Hello everyone! If you have not yet seen it, @ernest has handed over moderation to @Drusas @Entropywins @ Frog-Brawler (the tag system consistently messes up the link to FB’s username lol) and myself here in !politics.
First order of business is for you all to weigh in on the community guidelines that you would like to see here. As the mod team, we will weigh all suggestions and then add them to the side bar as magazine/community rules. I’m going to give about 48 hours for users to see this thread and add a comment or discuss.
Please know that the goal is not to create an echo chamber here in !politics, but we want to ensure that there is not an encroachment of rage bait and toxicity. It brings down the quality of the magazine and it discourages community engagement.
For the time being, the mod tools are pretty sparse, so I want to manage expectations about the scope of moderation we’re able to do right now. For now, our touch will be light. Expect increased functionality as time progresses, though. We have 3 weeks of reports on file, so please know we see them. Give us some time to establish how to handle those before you start to see any movement.
To start, I would like to link this graphic to the community guidelines to illustrate where the cutoff is between heated debate and inappropriate bickering.
If it were up to be, I’d draw the line at Contradiction, if you’re trying to cultivate a serious magazine for thinkers.
What’s the line you’d draw if I’m trying to cultivate a clown college magazine for trolls? Hehehe (saaaarcasm)
I would just emphasize the need for respect in our conversations. That seems pretty important to me.
I’d say the biggest ones for me are:
- Be civil
- Be on topic (that’s probably a thread on its own to define what that should be)
- No editorializing/opinion/commentary in title or post body (save it for the comments)
These are okay, with the exception of giving commentary in the post body. Commentary in the post body might be a good way to tell why you think this could be especially important.
I’ll piggy back on your response here to add in that I would prefer that posters copy and paste the nut graf of the news story into the body of the post.
“Nut graf” is a journalism term for the paragraph that clearly delineates what the article is about. It’s what makes the piece newsworthy. “The paragraph that explains the story in a nutshell.” The nut graf usually appears in the first three grafs of any current events piece.
I think if this is included in the body text (willing to invite more than just this paragraph, but bare minimum this graf), then readers can determine if the larger piece is worth their time to read or important.
I completely agree with this one. I do this out of habit and didn’t even think to suggest it.
I think it’s important since headlines are often just clickbait and the nut graf can cut through some if that to help you decide if you want to click through to the article.
The few times I’ve tried posting article links, kbin automatically copied the first X words of the article into the post body. I don’t suppose that includes the Nut graf?
I think that can still be done in a follow up comment.
Some reasons why I suggested the rule:
- It can anchor the whole discussion and responses to OP commentary need to be made at top level. i.e., discussion may become centered around the commentary instead of the article. Especially on potentially polarizing topics.
- If I have a different commentary to give than OP, should I resubmit the article with a different editorial?
- Up/downvotes will be on the quality/merit of the article and not combined with the opinion of the submitter.
- If the commentary doesn’t fit within other rules, then the whole post needs to be removed and the article re-submitted.
- Any commentary can always be done in the comments, so we’re not really taking anything away.
As we collectively discuss this and come to a conclusion that most of us feel a sense of ownership over, I just want to state point blank that I do not want to see duplicate posts with the same link just because two users have opposite viewpoints on the ramifications of the news.
However, I’m fine with one poster giving CNN’s article on a newsworthy event and another user posting the Associated Press’s article of the same event. Those two news sources (among others) will have different perspectives, voices, and information. That lends itself to robust community engagement, to me.
One type of story (that I can’t find any good examples of here, so that’s good!) that I don’t like is the hearsay or expert-says types of stories. e.g., former-ex-prosecutor-political-insider says Trump definitely did something bad and will be charged next week.
It’s not real news masquerading as news for clicks and there’s nothing new or real to discuss in the comments.
“so-and-so slams so-and-so”-type articles are usually like this, too. It’s just political bickering and doesn’t contain any new points of discussion. Any comments on these articles is often just more attacking, since that’s where the discussion started from.
I realize these are probably quite difficult to identify and moderate objectively, but I think the community would be better off without them!
This one will be challenging, but we will consider it. Thanks for weighing in though. Even if this doesn’t become a direct rule, it at least points to the kind of community we want to co-create.
Could it be geared to allow content around editorialized content from news sources (e.g. NYT, WaPo, Newsweek, etc.)? Maybe a comment that says sensationalized content/clickbait will not be allowed.
Sadly the Op-Ed section of otherwise respectable news sources are the most contrived and toxic links that get circulated.
I’d strongly prefer submissions be focused on factual reporting as much as possible. I’d also want submitters to un-clickbait titles when necessary.
I can definitely get behind that. Most of the political anger is setup with this pot stirring he said she said shit. Granted, there still is a place for some of the puffery “I’m going to pass a law to do X” even though it may or may not happen. A lot of them can be total bullshit, like hopelessly unpopular laws being put into consideration that have no hope of even getting to vote, let alone passing. But at least that is real politics rather than the simple shit slinging of editorial content today.
“Be Civil” is the core value for me.
I also have a question, rather than an answer. Should all posts require the URL of an external article? Or are people allowed to post “topic for discussion” and personal opinion posts? There needs to be a place for that, I’m just not sure whether this is it. So far I haven’t found a good venue for that.
This is an excellent question and is really up to us as a community to establish. The thought had occurred to me that there’s room in our magazine for:
- politics news that is not US-based
- threads that are discussion only about political events
- responding to something clearly editorial (thinking here if a really cogent YouTuber has a video essay about political matters that isn’t rage bait)
It’s just a matter of community members saying what kind of content they want here and us establishing Badges (we can do that as mods, kind of like post flair).
I certainly don’t insist that opinion posts need to be allowed here, but I think there needs to be somewhere they belong. I guess the question is whether this should be primarily a place to find news or a place for taking about it.
Politics is all about opinion. We all have different opinions on how society should be run. If we only allow fact-based reporting, this magazine might as well just be /m/news. Opinion pieces should definitely be allowed. Maybe limit it to external opinion pieces from established institutions to keep content quality high.
Based off Rule #3 I would believe that it’s unspoken. However I think it should be added. I for one liked that r/politics had this rule. This magazine doesn’t have to mirror that, however I believe it’s worth consideration.
That said, Rule #3 could be extended to editorialized media, unless specified that the “editorializing/opinion/commentary” is OP’s. That’s something that should be included.