Hello fellow humans. I am posting today to address two topics:

Rules

As we round 2000 subscribers, it is time to define some rules for the community.

Many of you have probably noticed that the discussions have, at times, become heated and in some cases personal. As a fallible and emotional human, I too have been involved in this, and I want to define rules for myself as much as for everyone else.

So, the simplest solution is to “borrow” the subreddit rules. However, there are some rules that I do not think apply here and I have removed them and tuned the remainder. For instance, I think a lot of the rules about “low-effort” content may be overly restrictive and, frankly, isn’t even enforced on the subreddit. This is not to say that I want to allow low-effort content, but I think the other rules cover the bases adequately (and this is true for other removals). If there is something I have left out, and you feel it is important, please comment here.

  1. Be your own moderator
    • Think before you post or comment, and use your common sense about what is acceptable. This is a community space and should ultimately be community-driven. Be the community you want to see here.
    • If you are here because you want to make fun of or grandstand over all of the silly people who believe that UFO/UAPs may exist, you are not welcome. Just block the community and go about your day.
  2. Be Civil
    • No trolling or being disruptive.
    • No insults or personal attacks.
    • No accusations that other users are shills/agents. If you have some kind of evidence of this, please report instead.
    • No hate speech or abusive speech based on race, religion, sex/gender, or sexual orientation.
    • No harassment, threats, or advocating violence.
    • No witch hunts or doxxing.
    • No summarily dismissive comments (e.g. “Swamp gas.”).
  3. Posts must be related to UFO/UAPs
  4. Avoid duplicate posts
  5. Link posts should contain the linked content
    • For articles or other long-form content, include a summary of some kind.
    • For short-form content, such as tweets, include the entire text.

When we agree on the final rules, I will begin moderating all new posts and comments using them. I’m not going to retroactively enforce these rules because frankly nobody got time for that.

The Elephant

And lastly, I believe there is an unspoken phenomena occurring that I want to address; that is, I think that the overall lack of content and discussion in this community (and many others) has led many ex-redditors to creep back to their former home. I get it, the subreddit has by far more up-to-date news and commentary and this community simply does not.

Hence, I want to put out a call for those who have the time: Please do your part to contribute. I cannot be the only person here posting content. Of the ~2k subscribers, I am certain that there are a percentage who post consistently to reddit still. I ask you only to take a small amount of time to consider cross-posting to this community, or posting news as it appears on your various feeds.

You will quickly see the results of even a small amount of effort here, I promise.

~🛸 Cheers,
Daughter of Mars

EDIT: Given the, let’s say, slow reaction to this post, I’m going to leave it here for another week before committing to the rules. If there’s no strong objection then the rules will go into effect on the 14th.

EDIT 2: Rules are up, with only minor modification

  • Han_Tyumi_Shot_First@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    I’ve awalys liked the requirement of a submission statement on all posts. It severs as a summery of the posted topic, encourages the poster to explain the relevance to the community, and provides a good jumping off point that often will spark and foster more discussion.

    Not sure if others feel the same, but that’s a rule I personally think could be added that might be beneficial.

  • 6jarjar6@lemmy.sdf.org
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    1 year ago

    I also would love to hang out here instead of /r/ I catch myself over there to see the new content. I will do my best to try and post here. Thanks for your posts :)

  • d7sdx@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    @DaughterOfMars@lemmy.world Thanks for your effort! The rules should be sufficient for know 👍

    Regarding the big grey biologic … 2k users can nowadays be considered a smaller community and we don’t know how many of those subscribers are actually active anymore. Nevertheless it should be possible to attract more people to move away from /r/ but I don’t think we will achieve this by cross-posting. To really win people over we have to create more original content and somehow increase the visibility of this community. So, does anybody know some UFO “influencers” who are willing to move here? 🙃

    I am really curious where all the people from the “old” UFO forums went that closed down over the last decade.