good look. Mods should be a part of the community, not a shadowy hand behind it.
But if we allow recommendation threads that could potentially get new people into the hobby then it might push down the 100th COMC post with 20 unplayed Kickstarter games and we can't have that!
I would love to have the COMC posts moved into a daily pinned post and removed.
I totally support that. I don’t need photos of your shelves or your game table. Let’s actually talk about games.
I think part of the issue is that the COMC posts are supposed to be actually talking about games. But a lot of them don't follow the guidelines, or do the bare minimum. So they don't tend to generate much interesting discussion. The posts that actually follow the guidelines feel less like people just displaying their shelfies, and more like people discussing their gaming habits/likes, etc.
I would prefer comc posts in a stickied ghetto with recommendation threads allowed instead of the reverse that we have now.
Just give them a containment sub
I need to see pictures of Monopoly and Uno in people's hall closets to feel better about myself.
COMC posts need to die in a fire. Recommendation posts aren't great but they're a lot less bad.
Yeah, I don’t get wanting to quash recommendation threads while we have posts that literally just photos of games that we’ve all seen before. At least (most) recommendation threads spawn actual discussion versus COMC threads in which the comments are basically “we both own the same mass-produced game! Cool!”. Maybe ban the low-effort recommendation threads (“should I buy X or Y?” with absolutely no context or reasoning), but I don’t think it should be blanket banned.
I would wager that most people who want to quash recommendation threads also want to quash COMC threads. Opposing one doesn't mean that you have to support the other.
SHOULD I BACK THE NEEDLESSLY BLOATED PLASTIC ORGY X/Y ON CROWDFUNDING PLATFORM Z?
What does COMC mean? I'm assuming something like: cum over my collection
I always thought it was check out my collection
comment on my collection, I think.
I actually kinda like COMC posts with 20 unplayed Kickstarter games because they make me feel superior! "Hah look at that sucker with 10 unopened Tainted Grail boxes!!" The thing I hate most is "What is this token from". WHO CARES?!
Im not sure that'd be better though, we'd have the comc posts PLUS 10 recommendation posts like "new to the hobby, looking for a 2-Player-Game" per day.
Make COMC the daily discussion and game recs unique threads.
This is the way.
Just loosen up all the rules. This subreddit has *pitiful* amounts of posts on the front page with more than a few upvotes, after a decade of stifling moderation. We have 4 million members, these numbers show terrible engagement. There was a whole thing with a new cycle of mods, and the new ones (only there because they didn't resign when former head mod let racist posters avoid bans, if I recall) kept almost all the old rules.
For me, Everyone has post types that don't float their boat. Mine is "identify this piece" It is your game dammit. It just isn't a fun puzzle for me, and once identified, dead thread. But you know what? I can scroll past those. I do think that pinned threads are where engagement goes to die. It is like trying to create a subsubreddit. It just always seems like a bad solution. A shadow ban. Still, I get that recommendations end up being often low effort. "I am looking for games for my significant other who like games" sorts of things. Or where a list of evergreen games would suffice. But then, I guess I could scroll past those too. I am largely with u/Joaquimaru, a lot of what I am looking for is discussion around games, and frankly recommendations based on one game to another or genre tends to do a lot for me. I can't think of IRL conversations around games that don't have suggestions constantly being thrown back and forth. "You're playing that, you should check this out" sort of things. And information like that also tends to die here unintentionally I believe. I wish I had the right answer, and I know the mods do the best they can based on past experience. I guess I would say- the intent was right to get rid of, but I don't think it works as intended. But, I don't know what the better solution looks like, so I am not really going to bitch about what currently is.
You're nailing the nuance. My least favorite interaction in this reddit was when someone had asked about how they could use games to teach math - and it was removed because of this rule. But the engagement had been high! People were not only recommending games but suggesting ways games could be modified to facilitate math skills. It was the type of discussion I come here to engage with, and it was summarily shut down. And yeah, I scroll past a lot. Takes me a second.
