Hey Rams,
I wanted to get some feedback regarding two rules I'm considering adding in response to new trends in the content on this sub.
1. No posts speculating about financial aid situations.
There has been a huge increase in posts in recent years regarding financial aid. I understand that it's a massive part of the college decision-making process, but the vast majority of these posts get little to no engagement. This is because the financial aid process is opaque – aid package sizes differ from year to year, institution to institution, and person to person. Similarly, what one person considers to be "good" aid might not be enough to another person. We can also safely expect that no one from the Fordham financial aid office is lurking on this sub and handing out the guidelines for merit aid.
It's very difficult for anyone to give another person financial advice without knowing a lot of personal details like how much their parents make and are willing to contribute, which is information that should generally not be shared publicly.
Because the financial aid situation varies so wildly, I'd like to implement a ban specifically on posts asking for speculation about an individual's financial aid package size, whether it's good/bad, or how much to expect in appeal. For example, this ban would cover posts like "Is $35k good?" and "Is Fordham generous with aid?"
This ban would not cover posts comparing a package at one institution vs another (like "$10k at Fordham vs $5k at Fairfield?") or posts asking about when to expect aid packages/appeal, when the first payment is due, or other logistical questions. Those are easier for people to answer and get more responses anyway.
2. A ban on AI-generated content farming.
This issue just arose in the last day or two. Shoutout to u/ArchAuthor for bringing this to my attention. There were two posts on back-to-back days by separate accounts asking questions about the student experience at Fordham in an overly wordy, AI-generated content way. Looking into the accounts, I noticed that they each only had two comments on posts and the comments were identical – "I agree" and "interesing" on 8+ year-old accounts. These accounts are clearly farming information for some type of aggregate service.
I'm going to leave this post up for a few days before implementing any rules changes. Let me know if you have any recommendations.
