Posting in NEWS ONLY threads

[Big_Zukini]

Mods, apologies about my recent comments including commentary.
Any way to permit news-adjacent commentary? I believe we have so far managed to steer clear of politics in 6 pages.

 

[EmoBirb]

Any way to permit news-adjacent commentary? I believe we have so far managed to steer clear of politics in 6 pages.

It's true that thus far we've kept this thread relatively clean. But I think allowing extensive commentary, even if superficially related will result in this thread getting really messy, really quickly.

 

[helmutkohl]

Not sure which thread you are referring to
but News Only means news only.
non news commentary will get deleted at some point.

 

[DWG]

Not sure which thread you are referring to
but News Only means news only.
non news commentary will get deleted at some point.

There's the generic problem of what to do when the news, or the post containing it, includes errors. Had a correction deleted just the other day.

 

[helmutkohl]

you are free to post news with information that you feel is factual.

news only means news only. its not that hard.
for certain news only threads, like the F-47 and GCAP, we have speculation threads that are more open for discussion.

 

[MadRat]

Honestly, some asinine links littered with deragatory comments directed at politicians have been posted. The moderator refused to deal with them when the same information is available without fartisan pucklary. Absolutely no reason for this cowardly subversion of forum rules.

 

[EmoBirb]

news only means news only. its not that hard.
for certain news only threads, like the F-47 and GCAP, we have speculation threads that are more open for discussion.

Which is suitable for such threads. But in the case of the topic at hand (Attack against Iran), such a discussion thread would ultimately result in many upset people, thread bans, warnings and a locked thread anyway.

Which is also why my first reply here is basically "don't fix it, if it's not broken" so far the news only Iran-Israel-US thread has been civil, on brand for the news only stuff and relatively clean. So I fail to share the desire of other users to pout gasoline into a fire. Quite frankly, if one wants political discussions or just vent, other platforms are more suited.

This sort of stuff already failed during the much less controversial Venezuela raid.

 

[helmutkohl]

Which is suitable for such threads. But in the case of the topic at hand (Attack against Iran), such a discussion thread would ultimately result in many upset people, thread bans, warnings and a locked thread anyway.

Which is also why my first reply here is basically "don't fix it, if it's not broken" so far the news only Iran-Israel-US thread has been civil, on brand for the news only stuff and relatively clean. So I fail to share the desire of other users to pout gasoline into a fire. Quite frankly, if one wants political discussions or just vent, other platforms are more suited.

This sort of stuff already failed during the much less controversial Venezuela raid.

im wondering about what threads you, madrat, etc are talking about.
if its the Iran war thread, thats outside of my area. You can always contact Overscan

 

[MadRat]

im wondering about what threads you, madrat, etc are talking about.
if its the Iran war thread, thats outside of my area. You can always contact Overscan

NEWS ONLY: 2026 Israeli–United States strikes on Iran

 

[Jemiba]

The rule is simple, I think, as Helmut already mentioned before :

- News only means news only ! No comment, besides maybe a short explanation, what a linked page or video is about.
- Just answering to a post actually is a comment, so it probably will be deleted, or at best, edited, if another news is added as an alibi.
- Adding a commentary line at the bottom is kind of a gamble, of course, as it's hardly possible for any of the SPF team to constantly read through all posts. But other users in most cases do ...
- A self-written summary of a source should be ok, I think, if there's no bias, and above all, if the original source is given, so that it can be checked. The "Moderators can and will move split or delete posts" rule always is valid, of course.

Again, it is regarded as arbitrariness, depotism, sheer terror or worse by some, but this forum isn't a place to discuss politics, just read the rules again ! There are other, much more suitable places to do this, so, please, not here !

 

[EmoBirb]

im wondering about what threads you, madrat, etc are talking about.
if its the Iran war thread, thats outside of my area. You can always contact Overscan

It is/was that's the reason this thread was split off from the main thread. Because some wanted to inject their own commentary, contrary to the idea of news only posting. As @Jemiba has laid it out.

 

[MadRat]

It is/was that's the reason this thread was split off from the main thread. Because some wanted to inject their own commentary, contrary to the idea of news only posting. As @Jemiba has laid it out.

The supposed news link was the source of the improper commentary. The same information was available without the douchebag editorial. It's a slimey circumvention of decency.

 

[EmoBirb]

The supposed news link was the source of the improper commentary. The same information was available without the douchebag editorial. It's a slimey circumvention of decency.

I think in such an instance the best thing is just to ignore the commentary of the poster and focus on the footage provided.

 

[UpForce]

I understand that forum members have different interests when it comes to following current events and that results in the experience being somewhat disjointed. I don't think posts from anonymous social media accounts constitute news. There's a lot of that on the Iran/Gulf War 3 discussion, "flooding the zone", as the term of art (without expletives) goes.