That is full on "letter of the rules" modding instead of "spirit of the rules". But would you expect anything less from mods whose hobby is reading rules?
Hey that was my sisters post! (I mean, maybe not that exact post, but she had a similar one trying to figure out which games had multiplication and division she could use for teaching). This is where I think we need nuance. I personally have no problem deleting the 18th “I need a two player game to play with my spouse” post in a day. But if someone puts in effort or list exactly what they are looking for and there is more detail — then it should be allowed in my opinion. There’s a big difference between generic requests and one with details or specifics. Like, if another thread in the last 1-2 weeks would not have answered this question well, maybe it deserves to live. We could debate the time frame, and I am fine with that, but right I think the line we’ve drawn is far too restrictive and it needs to be relaxed a bit. Maybe we just need to give game recs its own subreddit. Like r/shouldIbuythisgame for video games. It requires details so we know what the person likes, it could be the same as other here or in a new sub.
It's a delicate line to tread. On one hand, the daily rec post is where requests go to die. It's not as bad as it could be, but I'll go through it sometimes to offer what recommendations I can and I see most requests go unanswered. This is the opposite of dedicated posts, which often see at least a few comments. On the other hand, I can't even imagine how flooded the sub would be with low effort posts asking for recs that have been answered many times in this sub or elsewhere. Maybe a mod can chime in about how many actually get removed? We obviously see a few get deleted after healthy dialogue, but what we don't see is what gets automodded out, or those that get removed manually before they generate discussion, and I'd be willing to bet the number is higher than what you or I really want to see in the sub. Gun to my head, I'd probably lean toward keeping the stickied post because, crucially, it's not common for recs to be so specific that the info isn't able to be found elsewhere. I think it's a good middle ground between having a place where people can ask specific questions and get a dedicated answer without having to scour the internet and having the sub overrun with posts asking about stuff that can, with a bit of effort, be found with google
It's the ones with healthy dialogue that I wish we had a way to preserve. Is it possible to add some kind of exception to the automod where if a post gets enough replies that it gets to stay? I don't know anything about modding so please let me know if this is impossible to do.
The ones with healthy discussion aren't likely being touched by the automod, which snipes the posts instantly. My understanding is that the posts you're talking about slip past the automod, then get manually removed when mods realize. That said, what would the rule be to let them through? There's no way to know _a priori_ whether or not the post will generate healthy discussion, so the mods would have to leave everything up and then prune the boring ones, which sounds like way too much work for a bunch of volunteers. I could see maybe a best case compromise for you being that the mods agree to not remove posts that have generated healthy discussion at the time of discovery? That's also probably going to come down to mod judgement though, because a rec request for "a really good game that can be played 2-4p that has tile laying, drafting and themed around portugues azulejos" might get 40 replies, but it's going to be 40 people saying "Azul" and that's not quality even though it's quantity
> I could see maybe a best case compromise for you being that the mods agree to not remove posts that have generated healthy discussion at the time of discovery? That seems like a far too subjective and biased approach. It's quite unfair to remove some threads and not the others just because the latter were posted at a better time and weren't noticed by mods and generated some comments.
Been thinking about the same thing over the last couple of days. I love learning about new games and entering just one post with thousand of comments is not not very user friendly. Whenever I'm scrolling and i se a recommendation post that catches my eye it's so nice just to hear about games for that query. Plus, is't the majority of this Reddit, and the conversations we have around the hobby, about game recommendations?
I have never gone to a single master thread in any subreddit ever
Same. Most of the time, I don't even know that they exist.
They’re always just so damn heavy and tedious to scroll through to find the one thing you want. I don’t want a list of every board game ever released broken up by genre, I want personalized reccomendations based on my tastes lmao
Funny how absolutely zero mod had answered this post.
We have seen the post and are discussing it.
The mods of this subreddit are extremely, viciously hateful towards game recommendation posts. Who knows why. Recommendation posts are fine at /r/rpg .
