The Agora

This thread doesn't really seem like a good faith attempt to have a discussion. Instead it's a Beehaw user trying to stir up shit.

So the exploding heads vote is well past a day old now. The vote is almost unanimous to defederate.

The count from earlier today was:

Excluding non-local votes the vote is currently ~60/40.

OP is giving the appearance of a concerned user but they haven't bothered to read the [Announcement] thread: https://sh.itjust.works/post/415764 which explains both the length of the voting period as well as the reasoning behind it.

This is by no means the final process and we’re depending on your feedback and discussion to keep improving things going forward.

We understand the concerns about vote manipulation and the discussions around alternate voting methods (like ranked choice). Use this thread to discuss the changes and any concerns or suggestions that you have.

As of now, the tentative plan is to run with this for the first week, see how many issues exist that require voting, generate the vote threads, complete a round of votes and then iterate on the process once we can all see what works and what doesn’t work so well.

We have a thread for discussion of the changes to how Voting works, please use that one.

Hey man, I think you're being a bit harsh. Let's not sharpen our pitchforks just yet. These are volunteers who have likely never had to admin a larger community like this. I can see why you're frustrated, and agree with you for the most part, but the way you frame this assumes malice where it's not neccessarally true.

They have given a timeframe for voting, a week. Though in this instance it's unlikely needed this is likely the reason action hasn't been taken on the new vote. The old one? They haven't taken action on most of that era of voting either. It was too much, so they've instituted this.

I sincerly doubt this is due to 'not wanting to offend the alt right'.

According to the pinned post, votes go up on Friday and stay up until the following Friday. The same post also indicates these procedures are by no means final.

I agree that it's clear what the community wants, just call it at this point. A week long vote might be suited to policy changes, but I'm starting to get the feeling that defederation of specific instances should be done quickly - informed by existing policy rather than popular vote. None of us really want to fuck around with bigots and trolls any longer than we have to.

In this case, I would personally advocate for something like this line of reasoning: "the users on this instance have a clear pattern of violating our instance's first two rules and the administration isn't acting to remedy it, therefore we defederate effective immediately".

I do want to echo what @sorrybookbroke is saying, please give the admin team some credit, they are putting in a serious amount of manual mod work. It's apparent to all of us that the policies still have a ways to go, but it takes time to build a community.

I think a week is good. Some use social networks at work, some on weekends, some occasionally. Some might be away for a few days. It's not like everyone is on Lemmy every day.

Even though in the case of defederating fash / bots (bots being more of an emergency), a temporary measure could be taken based on the initial results.

What we are effectively doing here in the Agora is creating a form of government. One where every user can bring forth concerns and policy suggestions.

What we need to do this is procedures. No government in the world can run effectively without them. These would be things like deciding when a vote can take place, and deciding what the vote will be about. We will also need procedures on how we even get to the point of calling a vote.

None of this existed before the vote for the mods. I was a part of that original thread about defederating from EH, and it was half discussion, half vote, and half personal attacks. It was the ManBearPig of threads. That thread showed there was sufficient reason to call a true vote on the topic, and I'm glad the mods have done so. But that thread was out of control.

Now, you bring up a good point, that the vote thread seems to be overwhelmingly in favor. So, why don't we propose a new policy? After 3 days, if the vote tallies show a supermajority of votes for aye or nay, and the vote has passed a certain number of votes cast, then the vote is called early.

We would want to make sure the supermajority is high enough to be clear, say 80% or 90%. And we must absolutely be sure that enough votes have been cast to represent the instance at large. Perhaps 40-50% of the total users? I'm no statistician, so these numbers will likely need to be adjusted.

Ultimately, we need to get to a point where enough policy and procedures have been decided where the mods and admins simply act out those policies and procedures without our needing to vote. If you stick around, you can help form those policies and ensure they are fair.

There were quite a few people who were expressing the opinion in the discussion thread and in other discussions here that they didn't want to be ruled by "the tyranny of the active minority".

I've not seen a democratically run instance like this before. Things are going to be a bit clunky and slow (as they are in any democracy). Let's give the process a chance, this is all very new and experimental.

I don't get why people are so impatient. The amount of users on this instance that exploding heads is affecting in minute. The rules on the vote say a week and, in the discussion, people have been pointing out that defederation is not the only option, the discussion has been valuable.

This isn't life threatening so maybe just chill out and let it play its course. If it's stressing you out so much feel free to do as your username suggests and quit this instance because afaik this is an instance for people with some level of patience.

I for one are still very interested to see how this experiment with the Agora is going to go.

If it already failed to build up what you expet from it and you are realy that unhappy with how things are going here, maybee this instance isn't the right one for you.