About r/ask
In its own words:
This is a place to ask specific, closed-ended, non divisive questions.
Community guide
r/ask (#818, about 1.3 million subscribers) is oriented around: This is a place to ask specific, closed-ended, non divisive questions. Recent activity samples show 34 posts/day in recent samples (~100% text). Public rules we collected include: Be polite and civil.; Post Format; Content Guidelines; No NSFW; No advertising or calls to action.
What belongs here
Stay inside the room’s stated scope rather than adjacent off-topic dumps. Self-promotion and ads are limited—read those rules before linking your own work. Medical advice requests are out of scope.
How it differs from lookalikes
Prefer this room when your post matches its description and rules—not merely a larger sibling community. Skim the full public rule list once rather than assuming defaults from similar subs.
Practical pointers
Read the live sidebar/rules before posting; collected snapshots can lag. Common flairs in samples include: Popular post.
SubMouse Editorial
The community was created on Mar 21, 2008, which makes it 18 years old. Since Oct 26, 2026, it has gained 1,614 subscribers (+0.13%). It sits just behind r/Accounting (#817) and ahead of r/Millennials (#819) in our ranking.
What sets r/ask apart
Compared with other large communities, r/ask leans heavily on text posts (100% of recent posts; the typical Top 100 subreddit sits at 35%). Its rhythm is strongly tied to time zones: the busiest hour (17:00 UTC) sees about 4.3× as many posts as the quietest (12:00 UTC).
Subscriber growth
Between Sep 19, 2026 and Nov 2, 2026, r/ask climbed from 1,289,733 to 1,294,876 subscribers (+5.1K, +0.40%). That is about 117 new members per day. The chart uses our weekly snapshots (9 so far), so it gets longer every week.
What r/ask talks about
We read the titles of 261 recent posts (Oct 29–Nov 5), the words that come up most are “women”, “man”, “good”, “wrong” and “feel”. Other frequent themes are person, girl, men, job, night and nowadays. Recurring phrases include “former coworker”, “coworker reached”, “sax criminal” and “criminal nowadays”. By format, 100% are text posts.
Activity and best time to post
r/ask gets about 34 new posts a day. The public archive holds 696,306 posts and 14,730,621 comments in total, about 21.2 comments per post. Last week the busiest day was Wednesday (46 posts) and the quietest was Thursday (29). Posting peaks around 17:00 UTC and is lowest around 12:00 UTC.
Rules of r/ask
The moderators of r/ask list 10 rules. In short:
- Be polite and civil.
- Post Format
- Content Guidelines
- No NSFW
- No advertising or calls to action
- No medical, legal, or technical questions
- Please use the search feature and do your research before posting
- No AMAs, DAEs or similar posts
- Minor Policy
- No Questions About Race, Gender, or Groups of People
How to join
Open reddit.com/r/ask and press “Join”. Read the community rules in the sidebar before you post: every subreddit is run by its own volunteer moderators.
Frequently asked questions
How many subscribers does r/ask have?
r/ask has 1,294,876 subscribers (Nov 2, 2026), which makes it the #818 safe-for-work subreddit in the SubMouse ranking. It added 5,143 members between Sep 19, 2026 and Nov 2, 2026.
When was r/ask created?
r/ask was created on Mar 21, 2008, so it has been around for 18 years.
Is r/ask still active?
Yes. r/ask gets about 34 new posts a day (average of the last four weeks). Over its lifetime the archive counts 696,306 posts and 14,730,621 comments. In a sample of 261 recent posts we counted 209 different authors.
What is the best time to post in r/ask?
Based on post counts from Oct 29, 2026 to Nov 4, 2026, the busiest day was Wednesday and the quietest Thursday, and most posts arrive around 17:00 UTC, with the fewest around 12:00 UTC. More posts also means more competition, so a quieter hour can help a post get noticed.
What kind of posts are on r/ask?
The community describes itself as: “This is a place to ask specific, closed-ended, non divisive questions.” Recent post titles often mention women, man, good, wrong and feel. Most posts are text posts (100%).
Is r/ask SFW?
Yes. Reddit does not mark r/ask as an 18+ (NSFW) community, and its own rules forbid NSFW content. SubMouse lists safe-for-work subreddits only.
What are the rules of r/ask?
Join the community on Reddit first, then use “Create post”. r/ask accepts text posts only. It has 10 posted rules, starting with: “Be polite and civil.”; “Post Format”; “Content Guidelines”. Moderators remove posts that break the rules, so read them in the sidebar before posting.
What subreddits are similar to r/ask?
Communities with similar topics include r/AskReddit (60M), r/TooAfraidToAsk (2M), r/AskUK (2.5M), r/AMA (1.9M) and r/AskCulinary (1.3M).
Stats from public data (data updated Nov 2, 2026; activity, rules and archive totals via the Arctic Shift archive, Nov 6, 2026). Point and comment counts are archive snapshots and can be lower than on Reddit today. SubMouse is an independent directory and is not affiliated with Reddit or the moderators of r/ask.