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Decision-Making on dbzer0 and the FAF (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
submitted 1 day ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) by rivvvver@lemmy.dbzer0.com to c/div0@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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Ahoy, y'all!

I've been meaning to make a post like this for some time.

Ever since this post I've been thinking about the governance structure on dbzer0 more and more. I've had some good discussions about the current governance model in that post, and I've also read other's perspectives with interest. For those interested, here are the threads I'm referring to:

This week, I finally found some time to write about my thoughts in the hope that it could start a larger discussion about how we could improve the way decisions are made on this instance.

In the mentioned post, the general sentiment is in favor of defederating from (by far) the largest German Lemmy instance.

One comment stuck out to me: https://lemmy.dbzer0.com/comment/24355698

u/ggtdbz mentions how they are directly affected by zionism, but are against the decision. Importantly, they make an alternate proposal: a 3 or 5 strikes system, but keep feddit.org federated, so that the (heavily propagandized) German users are still exposed to anti-zionist thoughts, and will not be able to consider theirs the default position on the subject. Many people upvoted.

Nothing further happened. There was no response by the OP, no governance proposal, no extending the timeframe of the vote.

Now I understand that someone probably should've made a governance post about this proposal, however, to my knowledge, noone in the mentioned threads had the voting privileges to do that. This structure is mostly opaque to me (and most other users, I think), which is one of the issues I see with it.

This brings me to another thing I noticed in these proposal threads: many don't seem to know how the voting system works. It isn't explained on the post itself, and isn't very legible either when people vote. As I understand it from this post, there're different voting classes, depending on if/how much a user donates to the db0 admins. But do their votes get more/less weight? These also give users a different reply image from the bot as the vote is recorded, showing either the voting class or what they said in their registration message. It explains that users who actually have a vote are paying users, mods, and select users who were vouched for by a paying user, mod, or another vouched-for user. Looking through the previous votes I could find 8 users who have been vouched for (and participated in a vote) so far.

Now I don't think this process was deliberated on by anyone outside the admin team who created it. I remember a few posts about the software to set this up being in development, and a post to announce its release, but none discussing just the structure of it. Please correct me if I'm wrong on this.

The proposal vote posts typically ask for a 2/3 majority from db0 users (outside sentiment is recorded, but doesn't count for anything). Here also, I don't recall any discussion about what percentage should be aimed at (although I think a weak consensus is a good idea, be that 2/3 or something else). Votes by regular members (not a mod/admin, paying user, or vouched-for) are used as a tie-breaker, although the exact mechanics seem to be more complicated.

There is de facto no discussion process that precedes or leads to proposals, and no method to amend existing proposals before or after a vote is called (see example above). There is a governance post type called "sense-check", which looks like it's intended for discussions prior to voting, but in practice it has been used exactly once for this purpose, on the only governance topic that wasn't opened by u/Flatworm7591.

This is why I would classify this voting process as majority voting, as opposed to consensus voting. A majority vote in my understanding would be a simple vote that asks a yes/no question and passes if a certain size majority says yes, regardless of any other factors (strength of agreement, strength of disagreement, amendments, counterproposals, etc.) and requires no prior discussion by those affected. I think this is a charitable interpretation though, considering the relatively small pool of users who have actual voting rights.

Now after laying out my understanding of the existing structure, I'd like to propose two approaches.

First approach, a consensus vote:

A consensus vote would be one that follows the model: Discussion -> idea-collecting -> proposal -> amendment/counterproposal -> vote -> implementation or similar, that also takes into account strength of (dis)agreements (for anything other than full consensus) and abstain/stand-aside votes.

To avoid the issue of the one sense-check post we've had, which is that it wasn't ever voted on, I think an important addition is that discussions must end in a proposal that is then voted on, even if the proposal is "change nothing".

For this consensus approach, a harm to the community would first need to be identified (there are of course other reasons to make decisions, but I'm going to focus on grievances for simplicity). Then, someone creates a discussion post on the governance community to discuss what this harm is and what is causing it. Once the harm is understood, solutions can be discussed. This could be done by first collecting ideas and then trying to merge them into a proposal or choose the most popular ideas out of the lot. Once a proposal was formulated, people can voice disagreements with it so that everyone can think about amendments that could resolve those disagreements. Once all or the most major disagreements have been resolved, the proposal can be put to a vote.

