We’re currently working on changing the rules of this community, because we feel there are some gaps in the current rules.
This is what we have so far:
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- Be nice! Don’t personally attack someone else. Racism and bigotry are not tolerated. Don’t use offensive language, swearing is allowed within reason. Trolling is also not allowed, go back to reddit for that.
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- Sources should be as unbiased and reliable as possible Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion.
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- No bots, spam or self-promotion Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
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- 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.
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- Post should be news Don’t post obvious opinion pieces, very dated news or things that are simply not news. Posts will be removed at the mods discretion.
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- 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.
We are looking for any feedback you guys might have, including grammer/spell checks (:
If you agree with the rules, they will go in effect in 24 hours.
Thank you!
Trolling is also not allowed, go back to reddit for that.
Telling someone to go back to reddit to troll is itself a mild form of trolling and fails to model the behavior the rule calls for. It contributes nothing to the meaning or clarity of the rule and the rule is better without it.
Sources should be as unbiased and reliable as possible Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion.
This rule would be improved by listing media source bias/fact-checkers that the mods largely trust, even if they reserve the right to occasionally override public checkers. The ability to pre-screen a source with fair reliability is valuable to posters.
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.
Even reliable news sources frequently editorialize their titles at this point. I’d appreciate a carve-out to de-editorialize a clickbait title, but I appreciate that title-matching is much easier to understand/enforce and that people are likely to try to abuse a de-clickbaiting clause to re-clickbait and bias their titles. If a culture where people modified titles to improve titles could be fostered, that would be neat.
Point 1 was indeed kinda a joke, but if you feel like that hurts the rule, I will remove it.
I am working on making some kind of place where we show all banned news sources which then integrates with the bot, but this might take some development time.
As stated in the rule, we will only remove posts if the title is wrong / incorrect, with that we mean that it misrepresents the article. The autobot can’t sense that you editted the post to make it better, so I just wanted to make clear that the autobot will still message you.
Thank you for the feedback (:
Point 1 was indeed kinda a joke, but if you feel like that hurts the rule, I will remove it.
I feel like you wouldn’t and shouldn’t accept the justification from a commenter that their trolling was a joke. You also wouldn’t consider it an improvement to make a racist joke alongside the rule against racism as a tongue in cheek way of illustrating the rule by counter-example. It simply is the thing the rule purports to disallow, which isn’t a great joke and doesn’t help the rule.
As stated in the rule, we will only remove posts if the title is wrong / incorrect, with that we mean that it misrepresents the article. The autobot can’t sense that you editted the post to make it better, so I just wanted to make clear that the autobot will still message you.
I might suggest to extend the rule with something like: While de-clickbaiting and de-editorializing poor upstream titles with replacement factual titles is allowed, when in doubt using the upstream title is always sensible. Having the modbot inform people about title deviations by quoting the rule including the bit about de-editorializing seems reasonable.
I’d suggest maybe going a little further on the title rule, something like:
Titles should accurately reflect the content of the article. Avoid sensationalized, misleading, or editorialized titles. If in doubt the articles own title is acceptable but accuracy is always preferred.
Sources should be as unbiased and reliable as possible Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion.
Every source is biased.
You’ll get someone telling you that mainstream newspapers are biased in favor of their country’s dominant ideology, or their owner’s business interests, or the cult that started them, or whatever.
However, some sources report on things that actually happened, and some sources report on rumors, fake news, speculation, and other BS.
We are aware, but we’re just humans, so we’ll moderate as fair as we can. I’ll be compiling a blacklist, with sources that are not accepted here, and people can let us know if they don’t agree with any of the sources on that list.
Maybe something like:
- Sources should be focused on factual news reporting — not rumor, gossip, condemnation, or opinion. Broadly, sources should be telling the reader what happened and not what to feel about it.
Another idea: have a rule that says “No disinformation or propaganda”, to frame things slightly differently.
I like this wording - with emphasis on focused - even most credible sources provide some analysis and opinions, so enforcement is bound to be somewhat subjective - but as mods its our job to be as fair and impartial as possible. I expect there will be opportunities along the way for the broader community to provide feedback which will be carefully considered.
For a worked example of why “unbiased” is undesirable, take a look at any news site that reports on issues relevant to a particular population — such as LGBTQ+, Christians, or Black Americans.
An LGBTQ+ news site is not going to be “unbiased” on, say, marriage equality. It’s going to have a viewpoint. However, it can still report true news stories.
Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion.
Problem with that is moderator bias. Can you list unbiased sources? Be better to just have a list of approved sources, imo.
https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-chart
This is the chart I sent to the mods over a discord message.
Basically, anything in the middle three columns would be “preferred” and the furthest left and right columns would be “not-preferred”. Again, stuff from the furthest left and right columns are not subject to instant removal and some could still fly if you can’t find another site posting the content, but generally, it isn’t that difficult to find another source that wrote an article about the same topic.
It would be ridiculous to think there are totally “non-biased” sites, the goal here is really just to not have constant posts from Fox News or the Huffington Post, let alone sites that veer even further in either direction, with the endgame being that this doesn’t wind up being a massive echo chamber of a community for any particular political leaning.
Edit - Open to suggestions about said chart, and other sites users think fall into any of the categories
It concerns me somewhat that that chart doesn’t consider accuracy at all merely whose biases stories most align with. There’s been a major problem with subtle and sometimes not so subtle lies being pushed in various news sources. The fact they give OAN any kind of semi-good rating at all is alarming as OAN regularly runs entirely made up stories with either no factual basis or which are at best a series of rumors tied together with editorialization and inference. There needs to be a much stronger delineation between opinion pieces and reporting and far too many news sites blur those lines.
https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/fact-check-bias-chart
The same website does offer a fact-check chart as well. Could possibly cross reference it with the bias chart. However, the plan is a blacklist rather than a whitelist, so most sources are going to be okay, at least to start with. If anything becomes a problem it can certainly be blacklisted quickly once that bot is up.
Well, that chart claims to show how biased a fact checking site is once again not how accurate it is. What I’m most interested in is historical data and sources. Does X news site regularly post stories that claim certain details as facts that later turned out to be false? Do they provide sources and how reliable are those sources? Do they claim things as factual that at the time are known to be false?
Having a evolving story with a lot of unknowns is one thing as long as it’s clear what’s speculation or what details are unconfirmed. Once in a while having a mistake in your reporting as long as you own up to that mistake and post a correction is acceptable. Regularly reporting on rumors with little or no corroborating evidence particularly if they’re not very blatantly calling it out as rampant speculation is not acceptable.
One thing that news sites need to do a better job about is vetting their sources. Fox News in particular massively abuses this. They regularly allow absolute kooks on their news and present them along side well respected experts as if the two are equivalent sources and it gives the false impression that completely unfounded claims have some degree of factuality. This is why historical checking is so important, so that you can see if some news site regularly runs stories that turn out to be false or misleading or that regularly include false or misleading info.
That’s not a bad chart, the general problem is maintaining a balance. You’re probably better off straight banning anything in the far left/right columns, because once you let a few through it swings fast.
The other problem that frequently happens is not treating both sides biased sources equally. If you make an automated message about potentially biased sources, you need to use it on all sources from each side, not equal numbers of sources. That chart has almost twice as many left leaning publishers as right leaning. This is important, because there are simply more left leaning publications (at least at the large publisher level). It doesn’t mean you have to allow NewsMax for balance, it means moderators need to be aware that most posts are going to be left leaning by numbers, which will create a feeling of favoring left sources.
The other problem that frequently happens is not treating both sides biased sources equally.
This is of the utmost importance to me (us). It’s definitely not going to be a situation where we say “Oh we blacklisted a source from the right, we have to hit one from the left now”. If a source is credible and not incredibly biased, it will always be allowed.
That link feels about as good as you’re going to get.
I’m working on making a list of banned sources (which everyone can read, and discuss), which can then integrate with the bot, so it will tell you that the source is not allowed.
I agree. Bias is hard to eliminate, even assuming good intentions. Also, sometimes there are topics that are only reported on by outlets that have a certain political slant. This gets into a gray area because sometimes those topics are invented or exaggerated to be more newsworthy than they are… but at other times they may be important news that simply isn’t covered by more neutral media for various reasons.
That said, I definitely could do without the daily hate pieces that slanted outlets tend to produce. So I think it’s a good idea, just might need some thoughtful tweaking.
Agree with some of the other commenters:
Per rule 1: “Trolling” is in the eye of the beholder, but I like that you’re trying to address bad faith argumentation. I’d rephrase the rule like this:
[Be civil. Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only.]
Then link to a document that details “good faith argumentation”, with examples. You’ll need them.
