I’ve noticed a lot of comments (and posts) from non-Australians in here recently. For sake of brevity, when I say ‘Australian’/‘Aussie’ here, I mean anyone who does live or has lived in Australia.
It defeats the whole point of having a separate comm for ‘world news from an Australian perspective’ if we have high levels of participation (votes/comments/posts) from non-Australians. It becomes just the same as any general world news comm.
I was thinking one measure we could take would be to change the display name of the comm to ‘World News for Aussies’. It’s succinct, clear, and may discourage participation by non-Australians to some degree.
Another matter is posts by non-Australians. Obviously, if we reduced voting participation by non-Aussies, it’s less of an issue if we have posts by non-Aussies - the comm would still largely be ‘from an Australian perspective’ by virtue of voting selection (although it would still be annoying if, like me, you mainly browse local by ‘new’).
That said, when 13 of the last 20 posts in the comm are from a user that appears not to be in/from Australia, maybe there’s a problem to be addressed. It doesn’t help that this poster has a clear and consistent agenda.
I’m obviously not proposing we start checking IDs or anything, but we could at least have a rule for participation only by people who do live or have lived in Australia. Then, if a problem becomes noticeable, the mods can send direct messages or take action where they judge it reasonable.
Interested to hear thoughts from users and mods (@lodion@aussie.zone @deadcat@aussie.zone)
The communities I set up accounted for this. Eg: the Music community is called “Rage” - a reference that only an Australian would get. So, when someone searches for “Music” communities, they’ll never find ours.
It also means that our music community is pretty dead, though. Our TV community “On the Telly” is likewise a ghost town.
I’m not sure what approach is better. Make it easily findable for non-australians (“World News”)? Or keep it local, but with references that mean you basically need to already know about the community to participate in it.
As for moderation: let me know if you want to throw your hat in.
Eg: the Music community is called “Rage”
tbh I found this a bit off-putting. It’s not clear to me whether or not the sort of music I’m interested in should go in that community or not. It’s not the kind of music Rage itself would ever play. Having a specific name like that doesn’t just limit it to people who know what Rage is, it also implicitly limits the type of content in a way a generic name like “AusMusic” would not.
Ha! I’ve just made a comment admitting that I’m a bit out of touch with what’s popular these days. When I was a teen, Rage played literally anything. Has that changed?
The intent was as I said - simply to come up with a name that was about music from an Australian perspective. I remember tossing a few names around, and people agreed that Rage was a good choice. This would have been about July/August last year.
When I was a teen, Rage played literally anything.
Anything? That’s one of my favourite recent pieces of Australian music. And not something I could see Rage playing. Though maybe I’m wrong.
Eg: the Music community is called “Rage” - a reference that only an Australian would get. So, when someone searches for “Music” communities, they’ll never find ours.
On the other hand, I just assumed it was specifically about the Rage program and overlooked it. ¯_(ツ)_/¯
I’d consider adding something to the name, like “Rage - Aussie Music”, which it would help discovery for better and worse but at least make it clear we don’t want the whole world promoting junk.
As for moderation: let me know if you want to throw your hat in.
I can throw my hat in to try and make it more of an aussie-focused comm (there are some easy wins, like missing sidebar, no deletion of clearly irrelevant posts, etc.) although ultimately, I suspect one of the big problems is a generic Lemmy news poster can type “world news” into the community field in the post form and this place shows up the same as the rest, so hopefully adjusting the comm title will help, instead of needing a full id change (e.g. /c/aussieworldnews).
I hereby dub thee “Eureka - Moderator of the World news!”
I’m open to the idea of renaming the Community. There’s no Admin tool to do that, but I expect that a couple of edits to the database will permit it to happen. I feel like we need a flow chart for this: Do we rename the community?
If yes, Rename would be preferred to abandoning it and leaving over a year of posts behind. So I’ll want to spin up a test community/rename it in the database before trying that approach on World News.That’s a problem for future Nath - and only if we go ahead and rename the Community.
Moderator of the World, mmm I like the sounda that!
Definitely a future problem – there’s no rush and we’d want to find a good one before trying a db change. Federation could be an issue so can’t hurt to ask devs before tinkering. Honestly, I think just a title change should be enough. Seems like it works for /c/news
I’m confused by the whole premise. We want world news that’s relevant to Australia?
Could we not call it “Pacific Specific”
I don’t hate that name.
But I always felt that aussie.zone should be Australasia centric instead of aussie centric. This was a thought before the Kiwis got their instance going though.
Yeah, would help draw more people perhaps but it is nice to have an instance where you feel at home.
Yeah, i’s not really thinking for building numbers. Really just because its the kiwis, Papuans and the rest…
So, you’re comment made me look again at what the continent actually is. And i have become a bit confused. So, i meant the continent including Australia. Whether thats Oceania or Australia (continent) i don’t know, but i think its definitely not Australasia, so anytime i said australasia i of course was refering to the best of the 7 continents!
