Remote View

2y ago

Vote

[Vote] Only those with an account on this instance should vote on the Agora.

Those in favor reply "Aye"

Those against reply "Nay"

214 comments

Looks like this decision is decided already but I figured I'd put in my input. Given this instance has an open registration policy, nothing is stopping someone from another instance to create an alternative just for voting on this instance. This individual might align and contribute positively to the fediverse and have really great ideas and contributions to discussions here. However because they use their alt account here on sh.itjust.works only for voting, their vote might get dismissed due to poor account reputation (another issue that I believe was already brought up in another post). The fediverse is meant to be a decentralized community and by forcing people to need to join this community to vote promotes centralization which I believe is the opposite of what the fediverse is trying to accomplish. I guess for now I'll hold off on casting my vote until the community determines what criteria should be considered when counting a vote.
- I think another big thing to consider is that we need to have a discussion thread first before people can cast their vote. A lot of people in this thread have already voted before hearing any arguments other than the OP, which heavily skews the vote in favor of OP. If we have a discussion thread for a few days first and get all the discussion out of the way we can then have a vote after and people can go back and read all the arguments made before voting.
  
  I like this idea a lot. I would have voted aye before reading TheDude's thoughtful (as always) commentary.
- If they're willing to put in the bare minimum of making an account and voting then I think that's okay.
  
  I could see this being a vulnerability though, there are people out there who would want to game democratic systems - particularly for hot-button issues, from real-life politics to defederating Meta.
- Was in the middle of posting the exact same thing when your post came in. Yes, it's open registration. So even if you make it so only local users can vote... anyone anywhere can instantly make an account here and vote. So there is no reason to enforce this. The reputation thing would just mean that people would have to "farm karma" before their alt can vote and then they just leave the alt sitting for votes. Im not sure you should be doing anything that promotes karma farming...
  So if it's easier to set up the vote with it local only. Do that. If it's easier to set up by allowing voting for anywhere. Do that. Just do what takes the least effort because at the end of the day there is no way to prevent outside voting.
  
  Just do what takes the least effort because at the end of the day there is no way to prevent outside voting.
  I voted aye initially but after thinking about it, this makes the most sense.
- On the other hand, quite some people still need to grasp all intricacies of federation: we already have quite a few users over from kbin demanding defederation from a third party instance without realising it would not affect them at all.
  Of course, it will be easy to sign up just for voting, but at least if you choose to do so, you know what you are doing...
- It's an interesting question.
  I think that, in general, it almost shouldn't matter which instance you're a part of. Ideally that choice doesn't affect how you view the fediverse. One of the largest reasons I'm against de-federation for anything but the worst offenders is that I think that we need to move away from centrally controlled social media to a more decentralized means of interacting.
  I think if I had to design it myself I would ensure that there not any governance decisions that should be made on the instance level. Communities should have rules, instances should have rules about what communities they want to host and the communities should work with the people running the instance to ensure that their software needs are taken care of (maybe they need video hosting, or some software integration into a game or whatever).
  Decisions about how to govern communities should be made at the community level and the community leaders should work with the instance administrators to ensure that everything runs correctly. The communities should determine their own means of setting rules. The instance owner is basically just running the hardware, keeping the software updated and ensuring the community moderators have the tools they need.
- requiring an account on this instance is not going to stop everyone, and it doesn't need to. i think this is on par with adding captcha to the account creation. people who are determined to disrupt will still get through, but this minimizes the possibility of low effort trolling.
  i agree that voting shouldn't be tied to account reputation or age. if someone's going to create an account just to vote here then so be it.
- I get what you mean, but if this is the forum for discussing how this instance is run, then I think at the very least, the opinions and views of those with accounts based on this instance should weigh more than those from elsewhere. They have their own instances to take an active role in, and if they find the direct-democracy aspect of sh.itjust.works, they should have their "main" account here. There's been a long-requested feature to allow account instance migration a la Mastodon style, making such a weighting or restriction more equitable.
- The majority won't bother though.

Aye
Of course their input should always be welcomed, but the final decision should be ours.

Aye, but with the caveat that people outside the instance should be allowed/encouraged to make comments if they feel it has value.
- The problem I've got with that (at the moment and hopefully that will be fixed) is that those of us on Jerboa can't see where users come from. Heck even on the website it can be easy to miss...
  
  Have you considered contacting the Jerboa devs to have that ability added?

