Happy Friday :)

I thought I might get a bit of feedback from everyone here on what the guidelines for posting in the news-related subs should be.

So far, all I’ve put in the sidebar is that things should be text post, or a link to a reputable source. Everyone seems happy for now, which is great. But I’m sure eventually this will become a discussion, so good to get things in the ground ahead of time.

Edit: This post was supposed to go on !ukpolitics, but I got the community wrong. There isn’t anything in the sidebar of !unitedkingdom@feddit.uk right now 🙃

Sources

As my history teacher would drill into me, Primary, Secondary, Reliability, Bias.
These might be a good way to work out which sources we’d like to see here, and what constitutes “reputable”. Or possibly a flow of which source to prefer (for example, if it’s only posted on some random site, perhaps see if BBC/Sky/Guardian/Reuters/Independent/FT/Telegraph have a similar article before posting) We could also do a breakdown of which sources are good/bad for what, and why.

This chart gives a fairly good way to classify sources. Apologies, there are a lot of non-uk sources in there.

Type of content

Links to sensible, sourced news sites, obviously a good thing.

Imho, text post discussions with clear titles to start sensible discussions are a good thing to have. Engagement-bait, not so much.

Editorial content, maybe, so long as it’s clear what it is.

Primary sources, where appropriate seem sensible.
Twitter, Mastodon, et al. Youtube, I’m less keen on. Though thoughts are appreciated.

Link aggregation sites, no.
Follow the links through to their source if you like, and post that.

Titles

Try not to editorialise. If the original title is a little wordy, try to keep in the spirit of the original when editing.

Multiple posts

When news breaks, it’s exciting, and everyone wants to post.
This can mean discussions getting fragmented.
If possible, have a scan of the community first to make sure it’s not already here, and if it is, try to only post when the additional source adds something new. Honestly, while we’re this size, I’m happy to let the voting system let things rise and fall. This might have to change down the line. Possibly linked to source preference?

  • GreatAlbatross@feddit.ukOPMEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I agree with that.

    It’s a tricky one potentially, and if we do it, there will need to be clear rules so that people know what is likely to happen.

    For example, how do we pick the one to use? First one in? First one with lots of comments? First one from the list of “good” sources?
    And after that, the rules need to be clear, otherwise people might not be happy that their post got locked/taken down.
    I’m also keen to avoid “delete them all and mod post”, as that feels very unfair to the community.
    Though that might be needed in extreme circumstances (like if an ex-prime minister started prowling westminster with an assult rifle), so maybe should be specified.