So you wish to turn this into another US news community? Not interested, there’s way too much US-centric stuff online already.

The first rule could be improved as well, demanding non-clickbaity titles instead.

If you’re going to allow US news then for the love of puppies include a rule that requires the subject to include the country.

1. Depending on how you access lemmy, this may not be the case. It certainly isn’t for me.

That said, I would rather have titles be non-clickbaity. Maybe require titles to be non-clickbait and without commentary.

2. Pass. There’s a ton of US news communities already. If it doesn’t affect the rest of the world, it’s not world news.

3. MBFC is… Meh? Their definitions of left / right bias seem to be very American and could probably use some adjusting. It’s useful but shouldn’t be the golden rule.

it’s already a “us perspective on the world”. And half of it is “biden says middel east X”. Allow US internal news in an election year and murder the sub.

I think title should approximately match headline, or at least text in the article. Additional commentary is a little annoying to moderate.

US internal news was a bigger problem for Reddit, but I think this community is a bit more international. Maybe blocking US news from US sources? If something is big enough to hit international headlines, it’s probably important.

The current mods are strongly against op-eds, so …

MBFC is really not that great a measure of objectivity, but really I think there is no good measure of objectivity given that the “truth” (e.g. Iraq had WMDs and thus the invasion of Iraq is justified) is fluid.

I don’t think moderators should be the arbitrator of truth in a community, but an arbitrator of what’s offensive/hate speech.

Half the articles here are already “what does the US think about the world?”

I don’t think the restriction on US internal news is actually accomplishing anything useful

One consideration: what about reporting on international relations involving the US?

If the US does/doesn’t fund military aid for Ukraine, is that about Ukraine or the US?

It seems that leaving the title free will only open the door for posters to title it with their opinion on the news article. The usefulness of this sub as a news aggregator will degrade into yet another source of punditry.

It makes sense to have some kind of accountability for the quality of the source as well. MBFC is imperfect, but I’m not sure what other metric you would use in disputes. What do you suggest as a replacement?

Thanks for the unban!

Is that why he’s spamming !politics@lemmy.ml with US internal news lately? The place has been terrible to navigate now.

I just find it ironic that the mods here implemented a rule that forbids spamming of posts by one person. Then this former mod? goes on to do exactly that at !politics@lemmy.ml

Removed by mod

Good luck, I want to dunk on the racist comments but they get removed before I can.

It’s the Internet, you’ll get death threats and abuse for posting a cat gif or saying you enjoy pineapple on pizza.

At the end of the day, these are anonymous accounts and you’ve gone beyond even that and it’s concerning.

Yeah, seems like it. This is true for a lot of online forums (… etc).

I wonder if they will answer that question.

Though, overall they are doing a pretty good job, it would be nice and appropriate to have a more cultural diverse Mod group @WorldNews.

Might be a reason you’re no longer top mod 🤷

I don’t really get why two steady and operational fora need to change.

Why don’t you leave at is; and if necessary, or needed, you might want to create a new @worldpolitics.

And yes, US news, which has an impact on the world, should be worldnews as well. As long it’s not Internal US news, and placed with a correct country tag or title( like some suggested)

So, Tesla calling cars back, is world news , and so is a new nuclear thingy. But not Michigan officer this or that.

What nobody wants is too much one sided news, and dis/ misinformation. And some users don’t even want opinion pieces, because they are not " facts"

I don’t mind Opinions stuff though. As long as the tag & title are clear, anybody can decide for themselves whether to click ot not.

I also agree with the quality over quantity statement somebody else made.

Given the example listed is an article by a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist representing what appears to be exhaustive reporting for a gold standard news organization, I worry that relaxing the requirement will lead to this community turning into a propaganda factory. Their proposal below that anything that “seems credible” be allowed is certainly a recipe for that. MBFC might not catch every case, but it’s good in most cases. It’s good practice to check there for press freedom, news org ownership, and documented history of deceit, which are all objective pieces of evidence rather than the more subjective assessment of bias. They’re also probably way better at this than mods are, no offense. Trying to replicate their database would be an enormous undertaking and the result would probably be poorer quality anyway.

Maintaining a list of evidence-based exceptions is probably more manageable. I suspect that people mostly want this to have more propaganda included as news though.

I’m not sure how a deny/allow list would work on a site by site basis, considering the post in this example was from The New York Times. Would you propose blocking all submissions from NYT?

