submitted 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) by MightBe@lemmy.world to c/politics@lemmy.world

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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.

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[-] jordanlund@lemmy.world 16 points 9 months ago

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.

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 16 points 9 months ago

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

[-] jordanlund@lemmy.world 11 points 9 months ago

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? ;)

[-] FlyingSquid@lemmy.world 8 points 9 months ago

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.

[-] MagicShel@programming.dev 7 points 9 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.

[-] MightBe@lemmy.world 9 points 9 months ago

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.

[-] jordanlund@lemmy.world 10 points 9 months ago

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

[-] MightBe@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago

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

[-] treefrog@lemm.ee 3 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

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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[-] MicroWave@lemmy.world 11 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

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 !politics@lemmy.world. I wonder if a weekly post to highlight or nominate quality comments would help to promote well-supported and thoughtful discussions.

[-] billwashere@lemmy.world 8 points 9 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¢

[-] Zerlyna@lemmy.world 7 points 9 months ago

I appreciate your posts. :)

[-] MicroWave@lemmy.world 4 points 9 months ago

Thank you!

[-] MightBe@lemmy.world 6 points 9 months ago

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.

[-] MicroWave@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 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.

[-] jordanlund@lemmy.world 4 points 9 months ago

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.

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[-] pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 10 points 9 months ago

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.

[-] MightBe@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago

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.

[-] pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 7 points 9 months ago

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

[-] antik@lemmy.world 6 points 9 months ago

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.

[-] pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 6 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I mean, your tone is kind of on display right here. From the other thread, you took a mod away which is completely understood. Here, the mod posting this is saying you're working together. My actual, real concern is that you guys are curating or planning to curate what you want shown like the old place used to do. It's not a known thing, it's a concern and you guys don't do anything to alleviate it.

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.

[-] antik@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago

Again, we're hands-off. We do have a discord server where all moderators have access to and were every > 2.5k users community has their own channel. We only get involved when we are asked or when site rules are broken.

I personally had issues with YoBuck's takes since very early on but we never stepped in because he wasn't breaking any of the site rules. Until today.

[-] pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 4 points 9 months ago

What are your plans about stepping in in the future? When my comments were disappearing and no one deleted their comments, one of your admins was pretty aggressive and also seems to have been lying about what can and can't happen on the admin side. I don't have trust in you guys right now and as I said, your first comment's tone was pretty shitty here as well. I would prefer not to start up the shitjustworks politics community, but as you can tell, I'm ready to go if I have to. TBF, it probably wouldn't be a threat to you or the others anyway. But why do you guys care so much about being the biggest or only one to go to? It's odd. The defensiveness and aggressiveness don't fit and aren't necessary.

[-] antik@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

one of your admins was pretty aggressive and also seems to have been lying about what can and can’t happen on the admin side

I've looked through that thread on your LW account and I don't see any aggressiveness? Rooki was doing his best to help you and clear things up: https://lemmy.world/comment/5946853

Lemmy software is buggy man.

I would prefer not to start up the shitjustworks politics community, but as you can tell, I’m ready to go if I have to

Ok?

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[-] jordanlund@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago

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.

[-] pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 4 points 9 months ago

There is some meta drama with the admins that's going on that isn't obvious. I agree with you in normal circumstances.

[-] jordanlund@lemmy.world 4 points 9 months ago

Oh, I'm sure there's all sorts of stuff going on that's not obvious. So long as it STAYS that way, I'm OK with it. :) Just like we mods have our own channel of communications, so do the Admins.

But the stuff the Admins do that is public, like discussing defederation from other instances, stuff like that? Well within their rights as Admins.

But nobody is telling us as mods "hey, we need you to delete content x" unless it's a clear violation of lemmy.world policy, like when we had to crack down on copy/pasting full articles in violation of copyright.

[-] pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 4 points 9 months ago

Oh, I’m sure there’s all sorts of stuff going on that’s not obvious. So long as it STAYS that way, I’m OK with it. :)

I can see why you wouldn't want to know. But as a user, I want to be able to not have to check if things are deleted or modified for no reason. Good luck for next year, it's going to get crazy I'm sure.

[-] jordanlund@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago

I'm not in a position to say what the Admins can or cannot do because I'm not an Admin. :)

What I CAN say, as an IT professional, when you have APIs and bots and tools of all sorts, the only real limit is "how much time and effort are you willing to throw at it?"

[-] pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 3 points 9 months ago

It's a little disheartening to hear, tbh. I've always thought of all of the instances as hobbyists just doing their thing, but we don't really know. I do know now that the LW admins can be trolls, I don't know if Ruud is one of them or doesn't have the time to check on them though.

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[-] plz1@lemmy.world 9 points 9 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.

[-] CharlesDarwin@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago

Is that why the logo is missing?

[-] MightBe@lemmy.world 9 points 9 months ago

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.

[-] Stamets@lemmy.world 5 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

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.

[-] MightBe@lemmy.world 6 points 9 months ago

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.

[-] Stamets@lemmy.world 5 points 9 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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this post was submitted on 29 Dec 2023

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