I think the issue is more that we get people in the community who assume everyone reading it are from the USA. Sort of like the default behaviour on Reddit. It isn’t that we don’t want participation from other instances.
Ah yeah, that shits me hard.
I saw a great word for it the other day, i just cant remember what it was.
It was insulting to Americans who did this in a way that made them realise there might be more to the world.
SeppoCentric
Pisses me right off, too. Fun tip: do it back to them. Assume they know what a Ballarat is. Even better if there’s a way they could possibly misinterpret it as being whatever their version is. The hate it, and will then 9 times out of 10 rant at you about why it’s justified to assume everybody reading [insert post from the other side of the world] is American
Needlessly dickish, antagonistic, and petty, sure, but sometimes people don’t realise how annoying their behaviour is until they are on the receiving end of it. See also: eshays and drongos who blast shitty hip hop on the train
E: pissed to pisses
Fuck me i was flying from brissvegas back to Darwin the other week and there was a bloke doing that on the fucking plane.
The airline staff came by 3 times to stop him. Fucking tweeker cunt
Wait what exactly was he doing that he got stopped three times?
Playing music out loud on the plane for us all to hear
Assume they know what a Ballarat is
You assume I know where Ballarat is.
Damn southerners.
I think the issue is more that we get people in the community who assume everyone reading it are from the USA.
True. We also get users like 0x815 who simply consider /c/worldnews as an arbitrary audience for their propagandising. To them, it is just another /c/worldnews to dump a news feed onto. It’s not even US centrism, it’s total apathy, objectification of our community.
Yeah, I didn’t want to name names (even though it was pretty clear), but I agree with everything you’ve outlined here. “Objectification of our community” is a particularly good articulation.
FYI deadcat hasn’t been around in ages. You’re one of the more active posters so you might want to mod the comm.
I think ‘world news from an Australian perspective’ is a bit subjective but not objectionable. I don’t think restricting posts from ‘people who do live or have lived in Australia’ would work or is necessarily desirable.
I think having an active mod who could propose and add a couple of rules about posts and comm conduct is the first step to cultivating the kind of comm you want to see and participate in without being heavy handed.
I’m going to be around a lot more often going forward. Sorry!
Ooof. Their last post
I’m going to be around a lot more often going forward. Sorry!
:(
On other sites, I’ve done this a few times. Promise to be more active online and then end up doing the opposite. It’s unfortunately common.
I’ve definitely seen that many times from YouTubers.
I’m in favor of the general sentiment, though am pretty agnostic about specific implementation details. The display name change sure sounds low-downside high-upside though!
A month ago, the aussie.zone founder said, in reply to a proposal to make an /c/AskLemmy comm here:
Maybe AskAnAussie? Or something like that. Want to keep the communities here Australia focused.
And I agree with this perspective, with respect to federation. This is a themed instance based around Aussies and Aussie topics, there are literally hundreds of other instances which can and do pick up general global topics.
My question is: why should we host a /c/WorldNews at all? What unique value does it have by being “for Aussies”? How would that change the posts in the comm?
Is there any reason why international news (not world news) specifically affecting Australia or Australians should be separated from other local comms like /c/news and /c/AustralianPolitics? e.g., news about a conference between officials from Australia and Pacific islands, or incidents involving Australian tourists. It would be good to hear from /c/news and /c/AustralianPolitics users before assuming, but if so, we can simply dismantle this comm and take the relevant parts to /c/news. Easy solution.
My question is: why should we host a /c/WorldNews at all? What unique value does it have by being “for Aussies”?
I think there’s value in being able to find world news that other Australians find interesting and discuss it with other Australians.
World news often has different implications for different countries, and being able to raise those points (without them being buried under a pile of other comments) and discuss them with other people who share your context is something that I think people find useful.
At the most basic version, that this comm is “News from outside of Australia” does provide value in that it won’t include news stories about Australia. Also, many ‘world news’ comms are defined as ‘news from outside the US’, which Australians probably do want to see and discuss in a world news comm.
So I wouldn’t be in favour of dismantling the comm in any case.
How would that change the posts in the comm?
I actually think it would stop the comm from changing. Until recently the posts and discussion in the comm have been Australia-centric by virtue of most engagement coming from people on this instance. There’s been some examples I’ve noticed lately where that hasn’t been the case, which is what prompted me to write this post.
Is there any reason why international news (not world news) specifically affecting Australia or Australians should be separated from other local comms like /c/news and /c/AustralianPolitics? e.g., news about a conference between officials from Australia and Pacific islands, or incidents involving Australian tourists.
Yeah, I already post that kind of stuff in those places.
Maybe call it “non-Australian news”. Those searching for Australia based topics would find it, but it’s for news that’s not about Australia.
I’m an ocker but this post and comments is coming off pretty rough. Feels like you’ll want an echo chamber not a place of discussion.
