I’m splitting this into two parts. First identifying the issue. And second my personal idea for a solution. I’m hoping for a lot of discussion so please be clear which part you are responding to.
Part 1: The problem
Reddit as a platform has many flaws. Obviously being a corporation means they’re terrible no matter what. But their platform is also flawed. Even if Reddit was 100% community owned the platform would still be flawed. The number one thing that is ruining Reddit are the tyrannical mods.
Each community on Reddit is a dictatorship. Whoever is arbitrarily in charge of a community has full unrestricted power to do whatever they want. The people who are actually creating the content and sharing it are totally at their whim. I understand that modding is a difficult and thankless job, but toxic mods ruined Reddit and Lemmy will do the same if it’s not addressed.
Lemmy’s answer is to allow people to create their own instances. Don’t like the mods at World? Go make your own Lemmy, with blackjack and hookers. But that’s not sufficient. It takes years to build up a community to have enough people for meaningful discussion to happen, and nearly all communities or instances fail. We absolutely need a way for mods to answer to the users.
Part 2: My solution
My solution is simple. Lemmy is built on the community. Everyone helps run it. Therefore mods are elected by the users who generate the highest upvoted content in a community.
Elections should happen on a schedule and, if a community is particularly upset with a mod, a vote of no confidence can be taken.
I understand that this will be a huge undertaking. But I truly believe that we need to fix this issue for Lemmy to thrive long term. Or else we’ll just end up with another Reddit.
Each community on Reddit is a dictatorship. Whoever is arbitrarily in charge of a community has full unrestricted power to do whatever they want.
Lemmy’s answer is to allow people to create their own instances. Don’t like the mods at World? Go make your own Lemmy, with blackjack and hookers. But that’s not sufficient.
I don’t think it’s insufficient. site admins can replace mods if they see the need for it. and if your site admins don’t take action when they should, you look for a new site with new site admins. or you become your own.
Therefore mods are elected by the users who generate the highest upvoted content in a community.
this is simple but simply flawed. how do you filter dishonest accounts? automated accounts, multiaccounts, trolls, brigading accounts of users coming from an instance with largely different values, …
IRL we have solved these, but we don’t want such an identity system on the internet.
Or else we’ll just end up with another Reddit.
on reddit you couldn’t choose your site admins. here you can. even today it is a very meaningful choice if you compare just lemmygrad, lemmy.world and dbzero
You’ve been here for two months…
I’m sympathetic to this post and surprised by the massive downvotes… But it sounds like a great deal of work for a questionably better result.
“Whoever is arbitrarily in charge of a community has full unrestricted power to do whatever they want”
So you want to kick out whoever build the community and be in charge with others likeminded people?
All popular community’s would be taken over by groups, bots, data centers, big tech … And used will be brainwashed. Your vote wouldn’t matter at all.
You vote with leaving a community and / or the platform.
Literally nothing is stopping you from creating communities or even an entire instance that follows that principle…
If you want to do it, then do it.
And if people want it, they’ll participate.
But even if they do, I don’t think you’ll get the result you expect and want
So your probelm with the platforms is not the platforms themselves, but people? Because the mods running communities here aren’t too different from the refit communities.
As for your second point, you want karma farmers to run the communities?
As I said, Reddit is a corporation so it will never be good even if their platform had no flaws.
I’m open to feedback on my solution, please provide your opinion on how it can be improved to address the weaknesses you’re seeing.
feedback on my solution
He gave you a good one but I’ll explain: there is no karma here. But spammers have a lot of accounts, which would mean one spammer would be able to elect himself which is not what we want.
Yeah that’s true. I guess I’m assuming people aren’t upvoting spam. What could be a better way to qualify who is allowed to vote for a community’s mods?
What could be a better way to qualify who is allowed to vote for a community’s mods?
Mods are volunteers. Not paid civil servants. Community mods are also not there to win a popularity contest. They are there to enforce the rules of the community. Not everyone is going to agree with any mod on every decision.
Mods are human and can make mistakes. Contacting a mod if there is an issue usually works more often than not. Attacking a mod, threatening a mod, being abusive to a mod because you see a situation differently is not the best way to go about discussing anything, and normally does not help the situation.
You are free to leave the community, start your own, and mod it the way you feel it should be done. Communities do not need to vote for qualified mods. Too many interpretations of what constitues qualified for a community run by volunteers.
And if the majority you’d need for a vote agreed the mod had to go, they would migrate to the new community anyway
Wut? Should we vote for who gets to live in your home too?
