The Agora
In the spirit of the Ancient Greek Agora, we invite you to join our vibrant community - a contemporary meeting place for the exchange of ideas, inspired by the practices of old. Just as the Agora served as the heart of public life in Ancient Athens, our platform is designed to be the epicenter of meaningful discussion and thought-provoking dialogue.
Here, you are encouraged to speak your mind, share your insights, and engage in stimulating discussions. This is your opportunity to shape and influence our collective journey, just like the free citizens of Athens who gathered at the Agora to make significant decisions that impacted their society.
You're not alone in your quest for knowledge and understanding. In this community, you'll find support from like-minded individuals who, like you, are eager to explore new perspectives, challenge their preconceptions, and grow intellectually.
Remember, every voice matters and your contribution can make a difference. We believe that through open dialogue, mutual respect, and a shared commitment to discovery, we can foster a community that embodies the democratic spirit of the Agora in our modern world.
Community guidelines
New posts should begin with one of the following:
- [Question]
- [Discussion]
- [Poll]
Only moderators may create a [Vote] post.
Voting History & Results
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I'm doubtful a quorum of 50% would happen, I imagine the majority of users will not participate in voting. I think if we set that as the threshold, nothing would ever get done. We might as well shutter the community. Maybe that many would vote if it were a defederation issue, but I still doubt it.
I think the proposer should tally votes. It should be easy to check the OPs math and bring up any discrepancies.
I like the discussion-> poll -> vote idea, but I'm not sure if most proposals will be large enough to require it.
Finally what about time limits? I've seen others says votes should be up for 3 days, or even 7 days which seems like a lot to me.
I was about to go start a discussion on exactly this issue:
I really believe that we need a discussion step before any vote. Sometimes, an idea isn't fully fleshed out. Sometimes, there's an angle almost nobody considered. We do need at least a day or 2 of discussion before something goes to a vote.
EDIT: Also, in regards to the ongoing vote, I think anyone from across the fediverse should be able to start the discussion step, but only a member of this instance can push it to a vote afterwards.
The discussion step is there for the OP to convince people that the move is a beneficial one, opposing views aired, discussed, dug into, and then a new post is put up as a vote where the only comments allowed are "Aye" and "Nay"
Look at this "vote", for example. It's all just discussion. Nobody is actually voting. I think people do agree with this format instinctively, it just hasn't been set up yet.
The idea of opening the floor for discussion to everyone is interesting but I think that sort of means we can't use subscriber count as a way of scoring votes.
My thinking was the subscriber count is a smaller subset of the total user base and will be made up of people who are specifically invested in participating.
What happens if you have subscribers to the Agora who aren't actually part of the wider shit just works user base and who also can't vote?
I don't think we need to overcomplicate that at this step. We could use something like 10-20% of daily active users on the instance or something as the minimum quorum, for example. Low enough to be do-able, high enough to not be 3 dudes voting.
Fair point, I suppose it'll become obvious if it starts being abused.
You have to filter the count by the instance to find the correct number.
I think a discussion for 3 days that allows anyone to participate followed by 7 days of voting, only by local accounts, makes sense.
Even if I were away for a week, I'd be likely to see the discussion before or the vote after.
Yeah, I don't think 50% is realistic either, I'm just trying to work out if there's a way of usefully measuring engagement.
It may be that expressing votes as a percentage of the user base it still helpful, it's just that the threshold needs to be lower.
Or, what about measuring against subscribers to the Agora? The sidebar says we have 109 subscribers at the moment, the top post has 55 comments - that seems to be a more useful ratio.
sounds sensible
I think we should accept any proposal only after it exceeds 51% of the agora subscribers who are on this instance.
(Remember, federation means you can subscribe to this community from many instances.)
How about announcing discussions for vote (pinned message/ sidebar), then just setting a time limit that makes it likely a fair amount of vote-interested and active people would have seen it? I'd find 1 week sensible but it could also vary by the gravity/complexity of the subject.
Regarding timescales, I added this to your other post but I think that would be perfect for testing out polling.
Hows that going to work anyway? There's no native poll option is there?
Was thinking having a vote be #1 in Agora for 7 days might be an interesting pass metric. Would guarantee anyone who visited saw it. Would also naturally slow down rule changes and build a cooling off period so things don't get passed because of some temporary kerfuffle.
I'm thinking we need a bot to handle all this. Check for quorum, track vote timelines, tally votes after it closes, administer polls, probably other stuff I'm missing
Yeah, a few people have mentioned this and it would seem to make sense.
There are a few Lemmy bots on GitHub https://github.com/topics/lemmy-bot, I guess that would need involvement from the mods.
Is there something that handles nuanced option taking? like more than 2 options ... like i suggested in a separate comment, systemic consensing?
We need to construct a vote ballot, then use up voting on the options you approve of.
This is approval voting and has excellent behaviors compared to most other voting systems
Ideally, voting would happen in a community that only allows local users to subscribe or vote.
If that's not possible in Lemmy, at the moment, something with access to the database could do the checking and report the results, I think.
Actually, i like weighted disapproval voting, because it counteracts mob approval following (better word?) to some extent. People are incentivised to think about how much any option (and there could be silly ones just for the sake of it) would go against their favours. I'd consider it intellectually mature if people could collectively establish such a system. But doesn't look like it ...
One thing that would be nice to have is a "neutral/abstine" vote. While this can be substituted by commenting, the latter would allow double voting.