Hello License Plate Spotters
We are reducing the user flair threshold to 3,000 upvotes.
After a few weeks of trying out the previous threshold of 5k, it became pretty clear that not enough posts were qualifying for user flair. With the new title guidelines, flair begging was killed off, resulting in fewer upvotes on posts. We did not see that decrease coming, and that resulted in posts reaching 5k going from about 8 per month to just 1 last month. We also listen to our community and many of you have expressed frustration with the lack of flairs. We are pretty certain that 3,000 will remain attainable and still account for our growing community.
Exclusive numbered flairs are still being granted in sequential order for helpful/funny/interesting comments at mod discretion. The next number in sequence is #35.
Plate collectors and ALPCA members can still qualify for the Collector and ALPCA Member user flairs, respectively. Think you're an expert? Modmail us and we'll send you a license plate quiz. Pass it and earn the Plate Expert user flair.
Rules Reminder
For a few months now, we have been trying to make the sub Original Content (OC) only. We will now be enforcing this more strictly. Please do not repost plates here that you have seen elsewhere on the internet. Spotting an awesome plate out in the wild is a thrill (at least for us nerds) and far more special than posting a plate you saw on the internet for karma. Also, NO POLITICS!
New Title Guidelines
We are implementing new title guidelines. Many of our members have requested this in various forms, and we will be trying out a new automod enforced system. For vanities you spot in the wild, mark your post with an "In the wild!" post flair. Your title must match the plate exactly or else it will be removed. If you are posting multiple plates at once, uh, this gets messy and we suggest you don't, choosing only the best ones to post. If you must post multiple, just choose the first/most visible as the title. Make sure your title is in all caps. For other post types, such as showing off your collection, plate news/discussion, for sale/trade posts, or trying to decipher a blurred plate, etc. choose a different post flair and you can title it accordingly.
Your mod team, u/HinsdaleCounty and u/ColgateDerpful
u/ExileInCle19, u/AnotherMister, u/KeepingItCoolish, u/Mdnquality, u/AdderallAndCaffeine, u/Exotic-Emphasis-4315, u/HarveyZoolander, and u/IzzyHoo; we have retroactively given you the flairs you deserve for reaching 3000 while the higher threshold was in place. Enjoy!
Holy shit this is amazing. You guys rock!!!!
This is awesome let's go!
Awesome š š
I gave up and figured I'd just spam the sub with the thousands of vanity plates I have collected over the years.
I would love to see vintage photos of personalized plates, especially from like pre-2010. That would be such a neat content segment in this sub
I remember those as a kid.. washington state plates were a yellow background with dark green lettering. They changed format of our plates in 1990 a couple years before I got into photography.
Even so, Washington did away with the embossed border quite a long time ago. Would be cool seeing some of those on cars. I love watching Almost Live segments where you can still see those in use.
The most vintage vanity plate in my collection uploaded circa 2014:
https://preview.redd.it/j0zgvzps4vif1.png?width=458&format=png&auto=webp&s=01cf44fb557cb7afb6a137b07b5cee7e73076845
and the next iteration of WA plates with the Script washington taken in '04 with my first digital camera that wasn't a palm pilot:
https://preview.redd.it/j8yupj385vif1.png?width=413&format=png&auto=webp&s=750facbcc55f1020c91d5d48afb8d944c5dc7164
Dang I would finally get one over 1000 and itās now 3000 šš¢
I came here to say the same thing. I finally got 1000 and was looking around to see why I donāt have the flair yet. Bummer.
3000 is way too high. I think there was one post that made it all last month
if r/LICENSEPLATESās threshold is 1k, 3k is way too high for here
They literally nuked this sub by doing this.
Yeah I gave up posting now. Iām on the road all the time for work and see so many plates but itās just not worth the effort anymore.
Not sure if this is the right place to ask but licenseplates.cc hasn't been updated in about a month. I think that site is run by member(s) of ALPCA so would you know why this is the case?
I am unsure. I actually have beef with whoever owns it, he never takes my submissions and eventually argued with me and I just gave up on that site. I think you can manually submit plates you see as updates, so maybe people just havenāt seen a high yet. Lots of people putting in fake high plates that last a month+ too.
Whatās wild is the amount of submissions they allow from āBrettā and his are clearly fake
Really? That's a shame. I submitted a high once but it wasn't put up, so I assumed you needed to be known by the owner or at least a member of ALPCA to be taken seriously.
