In a shocking display of mod tyranny, the newscomm mod team has been discussing potential updates to the comm's policy (the sidebar text) and is soliciting feedback from you, the reader. The purpose of this thread is for the community to discuss feedback on the existing sidebar text as well as potential changes/codifications of unofficial policy per below. We'll leave this thread up a while for feedback and discussion. Later, the mod team will post a revised draft policy for community review before finalizing it and carving it in stone on the sidebar. Note that this is a supplement to the broader Hexbear Code of Conduct, not a replacement.
Community and Policy Objectives
We aim to foster a book-club type environment for discussion and critical analysis of the news. Our policy objectives are:
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To encourage community members to post meaningful news, analysis and perspectives from around the world, with a focus on news outside the Anglosphere and beyond what is normally seen in corporate media.
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To foster a community where members welcome the perspectives and analysis from comrades not normally seen in corporate media (e.g. anti-imperialist, anti-Zionist, Marxist, Indigenous, LGBTQ, people of colour).
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To encourage community members to contribute their own analysis and commentary and for others to thoughtfully engage with this material.
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To support healthy discussion and good faith debate as comrades, sharpening our analytical skills and helping one another better understand geopolitics.
Our guiding rubric for community policy is, “Will this policy or action help encourage more good posts?”
Throughout this post, newscomm refers to any post in c/news, while newsmega refers to the weekly megathread.
Policies for Discussion:
Most of what is drafted below reflects the spirit of how the comm has been run to date.
(A) Low effort posts
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Avoid memes/jokes/shitposts in newscomm posts and top-level replies to the newsmega. This kind of content is OK in post replies and in newsmega sub-threads. We encourage the community to balance their contribution of low effort material with effort posts, links to real news/analysis, and meaningful engagement with material posted in the community.
Questions for the community:
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Any special policies required around sex jokes? Personally I don’t like horny posting so I get out the :spray-bottle: to discourage, but I appreciate that sometimes anti-sex sentiment is linked to anti-LGBT sentiment.
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Do simple anti-imperialist slogans like 'marg bar Amerikkka' count as low effort material?
(B) Archive links
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We highly encourage use of non-paywalled archive sites so that links are widely accessible to the community and so that reactionary sources don’t derive data/ad revenue from Hexbear users. If you see a link without an archive link, please archive it yourself and add it to the thread, ask the OP to fix it, or report to mods. Making it mandatory to post archive links would be an enforcement nightmare for the mod team and some sites deserve clicks. Including text of articles in threads is welcome but it's important to have link sources as well.
Questions for the community:
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What are good sites for archiving? I use archive.is but web.archive.org also exists.
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Should non-corporate media/non-paywall sites also have archive links? I’m thinking of non-chud sources.
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Anything special with twitter aside from xcancel?
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Is the bot that adds substitute links to reddit/youtube comments based or cringe?
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Are community members willing to help make archive links when other posters forget?
(C) American Electoral Politics:
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Discussion and effort posts on the (potential) material impacts of American electoral politics is welcome, but the never ending circus of American Politics© Brought to You by Mountain Dew™ is not welcome. This refers to polling, pundit reactions, electoral horse races, rumors of who might run, etc. The newscomm is not the place for the made for TV electoral busybox that saturates the corporate media and distracts from material analysis. Further, please try to avoid struggle sessions about the value of voting/taking part in the American electoral system.
This draft policy is specific to American electoral politics because this type of content saturates the English speaking online politics world and crowds out the international and material focus of this community.
Questions for the community:
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Should this policy apply to both the newscomm and the newsmega, or should we continue having the newscomm be more welcoming of American electoral politics than the newsmega?
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Should this apply to other countries than the US? Personally I don’t think electoral politics from the UK/Canada/Australia or from non-English speaking but still western aligned countries like Germany, France, Poland, Japan have nearly the media reach so I’ve never felt the newcomm is swamped by this content.
(D) Charity Posts
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Real people are impacted every day by the imperial actions we discuss on the comm. Some of them post charity links in the newscomm (gofundmes, mutual aid requests, etc.). At this time, the newcomm has no particular policy on charity posts. Typically, 3-4 of the 20 posts on the first page of c/news are charity posts. Neither the mod team or Hexbear admins vet charity request posts. The presence of a charity post on the newscomm doesn’t represent any kind of endorsement.
Questions for the community:
- Do we need a policy on this? If so, what would it be and how would it be enforced?
(E) Pessimism of the Intellect, Optimism of the Will
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By virtue of us all finding and joining this community, it is clear that everyone here knows the world is not right and that action must be taken. Each of us arrives with our own priors and our own capacity to act. The information available to us is incomplete, and even if it were, no one can predict the future. We ask community members to appreciate the uncertainty inherent in critical analysis of current events, the need to constantly learn, and take part in the community with humility. None of us are the One True Leftist, not even you, the reader.
History and the fight against imperialism is a dialectical process, meaning that anti-imperial victories include the seeds of defeat and vice versa. The purpose of this community is to foster clear eyed discussion, which means discussing losses, what could have been, differences in opinion regarding strategy and tactics, or what is actually happening through the fog of war. We welcome good faith discussion in this vein. No anti-imperialist defeat is caused by someone posting wrong on Hexbear. If you find good faith discussion of losses upsetting and you are lashing out at other comrades, we will ask you to take a break and will welcome you back when you're able. The news will still be here.
(F) Other Policies, Existing Sidebar Text
Any comments on the policies in the existing sidebar text? Any other matters to raise? Now is the time.
