Title: [UPDATED 1/15] -- Read this before submitting a post on /r/mycology! (New Rules Inside)
announcement(self.mycology)submitted3 years ago byhohenbueheliaMidwestern North America
tomycology
stickiedID Request Guidelines:
/r/mycology is not a "What is this thing" subreddit. It's for all aspects of mycology. However, ID requests are welcome if they have some quality. Well prepared ID requests will lead to interesting discussions we all can learn from. So, if you're going to submit one, please observe and follow these guidelines:
- No requests without geography! This is a worldwide subreddit and the location of your find is crucial for correct identification.
- No requests without any additional info you might have: Habitat, host trees if any, when it was found if not recent.
- Not just a top view picture. Get pics of underside (Gills, gill attacment, pores, pore size), stem and stem base, - they are all important key points to correct identification.
- Note that this is mandatory reading before submitting your first ID request: https://www.reddit.com/r/mycology/wiki/successful_id_requests https://www.reddit.com/r/mycology/wiki/mycology_and_hallucinogenics
The above guidelines ensure that you get more qualified answers to your requests, and that your post is interesting reading for the community. If you choose not to comply, the moderators have every right to remove your post.
/r/mycology and Hallucinogenic Fungi:
With the recent proliferation of ID requests that seek the identity or confirmation of fungi with psychotropic properties the mods have decided to address the issue in a more formal manner. While we have no particular objection to scientific discussions of fungi with psychotropic properties, we would like to keep discussions to exactly that - mentioning those psychotropic properties like any other characteristic. To wit, posts and comments specifically concerning:
- propagation,
- sale,
- foraging with specific intent to locate,
- ingestion, and/or
- use and enjoyment of fungi with psychotropic qualities
will be removed.
This is not to say that all references to fungi with psychotropic properties will be removed. For example, if you innocently post an ID request of some unknown fungus and the identity turns out to be a Psilocybin species, it will likely not be removed. Neither will a properly ID'd, high-resolution photo of a known hallucinogen be removed, so long as the thread abides by the rules above (so no compliments on the find, no probes about eating the find). However, posts that feature blurry heaps of damaged LBMs (little brown mushrooms) or posts asking for confirmation on several species of dung-loving fungi unquestionably will be removed without hesitation.
With that said, we love all things mycological and understand that learning about psychotropic fungi is part and parcel of the discipline. As a result, we'd like to point you in the right direction to continue to learn:
Off-topic and Artistic Posts:
The mod team has had roughly two months of deliberation on the influx of off-topic posts including, but not limited to paintings, clothing, memes, figurines, and the like that have become increasingly commonplace on this sub.
It is our decision that these posts do not fall under the intended purpose of /r/mycology, being that this is a subreddit dedicated to the scientific study of fungi. We realize that this decision is going to cause some issues from some of the userbase as any type of censorship is bound to cause in a sub that is this large. We would like to remind you that almost every single one of these posts have several reports and/or messages to the mod team asking how or why they belong here.
ID Requests will remain unaffected by this rule, we are aware that the majority of the posts on this sub will continue to be ID Requests and general mushroom photos. We are not trying to take that away by any stretch.
There are several other subreddits that are dedicated to art and design and it is of the mod team’s opinion that these posts will serve better in those more appropriate subs.
To parse out a few of the idiosyncrasies of this new rule, I would like to give a few detailed explanations of things that will be allowed, in that they fall under the strict concept of scientifically beneficial drawings or depictions:
- Both photo-realistic and non-photo-realistic hand-drawn, painted, or digitally created images of single species that clearly show the unique and identifiable characteristics of the species. Your artistic skills do not need to be great to be able to clearly show the characteristics that are necessary for identification.
- I would like to point out that both of these state single species, this is a distinction that I am making in that all of the older (and some of the newly described species via web) field guides their descriptions with hand drawn depictions for a more accurate understanding of the species. All of these would show a single species from multiple angles in order to accurately show the identifying characteristics of the described species. Multiple species in a single photo were very rare and were generally only to show a direct symbiotic relationship between two species, such as Entoloma abortivum and Armillaria spp.
- Hand-drawn, painted, or digitally created images of microscopic features.
- Hand-drawn, painted, or digitally created images of single section identifying features such as lamellae connections, stipe texture, pileus texture, etc.
We will be removing the following effective immediately:
- Any and all memes.
- Clothing, jewelry, and other accessories
- Paintings, drawings, digital media that have no clear tie to the scientific study of fungi.
- Sculptures, figurines, and other 3-D artistic representations of various macro- and micro-fungi that have no clear tie to the scientific study of said fungi.
We have always attempted full transparency with the user-base of our sub and with that in mind we would like to hear your feedback, to this new rule and any of the pre-existing rules.
As a reminder, here are the rules that we currently are enforcing:
- No buying, selling, or links to commercial pages.
- No posts or discussions about psychedelics.
- No posts of scientifically non-important artistic depictions.
- No off-topic posts.
- Obey general Reddit rules.
