I’d like to ask for @TheDude to make a server-wide announcement, visible to all members of this instance, that a binding vote about defederation is currently taking place.
Without knowing what the Lemmy UI allows, I was hoping for a text similar to the one informing new users that email verification is currently enabled. Here is what I would like the announcement to entail:
“A binding vote to defederate from another instance is currently taking place in /c/TheAgora. Should the vote be accepted, no users of sh.itjust.works will be able to access the defederated instance or interact with users of that defederated instance anywhere on Lemmy. Should the vote fail, the instance to be defederated remains federated, its content may still be shown on the home feed of sh.itjust.works and the users of that instance may still participate in discussion on this instance.”
I am of the very strong opinion, that no vote should be binding, unless it was announced early enough to all members of this instance! This vote will have instance-wide consequences, the fact that it is taking place needs to be broadcasted beyond this community!
Edit: fix typos (again)
Limiting the number of votes kind of has the same vulnerability though. Bad actors can flood the queue with dumb shit to push important votes to delay or create vote fatigue.
Personally, I kind of think there’s a reason why direct democracy isn’t used for this kind of stuff. If we really want a democratic forum we should have representatives, checks and balances, quorums, etc.
Personally, I kind of think there’s a reason why direct democracy isn’t used for this kind of stuff. If we really want a democratic forum we should have representatives,
Looking at the current state of the real world and real representative systems, i’m quite excited to see where this small direct democracy thing here is going.
–> Hey it works for the swiss, maybee it can work for us too. ;)
People are going to get a lesson on why democracy can be a messy business.
It’s a fun thought experiment carrying the idea through. How would we district?
Lower house - comprised of randomly assigned “districts” of active users with a fixed size which reshuffle every so often. The purpose here is largely to create a class of “professional” administrative citizens who are required to register a vote for their district. Not voting would result in an immediate reelection in the district.
Middle house - every local community over some size, or gated by other criteria gets two representatives, plus bonus reps for size/activity/whatever up to some maximum.
Upper house - forum-wide vote by ranked choice. Admin gets some nominating spots, and the other legislative bodies do as well.
Three houses! Interesting. Ok, now I want there to be a civics community to argue this out, lol.
Edit: Also, this instance is billed as bilingual… have we told the francophones about any of this? Je suis un croissant and all that.
Couldn’t we just point out that when it happens and just remove the bad faith votes? Direct democracy often encounters issues because the community isn’t united in the goal of consensus-based decision making. Ideally, we should encourage this instance to shift towards consensus-making instead of simple y/n votes that might still result in large amounts of users feeling ignored or unwelcome.
The conversation should take place with the goal in mind being to reach decisions for the community that most people can abide by - this is why I’ve been supportive of making voting exclusive to accounts on this instance.
