I can’t seem to find anything in a sidebar or sticky thread that talks about the moderation / rules of the news community. I’m very interested in coming to this community to learn about news, but right now it seems whats being posted tends to be relatively low (lower?) quality.

Examples of common rules

  • Use the same titles as the article itself
  • No blog spam, link to the source
  • Political news, should go to the political community
  • No dupes of same topic

As an example, take a look at other news aggregators that focus on news.

My goal here isn’t tell people what to do but its start a conversation on the topic.

  • alanine96@beehaw.orgEnglish
    4·
    3 years ago

    What do people think of a “journalistic integrity” rule? I know that’s also subjective, but I’m trying to think of how to phrase a rule that is basically “don’t post intentionally incendiary crap”. I guess the rule could just be “don’t post intentionally incendiary crap”, with some examples of what that means and community opportunities to in some way indicate that an article is incendiary crap.

    • Prestron@beehaw.orgEnglish
      0·
      3 years ago

      Sorry about the duplicate comments. Not sure if it was the server or the app I was using, but I didn’t think they posted until it was too late and I re submitted it.

      Anyway, I agree to this idea in theory, but only if there are extremely clear thresholds before the rule is invoked. For example: a limit on authors’ statements of opinion. Ways that are unacceptable for the article to refer to its subjects.

      Basically I think we should debate the rules we want, but once we have consensus I wouldn’t want us also fighting about what does or doesn’t break the rules. Let’s please make the rules clear and measurable.

      • Powderhorn@beehaw.orgEnglish
        1·
        3 years ago

        For example: a limit on authors’ statements of opinion.

        What did The Economist ever do to you?

        Seriously, a hard rule (zero) on that excludes that pub and would exclude almost everything, but would still be far easier to implement than drawing a subjective line for each post that satisfies no one.

  • UrLogicFails@beehaw.orgEnglish
    4·
    3 years ago

    One of the rules I liked from the /r/games community was one of the rules you mentioned here: “Use the same titles as the article itself.” I think all the rules you mentioned here are definitely good ground rules as well.

    Personally, I would also like to see people adopting the body portion of Lemmy posts to summarize the article, or quote a meaty part of the article; but that could also be used for misleading purposes, so I’m not sure if that’s a good idea without some level of oversight.

  • ffmike@beehaw.orgEnglish
    4·
    3 years ago

    Avoiding dupes is, I think, an important one. We’ve had multiple instances on Beehaw of the same story showing up more than once. If you try to post a duplicate link, Lemmy will let you know (by showing the previous copies to you as crossposts). It’s harder to make sure you’re not posting the second or third story from a different source on the same topic. Perhaps we can just encourage people to search before posting.

    I’d like the rules to at least ask people to add an image description in their original post. https://beehaw.org/post/686974 would be good to link to here.

    And given the nature of many posts in the news, I think it would be good for this community to remind people to be(e) nice in their discussions.

  • The saucest tof@beehaw.orgEnglish
    2·
    3 years ago

    I would like fo the country to be added to the title (or as tags if that exits on lemmy), like [USA], [FR] or [World]. We are an international community so it’d help filter out the news of country you are not interested in.

    • HeapOfDogs@beehaw.orgOPEnglish
      4·
      3 years ago

      I don’t disagree with this philosophy. Its more that I believe a few simple rules could go a long way to raising the quality of this community. For example if I walk into a library there is the notion of being nice (quiet, polite, respectful of others) - but I still assume the shelves are well organized.

      I have no issue if people disagree, but maybe consider at least a note in the sidebar talking a little about what this community is about?

  • Powderhorn@beehaw.orgEnglish
    1·
    3 years ago

    Rules make for great starting points, but consider that people are at different levels when it comes to their understanding of what news is.

    Use the same titles as the article itself

    Good rule unless the hed is useless or sensationalized. This likely means you have the wrong source, but now we’re in the realm of editorial discretion, which is not historically the strongest skill the public at large has developed.

    No blog spam, link to the source

    Subjective. Doctorow’s piece on enshittification was a blog post.

    Political news, should go to the political community

    Again, expecting people to know the difference is a big ask outside of a newsroom.

    No dupes of same topic

    Same URL, sure. But tick-tocks are not the same as analysis and generally garner a different sort of discussion.

  • Chloyster [she/her]@beehaw.orgEnglish
    1·
    3 years ago

    I have never moderated a community, so I don’t know the ins and outs of certain rules, but a rule for the same title as the article itself I think is a solid idea.

    A politics rule seems like it would be hard to me, as there are a lot of stories that could fall into a grey area?