COMMUNITY SURVEY RESULTS - May 2025

[u/jaydee4219]

Thanks to everyone who took the recent community survey! It's always great to hear from you. For those who are new here, we do this twice a year to understand what people are enjoying about the sub and seek community input on rule changes. This time we had 1,311 total responses, and we're glad to present the results today.

Survey results here

Color accessible survey results

To summarize, users seem generally happy with the sub and the moderation.

No Changes -

• Regarding Sexual content on the sub - you all are overwhelmingly satisfied with the amount of sexual content on the sub. So we won't be making any huge changes to the way we moderate sexual content. We would like the focus on the sub to remain on Romance Books of all kinds. The mod team will continue to have discussions on how we can balance this on the sub.
• Sale/Deal weekly thread - We will continue to redirect there.
• Does this [sex thing] happen in real life? - the sub was pretty split on this question so no moderation changes planned for right now.

We appreciate all of those who took time to leave comments for the mod team. There were just about 400 comments left and right about 50% were just saying thanks and had no suggestions. We felt the love and we appreciate you!

There was about an even amount of users who said we over moderate the sub vs those who believe there should be more moderation. We appreciate all the suggestions and will do our best to continue providing a balanced moderation strategy.

About 15% of the 405 comments addressed the sexual content and/or the change in tone observed in the subreddit. The mod team has seen this as well and unfortunately we can only do so much. The subreddit has experienced significant growth, increasing from 100k to 400k members in less than three years, and the influx of users has resulted in a shift of the tone and atmosphere in the sub. While the mod team will continue to explore different approaches to take, we encourage you to consider what actions you can take to help shift the tone of the sub? How can the mod team facilitate that for you, considering this is a community of 400k compared to our team of 9?

One change we are planning -

• There were a few comments regarding the barrier of entry to posting on the sub. The sub karma and account age limits will not change. However, we are now going to allow What Was that Book Called (WWTBC) comments in the daily request thread. The daily request thread should now be the best stop for new users wanting a book request, quick question, or now help in finding a specific book.
  • The comments do need to start with WWTBC to easily distinguish them from book requests in the thread!

Things to Note -

• Please remember to mark your post as NSFW where applicable. Report to the mods a post that should be tagged as NSFW. Specific titles are a requirement in this sub which may result in titles that are NSFW, if you do not want to see NSFW content please check out this video on how to remove NSFW content from your feed completely.
• There were a few comments regarding racism they've seen on the sub. Please report any comments you see like that!! The mods cannot be everywhere and we rely on reports to make sure the sub is a safe and welcoming space for everyone!
• The mod team has no affiliation with the romance bot. There were a few comments left for suggestions regarding the bot - please send those suggestions using the "contact us" link at the bottom of the romance.io website.
• There was some feedback regarding the lack of diversity in our subreddit. The mod team has also noticed this and to actively combat it we host a biweekly diversity megathread and work to ensure that our book club and reading challenges are intentionally diverse.
  • What is more important is that we want to hear from you! Please share your suggestions and ideas for titles or themes that can help us further enhance our commitment to diversity in our community. And just a reminder, your contributions are vital in creating a more inclusive space for all!
• The survey is anonymous and we got a few questions directed to the mods. We cannot respond to those questions directly so if you have a comment you want answered, please use the links below to send us a modmail.

Don't forget to check out the sidebar and the highlights! We have a monthly book club and a discord for the sub where we discuss the book club pick and have buddy reads! The highlights (pinned threads) are along the top of the feed when you load into the subreddit. That is where all of our weekly threads are so don't forget to check them out!!

Some key reddit features to point out:

• On the mobile app, you now need to select the u/RomanceBooks link at the top of the subreddit to see the sidebar information
• When viewing the sub on desktop, scrolling the feed will not scroll the sidebar. You now need to hover over the sidebar to scroll and see everything we put there (it also has it's own scrolling bar).
• To access the Wiki on the mobile app, there is now a link to it underneath the sub description.

If you have questions or feedback, please comment below or send a modmail. Thanks again for being part of r/RomanceBooks, we're so glad you're here!

[u/mrs-machino]

I want to apologize to the sub for the delay in getting these results out - I’ve had a lot happening over the past month and got very overwhelmed.

Huge thanks to u/jaydee4219 for picking up the work here, she’s a rock star!

[u/jaydee4219 → u/mrs-machino]

We're a team🩵🩵 it's no big deal, real life is more important!

[u/BookishBabe392]

You guys are awesome. Thank you for all your hard work!

[u/OK-CaterpillarCall]

Thanks Mods - you make this sub such a fun place! 🌼

[u/JediEverlark]

Thank you so much mods! All the work you put in to this overwhelmingly large (and wonderful) community is so appreciated!

[u/Revolutionary-Fig-84]

The fact that the mod team takes the time to do these surveys is just one more thing to love about this community. When I joined this sub, we had less than 30K members, and the way the mod team has navigated through the explosion in growth since then has constantly amazed me. Once again, thank you for all of the effort you devote to us!

[u/chatoyer0956]

Thank you for doing this

[u/Affectionate_Bell200]

Whooo hoo! This is always such a fun thing to look at. Thanks for all you do.

[u/ErikaWasTaken]

Thank you!

I appreciate the survey and your commitment to being transparent about the results, and how it informs your decision making.

[u/kgtsunvv]

Romance bot is unaffiliated? Whoever makes that thing is a GOD SEND

[u/ChocolateDream24]

So I was one of the people who mentioned suggestions for updating the romance.io bot response.

Your comment above says you guys don't have anything to do with her site (fair). So I used the Contact Us button on her page and made the suggestion that way. She said that she and the mods worked together to craft the auto response by the bot, and couldn't/ wouldn't make changes unilaterally (also, fair.)

How is a person meant to make a suggestion that will be considered by both parties?

[u/canusse]

Thank you so much! Such good information and lovely presentation!

[u/scienceandnutella]

Is there a way of limiting explicit content on titles? All other subs that have a mixture of NSFW content with SFW have the nsfw tag for the content of the post, not on the titles.

I think people will be able to leave detailed enough titles without them being nsfw. There is no need to graphically describe sexual or violent acts on titles. I don’t want to have to filter all nsfw content just to avoid titles.

[u/VitisIdaea → u/scienceandnutella]

Thanks for asking - unfortunately there is not. The subreddit rules prioritize clear, specific and informative titles, which help ensure that people know what they'll find when they click into a post. As you noted, Reddit's NSFW tag hides the content of a post but not the title. We want users to be able to make a clear and informed choice about whether or not to engage with a particular post and not be surprised by content inside.

While this does sometimes mean that titles are explicit or graphic (for whatever any particular user's definition of graphic/explicit is), we feel that this is the safest choice for the community and have polled the question in the past with similar results.

There are a couple of options for users who aren't comfortable reading NSFW titles, namely Reddit has a NSFW filter which you can implement on your account, or you can hide any post whose title you find discomfiting. I believe there are also third-party filters like the Reddit Enhancement Suite which can be used to filter out keywords from your Reddit browsing, although I have no idea how functional they are after Reddit's spate of "upgrades" after the last few years. Generally speaking we encourage users to make the best choices for them in terms of where to engage with Reddit and how to use Reddit's features.