[Meta] About This Community, Submission Guidance, Standards, and Moderation Policy - DubVee

### About This is a curated news community with high standards for submissions. Mis- and disinformation are rampant on the internet, and the rules established for this community are an attempt to curtail that and provide a reliable and objective source of world events. News posted here should not be sensationalized in order to be entertaining; it should be factual and accurate and written with the sole intention of informing the reader to the situation. #### How are News Sources Confirmed to be Unbiased and/or Reputable? When in doubt, I will run a news source through Media Bias Fact Check [https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/exclusive-source-bias-ratings-search/] in order to determine its bias and credibility. While this isn’t perfect, it’s a very good and highly rated tool ran by a non-profit organization. If a source’s bias is determined to be far-left or far-right, the post will be removed and you’ll be asked to resubmit the story from a more neutral and/or credible source. ### Community Rules Explained #### Rule #1: Reputable Sources With Low Bias All posts must be from a reputable news source that is known to report factually, in good faith, and without significant bias. I’m not naive, and I would consider very few news sources to be completely unbiased (AP and Reuters are the closest that come to mind). That said, most reputable sources of news will report the facts in good faith and leave the rest up to the reader to decide for themselves. Reputable sources do not speculate on every topic nor “just ask questions” to the reader. Reputable sources do not tell you how you should feel about a topic or tell you what you should think about it; they merely provide you the facts of the situation, informing you to make your own opinion. The good faith part is key here. There are lot of news sources that are technically “news” but are known to operate in bad faith and/or with a highly partisan angle. I will not list any specifically, but they are out there, and they are rampant. Additionally, do not link to tabloids, blogs, YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, or other social media. Those are not news sources. They are rarely, if ever, confirmed or fact checked, have no journalistic standards, and are usually rife with opinion. #### Rule #2: Do Not Editorialize the Title The post title must match the headline. I don’t think this really requires further explanation. #### Rule #3: Original Source is Mandatory Posts must have the original article source as the post URL. Let’s face it. Many of us are busy and often don’t bother to read the entire article. We’ll just scroll through a news feed, look at the headlines, and add the tidbit of information in the headline to our collective knowledge. The danger with that is that those headlines may be from a non-reputable news source which is fully aware of that habit and seek to exploit it with sensationalized titles or misrepresented facts. In the feed, the source URL is directly adjacent to the headline/title, so having an indicator of the source, front and center, is an easy way to quickly discern the source of the information you’re absorbing and whether it should be trusted. If you use an archive or other paywall-bypassing link as the post URL, the source is obfuscated. That allows a tabloid or mis- / disinformation headline to carry the same weight as one from a reputable source. Similarly, do not include your own image even if the post image fails to load. The source URL will be that of the image and not the article which will prevent the source from being apparent. To include an archive link that sidesteps a paywall, include that in the top of the post body. #### Rule #4: Be Civil in the Comments Be civil in the comments. No hate speech, bigotry, racism or any dog-whistle versions of any of that. If you need me to elaborate on this any further than that, then you probably shouldn’t bother commenting at all. #### Rule #5: No Bot-Generated Summaries Do not include bot-generated summaries of the article. Let people read for themselves. Bot summaries are hit or miss and often leave out nuance, perspective, or other pertinent details that are important to the story. If someone prefers a bot to TL;DR things for them, then they’ll likely already have some plugin/process of their own to do that. Leave them to that process and allow the rest of us to read the articles as the authors intended. #### Rule #6: Do Not Editorialize the Post Similar to rule #2, do not editorialize in the post. Any opinions you have about the news story should be in the comments. ### Moderation Policy The rules in this community are strictly enforced. Infringing posts will be removed as soon as they are known. That said, I strongly believe in transparency, so here is the protocol for how posts are moderated: - If your post is found to be infringing on a rule, you will receive a reply from a mod/admin stating which rule was broken and in what way. - The infringing post will be locked for further comments and removed. As far as I know, you should still be able to see the post in your profile and still see the reply from the mod/admin in your notifications. If this turns out to not be the case, this procedure will be adjusted to compensate for that. - Depending on the nature of the rule violation, one of the following will happen after that: - You will be encouraged to resubmit after making the necessary corrections. (e.g. If you accidentally used an archive link for the source, you’ll be asked to resubmit with the original URL) - You will be specifically told not to resubmit the post (e.g. you’ve linked to a tabloid/non-reputable source) Repeat offenders will face a temporary or ultimately permanent ban. This isn’t baseball, and it’s not a three-strikes policy; it depends more on which rule was broken, how often, and in what way(s). That said, some rule violations are more egregious than others. Repeatedly submitting non-reputable news sources after receiving warnings will result in a ban. Being uncivil in the comments will also get you a ban. Continued violations after temporary bans are lifted will ultimately result in a permanent ban from the community. The other rules are important, but it’s easy to forget, so infractions to those will typically be dealt with more leniently. However, consistently (and/or flagrantly) violating them can end up with a ban from the community, especially if you are non-responsive when asked to bring them into compliance with the community rules.