Next, I want to talk about voting classes. I understand the inherent issues that come with online spaces like these, that any meaningful power given to the users can theoretically be abused by bots/bad actors, but I think it's an issue that only 8 users were vouched for, and the rest paid for their right. Vouching should be far more prevalent IMHO, or this place will still be run by a very small minority.

This approach is not intended as "Do this thing now and do it exactly as I tell you to". I'm sharing my thoughts on this in the hopes to start a discussion about possible alternatives/reforms. This approach is largely influenced by my reading on consensus systems and experience using consensus methods in IRL organizing spaces. Books/articles I've read on this that I found useful are: "Consensus" by Peter Gelderloos, "Consensus Decision Making" by seedsforchange.uk, and the Apache voting process.

Second approach, maximal autonomy:

This is one I am leaning towards a lot. The question I asked myself was "How would anarchists solve the problem of who to defederate from the best?" In governance votes about defederation there seem to be three major tendencies:

Those who want to:

  1. defederate from problematic groups
  2. federate, to keep these problematic groups exposed to radical ideas.
  3. use personal blocklists to "defederate" and only actually defederate from groups like, for example, exploding-heads.com, skinheads.io, etc.

I think 2 and 3 aren't mutually exclusive. However 1 is incompatible with 2 and 3.

My proposal for those who find themselves in group 2 or 3 is to find/create an instance that defederates no instances you wouldn't also add to your personal blocklist. Then, rely on that blocklist and your own judgement. Since personal blocking only affects yourself, it doesn't raise the issue of having to make collective decisions on these topics.

A few Lemmy instances that defederate sparingly do exist, and rely heavily on users who create local blocklists as they feel the need to.

Perhaps someone could even create one that joins the FHF federation we got going on here.

Perhaps we could create shared blocklists that we curate, FOSS-style.

But the basic idea is to use blocklists to cut out the middle-person, the instance admins.

Naturally, this would still depend on moderation being done by admins, but I think having the least responsibility (and reliance) on admins as possible is the way to go, even if it cannot be fully removed.

This would also leave those in group 1 to make decisions with people who already have similar views, making decisions easier, and hopefully, strenghthening their consensus.

Finally

I hope I made some people think, and I hope we can have a healthy discussion about this in the comments, if people are interested.

Sorry for the long (and rambly) post, this has been on my mind for a few months now and it all had to come out at once :3

EDIT: To clear up some confusion I seem to have caused: The two "approaches" are not supposed to be mutually exclusive. I think we can and should consider both at once.

I also wrote a lot about instance defederations in this post, but I wanted to focus on how we make decisions broadly, not how we can handle (de)federation only.

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[–] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

Generally any attempts to restructure decision-making need to be also counter-balanced against the realities of running a social media and the fact that people are here for the social media, and not for the decision-making. I.e. introduce too many discussions and processes and you end up with people checked-out from the whole process due to "voting fatigue". We've tried to structure our decision-making process in a way that tries to make it as smooth as possible within the confines of the lemmy software and doesn't require endless rehashing.

Yes a consensus vote is superior to majority vote, but I think it's just not feasible with 1K+ Monthly active users. Even the discussions in the current voting threads become almost unmanageable. Consensus is great if we could organize the FAF around small instances based around affinity groups, where each affinity group would do a consensus process and bring the results to a larger confederation decision making, but the realities of webhosting and alienation make this practically impossible. But it's nevertheless what we've been trying to soft promote with the FAF itself.

Yes vouching should be more common, but at the same time, it's not easy to understand who someone is from online comments, and fascists, entryists and wreckers are really fucking good at pretending just long enough to get such approvals, so I understand people being cautious. And the other part is that people just don't bother to understand how to vouch for others.

Second approach, maximal autonomy:

This is just not a practical approach, especially in a very hostile online space, inundated with fascists, bigots, and so on. A lot of people join our instance because they don't want to take the immense amount of effort needed to curate each and every interaction reactively. A lot of people want to just join an instance and use the threadiverse without having to worry about encountering, say, genocide apologists in every discussion. Is there space for such "manage your own blocklist" instances? Sure, there's already plenty of them out there such as lemmy.zip and many people flock to them for precisely that reason. But not every instance has to work in that way and we choose not to.

