Update 1: Thanks for your patience, IRL got in the way. The responses to this post are quite varied, and that makes me happy that we discussed this instead of me unilaterally just banning posts and narrowing our scope. The discussion also helped us uncover ideas I wouldn’t have realised on my own. Thank you all for being a community, and not just in name.

Due to the way online forums work, multiple replies suggesting they’d be happy with my decision whatever it is, and my previous experiences being too bureaucratic in casual communities, I’ve decided to instead make small adjustments which we can extend (or revert) easily if they don’t work.

• I’ve added a kangaroo emoji to draw attention to the community title and to the fact that this is an Australian-themed place
• I’ve added a new rule: “News posts must include some body text explaining how the article is particularly relevant to the Australian perspective, rather than mere global news.”
• Zagorath has offered to create an automated bot to remind posters of that rule. In the meantime, I’ve added them as a moderator to give us an extra pair of hands - although I want to say I’m already satisfied with the admin team’s help, that was reassuring to see.

Also, in response to Nath’s advice, I’m considering if the group name should change to Overseas Tidings, yes because of the pun, but admittedly I didn’t even know that word so I won’t go forth with that unless there’s community backing.

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A user has pointed out that a recent post about the US military doesn’t appear to follow Rule 1 of this community, and I now notice many other recent posts from various users are also straying further and further away from having direct links to our region.

While one can argue that these posts are significant or insightful to Aussies, and I agree, these stories are general world news, for which there are many other communities on federated instances, and which may overshadow the regional-specific news that is unlikely to interest users outside of our region.

I want to begin a conversation to find out whether this community is in support of our team enforcing the rule more strictly, to keep this community in line with it’s unique purpose.

I also propose that news about international conflicts, such as the ongoing Russo-Ukrainian war and Middle-Eastern conflicts, should also be considered as general global news unless the news itself specifically discusses the involvement of Australia or another country in our region. While Australia is continuously participating in these conflicts, and while I believe that’s an important political and economic issue for Australians to grapple with, general updates on conflicts we’re involved in are more suited to other global news communities.

I’m also considering adding more staff to this community to help prevent rule-violating posts staying up for hours or days if existing staff are busy, to avoid normalising general world news here and avoid non-community think tank spam from abusing this community.

I haven’t yet locked or deleted existing posts which may violate this rule, even if I believe some cases are clear violations, because I don’t want to suddenly clamp down on posts on a whim when they were normal to post before.

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Tagging fellow community staff: @lodion@aussie.zone and [inactive account?] @deadcat@aussie.zone

Tagging all posters from the past month, as this rule affects new posts: @zero_gravitas@aussie.zone @arbilp3@aussie.zone @Gorgritch_umie_killa@aussie.zone @maniacalmanicmania@aussie.zone @Eyekaytee@aussie.zone @TheHolm@aussie.zone @bpalmerau@aussie.zone