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?
I think you’re pretty much on the money as far as sources go (and on the matter of letting things grow organically while it’s still a small community) - something specific about multiple posts though:
I think @Noit@lemm.ee or @NuPNuA@lemm.ee has been in touch with you about long-running megathreads already - in the politics sphere, at least, these do tend to absorb a lot of the “oh god what’s Suella done now” and “but why can’t we election now boohoo” chatter. That in turn tends to mean that little things and breaking news naturally gravitate into them, which helps keeps things tidy.
As an added bonus, as a community grows, they also serve a really useful purpose in letting people form a picture of who the people on the other side of the screen are, and keep the pixels humanised, if you see what I mean - which is particularly important when discussing Serious Business like politics, of course.
So in conclusion, I think you should do megathreads in the politics space; thank you for attending my Thread Talk.
Thread Talk, love it.
Yes, they were in touch a little while ago. I can’t remember if we discussed megathreads! Once things have settled in more, it would definitely be good to talk again.