Responsible posters should have the presence of mind to wait for attribution of events to known sources, given how prolifically disinformation is produced these days. Given how things are going "news" is something of a misnomer for that particular discussion. I certainly don't use it as anything close to my primary way of acquiring information or organizing my thinking. There are subject matter expert institutions' newsletters to follow for that.

It's more of a stochastic experience of tidbits from qualitatively and motivationally different informational and other spheres. That's informative and impressionistic in its own right but not necessarily or primarily based on the quality of reporting or analysis. A microcosm kind of building of situational awareness, not universal. This is not to say that it necessarily needs altering or can be meaningfully improved.

 

[helmutkohl]

I think this needs to be emphasized again..

This forum is about Secret aircraft projects.

Over time, the forum has grown exponentially in terms of active users and the number of posts which leads to discussions going beyond the scope of the original forum. Volunteer moderators now have more things to deal with and can't actively police every single thread. Politics was never part of the original scope.
If off topic threads have to be made news only, or closed all together, then so be it. It's not what this forum was intended for.
We want to know what secret aircraft project Lockheed or AVIC has hidden from public, not what Musk and the Ayatollah had for breakfast.

 

[MadRat]

I don't feel the need to 'splain my politics here. It may not orient with non-Americans nor people of many religions. I've been abroad enough to know my viewpoints are biased. So I promise to do my best not show you mine if you do not show me yours.

 

[DWG]

The rule is simple, I think, as Helmut already mentioned before :

- News only means news only ! No comment, besides maybe a short explanation, what a linked page or video is about.

So if the news posted is incorrect we just leave it uncorrected?

I'm specifically thinking of the example last week where we had posts saying the sinking of the IRIS Dena was the first sinking by SSN/first sinking by torpedo since WWII, when in fact that was HMS Conqueror's sinking of ARA General Belgrano in the Falklands War.

I understand the general principle, and don't disagree with it, but rules need to be applied pragmatically.

 

[Jemiba]

One of our general rules is "Always quote your sources". Not, that we, the whole membership here, distrust anybodies statement, but statements like "I read somewhere ..." are hard to check.
So, if a source is identified as being wrong, I would propose to look for a counter statement, and , staying with the example of the sinking of IRIS Dena vs. ARA General Belgrano, denote it with a short note "counter statement to post #123, sinking of IRIS Dena".

As some of the last reports have shown, the problem sometimes isn't the content of such a header, but the wording. When an Iranian school was accidentally hit, it wasn't that the statement as such, but that for some members, the wording was regarded as biased.

Always keep in mind, please, that we here are an international community of more, than 50,000 people, and though nationalistic statements are strongly discouraged, of course, there logically are different points of view to most events. And just having a certain nationality, not necessarily turn every statement in favour of this nation into truth, nor a statement against it into a lie !

And just, as we would all sit in a big plenary hall (a football stadium probably would fit ...), everybody just shouting out his opinion without any sensibility, certainly would result in a mass brawl in the South Bank ...
So, at least a certain level of diplomacy is needed by everybody posting in such delicate themes. Yes, that's quite a big challenge, and we're trying to monitor it, and in the case of violations, we are the ones, who have to shout "Order ! Order !".
For other ways of discussion, I would recommend your favourite pub (with the indisputable advantage, that there you could have a drink, too), or, as already mentioned, other online communities.

 

[scautomoton]

Is it almost worth having an additional forum rule along the lines of no Current Affairs?

Arguably, there is enough coverage on TV/radio/the rest of the web regarding the various just and unjust activities occurring around the world. I personally like to get away from the endless doom by visiting sites such as this. And before anyone pipes up that I have the choice not to read said threads, I do exercise that right, but nonetheless any acrimonious commentary tends to spill over into other threads, and the general atmosphere does take a downward turn.

 

[MadRat]

We don't need that. Other than a few repetitive offenders the postings have been fine.

Someone else appears to have cleared up posts I found to be offensive when another moderator defended them. Some are better than others.

 

[EmoBirb]

Is it almost worth having an additional forum rule along the lines of no Current Affairs?

The issue with this is that it would heavily impact threads of modern systems which take part in current affairs. Current affairs drive debate, which drives development, which drives procurement, which ultimately results in deployment. So to a certain extent these things are interwoven. Obviously things that are only tangently related to any given system and mostly politcal grandstanding should be reported and subsequently removed. But within a certain threshold the active deployment of something in a war zone can be considered a checkpoint in the history of a given system. And as this forum serves in many ways as an archive for information about past and current systems, such instances are often the catalyst for procurement decisions or further developments to address certain dynamics that have been discovered. These are like combat records from WW2, surely they were current affairs back then, but we look back at them as viable sources to understand other aspects of any given development. In short current affairs don't remain current and if they are within the framework of the forum (i.e. not politically motivated, no jingoism, not insulting etc.) it should be fine.