I’d like to ask for @TheDude to make a server-wide announcement, visible to all members of this instance, that a binding vote about defederation is currently taking place.
Without knowing what the Lemmy UI allows, I was hoping for a text similar to the one informing new users that email verification is currently enabled. Here is what I would like the announcement to entail:
“A binding vote to defederate from another instance is currently taking place in /c/TheAgora. Should the vote be accepted, no users of sh.itjust.works will be able to access the defederated instance or interact with users of that defederated instance anywhere on Lemmy. Should the vote fail, the instance to be defederated remains federated, its content may still be shown on the home feed of sh.itjust.works and the users of that instance may still participate in discussion on this instance.”
I am of the very strong opinion, that no vote should be binding, unless it was announced early enough to all members of this instance! This vote will have instance-wide consequences, the fact that it is taking place needs to be broadcasted beyond this community!
Edit: fix typos (again)
The current policy is, a [Discussion] thread runs for a week, then a [Vote] thread runs for a week. How is that not enough time?
“from another instance”. Name the instance. It’s exploding-heads. It’s not “another instance” it’s a vile instance full of trash and hate.
They’re probably speaking broadly since this won’t be the last time we vote.
Please god no, this agora shit has enough HOA vibes as it is without a bunch of busybodies making their crusade everybodies problem. I’m in favor of defederating and I’m still sick of seeing it on my feed.
This seems like a lot of drama over having to just log into your account on that instance instead of seeing it in your All feed.
It seems like a lot of drama over telling Nazis to get fucked.
Look if we are really going to do the direct democracy thing this problem will always exist. More engaged users will rule the forum, and less engaged users will feel marginalized and make excuses or demand concessions when votes don’t go their way. The only way around this is to enforce some kind of quorum threshold but that will almost certainly never work. Pinned announcements will just flood the forum unless you restrict the number of possible votes per week, which might be an interesting thing to try.
I personally kind of think it’s a bad idea (this brand of forum democracy), but I’m also curious to see the experiment play out.
I think that would be overkill. The current Vote thread has 327 upvotes and 419 comments, so it’s definitely being seen.
Also, having people come in and vote who didn’t take part in the discussion can be problematic as they’ll have a pretty shallow understanding of the topic and the arguments for and against.
I won’t downvote because I think that it’s rude to do so when disagreeing, however I think you may be overestimating how much people want access to the entire fediverse. Especially parts of it that are overtly hateful. This post is melodramatic.
I was able to find this sub, read the announcements and discussion, and vote. I came here because I was curious about the self-governance experiment. Are you interested in increasing voting, or engagement with governance.? They’re related but not the same.
Separately, I think we should rename the process “defenestration.”
Separately, I think we should rename the process “defenestration.”
Seconded. Any objection in the assembly?
Objection: defederation is a beautifully descriptive name. You remove an instance from the Federation. Defenestration is funny, but doesn’t give any context.
We’re tossing whole instances out the window.
I’m not certain all that is necessary but I agree there should be no more than one active vote at a time and it should be pinned to the top. It’s quite easy to miss what’s going on if you don’t happen to log in every day.
Limiting the number of votes kind of has the same vulnerability though. Bad actors can flood the queue with dumb shit to push important votes to delay or create vote fatigue.
Personally, I kind of think there’s a reason why direct democracy isn’t used for this kind of stuff. If we really want a democratic forum we should have representatives, checks and balances, quorums, etc.
Couldn’t we just point out that when it happens and just remove the bad faith votes? Direct democracy often encounters issues because the community isn’t united in the goal of consensus-based decision making. Ideally, we should encourage this instance to shift towards consensus-making instead of simple y/n votes that might still result in large amounts of users feeling ignored or unwelcome.
The conversation should take place with the goal in mind being to reach decisions for the community that most people can abide by - this is why I’ve been supportive of making voting exclusive to accounts on this instance.
People are going to get a lesson on why democracy can be a messy business.
It’s a fun thought experiment carrying the idea through. How would we district?
Lower house - comprised of randomly assigned “districts” of active users with a fixed size which reshuffle every so often. The purpose here is largely to create a class of “professional” administrative citizens who are required to register a vote for their district. Not voting would result in an immediate reelection in the district.
Middle house - every local community over some size, or gated by other criteria gets two representatives, plus bonus reps for size/activity/whatever up to some maximum.
Upper house - forum-wide vote by ranked choice. Admin gets some nominating spots, and the other legislative bodies do as well.
What are we, a community or a government simulator?
😁 ¿por qué no los dos?