World News

Unless something has changed with the newest Lemmy release, then no. The setting to block/permit instances is site-wide.

Eg: the Music community is called “Rage”

tbh I found this a bit off-putting. It's not clear to me whether or not the sort of music I'm interested in should go in that community or not. It's not the kind of music Rage itself would ever play. Having a specific name like that doesn't just limit it to people who know what Rage is, it also implicitly limits the type of content in a way a generic name like "AusMusic" would not.

Eg: the Music community is called “Rage” - a reference that only an Australian would get. So, when someone searches for “Music” communities, they’ll never find ours.

On the other hand, I just assumed it was specifically about the Rage program and overlooked it. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

I'd consider adding something to the name, like "Rage - Aussie Music", which it would help discovery for better and worse but at least make it clear we don't want the whole world promoting junk.

I think the issue is more that we get people in the community who assume everyone reading it are from the USA. Sort of like the default behaviour on Reddit. It isn't that we don't want participation from other instances.

I’m going to be around a lot more often going forward. Sorry!

Ooof. Their last post

I’m going to be around a lot more often going forward. Sorry!

:(

My question is: why should we host a /c/WorldNews at all? What unique value does it have by being “for Aussies”?

I think there's value in being able to find world news that other Australians find interesting and discuss it with other Australians.

World news often has different implications for different countries, and being able to raise those points (without them being buried under a pile of other comments) and discuss them with other people who share your context is something that I think people find useful.

At the most basic version, that this comm is "News from outside of Australia" does provide value in that it won't include news stories about Australia. Also, many 'world news' comms are defined as 'news from outside the US', which Australians probably do want to see and discuss in a world news comm.

So I wouldn't be in favour of dismantling the comm in any case.

How would that change the posts in the comm?

I actually think it would stop the comm from changing. Until recently the posts and discussion in the comm have been Australia-centric by virtue of most engagement coming from people on this instance. There's been some examples I've noticed lately where that hasn't been the case, which is what prompted me to write this post.

Is there any reason why international news (not world news) specifically affecting Australia or Australians should be separated from other local comms like /c/news and /c/AustralianPolitics? e.g., news about a conference between officials from Australia and Pacific islands, or incidents involving Australian tourists.

Yeah, I already post that kind of stuff in those places.

I’m an ocker but this post and comments is coming off pretty rough.

Yeah, I was not wholly comfortable while writing this post - it's against my instincts to be exclusory. Sometimes, however, exclusory spaces are helpful for certain purposes.

Feels like you’ll want an echo chamber not a place of discussion.

I hope I can reassure you that this is definitely not my intention.

What it boils down to is:

What is [email protected] for? Why does aussie.zone have its own 'world news' comm? Why don't aussie.zone users just subscribe to any other world news comm?

For me, I saw this as having been answered by the sidebar in [email protected] , which lists [email protected] with the text "World News (from an Australian Perspective)".

I interpreted that as meaning that this comm was intended as a space for Australians (in the broadest sense possible) to post news of interest to themselves, and to discuss it (largely) from an Australian perspective.

In any case, I certainly wouldn't want there to be any hard-and-fast rules or strict enforcement!

I suggested the simple measure of adding 'for Aussies' to the display name as it's a simple way to note the purpose of the space with the hope that people will just self-regulate with the purpose of the comm in mind.

If someone from another country jumps in the comments to explain some news story for us, that's great! That's adding to the purpose of 'world news for aussies' by helping an Australian audience understand certain issues abroad.

Regarding submissions, though, I think there could be some use - in terms of achieving the purpose of the comm - in a guideline that submissions should be made by users with some meaningful connection to Australia. Because voting can't be moderated, but posting can.

As @[email protected] noted in a comment, one specific user is currently just dumping copy-pasted submissions they've posted in a dozen other places in this comm without any thought or respect to the purpose of the community, or even that it is a community. I believe the comm would be better without their submissions.

I don't think it's coincidence that this user has no meaningful connection with Australia, or even conversational engagement with this instance and comm.

Perhaps, though, that specific issue would be better addressed with a general 'over-posting' rule to be enforced with discretion.

Maybe my interpretation of the purpose of this comm is incorrect or not supported by the community. Maybe its purpose is really just as simple as 'News from outside of Australia' and as long as that bar is met, people are happy with it.

Personally, though, I think that guiding this comm towards Australia-centric discussion, posting and voting would make it a more unique and valuable forum. I think it already is that to a fair degree, but some of the post-flooding and comment sections lately have been otherwise, which of course is what prompted me to write the original post to begin with.