Meta Thread July 2017 - Politics

Meta Thread July 2017
Henry Rollins: It's Amazing How Quickly We Got Used to the Trump Dumpster Fire
Justice Department Defies Court Deadline To Release Sessions' Contacts With Russians
MSNBC host Chris Hayes provides evidence that foul play is afoot in Donald Trump Jr email chain
Russia scandal goes well beyond Trump: GOP leaders definitely knew about hacking — did they benefit too?
Kushner updated disclosure to add more than 100 foreign contacts: report
WH won't address Kushner's security clearance
Trump’s Russian Laundromat. How to use Trump Tower and other luxury high-rises to clean dirty money, run an international crime syndicate, and propel a failed real estate developer into the White House.
Donald Trump, Jr., Asked To Testify On Capitol Hill Next Week
‘GOP recruited me to collude with the Russians’: former UK spy
Ordered by court to disclose his Russia contacts, Sessions releases blank sheet of paper
Trump goes backwards, falsely claims Putin preferred Clinton
A key academic paper cited by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in their plan to roll back net neutrality was recently revealed to have been secretly funded by an AT&T-backed trade group.
Dem senator: ‘Strains credibility’ to think Trump didn’t know about son’s Russian meeting
Obamacare Is Not Collapsing, Imploding or Exploding
Why Do Republicans Suddenly Hate College So Much?
Lieu: Trump Jr. emails were 'clear violation of federal law'
Royce and Rohrabacher Got Illegal Dough from Pro-Russia Groups: Lawyer
Spokesman declines to say whether Pence ever met Russia operatives
White House criticizes accuracy of Congressional Budget Office, misspells ‘inaccurately’ in first version of video
Oklahoma Democrats Sweep Two Special Elections
Time magazine puts Trump Jr. on cover: 'Red-handed'
Only 17 Percent of Americans Believe Trump is Telling the Truth About Comey
What Did Republicans Know About the Russia Scandal? America Deserves an Answer.
Donald Trump Supporters ‘Conned’ Into Opposing Net Neutrality
Grassley to send Trump Jr. letter asking him to testify.

Meta Thread July 2017

Posted: 13 Jul 2017 07:26 AM PDT

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 changes, and suggestions you have for improving the sub. The June 2017 metathread can be found here

Change to Submission Procedure - "Bot Approve" and "Bot Remove" have been disabled.

If you've ever submitted to our subreddit in the past, it's possible that you've seen the flair "Bot approved/removed" in use. This was an automatic queue cleanup process that approved posts with low numbers of reports, and removed posts with very low scores after a duration of time had passed without our review. Due to changes in how we are handling submissions, we have turned off this automation. This should not have any substantial impact on how r/politics/new behaves, as this process only effected posts that had been buried far into the queue.

IRC - Soliciting Feedback

Did you know that r/politics has a live chat channel? It's true - our generous hosts at Snoonet provide a space for IRC live chat discussions for our community. The excellent reddit based Orangechat is also available, and connected directly to the #politics IRC channel - either method of connecting will work. Unfortunately it's been a while since we've given the channel any attention, so we'd like to take this time to solicit input on ways that we can improve the quality of discussion in that medium. Rule change requests? Bot requests? Overthrow the ops through political revolution? Let us hear it. Do not call out specific users by name - please discuss channel issues in generalized terms only.

What we're talking about

There are some persistent themes that have been brought up in the last several meta discussions that we've definitely been talking about behind the scenes. Here are a few answers to common questions:

Q: What's the deal with X source? Why don't you allow it?

There are many reasons that we may have blacklisted a particular domain. Usually it's due to the content within containing a majority of content that violates our rules. For example, sites that have a hard paywall (which do not allow visitors to view the content without paying under any circumstance) will not be accessible by the majority of our users. User submitted content platforms that can't be distinguished from edited / staffed news articles are barred for violation of our 'No personal blog / vlog' rules. Domains affiliated with state propaganda sources are banned under our rules against 'State sponsored propaganda.' If you have concerns about a specific domain, feel free to discuss it below. If you've received an answer concerning the domain from us in the past... you can still ask us about it but chances are that our response will be the same.

Q: What's the deal with Y source? Why don't you ban it?

There are a few sites that users often request we ban - either because it is believed that they are too partisan or because they are affiliated with organizations that users may believe should be banned from participation. The fact is, the moderator team are not editors - we use the submission rules to determine if a domain is breaking our rules. If they aren't, then we don't have an objective measure by which to ban which would introduce bias on our part. The rules as they are written are designed with the goal of reducing moderator bias as much as possible. If you have a specific complaint about a domain, don't just tell us that you don't like it. Tell us what rule you think we should be enforcing that we aren't - and thoroughly consider whether that rule can be enforced by an objective standard.

Q: I'm noticing too many spammers / trolls / people I disagree with.

That's not a question. But the mod team hears complaints about this frequently.

Young accounts - We are always looking at ways to mitigate spammers and genuine troll accounts. We are shortly going to introduce some tools that will prevent very young accounts from submitting posts to the sub, and limit the frequency at which younger accounts will be permitted to post. This has been frequently requested. Spam, SEO manipulation and other malicious behavior is a major concern for us.

Anti-spam / whitelist - With the depreciation of some of reddit's anti-spam reporting tools, we are considering (though no action will yet be taken) moving to a whitelist domain submission model. We'd love to hear the community's feedback - positive or negative - on whether this would be a good direction to take link submissions. This change could potentially also be undertaken in conjunction with other proposals for things like a domain notability requirement, and distinguishing flair for editorial content.

Reddiquette - Disagreement and debate are a healthy part of the political process - we ask that you please do not report or downvote users and comments with which you disagree. Only rule breaking behavior should be reported to us, and only off topic and unsuitable content should be downvoted.