https://www.thedailybeast.com/texan-moved-fam-to-russia-to-flee-wokenow-hes-headed-to-ukraine-front-line/

Archive - https://archive.ph/5UhGI

Hey everyone. I've been considering if I should add this clause since November when I rebooted this community, but a post yesterday whose user-created title resulted in needless fighting in the comments finally made me organize my thoughts around why it should be implemented.

Keep in mind that there are no ex post facto rules in this community; anything posted before this isn't subject to this amendment. (Although if you've posted something, going back and making sure it conforms would make me very happy.) Before getting to my rationale, the Rule 3 extension is bolded below while verbosity getting axed is struck through:

"Posts should use high-quality sources, and posts about an article should have the same headline as that article. You may edit your post if the source rewrites the headline. For a rough idea, check out this list. ~~If it’s marked in red, it probably isn’t allowed; if it’s yellow, exercise caution.~~"

1. User-created headlines are often far more ambiguous. As an example, "Trump voters are afraid that he would hold his promise to cut medicaid". Which Trump voters specifically? The real headline tells us: "4 in 10 Republicans worried Medicaid cuts would hurt their communities: Poll". As another example (of a screenshot of an article; I've considered for a long time if image posts are healthy for this community as it was the original intention to be articles-only, but I don't want to adjudicate that here): "Only thing worse than ICE agents..." The title is a joke instead of telling readers anything relevant unless they click on the image.

TL;DR: Weasel words and jokes obscuring the facts.

2. User-created headlines often introduce unsourced claims which the moderators have to meticulously check the article for. For example, "Michigan Arab community, a majority of who voted for Trump in 2024, are outraged that the man who instituted a Muslim travel ban in his first term, has done so again in his second". Refer back to (1) for "Who in the Michigan Arab community?", but more importantly, "a majority of who voted for Trump in 2024" is never once substantiated. This violates Rule 2, yes, because the OP doesn't use a high-quality source for this explanation of why their post fits the LAMF criteria, and hence this one was removed. But now a moderator has to read through the entire article just to see if this claim is substantiated there.

TL;DR: Unsourced information is much harder to prove and remove.

3. Original headlines usually have better grammar, spelling, and parseability. Refer to the example in (1), in which "are afraid that he would hold his promise to cut medicaid" is less parseable than "worried Medicaid cuts would hurt their communities". This is also a weird title on account of Trump already cutting Medicaid; this article is about them worrying about the effects of that.

TL;DR: Things written by professional writers are usually more readable.

4. Trying to establish rules around what headlines should and shouldn't include (jokes, unverified claims, etc.) is Sisyphean nonsense – not just so the mods don't have to meticulously arbitrate each one but so that users don't feel like they're playing the Password Game.

TL;DR: Moderating custom titles against (1), (2), and (3) is a nightmare.

5. The post body still exists for jokes, claims outside of the article for why this is relevant (provided you follow Rule 2 and source them), your thoughts on what's discussed, etc. We can let the people who want the color commentary go to the comments while letting people who want a useful link aggregator avoid interacting with them.

Because this removes the ability of the OP to explain relevance in the title, Rule 2 is rewritten slightly:

"If the reason your post meets Rule 1 isn't in the source, you must add a source in the post body (not the comments) to explain this."

EDIT: Sorry, I meant to edit this post yesterday when the vote was in, but 'Ban' won. I forgot the numbers from 22:00 UTC, but the current vote (by subtracting downvotes from upvotes) is 51–40, which is pretty close to what it was yesterday. So it's not a total blowout, but it does show that most people want these types of posts banned. Thus, they will be banned for at minimum two months, and a reevaluation can (not necessarily will) be initiated on 20 January. A subsequent vote will be held to determine if we want to have Throwback Tuesdays (suggested in a DM) and/or if we want to allow "Historical" leopards (older than e.g. 15 years) while disallowing "Outdated" ones (older than 3 months and younger than e.g. 15 years).

[PLEASE READ IN FULL BEFORE VOTING]

With Donald Trump's recent reascent to the US presidency, there are likely to be a bunch of stories posted here from his first term, especially as Trump is likely to have nearly unchecked power to accomplish his face-eating compared to his first term. No matter what, there will be measures taken to address this (see the 'No ban' section), but you can vote here to determine if they will be banned altogether.

This post will be locked to ensure only the 'Ban' and 'No ban' comments are present. The one with the highest score in three days (14 November, 22:00 UTC) will be the winner. A rediscussion of the decision will not be possible until 20 January 2025, the day Trump is set to assume office. Obviously this isn't strictly a Trump community and any leopard at all is welcome and encouraged for diversity, but it goes without saying that he's the most prominent leopard right now by far.

Ban

The 'Ban' comment means that articles and other stories (e.g. social media screenshots) which are a certain amount out-of-date (this will initially be three (3) months but is subject to change) will be subject to immediate removal regardless of justification. There will be no penalty for the user other than a removal. This will apply to all posts, not just Trump-related ones, but I foresee this mostly affecting Trump posts. Should a ban be enacted, a separate measure can be voted on to determine if we should have e.g. a policy where posts more recent than three months or older than 20 years are allowed, but nothing inbetween, so that historical leopards are allowed to be showcased. For right now, I don't want to unjustly split the vote.

No ban

The 'No ban' comment means that this will not happen, namely that there will be literally no cutoff. However, a minimally intrusive measure will be taken to distinguish posts covering older stories, namely that if the story is older than three months and the story does not take place in the current year, the poster will need to indicate this in the title by prepending it with the year in brackets (e.g. '[1914] I never thought the politicians would send my children off to die!').

Voting

You're welcome and heavily encouraged to upvote the comment you want and downvote the one you don't, since otherwise there's no way to guarantee someone else won't do that and cancel your vote. Both comments combined must receive at least 50 upvotes (regardless of score accounting for downvotes) for this to be binding.