1y ago

Community Feedback

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 !politics@lemmy.world, 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.

80 comments

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.
- I also hope this doesn't turn into "this is about WORLD politics. Why are you talking about America?"
  
  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? ;)
- 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.
  
  LOL - Brace yourself! 2024 is going to be a RIDE! ;)

- Don’t apologize for the Trump smells posts. And I’m being very serious here, just because WE want the political news to be serious or relevant doesn’t mean that it is. We currently have a lot of very childish and middle school rhetoric happening in today’s political climate and ignoring it is equivalent to sticking our fingers in our ears and screaming “la la la… this isn’t happening..la la la”. We can’t discredit this sort of without harming our overall understanding of what’s happening. Do I wish we weren’t having a discussion about the odor of a major political figure and instead talking about how we’re going fix problems like housing prices, wealth disparity, climate change, etc? Hell yes! Be here we are.
  Now about the proposed rule change, I don’t think importing world politics into c/politics is such a great idea, especially right now. c/politics is just implied to be US politics. I would love to hear about other struggles or relevant world oriented political news, just in another Lemmy community. For example what’s going on in Ukraine and Israel are VERY important on the world stage but I’d like to currently keep the impending doom segmented at least for my own mental health. We could rename c/politics to c/us-politics and create c/world-politics (assuming that’s technically possible). I’m not going to leave this community regardless of the decision but it wouldn’t be my favorite decision either.
  Just my 2¢
- I appreciate your posts. :)
  
  Thank you!
- Good to talk to you again. You are one of my favorite accounts on Lemmy.
  Are the mods thinking transforming this community into something like “ask politics”-type format?
  Article submissions are still very much welcome here, but I would like to expand this place so that we have more discussion among the community on political topics. So, a bit of both.
  I do want to foster a culture of thoughtful discussion here, and that needs to originate from our power submitter such as yourself. If you put in effort in your submission, then the comment section will be encouraged to make effort as well.
  I don't think a weekly highlighting would be necessary, because I think we should all read more and be more informed on politics before we comment. Still thinking about what we should do here.
  
  Thanks for the recognition and appreciate your thoughts.
  Let me clarify about the weekly highlighting suggestion. A post from the mods along the lines of "What was the top comment you read this week?" and people can link them in the comments. That's just an example of something to acknowledge commenters who put time and effort into their responses. Politics is dirty and usually pretty negative, so if there's somebody wading through the crap to provide some clarity and discussion, we should focus on that positivity. Maybe that's a bit idealistic, but just a thought.
  Modding is tough work, so thanks for doing it.
- 2024, being an election year, is going to throw whatever we PLAN to do into complete chaos. LOL. Between the primaries, the general, and all the Trump shenanigans, it's going to be a super busy year.
  Likely each primary and caucus will need it's own megathread, and, yeah, I might have a calendar all set up to remind me when they are happening. ;) Ditto for the Trump trial dates, then the eventual general election.
  
  Agreed, I fully expect chaos this coming year. Certainly have your work cut out for you!

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.

I’d love to see the removal, or culling of op-ed pieces. It’s not news.
- Given the removal of the US only restriction here, I am hoping that we can use !politics@lemmy.world as a place that allows for analysis and op-eds, and keep !world@lemmy.world as the place that does not allow op-eds and focus solely on world news.
  
  Right, but removing the US only restriction leaves no community that allows validated news only. Nowadays, op-eds are about as close to dis-informative fake news as one can get. It’d be nice to have a Reuters’esque-based non-biased news source here.
- I disagree strongly. The arguments and rhetoric that politicians and pundits throw at each other is a huge part of the political process in a democracy with liberal speech rights.
  Besides that, basically every political movement starts out as opinion. Like, "Hey, I don't think the king has divine rights and he ought to be forced to listen to us a bit," isn't an objective fact, it's an opinion. A great opinion if you ask me and one I would fight for in 19th century Europe or whatever, but I can't give you any tangible measurable thing that conclusively proves that that's the way it ought to be. I just have a really strongly felt opinion about it.
  News communities shouldn't have any op-ed pages, but politics pages are exactly where those kinds of articles belong imo.

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.
- 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.
  
  There is some meta drama with the admins that's going on that isn't obvious. I agree with you in normal circumstances.
- 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.
  
  That's good to hear. I'm more concerned about how much Lemmy World admins are involved, I left lemmy world for a reason.

Is that why the logo is missing?
- 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.
  
  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.
  
  Seriously though, we need a new logo. As dumb as it is, it really makes the community feel more like a community. I've thought about this every time I see that bland looking "p" in my sub list, so I'm glad you brought it up!

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.
- 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.
- 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?
  
  !politicalmemes@lemmy.world would be good.
- I would love if a style like r/neutralpolitics could happen here but it takes A LOT of moderation to pull off successfully, and unfortunately the format is incredibly susceptible to “sealioning”.

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.
- 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
  Unfortunately, this is really a community cultural issue inherited from the old site. Karma isn't a thing here, but I do believe the habits formed from having karma to be the root of many toxic behaviors here.
  There is no user scoring system here, if your views are unpopular but reasonable, I don't see the need to remove it; the opposite is true, if your comment is upvoted but breaks our community rules, then they will be removed.
  I am a strong believer in democracy, but I don't believe in mob rule, so the above is the principle I go by.
  
  I've never seen down votes not used to punish people with messages that others disagree with.
  I mean, if someone posts a racist angry opinion, Im likely to down vote. Even if this was their carefully considered opinion.
  But when people are liberal in their use, it suppresses discourse and creates the echo chambers we say we hate (when other people do it).
  I'm not sure lemmy provides mod tools that would help move the needle, but I'm in your corner for changing/expanding the discourse.
  I'm here to learn. Sounds like what you're proposing would help that.
  Best of luck and thank you for the reply.

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.
- 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.
  
  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.

80 comments