wrongplanet election?

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it has been impossible to ignore the dissatisfaction over the rule-enforcement on wrongplanet recently. almost everyone seems to be bearing a grudge against various members of the Moderation team and conspiracy theories are rife.

with the intention of ending this unrest amongst members, i would like to suggest a new procedure for the nomination of Moderators: i think it should be considered to begin implementing a democratic system, where all adult members (anonymously) elect the individuals that they want to be on the Moderation team.

the part in bold of the quote above is what i percieve to be the problem, or a potential problem. if it hasn't happened already, sooner or later there is going to be an imbalance within the Moderation team and the Majority will continue to increase in numbers as the existing Moderators recruit more of their "own kind."

all criticisms for this suggestion are welcome.

I dont expect for a minute this will happen but it sounds like a good idea with some flaws like the fact anyone can make numerous accounts and some people might vote their friends without thought of who seems most fair or even-handed. Of course i supect that some moderators have voted this way already.

I think only people who have made numerous posts should be allowed to vote and anyone with the same IP address or posting style should be looked into as it is now with banned members. This would make the moderators more accountable to the public and make it harder for allegations of cronyism but there would be a great risk of more populist decisions though im sure this happens already without the democratic elections.

However this is the only way, likely for a more diverse moderator team who arent as swayed by loyalty to the existing moderator team and so will lvery possibly be fairer as this would lead to different opinions of moderators and so like a parliament with no great majority every decision would be thoroughly questioned by the "opposition" and a greater effort would need to be taken to come to a common consensus for there to be any drastic decisions put forward like a banning for instance.

Democracy in the world has many faults and popularity contests are one of them but it has time and time again proven to be fairer to the majority of people than any other form of "government. Overall im for it but i wouldnt hold my breath.

Will someone please let me know when the recruitment of my "own kind" comes into play.....I'm kind of interested to see who that will be & what they'll look like.

As of yet I know of no popularity contests that I have won here on WP but if I do win one, I'll throw a big ol' party and invite only those members that I don't know which means that everyone on WP will be invited. . . oh, and of course you'll know who I am. . .I'll be the stranger over in the corner, looking at the cracks in the floor, rocking back and forth & chewing my nails.

I'm not really opposed to this but I don't think it'd be very practical to implement....

A nice idea but it would be hard to do. On LambdaMOO (one of the first internet communities back in 1991 and still one of the most democratic) the "wizards" (akak mods) decided to run things by democracy - the users would submit petitions and vote in polls on what to do. Then the wizards would follow up on those decisions.

Then something happened (I'm not sure what) and they basically changed their minds and said that in the end the wizards had final say, since they were the ones responsible under the law (US law since the server is hosted in the US). They do still have petitions and voting polls but the wizards dont have to obey....

Also, if the "elected" group decides to do something that is against US law or costs Alex a [censored]load of $$$....well you can see where I am going with this.

Also, we do have one major democratic power: if alex screws up big time (or one of the mods does and alex stands behind that person) and does the unthinkable, we can just LEAVE, start a new forum, and let the mods be as self righeous as they want to be.....

Methinks thou doth protest a bit too much.

Which is the wrong context for that remark, but still, sounds to me like some days, the squareness of some of the moderators is the only thing that keeps some of us sane. This is not a democracy, and it's getting a little too big to be a democracy. All that the moderators do is enforce the rules....mostly against 4 letter words. They do offend some of us (the words, not the moderators), and against people getting on and giving drug advice (liability) and talking about killing themselves (also liability), and about slamming other members (liability, descency...and on and on), so if you follow the rules you should be okay, but if you want to use this as a forum to swear at other people, or tell them what sick people they are, or advocate blowing up the entire NT world, then you're probably in the wrong place anyway.

My two cents, flame me if you like. I don't care.

BTDT

i like the idea, it would all depend on how it's done. i think it's essential that the moderators should be more representative of the members, and that the members should have some say in who gets to be a moderator.

finding a system to do it is hard. if you just have a naive election then it could be the case that, if there's more right-wing members than left-wing members, they could end up electing an entire team of right-wing moderators, which isn't representative. or the fact that there's much more aspies than nts could mean no nt ever became a moderator, then there'd be no representation for the small minority of nt parents we have here.

i don't think things can really carry on the way they are. there would just be more and more drama and controversial decisions. i've seen message boards collapse in situations like that - either the owner pulls the plug in frustration or the boards descend into free-for-all flamewars with no useful discussion or support possible.

same here! especially since it would ultimately be the Moderators' decision to replace the current system and i think too many of them would fear losing their status to take the risk of facing a democratic vote.


what i mean is it's unlikely that someone (in this case; a member of the Moderator team) is going to choose someone who opposes their general view of things to join their "gang." all it takes is 51% in favour of one particular school of thought then, as more members are selected, the Majority snow-balls.


true. i'm not suggesting that it would be a "quick-fix" solution but, with the right forward-planning, i believe it would be within the realm of possibility for it to work. i realise that the main problem would be ensuring that people didn't set up multiple accounts. i'm sure most of the Moderators must be sick to death of defending their current recruitment procedure- with a fair voting system all these corruption rumours would be put to rest.


that is what i would automatically do if i had a major disagreement with the Moderators. i wouldn't be posting this right now if i didn't think that the good things out-weighed the bad things. my idea was just a suggestion to make a good place even better.

