A short introduction: This is an alt account. I'm a moderator here who has been unhappy with the state of news/political discussions here for a long time. The admins have kindly given me the opportunity to see if we can make some improvement the community here.
We will be doing some major revision of the rules left by the previous moderators and will use discussions in this thread as feedback on the direction we should take our community.
This will be an open discussion on the state of our community, the rules and our moderation practices. Feel free to give your inputs.
My goal is to foster thoughtful discussion in our community, and not let this place be a replica of r/politics.
First order of business, immediate rule change.
On !politics@lemmy.world, effectively immediately, we will no longer restrict political discussion to the politics of the United States of America. Discussion regarding of the state of politics from around the world is now welcome.
I will leave this pinned for 1-2 weeks for our team to take feedback and make our proposals then.
I think the challenge is going to be separating World News from Politics. Articles will need to have some kind of political angle to be appropriate here.
So, for example, my submission of Daihatsu getting caught faking safety reports for 30 years, World News, nothing about that is political.
Putin supporter falling out a window? (AGAIN?) I could see that being in one or the other or both.
I agree, but I also think we're going to have people complaining that there are too many people posting about American politics. We'll see. Maybe the tag thing would be a good idea. I also don't think, as a U.S. resident, that a community for U.S. politics would be a bad idea. I don't know how many people would use it at this point though.
It really depends on the balance of posts. It's possible I would migrate to something more US focused but I'd have to see whether I'm unhappy with the ratio after the change. I don't want to keep myself ignorant of the rest of the world, but if I can't comment on a majority of posts because I know nothing about that country then it's not really a community I fit into.
But I recognize that's a me problem and not a y'all problem.
News should be news, I would like this community to focus on political discussions, editorials, and commentaries from a variety of viewpoints, if that makes sense.
And to be frank, I don't think topics like "Trump smells bad" is good political discussion, which is what I would aim to avoid.
What about discussion of his mental instability as it relates to fitness for office? Because I've heard, from people who worked with him, that his smell is caused by stimulant addiction related incontinence. Which would make it an issue of mental instability rather than hygiene.
Sorry, lemm.ee was not federating correct until now.
I think it is OK to discuss in this context, however, given that the evidence is really circumstantial at best, it could be hard to keep it on this track of discussion without muchbsupporting evidence to back it up.
I hear you. I've seen a lot of this type of discussion around Trump go more into outright shaming and old man smell territory without addressing the actual causes, which, as you said, is all anecdotal evidence.