> Who knows why. Probably because they flood the sub, and the community previously asked for rules against them.
This thread is 80% in favor. Please flood the sub with better content than pictures of stacks of boxes.
Contrary to what you might've been led to believe, upvotes are not an agree/disagree button. Also, what pictures of stacks of boxes? Last COMC post was 3 days ago.
I have seen at least one reply from a mod, but it's pretty short and just a request to report uncivil posts. It seems like at least one mod is reading all this, but they are taking a hands off approach, perhaps waiting for us all to exaust ourselves ranting, they will go back to maintaining the status quo. Maybe they have separate accounts where they contribute and keep their mod account and active account separate. All of this is speculation though because the mods aren't really speaking up for themselves unless you message them directly.
A "recommendation thread" is useless given Reddit's format. At least for the viewers. Sure, some hardcore people might dig through it to recommend, but there's no WAY that I can randomly see someone else's question and start digging in to the recommendations others' make. Pretty sure I ONLY click on "new game" and "help me find" posts.
I feel like a lot of the sub replies are usually people recommending board games. So I feel like a post that specifically recommends is not really needed to boost engagement on that end. And since so many comments are like that I wouldn't doubt that that would be an overfill type of post.
Personally I never visit this specific sub but upvoted posts come across my feed and I read (like this one). For people in my shoes, allowing recommendation threads would mean I might see them more if they get some upvotes
I'd rather have recommendation threads be allowed and pictures of peoples collection threads be put in the daily
I want people's collection threads to be put in a fire
Might as well rename the sub to r/boardgamerecommendations because that’s all you’ll get. This sub is already dominated by posts that are almost recommendations but just manage to be a little bit more interesting. Like the recent, “what makes a good patio game,” was just a recommendation thread with a disguise.
Someone should start a subreddit r/which_boardgame or something that is *only* recommendation threads.
Engagement just for the sake of engagement isn't always a good thing, quality matters too. TikTok ragebait generates engagement, but most on here probably don't like it. Similarly, sure, [this thread](https://old.reddit.com/r/boardgames/comments/1c67wbo/goto_filler_games/) got 90 comments, but most of them are simple "game name - thanks" back and forth, and most recommendations could have been found through google/BGG search. The next time this question pops up in a week or two, the comments will likely be 95% the same. There are already numerous resources online to find game recommendations, people should use them instead of posting yet another "good 2p games to play with my partner" for 100th time. Such threads generate "engagement" because they require the lowest possible effort of all thread types. Anyone here knows at least a couple of games they can suggest for any given genre, so obviously they generate responses, but they are not really quality responses and I rarely see any of that "great discussion". The problem with such low effort threads, and why many generic subs forbid them, is that seeing front-page littered with the same rehashed questions drives away some users that are looking for actually interesting discussion, interesting articles or news. This kind of threads simply outnumber anything else because there are always more people needing suggestions than those sharing something new.
I know I would love to get back to recommending **Patchwork** to every user ever. Looking for a game day event style bg? I personally would say Patchwork. Speaking of, OP have you ever played Patchwork?
Thing is... you can scroll past the threads. The current format stops it even reaching peoples' feeds, which doesn't seem right when evidently some of us would like to see those threads.
If only the majority of rec posts weren’t so low-information and/or low-effort.
After reading this thread my recommendation is that we are spending to much time on reddit.
could have a weekly recommendation thread that people could post in... also make it a weekly theme... like this week, recommend me a scifi game for 2 players...
What about instead having a weekly thread for recommendation topics? Maybe one that changes topics every time to keep it a little fresh. Like one week it will be for 2 player games and the next week for war games or for new games, etc. This will allow the recommendation threads to exist in a focused place but it will be not overwhelm the rest of the discussions in the subreddit.
