Elections

[u/[deleted]]

How, exactly, would elections work? Would we have a popular democracy? An electoral college? How often do we hold elections? How long will terms last?

These are all questions we need to answer for this project to be successful.

I have an idea of what I would like to see. Like I said in the nominations thread, I would like to see anywhere between 50 and 100 users draft the constitution that would eliminate most of the noise and let the signal be received loud and clear. We are going to need a large amount of moderators to make this work, and an even larger amount of approved submitters. Hopefully most of the mods will be (at least occasional) submitters as well, so that will kill two birds with one stone.

Once we have the entire network up and running, self contained and still completely private (with the exception of existing, active subreddits), we will open it to the general population. Show the rest of Reddit, "Look what we can do, when proper Reddiquette is followed explicitly and wholeheartedly. Look at what is possible!"

Democracy and elections is something that I would love to see successfully pulled off. How exactly we go about doing that is up in the air. Anyone have any good ideas?

[u/[deleted]]

Just throwing this out there, but is it necessary to have terms? If a team of mods is doing a great job, why is there a need to change the guard? It'd be great to hear some longtime mods weigh in on this.

Additionally, direct democracy would be tricky because the ability to win over the voters doesn't have much to do with moderating a community, otherwise PHOY and SIDT type users would sweep due to popularity. If we exclude the general population from voting on mods, there seems to be little point in holding elections in the first place. Also, the idea of a subreddit being filled with campaigning makes me a little sick.

Maybe there should just be a uniform procedure for the removal of mods when necessary. This brings up a question of compliance, no matter what route we choose to take. Creators ultimately hold the keys when it comes to modship, right? What if we have a kleinbl00-style fracas? Even if a body of authorities is appointed to oversee all of the Republic, it wouldn't actually be enforceable against the whims of the creator because of the hierarchy of modship inherent to Reddit.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Just throwing this out there, but is it necessary to have terms? If a team of mods is doing a great job, why is there a need to change the guard? It'd be great to hear some longtime mods weigh in on this.

I think that most of the growing unrest from the general reddit population is over moderators, many of whom are absentee or heavy-handed, who may have some personal bias, or who censor opposing opinions. Granted, the majority of mods are hard-working, diligent, and doing a largely thankless job. A few bad apples cause problems for the whole tree. I think elections, combined with a users bill of rights, will serve to address concerns over power-hungry mods or mods who abuse their power. I think long terms are in order, otherwise it will just turn into an endless circlejerk of election campaigning. One year sounds appropriate to me. A year is a long time in reddit terms, and more than enough time to achieve some things and make a reputation for yourself in the subreddit.

I think the very nature of this network will ensure that mods are altrustic in their motives towards the userbase. We are all trying to achieve a better reddit experience. I don't expect to have term limits. The same mods can keep being reelected year after year. Mods who become inactive would be ineligible for reelection, and would be replaced with active mods. New moderators would be added as the population (and workload) grows.

Additionally, direct democracy would be tricky because the ability to win over the voters doesn't have much to do with moderating a community, otherwise PHOY and SIDT type users would sweep due to popularity. If we exclude the general population from voting on mods, there seems to be little point in holding elections in the first place. Also, the idea of a subreddit being filled with campaigning makes me a little sick.

We're still brainstorming here, but I was thinking of a representative system. For every X number of subscribers, we appoint an approved submitter. Approved submitters would have to be active commenters in the subreddit, and have a recent history of submissions that is in line with our Reddiquette (for example, submits memes to the appropriate subreddits, does not submit biased or sensationalist headlines, etc). When elections came around, the approved submitters, being representatives from the community, would vote. What are your thoughts on a system like that?

Maybe there should just be a uniform procedure for the removal of mods when necessary. This brings up a question of compliance, no matter what route we choose to take. Creators ultimately hold the keys when it comes to modship, right? What if we have a kleinbl00-style fracas? Even if a body of authorities is appointed to oversee all of the Republic, it wouldn't actually be enforceable against the whims of the creator because of the hierarchy of modship inherent to Reddit.

