Welcome to the discussion of US Politics!
Rules:
We ask that the users report any comment or post that violate the rules, to use critical thinking when reading, posting or commenting. Users that post off-topic spam, advocate violence, have multiple comments or posts removed, weaponize reports or violate the code of conduct will be banned.
All posts and comments will be reviewed on a case-by-case basis. This means that some content that violates the rules may be allowed, while other content that does not violate the rules may be removed. The moderators retain the right to remove any content and ban users.
That's all the rules!
Civic Links
• Congressional Awards Program
• Library of Congress Legislative Resources
• U.S. House of Representatives
Partnered Communities:
• News
I think the challenge is going to be separating World News from Politics. Articles will need to have some kind of political angle to be appropriate here.
So, for example, my submission of Daihatsu getting caught faking safety reports for 30 years, World News, nothing about that is political.
Putin supporter falling out a window? (AGAIN?) I could see that being in one or the other or both.
I also hope this doesn't turn into "this is about WORLD politics. Why are you talking about America?"
Or vice versa, it will take time for people to get used to seeing non-US politics.
Due to naming ambiguity, we might need to require country tags as well.
News about a Georgia election... well, WHICH GEORGIA? ;)
I agree, but I also think we're going to have people complaining that there are too many people posting about American politics. We'll see. Maybe the tag thing would be a good idea. I also don't think, as a U.S. resident, that a community for U.S. politics would be a bad idea. I don't know how many people would use it at this point though.
It really depends on the balance of posts. It's possible I would migrate to something more US focused but I'd have to see whether I'm unhappy with the ratio after the change. I don't want to keep myself ignorant of the rest of the world, but if I can't comment on a majority of posts because I know nothing about that country then it's not really a community I fit into.
But I recognize that's a me problem and not a y'all problem.
News should be news, I would like this community to focus on political discussions, editorials, and commentaries from a variety of viewpoints, if that makes sense.
And to be frank, I don't think topics like "Trump smells bad" is good political discussion, which is what I would aim to avoid.
LOL - Brace yourself! 2024 is going to be a RIDE! ;)
I made an alt for this specific reason, among others.
What about discussion of his mental instability as it relates to fitness for office? Because I've heard, from people who worked with him, that his smell is caused by stimulant addiction related incontinence. Which would make it an issue of mental instability rather than hygiene.
I'm a news junkie and former reddit lurker, so lemmy.world has allowed me to share news articles with everyone. Apologies for the Trump smells posts! I'll be more mindful in the future. Aside from that, I have a couple of observations:
I feel that the news articles provide an organic way to begin discussions. Are the mods thinking transforming this community into something like "ask politics"-type format?
Regardless of the format, I think it's important for people to cite sources when making claims and arguments. Implementing a mechanism to encourage high-quality comments could be an interesting experiment for [email protected]. I wonder if a weekly post to highlight or nominate quality comments would help to promote well-supported and thoughtful discussions.
I appreciate your posts. :)
Thank you!
Good to talk to you again. You are one of my favorite accounts on Lemmy.
Are the mods thinking transforming this community into something like “ask politics”-type format?
Article submissions are still very much welcome here, but I would like to expand this place so that we have more discussion among the community on political topics. So, a bit of both.
I do want to foster a culture of thoughtful discussion here, and that needs to originate from our power submitter such as yourself. If you put in effort in your submission, then the comment section will be encouraged to make effort as well.
I don't think a weekly highlighting would be necessary, because I think we should all read more and be more informed on politics before we comment. Still thinking about what we should do here.
Thanks for the recognition and appreciate your thoughts.
Let me clarify about the weekly highlighting suggestion. A post from the mods along the lines of "What was the top comment you read this week?" and people can link them in the comments. That's just an example of something to acknowledge commenters who put time and effort into their responses. Politics is dirty and usually pretty negative, so if there's somebody wading through the crap to provide some clarity and discussion, we should focus on that positivity. Maybe that's a bit idealistic, but just a thought.
Modding is tough work, so thanks for doing it.
2024, being an election year, is going to throw whatever we PLAN to do into complete chaos. LOL. Between the primaries, the general, and all the Trump shenanigans, it's going to be a super busy year.
Likely each primary and caucus will need it's own megathread, and, yeah, I might have a calendar all set up to remind me when they are happening. ;) Ditto for the Trump trial dates, then the eventual general election.
I’d love to see the removal, or culling of op-ed pieces. It’s not news.
Given the removal of the US only restriction here, I am hoping that we can use [email protected] as a place that allows for analysis and op-eds, and keep [email protected] as the place that does not allow op-eds and focus solely on world news.
I'm happy to see the rule change to be world-inclusive now. I do hope there is a way to tag/flair posts to show geography, though, or it'll end up having people assume US-first.
Is that why the logo is missing?
The previous logo and banner was made by YoBuck, I think he took it with him when he left.
Might want to run a logo contest/banner contest sometimes soon, if you guys are interested.
What a fucking child. Not surprising given he was unilaterally banned from another instance for aggressive homophobia well before he was banned here.
I say run it. His logo was mid at best. I'm sure there's plenty of people who can offer something better with barely any effort.
It was startrek.website, right? I know about that one.
I have gone out of my way to not interact with him or even be on the same mod team as him, because some of the things he said was legitimately disturbing, and I think he needs serious help. It is my hope that our community can move past him.
With any luck, we'll start running the contest very soon.
That would be it. There's a new Trek show that has some gay characters, a lesbian, a non-binary character and a trans character. People got bitter as hell and started attacking the show over those specific characters. And i don't mean criticising. I mean attacking. Him being the creator of star trek community on lemmy.world was the sole reason I never posted there. Even tried to help him out once and he got self righteous and said he didn't need my help and I've been assuming its because I have the same name as one of those gay characters I mentioned. The one who gets complained about the most.
