There are some communities where the vast majority of posts are by on or two users reposting news articles.

Sometimes they’ll summarize below, but they will almost never share their opinions on the article, or even just ask what others may think about in regards to this aspect or that aspect. So the entire feed is just URLs.

I would feel more engaged to comment on those posts, or even start a post in the community, when it doesn’t feel like a bunch of robots reposting the daily slop.

  • @JohnnyCanuck@lemmy.ca
    7•8 months ago

    I disagree. You might as well say you can’t upvote or downvote without posting your opinion. Consider the post an upvote for the article.

    Some people want to post content, some people want to comment, some people want to vote, some people want to lurk, and some people don’t care. Having to publicly state your opinion would create a barrier to posting news articles that would kill the community… There will hardly be anything to comment, vote, or lurk on.

    If you want a community where people post news and their opinions - and have to do both - start one, and unsubscribe from the communities you don’t like.

    • ActualOP
      0•8 months ago

      would kill the community

      I’m of the opposite belief. I think some communities stay dead bc there’s just one person constantly posting articles with zero input. I avoid these “zombie” communities. Regular dead communities are more enticing to post in for me.

      start one, and unsubscribe from the communities you don’t like.

      This would create even more fracturing, which is already a big problem here.

      • @JohnnyCanuck@lemmy.ca
        1•8 months ago

        If you do end up finding or making a community like the one you want, I suggest you make it so the poster’s opinion is added in comments not in the post itself. Otherwise it becomes impossible to distinguish between votes for the article and votes for the comment. It’s already bad enough that you can’t distinguish between votes for the newsworthiness/quality/source of an article vs the feelings on the content.

        Take this article as a case in point: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/11159076

        What are people downvoting? Is the article not worthy of being news? Is the article from a bad news source? Do people dislike what happened in the case? Or are people downvoting the poster’s commentary?

        In my opinion that article should be sitting at a positive score as news, so it is visible to more people and available for discussion.