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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The current aye/nay system is cluttered and clunky. How about we allow comments in [discussion] posts and then have a separate [vote] post with a single comment for each option so people can choose up/down/abstain? Then nobody has to count anything, human or bot, or worry about typos, formatting, sarcasm, etc.
I also propose a minimum of 3 days, maximum of 1 week per each [vote], no time limits for discussion. You can choose when to start the official [vote] after discussion starts.
I think the vote posts might be better off in their own community outside the agora, like c/pollingplace or something. Discussions and topics that meet a threshold here are moved to that community and voting goes for a week. Each week the current slate of pending votes is posted and voting can occur with upvotes and downvotes on an aye, nay, and abstention comments inside the post.
Can a mod/admin/whatever pull who upvoted what? Somehow Lemmy is tracking it since it knows what you've upvoted. But it might make sense for the first couple of votes to do some real data analysis on them (who/what instances, age of account, average post quantity voted which way) to determine an algorithm that minimizes brigading while allowing everyone a voice.
I really like this, helps keep it neat and easy to find each question on the "ballot" which will have a natural time limit
This will make or break this proposal if we want to limit based on sh.itjust.works users, account age, etc. If that exists, it sounds like a great option to me.
I think that [discussion] preceding [vote] makes good sense. I’d add that [vote] posts should link to their respective [discussion] posts.
I like the idea of using lemmy's builtin voting mechanism.
I think for yes or no voting questions, it would be simplest to express all options with a single comment that is an affirmative statement on whatever is up for vote. Then each user action (pressing the upvote button, pressing the downvote button, or reading the post and pressing no button) maps exactly onto the vote a person casts.
I think this would be useful too, but currently that way of voting raises the issue that anyone outside this instance could vote on that issue as well and there would be no way of determining how many up/down/abstain votes came from users of this instance alone. A bot that could filter users of this instance would solve that though. If a separate community was created solely for voting (as opposed to discussion), there might be a way to make it private for users of this instance which could solve the problem also.
Maybe add a period of time between closure of discussion (which may take longer on complex topics) -- and voting? So that people have time to see it all, and perhaps even make summaries? With several options, those should be well composed: Heading - explanation (links to relevant comments), each in a comment to the poll. ~~Commenting in the poll disallowed if possible~~ (abstension, well yeah ...). I like this.
I really like how simple the single post up/downvote thing is.
I guess my only concern is that it hides who's voted, which would make it harder to weed out bots/shitbags.
Some people want a secret ballot. Shitbags deserve a vote too 🤷🏻♂️
It's not perfect, but like you said, it's simple enough, and IMHO it's better than our current system
Whole problem with that system is that people is up to restrict other instances from voting and that's when it stops working at all.
Yeah I detailed that issue too. If we do indeed want to restrict voting to users of this instance, the fact that anyone in the fediverse can up/downvote on a comment makes it a non-starter without some additional way to filter the vote to only the users here.
This is a fantastic idea. Not sure about the time limits but the [vote] post seems like it would work really well.