Fediverse

It's possible but will be very easy to manipulate by people making alts and sockpuppets. You'd need a way to verify individuals.

The Fediverse Anarchist Flotilla is already experimenting with this sort of radical democracy, through our regular governance threads and our radical admin recalls but we have to rely on paid supporters and individually vouched people to stave manipulation.

Anyway, people can already repurpose the threativore which is the bot that enables this voting to handle the extra stuff you suggest and give it a try.

The thing is nobody wants to be a mod in here. 100% of those who apply are taken

Would a blockchain be better for a voting system?

You can just form a regular institutionalized user group / hobby association and run that this way if you want.

That's the end point I see for the fediverse too, localized specialized interest groups that run themselves, know each other IRL and both finance the space because they see the value it brings them and democratically decide how to run it.

... but it doesn't work perfectly with sign ups being unlimited, anonymized and open to the general internet.

The randomness of mod assignment could be a good thing. A mod with no subject matter expertise (real or imagined) would be less likely to be biased by their personal opinion.

I have also been wondering about this. But

admins and mods are selected sortitionally( randomly) from people who apply

That's your point of starvation. The application

I think, instead, everyone on the instance should be a voting member. And the decisions should be taken based on some requirement on the votes

1. person one flags a post -> that's a vote
2. maybe add a header that this post is under review? The voting process should probably be taking some time
3. another person flags the same post -> that's a vote
4. someone else says it should not be flagged -> that's a vote in opposite direction
5. ??? <- can be changed by an instance wide vote too
6. post/comment/user is either moderated or not, depending on votes and logic from the previous vote

In order to boost participation, randomly ask an active account to cast a vote on an ongoing discussion

I think there should be some way for "backend admin" to step in and ban something. But they should only do that for spam/csam/scam/etc. Nothing else, no matter how crazy or rude the take is
(btw, maybe the instance could also normalize asking someone to reword their take if it's rude or can be interpreted badly out of context?)

Yeah idea may sound stupid to some, but is it a question not worth pondering over?

I like it, at least as an experiment. Can't hurt to try.

I think it's a great idea. Why the Athens way with a lottery, though? Is that to address some specific thing, or just because you'd like to see how it goes? Because we kind of moved away from that in modern democracy, and now we do elections instead of a lottery. Likely because of ...reasons.

Time slots etc also good ideas. We already have to factor that in because the userbase lives in vastly different timezones. And it's great if spam etc gets removed in a timely matter and we don't always have to wait until it's 5pm in the States. Some good mod and admin teams already do it.

It's a fun idea and there's similar ideas, but in the end, someone always has to be in the contract of the server provider or host the infrastructure at home and is basically the admin overlord. That person is also liable if illegal stuff shows up.

I would not join. This type of thing is nice a laugh but I don't have the time to do the work. So Im a leech on the hard work of others. I hope those others understand my life situation that has me leeching but I get others have even more challenging situations. Oh wait. Who apply. Not everyone? that is not athenian democracy is it?

Make it! Fork Piefed/lemmy and get it setup. Why not, might be fun.

Still needs an instance owner who is legally responsible for all the content on the entire site - this way the police know who to come for if there is illegal content like CSAM. At that point, better make sure that the admins are trustworthy individuals who have been vetted more extensively than simply having applied.

But sounds a great way to engender a sense of ownership among mods (& perhaps those admins who were vetted).

Btw PieFed also has several features that implement democratization of moderation, lessening the work that a mod traditionally is forced to do on Lemmy since the end-users can do the thing on their own, aided with software. e.g. if someone wants to see less content about Musk or Trump, then keyword filters provide that option (All, Some, or None), rather than a moderator having to decide for all of the community members at once. Or if someone wants to avoid contentious content, they can hide or just collapse (requiring an extra click to read) comments below a certain (user-definable) score threshold. Or NSFW content can be blurred, rather than simply allowed vs. removed; also NSFW is distinguished from NSFL (gore). Also fwiw, moderator reports federate, and someone is actually notified if their content is removed or if they are banned, plus much more - PieFed already allows much more democratic processes than the more authoritarian-styled Lemmy provides for (I believe there is even a deeper description of administrative roles built right in). So you may want to read about that. See also this article.

However it is accomplished, it sounds like a grand experiment!

democracy for the slave owners?