The news mod team has asked to no longer be a part of the project until we have a composite tool that polls multiple sources for a more balanced view.

It will take a few hours, but FOR NOW there won’t be a bot giving reviews of the source.

The goal was simple: make it easier to show biased sources. This was to give you and the mods a better view of what we were looking at.

The mod team is in agreement: one source of truth isn’t enough. We are working on a tool to give a composite score, from multiple sources, all open source.

  • Aurenkin@sh.itjust.works
    0·
    4 months ago

    I think the problem arises from the fact that I don’t know what you mean by “this news outlet is shit”. Maybe we can define exactly what we mean here and block such news sites from being posted.

    I don’t think bias can be correlated with article quality, and we should be engaging with articles and ideas based on the merits within, not some aggregate made up thing like “bias”. I’m not saying it’s not a real thing, just that it’s made up and subjective enough to be in my view a useless measure and a fruitless endeavour to get a meaningful measure in the first place.

    If you want a bunch of opinions on the usefulness of an article then we have votes already.

    Obviously I don’t have the context of a mod, so if there are specific cases where you need a bias rating, however flawed, to do that job effectively then sure but I think that’s best developed as say a browser extension (or maybe one exists already) so it’s at least opt in.

    EDIT: Also want to say I appreciate both the call for feedback and also the decision to opt out of the bot for now.

    • JonsJava@lemmy.worldOPMEnglish
      0·
      4 months ago

      Sorry for any confusion. We’re moving away from bias - that’s the goal, at least.

      News source being “shit” examples:

      • A Voice for Men
      • The Activist Mommy
      • Adams County Times
      • Akron Reporter
      • Albany Standard
      • American College of Pediatricians
      • Ames Today
      • Antelope Valley Today
      • Baltimore City Wire
      • Benton Times
      • Bloomington Leader

      I could go on, but I’m at work right now.

      • Aurenkin@sh.itjust.works
        0·
        4 months ago

        Glad to hear we’re moving away from bias, I didn’t pick up on that which could have been my fault so appreciate the clarification. All the best with your work day.

      • stormesp@lemm.eeEnglish
        0·
        4 months ago

        Can you tell me how many articles from those sources were shared the last month? Because i havent seen many or any at all, but meanwhile i have seen Al jhazeera and other news outlets being called not credible without much basis. If the information shared on an article is not factually correct, you can write a message or edit the title so people can know it or even remove the thread if it can be harmful, but what the mod team here is doing is just absurd. The goal should be to get rid of the bot already.

          • stormesp@lemm.eeEnglish
            0·
            4 months ago

            Thank you for confirming that having a bot leave a shitty opinion about how trustful that source is or not is not needed. Unless you are saying that the threads removed due to not having a reliable source is based on mbfc, which would be extremely funny and sad at the same time.