r/AskAnAustralian: rules, karma requirements and posting culture

Who posts here

There is no specialist knowledge here to have. The rules describe it as a place for non-Australians to learn about the country or get an Australian take, and the simplest questions, like whether a term of address sounds natural, get full answers. What you are expected to know is the tone: locals use slang and swearing without explaining either, and a question that could be answered by the moving wiki gets removed and sent there.

• Australians asking other Australians about everyday annoyances: supermarkets, tipping screens, police, landlords.
• Visitors, migrants and international students asking how things work and whether what they noticed is normal.
• People planning a move, a trip or a degree and looking for local opinion.
• People wanting an Australian read on a personal situation, from dating to a dispute in a car park.
• Locals who mostly answer, usually with a city flair next to their name.

Karma and account requirements

What it takes to get a post through in r/AskAnAustralian.

What you can post

What happens to a new post

Where the most recent posts ended up. Sample size: 400.

• Stayed up84%
• Removed by Reddit's filters2%
• Held by AutoModerator11%
• Removed by moderators3%
• Deleted by the author<1%

Reddit counts a removal by the subreddit's own AutoModerator rules as a moderator removal, so that share is not all human. Held by AutoModerator means the post is waiting in the mod queue.

What happened when we posted here

We have posted here ourselves. This is how our own posts and comments fared.

Stayed up

100%

Removed by Reddit's filters

0%

Removed by moderators

0%

Period

June 2026 to July 2026

The rules, in the mods' words

1. 1

   Follow the Reddit content policy.

   Follow all Reddit Content Policy rules, listed here: https://www.redditinc.com/policies/content-policy

2. 2

   Questions should pertain at least somewhat to Australian culture or lifestyle.

   This is primarily a place for non-Australians to learn about Australian culture and society, or get an Australian take on personal, community, or world issues. Non-Australia related questions will be removed at the mod team's discretion.

3. 3

   Honest, good faith questions only

   We recognize that questions can come from an emotional place, and it's okay to include your opinion, but rants and propaganda disguised as questions will be removed. Questions that actively disparage ethnic or religious groups are grounds for a ban.

4. 4

   Don't be a dick

   Don't be a dick, we're all human. Yeah thats right, this means witch hunting and that shit that happens elsewhere. Just be respectful of everyone.

5. 5

   Don't be a Drongo

   Remember to play the ball and not the man, personal attacks will not be tolerated.

6. 6

   Tell the truth

   just because you say 'cunt' a lot doesn't make you an Aussie, we know who we are...

7. 7

   Permission is required for Polls and Surveys

   If you want to post a poll or survey please message it to the mod team before posting. Commercial surveys are not allowed.

8. 8

   IMGUR

   If you're going to upload an image, for the love that is all holy use imgur... please.

9. 9

   No overtly Political posts

   Posts that are too politically charged will be removed at the discretion of the Mod team.

These are the rules as archived in January 2025. Rules change. Check the sidebar before you post.

The culture

r/AskAnAustralian is a question and answer room with about 715,000 members and more than 50 posts a day. Every post is text, usually short, about 80 words, and more than half of titles are questions. It is unusually talkative: the typical post gets around 25 comments, and the big ones run to hundreds or more than a thousand.

It was set up for outsiders to ask Australians things, and those posts are still common: a European confused by local dating, a nurse wondering whether a term of endearment sounds right. But much of the feed is now Australians asking each other. The posts that climb highest are shared gripes about daily life. Tipping prompts on payment screens, supermarket own-brand changes, post office hours, a hardware chain that is not what it was.

The friction is around migration and politics. Moving to Australia questions are frequent enough that the mods built a wiki page for them and remove repeats. Posts on race, homelessness and policing do run and get long, heated threads, but the rules bar overtly political posts and rants dressed up as questions, and the mods decide where that line is.

What lands

• A shared complaint phrased as a question, like when payment terminals started asking for tips.
• An open prompt every local can answer from experience, such as the social rules nobody teaches you.
• An outsider's honest observation about an Australian habit, asked with curiosity and not a sneer.
• A specific consumer story with a question attached, like a retailer upselling software to an elderly relative.
• Nostalgia and trivia: old first names that have vanished, half-remembered slogans and songs.

What gets removed or ignored

• Posts from accounts under 12 hours old. AutoModerator removes them on sight.
• Repeat questions about moving to Australia or whether it is still worth it. The wiki says these are answered there and new ones need mod approval.
• Spam and off-topic offers: game keys, product sourcing, all-caps service ads.
• Polls and surveys posted without permission, and any commercial survey.
• About 11% of posts in the sample were held by AutoModerator. Our data does not say what triggers it, so expect that a first post may wait for review.

The unwritten rules

• Ask an actual question. A rant with a question mark on the end is named in the rules as something that gets removed.
• Expect dry humour and swearing in the replies. The sidebar is written that way and so are the answers. It is not hostility.
• Say where you are from and where in Australia you mean. Answers differ by city and state, and locals wear a location flair for that reason.
• Comments are short, about 24 words, and almost never include a link. A link in a comment looks out of place.
• Do not pretend to be Australian. The rules call it out, and people can tell.

Self-promotion

The rules do not have a self-promotion clause as such. What they do say is that polls and surveys need permission and commercial surveys are banned, and posts must be honest, good faith questions. In practice anything that reads as an ad is treated as spam: product offers and service pitches appear among the removed posts. A few thin promotional posts do slip through, such as a shopping app recommendation or a call for confessions that insists it is not an ad, but they are the exception and get little out of it. There is no workable way to promote here. A brand can only show up by asking or answering a real question.

How people write here

Typical post length

78 words

Typical title length

9 words

Titles phrased as a question

56%

Typical comment length

24 words

Comments that include a link

1%

The regulars

The accounts that showed up most in our sample. Worth reading before you post: they set the tone, and they are usually the first to reply.

Top keywords

The words and phrases that show up far more often here than in other communities, from recent posts in r/AskAnAustralian.

• australia 93 posts
• sydney 39 posts
• melbourne 33 posts
• australian 39 posts
• aussie 17 posts
• brisbane 11 posts
• australians 11 posts
• nsw 7 posts
• aus 11 posts
• aussies 8 posts
• road 16 posts
• vic 6 posts
• coast 10 posts
• places 19 posts
• travelling 9 posts
• country 18 posts
• live 35 posts
• living 24 posts
• overseas 10 posts
• life 32 posts
• uni 10 posts
• experiences 19 posts
• ocean road 4 posts
• melb 4 posts
• macquarie 4 posts
• gold coast 4 posts
• cairns 4 posts
• cbd 6 posts
• wondering 27 posts
• trip 12 posts
• family 22 posts
• coles 5 posts
• keen 8 posts
• visiting 9 posts
• student 16 posts
• international student 5 posts
• dating 10 posts
• lived 11 posts
• universities 7 posts
• queensland 4 posts

Posts that did well

• Can we be honest about the Shoey?1k upvotes · 380 comments
• Dating Australian women as a European – am I missing a cultural difference?830 upvotes · 680 comments
• When did we start letting machines guilt us into tipping in Australia?728 upvotes · 313 comments
• What is an Australian social rule that nobody ever teaches you?716 upvotes · 1.5k comments
• What are the police so busy doing?643 upvotes · 569 comments
• Would you support Australia banning businesses from actively encouraging tipping, particularly through POS systems that automatically ask customers to leave a tip?634 upvotes · 162 comments
• Has Australian coffee made it difficult for you to enjoy coffee overseas?618 upvotes · 763 comments
• Who was the smartest person in your Aus high school class and what are they doing now?618 upvotes · 872 comments

Common questions