Nay
People from different instances visit communities on this one and must follow its rules, so they should have a say on them.
\ Moreover, having to create a separate account just to be able to vote here is impractical, but I doubt it will stop those who are in bad faith.

Nay, I thought half the point was that "the instance you join doesn't matter much." I'd generally like more cohesion, not walled communities that you need 5 different accounts for.
Edit: I want to add to this. Nowhere in the community description here does it say it's meant for sh.itjust.works community discussion/voting. I think there's value in a community closed to sh.itjust.works that ONLY discusses sh.itjust.works relevant topics/polls. But this isn't the community for it.
- I'm still an Aye.
  I already have 4 accounts on different instances, which is useful while Beehaw does their defederation thing. Part of this decentralized federation is that each instance gets to make it's own rules on how it operates. Why should members of one instance get to make all the rules for another one?
  If someone wants to make an account and participate in the growth of this particular instance then they're already vested in this community.
  
  This is exactly how I feel. Maybe I need to re-read theDude's OP about the direction of the instance but I thought this was a place to discuss the Administration of this instance, so why would people from other instances get the same say and input? You don't vote for other country's elections...
- I was all for Aye but you do make a good argument. Especially since I was thinking of spinning up my own instance for just me. On the other hand it's not that difficult (at least right now) to just spin up an account here to have a vote.
  I do think it makes sense that the people who call their instance home get to call the shots though.
  For example: Beehaw. Their admins defederated sh.itjust.works because they wanted to. Fair, idk but their choice.
  Edit: looks the Dude has a similar opinion. https://sh.itjust.works/comment/296455
  
  Fair enough, I just sort of think it goes against the concept of federation. I'm also strongly considering spinning up my own instance, and I'd like it if that option didn't include the caveat of "you don't actually get to interact with anything, join those specific communities to interact." That's just a collection of reddit alternatives that sort of talk to each other. Meh.

Aye--in at least some cases. (I am responding to the matter "Only those with an account on this instance should vote on the Agora." I am seeing a bug where if I scroll down then back up, I see the title and body of a different post, so if this goes to the wrong place, mods please move it to the correct place)
I can foresee some issues that might be open to vote by everyone on Lemmy, and those that should be open only to members of this instance. A vote to allow or ban certain types of content (say, porn or gore) should be restricted to the membership of the instance, with owner/admin having authority for absolute bans on grounds of "hosting that content is illegal where this instance is hosted" or similar grounds. Perhaps a vote to remove a moderator might be open to all users on the grounds that members of other instances may be active contributors and have a genuine stake.
So I vote Aye to restrict instance policy votes to members of this instance at least some of the time. I would also vote that anyone from anywhere can share discussion and opinion on any topic even if they may not cast a vote.

Nay.
It's kinda pointless.

Nay. I feel this suggestion is based in the old centralized platform mentality. That isn't to say it is wrong, but it seems based in a premise that does not apply to a federated platform. If you start thinking about how a federated platform actually works, I could join this community...and others on this instance...from an account on another server. Why would we treat someone as second class citizens for using the Fediverse in the way it was intended?
For those thinking "they can just make an account here if they want to vote", you are right. They could. But that also goes back to centralist mentality. We want to be able to interact with people and communities regardless of which instance houses the data object that is my account. From that perspective, I feel voting should be more inclusive than just those who have a user object stored on this instance.
My question back to you would be, what problem are you trying to solve by this limitation? I'm sure there are any number of hurdles we will need to address with open voting, but we have to identify those problems first.
- I don't want people who haven't agreed to follow the same set of rules deciding what the rules are that I must follow.
  It's like how much of the world decided it didn't enjoy colonial rule so much.
  
  Where are people getting the idea that this community is for discussing administration of this instance?

Aye, but people outside the instance should be encouraged to participate in discussions.
Still staying with that opinion, despite the current discussion started by The Dude.
On third thought, reading some of the comments here, maybe a universal answer is wrong here. We should distinguish between instance-only questions (signing up, defederation,...) and community relevant ones (re communities,...?) I keep the vote in case we don't distinguish.

Aye
Don't want to get brigaded, so requiring minimal effort to vote seems appropriate.

