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>Communities can elect and impeach their own mods by voting. This invites tyranny of the majority. Which will mean for certain topics where the community disli
by natch 8y ago
>Communities can elect and impeach their own mods by voting.
This invites tyranny of the majority. Which will mean for certain topics where the community dislikes open discussion and questioning of ideas, divisiveness will grow because bad ideas can not be effectively challenged.
- erikpukinskis 8y agoWon’t this be resolved the way it does on Reddit with people ejecting to more specific communities? I’m a feminist for example, but I’m no longer welcome in mainstream feminist subreddits, so I subscribe to various more-specific-feminism subbreddits, and explicitly debate friendly ones.
- natch 8y agoI'm not too happy with that resolution though, because it leads to problems. While it may seem to reduce short term conflict, it exacerbates the effect of many of us living in ever-more-impervious bubbles. Which could lead to larger problems down the road as people's shared understandings about reality diverge even more.
- int_19h 8y agoIf enough people believe the same, then such segregation will not happen, because moderation will be self-moderated. OTOH, if enough people really want all those bubbles, there isn't really anything you can do to stop them.
- natch 8y ago>If enough people believe the same, then such segregation will not happen That's wishful thinking. Reality has shown that this isn't the case. >there isn't really anything you can do to stop them. You can challenge them on it. Unless they shut down challenges. Which is what this system enables.
- SquishyPanda23 8y agoI've never seen a community that was completely open to discussion and where bad ideas disappeared because they were effectively challenged. On the other hand, I've been in several communities where the mods had a clear agenda and the participants were helpless to change it. I'd personally rather the people who are hostile to new ideas or critical thinking have their own communities and that their ability to harm other communities can be mitigated by a moderation system accountable to the users. I do think there needs to be serious discussion about how to make communities that are good for people. The echo chamber and polarization effects tend to contract people into a smaller worldview. How to have a cohesive community that doesn't do that is essentially an unsolved problem in the social sciences.
- natch 8y agoI agree with most of what you said, but we might be looking at it from different angles. Especially want to zero in on this: >I'd personally rather the people who are hostile to new ideas or critical thinking have their own communities A fact that you don't seem to have in your mind here is that often those people are the majority. So you'll have majorities voting in mods who are hostile to new ideas and critical thinking. With this platform we still get lock-in of polarized thinking and echo chambers.
- SquishyPanda23 8y agoI think your view here may be a little more pessimistic than mine. I don't think the majority is opposed to critical thinking, although I think most people are bad at it. I also think most people are bad at civil and effective communication, so you may get toxic communities even from well-meaning people. I'll be interested to see what happens. You may be right that communities will select mods that create echo chambers. I'm a little more optimistic. Whichever way it goes, I think the ability to experiment (e.g. with weighted or modified voting schemes) with this sort of mechanic is definitely worth pursuing.
- natch 8y agoYes you are optimistic.