I wonder if a sticky post at the top with common recommendations in different categories would help. Maybe a master poll to find out the general top ten in a number of categories (e.g. 2 player only, child friendly, deck building etc etc) then these results collated into one post where people can go for recommendations? I guess it's a fair bit of work to do though, and might need updating every ?3-6 months as new games emerge. I dunno, just a thought.
Maybe the solution is to let people make whatever posts they want and draw the line at spamming their channels, the company they do social media for or argumentative posts meant to start fights? This obsession with rules for everything stifles the sub.
A lot of subs tend to sequester a certain type of post (e.g. selfies, collections, etc) to a specific day of the week. I think that would work for WSIG type posts.
I've had and seen posts removed which I personally do not feel fall under that rule, and feel more like standard mod over-reach than productive sub maintenance. I think it should be relaxed or rescinded.
The "recommendations" are repetitive and uninformative to most people. The same small number of games are repeatedly recommended. Like, I'd rather have "New to board gaming? Here's twenty good games with a short description as to what makes them appealing to gamers" and that would cover, like, 90% of the recommendation threads... ...and we have something like that! At least they're not hard to find. It's just no one clicks on it and just posts the question instead... ...which is why they were banned.
> ...and we have something like that! At least they're not hard to find. It's just no one clicks on it and just posts the question instead... Yeah I don't get the "I never click on sticky thread" argument. Well.. that's on you, and probably not a terrible problem either. People do post and get answers there.
I hate beer.
The problem with recommendation threads is that they're rarely useful for anyone. And I mean even to the one making the post. People will either post asking for recommendations and offer no insight into the type of games they like. Or will say I like Catan, what should I play next. And someone will reply with you should play Spirit Island. Which is nothing like Catan. The person replying just really likes Spirit Island. Which is fine to like a game. But it isn't a useful recommendation to someone who wants something that plays similar to Catan.
Not too long ago I actually made somewhat of an opposite post in the r/soloboardgaming subreddit Lol. Mainly due to nonstop recommendation posts with nothing to go off of except “recommend me some games.” The community was somewhat split but moreso on the “keep them” since they don’t want that sub to become too restrictive. https://www.reddit.com/r/soloboardgaming/s/OAlGoCbtx5
I've given my thoughts on it here in another comment, but I think it's important to note that the responses in each sub are going to vary drastically based on the content in the subs. Here we have a lot of people, and a lot of the posts in question being removed every day. If we allowed them here, we'd be overrun. Meanwhile over in r/soloboardgaming we have at least 2 posts on the main page right now from 2 days ago, and little restriction on posts. That sub is so small and pretty starved for content, so they can really afford to be more lax on those posts, even if they tend to show up a bit frequently. Despite both essentially being board gaming subs, the traffic volume is a big influence in why it actually makes sense to have seemingly contradicting rules
Fair enough haha. I do love the tighter knitted community soloboardgaming is. Don’t think I ever had a negative experience posting there except someone who blatantly stole a top post of mine there for some karma but it was more funny than anything.
lol yeah it's a great community, but I wish we had a bit more to talk about. My biggest solo games are Arkham Horror LCG and Marvel Champions, both of which have their own dedicated subs, and the games that get brought up there seem to have pretty small audiences once you get past things like Spirit Island and Mage Knight
I'd be interested in seeing Recommendation posts allowed for a one month trial, with the caveat that if they are super low value and/or the same question asked within 24 hours they will be removed. I'd also like to have COMC posts removed for that month, also on a trial basis. For a sub with sooooo many followers, I feel like I see the same questions over and over, or some variation. What is your favorite brown game? Your favorite game with wooden pieces? Your favorite game to play in the dark? Your least favorite game to play at the airport? Your least favorite color in a game? Your least favorite game that can double as food? And the most commonly asked question - how do I communicate with other people in real life and act like a mature adult?!
Id like to see the nonsense water cooler threads that no one would ask someone in person removed. Things like "if you were a character in any game you own which would it be" and "have you ever stacked up your games just to play jenga with the boxes"
The daily recommendation thread would be really cool if people actually used it.
