As a more casual user that has chosen ShitJustWorks as his new home instance, I don’t feel inclined to participate daily in the internal politics of this instance. Yet (semi) daily, the Agora seems to vote on issues that will affect me directly, such as defederating from instances the thread-starters deem to be harmful, something I am fundamentally opposed to as long as the block functionailty is sufficient to filter content you really don’t want to see.
I suspect that many more people on this instance feel the same way, not wanting to participate daily in internal politics that is, or aren’t even aware of the voting power the Agora holds. After all, the fediverse explorer currently shows over 6000 users belonging to this instance, with over 2000 active monthly. Yet the most commented-on voting thread in here has merely 200 votes, so only 10% of users will change the rules for all users in this instance.
I fear a ‘tyranny of the active few’, to put it in hyperbolic terms, that has the potential to drive away the majority of people.
But I also recognize the usefulness of the Agora and as such, I would like to suggest some voting rules:
- At any point in time, there will be just one voting thread open on the Agora where people get to decide on issues that will affect how the instance is run in the future, pinned at the very top.
- In this thread, up to X number of top-level comments will represent the actual issues to vote on. I suggest 10 as the maximum number of different votes in such a voting thread.
- Voting will run for a full month, to allow maximum participation.
- Over the month, people can create discussion threads for issues and preliminary voting threads to include those issues in the main voting thread. The X most popular issues will be voted on in the next month’s main voting thread.
By limiting the number of issues to vote on, bringing them together in one thread and giving ample time for users to participate in the voting, it will be easier for casual users to keep track on what is being voted on and foster a voting culture that is backed by the majoriry of this instance’s users.
Now that we have a mod team in place for The Agora, this is our next priority. We’re working on some preliminary guidelines based on previous discussions/votes that we’ll be discussing soon.
For now, just know that we share your concerns. We want everyone to feel represented here, not just a vocal minority.
Thanks for posting this. You’ve summed my concerns well. I’ve been active on agora (though mostly I have been posting in the logo topic) - but I’ve been doing it out a sense of needing the balance out the more motivated ‘HOA’ type users, who seems to be brigading around to an extent.
I really like all of your ideas but especially the voting needs to be done by comment upvotes or polls, instead of a chain of ‘ayes’ and ‘nays’ - and the votes needs to have clear rules about how long they run.
I get the sense that these things may be set after agora mods are in place. Thats just my assumption.
I also really think the agora community SHOULD NOT be able to target specific communities for defederation. Instead we should articulate rules that federated communties must adhere to, and auto defederate from communinities that are shown to break them. People aren’t going to want to wait a month to be defederated from a gore instance or something like that.
The process is way too witch hunty as it is. It got very toxic very fast.
Call me a pessimist, but I see this only going the way of a hive mind against whatever becomes unpopular at the moment. The good news is I already have another account elsewhere.
I agree. I don’t want a small number of highly motivated individuals with grudges, vendettas, and ideological priors having that much power. Ban TheDonald type stuff, bots, etc. but otherwise be very careful
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These are good ideas and I share the concern. The dynamic is similar to city government, where an active minority of usually wealthy retired homeowners has outsized power because they have more leisure time. It’s undemocratic.
Another idea to ensure that decisions are not made by an unrepresentative minority is a minimal voting threshold. For example: Only threads with a minimum of x votes will be considered. (Where x might be a percentage of total users of the instance, so that it changes over time.) It would be silly to make important decisions based on a thread with just a handful of votes.
Commented on something like this the other day. Official votes should be limited to its own community with only active votes. The slate of votes would run at standard times (i.e. Sunday to Sunday). The agora could be used for discussion and meeting a threshold for a topic to clear to be put on the voting slate.