Some mods have also been deleting comments that add context to mod abuse. @naturalgasbad gave me the full DM context for their “bad faith argument” with a moderator (they did not specify which one), which I posted in a comment in the other pinned thread. It’s a rather childish escalation sequence imo. That comment was deleted for “violating Rule 6”, but I have copied it below for the record:

For the record, naturalgasbad sent me their exchange with the moderator, which stemmed from the moderator in question removing SCMP articles due to “SCMP not meeting reliability guidelines.”

@moderator:

Al Jazeera is reliable when they aren’t talking about things that involve Qatar, that seems to be their specific blind spot.

Kyiv Post and the Telegraph I haven’t specifically looked at, if they get reported I’ll check them out.

@naturalgasbad:

Literally by the standards on SCMP you quoted, they’re unreliable.

@moderator:

SCMP: Mixed for factual reporting due to poor sourcing.

Al Jazeera: Mixed for factual reporting due to failed fact checks that were not corrected and misleading extreme editorial bias that favors Qatar.

You: “bUt ThEyR’e ThE sAmE!!!”

Poor sourcing is poor sourcing. You picked a shitty news agency. Try to do better next time.

(for reference, the Daily Telegraph is also “mixed due to poor sourcing” and Kyiv Post is “mixed due to failed fact checks”)

@naturalgasbad:

MBFC claims SCMP has poor sourcing based on the suggestion that they’re misrepresenting the US import ban on China (the one “failed fact check” according to them). That’s how MBFC gives the commentary on their ratings. It’s based on a sample-size of one. There’s no long-term commentary provided by MBFC because their entire ratings system and commentary is based on sampling a small number of articles (we don’t know which ones) and going off of what goes wrong within that sample.

It’s also reflecting the problem of a US-based bias assessment website: it suggests that ideas within the US Overton window are “correct” will those shared by the Global South are “less correct.”

From what I can tell, some of the problem is what they assume the basic level of skill is for readers. A few weeks ago, I posted a story about SCMP reporting on a research study published in Science. Members of this community failed to find it, despite being told the subject, authors, where it was published, and when it was published. That’s not poor sourcing, but poor research ability on behalf of the readers.

@moderator:

Continuing to argue with a mod who has made their decision will not win you any favors. Keep it up and you’ll get a ban on top of having your shitty links removed, oh, wait, you’ve already been banned for abusing the report feature. I can easily extend that.

@naturalgasbad

But again, MBFC’s entire commentary on SCMP’s issues is reliant on this single sentence from a single article. It’s inherently because MBFC relies on a small sample set of each site to determine a rating because they lack the manpower and the educational foundation to provide comprehensive analysis of a news source. Either way, that article was an editorial, not a news report. (In any cases, SCMP is commenting on Chinese reports written in Chinese, which American readers struggle to find because they don’t speak Chinese).

[The [U.S. import ban] has been taken without evidence being provided.]

Unlike SCMP’s reporting, Polygraph is unable to source the article this claim can be found in. From the articles I can find that, SCMP is comnenting based on this statement:

[The ban creates a “rebuttable presumption” that any Xinjiang goods were tainted by the use of forced labour – a “guilty until proven innocent” principle that effectively inverts US customs laws related to forced labour]

In fact, Ad Fontes’ media bias chart considers SCMP to be “reliable” (reliability score of 41.56 on a 0-64 scale) and “centrist” (bias score of -3.3 on a scale of -42 - 42). This is on par with Al Jazeera (41.65, -6.71) and New York Times (41.92, -7.96) and better than Washington Post (38.08, -8.69). (Ad Fontes also has issues, but your obsession with MBFC in particular is a little odd).

@moderator:

7 day ban. Want to go for 30?

@naturalgasbad:

I cited Ad Fontes. Feel free to criticize their methodology.

@moderator:

30 days. Keep going.

@naturalgasbad:

So… Do you not like Ad Fontes’ methodology, then?

@moderator:

And permaban. Good luck on your next account.

Children, please stop fighting.

IMO bad apples don’t suddenly get reformed when rules change. If they’re willing to go on power trips, they’re going to keep going on power trips lol

Let’s see what happens—unsubscribing until I see positive change.

Ah soak so pro-Palestinian, good choice.

In general, a lot of “news” ends up being bullshit spun around a single organization or think tank’s position under the guise of independent journalism.

Welcome to American news.

u just posted an article that “presumes” idf is stealing organs. no real evidence. this smell of hypocracy is it not.

Removed by mod

I would expect that that the mod that is not on rotation should not be doing mod work like banning users etc. if there are issues with mods switching to anonymous accounts and not being banned, when the mod moved off rotation, the post can still be reported and a more objective mod will review the post/user.
if every time the anonymous user is banned and the problem mod rotates in and unbans a user, we would be able to identify the problem mod after a few unbanning