C/politics@lemmy.world being US only is weird

I guess it is a consequence of the Reddit migration where the habit is just keeping the old community name. But having C/Politics being US only on Lemmy.world, an instance that aims to be international (hence the name), seems weird to me.

Would have been cool to give up this assumption that everything is related to US by default when moving away from Reddit. I mean, even the canadian political news of Lemmy.ca is CanadaPolitics.

ElectroVagrant,

I can see where you’re coming from, however…Did you message the mods of /c/politics & ask if they might consider changing their display name to more clearly indicate their US focus? It’s not ideal, but the display name is what’s shown when searching for communities or seeing posts from them in local/all feeds, so it at least helps in that regard.

At the same time, as other comments point out, there are a number of other politics communities with a broader focus across other instances, so unlike Reddit, we can have a /c/politics in any number of other instances with different rules and without a US focus. In a weird way, it’s almost better that the /c/politics here is US focused, as it encourages folks to post & discuss general politics (including the US) in other smaller instances.

Although, ultimately, this would come down to whether the admins would prefer such simply named communities to have a wider focus as their name suggests instead of a narrow focus as is happening here, but I haven’t gotten the sense that the admins necessarily want to get that directly involved in community naming & creation tbh.

jungle,

I think you’re missing the last part of the fully qualified name: “.world”

marmo7ade,

So lemmy.world should not host content that is specific to the USA?

Does “world” refer to the literal world or the world of lemmy?

Ryumast3r,

There goes pennsylvania@lemmy.world

Sorry guys, gotta leave.

ElectroVagrant,

It’s a difference of interpretation imo. Others here understandably read it as meaning or suggesting an international focus, but others still (such as myself) read it as meaning a general focus (which is itself reinforced by the front page’s own description).

Personally I do agree with OP & others here in preferring non-specific communities like politics or law to be open to international politics & law, but I’m not in a position to make that call. Also as noted, I don’t think the admins are interested in intervening in communities so long as their moderators aren’t abusing their positions nor abandoning their accounts & letting communities go unmoderated.

FinalBoy1975,

It definitely should change its name to US Politics.

WhoRoger,
@WhoRoger@lemmy.world avatar

Another example: !law

daniskarma,

I suppose it’s about moderation. It would be a bad idea to talk about European or south American politics if there’s only US moderation. Política is a very touchy matter and needs a very good and diverse moderation team.

pineapplefriedrice,

Which is not an issue at all. Plenty of medium-sized subs have a geographically wide spanning mod team. For a large sub like that it’s a non-issue.

NettoHikari,

No, it’s about Americans always thinking they come first. I was told so many times that “rEdDiT Is aN AmErIcAn wEbSiTe”… But now, they can’t pull that shit any more.

I say rename the communities.

meldroc,

I wonder how hard it would be for Lemmy devs to put in an aliasing feature, say so when a user goes to c/politics, it’ll automatically switch to c/uspolitics or something like that… That would make this easier.

NettoHikari,

Probably not hard. But that doesn’t solve the problem that a generic term is used for something US only on a platform that isn’t US first.

meldroc,

The point of suggesting this was to make the process of renaming the communities a little easier. Users do have to be led around by the nose, don’t they?

NettoHikari,

If you’re talking about me here, I understood why you were suggesting it. But to me, that’s not the problem of c/politics in this case. They wouldn’t want to rename, if it was possible, because “AmErIcA fIrSt”.

hypelightfly,

In this case they did come first though! They registered the /c/politics community first.

But really they should change the display name to US Politics.

NettoHikari,

It doesn’t matter. The name is misleading. It’s a generic name and therefore should cover all politics. I’ve seen people claiming “ohh, but it’s only US mods”… Yes. I run a whole instance. Americans are welcome there, too and I’m from Germany. So?

NAS89,

Politics was my first blocked community on Lemmy. Then every other US politics community that has sprung up. They’re either echo chambers or flame wars and it’s irritating to use the internet as an escapism and run into arguments daily.

Buelldozer,
@Buelldozer@lemmy.world avatar

and run into arguments daily.

