Quote:
Originally Posted by Alternate Identity
I am talking about it being too much work for the general members and causing general membership activity to decline.
And the level of posting has declined enough already.
I think it depends on how you look at it. The way I see it, it allows the actual users of the forum to have direct influence in how it is structured, and how discourse happens.
One of the things that could originally be worked on by the users is establishing a set of rules to be applied equally to everyone. Here's a toy example:
A user proposes making a rule that prohibits advocating white supremacy. It is opened for amendments. An amendment is proposed stating that if a user does this, they are banned on sight, and their post is deleted. If most people aren't white supremacists, this should pass, and then the proposal should pass, so already, through the direct action taken by users, through direct Democracy, a new rule prohibiting advocating white supremacy with the punitive measure of an immediate ban will have been passed.
This is a simple example, but it illustrates how it could work. The most "work" the users would have to do, would be discussing how things should be in the forum, making and voting on proposals and amendments. The greatest amount of work would be on the facilitator, but even that could be distribute among several different facilitators.
The proposals themselves would take some time to be approved or to fail, but how long have people been debating the rules and moderation of the forum? From taking a quick look around, it appears to me that it has been debated for quite some time.
I think organization is the biggest thing the forum is lacking, and this would allow the users to organize the forum themselves. And like I stated earlier in either this thread, or a different thread, the users would actually be engaging in a process of politics, in a politics forum.