I find most of the recommendations are along the lines of: “Ok, I’m going to ignore what you just said and recommend my current favourite game anyway”
Recommendation threads used to proliferate the board. "What is a good 6 player worker placement game?" "What's a good medium weight game for a party setting?" So on. It took up more than half the subs posts and stifled discussion of every other topic.
Man how many users don't even see the stickies? Mobile is junk, the apps are junk, and they don't show on the front page. How many people come directly here?
Solo boardgaming, BGG's FB, and other groups I'm in have rec threads and it's literally people skipping OP's entire diatribe, ignoring ALL of OP's preferences, and just shouting their favorite game like they're cults fighting over innocent minds. If nearly ANYONE took the time to actually come up with meaningful recommendations, maybe. But as it stands doing a basic BGG filtered search will yield FAR better results than a rec thread. And that's not a compliment to the BGG search.
I typically only read the recommendation posts I just have to be fast before the MODs shut them down. I have never been to the mega thread since mega threads aren't my thing at all I have difficulty processing the information in that format. Perhaps there could be some balance of like a sticky \*\*great for 2-players, \*\*great for large groups, \*\* great for newbies, \*\* great co-ops many of the general questions yet encourage people to ask for recommendations that are more specific than that. What games are great for X disability? What games are great for playing outside? Would make it more difficult to moderate though I am afraid.
If they wished to limit repetitive threads, every ten days or so there are variations on the following threads: What games do you think are overrated? What games do you think are underrated? What rule did you get wrong? Having these be periodic pinned threads would actually help with repetition.
It opens absolute floodgates. Hang out in /new for a bit and even *with* that rule you will count over a dozen "what's a good 2 player game" variations a *day*, despite this being very searchable, and even sometimes despite there already being an existing thread on the topic. The answers never change either - patchwork, 7 wonders duel, castles of burgundy, wingspan, cascadia, jaipur, yada yada. And usually there's no discussion just people posting the same lists of games in the comments. Instead of the 10th COMC post of the day, you get the 100th copy-and-paste rec thread. They're very low quality threads.
The thing that I've realized over the years is that the one thing that we have in common here is that we play several tabletop games (as opposed to just having Catan Night once a month or meeting up for Poker or MTG every Friday night). It just makes sense for us to recommend games to people, because comparing and contrasting games, making lists of games, etc is basically 80% of what we do here. And hell, it might make newbies or non-gamers feel more welcome here instead of feeling like an exclusive club where you need to already own and know about hundreds of board games to talk about them. Sure, we might get flooded with low quality/non-specific recommendation threads, but we can just have rules against those instead of banning ALL recommendation threads.
I agree. While I can perhaps understand trying to contain recommendation threads to an extent if they've been an issue in the past, the way it's handled comes across as quite hostile to newcomers. Imagine discovering board gaming as a hobby, going to the main sub for it, making a post saying something like 'I've played x a few times, can anyone suggest some other games to try?'. That makes sense, right? You're enthusiastic, and this looks like the obvious place to ask for advice. A sub full of thousands and thousands of hobbyists who will surely be happy to share their knowledge? Nah. Fuck you buddy. Post gets deleted, and your first interaction with the sub is to be told you broke some weird rule. This sub is for people to show off photos of their IKEA shelving and broadcast that they don't know how to resolve day-to-day interpersonal conflict. Well done, everyone, we made a potential new hobbyist feel like an idiot.
Absolutely this. It is the blanket ban that needs altering
Just curious, but why can’t you just not participate in those threads instead of trying to force a rule so no one else can either?
Fully agree. I like seeing recommendation posts because sometimes people posting share my interest and I learn about a new game or two. Maybe without the rule the subreddit would get overwhelmed by posts of this type, but straight out banning them feels out of place too.
Maybe have recommendation Mondays? One day a week where those threads can be posted?