Last edited by hecate on 30 Dec 2005, 2:10 am, edited 1 time in total.

i think you've misunderstood me- i don't have any major problems with the Moderators myself (as far as i know!), my suggestion was to protect the Moderators from being accused of things they are not guilty of.

I wasn't aware that a 51% majority was needed. Maybe a 2/3s or a 100% majority should be required, then. Hmm.....



Ugh... you want to introduce <b>politics</b> into an aspie forum?

It could work. It seems to (mostly) work for LambdaMOO, where they vote on petition to change things and make major decisions. But even they don't let the general populace vote for who gets to be wizards - that right they reserve for themselves.



An admirable goal. I think thought, if we all are going to be serious about this, we're going to have to develop a workable plan and present it before we can expect anything to happen.

A election will not happen when Alex will not allow it to happen in the first place. That said it should happen I think.

In any human organisation those with superior social skills rise to the top and take on the positions of power. That is evident everywhere you look; though in most democratic countries, nearly all organisations have procedures in place to provide some control over which of these socially-able contenders gets those positions, and what they do when they have them. The controls take the form of elections, clear rules and transparency. These controls exist everywhere, from the local swimming club, to the highest level of government. Despite them, it is true that the same type of people get these positions — you generally need to want to have power, in order to get it — but the rest of us though mindful of this imperfection, have some peace of mind in knowing that those with the power are accountable to those they exercise that power over.

Though WP is composed of many who struggle socially, it is still a microcosm of society at large — why shouldn't it be? Those who want power can get it; as is evident by the Johnny-come-latelies with the 'ol moderator title. It's not difficult; colloquially I think the mechanism is known as "brown nosing". The system of moderator selection actually makes this mechanism the only option for those keen on joining the moderator clique.

So why do some of us make such a fuss? Well, the mechanism by which those who have the capacity to remove us from this "community" are selected, is a process that is used to exclude us from many things in life in general. Except here, in a place that purports to be for people like us, it is encouraged without even the checks placed on it that socially able people use in the real world.

To be honest, that disgusts me.

I see where you're coming from, but democracy on it's own is not the answer — and I don't think there is a perfect solution; but that shouldn't prevent people trying to improve a system that is manifestly rotten through. It's probably impractical to implement full democracy in a place like this, anyway; but there's still plenty of scope to have some democratic process. More importantly, there needs to be transparency and consistency. Moderators should also be expected to behave honestly and with integrity.

That's what you believe, because most of their dirty work is done behind closed doors. When they've been after me, they've made accusations, withdrawn those accusations, ambiguously reinstated similar allegations, then restated the initial allegation and refused to explain exactly how it broke a certain rule in the Guidelines that specifically defined the offence.

Sorry to bring that up again, but I really couldn't help myself.

I think it'd be really cool if we could pull it off effectively. Of course, if we want to introduce a political system to WrongPlanet, all the problems of politics will come along with it. Almost all the time, the people who would actively campaign for a moderator position would be the least fitting ones for the job, and members who attract less attention and have lower post counts wouldn't get elected, even if they would make fine moderators.

Putting together fair elections might be tough, too. We'd need to decide on a base level of posts a member has to have in order to place a vote, and then there's the issue of how relevant those posts have to be, as opposed to a bunch of posts in the word association game thread or something.

It'd take a lot of work, but I like the idea. Hopefully we can get alex to chime in.

I don't think it's such a hot idea. Popularity is a bad measure of suitability for moderation.

In my opinion, the best moderation is that which entails the least interference possible while still maintaining a smoothly running forum with no trolls (and by trolls, I mean the creeps who come on and post porn or entire paragraphs of profanity that have nothing to do with the site, and who never have contributed anything useful or relevant).

Furthermore, being a mod isn't such a joy or privilege, it's a pain in the hiney and a responsibility. What if someone got elected to be a mod and they really didn't want it? Or it seemed like fun for all of two days and then they got sick of it?

My rule of thumb was that if someone was jumping up and down begging to be a mod, they were probably very unsuited for the position and just wanted to exercise a power trip....