State of the Subreddit Address, 2025

To all who read, comment, post, and lurk on /r/conlangs, I and the rest of the moderation team send you warm greetings. We are so incredibly thankful for all 100,000+ of you! It’s another year, so it’s time for our annual State of the Subreddit Address, where we reminisce about the year behind us and anticipate the year ahead of us.

Moderation

The only significant change in the moderation team was announced in last year’s SOTSA. Our fearless leader, /u/Slorany stepped down, leaving little ol’ me as the infamous “Head Moderator.” (All mods share equal authority, I’m just the name on top of the moderator list, and also, apparently, responsible for writing this post.)

Activities

/r/conlangs hosted a record FIVE speedlangs this year:

Additionally, we hosted our annual month-long lexicon-building activities:

To celebrate passing 100,000 subscribers, we did something new and hosted the Halloween Extravaganza, a day where we posted a new activity every hour on the hour on 31 October. Putting this together was a group effort from /u/upallday_allen, /u/PastTheStarryVoids, and especially /u/impishDullahan.

Segments

For those unaware, Segments is an ongoing journal project spearheaded by /u/Lysimachiakis that showcases the best work from members of the /r/conlangs community. This year, we’ve published several new issues:

We just put out a call for submissions for Issue #16 (Supra III)!

Hey. Hey, you. Why don’t you set a New Years’ resolution to write an article for Segments? The “Supra” issues are open to any topic in any conlang, so now will be the perfect time to get started on it!

Meta

This year, we made a couple of announcements.

And then we had one major announcement:

  • We rebranded the “Small Discussions” to “Answers & Advice”. This change was met with broad approval, and it seems to be working out for us so far. If you’re new to this subreddit, the “Answers & Advice” posts (previously “Small Discussions”) is a mega-thread we sticky to the top of the subreddit every two weeks for newbies and veterans alike to ask questions, request resources, or get critiques. Unlike other megathreads in other subreddits, ours gets a lot of love and attention, comparatively. We invite you to check it out and use it! It’s one of our best resources.

Demographic Survey

In March, we posted the joint /r/conlangs and Conlangs Discord Network Demographic survey. I have released half of the results so far. Here’s Part I and Part II. Parts III and IV are sitting incomplete in my Google Drive, as they proved to be more difficult to write than I had hoped. I will publish them, though! Before this March! (Feel free to yell at me if I don’t.)

The Future

We may not have flying cars or moon tourism or world peace, but we will have more conlangs, that’s for sure.

Here are our plans for the future:

  • More of what already works. More Segments! More Lexember! More Speedlangs! More A&A!
  • Building connections. I and the mod team have already begun building relationships with other similar communities and organizations in hopes to collaborate. We have an excellent relationship with the Conlangs Discord Server, but we’re looking to expand our horizons to even more corners of the internet to give our members access to anything and everything they need. If you are in charge of a community or organization or podcast or YouTube channel that pertains to conlangs, worldbuilding, linguistics, or just cool shit in general, send us a modmail. We’d love to talk with you and maybe do something together.
  • Colonizing the internet. I’m talking YouTube. I’m talking TikTok. I’m talking Bluesky. (Maybe not Twitter and Facebook though.) Anyway, we want to spread /r/conlangs out and create a few official accounts so you can follow us without ever looking at the new Reddit UI. We’ll announce those accounts… later. If we get to it.
  • The 11th Language Creation Conference hosted by our friends at the Language Creation Society is taking place on April 11-13 in College Park, Maryland, USA! Lots of members of the subreddit and beyond will be attending, presenting, and following everything that happens, and r/conlangs will be hosting some megathreads for it. We encourage you to check it out, participate, and post about it!

Are you worried about the future? So are we. It might sound silly, but we consider this subreddit to be a refuge for weary language nerds. If everything is falling into chaos, we want to be a place of structure. If everyone has gone stupid, we want to be a haven of intelligence. When nothing seems logical, we want to be a place where you can be creative. Even if none of our other goals are accomplished, we want to make a promise that we will be a safe “third place.” No matter where you go, or what you do, or who you are, the community of /r/conlangs would love to see your constructed languages.

Now tell us about your year. What were you able to accomplish with your conlangs, and what do you hope to do this year?

Wishing you a bright 2025,
- The /r/conlangs moderation team