Hi all. So I made:

!usa@ponder.cat

The thinking is that there isn’t a good home for non-political US news on Lemmy. There are three obvious communities, but one is on lemmy.world, one is defederated from lemmy.world, and one is on an instance that I find just slightly off-putting.

My questions are two:

  • Is this useful? I assume I’m not the only one who feels like this is needed.
  • How do people feel about a news+politics community, versus a strictly non-political news community? There are plenty of good places for US politics. I could go either way, but personally I tend to like the news+politics combination, and I think a lot of the big news in the US for the next few years is going to be political.

Let me know your thoughts, have a good weekend.

  • Admiral Patrick@dubvee.orgEnglish
    11·
    1 day ago

    How do people feel about a news+politics community, versus a strictly non-political news community?

    Sadly, there’s too much overlap between news and politics. It would ultimately be the mods’ call whether an article is news but has a political tone versus an article that’s strictly politics. e.g. “T*ump says [blah blah blah]”. If it’s going to impact people regardless of politics, then I guess it would be news. If it’s just posturing / brain fart that gets reported, perhaps it should go to politics.

    That said, I generally do prefer politics to be separate from news unless it’s something concrete and newsworthy.

    Also, I am not a fan of the icon you chose for that community lol.

    Is this useful?

    I’ve been pretty happy with !news@lemmy.world for the most part, but I welcome more as long as they take a solid stance against misinformation and agendas.

    My only reservations, currently, with !news@lemmy.world is the LW-wide recent moderation policy changes which could tie the mods’ hands with regard to removing misinformation. Note that policy has been rolled back pending a re-write, and I’m unclear if the 2.0 version is going to be as boneheaded as 1.0 was.

    FWIW, I used to run a US news community on my own instance, but I archived it when the one on LW updated their rules to my satisfaction. At the time, there was mostly just worldnews at ml which was (and likely continues to be) a shitshow, so I was filling the gap.

    What I like about LW’s main ‘news’ community is that they:

    • Require post titles to match the headline
    • Require posts to be to actual news outlets and not blogs, press releases, opinion pieces, etc,
    • Disallow non-credible sources
    • Require the actual article URL to be the post link rather than an archive link or link shortener to prevent tabloid trash headlines carrying the same weight as reputable ones.

    My local news community went a bit further by disallowing highly biased sources, but I was willing to let go of that requirement and refer people to LW’s news since it meant less mod work for me (allowing me more time for other projects).

    My hope is to see similar measures taken by any new news/politics communities as those are very good measures to prevent dis-/misinformation.

    • PhilipTheBucket@ponder.catOPEnglish
      5·
      1 day ago

      Also, I am not a fan of the icon you chose for that community lol.

      GET READY FOR THE FUTURE BABY, IT’S HERE, LOOK IT IN ITS EYES

      I’ve been pretty happy with !news@lemmy.world for the most part, but I welcome more as long as they take a solid stance against misinformation and agendas.

      Yeah, agreed. It being on LW is literally the only thing wrong with it.

      That said, I generally do prefer politics to be separate from news unless it’s something concrete and newsworthy.

      I think you are right. I switched it to be non-political news only. That’s the specific niche that is missing, there is no shortage of places for US political content.

      Edit: Also, I edited the rules to include some of your excellent suggestions.