11 votes

What's the difference between ~news and ~misc?

Posted by updawg
Tags: filtering, groups

The sidebar description of ~news says

All the world's current events, including politics as well as analysis or opinion pieces.

But most politics articles are moved to ~misc. I've even seen people say that ~news is not for politics. So what determines if news stories aren't good enough for ~news? I get that an article about the estimated 20,000 deaths from a flood in Libya is news. But what's the line for politics and other similar categories? And why not have ~news.politics? I'm sure that must have been discussed before, but I'm not sure if it has been discussed in the context of the sidebar.

Basically, we need to either change how articles get categorized or change that sidebar description.

4 comments

  1. boxer_dogs_dance
    Link
    To make things more complicated, there is the american politics megathread in ~news that refreshes weekly.

    To make things more complicated, there is the american politics megathread in ~news that refreshes weekly.

    7 votes
  2. [3]
    mycketforvirrad
    Link
    I often default to a comment Deimos made when moderating content away from ~news. Source: Deimos With the consenus that there will never be a ~politics, and utilising ~news for purely factual news...

    I often default to a comment Deimos made when moderating content away from ~news.

    I've said this before, but I'd rather if ~news didn't even exist. Every single other group is based on a content subject, but ~news is based around a type of content.

    In general, if there's a group for the subject that the content fits into, it should be posted in that group. ~news is really just around as a kind of catch-all for things like "world events" that don't easily fit anywhere else.

    Source: Deimos

    With the consenus that there will never be a ~politics, and utilising ~news for purely factual news stories or articles on journalism, ~misc sees itself become home to a lot of the politics and opinion pieces.

    7 votes
    1. [2]
      updawg
      Link Parent
      Which is totally fine. It just seems that politics shouldn't be specifically mentioned in the sidebar if ~news exists mostly for articles like "2000 people die in earthquake in Morocco" and not...

      Which is totally fine. It just seems that politics shouldn't be specifically mentioned in the sidebar if ~news exists mostly for articles like "2000 people die in earthquake in Morocco" and not for politics.

      4 votes
      1. mycketforvirrad
        Link Parent
        I agree that the sidebar blurb for ~news is a timecapsule to Tildes early days. It could definitely do with a 2023 re-work/re-word.

        I agree that the sidebar blurb for ~news is a timecapsule to Tildes early days. It could definitely do with a 2023 re-work/re-word.

        7 votes