Updated Rules?! OMG THIS IS A MOMENT IN HISTORY! QUICK TAKE A PICTURE πΈ
Europe
News and information from Europe πͺπΊ
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Rules (2024-08-30)
- This is an English-language community. Comments should be in English. Posts can link to non-English news sources when providing a full-text translation in the post description. Automated translations are fine, as long as they don't overly distort the content.
- No links to misinformation or commercial advertising. When you post outdated/historic articles, add the year of publication to the post title. Infographics must include a source and a year of creation; if possible, also provide a link to the source.
- Be kind to each other, and argue in good faith. Don't post direct insults nor disrespectful and condescending comments. Don't troll nor incite hatred. Don't look for novel argumentation strategies at Wikipedia's List of fallacies.
- No bigotry, sexism, racism, antisemitism, dehumanization of minorities, or glorification of National Socialism.
- Be the signal, not the noise: Strive to post insightful comments. Add "/s" when you're being sarcastic (and don't use it to break rule no. 3).
- If you link to paywalled information, please provide also a link to a freely available archived version. Alternatively, try to find a different source.
- Light-hearted content, memes, and posts about your European everyday belong in [email protected]. (They're cool, you should subscribe there too!)
- Don't evade bans. If we notice ban evasion, that will result in a permanent ban for all the accounts we can associate with you.
- No posts linking to speculative reporting about ongoing events with unclear backgrounds. Please wait at least 12 hours. (E.g., do not post breathless reporting on an ongoing terror attack.)
(This list may get expanded when necessary.)
We will use some leeway to decide whether to remove a comment.
If need be, there are also bans: 3 days for lighter offenses, 14 days for bigger offenses, and permanent bans for people who don't show any willingness to participate productively. If we think the ban reason is obvious, we may not specifically write to you.
If you want to protest a removal or ban, feel free to write privately to the mods: @[email protected], @[email protected], or @[email protected].
Banned for general uppitiness. (/s)
Me sorry. Here take a package of Noodles as a sign of my sorriness.
Sorry, for linking some non English articles. I got some feedback from other community that it is fine (even thanked me for it, that it makes the content more diverse).
I like what @[email protected] does, he tries to make multilingual conversation about eu and other stuff on his blog and mastodon.
I think a diversity of sources is absolutely great, especially since there's no reason to believe English speaking media to be particularly good at covering Europe.
Personally I'd rather use the built-in translation in FireFox rather than Google translate, if possible.
Maybe an idea could be to tag non-English content (title [language]), and to provide a machine translated link in the body of the post?
The issue with that is it is extremely browser-dependent. Hence asking for the submitter to include a translation.
Yeah, I misread the rules as asking the link to be to a translated version, which is not what they say. So I think this is a good solution. And I think people are right to encourage non-English sources. :)
@plactagonic Hi. I am an English version of @tymoty π
Thank you for your kind reference to my activities. If you get more involved, it would be even better π
If you are a link between that English speaking community and our hybrid communication community, it would be very nice π
No reason to apologize! It is indeed great to have content that is non-English in the original. And you're also right, being stuck with British/American sources + Euronews and Euractiv isn't the best situation.
So your efforts are definutely appreciated.
Loads of interesting news are covered only nationally. What I linked was really fresh and probably not interesting for foreign media but because it was related to earlier post that got some traction I just linked what I found.
Skimmed over it, doesn't look like the European hypetrain I've gotten to know yurop. But it's also not a sub solely about Russian propaganda, so ... Looking good, I guess.
Infographics must now include a source and a date (year). This rule is a result of the critical feedback we got on a few infographics that were not exactly wrong, but definitely outdated.
I'm sorry π€
You! We must know how many stores Tennessee Fried Chicken is currently running in Transsylvania. :)
Thank you guys!
As always, for people wanting a more laid-back community, there is [email protected]
We are clarifiying the rules regarding acceptable behavior in discussion: be kind & argue in good faith.
I have seen that idea so many times over the years, yet the simple fact is: it does never ever work.
There will always be one side actually arguing (in good faith) and one side reporting every opinion they don't like. And wheather it's mods just becoming tired, subconciously influenced by the fact how often some people got reported already or just a simple matter of statistics with a lot of reporting... in the end the former group will get punished and stop to contribute while the latter doesn't give a fuck and will just circumvent the rules with a new account should their bullshit backfire for once.
TL;DR: hard rules work, wishy-washy nonsense like "be nice to each other" doesn't.
Users will keep being users. Since we are users ourselves, there will always be some we like more, some we like less. And some, are just toxic. This rule is simply saying their behaviours are not welcome.
You're right. There's always a rotten apple. I think the rule mostly points toward a level of politeness we strive to keep. It's like virtual signaling, it works in other ways. Some may take the hint when they read that.
Anyway, you're just being cynical. And I don't mean to offend you by giving adjectives. It's just that I found interesting to see your comment jump on that rule when it could also be said on pretty much any other rule (e.g. spam)
when it could also be said on pretty much any other rule (e.g. spam)
Spam is much easier to evaluate objectively. Feeling insulted isn't. Especially when some people make it their whole personality to feel insulted by any opposing viewpoint or opinion. Which then leads to constantly getting reported for not sharing their views, which leads to more scrutiny if anything you said could actually be perceived as insulting. Add mods becoming tired or just plain old statistics... you can probably follow my train of thought.
PS: And as any other cynic will tell you... that's not cynical but just speaking from experience.
- I have no expectation that the new rules are perfect. No doubt there a traps we will fall into.
- The full rules are a little longer than the summary above.
- For the most part, human communication is pretty hard to regulate using absolute rules.
EDIT. Sorry, this comment was intended for someone else but whatever. The general point stands.
Disagree somewhat. The gold standard of communities is the techie forum Hacker News. Even even after years of existence, and repeated influxes of the great unwashed from the R-site, the quality of conversation on HN is still astonishingly high.
The magic formula appears to be (1) a simple mandate for participants to show an interest and assume good faith, (2) a forgiving attitude to transgression which involves privately asking miscreants to behave themselves, and (3) an activist moderator who is always there to jump in and push conversations gently back on the rails.
Admittedly, Hacker News has specialist subject matter, which always raises the quality of a forum. But even its politics-focused discussions are generally civil, so something else is clearly going on. Most people agree that the moderator there is unusually effective, but the other elements also seem to be playing a role.
It should not really be surprising. Decent leadership, assuming good intentions, forgiveness, reform rather than retributive punishment - these things tend to result in better communities in the offline world too.
Nice, these changes / clarifications look really helpful to be able to have accurate and meaningful discussions. Thank you!
Even though I only speak English, I'm happy for foreign language articles/comments to be posted (as long as the language is correctly marked), is it mostly a moderation problem?
Are there actually equivalent communities for other languages around?
We have [email protected] for content in French, and it seems that [email protected] is the same thing for german speaking content.
So far, I've mostly modded German comments here (which luckily is my mother tongue). It's a matter of common understanding, including with/among the mod team.
Idea: /c/ΠurΟpa, a community about Europe where everyone is free to speak whichever European language they feel like.
Expect Latin scholars to finally practice their language
Expect readers of AstΓ©rix to flex the proverbs they learned.
Dann, that sounds hot.
This is a neat idea!