The same arguments daily! Even as a politically active American it’s utterly boring and unnecessary. Yes, we get it, you hate $PoliticalTribe and feel that you need to show everyone how awful they are. Yes, fine, they are truly terrible. Now lets talk about something else for a minute.

Ab_intra,
@Ab_intra@lemmy.world avatar

I agree. US is not the only country in the world, and should not dictate a community like this. If Americans want to discuss politics they should make a com about that, and let the general /c/politics be international politics.

outrageousmatter,
@outrageousmatter@lemmy.world avatar

I’ll speak to the moderators, if we should unlock it for international politics, but right now it’s US moderators and I barely know italy politics or EU politics but am Interested in adding them.

Ab_intra,
@Ab_intra@lemmy.world avatar

Then they should get more europeans, why should there only be mods from the US lol.

outrageousmatter,
@outrageousmatter@lemmy.world avatar

I wonder if it has to do with r/politics being US only, I really don’t know mate.

Ab_intra,
@Ab_intra@lemmy.world avatar

It’s the same issue. Not all politics is american. It should be uspolitics instead.

Sarmyth,

That’s so reductive, it’s absurd. It’s free labor to moderate these things.

Who is they? And where do these people magically spring from? If lemmy has a low content issue, surely there would be a low amount of people willing to moderate as well.

Ab_intra,
@Ab_intra@lemmy.world avatar

You really think Lemmy has a content issue lol?

And of course free labor don’t grow on trees but I’m pretty sure there are many that would be willing.

khajimak,
@khajimak@lemmy.world avatar

Because Americans were apparently the only people who wanted to work for free

PeleSpirit,

They’re trolling you, don’t open it up. This is the most popular and largest.

DoctorTYVM,

There’s a Canadian Politics community on Lemmy.World too. It’s very small but that can change!

lemmy.world/c/canadapolitics

Blaze,

To be honest, there is !canadapolitics and it makes more sense to have it on their instance

livus,
livus avatar

@hyorvenn the great thing about the fediverse is that you're not limited to lemmy.world

The politics@kbin.social doesn't have that rule. I posted about Zimbabwe politics the other day and they seemed fine with it.

hyorvenn,

Yes it’s not a space problem, space in the fediverse is near unlimited. It’s about following the philosophy of Lemmy.world I guess.

BlackRose,
bloubz,

I just had the idea of making the same post. It’s misleading

Zenzio, (edited )

Maybe the first rule for any topic regarding politics should be to mark your topic/thread with a specific country code right in the title (e.g. US/GB/DE etc.). Maybe even at the beginning of the title of the topic. Obviously that sounds like a hassle to enforce.

In principle I agree, I very much dislike reading headlines about US politicians doing this and that as if I'm supposed to care. It's always some sort of circle jerk for one side or the other.

There is always going to be a large US community in any global politics forum. That is not a problem. And other parts of the world (let's say any country in Europe) are never going to be as vocal about their local politics in comparison. Bringing some sort of self-enforced order to these posts could be nice.

Edit: To clarify, I wasn't commenting because I'm bitter about a community being dominantly US. I do not browse this community. It matters little to me what happens here. The thing I'm mildly annoyed by is headlines like "Republican/Democrat politician does dumb thing " showing up on the front page.

I'm aware we could always block a community. Though I would prefer that would be some niche community like e.g "Missouri politics". The reason I stumbled upon this thread in the first place was because it was on the front page.

FinalBoy1975,

deleted_by_author

  • Loading...
  • imPastaSyndrome,

    So if uspolitics has to be uspolitics why not create your whereverwhinybitchesarefromPolitics too, since you want somewhere to post your politics shit? Not sure why you need a broad namespace for your stuff

    hyorvenn,

    Well I’m not really the kind of person to follow these communities anyway. What I pointed out wasn’t a community with a majority of US members (that is no problem whatsoever), it’s that the rules strictly enforce US content. From what I understand from the moderator’s own post, it’s a moderation issue (which sounds okay to me). I was just highlighting the inconsistency between the choice of the community name VS what Lemmy.world tries to encourage. But it’s not the end of the world.

