With the ratification of the RFC process all but assured even if we do want to allow more time for people to vote, we can get started on hammering out a implementing a mod selection process.
I’ll kick things off with some polls to assess community sentiment, some of which will be redundant with past polls but will be here so that this thread has a complete set.
Mods?
We should have a fixed number of mods
Anyone who volunteers and secures a 2/3 community vote should be mod.
People should be nominated by someone else and then accept a nomination, rather than volunteering themselves.
We don’t need a fixed number of mods, but there should be some sort of gatekeeping between volunteering and vote (please elaborate).
0voters
Mod terms
Mods can serve indefinitely
Mods should serve 3 month terms
Mods should serve 6 month terms
Mods should serve 1 year terms
Mods should serve some other length of term (please specify).
0voters
Mod term limits, assuming mods have terms
Mods can only serve one term and take at least one term off before rejoining
Mods can serve at most 2 terms
Mods can serve some larger but fixed number of terms (please specify)
Mods can serve any number of terms as long as they keep meeting the 2/3 vote threshold.
0voters
Mod elections, assuming we have terms
Elect all mods at once, so we have fewer votes
Mod terms should be scheduled and offset so that we don’t wind up with a gaggle of n00bs all at the same time
Mod terms will naturally be offset because we’ll vote on volunteers as they emerge rather than at particular times
0voters
There are more volunteers/nominees than openings. How to pick who goes up for vote?
All of them. I don’t think we need a fixed number of mods
Head to head primary election
First come, first served
The volunteers work out themselves who goes up first.
Some other process (please elaborate)
0voters
If you think any of my polls is missing an option, please post a new one including it, and feel free to post a poll to solicit feedback on any other part of a mod selection process you think is important.
I think the most interested members of the community should have outsized influence, as long as there are infrequent final votes that are accountable to the whole community. I think that’s the only way to have a community-driven site with many members who don’t want to be involved in the organizing process.
This is no different than political primaries, where activist bases have more influence on the results. I disagree with the implication that the most vocal members are also the most fringe. There’s no solution because that’s not a problem.
I don’t believe that there should be a fixed number of mods. I think we should, by custom, start out with five and let the mods signal whether the workload requires another mod, but we should also not stick to a set number where we have to go through a formal process every time we need to add another one.
There were clearly some underlying tensions from before that. The C-word debate just brought a lot of those to the foreground. It wasn’t the first and it won’t be the last drama bomb this forum experiences.
For the most part, I suspect these changes are mostly “under the hood” and won’t affect the forum experience of most posters. Some aggrieved posters are probably going to find out that replacing the mods won’t change how they get moderated.
The only important vote here, to me anyway but I think generally, is that mods not be able to serve consecutive terms.
That makes this whole process a contentious referendum on mods. Almost no one wants to throw any mods out and that’s great. This is no different than permanent mods who are subject to recall. It changes the entire process from something entirely not-controversial into something that will at least be sometimes full of drama. What the fuck is the big deal if a mod takes a time off and then can remod after a term?
No idea why we need to limit the number of moderators. I think the whole thing should be much more free flowing and people who want to mod getting to mod.
I am pretty much against all limits and caps on moderators.
I am confident all these limits and roadblocks will cause problems down the road.
I don’t know why we insist on making this magnitudes more complicated than necessary. Just seems as a community that people should be able to become mods and retire with little friction,
Again the whole thing seems mostly driven by trying to get rid of specific people and not really as a way to fundamentally improve the site for the majority of users.
Dunno how great it is to lobby specific votes here, but why not?
Oust, the problem with only allowing a set number of terms is we really might run out of people who want to mod. That might take a couple years and not enough mods is not really an emergency, but I could see a lot of alternation here and some people (me) encouraging fresh volunteers, but not finding a huge number. Like what if this rule and site are somehow in place for 15 years and the number of posters stays about the same?
What’s the point of having this thread, if not for people to support ideas and advocate for changes?
My main problem with term limits is exactly the problem of running out of mod candidates. Not everyone who wants to mod will be suitable to be a mod. Should we be forced to accept them as mods because we want to kick out the old mods?
I think we should just come up with a method of selecting and mods to fixed terms and leave the debate over limiting how many terms one can serve for a future discussion a year or two from now.
I would consider adding a provision in the final proposal that if mods feel the need for a temporary increase in number (say one mod has a work issue and another has a health issue that means mods will be short handed for a week or two), they can by pass the RFC process and either appoint or put up an immediate vote for a mod pro tem to ease the short-term burden.
Didn’t someone say they PMed five people and all of them declined? I thought it was you or jmakin, but I could be wrong. If we go with five mods as normal, we currently have two vacancies and two volunteers last time I checked. And I’m not sure that both volunteers that I know of would get 2/3 in a community vote.
I think we have that problem now if the number of volunteers aren’t well in excess of the number of open slots.
I really have no interest in modding stuff or decisions as admin other than clicking the buttons to make things happen the community wants.
As a user I am not that interested at the moment - I think we should go ahead and mod pocketchads and see how this new process we are adopting works for a few months. Things seem to have settled down a lot.
Without really soliciting we have otatop and whosnext on deck as well pocketchads. I think smacc would do it again. I would. I think other existing mods would do it again. We should have enough to at least toggle back and forth and eliminate the horrible idea of a referendum on existing mods every X months. Permanent mods with recall possibility would be better than that.
I prefer retention elections with no term limits and to lean towards longer terms so that we have less frequent votes. If you prevent mods from serving non-consecutive terms when they wish to serve again, you’re just pushing the referendum on them back to whenever they become eligible again. I don’t think it makes a huge difference on whether they are serving as a mod or not when you do the referendum.