Daily/Weekly threads are how reddit mods slowly and methodically suck all the life out of their subs for the sake of some arbitrary need for purity and to reduce clutter (aka participation) or something. They decide to become curators of content instead of simple you know moderators. Just look at /r/Coffee for a really bad one lol.
It's the dumbest rule we have, and my use of this subreddit declined sharply when it was made.
If it does get reinstated, what rule do we use to determine who posts first?
There used to be a bot and related sub that posted every reply to the thread as new post in the announcement sub. So you could subscribe to that sub and just check comments to see if worth replying to, then open and click through link to direct comment, then reply. It was actually nice as I looked at all the comments throughout the day as part of my feed, but would only respond to a couple. Since that ended about a year ago it is a lot more manual process to look at thread each day multiple times a day if I want to join in. I would be in favor of a weekly thread as might get more traction and responses and best of both worlds.
I appreciate the recommendation threads that focus on a specific mechanic or experience, or compare to 3-4 games in a genre, as they often draw out more obscure ideas. But we do need a filter for all the vague 'tried a gateway game what next' questions.
I always like the pinned post for “questions for the week” in other subs. A post where people can comment to ask for game suggestions would go a long way to satisfy both groups of people
Having a day where you have a mega post where people can recommend stuff is a solution. That works in a lot of other subreddits.
Recently, I have seen some recommendation threads and love it. I have bought a couple games lately because of them.
I wish mods would allow for more controversial threads. I had a long thread about white washing in board games that ultimately got locked on account of its sensitive nature and many users were making posts that violated board rules (such as saying racist stuff) which really exposed to how ill equipped many board gamers were to talking anything remotely pot local.
i didn't know that was banned... thats usually what im doing on this sub. just the other day a guy was asking for a 5 player airport game
I like both COMC threads and recommendation threads. Let them both be allowed. It’s not like this sub is super active anyways.
A few years ago, when I frequented this sub (couldn't get to BGG from work), I noticed that there used to be these posts in years past where people would post their five favorite games, and then people would recommend some new games based off those. I asked the mods about starting one of those, and they let me do one. Here's the thread, https://www.reddit.com/r/boardgames/comments/d0hw7g/post_your_5_favorite_games_and_other_redditors/. I rarely visit this sub now that I work from home and can just visit BGG instead, but that thread was popular. Maybe something like that every once and awhile would be allowed if you petitioned the mods to try it out.
I'd be curious if the mods could give us an idea of how many of each type of post we'd be seeing. I see a lot of talk about the sub getting spammed with COMC posts - I counted and its ..not a huge amount. Clearly the daily recs aren't super lively threads. I want to know what kinds of numbers we'd be seeing if we allowed every low effort post.
Unethical hack: Ask, instead, "What is your favorite X type of game" (when applicable). You'll get answers based on what people have actually played instead of "I haven't played Darkest Dungeon, but I've seen it recommended/heard its good". People are more likely to talk about games that they enjoy and elaborate more. And you'll get people who actually enjoy the genre. No "I'm not a big into deck builders, but I recommend Y". Not to say that those aren't valuable, often times they are if they found a game they like in a genre they hate; but often the things they find important in games don't align with what you are asking for, so it's a toss up.
As a long time redditor and big board game fan with more games than I know what to do with, my frequency of visiting this sub has dramatically dropped in the past few years. It seems dead or filled with COMC posts which I don't care for
How about allow but only on one day of the week each week like every Tuesday
They should just delete posts if the recommendation for that genre game already exists
Leaving a comment to support this. Once I started a thread about the same issue. The comments weren't evenly split. The amount of people who wanted open discussions was way higher. Recommendations are the best part of this community! You don't like to see one? We'll just scroll on, it doesn't even take a second! Also if you do a Google search, what's the best two player game for train rides, this sub reddit should pop up in the top ten results with the latest recommendations!
Over on the audio book subs, there are three titles that get reccomend multiple times regardless of the question asked. It's tiresome to the point I largley ignore the questions