I can’t seem to find anything in a sidebar or sticky thread that talks about the moderation / rules of the news community. I’m very interested in coming to this community to learn about news, but right now it seems whats being posted tends to be relatively low (lower?) quality.

Examples of common rules

  • Use the same titles as the article itself
  • No blog spam, link to the source
  • Political news, should go to the political community
  • No dupes of same topic

As an example, take a look at other news aggregators that focus on news.

My goal here isn’t tell people what to do but its start a conversation on the topic.

  • banner80@fedia.io
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    8
    ·
    1 year ago

    I’m a mod at /truenews @reddit

    It’s hard to keep a healthy news sub because of so much polarization, and so much subpar stuff that’s called “news”. I can point to 2 successful examples that handled it differently.

    At truenews https://www.reddit.com/r/truenews/We simply ask for quality sources. You can read the sidebar for the rules. Basically we demand that all news posts are actually from reputable news sources. We provide an explanation of what that means and tons of valid examples. Then we mod to remove non-valid sources, and work with posters to help them understand the rules. If a user is having trouble getting used to the rules, we ask them to stick to the 2 dozen recommended sources we provided.

    Another example is neutralnews https://www.reddit.com/r/neutralnews/This is a very clean sub because it went a very strict way. Not only are all posts expected to be from valid sources, but any comment is expected to contribute something useful (so no jokes or venting), and all claims in comments have to be substantiated. This sub is very hard to moderate and it can also be hard on participants because so many comments get deleted until users get the hang of the rules. But the benefit is that it enables real discussion from any angle of politics because people are blocked from repeating party lines and memes, and instead have to argue their point with sources. Some of the most useful political discussions I’ve seen have happened in this sub, due to the requirement for good faith arguments with sources.

    • HeapOfDogs@beehaw.orgOP
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      3
      ·
      1 year ago

      Thanks for sharing. I was hoping people with hands on modding experience would talk a bit about what they have seen. It’s interesting to hear all the different viewpoints.