I admit I get tired of “researchers” coming on here to develop an App that already exists.

I feel the same. Some them are also asking questions that have be asked before, meaning the are also to lazy to search the sub first.

I agree, and also admit,I’ve reached out recently to try to connect with other rehab professional.

‘However, put yourself in their position, you’re a undergrad or graduate student who’s taking way more classes than you should and are assigned aproject to study people with BVI? How many people with BVI, on average, do you think this student knows or is around? I’m currently at a large midwestern university with over 23,000 students, there are currently only 63 who are PWBVI can that number make an accurate empirical study?


As someone else said though writers pay a lot of money to go to conferences to learn things like police procedures or cooking techniques to use in their books, so I wonder why they come in here ask us about blind characters all the time.

It's really unfortunate that this happens to you folks. Maybe the "guidance for sighted people that want to make an app" in the FAQ should be expanded and escalated to some form of rule.

For God sake I hate this. I feel like they’re kind of like those people who went asked what type of update like to make they reply with “I’d like to make a Facebook but for sports. “

I have been going back an forth on this for a while. On one hand, I get tired of students coming here and asking the same questions that could be answered with a quick search. On the other hand, I have been a college student and had to do a project involving a disability, and I wasn’t real familiar with that particular disability. Luckily, one of my friends had that disability and he pointed me in the direction of some resources.

I agree. I‘m mostly annoyed at how many questions get asked like every couple of days. I don‘t mind educating people sometimes, but if they can‘t even put in the effort to see if their question has already been answered, I don‘t feel compelled to spend my time on it.

I don't see the problem. You want to know things, ask at the source. As long as people genuinely want to know the answers, I have no problem providing them. Better than just guessing.

It's insulting. Writers pay to attend conferences and talk about planning to pirfect murder plot for example.

eh. idk. let em ask. we just dont have to answer if its not worth while.

id rather not have a ban/rule change. id rather just have us all collectively judge for ourselves if its worth our time.

Touched a nerve and glad you did. I'm new to this sub. Legally blind from RP that has been ever so slowly sapping my sight my whole life. Came here in part from my search for a support site for high-functioning/professionals who are increasingly facing the limits (how's that for a micro-sub) Lots of great posts and responses. But the writers/filmmakers/app developers blatantly looking to profit from their questions is unsettling. Not sure there's an answer, but good to at least explose it.

I actually direct sighted people here when they have questions. When blindness comes up on /r/ask Reddit the only responses are either stupid jokes or people just guessing.

Few people understand the emotional aspects of blindness - the grief, the depression, the anger, the overwhelming unfairness of it all, the bad days when you feel you somehow deserve this, or the frustrating days when you'd sell your soul just to be able to do something everybody else takes for granted.

The ones who come in here trying to fix our lives with a new app wouldn't dream of going to r/PTSD or r/Rape_Survivor and ask insensitive questions. But we don't get the same consideration or the same privacy because people don't understand the emotional dimension of blindness. I certainly didn't until it happened to me. I'm as guilty as everybody else.

As part of the mod team one of my jobs is to explain to students/authors/film makers who show up with their questions and surveys that we're not the blind version of r/AskReddit, we're more of an informal group therapy session for people going through the traumatic experience of blindness. We don't come here to answer questions from outsiders, we come here because this is a place we feel understood.

On the other hand, if I just delete and ignore their questions, how will the rest of the world ever learn? If I don't explain why we're removing their questionairres from r/Blind they'll never realize we're asking for privacy while we process the loss we experience.

The best I could come up with is to remove the questionairres and send a message to the OP, a message quite a bit like this one in tone and in content, explaining my decision. But it's time consuming, inefficient, and tiring for me to do that two or three times a day, every single freakin' day.

Some of us don't want to answer any questions. Others want to answer everything. Most of us are somewhere in between, and probably more of us are on the "Don't bug me with your stoopid questions" end of the spectrum. But many of the surveys and interviews are compensated, and some of us really struggle for money. It seemed unfair to me to deny the opportunity to those who appreciate it.

I really didn't know what to do, so u/rumster and I brainstormed a bit and came up with this.

It's not a perfect solution. Some outsiders won't read the sticky thread and post anyway. Some people will abuse the system. There will be problems we haven't even thought of yet. That's where you come in. Help us make this work. Give your feedback. Tell us what works and what doesn't work. Tell us how to do better.

Not to mention would-be writers.

I just press H key to go to next post, ignore those which I don't care about.

Whoops. Stumbled across this post as I was **looking** at pictures of guinea pigs.

They are adorable, you should check them out some time.

/u/oldmanonfire and I discussed this a couple weeks ago: We are going to setup a highlighted post where these people could post and in and people who want to participate can respond to. Period. I was going over best practice to implement it and I'm going to follow the /r/chicago weekly post thread as the concept. Let me know if you are all good with this.

Side note: I was going to ban them completely from posting but I got a bit flak for the nuke option too... So yeah... this was the end result above.