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)

  • Aussiemandeus@aussie.zone
    6·
    24 days ago

    I’m confused by the whole premise. We want world news that’s relevant to Australia?

    Could we not call it “Pacific Specific”

    • Nath@aussie.zone
      8·
      24 days ago

      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.

      • Aussiemandeus@aussie.zone
        7·
        24 days ago

        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

        • Baku@aussie.zoneEnglish
          6·
          24 days ago

          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

      • eureka@aussie.zoneMEnglish
        2·
        23 days ago

        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.

        • zero_gravitas@aussie.zoneOPEnglish
          3·
          23 days ago

          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.

    • Gorgritch_Umie_Killa@aussie.zone
      2·
      7 days ago

      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.

        • Gorgritch_Umie_Killa@aussie.zone
          1·
          6 days ago

          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!