Fediverse

I have also been wondering about this. But

admins and mods are selected sortitionally( randomly) from people who apply

That's your point of starvation. The application

I think, instead, everyone on the instance should be a voting member. And the decisions should be taken based on some requirement on the votes

1. person one flags a post -> that's a vote
2. maybe add a header that this post is under review? The voting process should probably be taking some time
3. another person flags the same post -> that's a vote
4. someone else says it should not be flagged -> that's a vote in opposite direction
5. ??? <- can be changed by an instance wide vote too
6. post/comment/user is either moderated or not, depending on votes and logic from the previous vote

In order to boost participation, randomly ask an active account to cast a vote on an ongoing discussion

I think there should be some way for "backend admin" to step in and ban something. But they should only do that for spam/csam/scam/etc. Nothing else, no matter how crazy or rude the take is
(btw, maybe the instance could also normalize asking someone to reword their take if it's rude or can be interpreted badly out of context?)

I'm curious, can't wait to see how it goes!

I think it's a great idea. Why the Athens way with a lottery, though? Is that to address some specific thing, or just because you'd like to see how it goes? Because we kind of moved away from that in modern democracy, and now we do elections instead of a lottery. Likely because of ...reasons.

Time slots etc also good ideas. We already have to factor that in because the userbase lives in vastly different timezones. And it's great if spam etc gets removed in a timely matter and we don't always have to wait until it's 5pm in the States. Some good mod and admin teams already do it.

It's possible but will be very easy to manipulate by people making alts and sockpuppets. You'd need a way to verify individuals.

The Fediverse Anarchist Flotilla is already experimenting with this sort of radical democracy, through our regular governance threads and our radical admin recalls but we have to rely on paid supporters and individually vouched people to stave manipulation.

Anyway, people can already repurpose the threativore which is the bot that enables this voting to handle the extra stuff you suggest and give it a try.

You can just form a regular institutionalized user group / hobby association and run that this way if you want.

That's the end point I see for the fediverse too, localized specialized interest groups that run themselves, know each other IRL and both finance the space because they see the value it brings them and democratically decide how to run it.

... but it doesn't work perfectly with sign ups being unlimited, anonymized and open to the general internet.

Yeah idea may sound stupid to some, but is it a question not worth pondering over?

Quite a stupid idea honestly. You seem to not understand that someone needs to host the infrastructure that an instance runs on. So what you are saying is: give the admin rights to a server that someone pays money for, to some other person every few weeks. This just does not work.