r/todayilearned rules, stats, and what to post

This community is for people sharing one specific interesting fact they just learned, and the description says it plainly, you learn something new every day and you submit interesting and specific facts about it. The format is a fact in the title, backed by a source, so readers get the whole story without even clicking. The people posting here are general readers and curious browsers, not buyers, and the rules are written to keep the feed factual rather than chatty. There is no room for opinions, stories about your day, or anything that smells like a pitch. If your post would work as a line in a trivia book with a citation at the end, it fits.

The rule that decides everything here is “Inaccurate/unverifiable/not supported by source”, which requires a reliable source linked directly for every claim in your title. “No recent sources” bans anything published in the last two months, so fresh news is out. “No personal opinions/anecdotes/subjective posts” removes anything subjective, like saying something is great. “No misleading claims” removes posts that omit essential information or suggest connections between unrelated facts. “Too general/can't stand on its own/how to” governs titles, which must start with “TIL” or “Today I Learned”, be specific, and stand on their own without a click. “No politics/agenda pushing” bans recent politics and social issues outright. “No submissions about software/websites” bans posts about the usage, existence or features of specific software or websites, which matters a lot if you build software.

A good post here is one specific, verifiable fact you genuinely just learned, written as a title that starts with TIL and tells the whole story by itself. The source must be a reliable publisher and it must be older than two months, which means evergreen facts, not news. For a founder, the honest play is to share surprising facts from your industry's history, research, or data that a reputable outlet already published a while ago. You are building credibility as a curious person, not promoting anything. If the fact happens to touch your field, that is fine, as long as the post is about the fact and the source carries the weight.

Posts get removed for lacking a reliable source, for using sources newer than two months, for opinions and anecdotes, for political or social topics, for misleading claims, and for vague or broad titles. Software and website posts are banned outright, so a TIL about your own product's features is dead on arrival. Titles that cannot stand alone without the link get removed too. NSFW links must be tagged if you ever share one.

The two month source cutoff is the rule that caught my eye, because it quietly kills most timely marketing angles before you even draft the title. I also like that the rules spell out bad title shapes, like “TIL about x”, which tells you exactly how much care the room expects. Honestly, this is a community where the title is the product, and if you cannot write a great one, you have nothing to post.