    Zenzio,

    That's fair enough and I agree. And like you said, it's not the end of the world.

    PeleSpirit,

    There are other politics subs, this is the most popular. You could find a quieter sub that follows what you want.

    pjhenry1216,

    It's not that every community on lemmy.world needs to be international. There are no rules that suggest that. It's first come, first serve unless you can convince the admins or mods of the community otherwise. I also do not think majority rules should apply here aside from a petition type approach where you can just show the mods there's a strong feeling. I don't think forcing anything is the approach. So unless you already talked to them and they said no and this is simply a petition approach as a second go, I don't know what you really want to happen aside from venting (which is also legitimate). But considering you're suggesting that things should change, I'm wary of the way in which you think these changes should be allowed to be affected.

    hyorvenn,

    I don’t want to launch a petition to be honest, I just wanted to see what the other members of the instance thought about it (mainly because I wondered if Lemmy.world was in fact mostly composed of US members). I agree that a community should not be renamed/removed if it does not break any rule or do anything that deserve such a treatment.

    As I said in other posts, not all communities on Lemmy.world must be international, that would not make any sense. But I would not create a c/photography community and ban any non french content for example. If a community is specific to one country, it’s a reasonable approach to say it in the name if any member of the instance has not more chance to belong to this country than another.

    pjhenry1216,

    You're absolutely correct it's a reasonable approach. I don't disagree. I honestly would prefer that as well. But I don't get confused when I see something outside of that. If they're used to talking politics in person, they may not normally call it US politics. Or maybe they simply weren't thinking at the time. Or maybe they just thought it'd be more popular and didn't think of the downsides.

    There's plenty of entirely legitimate reasons why the name could be what it is. I don't think it's weird. Again, I'd prefer otherwise, as based on name along id assume one thing, but upon visiting and seeing another, it wouldn't cause me to stumble. Like, I feel like this post would have made more sense just commenting how many US Americans are weird like that and just default. I blame exceptionalism myself, but that's just my gut.

    And to be fair, it's not like naming a community "photography" and expecting only US photography. It'd be more like calling it "healthcare" or "government" or something that is commonly talked about without the "US" designator within this country.

    betterdeadthanreddit,

    They could change it so it’s only news about world superpowers. Results would be the same though.

    danc4498,

    Lemmy.world, an instance that aims to be international (hence the name), seems weird to me.

    I never got the impression that this instance specifically aimed to be international. It always felt like the aim was to replace Reddit in whatever way that manifests itself. I never got the impression that every community needed to be equally inclusive of content from all countries.

    As for !politics, I think part of the problem is that changing the rule would result in very little change since

    So it may be better to just keep the US users isolate where they are and create a new sub that would just be less dominated by those users.

    hyorvenn,

    From the Lemmy.world description:

    “A generic Lemmy server for everyone to use. The World’s Internet Frontpage Lemmy.world is a general-purpose Lemmy instance of various topics, for the entire world to use.”

    And the logo is an earth. It does not forbid any community restricted to one specific country (neither should it, it’s perfectly normal), but it sure isn’t specifically tied to the US. I think a fair comparison would be if c/politics was China content only, that would looks weird too (even more so because of the language but well, surely you get my point).

    danc4498,

    I just think you’re reaching to say the “world” branding has anything to do with the philosophy of the website. I think it’s cool branding and synergy with the mastodon instance. Other than that, it is no more worldly than Reddit was.

    With that said, it’s no more weird that c/politics is specific to US politics than r/politics was.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • general@lemmy.world
  • DreamBathrooms
  • mdbf
  • ethstaker
  • magazineikmin
  • GTA5RPClips
  • rosin
  • thenastyranch
  • Youngstown
  • osvaldo12
  • slotface
  • khanakhh
  • kavyap
  • InstantRegret
  • Durango
  • provamag3
  • everett
  • cisconetworking
  • Leos
  • normalnudes
  • cubers
  • modclub
  • ngwrru68w68
  • tacticalgear
  • megavids
  • anitta
  • tester
  • JUstTest
  • lostlight
  • All magazines