In light of recent events which have really been blown way out of proportion, I would like to suggest a system to help us reach democratic decisions for these kinds of things, since for me at least, one of the most highlighted issues out of this was the fact that users were completely in the dark about the problems until they were simply notified about the decisions taken to solve them.

My idea is to initially have a normal post where the problem is described in detail and the admin/mod team can possibly suggest a course of action a priori, and discussion is then made where the users express their opinions on the stated problem and course of action if there is one, along with their suggested solutions.

Then the post gets locked and it enters a voting stage, where a group of actions can be voted upon, preferably with Yes/No answers, and a deadline for this stage to end.

Then the results can be viewed by everyone, and the admin/mod team can decide how to move forward.

I realize that this complicates administration, but I hope that implementing such a system will help make this easier to do compared with trying to reach a consensus by discussion alone.

Obviously this should mainly affect meaningful changes to the site, we don't need to make a whole voting process in order to rename a couple of emojis.

  • buckykat [none/use name]
    ·
    2 months ago

    We've done things very like this before, regarding federation/defederation, with dean-frown and dean-smile

    • iByteABit [comrade/them]
      hexagon
      ·
      2 months ago

      True, but I think an embedded voting system would make things more smooth, much easier to count, and having the voting as a seperate step to discussion gives the opportunity for new options to be created by user input

    • goose [he/him]
      ·
      2 months ago

      It got awkward when the votes went one way and the decision went the other way