There needs to be actual content rules. TIL worked best when the mods actually adhered to those content rules. Otherwise you just have people posting all kinds of nonsense. Quality is better than quantity
This community is on lemmy.world from what I can see. You might be interacting with it through kbin, but that doesn’t mean there are no rules here. That’s my only point.
@pruwybn These all amount to nothing more than, TIL X exists. The problem with posts like these, is that if you can sit there and write endless posts just like it, it's not really a good post. TIL about fir trees, TIL about car tires, TIL about weed trimmers, TIL about Disney land, etc. etc. etc. etc.
TIL about the TRAPPIST-1 Star System
TIL that there is a global, time traveling radio (sort of)
TIL norway has a homocide map with exact locations of murders.
This doesn't start with TIL and doesn't really sound like a TIL at all:
We then have topics which are vague and don't really tell us anything.
TIL: How Henry Ford’s Strange Social Program Aimed to Control The Personal Lives Of Workers
TIL: How The IMF and World Bank Debt Trap Countries and Force them into Austerity
This is just presented in non-neutral way, and has been posted dozens or even hundreds of times over at reddit, so much so that it's on their repost list:
TIL this Fun Fact: Unfortunately, Chainsaws Were Invented for Childbirth
Clickbait style submissions like this:
TIL that in 2014, a photographer tried to copyright a monkey's selfie and sue Wikipedia for it.
In this kind of submission the user is telling us about an event, without actually telling us the outcome of that event. It's unclear exactly what 'fact' it is they've learned, beyond 'an event happened', it's delayed news at best. A much better TIL would be about the outcome of the trial and what legal implications that has.
Topics like this are just written to say LOL These people are stupid:
TIL the US government once banned sliced bread
and are missing crucial context in the title like the fact that it happened during WW2 when there were shortages.
TIL Most Explosives used by Hamas Are Unexploded Israeli Bombs Dropped on Palestine
This is literally related to a current on-going international conflict and politics and seems to be written to support an agenda. There are reasons they have a rule about no news, and no political posts.
At least this place isn't as bad as a TIL I saw on another instance that seems to do little more run a bot to repost submissions from Reddit
@MikeOToxin no? Magazines should have standards for their posts so that a community can be formed and grow around those principles. The principle of 'just post whatever you want' doesn't encourage much beyond post anything. The only real restrictions on posting in the rules are: no baiting, promoting agendas or self-promotion.
There is nothing there on how you present what it is you've learned beyond 'start it with TIL'. There isn't even a hard requirement that you link to the source, which makes no sense.
Requiring users to actually link to a reliable source to back up what it is they've learned, and to present the knowledge in an objective and readable manner should be a bare minimum.
@crossmr Is this in regards to my thread about Roko's Basilisk? I checked the sidebar before posting, and didn't see anything that suggests it was a bad fit for this community.
@Chozo
Not just yours. The most recent is just little more beyond 'TIL X exists' a couple before yours is 'TIL X exists, well sort of' so it's not even that vague. There are in fact several like that in recent posts. Some are opinions are just vagueness, or nonsense.
As downhill as TIL on reddit has gone, the rules there are a good foundation but do require active moderators to remove the stuff that doesn't belong.
@crossmr I mean, what else would you expect people to post? Any new thing you learn is something you're discovering the existence of for the first time.
What sort of posts would you recommend? "TIL how to change a tire" with a link to a tutorial video? Not being sarcastic, genuinely asking, because I feel like what you're suggesting would exclude almost anything from being posted, unless I'm misunderstanding you (which I probably am).
E: I just took a look at some of the other recent posts, and I see what you mean. There's a lot of low-effort threads that aren't really doing much to encourage discussion.
@Chozo if your post is 'TIL A star system exists' and you can't really tell us an interesting fact or piece of information about it, I'd say.. don't write something to be honest or if you really want to write about that thing, try to find something interesting about it to actually submit. TIL on Reddit also has a rule about titles standing on their own. Yes you can expand on topics inside the submission, but people should get something simply from reading your title. A lot of those titles don't really give you anything at all.