Politics

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!

To start, I would like to link this graphic to the community guidelines to illustrate where the cutoff is between heated debate and inappropriate bickering.

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.

No screenshots of article headlines. Always require a link to an article instead.

One of the biggest problems I had with reddit was the posting of editorialized headlines with no source. Once I would find the source (if the article is even real), I often find the article contradicts it's own headline or lacks any sources for the claims made. Of course, the screenshots would be upvoted anyway because people want to be outraged, regardless if the story is accurate or not.

I'd say the biggest ones for me are:

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

"Be Civil" is the core value for me.

I also have a question, rather than an answer. Should all posts require the URL of an external article? Or are people allowed to post "topic for discussion" and personal opinion posts? There needs to be a place for that, I'm just not sure whether this is it. So far I haven't found a good venue for that.

I would just emphasize the need for respect in our conversations. That seems pretty important to me.

Mods might want to consider which sources are blacklisted or whitelisted. Fairly straightforward thing to automate and could cut down on things that are clickbaity or just misinformation. A biased source is one thing but a site that mainly talks about lizard people or aliens probably isn't reputable.

Might not be worth it to create a list or automation until manual moderation gets too much as that would be a chore to create.

I would like to see more discussion around handling misinformation. The lines between misinformation, trolling, and someone being genuinely incorrect (which is still misinformation) can be blurry.

However, I personally believe that spreading misinformation is more dangerous than regular trolling. Of course, it can require research to determine whether or not something is mis/disinformation. Obviously this is a complicated subject and other social media platforms haven't even figured it out yet.

Some forms of humor including unmarked sarcasm (may be akin to light trolling) should be allowed.

Side note: It looks like the italics markup on kbin is actually underlining for other platforms.

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

Any chance we can require a secondary comment be posted with article in text form? Lots of these sites are paywalled and I can't see the articles. There was usually some kind soul or tldr bot to post the article in the comments on /r/politics.