this post was submitted on 29 Dec 2023
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politics

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Community Feedback (self.politics)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by MightBe to c/politics
 

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.

My goal is to foster thoughtful discussion in our community, and not let this place be a replica of r/politics.

First order of business, immediate rule change.

On [email protected], effectively immediately, we will no longer restrict political discussion to the politics of the United States of America. Discussion regarding of the state of politics from around the world is now welcome.

I will leave this pinned for 1-2 weeks for our team to take feedback and make our proposals then.

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[–] jordanlund 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I think the challenge is going to be separating World News from Politics. Articles will need to have some kind of political angle to be appropriate here.

So, for example, my submission of Daihatsu getting caught faking safety reports for 30 years, World News, nothing about that is political.

Putin supporter falling out a window? (AGAIN?) I could see that being in one or the other or both.

[–] FlyingSquid 16 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I also hope this doesn't turn into "this is about WORLD politics. Why are you talking about America?"

[–] jordanlund 11 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Or vice versa, it will take time for people to get used to seeing non-US politics.

Due to naming ambiguity, we might need to require country tags as well.

News about a Georgia election... well, WHICH GEORGIA? ;)

[–] FlyingSquid 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I agree, but I also think we're going to have people complaining that there are too many people posting about American politics. We'll see. Maybe the tag thing would be a good idea. I also don't think, as a U.S. resident, that a community for U.S. politics would be a bad idea. I don't know how many people would use it at this point though.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

It really depends on the balance of posts. It's possible I would migrate to something more US focused but I'd have to see whether I'm unhappy with the ratio after the change. I don't want to keep myself ignorant of the rest of the world, but if I can't comment on a majority of posts because I know nothing about that country then it's not really a community I fit into.

But I recognize that's a me problem and not a y'all problem.

[–] MightBe 9 points 1 year ago (2 children)

News should be news, I would like this community to focus on political discussions, editorials, and commentaries from a variety of viewpoints, if that makes sense.

And to be frank, I don't think topics like "Trump smells bad" is good political discussion, which is what I would aim to avoid.

[–] jordanlund 10 points 1 year ago (1 children)

LOL - Brace yourself! 2024 is going to be a RIDE! ;)

[–] MightBe 4 points 1 year ago

I made an alt for this specific reason, among others.

[–] plz1 9 points 1 year ago

I'm happy to see the rule change to be world-inclusive now. I do hope there is a way to tag/flair posts to show geography, though, or it'll end up having people assume US-first.

[–] Godric 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

I'd like it if this was a place for nuanced discussion of political issues, not an endless stream of tabloid-level garbage involving politicians. I believe drivel like "Trump Smells" and the later clarification "Like Butts And Armpitts" is childish and need not be here.

[–] NevermindNoMind 13 points 1 year ago

I agree, but it's a hard line to draw when Trump is the likely GOP presidential nominee, and half or more of Republicans in Congress are little knock off versions of him. Take for instance, Trump's Christmas message directing Biden and liberals to rot in hell, that's just a garbage story. But it's the presumptive GOP nominee saying it, so I guess it's substantive? If you ignore it, you normalize it.

Maybe it's not news stories that are at fault, it's just that the US politics itself has reached "tablod-level garbage". Fuck I'm not looking for to this election year.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I’d agree, but there needs to be a place for political slugfests too. Where can we discuss Trump’s BO, Rudy’s flop sweat and BoBo’s HJs?

[–] MightBe 3 points 1 year ago
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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'm probably going to move to another politics community then. I thought they took the old site's politics and made it less antagonistic here. I don't like that the admins of lemmy world are involved either. You seem like you want to do well, but I have real concerns now. I might start one on sh.itjust.works and keep the energy that was here.

[–] jordanlund 4 points 1 year ago (6 children)

When it comes to Moderator drama, I would RATHER the site Admins make the call than the other moderators.

If you don't then the optics are bad. Say I took the initiative and bounced Yobucks and appointed MightBe, the end result, to you guys, would look like I staged a coup and inserted my own cronies to the modlist (which is something that happened more than once on reddit.)

Being able to step aside, reach out to the Admins and go "Hey, I think we have a problem..." is a huge improvement.

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[–] MightBe 3 points 1 year ago (34 children)

I would like to address your concerns. The audience here is very much US centric, so that even with the current rule change, I don't expect the content and culture here to drastically change overnight. In fact, I would still very much expect US politics to be fairly dominant here in the near future.

And rest assured, we would not want the antagonism here to increase either.

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[–] CharlesDarwin 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Is that why the logo is missing?

[–] MightBe 8 points 1 year ago (3 children)

The previous logo and banner was made by YoBuck, I think he took it with him when he left.

