Aotearoa / New Zealand @lemmy.nz RaoulDuke @lemmy.nz 1y ago

We want your thoughts on keeping politically controversial posts in !politics

Based on feedback from this post, we're going to trial pushing for more politically controversial posts to go in !politics instead of !newzealand.

We're interested in seeing where users think the line is. Which of these recent posts do you think belong in !politics?

We're not able to move posts to another community at the moment, but we're thinking of locking posts that should be in !politics and asking the OP to cross-post them there. Do you think this is the best approach?

56 comments

What about if !politics is used for government-related posts.

Teachers negotiating with government, policy changes for surgeons out of the control of the surgeons themselves, ETS, parliament protest, RNZ tankie issue (not related to our government but fully political in it's own right), these would go in !politics.

All Whites abuse, teacher being a dick, migrant workers being exploited, Mongrel Mob charges - these would go in !newzealand as their relationship to the government is not central to the article.

I also hear concern about the lock-and-crosspost idea. Perhaps when it's not black and white, this is an encouraged split rather than an enforced one?
- I guess that could work, although I'd say the RNZ tankie story is no more or less political than the other stories you say can go in the NZ community.
  
  And yeah, I think worth trying it as a guideline rather than a rule, and seeing what happens.
  
  Another option (which creates more fragmentation) is to have a "NZ news" community, where news posts are allowed, then ban all news posts (i.e. new stories from the main outlets) from the NZ community. Then you don't have to worry so much about what counts as political.
  
  I guess Reddit-style post flairs would sort out a lot of this, but am guessing that's a fair way down the roadmap.
  
  I'm just not sure what would go in !newzealand if the news all got kicked out!
- their relationship to the government is not central to the article.
  
  This is a good place to draw the line, in my opinion. I mean, what is "central" might be up for debate. But it's still a good guide. I'd categorise the articles the same as you.
  
  And I think we leave it as a recommendation unless something seems obviously out of place at the moment.
  
  (I just realised I didn't actually submit this comment last night)
  
  Maybe we could write a post to help people decide which community to put an article in, but not be too strict on enforcing it?
I think almost any news coverage can be politicised in the comments, especially with the level of polarisation and discontent in NZ, and the scale of social issues currently in the media spotlight.

I would consider all of the examples posted to be relevant to current affairs, and not necessarily politics focused (though I concede comments on them would likely stray into political debate almost immediately).

Politics to me should be more scoped to stuff like "David Seymour says <controversial thing>", "PM Hipkins talks to us about <topic>" etc.
- See this still comes down to interpretation, and even how the headline is worded. The article in #5 features a video with James Shaw and Peeni Henare discussing the start of the ETS and focusses pretty much solely on the government. Stuff's headline for the same story, Government thinks its climate policy is planting too many trees, sounds far more like politics too.
  
  Agreed, it's a very fuzzy boundary. I guess my point/view is that the boundary is so wide as to make the distinction meaningless in most cases.
  
  The only kinds of posts I can think of that are unlikely to become political are non-news, non-rant posts like photos of NZ scenery or general discussions about activities or hobbies.
Those are all politics.

But, 4 months out from an election, pretty much every single post in !newzealand is going to be politics. There's no way to fight that, for now.
I think it will be exceedingly difficult to separate out any news from politics in this country.
Personally, I think while "politics" is something that should be defined broadly, and almost all of those posts are political in some sense, it doesn't really make sense to split those out into a different community. I think there's a reasonably clear line between "party/parliamentary politics" and everything else. But there's not between "politics in general" and everything else.

I guess I would flip it's on it's head and ask "What would be allowed in the NZ sub?" You're really left with meme posts, personal stories, maybe entertainment (in some cases!) and things that are really very "light". And also, it wouldn't be clear a lot of the time whether something qualifies as "politics".

One of the problems I had with r/nz (and some other subs) is that their rules got so strict, I basically gave up posting because chances are anything I posted would be deleted (sometimes when it didn't actually break the rules, but the mods didn't have time to look carefully at the post to decide if it did). It makes some sense to have more rules in a larger community, because otherwise you end up flooded with low effort posts or whatever. But here, if posts get locked/deleted/whatever, people are probably just not going to bother. Personally, I don't want to have to think through a bunch of rules to decide where I post something, so in the end I'll probably either post on another instance, or not post it at all.

