How Can We Make r/sleeptrain A Better Sub for Sleepy Parents?

[shiftybroccoli]

Hello all!

New Update Feb 14: The post is now locked for comments. Thank you all so much for your suggestions and words of encouragement. I have a group of mods that are excited to get started on making this sub a better place learn about sleep training. Post to introduce the mods and updates to come in the next couple of weeks. We will be updating the wiki, rules, setting up automod and more! Be on the lookout!

Update: over the last year, our sub membership has literally doubled. Our membership has exploded and we are no longer a small community of sleep-deprived parents. Now that the sub is larger, it has become much more active, filled with tons of duplicate-type posts, and the occasional spam.

I am looking to build our mod-team, so if you're interested in joining, please reach out to the mods.

In the meantime, I want to hear from you all on how we can make this sub better. I have always visualized this sub as a place where new parents can come to learn about the basics of sleep training, without needing to spend thousands of dollars on "professional" sleep-consultants or costly programs.

We've read through some feedback and it seems like absent mods are a huge concern and we hear you. Any other suggestions? Setting up automod to welcome new members and address common sleep issues at different stages? A daily chat thread? Enforcing no duplicate posts? What rules updates do you want to see?

I will leave this post up for a week or so and tally up all the suggestions and start working on making this a better place to get better sleep for you and your babes.

 

[zzareyan]

@shiftybroccoli If you are looking for mod help to get everything off the ground I’d be happy to help for a bit. I’ve been a mod over at r/clothdiaps for 3 years now.

I like the idea of weekly chat/discussions/question threads. We have wondering Wednesday. You could do a second question day on Saturday and success Sunday. I don’t remove posts outside of the weekly threads. I found our community is more active when people are able to interact with the sub (post and comment) in the way that suits them best. The theme posts collects a lot of questions and people are still welcome to post a stand-alone post.

I agree that there should be a crack down on sharing copyrighted material. But I’d also like to see maybe a rule or suggestion that people share free advice or what worked for them. Maybe it’s fine to say, I paid for xyz and that worked for us. But a better comment would be to share the schedule you followed or the main strategy you used. Actual experiences.

 

[shiftybroccoli]

@zzareyan Those suggestions are great. I would love to add you as a mod. I have a google spreadsheet that I’m adding all the ideas that have been added to this post that I can send you as well. I’m hoping to have like 5 mods so that we can get to reports more quickly.

 

[zzareyan]

@shiftybroccoli I’ll pm you my email!

I had another thought too. Flairs. Sort them by age or sleep training method or help I’m lost! It took me a bit of manually adding them to all posts but eventually the community caught on and 99% do it now! Even new members and first time posters.

 

[shiftybroccoli]

@zzareyan Yes! Such a great idea!

 

[damseremie]

@shiftybroccoli I think explaining the difference between sleep coaching (establishing healthy sleep hygiene, age appropriate schedules, etc), sleep training (teaching to fall asleep independently), and night-weaning in the sidebar would be really helpful. Sleep coaching a newborn is okay, night-weaning is not okay. Sleep training does not necessarily mean night weaning, etc.

 

[shiftybroccoli]

@damseremie You are so right! And thank you for the award!

 

[cindyfernandez]

@shiftybroccoli It's probably Reddit culture a bit, but I feel like people come here asking questions and there aren't as many who stick around to share answers. I got over this but I remember feeling like I had poured in a lot to answer questions and then when I had a question- crickets.

Personally I love the newborn posts- there is definitely a place for them here.

Is it Reddit's algorithm that mean the front page is different for everyone and so you might not see that someone else asked an identical question to you an hour ago?

 

[shiftybroccoli]

@cindyfernandez Thank you for your feedback. I do agree that I would like to see a more diverse array of posts, as well as more adherence to Reddit culture. I think that many many people post, but I am not seeing users responding to posts as often. We often see drive-by posts in this sub Reddit.

 

[cindyfernandez]

@shiftybroccoli You know, I was thinking that while this sub is called sleeptrain, it is kind of a place were all sorts of sleep questions get asked, that might not be sleep training specific. I like it, and while we are on a different sleep training pace to many people here, it's the general sleep advice that I have benefited the most from.

But is being a baby sleep sub what r/sleeptrain wants to be?

 

[shiftybroccoli]

@cindyfernandez I’m not sure I fully follow what you mean. I think the goal of the sub is for parents and babies to get better sleep, which means babies eventually sleeping through the night, without needing interventions or feeds (as long as they are gaining weight and healthy).

Do you think the sub should have some other focus?

 

[cindyfernandez]

@shiftybroccoli I mean that there are a lot of posts about, for example, scheduling, swaddling, etc etc that aren't necessarily sleep training per se. I think that's really great, in case that wasn't clear!

 

[shiftybroccoli]

@cindyfernandez I understand now! Yes, I think those are all vital parts of the sub. I look at swaddling, schedules etc like athletes prepping for a game. The actual week of sleep training is the game itself. Thanks for your feedback!

 

[trivalee]

@shiftybroccoli I really love this sub and would love to help as a moderator. I think the suggestions in this thread are great. In particular the "Sleep training starting today" type of thread so we can better support each other.

I don't like as much the idea of consolidating the calls for help per method thread because I think its hard to follow the conversations in the comments, and the layout of the comments makes it very hard to follow on mobile phone. I also prefer to give people with specific questions a more personal approach to help them.

I think more flairs and some common threads would be great to better organize the content. As I mentioned to both mods in private, I would super happy to contribute to this sub as a mod, so please let me know what I can do.

 

[shiftybroccoli]

@trivalee Thanks! I will be reaching out!

 

[fundementalzero]

@shiftybroccoli Maybe also some sort of post or link to a document that has some typical sleep schedules for different ages. I know some people (including me!) are often confused about whether they have a low sleep needs or a high sleep needs baby, and there are a ton of answers and opinions regarding schedules! So having some example schedules laid out for both types would be nice, to give folks a starting point to work with. We could take a poll and then combine the answers into an average schedule by age sort of thing.

I notice lots of people asking about what their schedule should be, so that might eliminate some unnecessary posting, and those posts often tend to get lost or unanswered because there are so many of them. That makes me feel bad, because there are probably some folks who don't get the help they need due to a post accidentally getting lost in the shuffle, and they then get discouraged about asking questions.

I've gotten an enormous amount of help from this sub, and I want everyone to have the same experience!

 

[fundementalzero]

I should also mention that I'm willing to help put this together! I'm relatively new to Reddit though, so I'm not sure how this could best be done.

 

[shiftybroccoli]

@fundementalzero That would be awesome! Thanks, I will be reaching out.

 

[fundementalzero]

@shiftybroccoli Maybe a monthly AMA style session with a sleep expert, where people can ask quick, simple questions.

 

[shiftybroccoli]

@fundementalzero I’d love something like that too.