/meta/ - Ruthless criticism of all that exists (in leftychan.net)

Hello everyone, now that we've settled in here a bit more, it's time to address the burning questions of constitutional reform! Until now we have been playing it fast and loose, lets say, with the old Bunkerchan rules, but they are clearly no longer apropos.

The key issue we would like to discuss is the internal administrative structure. As of now, we have been attempting to use mostly horizontal democratic organisation (among mods), however this has had some notable lapses and issues, and some would like to use a more 'traditional' hierarchical structure with admins at the top, moderators in the middle, and janitors on the bottom, or just admins and moderators. The advantage of having admins with executive power is primarily to cut through deadlock, which has been a real problem since our migration. That said, perhaps there are other ways to deal with that.

Another proposal is the question of user democracy and more involvement of users without volunteer status in decisionmaking. This is a good idea in theory but in practice it is difficult to agree on how to move forward with it. Should users have direct voting power? If so, how will this be implemented and to what extent? Can the moderators override the users and if so in what circumstances? Should users be vetted (ie through Matrix) in order to ensure that the vote is not totally skewed by sockpuppets? If so doesn't that privilege people who use off-site communication unfairly? As you can see, it is a difficult subject, but interesting nonetheless.

One more issue is over who is and isn't allowed to post on leftypol, ideologically speaking. Mostly everyone can agree that this board should be for 'the left' but what does that mean exactly? Who is included and who is not in that definition? While I'm sure everyone will agree that 'orthodox leftism' should be allowed, there is ambiguity over what that means at the boundaries. Are anprims allowed? Post-colonialists? Anarcho-nihilists? Juche proponents, or Pol-potists? How about social democrats? And so on. To what extent are non-leftists allowed? Do they have the same 'rights' as leftist posters or are they treated harsher?

I have attached the most up to date version of the old constitution, which some of us think should be simply adapted to the new circumstances. On the other hand, some vols have proposed a new constitution altogether which I will attach below. There is also the option of throwing all of these out and working on something else, so please let your opinion be known. Per the vote on this topic internally, some moderators will be posting with their names displayed, and others may choose to post 'anonymously' (ie. still visible as a moderator but with no name attached).

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The Bunkerchan manifesto: attached as PDF.

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The 'new proposal' constitution:

"ARTICLE 1: OUR MISSION

/leftypol/ is a collective of people dedicated to non-sectarian discussion of politics and current events from a politically incorrect left-wing perspective. To facilitate this mission, both technical and moderation staff are needed, in order to create the website, maintain the software, the server, etc., and moderate content by deleting spam.

These staff members are required to have privileged positions above normal users in order to perform their duties. However this also comes with a responsibility to not abuse their powers and act in good faith to push forward the mission of leftypol by:

• Attracting users to the website – continuously growing the userbase while also maintaining a suitable board culture.

• Recruiting staff – adequately recruiting technical and moderation staff to perform functions necessary to the mission at hand. This includes removing staff members who abuse their power or are otherwise harmful to the mission.

• Miscellaneous functions – Carrying out any other tasks related to the mission of /leftypol/ while respecting feedback from the user base.
ARTICLE 2: THE STANDARD POLITICAL PROCESS

Proposals – In order to vote on an idea for a technical or political change to leftypol, it must be first proposed. A proposal must get at least two upvotes from people other than the proposer to proceed to the voting stage.

Voting – All decisions are made by direct vote of the current moderation staff. The voting period will be 72 hours, or, 3 days. Votes pass instantly with 50% of the vote or greater (except where downvotes are equal to votes). Nonvoting is counted as an ‘abstain’. At the end of the voting period those votes with more upvotes than downvotes are considered to have passed, even with a plurality.

Special Voting Categories – Certain types of votes are exempted from normal guidelines. Votes to create a thread to facilitate user feedback on certain issues are exempted from the proposal phase and can be voted on directly. The voting period for feedback threads is 12 hours instead of 72. Optionally, other categories of proposals can be designated as exempted by the modocracy through the standard process.

ARTICLE 3: SPECIAL GOVERNANCE CATEGORIES

Technology Team – also known as the tech team, those responsible for running/maintaining the website and all things technical. The tech team reserves the right to grant themselves special administrative powers on the website in order to perform their technical duties. The tech team also has the right to receive and act on technical feedback directly from the users with regards to bugs and minor feature requests. The leader of the technology team has the right to hire and fire members of the tech team without direct feedback from the modocracy. The leader of the tech team is the member who owns, pays for, and thereby assumes the legal risk of running the web server(s) for the website. The leader(s) of the tech team and corresponding stewardship of tech resources can be transferred via the normal political/voting process. Members of the tech team do not have the right to vote unless they are also moderators. Major technical changes and scheduled downtime are still subject to the standard political process.

Executive Committee – Upon an optional direct vote, for purposes of convenience, the modocracy may choose to appoint a temporary committee of administrators. There must be exactly 3 administrators. During the period of administrative rule, all voting and decision powers are given to the administrators (except hiring/firing staff which still requires a direct vote of the modocracy). Administrators govern by a direct internal vote. Administrators do not have to abide by any waiting periods for voting and also may vote on issues directly, bypassing the proposal phase. Normal moderators continue their duties in spam cleaning. The modocracy defines the start and end date of the period of administrative rule, and chooses which 3 staff members will act as administrator using the normal political process. This period may not exceed 90 days.

ARTICLE 4: CONTENT MODERATION POLICY

Content moderation policy defines clearly what types of content should be deleted, edited, and under what circumstances users should be banned, and for how long. Moderators should only moderate content in accordance with this policy and moderating outside the parameters of this policy should be considered an abuse. A detailed content moderation policy should be created and updated from time to time, taking into account feedback from the users. The moderation policy is created by the modocracy (or administrators).

ARTICLE 5: MODOCRATIC CENTRALISM

Any outreach to the userbase by the staff must first be approved by the normal political process. Outreach includes posting of internal mod drama, or any revealing of information that would have an impact on the optics of leftypol. Violating this policy is grounds for disciplinary action upon direct vote of the modocracy."