Nay (Even though I'm on sh.itjust.works)
There is no point to have a Federated community not allowing federated users
Lemmy is not made to create an account on every instances either, don't create a myriad of accounts on every instances, this defies the point why Federation principle was made, to dispatch the content and the load

Aye
I know I'm too late to really weigh in on this, but this community is still vastly smaller than others and could get overwhelmed by votes that reflect what's best for lemmy.world and not sh.itjust.works. (I know it's an over-used example, but I'm okay with other instances restricting CCP criticism as long as this one allows it)
My understanding of the federated vs centralized argument is that we actually want different servers to be run independently and then bring different things to Lemmy as a whole. If we had the same rules across all of the instances, then we might as well be one big centralized instance again

Nay.
Servers are an implementation detail that shouldn't matter to users in the first place.

Aye, it is better to start with being more restrictive; especially with an influx of new accounts. If in practice it is not achieving the desired goal of hindering bad actors we can try something else. that being said the only way to see the actual benefit is to try. Perhaps try it for a month with a vote at the end to make the rule permanent?

Aye
Edit to acknowledge that I have read The Dude's comment, but given that it is open registration someone who wants a vote can register easily (right now). Vote remains aye, but this alone may not be sufficient re: enfranchisement. It is a necessary, if insufficient, qualifier I agree with.

Aye.
Service guarantees citizenship.
- Ugh. That was satire, not a playbook.
  
  Only the movie was satire, and it was a great movie!

Nay, I agree with TheDude

edit: changed to nay after reading thedude
- I think discussion should be open to anyone, but voting should only be by those who will be bound by the changed rules.
  People with accounts on other instances have their own sets of rules to be concerned with and are not obligated to follow the rules decided on and implemented by this instance.

Nay
We have open registration anyway, so there wouldn't be much friction if an outsider wanted to create an account to vote. We're large enough that we can rely on our numbers, we just need to make sure everyone knows about the Agora.
- After creating an account and agreeing to follow the rules they aren't an outsider anymore.

Edit: changing to nay after reading The Dude's comment.

Nay
But honestly I'm kinda divided, I think people who are part of other instances but post and interact with the communities here should have a say, but I'm afraid of other communities brigading and flooding votes to get an outcome here they want. In general I think people from other instances should be able to vote but there's a lot of nuance here

Aye.
Not sure if that is a feature of Lemmy but it seems pretty simple to script an automod to do mod things to people who post here without being on the instance.

Aye
Edit: Wow how fascinating, someone already went through my profile and downvoted all my comments.

Aye
But allow comments and discussion from other communities.

Aye
~~, Aye Capt'in~~

Aye
I agree with @captain_aggravated

Nay
Like TheDude said, it goes against the very nature of decentralization.

Nay. I agree with thedude's thoughts about this.

"Aye" (but I think anyone can sign up so it's mostly about making someone jump through an automated hoop).

First vote, first big mistake.
This vote should be taken as invalid because arguments must be heared before an informed decision can be made. Valid arguments have been brought in after people had already voted.
[removed wrong user mention]
Edit: and there exist methods of not only doing a polarising yes/no vote but more nuanced ones when there is more than just one option. Systemic consensing is one that i know of.
Edit 2: we should first make sure that we agree on the modus operandi, anyway. For example, also the open "yes/no" reply vote might not be acceptable to everyone (there would have been up/down-voting available,why not use that?)
- This vote should be taken as invalid because arguments must be heared before an informed decision can be made.
  Why? No rules on it, you should make that a discussion/vote topic though.
  @StarNyte@burggit.moe to your consideration.
  I try not to interact using my other accounts (not everyone can see burggit) so if you do ping me, just use the one related to the thing, please and thank you.
  Edit: and there exist methods of not only doing a polarising yes/no vote but more nuanced ones when there is more than just one option. Systemic consensing is one that i know of.
  Edit 2: we should first make sure that we agree on the modus operandi, anyway. For example, also the open “yes/no” reply vote might not be acceptable to everyone (there would have been up/down-voting available,why not use that?)
  You can start your own voting ways on that kinda stuff, I just did this because it's likely what the ancient greeks at Agora would've done. Just shout your answer for all to hear. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voice_vote#Ancient_Greece
  
  Why? No rules on it, you should make that a discussion/vote topic though.
  Common sense. No informed decision can be made if not all information has been brought forward.
  if you do ping me, just use the one related to the thing, please and thank you.
  My bad, i just tapped the first user the system suggested. Sorry for that, and good that it was still your account :-)
  There have been more nuanced arguments made in this thread, this is why i had the idea.
  I don't think that the ancient greeks didn't discuss their stuff before voting.

214 comments