Hi there, I'm a new account. I've noticed there is quite a bit of discussion regarding moderating in the Politics 7.0 forum. Here's my perspective:
Perhaps the forum members should all make decisions about the forum in a horizontal manner, rather than a top down manner with one person or a small group of people making decisions, and instead of a no-holds barred approach where people are able to do things like spread Neo-Nazi propaganda or constantly derail discussions.
I think if you're having trouble organizing the forum, you should look to Occupy Wall Street, and the General Assembly (GA) they made use of, and adopt it to use in the forum. It would work like this:
There is an area of open discussion, where anyone discusses anything. Ideally this discussion would be used for hashing out and formulating proposals.
Someone can then make a proposal, and it will go to the General Assembly.
In the General Assembly, there is a facilitator who facilitates the process. The proposer will outline the details of their proposal, and it will go up to a vote of the users in this manner:
1. Proposal is made
2. A vote is cast to determine if the proposal shall be opened for amendments or not.
3. If voted yes, the proposal will be open for amendments for a period of time, and anyone can offer any amendment they like. As soon as an amendment is proposed, it is voted on and is either adopted or not.
4. As soon the amendment period ends, the entire proposal is voted on. If passed, the proposal is enacted. If failed, the proposer can feel free to refine their proposal, hash out in discussion why people didn't support it, etc. and other people can make other proposals. (Only one proposal can be active at a time)
While voting you can
a. Abstain (if Abstain, you are not counted in vote talley)
b. Vote yes
c. Vote no
And you can also perform four actions:
1. Point of Information (POI) - A POI is raised when a member feels like they have important information that was unaddressed, and they need to make everyone aware of it.
2. Point of Process (POP) - A POP is raised when what is occurring does not follow the established rules of procedure.
3. Question or Clarification (QOC) - A QOC is raised when a member is unsure about a detail in the proposal or amendment.
4. Block - A block is raised when what is happening in the GA might be very bad, or it might go against the safety of the users, or it might lead to some bad consequence like serious legal action taken against users or the owners of the site, or something like that. A block is not a no vote, and is not merely a disagreement, a block is a safety check on the integrity of the GA.
Whenever one of these four actions is taken, the vote is halted, reset, and a revote occurs.
The voting rules are as follows:
The normal voting rule in effect is simple majority, meaning you just need a majority to pass a proposal or amendment. But if a block action is taken, after the vote is reset, it goes into a one against all rule. In this rule, if there is more than one person voting no, the vote doesn't pass. It can only pass if it's everyone voting yes, versus a single no vote (the blocker).
Users don't have to participate, and can leave at any time. I think you would have to have them leave the forum however, as this is a method that can be used to organize the forum. It's Direct Democracy, and horizontal decision making, where everyone has equal say and input to the outcomes.
The facilitator would do things like outline which point in the process the GA is in, open the GA to a vote, manage the time, count the votes, things like that. They are sort of the Operating System of the GA. What's important to note is that the facilitator does not have more power in the GA than any other user, they are merely facilitating the process.
This approach does have a weakness however, and that is a user could do nothing but block every vote, or use one of the other four actions to continuously reset the vote. There can be an established rule prohibiting this, and if a user exhibits this behavior they would be subject to whatever punitive measures were established. This would be necessary to keep the GA functioning, which is important because with this approach, everyone that participates in a good-faith manner will have direct influence in the forum.
Just an idea to consider, and I think it would be a neat experiment!
Last edited by AllCowsEatGrass; 03-04-2017 at 05:20 AM.