Skip Navigation
News @lemmy.world Thekingoflorda @lemmy.world

Feedback needed for new rules

We’re currently working on changing the rules of this community, because we feel there are some gaps in the current rules.

This is what we have so far:

    1. Be nice! Don’t personally attack someone else. Racism and bigotry are not tolerated. Don’t use offensive language, swearing is allowed within reason. Trolling is also not allowed, go back to reddit for that.
    1. Sources should be as unbiased and reliable as possible Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion.
    1. No bots, spam or self-promotion Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
    1. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source Posts which titles don't match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title is wrong / incorrect, the post will be deleted.
    1. Post should be news Don’t post obvious opinion pieces, very dated news or things that are simply not news. Posts will be removed at the mods discretion.
    1. No duplicate posts If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.

We are looking for any feedback you guys might have, including grammer/spell checks (:

If you agree with the rules, they will go in effect in 24 hours.

Thank you!

23
23 comments

  • Sources should be as unbiased and reliable as possible Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion.

    Every source is biased.

    You'll get someone telling you that mainstream newspapers are biased in favor of their country's dominant ideology, or their owner's business interests, or the cult that started them, or whatever.

    However, some sources report on things that actually happened, and some sources report on rumors, fake news, speculation, and other BS.

  • Trolling is also not allowed, go back to reddit for that.

    Telling someone to go back to reddit to troll is itself a mild form of trolling and fails to model the behavior the rule calls for. It contributes nothing to the meaning or clarity of the rule and the rule is better without it.

    Sources should be as unbiased and reliable as possible Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion.

    This rule would be improved by listing media source bias/fact-checkers that the mods largely trust, even if they reserve the right to occasionally override public checkers. The ability to pre-screen a source with fair reliability is valuable to posters.

    Post titles should be the same as the article used as source Posts which titles don't match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title is wrong / incorrect, the post will be deleted.

    Even reliable news sources frequently editorialize their titles at this point. I'd appreciate a carve-out to de-editorialize a clickbait title, but I appreciate that title-matching is much easier to understand/enforce and that people are likely to try to abuse a de-clickbaiting clause to re-clickbait and bias their titles. If a culture where people modified titles to improve titles could be fostered, that would be neat.

    • Point 1 was indeed kinda a joke, but if you feel like that hurts the rule, I will remove it.

      I am working on making some kind of place where we show all banned news sources which then integrates with the bot, but this might take some development time.

      As stated in the rule, we will only remove posts if the title is wrong / incorrect, with that we mean that it misrepresents the article. The autobot can't sense that you editted the post to make it better, so I just wanted to make clear that the autobot will still message you.

      Thank you for the feedback (:

  • These rules imply, but do not acrually require, that posts must provide a link to an authoratitive source. It is possible to interpret those new rules such that sources are optional and that the only time some of those requirements come into play is if a source was optionally included.

    I think there should be an explicit requirement that all posts include a link to a source...followed by all those other requiremeents.

  • Agree with some of the other commenters:

    Per rule 1: "Trolling" is in the eye of the beholder, but I like that you're trying to address bad faith argumentation. I'd rephrase the rule like this:

    [Be civil. Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only.]

    Then link to a document that details "good faith argumentation", with examples. You'll need them.

    Per rule 2: A list of approved sources is better than a removal of biased sources. At least that way you can get individualized feedback on the list, rather than constantly having to address bias within each individual submission. Whitelist good/credible sources and blacklist others, and post occasional notices for feedback on each list. That way you can filter by domain and avoid most confusion.

    Per rule 4: Remember that sites change headlines occasionally, so you'll likely get some reports on those.

    Per rule 5: I would rephrase it like this: [Posts must be news from the most recent __ days. No opinion/editorials.]

    You can specify the timeframe, but 60 or 90 days is generally pretty good.

    Add a catch-all rule 6 that goes without saying but gives you clear protection if something just doesn't sit right with you: "Mods reserve the right to remove disruptive posts and comments on a case-by-case basis."

    • I will indeed rephrase the first rule, good suggestion!

      If you have a whitelist, you don't need a blacklist, so I don't fully understand what you mean with that. The problem with having a whitelist is that I think it's to much work to curate each news source, and could be seen as restricting if not enough are whitelisted. That's why we'll probably go for a blacklist.

      Yea, the bot already has some problems with that. But we'll first ask questions, then delete, so no worries there.

      Good suggestion, I'll discuss it with the other moderators.

      That catch all rule is already included in the instance rules, so that's not really needed.

      Thank you for the suggestions (:

      • I think a blocklist of common sources of biased and sensationalized / misinformation sources would be the best option. It would definitely be a ton of work to whitelist every good source, and you especially want to encourage smaller trusted industry-specific sources (think like pv magazine), there are a lot of those small high quality sources that are geared towards industry professionals. With a short blocklist you could probably cover a significant portion of the loudest biased sources of misinformation.

      • If you have a whitelist, you don’t need a blacklist, so I don’t fully understand what you mean with that. The problem with having a whitelist is that I think it’s to much work to curate each news source, and could be seen as restricting if not enough are whitelisted. That’s why we’ll probably go for a blacklist.

        Good point. Either way you'll have a lot of work to sort out sources up front. After a few months of work the system should sort itself out and you'll have to do much less maintenance. But you're right that a blacklist-only approach is probably simpler. I guess it just depends on whether you choose to take a "source is forbidden until we allow it" approach or "source is allowed until we forbit it" approach. Both have merit, but the optimal choice depends entirely on how much traffic you're generating.

  • Hmmm. For rule 4, please make sure there's leeway for site-altered headlines.

    And maybe a rule against bad-faith participation, just as a catch-all for dealing with trolls, sockpuppets, bots, purveyors of disinformation...

23 comments