I don't think Lemmy as a whole should have any sourcing rules, but I think some of the individual large communities might benefit from some sourcing rules. If a particular source is notoriously disreputable or poor quality, perhaps a community could vote on whether posting links to that source should be discouraged/forbidden?

What are your thoughts? Tagging the active mods (@Bitswap@lemmy.world and @otter@lemmy.ca) for their input as well.

[–] otter@lemmy.ca 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I'm good with removing poor sources. I don't think there's a way to restrict domains on a community level (not yet anyways), but we can manually remove them based on reports

[–] Bitswap@lemmy.world 3 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I'm torn. On one hand, I'm fine with removing poor sources as there is so much garbage on the internet it's good to keep it from invading all spaces. On the other hand, there's some good discussion here...but it could be mainly about how garbage the article is...

Overall, there have been very few reports for poor sources/spam/fake articles. So report it and we'll start removing it. This means we should probably compile a "deny list" for inappropriate sources.

[–] threelonmusketeers@sh.itjust.works 1 points 6 months ago (1 children)

Compiling a "deny list" seems like a reasonable strategy. What would determine whether a source is added? Frequency of reports? Moderator discretion? Community vote? Could a source ever be removed from the list if its quality improves?

[–] Bitswap@lemmy.world 1 points 6 months ago* (last edited 6 months ago)

Great questions. Honestly, I haven't given it much though.

What would determine whether a source is added?

Hard question. Open to suggestions. Even if a post starts off with a click-bait-y title/source, our member typically post concrete sources and more resources in the comments. The discussions are a large part of the community and, as of now, we are not overrun with bad sources/posts. I inclined to create a plan, but not implement until we have more issues. I'd like to say the community decides, but it could lead to endless polls about sources. Thoughts?

Frequency of reports?

Absolutely would be one metric. So far, we get very, very, very few reports in the Space community. Mostly the reports are to remove trolls or unrelated content.

Moderator discretion?

It would probably start here. Not sure I'm comfortable making those decisions, but this is likely the reality until we have more discussions and decide on a path forward.

Community vote?

This would be pretty great...just not sure how to go about it. I guess we could sticky a vote post for a few weeks or something.

Could a source ever be removed from the list if its quality improves?

We would have to have a mechanism for this. Times change. So do journals/magazines/periodicals.

I believe that Otter is correct, there is no way to restrict domains on a community level. So this would be managed by the mods supported by reports from the community.