The word ‘democracy’ is not a synonym for voting. So it doesn’t really make sense to say “democracy was practiced” as you have above.
For example: If folks voted that bans for cause under 72 hours cannot be appealed… there would be no voting on such bans, but democracy would have certainly been practiced. Conversely, if a rogue mod listed a buncha users, and then had an “election” on who he should gratuitously ban, there would indeed be voting… but democracy would most certainly not have been practiced.
In a democracy, the legitimacy of the officers is derived from the population, who have equal say. Come on, you already know all this… right? This is, after all, a political junkie website.
No. Not at all.
The binding election was prompted by one of our elected mods doing a Pronunciamiento. They declared that, quote: “Unstuck is not a democracy”. I though it was important for the unstuck community to weight in on this issue.
Do we want to be a democracy going forward, and thereby dismiss this pronunciamiento as a rogue act. That’s the “yes” side. The “no” side is the side of legitimatizing and acquiescing to this pronunciamiento, while forsaking democracy going forward.
I meant “This isn’t a democracy” as in not every moderation policy or decision has to be voted on and dragged on for weeks and weeks, especially not when it’s something as straight forward as posting people’s names, or cutesy little plays on their names, or references to things that will lead you directly to their names.
Can we just cut to the chase? There is no point to this thread because this site will never be a democracy. As long as an admin has their name attached to the site in some way, that admin should have the (non-democratic) discretion to take actions like the ones laid out here:
As a recent example involving doxxing and moderation, I do not care what users vote on regarding doxxing - it is never going to be ok and it is (hopefully) never going to go unmoderated regardless of votes. The same should be true for other items laid out in the terms of service. As a topic that hasn’t generated recent controversy, the same is true for inline NSFW images.
That is not an exhaustive list of things that are not up for democratic vote. If this seems like too much of a dictatorship, I will happily pass along admin rights and hosting privileges to whoever the community selects.
What amazes me quite a bit is how you think you are inventing the wheel. Unstuck isn’t the first membership organization to have a chat site. That happened several decades ago. And, it’s not a particular to the interwebs. Membership organizations have had print publications for a few hundred years. The issues are the same.
Suffice to say that organizations with print publications, the editors didn’t declare they were above and outside of the governance of the organization they represent. Likewise, membership organizations with a web presence don’t declare that their webmaster is exempt from the governance of their organizations.
This is also independent of being a democratically organized organization. The same situation holds in non-democratic organizations.
Unstuck isn’t really much of an organization and doesn’t really have much governance. This whole experience had made my highly skeptical of non-hierarchical structures.
It should not. Unstuck was never organized in a non-hierarchival manner. In fact, it has never been anything that even vaguely resembles such organization.
Lack of organization != non-hierarchival organization any more than it == hierarchical organization.
If that information can be easily to your identity then yes, it should be protected if you want. Whether someone should be punished probably depends on their intent in posting it. If they are posting it to reveal your identity (or as a threat that they could reveal your identity), then yes, I think it warrants punishment. If it comes up naturally in conversation/doesn’t seem malicious, I’d probably just delete it and remind the person not to share that info.
Example - say you post that you got 3rd at a specific poker tournament. You then realize that the results are online and anyone can easily find your name. You delete the reference so your post now just says that you got third at a big tournament. If someone keeps referencing that specific fact in completely unrelated discussions, then IMO they 100% deserve a severe punishment - whether you want to say it’s technically doxxing or not.
A majority of human organization is non-hierarchical. Most,(but not all) adults in families organize that way. Same with organized groups of friends, like FFLs,and such. So we are talking billions of examples. But I know that’s not the kind of exampe you are looking for…
The kind of example I feel you are looking for is Mondragon…
At this time, Anti-democracy has a commanding 31-21 lead. This is surely an insurmountable lead, Hence the insertion of “Last ever” in the thread title. The era of democracy in the unstuck community., which was actually established at the exiled site, will come to an end on the 8th.
Of course, we suck at doing democracy anyways, so it’s prolly for the better we need not even try anymore.
This thread is the perfect example. Nobody made a positive argument to scuttle democracy. Nobody made a positive argument to keep democracy. Nobody gave a shit about discussing the issues.
Instead we got ~170 posts from the likes of grue and friends bickering, belly-aching, and carrying on about some long running, seemingly undecipherable, but obviously off-topic, vendetta they insist on polluting every damn thread with. Doesn’t look like fun to me… but different strokes for different folks, I guess.
You namedropped 1 person, but of course you and your cult members are the principal agents that led to this.
Do you accept responsibility for the end of democracy, and hopefully now realize how terrible the tactic of Sabotage is towards achieving any political goals?
I voted to keep democracy, just like you. Again, you seem to have me confused with somebody else.
In the context of actual real world activism, the word ‘sabotage’ has a particular and somewhat technical meaning . It also has a history. It can be very effective. A recent example in the news was how the ILWU won their new contract. Check it out.
However, none of that is relevant to unstuck. Nobody could use the kind of IRL sabotage I’m speaking of because… we don’t do anything, useful or not. We’re just a fan site for a buncha ex-poker players who enjoy the offerings of the political entertainment complex. In the context of unstuck the whole idea doesn’t even make sense.
