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Look, I'm all for democracy in the real world, but this is a very bad use of democratic processes for a number of reasons: 1. First and foremost, it's not a de

Look, I'm all for democracy in the real world, but this is a very bad use of democratic processes for a number of reasons: 1. First and foremost, it's not a democracy if your turnout is too low. The 2024 election had voter turnout of 2%, which would be a catastrophic turnout in any real democracy. Either too few knew about the election, too few thought their vote mattered, or too few had any idea how to choose between the options. Any of these reasons requires immediate and pressing attention if a democracy is to be called that. 2. Never having re-elections makes it useless. For it to be a truly democratic process there absolutely needs to be a way to withdraw consent from a moderator who behaves differently than expected. So yeah, a no confidence vote would be an option, or better yet regular elections to hold a position. I'm afraid that the largest problem is that democracy is really just a bad fit for this kind of site. By its nature the only people who are likely to vote in this type of election are a small dedicated core, not the enormous number of users that the site actually serves. A small core of contributors to a community resource invariably seems to develop a sense of "us against the world"—the thin blue line of police lore isn't an isolated thing, it's what happens when people view themselves as lone defenders of something they care about. And just like with police, that can result in a toxic culture that begins to actively degrade the plebian outgroup that they started out serving. I don't have a better answer, but I don't believe democracy is a good fit for moderators on the scale of community that Stack Overflow operates. It's too big to have good turnout, and the problems caused by bad turnout have become catastrophic.

BOOSTERHIDROGEN 1y ago
Then the answer is clear; copy paste a lot of dang to moderate. So this is clearly a management faulted no properly choosing a moderator.
eru 1y ago
That's part of the reason that as an employer I don't like worker democracy anywhere I work. With the usual model, I can just negotiate directly with management and they can tell me yes or no, and we can make a contract (or be a bit vaguer and make promises). With worker democracy, there's no one I can negotiate with that can tell me anything definitive.
- palata 1y ago
  > as an employer I don't like worker democracy Well... obviously :-)
  - eru 1y ago
    I also can't spell. Should have been 'employee', obviously.
esafak 1y ago
In real world terms, it is not that big a democracy, but the founders may have judged against mandatory voting. First, it would have added friction that could have impeded growth. Second, the voters may not have been qualified; they did not use the site enough to be able to or care to select one moderator over another.
- lolinder 1y ago
  I'm not proposing mandatory voting, but you have to fix turnout somehow or just openly acknowledge that you're running on a non-democratic system. > Second, the voters may not have been qualified; they did not use the site enough to be able to or care to select one moderator over another. This is exactly the attitude I'm talking about. I think the dedicated core actually does believe this: that nothing is broken, it's okay that the outgroup doesn't vote because they'd just ruin things if they did.
zahlman 1y ago
> Never having re-elections makes it useless. For it to be a truly democratic process there absolutely needs to be a way to withdraw consent from a moderator who behaves differently than expected. So yeah, a no confidence vote would be an option, or better yet regular elections to hold a position. Notwithstanding everything else I said above about how "moderation" is actually almost completely irrelevant here, and the overwhelming majority of what people call "moderation" is in fact curation done by community members in more or less a direct democracy: We have elections annually (https://stackoverflow.com/election https://stackoverflow.com/election), and so does each Stack Exchange site generally. Moderators generally must voluntarily step down barring a major problem; but this was carefully considered at the start (https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/984 https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/984).
- lolinder 1y ago
  With all due respect, your (2 whole pages of) comments here are showing exactly the kind of in-group out-group aggression and defensiveness that I described, and it's that attitude that people are consistently complaining about. It's what started killing Stack Overflow long before LLMs.
  - zahlman 1y ago
    I genuinely don't understand what you're talking about. Should I not correct people when they say factually inaccurate things about a service I care about? Should I not point out that their use of a service is not aligned with the intended use of that service, or that a community already exists with differently aligned goals? Should I not point out that they are not in a position to override that community's purpose and vision? Because I absolutely will not agree that other people should get to change what Stack Overflow is, simply because they think it should work like the other sites it was explicitly intended to provide an alternative to. I'm trying my hardest here to be courteous and to consider all sides: the fact that the software doesn't work optimally for our goals; the fact that the site owners have unaligned interests (corporate ones around ad revenue and site traffic); the fact that key parts of the site software were poorly designed at the start and not properly re-evaluated and fixed (in particular, the reputation system, which saw only a passing attempt to invite meta-discussion and then no corresponding change); the fact that the site's UI affords misuse by looking too much like a discussion forum (compare and contrast Wikipedia: there's no sense that anyone is replying to anyone else except on the Talk and other meta pages, and the edit form is hidden behind a link). For what it's worth, alternatives exist, and I prefer them. In particular, I use Codidact (https://www.codidact.com https://www.codidact.com) and I consider that its design has fixed many problems with the Stack Exchange network. But fundamentally, these kinds of Q&A sites are meant to work a certain way in the main Q&A space (although Codidact opens up the possibility of parallel related spaces, not just meta). They are fundamentally and crucially not a place to just ask something because it's on your mind (or with the specific intent of getting out of a bind), without heed to existing questions, and hope that someone addresses you personally. That's how traditional forums work, and ultimately the cause of all the things that made experts fed up with them and motivated to try something new in 2008. I've written a lot ITT because there are a lot of misconceptions about Stack Overflow out there, and many of them are quite popular; and because the site itself is not very good at presenting the needed correct information.
throwaway2037 1y ago
> For it to be a truly democratic process there absolutely needs to be a way to withdraw consent from a moderator who behaves differently than expected. This is a strange requirement to me. Do parliamentary democracies have this feature? I don't think so. And they are "truly democratic" in my book. FYI: I have been part of SO.com for about 15 years. I am regular on both sides of the Q&A. Never once have I felt compelled to vote in any election on SO.com. The site admin is totally uninteresting to me.
- lolinder 1y ago
  > Do parliamentary democracies have this feature? I don't think so. And they are "truly democratic" in my book. I can't speak for all parliamentary elections, but in the UK MPs must be put to the vote at least once every 5 years, and in practice elections are called more frequently than that. I'm unsure what a system that elects for life but is still a democracy would look like: do you have ideas in mind?