And shared blocklists are effectively the same thing we're doing right now, only with more steps in between. Instead of trusting the admins of your instance, you're now implicitly trusting the blocklist curators instead.

[–] rivvvver@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (1 children)

thanks a lot for the reply.

yea, online decision-making is tough to handle, and theres a lotta issues stemming from the anonymity aspect alone. so i understand that my first idea is likely very difficult to implement fully and would cost those involved in it a lot of energy as well.

the way u spoke about "voting-fatigue" makes me wonder tho, wouldnt we already have that?

i know i definitely have long discussions in every voting poll, where new ideas come up that possibly werent considered as options. so this is already kind of happening, but bc of the structure that is used, the discussion is effectively worthless. so i think theres definitely enough energy there to have that discussion first, then follow it with a vote on a (now more thought-out) proposal. at the very least, it should make it easier for Flatworm to understand the "against" side more, which seems to have been a difficulty in past voting posts.

Instead of trusting the admins of your instance, you're now implicitly trusting the blocklist curators instead.

theres a fundamental difference, tho: i can override the blocklist. i could make my own patches to it, but still keep the list updated. also, i could opt in/out at will without changing to a different instance with a different community and rules and governance.

[–] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (1 children)

I think you have a misapprehension about how our decision making works. Specifically, just because a vote is taken and goes one way at one moment in time, doesn't mean we cannot open another vote, or amendment about the same subject later on. You also don't need to wait for unruffled to make governance posts. Any person who can vote, can open governance posts.

theres a fundamental difference, tho: i can override the blocklist. i could make my own patches to it, but still keep the list updated. also, i could opt in/out at will without changing to a different instance with a different community and rules and governance.

Assuming the software handling the blocklist allows this. Likewise there could be threadiverse software that allowed soft defederation and people overriding it, but nobody built this yet. Anymore than they've build this shared blocklist format you imagine.

Anyway, this tells me you effectively want to run your own instance, without running your own instance. But as I said, there's instances that allow you to do that. Ours isn't meant to work this way.

[–] rivvvver@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 16 hours ago (1 children)

just because a vote is taken and goes one way at one moment in time, doesn't mean we cannot open another vote, or amendment about the same subject later on.

yes, of course, but the way every vote is phrased (and the fact that it is a vote on a specific proposal) primes ppl not to think about the issue broadly, and therefore limits any discussion that happens about it.

You also don't need to wait for unruffled to make governance posts. Any person who can vote, can open governance posts.

i do need to wait, since i dont have voting rights. ive had issues with where the instance is going for a while, so i couldnt justify making a donation so far.

anyway, the fact that the admin team inherently becomes aware of issues first means that they will be the ones who get to open governance posts about those. this is obvious when u look at the 9 votes that were done so far, all of them were posted by Flatworm. so, by this fact, flatworm or the rest of the admin team decides how governance is implemented specifically. and those who make the posts have the responsibility to do it well.

Assuming the software handling the blocklist allows this.

ideally a software could handle that in the background, yes. but there're lemmy apps that support blocklist imports already, so i could already do this. id just need to manually update them by hand, or id have to write a script to automate that.

[–] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

i do need to wait, since i dont have voting rights. ive had issues with where the instance is going for a while, so i couldnt justify making a donation so far.

Your other option is then to become a valuable and visible enough in the instance to be vouched for. You can also just ask the admins or another person with voting rights to open the thread for you. Ultimately we need to have a way to limit manipulation somehow.

ideally a software could handle that in the background, yes. but there're lemmy apps that support blocklist imports already, so i could already do this. id just need to manually update them by hand, or id have to write a script to automate that.

OK so you can't do it already, you could just theoretically do some work to do this in the future if you wanted to.

I just have to ask, if this sort of instance already exists, and this sort of shared blocklist is so easy to implement for those who need it, why is it not enough for people who want to, to use those instances and shared blocklist software?

[–] rivvvver@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago) (1 children)

Your other option is then to become a valuable and visible enough in the instance to be vouched for.

unfortunately im more of an "active lurker" type. neurodivergence and social anxiety make it near impossible for me to have simple social interactions online and irl.

Ultimately we need to have a way to limit manipulation somehow.

i understand and i think the vouching system is a great idea and implemented fine. i do wish we had more of a culture of vouching for users tho. i fear that many will only vouch for others bc theyre friends and share many opinions already, not bc its just a long-time member who engages in discussions in good-faith.