I’m an ocker but this post and comments is coming off pretty rough.
Yeah, I was not wholly comfortable while writing this post - it’s against my instincts to be exclusory. Sometimes, however, exclusory spaces are helpful for certain purposes.
Feels like you’ll want an echo chamber not a place of discussion.
I hope I can reassure you that this is definitely not my intention.
What it boils down to is:
What is !worldnews@aussie.zone for? Why does aussie.zone have its own ‘world news’ comm? Why don’t aussie.zone users just subscribe to any other world news comm?
For me, I saw this as having been answered by the sidebar in !australia@aussie.zone , which lists !worldnews@aussie.zone with the text “World News (from an Australian Perspective)”.
I interpreted that as meaning that this comm was intended as a space for Australians (in the broadest sense possible) to post news of interest to themselves, and to discuss it (largely) from an Australian perspective.
In any case, I certainly wouldn’t want there to be any hard-and-fast rules or strict enforcement!
I suggested the simple measure of adding ‘for Aussies’ to the display name as it’s a simple way to note the purpose of the space with the hope that people will just self-regulate with the purpose of the comm in mind.
If someone from another country jumps in the comments to explain some news story for us, that’s great! That’s adding to the purpose of ‘world news for aussies’ by helping an Australian audience understand certain issues abroad.
Regarding submissions, though, I think there could be some use - in terms of achieving the purpose of the comm - in a guideline that submissions should be made by users with some meaningful connection to Australia. Because voting can’t be moderated, but posting can.
As @eureka@aussie.zone noted in a comment, one specific user is currently just dumping copy-pasted submissions they’ve posted in a dozen other places in this comm without any thought or respect to the purpose of the community, or even that it is a community. I believe the comm would be better without their submissions.
I don’t think it’s coincidence that this user has no meaningful connection with Australia, or even conversational engagement with this instance and comm.
Perhaps, though, that specific issue would be better addressed with a general ‘over-posting’ rule to be enforced with discretion.
Maybe my interpretation of the purpose of this comm is incorrect or not supported by the community. Maybe its purpose is really just as simple as ‘News from outside of Australia’ and as long as that bar is met, people are happy with it.
Personally, though, I think that guiding this comm towards Australia-centric discussion, posting and voting would make it a more unique and valuable forum. I think it already is that to a fair degree, but some of the post-flooding and comment sections lately have been otherwise, which of course is what prompted me to write the original post to begin with.
Thank you for your explanation.
To me world news is just news from around the world, I want facts not opinions. An Australian perspective will happen in AZ comms just by manner of most members are from straya.
Anyway you just turn the phone upside down to get our perspective dontcha 😜
An Australian perspective will happen in AZ comms just by manner of most members are from straya.
That’s a reasonable theory, although unfortunately it’s not playing out that way in this comm. One of the most active post makers does not bring (nor care about) an Australian perspective, so half the posts are just China news&opinions from Taiwan news sites, or Europe-centric topics unrelated to us at all. Most AZ members aren’t making new posts every day, nor do I suspect we’d bother posting fluff daily for the sake of matching their pace, so most members being strayan isn’t enough to make it happen.
Anyway you just turn the phone upside down to get our perspective dontcha 😜
The bloody thing keeps rotating! Such is life.
Is is possible to only allow aussie.zone users to post to this community @lodion@aussie.zone, @Nath@aussie.zone? If so that might be the simplest solution. The sidebar could be updated to mention the restriction along the lines of ‘A place for aussie.zone members to share and discuss news and events from around the world’. What do you think @zero_gravitas@aussie.zone? It’s not full proof but it would place an extra hurdle in front of anyone who does not have an aussie.zone account and who wants to post multiple seemingly unconnected items a day to this community.
Unless something has changed with the newest Lemmy release, then no. The setting to block/permit instances is site-wide.
Has Local only community been implemented? That might suffice for now. If and/or when finer grained community settings are implemented the community could be federated again.
Sorry for a slow reply - I’d say it was a busy day, but in truth it has been a busy weekend/month even.
To answer your question: yes. We can set a community local-only. That’s probably a step too far, though. I’ll have to play with it to be sure, but I think if you set a community local-only, it isn’t even visible to non aussie.zone members.
I’ll have to have a think about it. Maybe a rule that goes something like ‘if it is obvious from your comment that you assume USA is the centre of the world, it’ll be removed’. Then we can report/remove such comments with a simple ‘rule 3’ comment etc. let them figure out what that means.
I forgot there were two overlapping issues raised: 1. other instance users commenting and 2. other instance users posting.
Your suggestion seems reasonable and manageable for issue 1. I like it. What do you think @zero_gravitas@aussie.zone?
I think with issue 2 it seems like az visitors from other instances tend to work out their posts to worldnews don’t get as much traffic as other worldnews comms and then they move on so maybe that issue manages itself already.
