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.
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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.
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Fantastic idea, money being involved in democracy has always worked out to benefit the average person.
Fuck the poors, they should have no voice in our community. What, you can't afford the price of a cup-a-coffee? Begon.
First vote afterwards? This is now a paid instance. I don't even want to see those plebs.
True democracy. Only ~~land owners~~ paying members^tm^ can vote
aye
Your vote will count as an approval even if you were clearly sarcastic.
I'll pay you twelve dollars for the rights to your vote
As it stands, you could just create another account for $0 rather than paying for their vote. In fact, you could create a whole lot of them.
That's a good point. There are other solutions though that are less destructive. We could have timed verification, "karma" limits, lock it behind an application, only select participants, or only community mods which would lower the amount of false voters. Non of these are perfect, but neither is the donation gate.
To echo myself in another comment:
There are countless ways to trick that system and the trolls will be more dedicated than the average user. If someone really wants it a hundred bucks isn’t that hard to get, or to “find”. Especially if crypto is an option. If it’s 5 bucks to vote permanently, then that’s 5 bucks per vote, permanently. A person with more money and more accounts will have outsized power in this community.
[this] selects a specific type of person too. As a dev, I understand how rare it is for a person to move into a paying role on a site.
This minority of the instances population on an already small group will be those who most want power, not the most invested. That’s what 5 dollars gets you. Power. This is a poor idea.
I understand your concern, but I disagree with the direction you'd take it. Only allowing paid users to vote creates a power inbalance and makes the more power hungry much more powerful, without really stopping them from making more accounts. Sure, it costs them more, but there will be much less competition to overcome.
I want to be clear that I wasn't necessarily arguing for some type of paid option. Just that what we have now also isn't democracy.
Either would be a democracy, definitionally, though both are imperfect. I'd agree something needs to be done to fix the imperfections where possible
Idk man, $5 once, for voting rights for as long as you participate?
I get your point, but it's a pretty quick filter for trolls. Few are tossing five bucks for the privilege of fucking shit up when they can do that other places for free.
I'm not casting my vote yet as there are other means of gauging someone as an actor deserving* of voting rights in an instance (account membership, length of membership, x period of not being a shithead/having mod actions performed, etc.) that haven't been fleshed out here, but if that is too difficult or fraught to be effective I will support a small fee for voting rights (while fighting tooth and nail against making this a pay-only instance afterwards).
*'Deserving' may raise some hackles, but keep in mind this isn't a country in a real sense. Instance migration is a trivial action. If you feel you're disenfranchised in some way by whatever vetting for voting rights we land on, pick another instance or spin your own.
I'd disagree that this is a reasonable solution, or that this will stop trolls. There are countless ways to trick that system and the trolls will be more dedicated than the average user. If someone really wants it a hundred bucks isn't that hard to get, or to "find". Especially if crypto is an option. If it's 5 bucks to vote permanently, then that's 5 bucks per vote, permanently. A person with more money and more accounts will have outsized power in this community.
You are right, there are other ways to validate. Moderators checking up on the posting history of random voters at reasonable intervals is one I'd like to see, and volunteer to do. I'd see any other, email validation, request form, specific user validation, active time, etc. before I'd lock it behind a monetary incentive. That only locks out people who can't afford democracy, or justify the purchase. It selects a specific type of person too. As a dev, I understand how rare it is for a person to move into a paying role on a site.
This minority of the instances population on an already small group will be those who most want power, not the most invested. That's what 5 dollars gets you. Power. This is a poor idea.
Thank you for the respectful and meaningful responce. though I disagree I'm glad to have the conversation
"Thank you for the respectful and meaningful responce. though I disagree I'm glad to have the conversation"
Name of the game, my friend. Screeching at each other is old hat, we're about productive discussions and community-building these days.
Edit: Jesus Christ, sorry for the novel here folks. Didn't realize how long this was
I do understand your concerns re: monetary influence, but in terms of it not being a trolling deterrent/being means of exercising power to the detriment of the instance writ large, I disagree. If there's counterpoints to the stuff below, sincerely let me know, I'm here to listen. I could be wildly offbase, I'm just your average internet enjoyer.
To my understanding, your average troll engages based on both incentive AND opportunity. There are 'power trolls' for sure, but in general even small barriers can narrow down the bad actors you have to deal with. Let's say someone invests $100 and multiple accounts. You still need to contend with your $5 voters - given the tenor of this place so far, I can't imagine power trolls would have more influence than the wider community*. Additionally, I find it difficult to believe that such an entity wouldn't eventually do something that results in a ban, if they're operating in bad faith generally. You get banned, your money is gone - no refunds, go fuck yourself. Want to try again? Pony up. Your average troll, at a certain point, will determine that the cost-benefit ratio isn't worth it when there are other instances/places on the net they can cause more disruption for less.
That said, even while I think this is something that could protect against bad actors, you're right that there are other means of determing who should have a voice (see: instance members of good standing) beyond whether they donated or not. Further, these are things that should be established EVEN IF donation is a factor (basic shit - how long have you been here? No evidence of fuckery? Maybe require an email for verification on top of membership to this instance [which is another voting point here], etc.). Just something to signal investment in the instance's community.
I'm happy for folks to try everything else before having donation be a qualifying factor for voting rights, but I do feel it shouldn't be taken off the table entirely. Direct democracy without checks and balances has typically failed to provide good outcomes.
*The other factor here is how interested in voting for community standards your average user will even be. Ex: I used reddit for years. So long as I was able to interact with the site using the client of my choosing and could engage meaningfully with the content, I didn't give a crap about larger concerns of governance. When decisions were made that I didn't like, I voted with my feet. I do wonder about what the ratio of folks with an actual interest in meta concerns like instance governance will be v. people who just want to talk about rom hacks on patientgamers.
