This part is worth repeating. I will be supporting this and already do.
Sorry, I’ve been busy today and it looks like it got a little crazy.
I have no problems with putting a train back on the tracks but I’m a bit confused on the category" [Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share". How does it morph into “breaking news”?
Yes, the Titan Sub disaster was about something that recently happened in the news but it wasn’t necessarily something relegated to news-only posts. I’m confused on why MPSIMS is the keeper of the news flame. It seemed like a good place to speculate on what happened without citing anything.
Breaking news threads live in MPSIMS. Perhaps they could be elsewhere, but that’s their current home. We have special rules for breaking news threads. And a special tag to indicate which threads ARE breaking news threads.
And it’s fine to speculate as to what happened, with our without cites. It’s not fine to talk about how the rich people who died deserved it in that thread.
I’m okay with the modding, just chagrinned that I didn’t notice which thread/forum I was in.
That happens. Please don’t chagrin yourself further over it. I got my one and only warning because I lost track, too.
I don’t see a Breaking News category on start-up. If someone starts a new topic in MPSIMS how do they choose Breaking News as a sub category?
When you click New Topic, You’ll see the the Category pull down and then the Optional Tag pull down.
In the Tag field, type Bre and only breaking-news will come up.
And often the mods will tag something as breaking news.
So the Op has to deliberately choose this. Thanks to both for explaining.
I can see making Breaking News a separate category.
Ah, that’s what I thought originally. Seems like it’s making extra moderating work.
Tagging is very easy. Though moderating Breaking News threads can be extra work.
It would be a very small category, I don’t think we would ever break it out to its own forum.
There are only 49 breaking-news threads so far.
It’s not really making more work, it’s trying to help the posters keep breaking news separate. A lot of the breaking news threads are very popular, and i think that’s partly because they are focused and fairly conflict-free.
I got my hand slapped for making fun of how a political candidate was wearing his flag. It was totally justified because of course that post should have been in the Cafe Society due to the fashion aspect.
It is not about the number, it is about them being a special category of threads with their own unique rules.
That’s not unique. QZ threads tagged with “Factual” are moderated with more strict FQ rules instead of the normal, more relaxed rules of QZ.
It wouldn’t make sense to break these tags out into their own categories/forums. They just don’t get enough posts. Breaking News threads in MPSIMS and Factual threads in QZ both had special rules before we started using tags. The tags were just added to make it easier for everyone to distinguish when these special rules apply.
It is a matter of perspective:
I tend to see the different forums as the “natural” groupings of threads with similar rules or subjects.
Apparently you see even more categories grouped by tags. (Which is perfectly valid off course)
I would argue you shouldn’t separate by subject but by moderation, making the rules simpler to grasp.
It’s terrible how we’re not allowed to have any fun in the Ukraine war breaking news thread. SUCH a downer.
As someone who often inserts quips into heavier threads, I don’t mind if a mod pops in to draw a line somewhere. That’s entirely their role.
We do. The hijack rules are strictest in GD, P&E, and breaking news threads within MPSIMS. A hijack needs to be really disruptive before I’ll moderate it in Cafe Society.
For the record, I was one of the called-out, and I don’t feel offended over it. I was responding to Atamasama’s quip, and it didn’t occur to me it would be a hijack. The mod was just doing their job.
It was actually kind of nice to be recognized for something. 
breaking-news in Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share (MPSIMS) and factual in The Quarantine Zone are the only special rules tags that I’m aware of. The Breaking News tag replaces the OP or a Mod putting [BREAKING NEWS] in the thread title.
Some of the few cross forum tags are ukraine-invasion and ai, no special rules for it though. Most tags are for Cafe Society & The Game Room.
As @puzzlegal said, The Hijack Rules are most strongly enforced in GD and P&E, then FQ then working down to lightly in MPSIMS except breaking-news and not at all in the Pit, though other pit posters may tell you to drop the hijack. I do so in the Troll thread, not as a poster and many other do to. The Pit is odd, I guess I don’t really understand its rules but it has the least rules.