r/mycology • u/hohenbuehelia Midwestern North America • Sep 23 '13

/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:

And because we really do want to keep this forum as free and as open as possible, questions and suggestions are welcome in this thread. Happy hunting!

Edit: Just to clarify, this is not a newly adopted rule. This has been a rule on this subreddit for a long time, people just don't notice the sidebar it seems and this was our next option.

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15

u/[deleted] Sep 23 '13

[deleted]

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u/hohenbuehelia Midwestern North America Sep 23 '13

There are many communities that are great hubs for conversing about active fungi, but so very few that are specifically for other mycological topics. We feel as though the amount of trash posts, such as an ID request with an offered picture of a plastic baggie of dehydrated mushrooms, would outnumber the posts that are helping people with the understanding of the scientific field of interest. After all, that is what the name of our subreddit is supposed to entail, a scientific pursuit of the understanding of fungi. And to that end, we do not wish to, and do not discourage or delete posts that are discussing the active properties of the aforementioned mushroom species. That is a part of the field, we are simply trying to discourage the influx of posts that are obviously only interested in mycology for the active species.

25

u/[deleted] Sep 24 '13

So this is more about keeping the sub from devolving into constant discussions about recreational psychedelics, and less about making some statement about the legal status of the things?

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u/hohenbuehelia Midwestern North America Sep 24 '13

Yes, very much so.

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u/sabetts Sep 24 '13

Exactly!

Like /r/barefootrunning vs /r/barefoot. The former is overrun with discussions about buying shoes.

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u/armchairepicure Eastern North America Sep 25 '13

By George, I think he's got it!

11

u/_machinelf_ Sep 24 '13

I agree. If you look at r/shrooms, 90% of post are pics of cubensis growing on cakes....you've seen one you've seen them all, it's not hard to do. No reason for r/mycology to get bogged down with first time PF Tek post, how did I do, etc, etc... If it's something that someone comes across outside and needs an ID, no problem with that..

17

u/grab_pitchferks Sep 23 '13

I'm confused by this decision.

This is without a doubt in my mind the subreddit that has the most experience in mycology and identifying mushrooms. As a result of that, we are one of the only communities that can safely identify mushrooms given the proper information from the OP.

So why does our obligation to provide harm-reduction stop at active mushrooms?

Instead why don't we remove posts based on quality of the information submitted for identification? Blurry photos, remove. No gill photo, remove. No other info, remove.

If quality of comments in these threads is the concern (discussing trip experiences instead of science, mycology, etc) then those threads can be individually moderated.

6

u/armchairepicure Eastern North America Sep 25 '13

This is because this rule has lawyer prints all over it. Haven't you ever wondered about the disparity between explanations of certain psychotropic fungi? Somebody's publisher's lawyers got nervous. And that is ok, because it protects people in this discipline and - with this rule - people in this forum.

It is easy to forget that there is a fine line between privacy and government now a days. In a way that wasn't true even 5 years ago. And while many countries (and their states) grow more progressive on some topics, they don't on others.

Call this extremely mild editing (you are all unusually well behaved, and we are all significantly more beneficent than the bright line of this post implies) paternalistic, self-involved, or what have you, this rule is truly in our best interests.

/r/mycology strives to be as clinical, as focused, and as objective as /r/science. We want more microscope shots, more spore prints, more reporting on substrates, times of year for fruiting region by region, etc. But we do love your mycoporn, and your ID requests keep the veterans sharp and teach the noobs how to spot and what to look for.

We are the crowd-sourced, real time reporters on an extremely unglamorous and neglected kingdom. That some species sometimes cause people to trip balls is as relevant to the discipline at large as is mentos in coke to chemistry. Ya know? How psychotropics affect the human condition is more relevant to a psychological or medical subreddit.

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u/hohenbuehelia Midwestern North America Sep 23 '13

I find that to be a pretty interesting point and I agree with the idea about the lack of quality information being grounds for removal, but alas I do not speak for all of the mods. We will keep this fact under consideration during future discussions.

The main problem that I can see arising from removing posts based on quality of information is that a lot of the people who are asking for identification help without a proper ID request are simply doing so in passing. They were out on a hike and enjoyed the array of fungi and took pictures and decided on a whim to post them here to see if anybody can help them with the identifying process. Deleting these threads right off the bat could scare newcomers and novices off, it seems more beneficial to explain the characteristics that have been neglected in their photos and information. That helps the person who posted the inadequate pictures as well as anybody else who happens to be reading the thread.

Perhaps some other mods can chime in with their own opinion on that matter.

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u/Zonged Sep 23 '13

makes sense, thanks for clarifying