Speak up now: What should our community guidelines be?

Politics@kbin.social – 1 points – 12 months ago

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.

My first question is always going to be, what is the moderation policy for Nazi's/white supremacists/fascists?

Are you adopting a zero tolerance policy for that sort of rabble rousing trash, the iamragesparkle method, or are you going to say your hands are tied unless they blatantly violate the community guidelines?

(transcribed from a series of tweets) - @iamragesparkle

I was at a shitty crustpunk bar once getting an after-work beer. One of those shitholes where the bartenders clearly hate you. So the bartender and I were ignoring one another when someone sits next to me and he immediately says, "no. get out."

And the dude next to me says, "hey i'm not doing anything, i'm a paying customer." and the bartender reaches under the counter for a bat or something and says, "out. now." and the dude leaves, kind of yelling. And he was dressed in a punk uniform, I noticed

Anyway, I asked what that was about and the bartender was like, "you didn't see his vest but it was all nazi shit. Iron crosses and stuff. You get to recognize them."

And i was like, ohok and he continues.

"you have to nip it in the bud immediately. These guys come in and it's always a nice, polite one. And you serve them because you don't want to cause a scene. And then they become a regular and after awhile they bring a friend. And that dude is cool too.

And then THEY bring friends and the friends bring friends and they stop being cool and then you realize, oh shit, this is a Nazi bar now. And it's too late because they're entrenched and if you try to kick them out, they cause a PROBLEM. So you have to shut them down.

And i was like, 'oh damn.' and he said "yeah, you have to ignore their reasonable arguments because their end goal is to be terrible, awful people."

And then he went back to ignoring me. But I haven't forgotten that at all.

This sort of question is why this thread was created. I'm in favor of a zero tolerance policy for fascism, bigotry, and anything that is clearly misinformation. But that's my personal opinion and we'll all be working together to decide on what the community wants and what works best. Rules can also be altered as we grow, of course, if our initial guidelines aren't sufficient.

Obviously I'm 100% in the camp of "you have to ignore their reasonable arguments because their end goal is to be terrible, awful people."

Sadly I joined this conversation late, so we will see if others filter in.

I'm very curious as to what sort of community the fedaverse as a whole has cultivated after the reddit exodus.

I have seen enough users actively combat alt-right content here that I'm happy to swing the ban hammer on neo-Nazi and pro-white supremacy content.

What I don't want to create is an echo chamber that only permits the views of people I agree with.

I say this with all sincerity: as a progressive, we need genuine and legitimate leadership to step up and start governing again in the GOP. We don't need people who were once too awful to embrace getting a redemption arc (a la Mitt Romney and Liz Cheney style), but real and serious political leaders. I would like this magazine to be a place to stay informed about the moves and leadership on the right that are worth building bridges with.

And as much as I hate the entire MAGA crowd, we still need to be informed of their movements and goings on. So I'm not willing to draw the line at no right wing content from right wing sources ever. But I happily draw the line at no neo-Nazi or white supremacy sympathizing.

What I don't want to create is an echo chamber that only permits the views of people I agree with.

I'm confused.

Do you think I was asking for that?

If so, why?

But I happily draw the line at no neo-Nazi or white supremacy sympathizing.

We seem to be in the same ballpark, I just use stronger language about it.

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.

This is a minor point, but I would also suggest not allowing any threads or posts with all capital headlines.

I’m with a lot of people here on opinion pieces. Those are often not even based on facts and rarely provide any actual valuable discussion. So those should be either monitored more closely to only let serious substantial opinions through, or simply barred from appearing here.

Other discussions in this thread have highlighted reputable sources of content. This can include NYT opinions and news, but would never permit content from OANN.

I hope this addresses the concern about opinion/editorial content.

It does, thanks. I have nothing against reputable sources. Just wanted to chime in about filtering/moderating that type of content in general.

I think we may need to stipulate and employ the use of badges (similar to submission flair from reddit) so that users can use kbin QoL userscripts to filter out content they don't want.

