My suggestion to wookie wouldn’t change any rules. There are no rules now. That’s my point. It would adopt customs, which is far easier than the cumbersome process of making rules. Which, if we try to make a bunch of rules through endless polls, it won’t ever work.
Should mods just make the rules?
- Yes
- No
- Bastard
0 voters
I vote yes, with the caveat that their decisions are documented and open to debate and appeal through the process meb laid out. That is in the spirit of the forum imo.
After posting my first poll i feel like AOC discovering how important process is. You can disallow certain groups from voting hidden in the poll options. We definitely need a check or control for that
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Should SenorKeeed be Supreme Dictator for Life?
- Yes
- No
0 voters
This is the biggest issue imo. I’m not voting in any more polls. Most users aren’t going to bother with all of this nonsense.
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Is there any way to stop a poster from being a nuisance and starting unlimited polls that have no chance of succeeding but serve to muck up the forum and make it unreadable?
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I don’t get this argument. If people dont care enough to vote in how the site is run, then they can’t complain about how it’s run. Period. End of story. Anything else is very hypocritical.
I think from the thousands and thousands of posts we’ve had discussing this, people very clearly DO care, and quite a bit.
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Tell him to stop? Ban him?
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If people dont care enough to work through 2000 page legislative proposals that govern energy policies then their children dont deserve to breath clean air in 2045…
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I mean, that’s a fair point. But really all that’s required of them will be to read an OP and click a button. If they want to be more informed about it that’s on them.
This really feels like the only sane way to do this. Otherwise it’s a freeforall, which I’d argue has not really been working. Probably 80% of our posts for coming on a week now are about this. Current system aint workin, but it’s because we don’t really even HAVE one.
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I haven’t read all the replies and tings yet but would like to make a couple of quick comments if I may…
.1. Can this thread and the polls remain open for a week (at least)? I’d like to maybe comment in more detail but feel everything gets a bit rushed sometimes and people who would otherwise give a view don’t because they haven’t had the time to put their thoughts together.
.2. Mods should be responsible for enforcing agreed to rules not creating them.
& 3.a related thought is around participation levels in votes etc. Not everyone has as much time free as some of us and their participation could well be a bit hit-and-miss depending on timing etc. I think it would be an idea to have all final* votes to be taken, say, in the 1st week of each month.
(* final being the one that actually puts something in the rules or adds a mod etc - not any preceeding comment threads or prelim/sounding polls)
That way - if I’m some who would like to express a view but don’t pay enough attention to the atf sub - I know that for the 1st 7 days of each month there may, or may not be, new proposals being called to vote.
Nothing - permanent rules wise - is so urgent it can’t wait to be finalised with a set schedule and all users know when to tune in if they’re interested and also know that key decisions aren’t being rushed through while they weren’t looking/busy irl.
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I think one of the strengths of the RFC system I’m sorting out with folks here is that it doesn’t demand the attention of most users. People who care about the process can participate. Others can wait to vote on the final result. Others can ignore the whole thing entirely.
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I think all of that is reasonable.
Maybe set a minimum participation rate then? 2/3rds of DAU?
that is not a bad concept to use the DAU. I worry it could put us in stalemate situations though. I don’t think we’ve ever in the history of this site reached 2/3rds of the DAU on a poll.
Maybe close to 50%, that’s all.
Im okay with stalemate. I think making rule changes harder is okay.
If we cant reach threshold then we have to go around engaging the rest of the users. If you cant convince them to care you dont get a rule change
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Then you’ve come to the right place. 
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I think I’ve told you this already but I haven’t been planning on stepping down.
In terms of work, there is no need for additional admins. There are 4 basic types of Admin tasks:
-
Back-end stuff like maintaining the server and installing updates, etc., which jmakin is taking care of and I believe he actually does this sort of thing for a living
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Front-end stuff like customizing the design and layout and making sure it doesn’t break when the site updates, which I am taking care of and have no qualifications for but seem to have figured out, with some help from the programming thread
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Selecting site settings: there is an admin control panel with settings for everything from how many likes a user can use a day, to which sites we allow embedded content from, to length of time a post can be edited, to whether or not we allow fall back to Google’s Ajax-Crawling API if no webcrawler is detected (we do!)
-
Administrative tasks like opening a new category or promoting a user to moderator
What zikzak (and now jmakin) and I have been doing in the past is taking care of the first 3 tasks in whatever way we think makes the site look and function best. Then we respond to feedback regarding the look and features and try to fix any complaints. When people complained about running out of likes, we increased the limit without running a poll. When people wanted a wider-screen version of the theme, we added that without running a poll. If anyone objects to falling back to Google’s Ajax-Crawling API if no webcrawler is detected, well sorry, I will quit the site before that happens.
For the fourth set of tasks, zz and I have always been reluctant to do anything without being directed to by the community. We have generally taken this to mean, we don’t do anything unless the mods ask us to, or unless there is a non-controversial poll (like there was a poll on whether or not we should open an A&E category. Results were 96%-4% in favor, so we created the new category).
Part of what @beetlejuice seems to be proposing is that, instead of the mods directing the admins to take administrative action, there would be a separate group that would make these decisions, and tell the admins, “we are certifying the result of this poll, please make inso0 a mod.” That seems fine to me. I’m not sure it’s necessary to add that extra layer, but I think the more people who take on responsibility for various aspects of the site (i.e. the more horizontal we can make things), the stronger the community will be.
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