Actually, it’s more like the mods are the judicial branch and the community, in addition to acting as the legislature, are also the executive/cops through flagging posts.
So if a black family is having a barbecue and I call 911, I’m a cop?
cops are the people who respond to the notification and are the first to make an official decision. There ought to be an independent check on that power other than recalling the mod via referendum. A judiciary allows the mod to just do mod stuff and send the arguing over to the argument corner where special volunteers deal with just arguments and not regular mod stuff.
I don’t want to be cynical but I suspect OPicus Awesomnius wants firsties with the vestal virgins
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I suppose you could make the case that the Discourse software operates as the cops, if you want to go with that analogy.
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you’re on my shortlist for associate justices
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i’m already winning but i’ll flesh out the system further to give everyone a sense of what’s gonna happen:
a new subforum will be created for the court system. i will nominate associate justices and take applications for judgements outstanding. then i’ll set a schedule and hold hearings for any outstanding complaints.
but most of the time i expect nothing will go on until a mod deems it necessary to take action against someone, whether it’s a temp ban or containment or whathaveyou. when the mod takes whatever action he or she takes, the accused perpetrator of the forum crime will have an opportunity to challenge that mod action in this court. this will be done with like a button the banned person sees, or if we can’t do that then just email me, i’ll make an email.
the accused will remain in whatever state the mod put them in pending trial. bail can be arranged through a bitcoin address that i’ll also post. this is absolutely not any corruption of any kind, it will be used for the good of the forum absolutely, it’ll just be resting in my account. when i get the application for a trial i’ll call the justices and once a 69% quorum is reached we’ll unban the accused and contain them to the court-thread for the remainder of the trial. if the accused flees and starts posting in other places, they risk banishment until the trial is concluded.
we will hear from the accused, and we can ask to hear the side of anyone else involved, but that request would be nonbinding, there will be no threat to testify against anyone. justices will be allowed to ask questions of the accused and witnesses. no other member will be allowed to post in the court-thread under punishment of tempban by the bailiff. there will be a parallel thread for the hooting and hollering mob just outside of the court so that we can all have our fun
in accordance with the will of the people by the results of the poll at the top of this thread, i pledge not to use mod powers outside of the judicial subforum. for each trial i will request a bailiff from the community-approved group of moderators to carry out punitive actions decreed by the court in accordance with forum law. there is no compulsory aspect to this request, mods can freely decline as they will remain a separate and equal branch. a trial will not take place without a bailiff. the purpose of this court will not be to overrule mods, only the voters have that power. the purpose of this court will be to work with the mods and the members AND the accused to make the community better.
and if it doesn’t, like i said, we’ll bin it
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I’m OK with the idea of an judicial branch or panel of arbiters or whatever you want to call it. But I don’t support the way it has been proposed in this thread.
I suggest meb’s proposal as an alternative.
I would also like any candidates for the panel to offer an explanation of why they should be selected.
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this is the meb post being referred to
i would just tweak it so the judiciary breaks ties among moderators so the admin can be kept out of forum drama, but otherwise this is extremely similar to what i’ve proposed itt
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Now we just need wookie to unilaterally adopt it so we can end all this endless voting and arguing. It would literally be over instantly.
I think this is fine to change, but I’ll explain why i set it up this way. I don’t think jmakin in his role as admin should have any day to day mod duties. However, this role is so important that I feel like the admin should have some say in the overall policies and feel of the community that the forum is going for. This was my attempt to somewhat balance it by saying that they basically break any ties in mod decisions.
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Not sure how jmakin feels about this, but zz and I explicitly did not want this responsibility as admins. x-posting what I just posted in one of the other threads.
In terms of work, there is no need for additional admins. There are 4 basic types of Admin tasks:
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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!)
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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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With that perspective, I think this is the correct way to go.
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Can we have senate hearings for candidates?
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I can envision two different systems here. One, where mods act and don’t have any transparency outside the moderator and arbiter. The mods decide, a poster appeals, then the arbiter decides. But the offenses and decisions aren’t publicized. Kind of 2+2 moderation: decisions are made, you don’t like it PM the red (arbiter).
Another where there is a lot of transparency and documentation of actions, disputes, and decisions. This is certainly my preference. But should we add some democratic controls and overrides? I would suggest: election of moderators with 2/3rds yes, and arbiters with 80% (arbiters should be people who would pass nearly unanimously). Any arbiter or mod can be removed with a simple 50% vote. And there should be a referendum mechanism. If a poster strongly disagrees with the arbiter’s decision on if a type of post should be moderated or not, they can submit that to the forum for a vote. So not whaaaaa I shouldn’t have been banned. But rather, have the arbiter come up with a petition to craft guidance to the moderators: should this sort of post be moderated. Not the specific decision, the general rule. The arbiter writes it, not the complainant. Then the community can take a vote.
I know you probably haven’t been following these trainwrecks closely but I feel I’ve made it pretty clear in my posting that I just mostly wanna do nerd stuff. So, basically just 1.)
I think it is not a bad idea what meb is proposing. However I would not really prefer being any kind of input beyond what I’m posting as a poster here. I would maybe go along with something like what he proposed, if necessary, but only if there was a massive community mandate for it. My position basically is, I’ll do whatever the f*** the community wants. I will act in the communal best interest of the website. For small stuff like changing the mention limit, I won’t sweat it and just take unilateral action about stuff that no one cares about really.
Goreo is right. He just said what I haven’t been able to say very clearly, and is pretty much how I’ve been trying to approach things.
part of the reason I’ve been insisting so strongly for rules beyond how we do polls is that if I am acting in the best interests of the community, I want it to be at least very clear what the community wants. I don’t want any gray areas where people could misconstrue actions I take as some kind of favoritism or bias. And in the last few weeks I’ve been surprised at how many gray-ish areas there have been. Probably my own fault, I don’t know.
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i agree up to a point. i feel the admin position is such a high level of responsibility i don’t want him putting himself in a position to ever risk the trust he’s built with the community by taking sides either with the mods or against the mods. because that’s ultimately how some members are going to see it when things get personal for them.
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I agree 2/3 vote for mod and higher level for arbiter because arbiters should be people that would pass unanimously or almost unanimous. I’m a believer that once forum governance is officially setup, we don’t need to have transparency to the level it’s been up to now, because honestly who needs all these threads? I think we’re setting this up in a way that we’re entrusting the people chosen to use their best judgment on decisions for the good of the community.
Yeah if the admins don’t want responsibility beyond technical stuff, then let’s keep them out of it. 100% agree with what you and ggoreo are posting on this subject.
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