Comment · Wed, April 3, 2013 · Ceretropic
Modafinil Posts
Original post in this thread
MisterYouAreSoDumb · 239 points
Lately this subreddit has been turning into "Modafinil and Me." This is a place to advance our knowledge of all nootropics, not simply beat the latest popular one to death. I understand that many of you have questions about modafinil. However, I assure you that they have all been answered before. The search function works well, please use it before asking basic questions that we have all seen 100 times. I do not want to discourage discussions. However, we should limit those discussions to trying to expand information, not regurgitate what we already know.
* Modafinil is a wakefulness promoting agent.
* Modafinil will not replace dopaminiergic stimulants for ADHD.
* Modafinil will not work for everyone.
* Both enantiomers in racemic modafinil are active.
* R-modafinil is 3 times more active.
* Generics seem to be hit or miss. Some think they are the exact same, other don't...
* Your order will take a while to get here. Don't ask us if this is a normal thing.
* Modafinil increases hypothalamic histamine. This can lead to flush-like symptoms.
* There is a 99.999999% chance that you do not have Steven Johnson's Syndrome. If you did, Reddit is not the place to figure that out.…
What they were answering
9garden · 3 points
I agree with the previous comment (and I understand your response). I subscribe to /r/guitar and on a regular basis see the same post over and over again asking, "which guitar should I buy?" or "can someone explain modes?". The point is, the posts are annoying, but that's life. I'm not gonna complain about somebody with a new interest in guitar coming to /r/guitar to ask an inane, easily searchable question. I believe the community was built for just that reason (and more).
If your subreddit has experienced some new traffic because of a popular post and you're bored recounting the same info, maybe you should augment your modifinil with something that cheers you up.
I write this as a new visitor to /r/nootropics who felt a little less than welcomed. I found the recent posts regarding modifinil interesting and informative. While I understand why you'd find it annoying, I'm trying to understand why you'd want to chase away people who may have heard the word nootropic for the first time about a day ago.
This sub is interesting and your rational for making a snippy comment directed at people like me doesn't cut the mustard I think. You could afford to be nicer to the noobs.
All that said, I hope you don't ban me, heheh. I'm not trying to be flippant or contrary. It happens all the time and I thought I'd say something now because... I don't know... just to make conversation?…
u/MisterYouAreSoDumb · Ceretropic
This post is over a month old. Nobody has commented on it for a while. However, in the past 24 hours, 3 people have written on it. That usually never happens in Reddit posts, due to the ranking system. Out of curiosity, how did you stumble on this post? Did you just search for modafinil using the search function? I just think it's interesting that 3 different people all commented on it on the same day. Was the subreddit referenced somewhere in an article?
Regarding the issue, it has largely gone away since I made this post. We were getting 4-5 posts per day about modafinil. Many of them were extremely long winded anecdotes from first time users. Some were huge walls of text indicative of someone's first time on stimulants. After a while, people started complaining to me about it. Since modafinil is not really a nootropic, we kind of make an exception for discussions about it. However, when it starts taking over the subreddit, something needs to be done. I don't want to discourage new users from posting. However, I also don't want to have old users get annoyed and unsubscribe. It's a balance that needs to be had. That balance benefits everyone. You may have come here out of curiosity for modafinil, but you should quickly realize that there is much more to nootropics. That is what is nice about this subreddit. It is a place to find all sorts of new information and interesting discussions on substances you may have never heard of before. If the users that post the new and interesting information get annoyed by an influx of discussions about a non-nootropic like modafinil, then the content suffers.
There is no reason you should feel unwelcome here. Everyone is very friendly, and willing to add to the discussions. We generally try and keep things well sourced and based in science. However, anecdotes are welcome as well. We just try and isolate bias as much as we can while relaying that information. That was one of the major problems with the modafinil posts. They were not written at the appropriate level, and were hugely biased. My comments were meant to make those people thinking of posting another huge modafinil anecdote, to take a step back and think before they did. Is the post going to generate a good discussion? Am I letting bias and the placebo effect affect my judgement? Should I wait another week to get a feel for the drug before going on a rant? My wording was meant to be just snippy enough to generate some internal thought. I don't want to make anyone feel unwelcome, nor do I want to make anyone feel bad about their thoughts. I want to generate some internal dialogue about the quality of posts, that's all.