18
votes
Should we use a megathread for US election news as we get closer to Nov 3?
I was thinking about how much the quantity of election news is likely to increase as we get closer to Nov 3. And more specifically the likelihood that this election will not be clear cut, will be contested, lawsuits filed, etc in the days and weeks after Nov 3.
With that in mind, do we want to proactively put up a weekly (maybe daily for the actual week of) megathread to consolidate some of it?
Can it be lumped in to a US tag or something? I mean your election for your president is interesting in bits, but its not as critical to me as it probably is to you.
Now reading Tildes I've learned to translate "ours", and "the election" or "the president" or other non-defined areas to be about people in the US so its cool but, it would help the rest of us I think.
EDIT: OR just add a "US Election" or "President Trump" or "US President" etc.
EDIT2: waaaaay later (about 5 hours) when I had some time to think it over even more I realized its kind of a punch in the air.
I live in the Nordic countries so "The West" meaning I am as inundated by US stuff like everyone else since the US is the main cultural imperial force here (like England was, Germany was, then France was, and on and on). What the US does is on the front of my magazines, in the stand of a US owned franchise of corner shops, next to the US branded place I buy coffee. Like I guess most here, I can rattle off most US states, but have a hard time remembering what states exist on Balkan. I understand the jokes poked at people coming from certain US states as I know what clichés the joke is referring to. Hell even critical debates about stuff like racism is forced in to a US narrative here, even when thats not applicable completely hiding the actual racism in my society.
I know the name of the spouse of your leader, but I have hard time remembering if my prime minister is married and wouldn't care one bit if he was or wasn't.
I learned English watching US tv-shows, play games made for the US, I come from a tiny language so my computer OS runs using English instead of my own language since thats easier and the forums I visit are English speaking and US centric.
So much like the 1750's when we all spoke French and named shit after French stuff, its not something that can be avoided. It will pass when the US collapses too, but until then perhaps being spikey about it is the wrong way to go about it.
A unique tag already exists for this, and has been used pretty consistently for several years now, if people want to filter it out: https://tildes.net/?tag=2020_us_presidential_election
CC: @callmedante, @Eabryt, @vord too
Added, thanks for the heads up. Still think us.elections would be nice, to cover related topics that don't strictly fall under presidential election (contested house/senate races, etc).
My goal is to be completely blacked out for a week+ (where everything should hopefully be sorted), with family to signal to us if we need to bug out to the wilderness.
I don't think we really need a second tag. Just because the current one has 'presidential' in it doesn't necessarily mean it only applies to that specific part of this election. It has been applied to news about various other senate/congressional races in the US already too, and I imagine will probably continue to going forwards. Were I less lazy, or if a bulk tag editor was already implemented, I would probably change it to be a bit more general purpose sounding as you suggest though.
I second the use of a tag.
I think a megathread will get unwieldy in short time, given the rapid pace of news surrounding the US Presidential election. A tag could be filtered by any users not wanting to see that kind of news.
I agree. I was trying to think about all of this with the President's COVID post and how to handle the updates.
Also definitely a good suggestion. I do this when I manage to remember, but sometimes forget (such as this thread).
Edit: changed topic tag from "politics" to "politics.usa"
There’s a New Zealand election in less than a month too, so being specific about which country being referred to in the title would be nice as well, for those of us who are interested in both :P
I think a tag is appropriate.
Tildes is not struggling with too many submissions. There's no need to mega-thread topics when a handful of clicks will get you through all the submissions made in a week.
Yes please. Wife and I intend to block out all election-related coverage until a week later. Reddit will be unusable, but perhaps Tildes could be by filtering a usa.elections tag.
I like the idea of a weekly megathread/recap. I know alayaza (spelling?) wasn't everyone's favorite user, but I loved the weekly primary threads she used to put up before she got the axe. It would be nice to have all the "horse race" coverage rounded up in a weekly post as well as some other big stories from state and local elections.
I think a general megathread wouldn't be a good idea for two reasons: 1) very specific / different topics can and have happened on the same day / same week and 2) (thankfully) there's not interesting election-related news every day, and having a reoccuring megathread would make people talk about it regardless.
A usa.elections tag sounds like an excellent idea, though.
~news.politics.us, maybe
Then one for each country as dictated by demand. If you want US, or Brazil, or Australian news, or politics, just follow each one.
Any national politics is more than the election, it's just election news is the zeitgeist of election years.