I'd say the biggest ones for me are:

Be civil
Be on topic (that's probably a thread on its own to define what that should be)
No editorializing/opinion/commentary in title or post body (save it for the comments)

These are okay, with the exception of giving commentary in the post body. Commentary in the post body might be a good way to tell why you think this could be especially important.

I'll piggy back on your response here to add in that I would prefer that posters copy and paste the nut graf of the news story into the body of the post.

"Nut graf" is a journalism term for the paragraph that clearly delineates what the article is about. It's what makes the piece newsworthy. "The paragraph that explains the story in a nutshell." The nut graf usually appears in the first three grafs of any current events piece.

I think if this is included in the body text (willing to invite more than just this paragraph, but bare minimum this graf), then readers can determine if the larger piece is worth their time to read or important.

I completely agree with this one. I do this out of habit and didn't even think to suggest it.

I think it's important since headlines are often just clickbait and the nut graf can cut through some if that to help you decide if you want to click through to the article.

I would probably focus on the lede instead of the nut graf. At least the first paragraph that answers who, what, how, where, why is of importance. Getting into the nut graf might be somewhat complex in some articles, as with many (I'm currently looking at a Forbes article) the nut graf is bullet-point summarized after the lede.

Or maybe either one will do. Although I'd believe that contributors will probably post the lede over the nut graf of an article due to ease or confusion.

Not trying to split hairs with you, but we are talking about the same paragraph with different terms.

Lede: A clash at city hall today resulted in a rushed vote called during a late night session today, drawing criticisms from civil rights advocates.

Nut graf: Proposition HB (number) had been backed by state legislators from almost exclusively one political party. The bill would impact certain people in this specific way. About 150 protestors packed the gallery and spilled out into the foyer as the leader of the bill's opposition in the state house, state rep So-and-so from the name of county district, lead a 15 hour filibuster that was interrupted prematurely by the lieutenant governor calling a vote on the bill just before the special session ended.

Usually the first paragraph is the lede, while the nut graf is the next paragraph or set of paragraphs.

For instance (the article I was referencing): here

The lede:

Twitter’s revenue from U.S. advertising in April was down 59% from the previous year, the New York Times reported Monday, after major advertisers left the social media platform following billionaire Elon Musk’s takeover—though Musk claimed two months ago the site was “breaking even.”

Nut graf:

Twitter made $88 million in U.S.-based advertising sales during a five week period starting April 1, down 59% from April 2022, the Times reported, citing an internal presentation and seven Twitter employees.

The social media company estimates its U.S. ad revenue will be down at least 56% each week in May, compared to last year, per the Times.

Twitter’s global ad revenue this year is estimated to be 28% lower than it was in 2022, at around $3 billion, according to research firm Insider Intelligence, as Twitter’s top 50 advertisers are spending markedly less since Musk took over the company in October.

I think either or would be acceptable in the body of the post, however I do believe that most users will post the lede over the nut graf just because it's the first paragraph and the most convenient.

EDIT

At least that's my interpretation of the difference between the two. You might be correct in that we're describing the same things, however I see a lot of articles structured like the linked article in Forbes. Seemingly where a lede and a nut graf are both present.

I think that can still be done in a follow up comment.

Some reasons why I suggested the rule:

It can anchor the whole discussion and responses to OP commentary need to be made at top level. i.e., discussion may become centered around the commentary instead of the article. Especially on potentially polarizing topics.
If I have a different commentary to give than OP, should I resubmit the article with a different editorial?
Up/downvotes will be on the quality/merit of the article and not combined with the opinion of the submitter.
If the commentary doesn't fit within other rules, then the whole post needs to be removed and the article re-submitted.
Any commentary can always be done in the comments, so we're not really taking anything away.

As we collectively discuss this and come to a conclusion that most of us feel a sense of ownership over, I just want to state point blank that I do not want to see duplicate posts with the same link just because two users have opposite viewpoints on the ramifications of the news.

However, I'm fine with one poster giving CNN's article on a newsworthy event and another user posting the Associated Press's article of the same event. Those two news sources (among others) will have different perspectives, voices, and information. That lends itself to robust community engagement, to me.