Per rule 2: A list of approved sources is better than a removal of biased sources. At least that way you can get individualized feedback on the list, rather than constantly having to address bias within each individual submission. Whitelist good/credible sources and blacklist others, and post occasional notices for feedback on each list. That way you can filter by domain and avoid most confusion.
Per rule 4: Remember that sites change headlines occasionally, so you’ll likely get some reports on those.
Per rule 5: I would rephrase it like this: [Posts must be news from the most recent __ days. No opinion/editorials.]
You can specify the timeframe, but 60 or 90 days is generally pretty good.
Add a catch-all rule 6 that goes without saying but gives you clear protection if something just doesn’t sit right with you: “Mods reserve the right to remove disruptive posts and comments on a case-by-case basis.”
I will indeed rephrase the first rule, good suggestion!
If you have a whitelist, you don’t need a blacklist, so I don’t fully understand what you mean with that. The problem with having a whitelist is that I think it’s to much work to curate each news source, and could be seen as restricting if not enough are whitelisted. That’s why we’ll probably go for a blacklist.
Yea, the bot already has some problems with that. But we’ll first ask questions, then delete, so no worries there.
Good suggestion, I’ll discuss it with the other moderators.
That catch all rule is already included in the instance rules, so that’s not really needed.
Thank you for the suggestions (:
If you have a whitelist, you don’t need a blacklist, so I don’t fully understand what you mean with that. The problem with having a whitelist is that I think it’s to much work to curate each news source, and could be seen as restricting if not enough are whitelisted. That’s why we’ll probably go for a blacklist.
Good point. Either way you’ll have a lot of work to sort out sources up front. After a few months of work the system should sort itself out and you’ll have to do much less maintenance. But you’re right that a blacklist-only approach is probably simpler. I guess it just depends on whether you choose to take a “source is forbidden until we allow it” approach or “source is allowed until we forbit it” approach. Both have merit, but the optimal choice depends entirely on how much traffic you’re generating.
I think regardless of whether we have a white list, black-list or both there will be sources that fall in the grey. Here’s an example. Imagine a school shooting in XYZ Community. Perhaps the local community newspaper provides a very detailed and credible article - the site is small enough it is unlikely to be on either a white list or a black list but it could still be a good contribution to the site. I providing examples of sources that are broadly accepted or not accepted is useful, but at the end of the day I think much of it falls to moderator discretion.
Absolutely true. A list either way is just meant to be a fast-track for approved sources and a stop light for disapproved ones. You’ll still have your work cut out for you. The value of a list, however, is that eventually submitters learn what’s kosher and what’s not. If you don’t have a blacklist, for example, then you’ll have to manually remove National Enquirer-type submissions every time they pop up. A blacklist allows you to set up an automated filter that everyone knows and understands. Coming from someone who modded on Reddit for over a decade, you want rules that are helpful enough to ALLOW you discretion, while at the same time being specific enough to cut down on repetitive bullshit. Clarity and consistency is key, and you don’t want rules that rely SOLELY on moderator discretion, otherwise your work just gets harder and harder as traffic increases. If you’re likely to remove Daily Stormer submissions every time they show up anyway, then go ahead and put it on a blacklist so folks know ahead of time that it won’t fly.
I think a blocklist of common sources of biased and sensationalized / misinformation sources would be the best option. It would definitely be a ton of work to whitelist every good source, and you especially want to encourage smaller trusted industry-specific sources (think like pv magazine), there are a lot of those small high quality sources that are geared towards industry professionals. With a short blocklist you could probably cover a significant portion of the loudest biased sources of misinformation.
Honestly, don’t get too caught up with written rules. It’s always going to come down to a judgement call and you’re never going to please everyone. Having loads of rules will just lead to “well I think this violates rule 72 § 904b(3) and here’s an essay on why!” Just do the best you can keeping things from becoming a Halo 2 matchmaking lobby.
We don’t want their to be the least amount of doubt when moderating. But I understand your point, and I’ll keep it in mind.
These rules imply, but do not acrually require, that posts must provide a link to an authoratitive source. It is possible to interpret those new rules such that sources are optional and that the only time some of those requirements come into play is if a source was optionally included.
I think there should be an explicit requirement that all posts include a link to a source…followed by all those other requiremeents.
Hmmm. For rule 4, please make sure there’s leeway for site-altered headlines.
And maybe a rule against bad-faith participation, just as a catch-all for dealing with trolls, sockpuppets, bots, purveyors of disinformation…
Both have been changed in the new rules which I will share soon. Thank you for the feedback.
