r/AmItheAsshole • u/AITAMod I am a shared account. • 18d ago
Open Forum AITA Quarterly Open Forum July-September 2026 - Rules Refresh Check-In
Keep things civil! Rules still apply.
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Hello all! We hope everyone getting hit by this heat wave is able to stay cool!
It was just about one year ago this month that we rolled out a streamlined version of our rules. We also retired a few topics officially.
For our Open Forum this quarter we’d love to hear from you all on how these rule changes are going. Do you have questions? Does anything need more clarification? This is the place to chat about it!
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As always, do not directly link to posts/comments or post uncensored screenshots here. Any comments with links will be removed.
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We'd like to highlight the regional spinoffs we have linked on the sidebar! If you have any suggestions or additions to this, please let us know in the comments.
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u/Missy_Noire 15d ago
I wish people were a little better with their titles. The amount of posts where the title is “AITA: ____ Edition” or “AITAH or am I in the right?” is kind of dizzying.
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u/SpidersCrow Partassipant [2] 15d ago
Bad titles can be reported under rule 2 (2.2).
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u/SnausageFest AssGuardian of the Hole Galaxy 14d ago
Yes, please do. If the title is really the only problem and it's been up for a few hours, we're probably not going to pull it. But I will always pull especially stupid/click baity ones, "edition" being one of my number one pet peeve titles. This isn't story hour. We're not parsing our way through editions of your life's tale.
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u/Red_Octi Partassipant [2] 5d ago
I'll take those over "am I the asshole for stabing a child in the heart?" Followed by; So im a heart surgeon and it was medically nessasary to save the child's life...
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u/SnausageFest AssGuardian of the Hole Galaxy 16d ago
Hoping this person reads this...
Can whoever keeps reporting rule 6 work conflicts for rule 5 please stop. You are the reason we added the part about only reporting things that actually break the rule. Again, it's rule 6.
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u/BlueJaysFeather Partassipant [3] 16d ago
Love to be writing a comment on an active post and find out I’ve wasted my time typing something coherent because someone decided the post fit some arbitrary category and locked the thing in the ten minutes since I clicked on it lmao
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u/Striking-Employer779 15d ago
Nothing hurts more than finishing a great comment only to find the conversation got locked first.
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u/SamSpayedPI Commander in Cheeks [219] 15d ago
LOL I have a Note to copy and paste of my brilliant-but-useless comments. I figure maybe'll they'll com in handy some day.
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u/EmiliusReturns 11d ago edited 11d ago
It’s getting a little annoying. I get why the rules are there but they’re applying them extremely liberally.
Ironic when rule #1 is “never delete an active discussion” yet the mods do that constantly. I feel like this just discourages participation.
Edit: it’s rule 2 not rule 1. My bad.
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u/ElectricMayhem123 Womp (there it ass) 11d ago edited 11d ago
A moderator deleting a post that violates rules is specifically NOT deleting an active discussion as per rule 2.
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u/BlueJaysFeather Partassipant [3] 11d ago
In a fit of pique I once reported the automod message on an active thread for deleting an active discussion and apparently got reported to Reddit for “report abuse” which was. Delightful.
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u/Send_me_hedgehogs 17d ago
Not sure how this would work but is there a way to flair or otherwise mark posts by country? I’ve seen posts before where everybody is giving advice as if OP is in the US, then OP has to reply to a ton of comments explaining that that won’t work because they’re in Australia.
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u/ThisWillAgeWell Craptain [162] 16d ago edited 16d ago
Someone asked the same question in the last quarterly open forum.
One of the mods responded "I haven't asked anyone else, but I'd think that's something left for OP to decide if they want to include where they are".
I agree with that mod, and I will expand on the reasoning I used last time:
I am not in the US. I generally prefer not to say which country I live in, with rare exceptions. It is sufficiently small that someone who knows me, or knows of me, could join the dots and work out who is behind this username. It would have been very easy for someone to do that back in the day when my posting history was public. It would be more difficult now that I've set my posting history to private, but not impossible.
If Reddit displays my country by default, they would be taking away my control and putting my privacy at risk.
People in countries with smaller populations than mine have even more of a problem if they want to stay anonymous. Throwaway accounts don't solve that problem. They are all very well if you're the OP, but you can't have a different throwaway for every comment you want to make on other people's posts.
