Hello fellow humans. I am posting today to address two topics:

Rules

As we round 2000 subscribers, it is time to define some rules for the community.

Many of you have probably noticed that the discussions have, at times, become heated and in some cases personal. As a fallible and emotional human, I too have been involved in this, and I want to define rules for myself as much as for everyone else.

So, the simplest solution is to "borrow" the subreddit rules. However, there are some rules that I do not think apply here and I have removed them and tuned the remainder. For instance, I think a lot of the rules about "low-effort" content may be overly restrictive and, frankly, isn't even enforced on the subreddit. This is not to say that I want to allow low-effort content, but I think the other rules cover the bases adequately (and this is true for other removals). If there is something I have left out, and you feel it is important, please comment here.

0. Be your own moderator
   • Think before you post or comment, and use your common sense about what is acceptable. This is a community space and should ultimately be community-driven. Be the community you want to see here.
   • If you are here because you want to make fun of or grandstand over all of the silly people who believe that UFO/UAPs may exist, you are not welcome. Just block the community and go about your day.
1. Be Civil
   • No trolling or being disruptive.
   • No insults or personal attacks.
   • No accusations that other users are shills/agents. If you have some kind of evidence of this, please report instead.
   • No hate speech or abusive speech based on race, religion, sex/gender, or sexual orientation.
   • No harassment, threats, or advocating violence.
   • No witch hunts or doxxing.
   • No summarily dismissive comments (e.g. "Swamp gas.").
2. Posts must be related to UFO/UAPs
3. Avoid duplicate posts
4. Link posts should contain the linked content
   • For articles or other long-form content, include a summary of some kind.
   • For short-form content, such as tweets, include the entire text.

When we agree on the final rules, I will begin moderating all new posts and comments using them. I'm not going to retroactively enforce these rules because frankly nobody got time for that.

The Elephant

And lastly, I believe there is an unspoken phenomena occurring that I want to address; that is, I think that the overall lack of content and discussion in this community (and many others) has led many ex-redditors to creep back to their former home. I get it, the subreddit has by far more up-to-date news and commentary and this community simply does not.

Hence, I want to put out a call for those who have the time: Please do your part to contribute. I cannot be the only person here posting content. Of the ~2k subscribers, I am certain that there are a percentage who post consistently to reddit still. I ask you only to take a small amount of time to consider cross-posting to this community, or posting news as it appears on your various feeds.

You will quickly see the results of even a small amount of effort here, I promise.

~🛸 Cheers,
Daughter of Mars

EDIT: Given the, let's say, slow reaction to this post, I'm going to leave it here for another week before committing to the rules. If there's no strong objection then the rules will go into effect on the 14th.

EDIT 2: Rules are up, with only minor modification

Some highlights:

The grave difficulty with essentially all past UFO studies has been that they were either devoid of any substantial scientific content, or else have lost their way amidst the relatively large noise-content that tends to obscure the real signal in the UFO reports. The presence of a percentually large number of reports of misidentified natural or technological phenomena (planets, meteors, and aircraft, above all) is not surprising, given all the circumstances surrounding the UFO problem. Yet such understandable and usually easily recognized instances of misidentification have all too often been seized upon as a sufficient explanation for all UFO reports, while the residue of far more significant reports (numbering now of order one thousand) are ignored.

In fact, the over-all public and scientific response to the UFO phenomena is itself a matter of substantial scientific interest, above all in its social-psychological aspects. Prior to my own investigations, I would never have imagined the wide spread reluctance to report an unusual and seemingly inexplicable event, yet that reluctance, and the attendant reluctance of scientists to exhibit serious interest in the phenomena in question, are quite general.

What the above illustrative case shows all too well is that highly unusual events have been occurring under circumstances where any organization with even passing scientific curiosity should have responded vigorously, yet the Air Force UFO program has repeatedly exhibited just as little response as I have noted in the above 1956 Lakenheath incident. The Air Force UFO program, contrary to the impression held by most scientists here and abroad, has been an exceedingly superficial and generally quite incompetent program. Repeated suggestions from Air Force press offices, to the effect that "the best scientific talents available to the U.S. Air Force" have been brought to bear on the UFO question are so far from the truth as to be almost laughable, yet those suggestions have served to mislead the scientific community, here and abroad, into thinking that careful investigations were yielding solid conclusions to the effect that the UFO problem was a nonsense problem. The Air Force has given us all the impression that its UFO reports involved only misidentified phenomena of conventional sorts. That, I submit, is far from correct, and the Air Force has not responsibly discharged its obligations to the public in conveying so gross a misimpression for twenty years. I charge incompetence, not conspiracy, let me stress.

What I find scientifically dismaying is that, while a large body of UFO evidence now seems to point in no other direction than the extraterrestrial hypothesis, the profoundly important implications of that possibility are going unconsidered by the scientific community because this entire problem has been imputed to be little more than a nonsense matter unworthy of serious scientific attention.

I'll just include the important parts from the subreddit post:

The attached link will lead you directly to the House Oversight Committee's hearing page for the UAP hearing due at 10AM on July 26, 2023 - just under one week away. Link also below:

https://oversight.house.gov/hearing/unidentified-anomalous-phenomena-implications-on-national-security-public-safety-and-government-transparency/

The subject of the hearing is listed as 'Unidentified Anomalous Phenomena: Implications on National Security, Public Safety, and Government Transparency'.

Linked on the page is the scheduled YouTube livestream link that is usual with House hearings. In case anyone runs into trouble accessing the government website, the direct link to the livestream is:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQ7Dw-739VY

To also note - previous hearings listed on the website show a list of witnesses brought forward during the hearing. This seems to only appear AFTER the hearing has concluded. Also attached, again after the hearing has concluded, is a document containing the statement made by each witness in the form of a PDF file. Each witness will have their own document, if provided, under their name (hyperlinked as Document for all) Examples of this can be seen by looking on the pages for already held hearings via the main hearings list via this link:

https://oversight.house.gov/hearing/

I particularly appreciated the segment with Bill Nye.

Not a fan of Faux News personally, but they certainly have a large audience so this is good to see.

Hopefully this isn't just another tease!

Hey folks, I thought I should pop in and make a quick post given the surge in signups at lemmy and the rapidly growing subscriber number of this community.

First of all, when I created it I didn't really put any thought into the future, I just wanted to hear and talk about disclosure news. For that reason, I did not attempt to define any rules or guidelines. As it stands, with about 700 subscribers, we still don't have enough engagement to really be concerned about moderation. It also helps that most people seem to be fairly well-behaved on lemmy so far, but that may change soon as reddit refugees continue to flood in. If it becomes an issue I will define rules and gather moderators as needed.

Secondly, if you see posts in other UFO/UAP communities that are missing here, perhaps you would consider cross-posting them. I certainly miss plenty of things.

Finally, thank you to everyone who has been posting valuable content here! We are currently the top UFO community on the lemmyverse as far as I can tell, and I hope that we can continue to spread knowledge about what is ostensibly the most ridiculed topic in recent history in a sane and reasonable way.

~🛸 Cheers,
Daughter of Mars

More News Nation bits. I only post this one because I find it interesting how the story LVMPD tells keeps changing.

I still see posts from other instances on beehaw communities, and it makes me wonder: If those posts can't be seen by the mods, then is there simply no moderation possible for them (other than the instance owner, I guess)?