- youtube as source: not every youtube is bad as a source. But so many get away with lenient standards than other text sources. Most of them lack evidence to support their claims, and use a hearsay as the sole source. So i suggest banning youtube as a source completely. Yes it'd prevent vids that provide sufficient evidence. But youtube is source, it doesn't take long before media outlets make news about it. e.g. 1) "Exposing The Solid State Donut Battery. It's Over." from Ziroth, 2) "216,000,000 Spy TVs | The LG Smart TV Problem" from Gamers Nexus, 3) "Statement by Federal Reserve Chair Jerome H. Powell" from Federal Reserve. These vids gain attention and generated many articles. So the only downside is missing a niche fact whose popularity was so small that no one made an article about it. Compared to the upside, i will say it's worthy. P.S. Hearsay is not necessarily bad as long as the speaker has built the credibility over time. Youtube vids tend to have no enough credibility compared to news outlets.
- Recent news: There are dedicated communities for news. i simply don't see the need to see news here. Also, recent facts tend to change, or be misleading or simply false. This place, to me, is a place for facts that will remain as facts and after hundred years. I know it's a subjective opinion but i'll venture to say people, including me, come here(and r/todayilearned) because of these unique and interesting facts from decades ago. I'm not saying they should be from Narnia, the point is the posted facts should be facts interesting as hell that a year later you'll still find interesting. News from last month is a hard no but from two years earlier is acceptable imo. the cutoff must be within them. It's up to debate. I'm here to just say we need a cutoff.
example posts for each problem:
- TIL there's a secure underground tunnel for celebrities to get to the Oscars, https://lemmy.world/post/51657138 youtube as source, hearsay
- TIL DJT Jr.’s recent wedding was bankrolled entirely by a Russian oligarch https://lemmy.world/post/51917499 literally a news article from this month; TIL that Elon Musk is buying ads on Instagram. He is urging US voters to check their registration status on his website https://lemmy.world/post/51684579 from this month, from substack but first half can be counted as news.
Lastly, i must confess i made this post after reading one particular post that annoyed me: TIL the name for one of Trump's distraction techniques https://lemmy.world/post/52012223. Thing is, it contains essentially zero new info in the title and it was an unacceptable post to me. Now i know that, unlike reddit, post contents are allowed as well as the link, which provided the info. So i have no problem with it. But i think posts should aim to put the main fact in the title so users can save time and move on. Ofc, who am i to force this.
i think that 2 years sounds like a good time limit, btw, in general, e.g. about technology that came out and how it works. (e.g. sodium-ion-batteries)
but i also don't want this to devolve into a politics and celebrities community. i'd rather ban politics and celebrity news than set a fixed time limit.