I came from Reddit where they definitely did matter. They don’t seem to hold any real weight here. Is this true for some or all instances? If they don’t matter, what are they for?
I came from Reddit where they definitely did matter. They don’t seem to hold any real weight here. Is this true for some or all instances? If they don’t matter, what are they for?
It’s a democratic way of judging posts. Democracy is good.
Developed further, voting could replace moderators. I’d like to see that happen.
How could it replace moderators developed further?
By providing a way to filter spam, trolls and whatever else you like, without the need for a central authority.
people can already do this via blocking, but no-one regards that as sufficient.
Voting can’t replace mods, because the instance owner is legally responsible for what’s posted to their instance.
They are bound by law to remove illegal content immediately.
Also, mobbing is a form of democracy, too.
See details on that “development” to which I referred, elsewhere in this thread.
Voting could replace mods in some ways, but in others it would be less effective (I know, not all mods are effective).
For instance, combatting spam; more users would have to see the spam and downvote it to have it removed (presumably in this system, a post could be removed when it reaches a certain downvote threshold? Not sure how else it would replace mods).
Additionally, content moderators and admins do actually do at least one other good thing; they look at and remove illegal or seriously upsetting material. Unfortunately, Lemmy has had several issues with csam being posted by presumably bots – good, active content moderators remove this as quickly as possible, protecting more of the users on their instances than a downvote threshold.
Outside of having some sort of threshold, I’m not sure I have a good picture of how downvotes could replace mods? Human oversight is really key to a lot of accurate and effective decision making; I’m sure we’ve all dealt with fully automated systems and know the pain of that.
The Democratic system of forum management to which I refer would work basically like this.
You choose who to speak to. You keep a list. Rating, flagging and tagging other forum members. (as opposed to having it done for you by a moderator)
This list can be something that you personally create. It can also be gotten from a friend or somebody who’s opinion you respect. It could be provided as a service, thus emulating the role of moderator. It could also be dictated to you, in the case of legally forbidden stuff. The list that you use might be the sum of several lists, tweaked over time to suit you.
(One term I’ve heard for this is “a system of silos”. Though I don’t really get the reference.)
It’s an idea that’s going around.
This is just a block list system. You can already do this now.
It’s a bit more than that but ya, it’s pretty simple and tested technology. But of course the magic is in the network.
It would effectively mean that someone new to a widely used community would potentially immediately run into spam, trolling, abuse and child porn and have to manually block a bunch of users before it looks normal.
Oh, that’s an interesting idea. It’s more nuanced than just relying on upvotes, and sort of democratises the role of moderator! I was thinking maybe reporting would come into it somewhere but I see that the idea you’re describing has more depth than I was picturing. I’d be up for using a system like that, I think!
Re this, though:
Is that just admins? Does that decision sort of shift mod responsibility upwards, leaving a good majority of decisions in the hands of the public but ultimately leaving a few powerful people with more global “modding” capability still? Not trying to nitpick or be antagonistic, this sounds like a cool system to use, I’m just trying to understand
However you slice it, if mandates are handed down by the legal authorities, this is the form (black lists, added to local lists, informing filters) it would probably take.
Ah yeah I hadn’t thought about legal authorities. I guess that would entail local police forces monitoring Lemmy and blacklisting and subsequently investigating specific users or bots once they post something illegal, which seems not so feasible sadly. But, definitely up for a more democratised system of modding generally!
How are legal mandates handled in lemmy presently?
No idea honestly mate, but what I meant when I brought up the illegality was really that it’s usually very disturbing content, which mods catch and remove before loads of people have to see it.
If it’s a new account posting that stuff, I don’t know how the system we’re discussing would prevent loads of users having to see it - altho I guess if those blacklists of users were collaborative and the person or team whose list you’ve “subscribed” to catch it, maybe that solves the issue?
Ya, something like that. There would be a government man with an account, keeping an eye out. Updating the gov black list as necessary.
I think it’s good for judging points and whatnot, but there’s definitely some places that could not have mods replaced by votes. I agree when it comes to most communities though. Have a great day! :D
You sound like a serf arguing for the need for kings