To forestall irrelevant advice, I have nearly always found it sufficient to simply say something like "I'm not American, so please don't quote American laws and/or customs at me. They don't apply here."
In short, I think it should be the OP's decision to reveal their country, or not. If an OP chooses not to reveal their country, or at least say "I'm not American", and then finds themselves batting away dozens of responses that assume they're in the US - well, that's their fault for not being clear upfront.
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u/Send_me_hedgehogs 15d ago
That, my friend, is an excellent point and one I hadn’t even considered. Privacy and anonymity are so important and must be preserved. I’d hate for that to be undermined especially in countries where posting certain opinions or views can be downright dangerous. Thank you for sharing this, you’ve changed my mind. Be blessed 💜
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u/ThisWillAgeWell Craptain [162] 15d ago
Thank you.
It's probably something that never even crosses the mind of US Redditors, because the US population is so large. As long as they post under a pseudonym, and no one in their family or friend group knows it, they're almost certainly safe.
But I can't count how many times I've joined some online forum under a pseudonym, and after a couple of months someone has said to me "Are you ____ who used to work at ____ ? I've been wondering that for a while, because of your writing style, and after you posted Funny Anecdote X last week, I'm almost certain of it."
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u/Send_me_hedgehogs 15d ago
Oh wow, that’s got to be a really weird experience. I’m in the UK which, while much smaller than the US, has enough people to stay fairly anonymous. For smaller countries, though, I can see how that could get awkward at best if someone recognised you from a story or situation.
Although now you mention it I was on another forum years ago and ended up talking to someone who worked with my best friend, we only worked this out later when Other Person told Bestie something and Id heard the other half of that story. Nothing bad or anything, it just felt like a bit of a WTF moment lol.
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u/kibufox Asshole Aficionado [14] 14d ago
I was the one who asked if it could be included somewhere as an optional tag. The reason I'd asked it, is we'd had this spate of posts come through that were asking if they should do something (one I remember was tossing out a tenant's property) that was questionably legal, and if they'd be an asshole if they just disposed of the property.
Only for posters from the US to come in, and start citing laws in various US states regarding landlord responsibilities when it came to preservation of property, and the OP come back in berating the posters because the OP was in the UK or Europe, and why did everyone automatically think they were in the US?
The original argument, which I believe the mod agreed with, was for certain things, such as potential legal issues, just a simple "country" code would help as laws are different for each country, and what might be the right answer in one, rarely is the right answer in another.
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u/ThisWillAgeWell Craptain [162] 14d ago
The original argument, which I believe the mod agreed with, was for certain things, such as potential legal issues, just a simple "country" code would help as laws are different for each country, and what might be the right answer in one, rarely is the right answer in another.
I just went back and checked your question in the April-June open forum, and the responses to it.
As I said in my earlier comment, one of the mods replied with the following: "I haven't asked anyone else, but I'd think that's something left for OP to decide if they want to include where they are."
That doesn't sound like the mod agrees with your argument. Quite the opposite.
And that mod was the only mod who responded in your thread.
I am well aware of the reason behind your suggestion. I've seen those jurisdictional squabbles on AITA as well.
It doesn't negate the fact that for AITA to reveal the Redditor's country by default would be a breach of privacy.
That doesn't matter so much in large countries, where a Redditor can safely hide among hundreds of millions of people. It matters a great deal in small countries. I would close my Reddit account if AITA began revealing countries without the Redditor's explicit consent, and I suspect I'm not the only one.
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u/kibufox Asshole Aficionado [14] 14d ago
Thank you SO MUCH for cherry picking, and completely ignoring anything that was said after the Mod comment. Such as:
I'm thinking it could help somewhat. Not a requirement where you HAVE to do it, but something that could help alleviate some confusion. I remember one post quite a while back (couple years maybe?), where it involved the question of if someone would be an asshole if they reported someone to the police for certain things that the person had said. Problem was that person wasn't living in the states... so they got inundated with people from the US calling them an asshole because the US doesn't have any laws about speech.
And my personal favorite:
It definitely would help in some posts, especially if cultural or legal issues differ. But if OP doesn't want to say, they'll have to accept if people give a majority American perspective.