I went ahead and checked the site just now and lo and behold it's been updated. Seems that complaining about something always fixes it, lol.
It definitely wasn't just that someone hadn't seen a high in a while since no jurisdiction had been updated at all in that time. Maybe the dude was just on vacation.
Itās back up and running now, they take a break every summer it seems.
Yep it started being updated again like a day after I posted that comment lol.
Iāve been contributing for a few years now and Iāve noticed every time around August they take a break
if the plate has a symbol in it do i have to write it out or can i use an emoji
Either one! If automod rejects the emojis/symbols you may also just post the plate without it.
I donāt understand almost all of this-
The traffic drop is interesting. The algorithm stopped pushing posts from this subreddit for me after the 5k change. Only had one pop up yesterday for the first time in forever
Yup. After the rule changes, I don't see this sub at all. I forgot it even existed until tonight. It's like it's been bricked since you can't make up funny titles anymore.
Whatās going on with this sub? Looks like people left. Good plates used to blow up faster. Now thereās a bunch of flair worthy plates that only have a few likes. Itās not fun anymore. Move the flair threshold down to 500, so everyone can participate.
I had 35k views on my post, and did not even come close to 3k upvotes. I didnāt even break 1k upvotes.
I got you up to 999, Iāll switch accounts and get you one more. Itās not not enuf to get flair, but at least itāll be 1,000.
* I don't understand!
numbered tags gang represent! #D20
u/colgatederpful are you going to do anything about the influx of A.I. license plates on here
I havenāt seen any. Got examples?
Yes, if ur being genuine I have a ton of examples actually- itās like a lot of the stuff trending rn- do u want me to dm u? Itās pretty widespread now that im picking up on it
https://www.reddit.com/r/LICENSEPLATES/s/iwv8ijRHA1
https://www.reddit.com/r/LICENSEPLATES/s/hXb2qxsymA
https://www.reddit.com/r/LICENSEPLATES/s/zaeFA8n7hv
https://www.reddit.com/r/LICENSEPLATES/s/ENunHHXwro
https://www.reddit.com/r/LICENSEPLATES/s/ZDJygchuyh
I can keep going if youād like, not trying to be rude u/colgatederpful I canāt tell with how much itās happening if this is like a joke im not apart of or if no ones noticing this- if itās a joke, iāll drop it- but im concerned if legitimately no ones noticing it
All five of the plates you showed me are actively registered to the vehicles they are on (you can check this with any checker like carfax or kbb). None of them are AI generated. I am really not sure what you are seeing. Perhaps the Texas one looks a bit weird, but that's just an artifact of photo compression. Personally, I think that blaming AI generation for legitamite posts is equally as bad as passing AI generated posts as legitamite.
I can show you what I see on all of em, the issue isnāt just the plate but also the expiration, the fact some of the car models just donāt exist- i mean that last image the giveaway was that it had a sticker with an expiration date of 02-28 and then on the otherside it had another year expiration date specifying it expires in 2026. The NC tag I recognize because i live on the VA-NC border, im not trying to make false accusations- but I think itās against the spirit of bothering to find a tag of anyone can just make up one using a prompt
You clearly have no idea what you are talking about. Indiana does two stickers because they have expiry by the date. The top left sticker indicates it expires february 28, the top right indicating 2026.
You can probably keep showing me stuff all day, and I'll happily explain to you what's going on, but literally none of this matters because, as I said, *all five* of the examples you showed me are plates which are actively and legally registered to the vehicle in the photo. AI can't generate that.
Thanks, Iāll take this as an opportunity to get my eyes checked- appreciate you; sorry if i came across rude, I wasnāt trying to be- Iāll be making that appointment here in a few
Update: I have 20/40 vision š«©š unironically, thank you for responding to this
Oh my god šš im glad you got inspired for a needed eye exam, hope your journey with glasses/contacts works out well
Me too, I cannot believe how blind I was, itās so jarring now that I have glasses. All my life I thought I had amazing vision, putting the glasses on made me realize how wrong I was about that. I mean im still impressed that there are actual visible craters on the moon and thats not just like in animation, or how much on the tv actually wasnt visible- im rewatching movies now and fully appreciating how beautiful the cinematography is.
Unironically this interaction has changed my entire life for the better- I had to go to the DMV too because apparently it was so bad i shouldnāt have been legally driving without glasses, so now my ID is updated to say im required to wear corrective lenses to drive. Mightāve killed someone or myself on the road at some point if we hadnāt had this conversation.