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 (@[email protected] @[email protected])

  • NathA
    7·
    16 days ago

    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.

    • ZagorathEnglish
      4·
      15 days ago

      Eg: the Music community is called “Rage”

      tbh I found this a bit off-putting. It’s not clear to me whether or not the sort of music I’m interested in should go in that community or not. It’s not the kind of music Rage itself would ever play. Having a specific name like that doesn’t just limit it to people who know what Rage is, it also implicitly limits the type of content in a way a generic name like “AusMusic” would not.

      • NathA
        3·
        15 days ago

        Ha! I’ve just made a comment admitting that I’m a bit out of touch with what’s popular these days. When I was a teen, Rage played literally anything. Has that changed?

        The intent was as I said - simply to come up with a name that was about music from an Australian perspective. I remember tossing a few names around, and people agreed that Rage was a good choice. This would have been about July/August last year.

        • Zagorath
          1·
          14 days ago

          When I was a teen, Rage played literally anything.

          Anything? That’s one of my favourite recent pieces of Australian music. And not something I could see Rage playing. Though maybe I’m wrong.

    • eurekaEnglish
      3·
      14 days ago

      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.

      On the other hand, I just assumed it was specifically about the Rage program and overlooked it. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

      I’d consider adding something to the name, like “Rage - Aussie Music”, which it would help discovery for better and worse but at least make it clear we don’t want the whole world promoting junk.