Edit: to make it a bit clearer, and reference what others have mentioned, people are saying #1 and #4 are political, but #2 is not. But surely racism is a political issue, not to mention the international relations component (the boundaries of countries are largely drawn politically). I know people will argue against that, but it seems to me there's also a pretty good argument that it is political.
- Yeah I agree with @SamC.
  
  To me, all the examples listed should be allowed on c/NZ and we should only enforce party politics/party policy/party attack discussions move to c/politics.
  
  I'm with you on this: things to do directly with political parties and politicians go under politics, everything else under the more generic NZ.
- One of the problems I had with r/nz (and some other subs) is that their rules got so strict, I basically gave up posting because chances are anything I posted would be deleted
  
  Is one option here to encourage government-related posts to go into !politics, but not lock them when they end up in the wrong place?
  
  Edit: to make it a bit clearer, and reference what others have mentioned, people are saying #1 and #4 are political, but #2 is not. But surely racism is a political issue, not to mention the international relations component (the boundaries of countries are largely drawn politically). I know people will argue against that, but it seems to me there’s also a pretty good argument that it is political.
  
  I guess 1 and 4 are something the Government has done (or not done), while #2 is not related to our government.
IMHO none of those are political.

Maybe #5 at a push.
Yes, totally agreed. I'm personally not interested in political posts so it's good to have them separate.
- Do you think all of those posts I mentioned should be in !politics?
  
  Probably not all, I'd say 1 3 4 5 8 and 9
Honestly I'm just stoked that there's this much engagement and consideration going on in this community I love it! Personally I'm not worried if political posts end up in here but I do think encouraging them to be in !politics makes a lot of sense
Bear in mind, saying "I don't want to discuss politics" is a political position, it's an active endorsement of the status quo.
- I think there's a difference between "I don't want to discuss politics", and "I don't want to discuss politics in my downtime on Lemmy".
  
  https://www.matterprints.com/journal/community/the-privilege-of-being-non-political/ - this articulates my view pretty well.
Apologies in advance: I've only just arrived so I don't know if my input is desired, but also I've seen some requests for more engagement and less lurking so I'm taking the risk.

Could someone explain what the up and down arrows on posts are for? I assumed it worked similar to Reddit or Quora: on the posts it's for things you want to see more or less of, and on the replies and discussion it's for saying this does or does not contribute to discussion.

If that's the case, posts that people don't want to see should be "downvoted" and we shouldn't take it as malice or being unwelcomed, but more that this doesn't fit the culture we are trying to build for this community specifically, maybe it would be more welcome in another community on the instance, or in another instance.

Again I could be wrong on how this all works, so please do tell me!

Purely from a scaling point of view, it would seem to be a bad idea to split up content and discussion further when there isn't a population to support that level of division.. but I understand the desire to ensure that the content appeals to the widest audience possible to try to grow that population. If it doesn't work like I assumed above, then maybe we could have a simple more/less poll on posts to say if we want to see more or less of this type of content?

As for these specific posts, many don't seem overtly political to me. Political in my mind is more about elections and the drama of all that, rather than the actual legislation and decisions that drive that.. we live in a society, so the rules that govern us and the way we pool our resources is something we certainly should encourage discussion around.

That's just my opinion, happy to lurk more if that's requested!
- Everyone's opinion is valued, thanks for for sharing!
  
  Could someone explain what the up and down arrows on posts are for? I assumed it worked similar to Reddit or Quora: on the posts it’s for things you want to see more or less of, and on the replies and discussion it’s for saying this does or does not contribute to discussion.
  
  You're right. I think the issue that lead to this discussion was that political posts tended to get heavily upvoted and often dominated r/newzealand. Some people are wanting a space that's free of those political discussions and the toxicity that often comes with them. Other people want a space where they can discuss, debate and stay informed about politics. We can't always please everybody, but we're wondering if this is a good compromise.
  
  One of the hardest issues with separating them is knowing quite where the line would be. It's pretty subjective. You could argue everything is political. You could look at how the media outlets categorise it, but I don't know if their opinion is any better. Many of the above posts are categorised as politics by the outlet. That's part of what this post is about. And it seems like everyone has a different idea.
  
  You're right about splitting up content and discussion and it's something I'm concerned about too. It depends whether that outweighs the benefits of keeping politics out of everything else.
  
  I don't have a strong opinion either way. Besides, I don't want to be making the rules for this place. I'd prefer the community decides how things work.
The NZ instance here is small and not very active (compared to reddit). Spreading the content across multiple communities makes it so that I have to check multiple communities that all have very low activity.

