this post was submitted on 02 Dec 2024
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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
  1. Follow the aussie.zone rules
  2. 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)
  3. Leave seppocentrism at the door. If you don't know what that means, you're not ready to post here yet.
  4. Avoid editorialising headlines. Opinions go in the comments, not the post.

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

Is is possible to only allow aussie.zone users to post to this community @lodion@aussie.zone, @Nath@aussie.zone? If so that might be the simplest solution. The sidebar could be updated to mention the restriction along the lines of 'A place for aussie.zone members to share and discuss news and events from around the world'. What do you think @zero_gravitas@aussie.zone? It's not full proof but it would place an extra hurdle in front of anyone who does not have an aussie.zone account and who wants to post multiple seemingly unconnected items a day to this community.

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

Unless something has changed with the newest Lemmy release, then no. The setting to block/permit instances is site-wide.

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

Has Local only community been implemented? That might suffice for now. If and/or when finer grained community settings are implemented the community could be federated again.

[–] 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.

[–] Nath@aussie.zone 0 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

The communities I set up accounted for this. Eg: the Music community is called "Rage" - a reference that only an Australian would get. So, when someone searches for "Music" communities, they'll never find ours.

It also means that our music community is pretty dead, though. Our TV community "On the Telly" is likewise a ghost town.

I'm not sure what approach is better. Make it easily findable for non-australians ("World News")? Or keep it local, but with references that mean you basically need to already know about the community to participate in it.

As for moderation: let me know if you want to throw your hat in.

[–] eureka@aussie.zone 1 points 5 days ago (1 children)

As for moderation: let me know if you want to throw your hat in.

I can throw my hat in to try and make it more of an aussie-focused comm (there are some easy wins, like missing sidebar, no deletion of clearly irrelevant posts, etc.) although ultimately, I suspect one of the big problems is a generic Lemmy news poster can type "world news" into the community field in the post form and this place shows up the same as the rest, so hopefully adjusting the comm title will help, instead of needing a full id change (e.g. /c/aussieworldnews).

[–] Nath@aussie.zone 2 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

I hereby dub thee "Eureka - Moderator of the World ~news~!"

I'm open to the idea of renaming the Community. There's no Admin tool to do that, but I expect that a couple of edits to the database will permit it to happen. I feel like we need a flow chart for this: Do we rename the community?
If yes, Rename would be preferred to abandoning it and leaving over a year of posts behind. So I'll want to spin up a test community/rename it in the database before trying that approach on World News.

That's a problem for future Nath - and only if we go ahead and rename the Community.

[–] eureka@aussie.zone 1 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

Moderator of the World, mmm I like the sounda that!

Definitely a future problem – there's no rush and we'd want to find a good one before trying a db change. Federation could be an issue so can't hurt to ask devs before tinkering. Honestly, I think just a title change should be enough. Seems like it works for /c/news

[–] Aussiemandeus@aussie.zone 0 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

I'm confused by the whole premise. We want world news that's relevant to Australia?

Could we not call it "Pacific Specific"

[–] Gorgritch_umie_killa@aussie.zone 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

I don't hate that name.

But I always felt that aussie.zone should be Australasia centric instead of aussie centric. This was a thought before the Kiwis got their instance going though.

[–] Aussiemandeus@aussie.zone 2 points 5 days ago (1 children)

Yeah, would help draw more people perhaps but it is nice to have an instance where you feel at home.

Yeah, i's not really thinking for building numbers. Really just because its the kiwis, Papuans and the rest...

So, you're comment made me look again at what the continent actually is. And i have become a bit confused. So, i meant the continent including Australia. Whether thats Oceania or Australia (continent) i don't know, but i think its definitely not Australasia, so anytime i said australasia i of course was refering to the best of the 7 continents!

[–] Nath@aussie.zone 0 points 3 weeks ago (2 children)

I think the issue is more that we get people in the community who assume everyone reading it are from the USA. Sort of like the default behaviour on Reddit. It isn't that we don't want participation from other instances.

[–] Aussiemandeus@aussie.zone 0 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Ah yeah, that shits me hard.

I saw a great word for it the other day, i just cant remember what it was.

It was insulting to Americans who did this in a way that made them realise there might be more to the world.

SeppoCentric

[–] Baku@aussie.zone 1 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago) (1 children)

Pisses me right off, too. Fun tip: do it back to them. Assume they know what a Ballarat is. Even better if there's a way they could possibly misinterpret it as being whatever their version is. The hate it, and will then 9 times out of 10 rant at you about why it's justified to assume everybody reading [insert post from the other side of the world] is American

Needlessly dickish, antagonistic, and petty, sure, but sometimes people don't realise how annoying their behaviour is until they are on the receiving end of it. See also: eshays and drongos who blast shitty hip hop on the train

E: pissed to pisses

[–] Aussiemandeus@aussie.zone 0 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Fuck me i was flying from brissvegas back to Darwin the other week and there was a bloke doing that on the fucking plane.

The airline staff came by 3 times to stop him. Fucking tweeker cunt

[–] topherclay@lemmy.world 0 points 3 weeks ago (1 children)

Wait what exactly was he doing that he got stopped three times?

[–] Aussiemandeus@aussie.zone 1 points 2 weeks ago

Playing music out loud on the plane for us all to hear

[–] eureka@aussie.zone 0 points 2 weeks ago (1 children)

I think the issue is more that we get people in the community who assume everyone reading it are from the USA.

True. We also get users like 0x815 who simply consider /c/worldnews as an arbitrary audience for their propagandising. To them, it is just another /c/worldnews to dump a news feed onto. It's not even US centrism, it's total apathy, objectification of our community.

[–] zero_gravitas@aussie.zone 1 points 2 weeks ago

Yeah, I didn't want to name names (even though it was pretty clear), but I agree with everything you've outlined here. "Objectification of our community" is a particularly good articulation.

[–] notgold@aussie.zone -1 points 2 weeks ago

I'm an ocker but this post and comments is coming off pretty rough. Feels like you'll want an echo chamber not a place of discussion.