[Mod Post] Hobby Drama Rules Discussion
[Mod Post] Hobby Drama Rules Discussion
Hey there! This is obviously a community in the vein of the reddit Hobby Drama subreddit, but I wanted to check in to see where we want to draw a few rules as a community. So to that end:
REPOSTING FROM REDDIT
I did see a few people were interested in having a bot auto repost from the reddit sub and most of our posts are reposts. My question here is should we have an anything from another site (reddit or otherwise) is fair game to repost with proper credit (let's try to keep those links back to original write-ups, I feel this is only fair to the authors) rule or should permission be obtained from the author first for reposts (basically like r/bestofredditorupdates on reddit)?
DRAMA RESOLUTION WAITING PERIOD
The reddit sub has a 14 day waiting period for drama to conclude before a post can go up. As we're obviously a smaller community I don't see the need to be as stringent, but waiving the waiting period could lead to a lot of biased hot take posts. Would the community like to see the waiting period waived, lowered, remain?
ETA: this post is open for discussion until 7/24 so please do add your opinion even if you feel "late" to the discussion! It's my goal to have the community rules updated by Friday 7/28 to fit our community a little better and knowing how our community feels as migration from reddit continues to take place will be a big assist.
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I personally think that reposting should require the permission of the original author (not just in this community, but in general). I guess this is an unpopular opinion, but giving credit just means you aren’t plagiarizing. It doesn’t mean that someone else’s work is now yours to repost in full on another site. A bot for reposting news links is one thing, but it really bugs me to see someone’s writing that they put a lot of work into posted to a different site without their knowledge.
The only reason I don't care all that much is because it's all online in public, it's made to be shared. Do you get upset when someone steals your meme and doesn't credit you? The internet is just made for this kind of spread. It's why comic creators use tags. Where do you draw the line for what online text is shareable or not shareable?
I feel like memes are made and meant to be shared hence the name. I feel a hobby drama post is more like a blog post to a community they are a member of. They are sharing it with members of that community and not intentionally sharing it with other communities. I also think asking for permission seems like a good middle ground between reposting all hobby drama posts from Reddit and banning all reposts.
My only issue with this is some of the people might not be there. They might have forgotten their accounts, left reddit or might be literally dead. I have definitely made some posts with some alts that I no longer remember the password to.
If we are going to require permission (which I am not for, for the record. I have a different philosophical view) then I would prefer it be an opt out type of thing. Meaning message the account, say that you are planning on reposting their post to Lemmy in the next week unless they respond and say they would rather not. That's a win, win, win. Not only will you get a better repost rate (because let's face it even if people don't care, some people won't bother answering their messages), you still give them the opportunity to say no and on top of that you get to introduce them to Lemmy!
I don’t know if we would be reposting really old posts or not so I’m not sure if that would be an issue. I think the opt out system is a good idea. At least it gives the creator a chance to decline the repost. Especially if we give them a decently long enough timeline to respond.
I wonder how this would all be enforced. Would you need to screenshot your PM to the OP?
I believe r/bestofredditorupdates usually just asks in the comments of the post so it's public to everyone. Personally I don't mind running on an honor system (since a fair share of the more popular HD posts are archived or authored by abandoned accounts) and if a write-up is reposted against the wishes of an author having a policy they can reach out to have the post here taken down.
For an example of a contacting the author issue though, the WoW write-up author was suspended by reddit and faik that was never revoked and the author never made another account. So there's no way (that I'm aware of) to contact them and that's a decently popular write-up that got voted an award by the subreddit community.
I don’t get fussed about it for myself because I know there is a large population on the internet that considers everything fair game and I post accordingly (not that I create so much stuff that everyone wants, haha). I learned that lesson twenty years ago when I spent ages in MS Paint creating a forum avatar for myself and soon started to see it popping up on other people’s profiles. I realized then that something might be legally* mine, but good luck enforcing that. Maybe most people also realize that and post knowing that they will be losing some control, but I don’t think that means we just give up all courtesy.
As far as sharing, I’m all for it - it is absolutely one of the best things about the internet. But to me it means sharing the link - “hey guys go read this cool thing” and then people can go and read and engage with the author on their work. Maybe you include some quotes with the link to give some context for sharing. It’s the wholesale cut+paste for the purpose of building up a different community that the author is not part of that I don’t care for.
Where I draw the line is a good question and I’m doubtless not always consistent. Memes? To me, the sharing and transforming is part of the nature of a meme - images are combined, text is updated or replaced, etc. Comics? Sharing one panel or whatever and directing to the artist’s site seems like the courteous thing to do, but if you are reposting so many of the artist’s comics that people just read your posts instead of going to the artist’s site I would consider that a problem.
Additionally, one benefit of requesting permission from the authors may be to attract some of them over here. I’d love to have more users passionate enough to write 5000 words about some obscure stamp collecting scandal on lemmy.
Anyway, that’s my 17 cents.
*this is from a US perspective, but I’m no lawyer
Going to answer you down here, but yeah I agree requesting brings us to the attention of posters and might entice them over here which would definitely help the community grow. I like the idea floated below of it being an opt-out request. I know it may come off a little rude, but some of the accounts for the most popular posts on the reddit are abandoned. The WoW one for example the poster was suspended by reddit and faik that was never revoked and OP didn't make a new account or anything so there's no way to reach them.
I like the opt-out idea, too. It’s clear that there are differing opinions on the ethics of reposting, so maybe attracting posters over here is the more widely-compelling argument. Maybe part of the notice of reposting could include an invitation to come and post it themselves.
I'm going to give it a week to see what everyone says, but right now I'm leaning towards (based on replies) strongly encouraging (but not requiring) posters sending an opt out message with a three day waiting period for a reply and then having a takedown policy for anyone who's been reposted here who doesn't want to be. More work for me, but I feel this might be a good middle ground. I mirrored my account on reddit so no one will have to make a Lemmy account to ask for a take down.
I did also reach out to the reddit mods a week ago asking for some guidance on how they'd like to link up, but I haven't heard anything back which is why I decided to leave it to the community here.
I can definitely say I’ve messaged the mods on r/HobbyDrama about maybe giving us some support, official backing, and it’s been 11 days with no reply. I’ll encourage anything that helps us grow and maybe have people post their content both on Reddit and here.
100% agree with this. We should have the courtesy to ask the author for permission before spreading their work. They should be aware it was posted here in case they would like to respond to comments or if they need to make edits.