Hello from the mod team!

First of all: Thanks to all members on their behaviors. You’ve been great! Please keep that spirit.

At the same time, we’d like to announce that we have updated the rules for this community, based on experience gained, recent events, and your feedback.

What’s new?

The following is a summary, along with some reasoning. The full rules are in the sidebar of the community, as always. :)

  • We are clarifying that this is an English-language community. If you create a post linking to a non-English source, please provide a full-text (automated) translation. This rule is a result of existing moderation practice where we already deleted some stray non-English comments and asked for the translation of a foreign-language link. (Nonetheless, we do love all European languages.)
  • When posting a link to paywalled articles, we’re now asking you to also link to an archived version of the article.
  • Infographics must now include a source and a date (year). This rule is a result of the critical feedback we got on a few infographics that were not exactly wrong, but definitely outdated.
  • We are clarifiying the rules regarding acceptable behavior in discussion: be kind & argue in good faith. These rules more or less explicitly lay out existing moderation practice.

Finally: Want to join the mod team? Please apply — we’d be especially happy to have more mods with a feddit.org account, since mod queue federation is a bit lacking currently.

  • plactagonic@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    6·
    17 days ago

    Sorry, for linking some non English articles. I got some feedback from other community that it is fine (even thanked me for it, that it makes the content more diverse).

    I like what @tymoty@f.cz does, he tries to make multilingual conversation about eu and other stuff on his blog and mastodon.

    • cabbage@piefed.social
      8·
      17 days ago

      I think a diversity of sources is absolutely great, especially since there’s no reason to believe English speaking media to be particularly good at covering Europe.

      Personally I’d rather use the built-in translation in FireFox rather than Google translate, if possible.

      Maybe an idea could be to tag non-English content (title [language]), and to provide a machine translated link in the body of the post?

      • federal reverse@feddit.orgOPMEnglish
        5·
        17 days ago

        The issue with that is it is extremely browser-dependent. Hence asking for the submitter to include a translation.

        • cabbage@piefed.social
          3·
          17 days ago

          Yeah, I misread the rules as asking the link to be to a translated version, which is not what they say. So I think this is a good solution. And I think people are right to encourage non-English sources. :)

    • federal reverse@feddit.orgOPMEnglish
      2·
      17 days ago

      No reason to apologize! It is indeed great to have content that is non-English in the original. And you’re also right, being stuck with British/American sources + Euronews and Euractiv isn’t the best situation.

      So your efforts are definutely appreciated.

      • plactagonic@sopuli.xyzEnglish
        2·
        17 days ago

        Loads of interesting news are covered only nationally. What I linked was really fresh and probably not interesting for foreign media but because it was related to earlier post that got some traction I just linked what I found.

    • lulztard@feddit.orgEnglish
      1·
      17 days ago

      Skimmed over it, doesn’t look like the European hypetrain I’ve gotten to know yurop. But it’s also not a sub solely about Russian propaganda, so … Looking good, I guess.

  • Meldrik@lemmy.wtfEnglish
    4·
    17 days ago

    Infographics must now include a source and a date (year). This rule is a result of the critical feedback we got on a few infographics that were not exactly wrong, but definitely outdated.

    I’m sorry 🤭

  • Ooops@feddit.orgEnglish
    3·
    17 days ago

    We are clarifiying the rules regarding acceptable behavior in discussion: be kind & argue in good faith.

    I have seen that idea so many times over the years, yet the simple fact is: it does never ever work.

    There will always be one side actually arguing (in good faith) and one side reporting every opinion they don’t like. And wheather it’s mods just becoming tired, subconciously influenced by the fact how often some people got reported already or just a simple matter of statistics with a lot of reporting… in the end the former group will get punished and stop to contribute while the latter doesn’t give a fuck and will just circumvent the rules with a new account should their bullshit backfire for once.

    TL;DR: hard rules work, wishy-washy nonsense like “be nice to each other” doesn’t.

    • federal reverse@feddit.orgOPMEnglish
      1·
      16 days ago
      • I have no expectation that the new rules are perfect. No doubt there a traps we will fall into.
      • The full rules are a little longer than the summary above.
      • For the most part, human communication is pretty hard to regulate using absolute rules.
      • JubilantJaguar@lemmy.worldEnglish
        32·
        17 days ago

        EDIT. Sorry, this comment was intended for someone else but whatever. The general point stands.

        Disagree somewhat. The gold standard of communities is the techie forum Hacker News. Even even after years of existence, and repeated influxes of the great unwashed from the R-site, the quality of conversation on HN is still astonishingly high.

        The magic formula appears to be (1) a simple mandate for participants to show an interest and assume good faith, (2) a forgiving attitude to transgression which involves privately asking miscreants to behave themselves, and (3) an activist moderator who is always there to jump in and push conversations gently back on the rails.

        Admittedly, Hacker News has specialist subject matter, which always raises the quality of a forum. But even its politics-focused discussions are generally civil, so something else is clearly going on. Most people agree that the moderator there is unusually effective, but the other elements also seem to be playing a role.

        It should not really be surprising. Decent leadership, assuming good intentions, forgiveness, reform rather than retributive punishment - these things tend to result in better communities in the offline world too.

    • adr1an@programming.devMEnglish
      1·
      17 days ago

      Users will keep being users. Since we are users ourselves, there will always be some we like more, some we like less. And some, are just toxic. This rule is simply saying their behaviours are not welcome.

      You’re right. There’s always a rotten apple. I think the rule mostly points toward a level of politeness we strive to keep. It’s like virtual signaling, it works in other ways. Some may take the hint when they read that.

      Anyway, you’re just being cynical. And I don’t mean to offend you by giving adjectives. It’s just that I found interesting to see your comment jump on that rule when it could also be said on pretty much any other rule (e.g. spam)

      • Ooops@feddit.orgEnglish
        1·
        16 days ago

        when it could also be said on pretty much any other rule (e.g. spam)

        Spam is much easier to evaluate objectively. Feeling insulted isn’t. Especially when some people make it their whole personality to feel insulted by any opposing viewpoint or opinion. Which then leads to constantly getting reported for not sharing their views, which leads to more scrutiny if anything you said could actually be perceived as insulting. Add mods becoming tired or just plain old statistics… you can probably follow my train of thought.

        PS: And as any other cynic will tell you… that’s not cynical but just speaking from experience.

  • Donut@leminal.spaceEnglish
    3·
    17 days ago

    Nice, these changes / clarifications look really helpful to be able to have accurate and meaningful discussions. Thank you!

  • Nighed@sffa.communityEnglish
    2·
    17 days ago

    Even though I only speak English, I’m happy for foreign language articles/comments to be posted (as long as the language is correctly marked), is it mostly a moderation problem?

    Are there actually equivalent communities for other languages around?