OK so you can't do it already, you could just theoretically do some work to do this in the future if you wanted to.

a non-technical user might have trouble with it, but theoretically i could open a git repo right now that hosts a blocklist file i can import with Interstellar. once imported, i can easily add or remove items from the list (i can also add several lists and enable/disable as i please). this is whats possible right now.

the only downside is that it doesnt automatically update them, so a non-techie might have issues using it like this.

I just have to ask, if this sort of instance already exists, and this sort of shared blocklist is so easy to implement for those who need it, why is it not enough for people who want to, to use those instances and shared blocklist software?

for me right now, it does seem like the best option. i would miss the feeling of community tho, and being able to participate in decisions that dont involve blocking instances/users would still be nice. ultimately, i want to be part of a more democratic social media. but i also want to be able to view memes from ppl in my local area (germany). legit the biggest reason im thinking of leaving dbzer0 is for ich_iel@feddit.org, as silly as it seems.

[–] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 13 hours ago (1 children)

I get the problem, this is why I also allowed the donation avenue as well (even though that can also be manipulated). You can be a supporter for like 1$ per month. Maybe less on liberapay.

If you have any ideas on how to improve the vouching culture of the instance, I'm all ears.

As for consuming just one comm, a lot of clients allow you to have multiple accounts, it shouldn't be too onerous to make just one feddit.org account for that comm and switch to it to see what's new.

[–] rivvvver@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 13 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago) (1 children)

If you have any ideas on how to improve the vouching culture of the instance, I'm all ears.

i have an idea. make it a habit to maybe once a week scroll through local user comments and pick one user who seems nice, look thru their history a bit, and vouch for them. get some kind of manual approval thing going that makes vouching more common. this should be low-effort enough, i hope. u could also more actively encourage other eligible users to vouch more (assuming u dont already).

of course, making vouching easier for regular users would be nice as well, but idk how easy that is to implement.

i want to also ask something else tho:

u seem to have skipped over my most important points in our discussion so far. namely the idea of a "discussion-post first, then vote-post" process (separate from proposal, amendments, etc.). and that the admin team is responsible for 100% of the voting posts so far, and therefore sets the example for regular (eligible-to-vote) users who might want to start a vote.

is this silent agreement or do u just not want to engage with it rn? im just asking, no shade either way and thank u for ur time so far

[–] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

u seem to have skipped over my most important points in our discussion so far. namely the idea of a "discussion-post first, then vote-post" process (separate from proposal, amendments, etc.). and that the admin team is responsible for 100% of the voting posts so far, and therefore sets the example for regular (eligible-to-vote) users who might want to start a vote.

I did mention that having too many governance posts invites voting fatigue. This applies here as well.

As for having the regular people start a vote, the 2 times the post was opened at the request of a specific user, it was because they explicitly didn't want to open it under their own name, because they didn't want to invite abuse.

[–] rivvvver@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 12 hours ago* (last edited 12 hours ago) (1 children)

I did mention that having too many governance posts invites voting fatigue. This applies here as well.

yes and i responded to that. discussions happen either way. u can have them happen before drafting a vote text, or after. whether users have the energy to engage in them before voting can be up to them.

As for having the regular people start a vote, the 2 times the post was opened at the request of a specific user, it was because they explicitly didn't want to open it under their own name, because they didn't want to invite abuse.

thats fair, but unless the person also drafted the post body, doesnt change my point at all.

[–] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

yes and i responded to that. discussions happen either way. u can have them happen before drafting a vote text, or after. whether users have the energy to engage in them before voting can be up to them.

Honestly, I disagree. Doubling the amount of governance posts and extending (potential) decisions over multiple weeks just will lead people to check out of the whole process. I've seen very similar stuff in reddit/r/anarchism and I don't want to end up in a similar scenario.

[–] rivvvver@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 11 hours ago

interesting point. im not familiar with the r/anarchism governance, but ill look into it.

i dont think i could change ur mind on this, but i know i and a few other users wouldve liked to engage in such discussion posts. whether it leads to this fatigue u describe or not is just speculation.

u could make a vote on it ig, or try it out for a limited time, then ask for feedback. i think this is about all i can do from my end tho.

thank u again for ur time.

