Overseas News

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A place for Australians and friends to share news from the other countries. Like all communities here, we discuss topics from the Australian perspective.

If you're looking for a global /c/worldnews instead, search for the many options on federated instances.

Rules

Follow the aussie.zone rules
We are not a generic World News clone. News must be relevant to Australians and our region. Obvious disregard will earn an warning and then a ban if continued. (If an article isn't from an Oceanian news outlet, and it doesn’t mention Australia, then it’s probably off-topic)
Leave seppocentrism at the door. If you don't know what that means, you're not ready to post here yet.
Avoid editorialising headlines. Opinions go in the comments, not the post.

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

lodion@aussie.zone

deadcat@aussie.zone

eureka@aussie.zone

[META] Participation by non-Australians? Should we change this comm's display name? (aussie.zone)

submitted 3 weeks ago by zero_gravitas@aussie.zone to c/worldnews@aussie.zone

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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)

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[–] Nath@aussie.zone 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Sorry for a slow reply - I'd say it was a busy day, but in truth it has been a busy weekend/month even.

To answer your question: yes. We can set a community local-only. That's probably a step too far, though. I'll have to play with it to be sure, but I think if you set a community local-only, it isn't even visible to non aussie.zone members.

I'll have to have a think about it. Maybe a rule that goes something like 'if it is obvious from your comment that you assume USA is the centre of the world, it'll be removed'. Then we can report/remove such comments with a simple 'rule 3' comment etc. let them figure out what that means.

[–] maniacalmanicmania@aussie.zone 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

I forgot there were two overlapping issues raised: 1. other instance users commenting and 2. other instance users posting.

Your suggestion seems reasonable and manageable for issue 1. I like it. What do you think @zero_gravitas@aussie.zone?

I think with issue 2 it seems like az visitors from other instances tend to work out their posts to worldnews don't get as much traffic as other worldnews comms and then they move on so maybe that issue manages itself already.