3mo ago

News and Politics in /c/australia: "She'll be right", or "not on, mate"?

I love putting things in boxes, it's my hobby you see, so I'd like to hear other people's thoughts and perspectives on this.

But my point is pretty straightforward: there is an overarching aussie.zone community, and as long as the sidebars are well-connected to aid discovery (and they're already pretty good), there's no point in having news and politics spread across three different communities, and we just end up with redundant crossposting creating parallel conversations.

It would be great to clarify the relationship between /c/australia, /c/news and /c/australianpolitics.

13 comments

i think sadly the community isn’t big enough, been keeping an eye on the daily users and it’s been hovering around 150 users for a while now, 0 growth
iirc someone said something along the lines of you start with the broadest tent possible and then as the place fills out it will naturally expand outward and create smaller tents for more specific categories
so i’m in favour of merging them and hope we reach a point in the future where we need to separate them
- [I'm not sure if @ pinging works, so just in case it doesn't, I'm replying just so you know I referenced this post over here]
All those words and not a single cunt. I doubt your Australianity.
- If it makes you feel better, I can call you a fukken seppo wanker. Will that do the trick, mate? ;)
  
  Hmmmmmmm it works. For now. But I got my eye on you
FWIW I'd prefer it kept to /c/australianpolitics. Mostly because it tends to get posted to each community. Multiple posts seem a waste of time as they'll dilute the conversation. It's not like its hard to subscribe to communities. Plus, sometimes it's nice to avoid politics because the atrocious state of the world can wear on people (it does wear on me sometimes).
I mostly let the upvotes lead me on these sorts of questions. We aren't algorithms - I'm happy for something worth talking about being posted on Australia (I do it often enough).
As a counter question: if you'd prefer to see less news and politics, what sort of content would you prefer to be posted instead? There might not be enough.
- From what i've seen so far on here, i think you're hovering around the same space i'm at. I think theres a lack of diversity of sources.
  AZ seems always at risk of becoming a Guardian and ABC news reposting site. It makes sense, they are the so readily accessible and very high quality sources in their own rights.
  But i don't think its great for AZ as a value proposition for continuing and new users. It also means that conversation might become stalted and defined by the Guardian and ABC outlooks, again not bad, but diversity of voices is useful.
  I'm not talking Murdoch propaganda trash btw, links need to have a certain connection to reality.
  I've thought for a while now, the best way to do this would be for a cadre of the continuing posting users adopting a diversity of sources mantra with their posting. It takes more work, but the result could deliver a more valuable proposition to the rest of the users looking through the communities.
  I act on this as a personal mantra with my posting in c/AussieEnviro, and c/Perth/Western Australia, i need to get myself organised to do the same with c/rage.
  The glaring problem is, of course, the diversity of sources doesn't result in high upvote numbers, so its a principle that seems to lack user engagement, (with some exceptions). I don't know why that is, maybe a confort thing of knnowing ABC and Guardian, or maybe too many articles from different sources are a bit too obscure for the mainstream AZ user. I don't know.
- As a counter question: if you’d prefer to see less news and politics, what sort of content would you prefer to be posted instead? There might not be enough.
  I'll leave this question to others, since my account is very much focused on news and politics.
I found the auspol community on the old site great. It had a real community feel and had deeper discussion of politics than news in general. There is an argument to be made that all news is political, but really, there is more of a focus on political discussion.
I don't know if there just isn't enough people here to support the focus, however, I don't find the duplication or cross posting and issue. Sometimes different angles come up in different communities.
I would think news communities should be topical but the Australia community would not need to be, being open to nostalgia posts or general discussion.
Is there a specific issue you are trying to fix or is the duplication the issue?
- Is there a specific issue you are trying to fix or is the duplication the issue?
  It's mostly the duplication, but also that it would frustrate people who don't want to see all the politics posts. (For what it's worth, I think politics is important and people should be informed whether they want to or not, but there are valid reasons for wanting to block politics comms for a while.)
  Nothing's really broken, but this is something that can be nipped in the bud if other users think it deserves fixing.
  
  I think seeing posts that are relevant but don't interest you as a user are less of a problem than a lack of content at the moment. However, best to start as we would mean to continue.
  I'd be more inclined to leave it to users to up and down vote as appropriate and mark as cross posts. Some people who browse all may be unaware of some local communities. Cross posting to relevant communities allows discovery. I would think that not all political posts should be cross posted but major ones could be.

13 comments