>>8760Anons of leftypol, this is my statement on the activities of the board moderation power change:
About three days ago now, yet another large mod argument had broken out. The details of this specific fight are immaterial, sufficed to say there was yet another large scale disagreement and deadlock among the moderators.
This comes after years of turbulent moderating, beginning with OldBO Che
scum purges, surrounding the Rojava debacle. Since this crime against the anons of leftypol, which was one of over moderation, the specific content in which leftypol rose to prominence has been corroded, corrupted, and has become close to death. Namely, a left wing board that wasn't plagued by uptight redditoid moderation, which drives away users and stultifies discussion
I won't bore you with the details of each and every drama. The most recent major drama, as i am sure you were aware, was the split of bunkerchan to leftypol. At this time, it was my suggestion that enough is enough, mod drama, which came from mods and only mods, not the anons, had endangered the board too many times. Because of this, I suggested a union of posters be created, with their own matrix room, in order to 1) preserve the community should the board be nuked or otherwise disrupted 2) as a platform where discussion of the board could be had, without mods being able to censor and curate that discussion and 3) given this discussion, where anons to organise themselves to make demands of the mods.
Suffice to say, the mods repeatedly crushed this attempt. They will lie outright, and claim they did not, but the fact is they deleted threads about the subject, forced me to reword threads, made me spend hours in matrix chat arguing for these threads, accepting them, then deleting them anyway. While the threads were live, mods would sit in them all day nay saying. Despite this, the union room currently has a similar number of people in to the janitors own congress.
Now, because of this, and in light of this most recent drama, the need for this union has become even more apparent. It is clear that in order to counter the power of the mods, the users must have their own vessel to make decisions. On top of that, this must be protected by the mod team itself.
Because of this, yesterday or last night I wrote out this proposal, which was in the other mod drama thread which many of you will have seen:
"Okay, so basically this is the gestalt official proposal, I was going to write a document with all the ins and outs of my reasoning, for that, you can go back through this chat and read what I have to say. Essentially, my belief is this: 1) there is somewhat of a consensus among mods and regular attendees to mod related discussions that some form of board democratisation is favourable 2) there are numerous different beliefs on what that should be or what it will look like 3) there is fairly wide consensus that the system of moderation decision making currently in place is not fit for purpose. 4) there is also a fairly wide consensus that, although democratisation is favourable to basically all, most recognise to a great or lesser degree real issues, among these, how can we prevent the subversion of such a system. 4) this leaves us in a position that, we must widen the scope of the decision making process on the board, I.e, democratise it, add more voices to the pool of those eligible to vote, while also making sure that pool does not become subverted with bad faith actors.
My proposal therefore aims precisely to target these concerns, in order to complete the above objective of democratisation to some degree.
While the ideal situation would be in my opinion direct democracy, there are very real threats to this, and very real problems with its implementation. Therefore, I suggest measures in order to smooth over implementation issues in a gradual, increasingly democratic fashion.
Thus, in practical terms, I would like the mods to vote on these 3 separate but cohesive proposals 1) that a union of posters be allowed to created by the posters, this union will act as the mechanism by which posters can discuss issues with the board. It will be owned by the posters, so that it’s independence from the moderation team can be assured. Initially, this union would be a place of discussion, and the will of the board discerned by the individuals who made up the voting body of the union. These individuals would be, those collections of posters who are currently engaged in the board moderation and have been long term. Gradually, more and more people would be added to the voting pool long term, it would be the specific job of these individuals to oversee this expansion. 2) in order to solidify this, myself and soy noticer (the initial inspectorate) be inducted in the mod chat, which would give us voting rights but no mod powers. This way, through the above mentioned Union, gradually more posters, judged good faith by said inspectorate, based on their participation in union discussion, could be added to the inspectorate voting pool and therefore the democratic process of the board. 3) I suggest that this action, if voted for by a majority of the mod team, would represent a binding mandate to enter into a gradual, good faith, long term process of board democratisation as described above.
*This might be sloppy I meant to write this from a laptop but needs must. I have thought through things like the constitution of the union etc"
this proposal would have been the ideal situation for me. I would have liked a vote by the mods, however, i went to sleep and as things transpired, the executive decision was made by Watermelon etc, to simply force the issue. It isn't how I would have done it, but I am ultimately fine with this happening. Particularly given the adverse reaction of certain mods, who refuse to see reason the area of user participation.
All of this being said, it is now the case that more or less the entirety of this proposal has been carried out, there is a new matrix room, admined by myself and user soy noticer, we now have votes on mod issues, although we are not mods. We also have mandate to gradually build this room, adding more anons who will recieve voting powers. These voting powers will given to users who engage long term and in good faith in discussions relating to board moderation. Note, this will have nothing to do with what they actually say, rather it will only be based on the manner in which they say it, and after they have demonstrating more than a passing interest. As described above, this is in order to be off putting to wreckers and infiltrators, and, once built, should create a higher quality democratic culture. There will be another room, where any users can come to discuss the board, it is from this room that anons will be selected for the voting process. As well as this, we will gradually add more of those anons as admins to the user voting pool, but this again will be a gradual process once trust has been established.
You may see this as some kind of power grab and indeed the mods will no doubt be in this thread telling you that is the case, I say to you that it is my and soy noticers full intention only to bring great user input to the board, whatever that may be. I would urge anybody who wants to get involved in the discussion of the board, in order that they may be gradually brought into the voting pool.
At no point in time ever in the boards history has the poster been given an opportunity to have a real say in board goings on, it is that which we mean to deliver. I am open to any and all questions, butt hurt wrecker jannies please refrain from your incessant nay saying and bitching.