This makes it difficult to engage.
- Isn't that why you subscribe to communities, so the posts all go in your feed?
  
  In any case, these two communities already exist. The proposal doesn't add new ones.
Honestly, I'm happy your doing a the work here and not me.

I am happy for you to take an approach that suits you.

In saying that, my preference would be to not split communities too early.
- We already have the communities, and both are being used. We are just having a go at adjusting the blurry line that sits between !newzealand!newzealand@lemmy.nz and politics@lemmy.nz.
One simple thing would be to disallow cross-posting. If !politics finds it interesting, people can go there to read it.

If something that seems apolitical turns into a political discussion, then perhaps it could be moved there? It’s important not to underestimate people’s desire not to read about politics, so erring on being too restrictive is fine in my mind. If it annoys people, tell them to post to !politics. I suspect a good number of people will just be subscribed to both.

Finally, I think you can find some fine lines by reviewing the articles that are posted. Anything about party politics or elections or politicians/parties criticising each other is politics. Luxon and Chippy commenting on flooding is different than them throwing even mild barbs at each other.

By reading only the headlines you posted it’s hard to judge. A moderator is going to need to review them.

I do have lots of thoughts on moderation as well as a lot of outdated experience. I’d be happy to share but when I’ve shared to em on /r/nz, people are generally pretty shitty to me about it. I think a lot of people like being able to shout at others and personally attack them so any threat to that is viewed poorly.
- One simple thing would be to disallow cross-posting. If !politics finds it interesting, people can go there to read it.
  
  I'd rather not have rules like this until it becomes a problem. As it stands, there haven't been any crossposts between different communities on lemmy.nz, only from remote communities.
  
  If something that seems apolitical turns into a political discussion, then perhaps it could be moved there?
  
  We simply don't have this ability. Because of how federation works, we might not ever get the ability to move posts along with comments.
  
  Finally, I think you can find some fine lines by reviewing the articles that are posted. Anything about party politics or elections or politicians/parties criticising each other is politics. Luxon and Chippy commenting on flooding is different than them throwing even mild barbs at each other.
  
  Yes, I think it's clear that posts about parties and the election go in !politics, but we sensed some desire to push more away from !newzealand into politics.
  
  By reading only the headlines you posted it’s hard to judge. A moderator is going to need to review them.
  
  Those headlines were chosen because of this. We wanted to know what the community thought in terms of posts that are not clearly for !politics.
  
  I do have lots of thoughts on moderation as well as a lot of outdated experience. I’d be happy to share but when I’ve shared to em on /r/nz, people are generally pretty shitty to me about it. I think a lot of people like being able to shout at others and personally attack them so any threat to that is viewed poorly.
  
  Come join the matrix chat, we talk about all sorts of stuff but it's not uncommon to have chats about what kinds of things we think should be allowed or what people's opinions are on things. If you don't have a Matrix account you can sign up on http://mtrx.nz (there are other instances too, Matrix is decentralised a bit like Lemmy so you can sign up to any instance and still join the chat).
  
  I agree with all of this. Just to add a couple of things:
  
  Because of some people's feelings having about politics in !newzealand, I wouldn't be keen to see posts that are clearly about politics cross-posted from !politics into !newzealand. Those who want to see politics can join the community. But I really don't want to disable cross-posting unless it becomes a clear problem. Sometimes it will make sense to cross-post, and I only want to introduce rules where we really need them. Cross-posting is also useful to help people other find communities they're interested in, especially across different instances.
  
  The other thing I want to say is that there are very few of us moderators here, and if they're anything like me, they're already spending more time on it than they should. I'm really hoping we don't need to be reviewing the contents of links and that people will generally post things where they belong. We're going to be adding more guidance about that soon. I'm happy to trust the community at the moment. People seem pretty onto it here.
My thoughts, for what it's worth

1, 5, 8, 9 !politics@lemmy.nz but may have general interest

2, 6, !newzealand@lemmy.nz

3, 4, 7 not sure on, but probably general interest

I think the lock and x-post is probably the best solution at the moment, it does mean that I don't have to subscribe to !politics@lemmy.nz but will see the posts if I want to read more
For me I don't mind too much where politics content goes and it's often a blurry line, but I think part of that can sometimes be because people often come into things wanting to make the discussion political. That's often going to make it difficult to categorise.

Race relations and crime are both recent examples of this. They attract people who are sometimes tempted to use anything vaguely connected as an excuse to state their political views on those topics, and provoke political discussions, rather than necessarily talk about the content of the post.

56 comments