IMHO, most Lemmy mods are fine. And it doesn’t take years to advertise your community. The end.
Most Reddit mods were fine at one point as well. In your estimation, if I wanted to start a Lemmy community for something niche say bonsai tree triming, how long would it take to get enough people for real discussions?
Your first phrase, added to your other points about removing and replacing moderation, makes it sound people are going to become bad just for being in positions of power.
As someone who’s seen the final days of kbin.social, let me tell you, they were rampant with spammers and scammers, and no amount of community effort would solve it.
Authority is needed.
And on a voting system, there is one already in the fediverse, defederation. It’s usually good to shake administration into noticing there’s a problem, or at least isolating the problem if left unattended so it doesn’t spread. Sure it can be used ideologically, but it’s also in their right not to deal with those they’re not aligned with.
1 week. Advertise and I’m pretty sure bonsai people will come. If they don’t exist or are not there, you will have no discussion anyway.
I’d love to see it if you’re willing to demonstrate
I’m not because I don’t have time for this. Feel free to do it. Back in the late 90s we had small communities and it was fun. No one wondered how we could attract hundreds of people from other forums.
Sadly it is no longer the 90s
No need to taunt: !communitypromo@lemmy.ca
I mean your the one with all these ideas. If you think they’re great, create a community or instance and prove it.
upvotes are way too easy to manipulate on fedi so if you really want democratic elections you would need a better system. but lets just keep it simple
upvotes are not representative of quality, or ethics.
Therefore mods are elected by the users who generate the highest upvoted content in a community.
wow, that may be the worst idea for the direction of lemmy since the Tesseract guy. bravo
How should it be done better?
By changing the premise completely. You fall straight on the flat edge of the very fallacy that drives sites like Reddit: that popularity is an indicator of quality. (And even worse, mistaking “popularity of A” with “quality of B”). Just a hint: Donald Trump won the popular vote. So has Netanyahu.
I kind of agree with the others here. the current system is fine, but if you don’t like it, make your own instance. lemmy has some problem mods, but they are far from the biggest issue
kylie_kraft was being a little harsh there. Your idea isn’t really that bad, thanks for taking the time to write it up and bring it up for discussion.
mods are elected by the users who generate the highest upvoted content in a community.
I don’t think this is a good idea. I’d encourage you to look at my comment history in this community specifically. Every comment I’ve left in my official capacity is a direct result of at least one user report. I prefer a very light touch moderation style, where I address rule breaking content when reported but otherwise let the community manage itself.
Those comments I left are not terribly popular, and I think that’s the heart of the problem. Running a community effectively and maintaining some sense of order is not generally a very popular activity. Do we really want to make moderation a popularity contest? Beyond that, I don’t post much in fediverse, does that mean I’m ill suited to being a mod here? I don’t think so.
I agree in general that poor moderation can be a problem, but letting the most popular posters run the community doesn’t seem like the fix.
Yep.
If the most popular posters ran it, moderation would make a community pretty flat.
So if I create a community and spend my time curating it, it should be taken from me if someone posts a meme and gets up votes?
Usually people who complain about mods are a problem. In face lemmy has lazy mods. We need stronger enforcement in some of these communities so they can thrive
You clearly don’t understand what a thankless job being a mod is. You’re subjected to relentless harassment from anyone you try to moderate. Its not really a job that anyone wants. Mods are volunteers who just want to improve their communities. You may disagree with their policies and enforcement, and you have the right to move to or create a new community. Having elections would just ensure that there’s no one at all to moderate them.
I think the federated nature of things will shake this out, if admins/mods (there seems to be some confusion about which term to use) get too nuts. Reddit has a legendary shithead Mod on the main Grateful Dead sub, but there’s an alternate GD sub where a group that is smaller, but sufficient to form a community, gathers.
In the case of here, someone can start a community with the same name on a different Instance, and just like those two Dead subs, it’s not a one or the other proposition for users, they can sub both or either. People will gravitate to the community with the best moderation that creates the best discourse.
Bottom line, this place is in a lot less danger from the problem you describe than Reddit. There are built-in pressure valves, seems to me.
People will gravitate to the community with the best moderation that creates the best discourse.
Nah, I think people gravitate to the biggest instances with the most people. That’s why comms on world are so popular despite the garbage modding.
I don’t even like leaning to heavily on moderation. I want emphasis to be on users ability to curate their feed.
