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.
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.
Simply requiring that an actual article is linked (and not a screenshot of a retweet of a Twitter post of an opinion of a screenshot of an article headline) would be a great first step and easier to moderate.
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 admit I’m getting outnumbered on this. I appreciate you adding your voice to this perspective so that I can re-evaluate my stance on it in an effort to provide this community what it wants.
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.