(Now, of course, I find myself VERY interested, to the point of joining a local, membership-based, non-profit ISP that's been around since before the BBS days to see how they deal with these things. None of this is new.)
I would like to add a second level of financial support to allow downvotes, say $10, an invisible downvote for $20, and a special Gold Star vote that you can buy individually which is also worth ten upvotes. Of course, if we implement Gold Stars I would like a FullOfShit award as well and a SilentButDeadly award which isn't shown but resets the counter to -1 any time the vote would otherwise go positive.
Let make kbin a place just like the real world - where money buys influence!
Nay, paywalled democracy isn't democracy.
I agree but I'd like to play a bit of devil's advocate here:
Real democracy, to me, means one vote per person. There is absolutely no checking that every person is only able to vote once in this system.
So, while paywalled democracy isn't democracy, neither is how this site runs now and is likely to run in the future.
As long as The Dude states that donating is entirely optional, "forcing" it by other means seems dishonest. Nay.
Nay. Let's not paywall this
Nay.
Absolutely F'ing not. Never let so much as a penny be involved in selecting who can and can not vote.
Nay
Nay.
Building the community requires participation, not a test of your financial means.
Nay
Nay
It's an interesting idea.
If you're going to have a place that is ran by votes, you need a method of ensuring that each person voting is a distinct person and not the 5th alt of a person trying to push a specific result. Donations create a trail between an account and a specific person.
On the other hand, I firmly believe that anonymity is an important factor in freedom of speech. The de-anonymization of the Internet has caused a lot of problems with social media.
I'd say Nay for now, but the idea of having a system to enforce 'One Person, One Vote' is a good one. But maybe money/real ID isn't it.
With a robust voting population, having 5 alts is not sufficient to affect the outcome anyway.
Nay
Yeah! Give all the decision-making to the rich! That has always worked out well.
Nay.
I agree duplicate accounts can and will be an issue, but I believe that donor-only voting is not the answer.
Although, if someone gives me a substantial donation, I might be convinced otherwise... /s
Nay
That would mean that many of the people which make up the community, but physically do not have the money to donate to these services (no matter how much you wanted to) would be completely left out of the equation on an important part of the community.
It would eventually lead to all the content on this instance or the threadiverse as a whole to be dominated by people richer than you which are able to afford this, which can then shift the content which they would like to see to the top of magazines.
Additionally, a sub-culture would likely form which would shame users for not being able to vote due to afford donating.
TL;DR:
Making votes donor-only poses a threat to the neutrality that comes by default on these platforms and incentivises hostile subcultures which would make the experience worse for a big part of this instance and potentially the threadiverse as a whole.
@9999monkeys No.. don't create such things like Twitter and such does. Everyone is the "same level" and donating is optional since not everyone can affort it
Nay, but I also get where you are coming from. Maybe alternatively have it be based on contributions? Like having at least x comments over the past y weeks. That way you only need to be an active member of the community.
yes, definitely. account age and activity are alternatives. but those can very easily be faked in larger communities. the only thing that shuts the trolls and bots down 100% is a fee. but everyone is unanimously voting against, i hope history proves me wrong
I want to thank you for engaging in good faith even after your proposal was met with a less-than-enthusiastic response. Clearly you're concerned with the long term health of this community. Personally, I think that there just isn't a 100% successful way to deter bad actors. We're going to have to deal with some of that, it's just how public spaces made up of people are. How we approach that is going to set the tone for the type of community we wish to be.
Nay. While I understand the driver behind the suggestion, I think a paywall is not the solution here.
Nay
Also wtf
The best way to ensure that democracy doesn’t spiral into Haiti
Nay, This essentially turns this instance into an oligarchy. I don't think other instances are going to appreciate this type of governance either.
Also, nothing stops trolls and bad actors from donating the bare minimum a thousand times to get a thousand voices. This would mean a high minimum investment should be required, which further hurts the common user.
I believe that a shitty/troll opinion has an artificial majority, the real users will catch on and act accordingly, however we still have to see an example of this.
I'm also certain that privacy people would rather not risk money transfers, cash or whatever (crypto is a whole other discussion).
In short, I think requiring payment, or proof of identity, or any other de-anonymizing measures would hurt discussion by excluding genuine users, even if it allows more trolls that would be ignored/dealt with by genuine users.
Nay. You shouldn't be able to buy your way to influencing policy.
If there really is a concern with bot accounts or duplicate accounts, then those should be tackled via different ways. Also, what is with the assumption that "assholes" both don't have money and also shouldn't be allowed to vote?
Nay...optional donate to vote. I will be donating, but not everyone who deserves a vote will necessarily be.
Nay - no paywalls. This server should survive because its a nice place, not because people pay money to have a day in its operation.
Nay
If we don't care about everyone having a chance to vote, then let's just pick 25 users that have been active in the last week, at random and pass things 14 of them support.
Nay
I don't want to associate my account with my money, and enforcing this would require that. I prefer to donate anonymously.
The downvote and upvote mechanism on the threadiverse has nothing to do with democracy.
Democracy is not only build on public vote. Institutions are a real big part of it. Before we vote we debate. On the threadiverse the vote system is somehow shot cutting the debate part.
Nay, this idea is fundamentally against the values of this instance.
Nay, I feel there has to be some better way to go about it than paywalling it. Maybe based on account age and contribution.
Nay.
I have some reservations behind that nay, but would be interested in our trying other approaches first and revisiting at a later date should they be insufficient.
Nay
Nay
Nay
Nay,
Though I did consider it as I do really wonder how we're going to handle this.