BOOSTERHIDROGEN 1y ago

Then the answer is clear; copy paste a lot of dang to moderate. So this is clearly a management faulted no properly choosing a moderator.

eru 1y ago

That's part of the reason that as an employer I don't like worker democracy anywhere I work. With the usual model, I can just negotiate directly with management and they can tell me yes or no, and we can make a contract (or be a bit vaguer and make promises). With worker democracy, there's no one I can negotiate with that can tell me anything definitive.

palata 1y ago
> as an employer I don't like worker democracy Well... obviously :-)
- eru 1y ago
  I also can't spell. Should have been 'employee', obviously.

esafak 1y ago

In real world terms, it is not that big a democracy, but the founders may have judged against mandatory voting. First, it would have added friction that could have impeded growth. Second, the voters may not have been qualified; they did not use the site enough to be able to or care to select one moderator over another.

lolinder 1y ago
I'm not proposing mandatory voting, but you have to fix turnout somehow or just openly acknowledge that you're running on a non-democratic system. > Second, the voters may not have been qualified; they did not use the site enough to be able to or care to select one moderator over another. This is exactly the attitude I'm talking about. I think the dedicated core actually does believe this: that nothing is broken, it's okay that the outgroup doesn't vote because they'd just ruin things if they did.

zahlman 1y ago

> Never having re-elections makes it useless. For it to be a truly democratic process there absolutely needs to be a way to withdraw consent from a moderator who behaves differently than expected. So yeah, a no confidence vote would be an option, or better yet regular elections to hold a position. Notwithstanding everything else I said above about how "moderation" is actually almost completely irrelevant here, and the overwhelming majority of what people call "moderation" is in fact curation done by community members in more or less a direct democracy: We have elections annually (https://stackoverflow.com/election https://stackoverflow.com/election), and so does each Stack Exchange site generally. Moderators generally must voluntarily step down barring a major problem; but this was carefully considered at the start (https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/984 https://meta.stackexchange.com/questions/984).

lolinder 1y ago
With all due respect, your (2 whole pages of) comments here are showing exactly the kind of in-group out-group aggression and defensiveness that I described, and it's that attitude that people are consistently complaining about. It's what started killing Stack Overflow long before LLMs.
- zahlman 1y ago
  I genuinely don't understand what you're talking about. Should I not correct people when they say factually inaccurate things about a service I care about? Should I not point out that their use of a service is not aligned with the intended use of that service, or that a community already exists with differently aligned goals? Should I not point out that they are not in a position to override that community's purpose and vision? Because I absolutely will not agree that other people should get to change what Stack Overflow is, simply because they think it should work like the other sites it was explicitly intended to provide an alternative to. I'm trying my hardest here to be courteous and to consider all sides: the fact that the software doesn't work optimally for our goals; the fact that the site owners have unaligned interests (corporate ones around ad revenue and site traffic); the fact that key parts of the site software were poorly designed at the start and not properly re-evaluated and fixed (in particular, the reputation system, which saw only a passing attempt to invite meta-discussion and then no corresponding change); the fact that the site's UI affords misuse by looking too much like a discussion forum (compare and contrast Wikipedia: there's no sense that anyone is replying to anyone else except on the Talk and other meta pages, and the edit form is hidden behind a link). For what it's worth, alternatives exist, and I prefer them. In particular, I use Codidact (https://www.codidact.com https://www.codidact.com) and I consider that its design has fixed many problems with the Stack Exchange network. But fundamentally, these kinds of Q&A sites are meant to work a certain way in the main Q&A space (although Codidact opens up the possibility of parallel related spaces, not just meta). They are fundamentally and crucially not a place to just ask something because it's on your mind (or with the specific intent of getting out of a bind), without heed to existing questions, and hope that someone addresses you personally. That's how traditional forums work, and ultimately the cause of all the things that made experts fed up with them and motivated to try something new in 2008. I've written a lot ITT because there are a lot of misconceptions about Stack Overflow out there, and many of them are quite popular; and because the site itself is not very good at presenting the needed correct information.

throwaway2037 1y ago

> For it to be a truly democratic process there absolutely needs to be a way to withdraw consent from a moderator who behaves differently than expected. This is a strange requirement to me. Do parliamentary democracies have this feature? I don't think so. And they are "truly democratic" in my book. FYI: I have been part of SO.com for about 15 years. I am regular on both sides of the Q&A. Never once have I felt compelled to vote in any election on SO.com. The site admin is totally uninteresting to me.

lolinder 1y ago
> Do parliamentary democracies have this feature? I don't think so. And they are "truly democratic" in my book. I can't speak for all parliamentary elections, but in the UK MPs must be put to the vote at least once every 5 years, and in practice elections are called more frequently than that. I'm unsure what a system that elects for life but is still a democracy would look like: do you have ideas in mind?