[–] Azzu@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (1 children)

I mean it's pretty clear from how it's setup that it's not supposed to be a "proper" democratic system. Like you correctly identified, only a few select people even have voting powers, mostly by who pays and there's no other clear way to get voting powers except to be friends with the admins.

This is not an instance "by the people", it's just a tiny bit more transparent than others where the admins can and do just literally whatever they want. Power over the instance is a little bit more distributed. But it just being "a little bit", it's the same as any other instance: if you agree with the "ruling class", fine, if not, switch instance to one you agree with.

Your suggestions are partially nice but I don't suspect their base goal is even wanted.

[–] rivvvver@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 15 hours ago) (1 children)

i mostly agree but i think it could be a lot clearer how it works.

for the first few votes, i legit thought my vote counted like everybody elses. the bot response of "wildebeest image" was not helpful in clearing this up. a small note such as "u do not have voting rights, but ur vote will count as +0.01 votes instead" would be a good start.

Your suggestions are partially nice but I don't suspect their base goal is even wanted.

i think the base goal is wanted, its just difficult to fully achieve, which is why i think it hasnt been done. full consensus is basically impossible, but weak consensus like 80-90% is totally doable imo if we simply used a process based on "discussion, then voting", with a broader range of eligible-to-vote users.

but this is an anarchist instance run by (mostly?) anarchists, i have no doubts about their base goals being pro-consensus.

[–] Azzu@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (1 children)

It's kind of their goal, but consensus only among anarchists. They don't want anyone not aligned with their agenda to vote, which is understandable, obviously you'd not want 60% fascists voting on something. But because of this, it's not consensus like you want it (among the userbase) because they can't know what the userbases agenda is. In society, as well as online, true anarchists are in the minority, and thus any vote system opened up to the majority would result in it not being like they want it anymore.

On a kinda unrelated sidenote, my main problem is more that some hostile actor with like 100$/month to spare and a couple IP adresses and maybe some AI bots could make like 20 legitimate-looking accounts each donating 5$/month to gain a large share of voting rights, a relatively easy thing to do.

[–] rivvvver@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 11 hours ago* (last edited 11 hours ago) (1 children)

hmmm i disagree with that sentiment. idk about the beliefs of dbzer0 admins, but as an anarchist myself, i would welcome any consensus, even among fascists.

once theres a decision-making process that includes everyones perspective and considers everyones needs, idgaf what u call urself and what ur affiliations are.

ofc i will likely disagree with the decisions a bunch of fascists make, but hey, at least theyre deciding anarchistically and i can bring my criticisms to the table and be heard (and for full consensus, they have to hear me out, too).

in online spaces, it just gets impossible to organize such full consensus, as well as ensure everyone is also a user and not just a malicious actor who wants to fuck everyone over.

[–] Luminous5481@anarchist.nexus 2 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

i would welcome any consensus, even among fascists.

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[–] rivvvver@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 9 hours ago* (last edited 9 hours ago) (1 children)

consensus meaning consensus decision-making process in this context, in case u got confused.

so yes, i want to tear down all hierarchies. and if my local racist conservative uncles already organize something anti-hierarchically, itll at least make it easier to convince them of my beliefs.

[–] Salamence@mander.xyz 2 points 9 hours ago (1 children)

and if my local racist conservative uncles already organize something anti-hierarchically, itll at least make it easier to convince them of my beliefs.

Racist arent anti-hierarchy, they literally believe in racial hierchy, its in the name

[–] rivvvver@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 9 hours ago

yes, i know. but im not talking about every single aspect of their beliefs right now. im talking specifically, exclusively about decision-making processes in this entire post and comment section.

[–] ggtdbz@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 19 hours ago* (last edited 19 hours ago) (1 children)

We can all see how the slow drip feeding of right wing cultural touchstones have affected online culture and even the way people talk. I even see it where I am, unnaturally western, vaguely out of place little quirks of speech or niche ideas that are only boosted by some elements of the right online.

We can also see the overwhelming response to what was perceived as a dangerously, unacceptably anti-Zionist environment on Tiktok. I get the feeling that a lot of old political decision makers in the west see that as a huge failure and the direct cause of the younger generations’ openness to change.

