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)
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.
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 😜
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.
The bloody thing keeps rotating! Such is life.