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I mean what you're arguing is to essentially turn forum administration into miniature governments. And I would hope that as reality has proven, government is ve

I mean what you're arguing is to essentially turn forum administration into miniature governments. And I would hope that as reality has proven, government is very easily gamed by people seeking power. You seem to make a lot of assumptions which, as someone that has acted as a moderator in the past does not bear out. Have you acted as a moderator before? What are some communities which you believe have the idealized form of moderation? Because even Stack Overflow as you've referenced has issues with high toxicity among users chasing off moderators all the same.

naasking 6y ago
> I mean what you're arguing is to essentially turn forum administration into miniature governments. Forum administration already is a limited government, typically authoritarian in current incarnations. Mods are the police, judges and juries. Works fine if you have the resources and mods are fair, and maybe that's typical for minor infractions, but the conflict of interest is clear. Authoritarian moderation doesn't scale though, and you disenfranchise a lot of people with every a mistake, particularly since a) there's rarely a transparent appeals process, and b) people don't typically like owning their mistakes. Doubly so when "it's my platform, so I can do what I want with it". Maybe that's not something you care about, but given the increasing importance of social media to democratic government, it's a problem that will likely worsen. > And I would hope that as reality has proven, government is very easily gamed by people seeking power. Government is a system of rules for governing people's interactions. A moderation system is a system of rules for governing people's interactions on a specific site. You can't speak of these things as if they're that different. Either a system of rules is vulnerable to exploits, or it's not. > Because even Stack Overflow as you've referenced has issues with high toxicity among users chasing off moderators all the same. I mentioned stack overflow specifically for the unintrusive and random review process and nothing else. SO doesn't feature any of the other ideas I listed. Finally, I have no "idealized form of moderation" in mind, I have knowledge of where existing systems fail, and how other systems have already addressed very similar problems. Designing a secure and scalable moderation system is a big task, so if you want to hire me to research and build such a system, then I will be happy to address all of your questions in as much detail as you like.

naasking 6y ago

> I mean what you're arguing is to essentially turn forum administration into miniature governments. Forum administration already is a limited government, typically authoritarian in current incarnations. Mods are the police, judges and juries. Works fine if you have the resources and mods are fair, and maybe that's typical for minor infractions, but the conflict of interest is clear. Authoritarian moderation doesn't scale though, and you disenfranchise a lot of people with every a mistake, particularly since a) there's rarely a transparent appeals process, and b) people don't typically like owning their mistakes. Doubly so when "it's my platform, so I can do what I want with it". Maybe that's not something you care about, but given the increasing importance of social media to democratic government, it's a problem that will likely worsen. > And I would hope that as reality has proven, government is very easily gamed by people seeking power. Government is a system of rules for governing people's interactions. A moderation system is a system of rules for governing people's interactions on a specific site. You can't speak of these things as if they're that different. Either a system of rules is vulnerable to exploits, or it's not. > Because even Stack Overflow as you've referenced has issues with high toxicity among users chasing off moderators all the same. I mentioned stack overflow specifically for the unintrusive and random review process and nothing else. SO doesn't feature any of the other ideas I listed. Finally, I have no "idealized form of moderation" in mind, I have knowledge of where existing systems fail, and how other systems have already addressed very similar problems. Designing a secure and scalable moderation system is a big task, so if you want to hire me to research and build such a system, then I will be happy to address all of your questions in as much detail as you like.