Greetings World News! A couple of us mods from /c/politics have volunteered for tribute and will be helping out on mod duties from here on out! Nice to meet you!
I’ll keep this short because you didn’t come here to hear me talk (“You’re right!”)
Job 1 is making the sidebar a little cleaner and easier to follow. I don’t want anyone to have any illusion as to why content got removed. It should always be clear and concise and not up for debate.
When it comes to copyrighted material, my opinion is super simple:
- Don’t repost the whole article. Boil it down to the 1 or 2 paragraphs that make the point. That falls under fair use.
https://www.copyright.gov/fair-use/
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If you can’t find the 1 or 2 paragraphs that makes the point, MAYBE that’s not the best article to use. 😉 “Brevity is the soul of wit” and all that.
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None of which matters if you use articles that aren’t paygated. If the whole thing is readily available, there’s no reason to copy/paste anything. See if you can find an alternate source.
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If you aren’t sure if something falls under fair use or not, assume it doesn’t. Err on the side of personal liability. “Could someone catch grief over this?” If yes, don’t paste it.
That’s it! Happy World Newsing! Verbing weirds language!
Edit OK, I lied. When posting from the web UI, it will helpfully offer to create an archive link of your choice. Archive links ARE allowed. I have cleared this personally with multiple admins now. If it proves to be a copyright issue, we can simply remove the link.
For some reason, my preferred apps, Boost and Voyager, don’t have that option. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Just a bit of a tangent: readily available unpaywalled content is not the same thing as accessible content. For people with disabilities, the archive links had the helpful side effect of stripping a lot of things that made the content inaccessible to them.
I understand the position you’re taking regarding copyright issues, and the choice of implementation, and I will be following the rules around it. I just didn’t watch people to think it was as simple as “no other reason”.
Good luck generally with moderation efforts though, I appreciate the effort you’re all making.
I wonder too if maybe that’s one of the reasons it offers to generate an Archive link when you submit through the web interface. ADA access is definitely a thing. Regardless, as noted in the addendum, archive links ARE allowed, just don’t copy/paste the whole shootin’ match.
Hmm. Pasting the text content is also good for usability and to hinder site tracking. Users can refer to the subject matter on the app they’re already on instead of jumping to a web view or a browser