Might want to run a logo contest/banner contest sometimes soon, if you guys are interested.

[–] Stamets 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

What a fucking child. Not surprising given he was unilaterally banned from another instance for aggressive homophobia well before he was banned here.

I say run it. His logo was mid at best. I'm sure there's plenty of people who can offer something better with barely any effort.

[–] MightBe 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It was startrek.website, right? I know about that one.

I have gone out of my way to not interact with him or even be on the same mod team as him, because some of the things he said was legitimately disturbing, and I think he needs serious help. It is my hope that our community can move past him.

With any luck, we'll start running the contest very soon.

[–] Stamets 5 points 1 year ago

That would be it. There's a new Trek show that has some gay characters, a lesbian, a non-binary character and a trans character. People got bitter as hell and started attacking the show over those specific characters. And i don't mean criticising. I mean attacking. Him being the creator of star trek community on lemmy.world was the sole reason I never posted there. Even tried to help him out once and he got self righteous and said he didn't need my help and I've been assuming its because I have the same name as one of those gay characters I mentioned. The one who gets complained about the most.

I'm ass at making logos. The tumblr one and the star trek memes ones I made but that's taking existing stuff and adding/removing to suit my needs. I'd do a horrendous job. But I'm all the way down to support the contest!

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[–] APassenger 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

I see thoughtful, factual comments with double digit negative scores.

I see short, factually incorrect comments highly rewarded for asserting as facts, things that are unlikely and unproven.

I don't know how this has become the pattern, but it now appears to be a culture problem within many communities - this one being high among them.

Mistakes happen and people will be wrong, but I see no avenue to correct growing misbeliefs on topics. There would have to be an article or some kind of other pressure to bring things back to facts.

I'm solidly on the left and my post history reflects that. I'm not saying anything fringe in my posts. I'm just applying the classic rules of critical thought seasoned with skepticism.

I'm tired of the down votes. Not for me, but for what they represent for lemmy at large and for this community. A whole lot of Lemmings are being poorly served by the siren's song of glib half-bites.

Can you help with that?

At present, I'm mostly talking about the "human trafficking" assertion that arrives on migrant bussing threads.

That's one specific example.

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[–] gAlienLifeform 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

As far as the specific "no longer restrict political discussion to the politics of the United States of America" rule goes, I think that's a positive change because in general I think the fewer rules and the more you let organic user behavior dictate the content on the community the better, but I also would not be too upset if this got reversed so long as there's some other well populated community I can find to post politics around the world type articles.

As far as input goes, one idea I had (and by "I had," I mean it was something I remember being a thing on reddit years ago and wish someone would bring back) was that it would be cool to allow text posts one day of the week so users could just submit their own original commentary or try to start discussions about things that aren't getting reported on. That might be way too much work to moderate, but I'd be interested in what people would have to say.

Lastly, I think also having one day a week (or maybe one a month) where meta posts are allowed would be a good thing. The moderation here seems to have improved and be in a good place now, but I think a vital check on bad moderation is individual users having the ability to make their case in front of the whole community about whatever issue, because reports can get buried and a lot of people aren't going to take the time to review the mod log and see what's been happening behind the scenes. I think there is some risk that trolls could try to take advantage of a meta post day and stir up bullshit and misinformation, but I feel like this community has developed enough regulars with enough common sense that those sorts of things could be shut down without the mods having to get involved.

[–] MightBe 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

To address your points.

I think there should be a good justification for all of our rules. LW isn't US based, many on the admin team are not even native English speakers, I see no good justification for us to restrict ourselves to US politics only. Of course, people upvote what they want to see here.

I don't think we will be restricting text posts in the future, I would like to see it being allowed here in general. But changes should be implemented carefully but steadily.

I would like the feedback thread to serve the function of a general meta post on our moderation style. We're all human, we make mistakes, but acknowledging them and correct them quickly would be our goal.

[–] gAlienLifeform 2 points 1 year ago

Ah, sounds like we're basically doing all my ideas already then (I've always been a "make general pronouncements about how the world ought to be first, pay attention to what's actually happening later" type of person lol). I do think there's something to be said for allowing users to create new feedback threads/meta posts to ensure their viewpoint doesn't just disappear into a thread with hundreds of comments most users won't ever look at, but having one general feedback thread is probably more than enough.

At any rate, thanks for modding. I was a mod for a few years on a medium sized reddit page and it was an absolute nightmare pain in the ass that honestly kinda ruined my mental health by the end (after several months of arguing with a stridently libertarian mod and a bunch of troll users about the need for a "no bigoted comments" rule I just hated every other human on the planet and didn't want to get out of bed for a while), so thank you for doing a necessary job I have no interest in doing myself.

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