Last Update: June 18th
TL;DR: Check out the top menu to search by location. Re-read the rules for updated title requirements, or read on below for the full details.
We are changing how Meetup vs. Online posts are specified; this will now be done entirely through tags in the post title, rather than flair. Those looking only for online play now need to include the tag #Online within their post titles. Those seeking meetups should continue to include a tagged location, e.g, #Chicago, Illinois, as they've previously done. If you are seeking both online and in-person, be sure to specify both a tagged location and the #Online tag. Please use the format #City, State/Province (including the comma, and with only one # before the city name) if possible; specifying a state/province and country (#Uttar Pradesh, India), or just country for smaller nations (#United Kingdom), is also permitted, if you don't want to include your specific town or city. Up to two location tags (including the #Online tag) may be specified, e.g., #DC and #NOVA or #NSW or #Online. Please ensure your #tagged location suits how far you are willing to travel to meet someone; don't specify an entire country or huge region if you're not able to venture far outside your city.
This change means that it is now quick and easy to locate others in your area! The search menu at the top of the page lets you do a coarse search of the most-commonly-posted regions; finer-grained search is also possible, and we'll be posting a location directory and guide at a later date to further explain how to do this. Searches can also be done by tapping on a post's flair to show more like it, or selecting a region from the main menu and then removing flair search terms as needed to narrow your search. Note that many flairs cover large areas, so refer to a post's #tagged location to see where the author is actually located. Some more details on the search menu are at the end of this post. Let us know how its working, or if there are any improvements needed!
Post length/quality is another concern we'd like to address. Currently, we don't have any significant post length requirement, which has led to a lot of posts that are almost completely empty, or just re-state the minimal required information from the title, giving no details whatsoever about themselves. These low-effort posts have been burying the posts of people who have put time and effort into composing good, descriptive posts, and also make for a poor searching experience. As such, we are instating a new length requirement of 50 words; this will be phased in gradually over the next couple days/weeks, to give us time to adjust things if people run into problems. The removal message will give an estimate of how many words short a post is, to assist users in fixing their posts. Note that padding out a post with filler or nonsense will not make it meet the requirements; the bot is smart enough to not count filler text. Please let us know what you think of these changes; do you agree, disagree, or have other suggestions we should implement?
We now allow users to choose to lock their posts. To do so, include the command !lock anywhere within the body of the post. Locked posts will get a comment by the automod reminding users how to contact the author; by default, posts will not be locked or get said automod comment, as some people find it annoying, and this will remain an optional feature for those who do wish to allow comments. Locking doesn't affect a post's visibility or ranking in any way. Some people, particularly new accounts that may not be able to send chat messages, may prefer to respond in comments, but we leave it up to the author to decide if they want to allow these types of responses or not. In the near future, we will also be looking into additional comment length requirements, to cut down the number of no-effort or spam responses to posts which do allow comments.
We are hoping to introduce an official, optional, method of including a verification clip and photos in posts. As an initial step, we are seeking individuals willing to verify ahead of time, so that we can refine the verification instructions and produce some correct examples for people to refer to when creating theirs. If you can help with this, please reach out by messaging the moderators.
These are the ideas we are currently working on, but we are open to other suggestions as well if there are additional concerns we should address. Please leave your feedback in the comments. We will continue to update this post based on feedback and progress on introducing these features; updates will be added below.
Some Notes On Location Search
The menu options are divided up based on activity over the past 2 years; areas that get a lot of posts have lots of divisions to make them practical to search, while regions where Reddit or our community is not popularly used may be divided only into continents.
For example, if you're a woman seeking a guy in Calgary, you'd start by picking Canadian Prairies from the Americas region menu. When you find an appropriate M4F Alberta post, tapping on its flair will show others like it, with the exact R4R tag and province. Alternatively, you can edit the search query after selecting a menu item, to keep only the desired flair:"Alberta" search query.
The actual flairs themselves are divided mostly at the country level; some non-country territories also have an entry, mainly when they are widely separated from their parent nation. The United States, Canada, Australia, India, and Brazil are further divided into states/provinces. Argentina and Kazakhstan meet the subdivision threshold area-wise, but we only plan to enable state-level flairs if we happen to actually get posters from those countries.
We will review these divisions and their menu structure periodically, to ensure they continue to suit our user base. The hope is that this will be intuitive, and give a coarse place to start your search. A more detailed location directory is being worked on, and will be posted at a later date along with an official How-To Guide.
Due to severe space limitations in the menu, some of the names are difficult to read, so here's what they mean:
| Menu Item |
Definition |
| Americas |
North America (not including the United States), Central and South America, and West Indies |
| Eurafrasia/Oceania |
Europe, Africa, Asia, Oceania, and Antarctica |
| New Zealand/Islands |
New Zealand and Oceanic Island Nations and Territories |
| West/North Australia |
Western Australia and Northern Territory of Australia |
| Victoria/Tasmania/SA |
Victoria, Tasmania, and South Australia |
| New South Wales (AU) |
New South Wales, Australian Capital Territory, and Jervis Bay Territory |
| Non-contiguous |
Non-contiguous US States and American Continental Territories of the United States |
| Asia (Except South) |
All of Asia, except for South Asia (there wasn't a good term for this division) |
If there are any others that are unclear to you, or if you want to suggest better names for these, please let us know.
Location search took a lot of work to get up and running smoothly, and we're still making tweaks; it will even be fully brought over to the Old Reddit layout as well sometime in the next several weeks. I'd also like to thank everyone who has worked on building or testing this feature over the past year. If you see anything acting strangely, please let us know so that we can fix it.
Recent Updates & Known Issues:
Known Issue: Locations in Texas must follow the recommended format above, or they will receive the wrong flair. If your post names a major city in Texas, the bot will will ask you to double-check the flair, and correct the post if needed, however we aren't able to make this work for every possible Texas location. Areas outside of Texas are not affected by this limitation. As of June 18th, we believe we've gotten this mostly working now for new posts; please let us know if there are any remaining issues.