We’re currently working on changing the rules of this community, because we feel there are some gaps in the current rules.

This is what we have so far:

    1. Be nice! Don’t personally attack someone else. Racism and bigotry are not tolerated. Don’t use offensive language, swearing is allowed within reason. Trolling is also not allowed, go back to reddit for that.
    1. Sources should be as unbiased and reliable as possible Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion.
    1. No bots, spam or self-promotion Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.
    1. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title is wrong / incorrect, the post will be deleted.
    1. Post should be news Don’t post obvious opinion pieces, very dated news or things that are simply not news. Posts will be removed at the mods discretion.
    1. No duplicate posts If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.

We are looking for any feedback you guys might have, including grammer/spell checks (:

If you agree with the rules, they will go in effect in 24 hours.

Thank you!

  • Hurts@lemmy.world
    6·
    1 year ago

    https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/media-bias-chart

    This is the chart I sent to the mods over a discord message.

    Basically, anything in the middle three columns would be “preferred” and the furthest left and right columns would be “not-preferred”. Again, stuff from the furthest left and right columns are not subject to instant removal and some could still fly if you can’t find another site posting the content, but generally, it isn’t that difficult to find another source that wrote an article about the same topic.

    It would be ridiculous to think there are totally “non-biased” sites, the goal here is really just to not have constant posts from Fox News or the Huffington Post, let alone sites that veer even further in either direction, with the endgame being that this doesn’t wind up being a massive echo chamber of a community for any particular political leaning.

    Edit - Open to suggestions about said chart, and other sites users think fall into any of the categories

    • orclev@lemmy.world
      3·
      1 year ago

      It concerns me somewhat that that chart doesn’t consider accuracy at all merely whose biases stories most align with. There’s been a major problem with subtle and sometimes not so subtle lies being pushed in various news sources. The fact they give OAN any kind of semi-good rating at all is alarming as OAN regularly runs entirely made up stories with either no factual basis or which are at best a series of rumors tied together with editorialization and inference. There needs to be a much stronger delineation between opinion pieces and reporting and far too many news sites blur those lines.

      • Hurts@lemmy.world
        11·
        1 year ago

        https://www.allsides.com/media-bias/fact-check-bias-chart

        The same website does offer a fact-check chart as well. Could possibly cross reference it with the bias chart. However, the plan is a blacklist rather than a whitelist, so most sources are going to be okay, at least to start with. If anything becomes a problem it can certainly be blacklisted quickly once that bot is up.

    • ryathal@sh.itjust.works
      21·
      1 year ago

      That’s not a bad chart, the general problem is maintaining a balance. You’re probably better off straight banning anything in the far left/right columns, because once you let a few through it swings fast.

      The other problem that frequently happens is not treating both sides biased sources equally. If you make an automated message about potentially biased sources, you need to use it on all sources from each side, not equal numbers of sources. That chart has almost twice as many left leaning publishers as right leaning. This is important, because there are simply more left leaning publications (at least at the large publisher level). It doesn’t mean you have to allow NewsMax for balance, it means moderators need to be aware that most posts are going to be left leaning by numbers, which will create a feeling of favoring left sources.

      • Hurts@lemmy.world
        2·
        1 year ago

        The other problem that frequently happens is not treating both sides biased sources equally.

        This is of the utmost importance to me (us). It’s definitely not going to be a situation where we say “Oh we blacklisted a source from the right, we have to hit one from the left now”. If a source is credible and not incredibly biased, it will always be allowed.