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)

  • 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.