this post was submitted on 29 Dec 2023
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politics

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Community Feedback (lemmy.world)
submitted 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 

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 [email protected], 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.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 16 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I also hope this doesn't turn into "this is about WORLD politics. Why are you talking about America?"

[–] [email protected] 11 points 10 months ago (1 children)

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? ;)

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I agree, but I also think we're going to have people complaining that there are too many people posting about American politics. We'll see. Maybe the tag thing would be a good idea. I also don't think, as a U.S. resident, that a community for U.S. politics would be a bad idea. I don't know how many people would use it at this point though.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago

It really depends on the balance of posts. It's possible I would migrate to something more US focused but I'd have to see whether I'm unhappy with the ratio after the change. I don't want to keep myself ignorant of the rest of the world, but if I can't comment on a majority of posts because I know nothing about that country then it's not really a community I fit into.

But I recognize that's a me problem and not a y'all problem.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago (1 children)

LOL - Brace yourself! 2024 is going to be a RIDE! ;)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago

I made an alt for this specific reason, among others.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

What about discussion of his mental instability as it relates to fitness for office? Because I've heard, from people who worked with him, that his smell is caused by stimulant addiction related incontinence. Which would make it an issue of mental instability rather than hygiene.

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[–] [email protected] 10 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (4 children)

I'm a news junkie and former reddit lurker, so lemmy.world has allowed me to share news articles with everyone. Apologies for the Trump smells posts! I'll be more mindful in the future. Aside from that, I have a couple of observations:

I feel that the news articles provide an organic way to begin discussions. Are the mods thinking transforming this community into something like "ask politics"-type format?

Regardless of the format, I think it's important for people to cite sources when making claims and arguments. Implementing a mechanism to encourage high-quality comments could be an interesting experiment for [email protected]. I wonder if a weekly post to highlight or nominate quality comments would help to promote well-supported and thoughtful discussions.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago

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¢

[–] [email protected] 7 points 10 months ago (1 children)

I appreciate your posts. :)

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago
[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

Agreed, I fully expect chaos this coming year. Certainly have your work cut out for you!

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 10 months ago (2 children)

I’d love to see the removal, or culling of op-ed pieces. It’s not news.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Given the removal of the US only restriction here, I am hoping that we can use [email protected] as a place that allows for analysis and op-eds, and keep [email protected] as the place that does not allow op-eds and focus solely on world news.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Is that why the logo is missing?

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It was startrek.website, right? I know about that one.

I have gone out of my way to not interact with him or even be on the same mod team as him, because some of the things he said was legitimately disturbing, and I think he needs serious help. It is my hope that our community can move past him.

With any luck, we'll start running the contest very soon.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago

That would be it. There's a new Trek show that has some gay characters, a lesbian, a non-binary character and a trans character. People got bitter as hell and started attacking the show over those specific characters. And i don't mean criticising. I mean attacking. Him being the creator of star trek community on lemmy.world was the sole reason I never posted there. Even tried to help him out once and he got self righteous and said he didn't need my help and I've been assuming its because I have the same name as one of those gay characters I mentioned. The one who gets complained about the most.

I'm ass at making logos. The tumblr one and the star trek memes ones I made but that's taking existing stuff and adding/removing to suit my needs. I'd do a horrendous job. But I'm all the way down to support the contest!

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (3 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 10 months ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago (1 children)

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?

[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago
[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago

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”.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 10 months ago (6 children)

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.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 10 months ago (7 children)

That's good to hear. I'm more concerned about how much Lemmy World admins are involved, I left lemmy world for a reason.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 10 months ago (26 children)

And what concern would that be? We can not be involved at all? I think we are pretty hands-off. We took action when a moderator broke the site rules.

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