I am absolutely in favor of doing everything we can to sway people over because nobody is born into wishing death upon others, refusing mass murder is something I believe most people can be reasoned back into. Creating a healthy environment is why we all left Reddit in the first place. Look at how easily the average Lemmy user is exposed to something to the left of Bush Jr now compared to on Reddit where political ideas were viewed semi-jokingly. Look at the stark contrast between how the Zionist political project is discussed here and literally any other online community.

I still think my three strikes idea is the right way to do it. German speakers are the most combative spreaders of this stuff on Lemmy, I don’t want to be too unkind to those who are not too far gone among them.

[–] rivvvver@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 14 hours ago

altho i was hoping to discuss decision-making more broadly here, i agree with u.

i live in germany and since the feddit.org defederation i also felt like i lost some connection to others in my area, im especially missing the memes and the local news.

im also physically incapable of just removing myself from the mainstream zionist beliefs here. in fact i think i have a responsibility to confront these ideas online so i can do the same - better prepared - offline as well.

[–] Bane_Killgrind@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (1 children)

This kind of thing is a common governance problem.. not the things that you said, but how your whole proposal is structured. I'm not going to be charitable with how I describe it, but don't take it as a personal attack, this is just pointed criticism.

Heavily, back handedly paraphrasing: "somebody (implying not me) should have done something different. I don't understand what's going on. Here's what we could do different."

This fails to do a few things that you actually want to do:

-gain and disseminate understanding on a process

-gain understanding of the current consensus

-take ownership of the issue (you are now, but you still can in the context of the original issue)

So we would want to ask

-of the admins "is there any way to create an amended proposal. can any user create proposals. Is there any document that explains our voting process etc"

-of our peers, before you follow that process "what are the methods that you feel should be available to us to deal with problem instances. What threshold of specific poor behavior should be met before specific actions are taken to address those?"

Then craft your proposal based on those facts and discussions.

[–] rivvvver@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

"is there any way to create an amended proposal. can any user create proposals. Is there any document that explains our voting process etc"

i think u mightve misunderstood my intention. im sure there are technically ways we could create amended proposals (for example) given the tools we have now, but the fact of the matter is that since its not an explicit part of the process, it wont be done.

there is of course a document that explains the voting process. only users with voting rights can create proposals (whether vouched-for users can is unclear tho).

"what are the methods that you feel should be available to us to deal with problem instances. What threshold of specific poor behavior should be met before specific actions are taken to address those?"

i gave the example of instance defederation, but my criticisms were directed at the decision-making process as a whole. these questions are things that a good process would bring up and clear up. i have no interest in discussing it here.

-gain and disseminate understanding on a process

-gain understanding of the current consensus

ive read every post i could find about the current process on this instance, the wiki, and the git repo. and ive participated in almost every proposal that was made.

yes, i had some small questions, but they wouldnt change my criticisms very much either way.

"somebody (implying not me) should have done something different.

as an anarchist instance, i dont want to be the "messiah" who comes up with "the perfect plan" of how to handle decisions. its just not up to me. we need to come together and change things if we see the need. this was me showing that i see a need, and hoping others would too.

I don't understand what's going on.

i think i do understand enough about whats going on to make this post.

again, im unsure what u were trying to say, so apologies if i misunderstood u completely, im doing my best.

[–] Bane_Killgrind@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

If things are opaque, ask questions. Like ask db0 to define those parts of the process that aren't well documented.

If you see a problem, bringing it up isn't being a Messiah it's participating in discussion

[–] rivvvver@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

there were some small questions i had. this post isnt about those. i have little interest in finding out if vouched-for members can open governance topics or if only paying members can. this isnt about that.

when i said in the post that the process is mostly opaque, i meant that its mostly impossible to understand without digging further into it, let alone find some random comment where someone asked for clarification.

it is opaque in the sense that if i participate in a vote (voting rights or not), i will see the bot response of some image of a pirate or a butterfly. perhaps ill think that means my vote was recorded. but i have no clue that there are voting rights at all and that my vote counts for basically nothing.

it should be as easy to understand as possible if we want maximum participation. if it had been clearer how it works, i probably wouldve donated sooner to get voting rights, and i wouldve vouched for a few ppl too.

this post is me giving suggestions on how to improve this and hoping others have ideas or objections to share. ive seen a few ppl who had similar criticisms and i wanted to provide a place to voice them. similar suggestions have even been made to the process before, got a positive response from an admin, and led to nothing (i linked a comment thread in the post that contains those).

