December 2016 Meta Thread - Politics

December 2016 Meta Thread
Trump voter lost her home to new Treasury secretary
Bernie Sanders mocks House Science Committee for promoting article denying climate change
Hey, media, stop building the Trump myth — the Carrier deal is corporate welfare!
Trump will helm a government of, by and for corporate America
Jeff Sessions Didn't Like How The Supreme Court Spared 'Retarded' People From Execution
China to Trump: Wise men don’t sneer at climate change
Jason Chaffetz Planned for ‘Years’ of Clinton Probes, Thinks Trump Has Yet to Do Anything Worth Investigating
WSJ editorial board comes out against Trump's Carrier deal
Reporter Denied Credentials to Trump Event... By Carrier
U.S. jobless rate hits 9-year low of 4.6% in November
Donald Trump will be president thanks to 80,000 people in three states
When will Trump voters realize they’ve been had?
Paul Ryan trashed government deals to help specific companies — until Trump did it
Jon Stewart: The American media has become an “information-laundering scheme”
Plant workers still losing their jobs to Trump: Don't forget about us
GOP-led Science Committee Sends Twitter Followers To Breitbart For Climate Misinformation
Florida Recount group filing lawsuit on Friday
'We do feel forgotten': About 1,300 Carrier company employees will still lose their jobs, despite Trump's deal
General James 'Mad Dog' Mattis Email About Being 'Too Busy To Read' Is A Must-Read
Don’t Be Fooled: Donald Trump Will Never Walk Away From His Businesses
House Science Committee Tweets Climate-Change Denying Breitbart Article, Debunked by Scientists
Bernie Sanders burns the House Science Committee for promoting a misleading article on climate change
The next FBI headquarters, a $2 billion project, could be built by a Trump associate
Pence denied request to help Carrier in 2014
"I just wish that I had not voted": Trump voter lost her home to new Treasury secretary

December 2016 Meta Thread

Posted: 02 Dec 2016 07:13 AM PST

Hello, /r/politics community! Welcome to our monthly meta thread. The purpose of this thread is to discuss the overall state of the subreddit, including recent rule revisions, recent and upcoming events, and suggestions you have for improving the sub.

The October 2016 metathread can be found here. We did skip November as there was some other stuff going on earlier that week.

2016 Election

What a ride. Well, after 2 different live threads, 52 state specific megathreads, 6 Election Day megathreads, 11 Election Day returns megathreads, and 1 presidential magathread we wrapped up our coverage of the 2016 election. We hope you all had as much fun as we did.

Now we move on to the next big thing: Covering the impending Electoral College Vote, Inauguration, and first 100 days of a new Trump Administration. We are excited about moving into this new area of coverage after such a long and divisive election campaign. No doubt there are plenty of people upset that their preferred candidate lost in the general (or even in the primary), but now we must focus on our new government and legislature that will soon be in place. Be excited by the opportunity given to them, but hold them accountable for their actions. We all want them to succeed. A failure for them is a failure for America.

Subreddit Bias

A lot of the feedback we have received lately has been centered around the anti-trump leaning of our subreddit. The moderator team believes this is both a reflection of the bias of the site as a whole (due to our prior default status) and/or a possible correction from the presence of a very strong pro-trump subreddit in /r/the_donald. We fully acknowledge the presence of a noted bias in our front page, but there is not a lot we can do.

As moderators we have done our best to set very clear rules that can easily be looked at by anyone. This is done to prevent us as moderators from stepping into an editorial role with our removals. Most of these rule violating submissions are very quickly reported by you all and that is amazing. At any given time we have at least 5 moderators idling in our backroom Slack. This is constantly filled with discussion and active consensus votes to determine submissions that fall in a "gray area". Be assured that it takes a majority of moderators to support an action that would be considered "gray". The moderation of this subreddit does not determine the composition of the front page.

The composition of a subreddit's front page and comments section is wholly determined by the score of a post/comment. This score is determined by the number of upvotes and downvotes. The sorting is then determined by some relation of score over time. (Note: Only the admins know the specifics of the algorithm.) We cannot determine the voting of our users. So, if you want a more diverse discussion you all need to upvote other opinions and not simply downvote things you disagree with. The composition of our subreddit is determined by you the users.

Frankly, major Trump cabinet appointments have not made it to the front page due to this partisan voting. That is a real shame. It is hard to have discussion (good or bad) about the new administration when the topics do not even reach the front page. You guys need to be better about that or else we will continue to not see major news stories simply because "they are conservative". In November 2016 we had 34,265 submissions in this subreddit, many of these were about Trump. There are many, many, many Trump articles with a score of 0. The options are there for a balanced discussion. It up to you all to vote responsibly.

New CSS

We recently implemented a slight change to our CSS. This prevents unsubscribed users from voting in our subreddit. Yes, we know you can turn off CSS. Yes, we know this doesn't work on mobile. However, our goal with this is to discourage drive-by voting, both up and down. We want people to stick around in our community and learn our rules. This is an attempt make our subreddit both more civil, and less partisan in it's voting. We'd like to hear any specific feedback you have regarding this change. If you are here reading this meta thread that means you came to /r/politics specifically. You are obviously seeking out this subreddit. For those here reading this and are upset by the change, all you have to do is subscribe and help this community fix our known issues and grow it into what you want it to be.

Fake News

The second most received item of feedback concerns fake news. According to political and media experts: In the recent election there has been a massive influx of falsified information into the media and social media sites like Facebook that has become a major factor in determining people's voting patterns, an act that may have been aided by Russia.

Our subreddit already blocks many domains. These include social media, petition/advocacy, blogging platforms, propaganda, and satire/fake news websites. This is done with automoderator and is handled immediately on submission. If you see a domain that has slipped by us and is indeed one of these "fake news" sites please message the moderators to let us know.

Breitbart

The final most received question is our subreddit's stance on Breitbart, a right-wing news site that has surged into the public consciousness with the rise of Trump. Despite the harassments it aimed toward the /r/politics moderation team, we have come to the conclusion that as Steve Bannon is no longer involved in the news site, it is not covered under the "No Propaganda" rule. If we were to ban every major news outlet with ties to a government, we would have to remove many more renowned media sources.

Further, "propaganda" is a serious matter. This is media that is truly state-run and produces a message that is dictated by the government. This can be seen in China with CCTV or in Russia with RT. Breitbart is nowhere near that and is ridiculous to assume otherwise. Going back to the partisan voting discussion, don't simply ban the news outlet because you disagree with the message. That is a form of editorial control that goes too far.

Moderator Applications

It doesn't look like our activity levels are dying down from our pre-election coverage. That is great, but we need help. We are always recruiting moderators to join our team. If you think you have what it takes to help moderate, please click here to apply as a moderator. We do not have any requirements and are interested in people with anywhere between large amounts of moderating experience and no moderating experience. Thanks for you consideration.

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Feel free to have an open and frank discussion with us below. We want your feedback on not only these issues, but other suggestions or concerns that you may have. Many past suggestions have been adopted and are in place to this day. Thanks for being here with us today, and we're looking forward to your feedback and suggestions. Happy Friday!

submitted by /u/english06
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Trump voter lost her home to new Treasury secretary

Posted: 02 Dec 2016 05:00 AM PST