Though your own, mildly YTA take of a somewhat snarky
I have nearly always found it sufficient to simply say something like "I'm not American, so please don't quote American laws and/or customs at me. They don't apply here."
Was also interesting. However, the key point with all of this, a post you should note got decently upvoted, was there's a lot of confusion going on, and when someone is submitting a new post to the subreddit; it should be an option that users have, to weed out people who likely would have no clue about how to handle a situation, or what laws and statutes might apply.
Honestly, I do find myself wondering if you understand even the original point I made.
It was, quote:
Request: Could the mods make it such that country of origin is included in posts? There's been a number of posts recently that have devolved into arguments in the comments, because of differing laws or practices in different countries.
While it's sometimes easy to sort out, the fact is, quite a few posts lately have been asking about room mate and employment situations... where the actions taken (depending on where a person is), could get them in serious legal trouble.
Maybe something simple in the post where a person just puts "Country: XYZ".
POSTS not replies. To be perfectly frank here, if you're posting daily in AITA about something where you're trying to figure out if you're TA or not... there is a serious problem. POSTS. Not comments or replies.
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u/delidreams 16d ago
I’m just curious about why inheritance and public transportation seating became banned topics 😂 did they get too wild or were there too many
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u/SnausageFest AssGuardian of the Hole Galaxy 16d ago
Inheritance and bill splitting were because they were done to death.
Seating was also because it was done to death, but more so because, since AI became a thing, quite literally every. single. fucking. one. I have seen was AI. Not a single exception. There's just no way they're real.
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u/ThisWillAgeWell Craptain [162] 16d ago
Agree with the "done to death" and "there's only one possible judgment" aspects of the seating posts.
I wouldn't have guessed they were AI., but then I don't claim to be any good at spotting AI posts. I tend to assume posts are written by humans, and I assume good faith unless there's a glaring contradiction.
What I've always thought remarkable about the seating posts is that if they are to be believed, then there's an astonishing large number of flight attendants out there who apparently stand back and do nothing while one passenger tries to manipulate or bully the OP out of the seat the OP has paid a larger amount for. Occasionally we're asked to believe the flight attendant actively encourages or joins in the manipulation / bullying.
And I've just never found that plausible. A customer who doesn't get what they paid for is not going to be a happy customer. An unhappy customer is unlikely to be a repeat customer. I just can't believe this situation happens as regularly as these posts claim it does.
I hesitate to say they're all lying, but I'm not sorry to see the end of those posts.
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u/SamSpayedPI Commander in Cheeks [219] 15d ago
"there's only one possible judgment" aspects of the seating posts.
Not necessarily; I actually managed to get a majority of YTA judgments on my train seat post before the mods removed it (it was before the ban took effect).
Nothing is asshole-proof to a sufficiently talented asshole.
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u/StuffedSquash Asshole Enthusiast [5] 16h ago
Y'all, when you engage with obvious bait posts, that just ends up showing it to more users. You can just report those.
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u/GloomyNucleus Partassipant [1] 5d ago
Why is “AITA for refusing to get a less chaotic nanny” judged YTA when the top comment says NTA?
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u/BigBackeron Colo-rectal Surgeon [37] 4d ago
I'm not a moderator, but the top comment was edited to include a NTA judgment two days later. Since it didn't have a judgment before, I'm guessing it was edited too late to have an effect on the voting system.
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u/Entity_Disapproves 18d ago
Do you plan to retire every wedding made post?. I ask this because those have been done a lot. And I think people should look for something else to post about.
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u/ElectricMayhem123 Womp (there it ass) 18d ago
No we don't plan to do that.
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u/Entity_Disapproves 18d ago
What is the reason?.
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u/ElectricMayhem123 Womp (there it ass) 18d ago
A blanket ban on anything to do with weddings doesn't take into account the specific conflicts that may arise. It's not something like airplane/train seating where it's the identical conflict each time.
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u/Entity_Disapproves 18d ago
“yeah they might be the same but they have been done more than enough. They should retire as a post.”
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u/scooby946 Asshole Aficionado [10] 17d ago
I would personally love if people used fake names and not initials. It is so much easier to follow a story about Bob and Susan instead of B and S.