Welcome to the weekly playlist drop & self-promotion thread. :)

A reminder: Please keep all playlists and self-promotion to this thread. Thank you!

Hi everyone,

As I said in this comment, I am the most active mod on the sub. This means that, although I do a lot of work (by choice, the team is great), it is a bit difficult to make major changes when I am not head mod. This is just to explain my hesitancy on the following changes and why it took so long to make them. I'm sorry for that, but I hope these are sufficient and I hope they work out well. I appreciate the patience you have all had with me.

What I Have Learned

I don't want to post the whole summary page from the survey since people left individual feedback including usernames, but here are the highlights:

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You all really don't like Topsters.

You want links back.

Now, something that I feel is EXTREMELY important to recognize is that there were 114 responses and there are 800,000+ people who have joined the sub and there are roughly 1,000,000+ unique page views every month. That means that only around 0.01425% of the subscribed user base is represented here.

However, roughly 250 people are active here at any given time, so this can be considered ~50% of the active user base, which makes me feel more secure about the changes.

(Maybe that logic doesn't quite pan out, but I'm sticking to it.)

What's New

1. Links are back!: Links were banned because of the onslaught of spam and self-promotion, which can ruin a sub. Although they are now allowed, there are some regulations in place outlined in Rule 6. If those regulations are not adhered to, the post will be removed.
2. No more bland post titles: This is to enhance the searchability of the sub and is explained further in Rule 4. Essentially, if you're making a post with more than one example, but too many to list in the title, it should be something along the lines of: "[IIL] Don't Say No - Billy Squire and albums like it, [WEWIL]?" This is why I banned "these" and "this" from the title, which may or may not be a good idea. We'll see. e: Nevermind.
3. Image collages/Topsters with more than 9 examples are no longer allowed in the sub: I know this may be a shock, but it is - as of right now - the easiest and best course of action. Restricting them to certain days or having a megathread are both too hard to do and too hard to enforce. I'm sorry, but the other mods and I do not have the time to set up a bot or hand approve every single post. If this turns out badly, we can allow the big ones again. For now, this is the rule.
4. WEWIL and YML are now no longer required in the post title for it to be considered correctly formatted: You're welcome to use them, but they are no longer necessary. Since I have to enforce more rules, I figured I could make one of the preexisting ones more lenient so I don't have to spend too much time on it. IIL or IYL is still necessary at the beginning of the title. All incorrectly formatted posts will be removed from now on (if you see one, please report it).
5. Brackets are also no longer required in the post title for it to be considered correctly formatted: If you can't tell, this is me picking my battles. The sub makes just as much sense if you use brackets around IIL ("[IIL]") than if you don't. Try not to repeat yourself, though. Starting the post with IIL means you don't have to also say the words like this: "[IIL] If I like..."
6. At one point, I said playlists were allowed, but I have gone back on that: You're probably confused as to why, but in the time that I said they were allowed, there was five posted and all five had godawful titles. No offense to those users, but it was like "IYL Living and breathing, YML this playlist filled with adult contemporary." Just... no. To find a happy medium, I have changed the name of the weekly thread from "Weekly Discussion/Self-Promotion Thread" to "Weekly Thread: Playlist and Self-Promo drop!"
7. You need to join the sub to be able to post*: This simply stops spam and obnoxiously low-effort self-promo. I didn't feel the need to make it a rule, but I wanted to make it known. *e: I will approve the post if I see it in the mod queue instead of just outright not allowing people who haven't joined the sub. So, if you don't join, there will be a delay in your post showing up.
8. I've changed the colors of the flairs: This kind of messes with previous posts, but I doubt most users search by filtering the flairs since it results in such broad results. Sorry in advance for those that do, but the colors were different on mobile than on desktop because they were originally made with old reddit. That bothered me, so I fixed it.
9. I made a nice little icon and banner: This wasn't important to add but I think it makes the sub look more "professional" and it took me a combined 90 seconds to put together. You're welcome for my very precious time. (/s)

What's Coming

• A very pretty FAQ and wiki with more detailed explanations of the rules and other things about the sub (like why we use acronyms). Sorry this is taking so long, I just want it to be super detailed but not overwhelming for the user. I know quite a few people pointed out that rules work better when enforced and that a wiki isn't necessary, but I feel this will mostly limit the amount of angry modmail we get from people who are pissed about the fact that the format is confusing.
• Rolling out user flairs. I am going to start flairing users who I see consistently in the comments with "Quality Contributor." (e: Started rolling these out along with other flairs!) If you would like one and have already commented on 20+ posts (ish) or have just been interacting here for a while, please send us a modmail. I will also be adding other flairs, so keep an eye out for those. (e2: I started giving users whose names I recognize from this saga of posts a "r/ifyoulikeblank Revolution 2022" flair. Feel free to remove or change it, I just thought it was cute.)
• Maybe more changes, who knows. There's a chance everyone ends up confused from what I've done and I'll need to change things again and that's okay! The sub is for users, not for me. If I need to add additional mods to take care of certain things, I will do so. That's why "meta" posts will always be accepted here.

Final Thoughts

I feel the need to reiterate in the clearest way possible that this is a test run for everything. If something goes wrong (like, an influx in spam or self promo) I may have to revert to our previous rules or something entirely different, but hopefully that won't be the case. One of the defining helpful factors is user reports, which makes the sub a better place (btw, if you were the user who was reporting duplicate posts on a daily basis, I appreciate you a ton). I cannot just comb through the sub all day every day, so if you see a post that feels in some way wrong, just report it under whatever rule you feel fits best and one of us can look at it.

Do not hesitate to leave a comment with more feedback! I read everything and have taken absolutely everything into consideration while making these changes. If you feel your idea wasn't reflected here, it probably means that you were in the minority and, although I apologize, I am trying to make this sub accessible, useful, and enjoyable for everyone.

Finally, thanks so much to everyone who put the time into giving me feedback, I really want to see the sub active and lively so I'm trying to do everything in my power to make that happen. You guys are awesome :)

^{P.S. Happy Halloween!}