Hi there.
A short introduction: This is an alt account. I’m a moderator here who has been unhappy with the state of news/political discussions here for a long time. The admins have kindly given me the opportunity to see if we can make some improvement the community here.
We will be doing some major revision of the rules left by the previous moderators and will use discussions in this thread as feedback on the direction we should take our community.
This will be an open discussion on the state of our community, the rules and our moderation practices. Feel free to give your inputs.
Can you be more specific about what you feel should be changed?
Everything is up for discussion, while we will still take a hardline against hateful rhetorics. I think the rules can be simplified and made easier to understand and follow, instead of feeling arbitrary.
The top items that I feel should be discussed:
So you wish to turn this into another US news community? Not interested, there’s way too much US-centric stuff online already.
The first rule could be improved as well, demanding non-clickbaity titles instead.
https://lemmy.world/post/10066374
This article which is US news has been here for a day. I don’t really see the reasoning for the restriction to US News away from World News on Lemmy, since lemmy.ml allows US News on !worldnews@lemmy.ml, and the community was not overran by US news.
Non-clickbait title is harder to enforce, because it is very much a “know it when you see it” type. I’m thinking that we will ask submitters to modify their titles first in these situations instead.
Maybe a restriction to US news that’s reported internationally?
I don’t think doing what lemmy.ml is doing is really a good argument, for me it’s quite the opposite - if lemmy.ml is doing it, I start to think whether it’s really a good thing to do.
If you’re going to allow US news then for the love of puppies include a rule that requires the subject to include the country.
Good point. Will definitely take into consideration.
This should honestly be a thing whether or not US internal news gets approved.
That said, I would rather have titles be non-clickbaity. Maybe require titles to be non-clickbait and without commentary.
Pass. There’s a ton of US news communities already. If it doesn’t affect the rest of the world, it’s not world news.
MBFC is… Meh? Their definitions of left / right bias seem to be very American and could probably use some adjusting. It’s useful but shouldn’t be the golden rule.
MBFC doesn’t even match the other media bias/credibility sites like Ad Fontes. It’s a crapshoot because the person running that site is basically a nobody with zero credibility themselves.
it’s already a “us perspective on the world”. And half of it is “biden says middel east X”. Allow US internal news in an election year and murder the sub.
I think title should approximately match headline, or at least text in the article. Additional commentary is a little annoying to moderate.
US internal news was a bigger problem for Reddit, but I think this community is a bit more international. Maybe blocking US news from US sources? If something is big enough to hit international headlines, it’s probably important.
The current mods are strongly against op-eds, so …
MBFC is really not that great a measure of objectivity, but really I think there is no good measure of objectivity given that the “truth” (e.g. Iraq had WMDs and thus the invasion of Iraq is justified) is fluid.
I don’t think moderators should be the arbitrator of truth in a community, but an arbitrator of what’s offensive/hate speech.
Half the articles here are already “what does the US think about the world?”
I don’t think the restriction on US internal news is actually accomplishing anything useful
I agree that there should be a restriction on US internal news. I literally subscribe to this community because I want to see news other than American politics.
One consideration: what about reporting on international relations involving the US?
If the US does/doesn’t fund military aid for Ukraine, is that about Ukraine or the US?
It seems that leaving the title free will only open the door for posters to title it with their opinion on the news article. The usefulness of this sub as a news aggregator will degrade into yet another source of punditry.
It makes sense to have some kind of accountability for the quality of the source as well. MBFC is imperfect, but I’m not sure what other metric you would use in disputes. What do you suggest as a replacement?