I'm ass at making logos. The tumblr one and the star trek memes ones I made but that's taking existing stuff and adding/removing to suit my needs. I'd do a horrendous job. But I'm all the way down to support the contest!
Seriously though, we need a new logo. As dumb as it is, it really makes the community feel more like a community. I've thought about this every time I see that bland looking "p" in my sub list, so I'm glad you brought it up!
I'm probably going to move to another politics community then. I thought they took the old site's politics and made it less antagonistic here. I don't like that the admins of lemmy world are involved either. You seem like you want to do well, but I have real concerns now. I might start one on sh.itjust.works and keep the energy that was here.
When it comes to Moderator drama, I would RATHER the site Admins make the call than the other moderators.
If you don't then the optics are bad. Say I took the initiative and bounced Yobucks and appointed MightBe, the end result, to you guys, would look like I staged a coup and inserted my own cronies to the modlist (which is something that happened more than once on reddit.)
Being able to step aside, reach out to the Admins and go "Hey, I think we have a problem..." is a huge improvement.
I would like to address your concerns. The audience here is very much US centric, so that even with the current rule change, I don't expect the content and culture here to drastically change overnight. In fact, I would still very much expect US politics to be fairly dominant here in the near future.
And rest assured, we would not want the antagonism here to increase either.
That's good to hear. I'm more concerned about how much Lemmy World admins are involved, I left lemmy world for a reason.
And what concern would that be? We can not be involved at all? I think we are pretty hands-off. We took action when a moderator broke the site rules.
I'd like it if this was a place for nuanced discussion of political issues, not an endless stream of tabloid-level garbage involving politicians. I believe drivel like "Trump Smells" and the later clarification "Like Butts And Armpitts" is childish and need not be here.
I agree, but it's a hard line to draw when Trump is the likely GOP presidential nominee, and half or more of Republicans in Congress are little knock off versions of him. Take for instance, Trump's Christmas message directing Biden and liberals to rot in hell, that's just a garbage story. But it's the presumptive GOP nominee saying it, so I guess it's substantive? If you ignore it, you normalize it.
Maybe it's not news stories that are at fault, it's just that the US politics itself has reached "tablod-level garbage". Fuck I'm not looking for to this election year.
I’d agree, but there needs to be a place for political slugfests too. Where can we discuss Trump’s BO, Rudy’s flop sweat and BoBo’s HJs?
As far as the specific "no longer restrict political discussion to the politics of the United States of America" rule goes, I think that's a positive change because in general I think the fewer rules and the more you let organic user behavior dictate the content on the community the better, but I also would not be too upset if this got reversed so long as there's some other well populated community I can find to post politics around the world type articles.
As far as input goes, one idea I had (and by "I had," I mean it was something I remember being a thing on reddit years ago and wish someone would bring back) was that it would be cool to allow text posts one day of the week so users could just submit their own original commentary or try to start discussions about things that aren't getting reported on. That might be way too much work to moderate, but I'd be interested in what people would have to say.
Lastly, I think also having one day a week (or maybe one a month) where meta posts are allowed would be a good thing. The moderation here seems to have improved and be in a good place now, but I think a vital check on bad moderation is individual users having the ability to make their case in front of the whole community about whatever issue, because reports can get buried and a lot of people aren't going to take the time to review the mod log and see what's been happening behind the scenes. I think there is some risk that trolls could try to take advantage of a meta post day and stir up bullshit and misinformation, but I feel like this community has developed enough regulars with enough common sense that those sorts of things could be shut down without the mods having to get involved.
To address your points.
I think there should be a good justification for all of our rules. LW isn't US based, many on the admin team are not even native English speakers, I see no good justification for us to restrict ourselves to US politics only. Of course, people upvote what they want to see here.
I don't think we will be restricting text posts in the future, I would like to see it being allowed here in general. But changes should be implemented carefully but steadily.
I would like the feedback thread to serve the function of a general meta post on our moderation style. We're all human, we make mistakes, but acknowledging them and correct them quickly would be our goal.
Ah, sounds like we're basically doing all my ideas already then (I've always been a "make general pronouncements about how the world ought to be first, pay attention to what's actually happening later" type of person lol). I do think there's something to be said for allowing users to create new feedback threads/meta posts to ensure their viewpoint doesn't just disappear into a thread with hundreds of comments most users won't ever look at, but having one general feedback thread is probably more than enough.
At any rate, thanks for modding. I was a mod for a few years on a medium sized reddit page and it was an absolute nightmare pain in the ass that honestly kinda ruined my mental health by the end (after several months of arguing with a stridently libertarian mod and a bunch of troll users about the need for a "no bigoted comments" rule I just hated every other human on the planet and didn't want to get out of bed for a while), so thank you for doing a necessary job I have no interest in doing myself.
I see thoughtful, factual comments with double digit negative scores.
I see short, factually incorrect comments highly rewarded for asserting as facts, things that are unlikely and unproven.
I don't know how this has become the pattern, but it now appears to be a culture problem within many communities - this one being high among them.
Mistakes happen and people will be wrong, but I see no avenue to correct growing misbeliefs on topics. There would have to be an article or some kind of other pressure to bring things back to facts.
I'm solidly on the left and my post history reflects that. I'm not saying anything fringe in my posts. I'm just applying the classic rules of critical thought seasoned with skepticism.
I'm tired of the down votes. Not for me, but for what they represent for lemmy at large and for this community. A whole lot of Lemmings are being poorly served by the siren's song of glib half-bites.
Can you help with that?
At present, I'm mostly talking about the "human trafficking" assertion that arrives on migrant bussing threads.
That's one specific example.