News @lemmy.world Thekingoflorda @lemmy.world 1 yr. ago

Feedback needed for new rules V2!

Thank you for all the feedback you provided, using your feedback, we've come to these new rules:

1. Be civil. Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only.
1. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as unbiased and reliable as possible. Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blacklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods.
1. No bots, spam or self-promotion. Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
1. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source. Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title is wrong / incorrect, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.
1. Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days. No opinion pieces, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed.
1. No duplicate posts. If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.
1. No link shorteners, the auto mod will contact you if they are detected.

Once again, we are asking for some feedback. This can be anything from spelling / grammar checks to fundamental changes. Let this be a place to make these rules as perfect as possible.

Please keep in mind that the blacklist is currently still in development. We are looking for some sites we should block, so if you know some, let us know.

Thank you for your help everyone!

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29 comments

For rule 2, I would suggest two changes:

Rename “blacklist” to “blocklist” in the spirit of inclusivity

Focus on reliability and accuracy rather than political bias

My guess is the purpose of rule #2 is to prevent opinion pieces and misinformation from being published as “news”. If the goal is to limit opinion articles presented as “news”, then perhaps the rule should instead clarify A) whether opinion pieces are allowed (and how that is defined) and B) if they are allowed whether they should be marked as such.

If the goal of rule #2 is to achieve some sort of “political neutrality”, I would challenge whether that should be a goal. This community has an inherent political bias that manifests in which articles people share and how they upvote or downvote. I don’t think that removing sources on the basis of political affiliation per se minimizes harm, and I strongly prefer a focus on removing posts that contain verifiable inaccuracies. Of course, it will ultimately be up to the moderation team to decide what actually constitutes misinformation (and there is bias there too), but I hope that shifting the focus toward that goal explicitly will mean that they will more carefully consider their own biases when exercising the moderation power.

Edit: typo
- Good idea, I'm not a linguistic expert or an expert on racism, but I feel like it's not a big problem to change it, and if it makes anyone feel better, it's worth it.
  
  As main rule we focus on "reliability" and "Unbiasedness". We then further explain that obvious biased posts, which are the most often "Bad thing" we see in this community, will be deleted. We don't expect perfect articles, because they don't exist, but we just want to make sure that posts which are only there to support a particular political movement, do not overtake this community.
  
  Rule 5 states that opinion pieces are not allowed. We will have to judge posts that get reported because of rule 5 on a case-by-case basis, and we will make sure to communicate if there's ever a post which is ambiguous.
  
  Let me know if you have any other questions or concerns (:
  
  Oh thank you for pointing out rule 5. I missed that one. Regarding rule 2, perhaps change the word ordering to put “reliable” first?
  
  I will do that (:
  
  Thank you for the suggestion.

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