[–] Bane_Killgrind@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 12 hours ago (1 children)

This affirms my criticism.

You are not trying to define a basis for the recommendation

You are asking without asking for other people to engage in work without volunteering to do it yourself

Again I'm talking about the structure of your post. You bring up great points in that some votes may not count,( I don't know if my vote counts yet) and that there's a lack of central documentation.

It's a bit of a writing exercise, but now that you've dug through all those posts it would be pretty great if you detailed what information you found and organised it in some way. You identified this gap and did the research and have some responses from admin here.

[–] rivvvver@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

idk what work i could engage in? there is central documentation. this is not my issue. sure, it could be clearer and better updated, but all in all i think its ok and does its job.

but i do not have the permissions to change how the governance bot responds to user's votes. i dont know if u understand my criticism is a structural one, not one of documentation.

i think the way the voting process itself works can be improved, and wrote down all the ways i could think of in one place. but i do not have the permission to change the current process, nor would i want to make this change over everyone elses heads.

[–] Bane_Killgrind@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 8 hours ago (1 children)

Idk how to explain better. You don't need permission, you need consensus. The work is gaining that consensus.

[–] rivvvver@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 8 hours ago

well, this is my genuine attempt at gaining that consensus. thats why i addressed the community at large. i have also spoken with other users before making this post, and my intention is to make more users aware of issues and possible solutions.

[–] PolarKraken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 23 hours ago* (last edited 23 hours ago) (1 children)

Thanks for the post, I like the sentiment, especially around needing some more public discussion and also around trying to decide whether the instance should favor a focused curated experience or expect (allow) members to do so themselves.

We have a huge amount of discussion over that question for each of these and if I'm honest, my own opinions are really not that well-defined. I find myself flip-flopping internally which really isn't productive, kind of embarrassing even. But I find it to be a difficult question that sometimes depends on even just my mood (which is admittedly pretty bad, maybe one tier above flip-flopping on things for money lol).

I somehow want both - a curated experience where our members are free to have whatever experience they choose. I know, I know, real "60% of the time, it works every time" energy.

I tentatively like the idea of using the flotilla as you're describing, though I'm always wary of fracturing already-small communities. Also wary of introducing additional administrative burden, which some of the suggestions you gave might do, but that's me projecting my own personal feelings of guilt more than citing comments by the admin team etc.

[–] rivvvver@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 15 hours ago* (last edited 14 hours ago)

thanks for ur response!

Also wary of introducing additional administrative burden, which some of the suggestions you gave might do

i agree that the full proposal would be a bigger administrative burden, but i wanted to write about how i think it would be in the best case, so that we can see what works with the capacities we have and at the same time be open about what concessions are made.

at the very least i think some small changes and a "discussion post first, then voting post"-rule would take very little effort to implement. but since it isnt my place to implement it, i dont get to decide what to do.

I somehow want both - a curated experience where our members are free to have whatever experience they choose.

i really like the idea of community blocklists, that can be "patched"/overridden for specific entries or text-patterns etc., but unfortunately i dont have the skills to add the software support that would make it feasible for non-technical users. Interstellar supports blocklist-file imports tho, which makes this possible for more technical users.

maybe we will get this lemmy feature someday.

EDIT: if u browse on mobile, u might actually be interested in Interstellar. it supports adding several "filter lists" that u can enable/disable at will. so u could for example have a "mental health" list that u enable when ur in a bad place and disable when ur feeling better.

[–] db0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 6 points 1 day ago* (last edited 1 day ago) (1 children)

I plan to reply tomorrow but for now I'll clarity that there's not multiple classes of voters. Everyone with the right to vote (admins , supporters, vouched) gets the same voting power

[–] rivvvver@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 19 hours ago

thanks! i thought so, but it wasnt explicitly cleared up

[–] GasMaskedLunatic@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 22 hours ago (1 children)

User-defined blocklists would be great. I think it would be a useful feature regardless of whether or not it would help prevent future defederations.

[–] rivvvver@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 15 hours ago

user-defined blocklists are already a thing in most lemmy apps (on mobile at least).

communally curated blocklists (e.g. on github etc.) are not a thing yet, to my knowledge.