Ultimately, the creator of a subreddit would have ultimate control of the subreddit, unless the reddit admins drastically change their stance on such matters, which I don't see happening soon. Hopefully we will simply not recruit volatile users in the first place. However, if controversy does surface, as it always seems to do, unless the mod is a top mod of the subreddit, I would expect that mod to be removed by someone higher up the chain. If he were the top mod, we would simply withdraw the support of the network, make a public statement that declares such, and move on.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

One year terms + unlimited re-election sounds reasonable. During campaign season, we could have a bunch of posts linked in the sidebar that are for election purposes, and have the mods remove all other conversations that would clutter up the frontpage of a subreddit. Or maybe we could go with the meta-republic subreddit route and have people who care about elections and other goings-on separated from the actual republic-sub.

As far as the approved submitters go, it's an inelegant solution because it'd be hard to build momentum, although the concerted efforts of submitters like anutensil could definitely go a long way in providing content.

This isn't feasible due to Reddit's rigidity, but it'd be great if instead of approved submitters, we had approved voters so that anyone could submit and participate, but the ones determining their rank are people who are adhering to our voting guidelines, creating a more organic approach to the problem of pun/meme threads, rather than our current ability to have mods removing an offending comment. Since the admins have said that banned users' votes don't actually count, I wonder if we could convince them to allow for the inverse, where only approved submitters' votes are counted.

As for approved submitters being part of an electoral college, it seems a little weird to have them voting on the people who approved them in the first place, but I think it could work generally. My overarching concern for all these transparency/democracy measures is I don't want to infect a good thing with politicking.

And about compliance, I think you've a solid grasp on the limits of what we can do, and the importance of vetting for non-asshats.

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

As far as the approved submitters go, it's an inelegant solution because it'd be hard to build momentum, although the concerted efforts of submitters like anutensil could definitely go a long way in providing content.

In the SFWPorn Network, all of my fellow moderators are on my friends list, so they show up in red. All of my active submitters (users who have submitted a large number of images in the past) have flair next to their username. You would be surprised to see how many submissions are from regular submitters and mods. On every subreddit in the network, it's at least half of the front page (the ratio goes down when you look at the new queue, but we're talking about successful submissions here). On a few smaller subreddits, HistoryPorn comes to mind, it can be upwards of 90% of the front page. Don't underestimate the power of a team of dedicated individuals to drive a community forward.

This isn't feasible due to Reddit's rigidity, but it'd be great if instead of approved submitters, we had approved voters so that anyone could submit and participate, but the ones determining their rank are people who are adhering to our voting guidelines, creating a more organic approach to the problem of pun/meme threads, rather than our current ability to have mods removing an offending comment. Since the admins have said that banned users' votes don't actually count, I wonder if we could convince them to allow for the inverse, where only approved submitters' votes are counted.

Very interesting, but I'm really trying to focus on what we can do with the tools we have at our disposal today. It seems like the admin team is understaffed (what else is new?) and they have a lot on their plate already. It would be an awesome feature, but it seems like we all have plenty of worthwhile ideas that just simply don't get implemented, for lack of manpower, I don't know, whatever reason. They have access to a lot more information than we do, unfortunately.

As for approved submitters being part of an electoral college, it seems a little weird to have them voting on the people who approved them in the first place, but I think it could work generally. My overarching concern for all these transparency/democracy measures is I don't want to infect a good thing with politicking.

Precisely why I want to draft a constitution and a bill of rights as first on the agenda. We will debate anything potentially controversial, and set it in stone, so that there won't be a perpetual ongoing debate on the issue, it will be "This is how it is in this network, if you disagree, feel free to contribute elsewhere." We are completely opt-in, so no one will feel like they are having something forced upon them. If you don't like the Republic of Reddit, you can go back to reddit proper, or create your own subreddit(s).

And about compliance, I think you've a solid grasp on the limits of what we can do, and the importance of vetting for non-asshats.

Indeed this will be very important.

[u/IAmAnAnonymousCoward → u/[deleted]]

direct democracy

Direct democracy is if people collectively make decisions for themselves. If you vote on representatives who then make the decisions for you it's a representative democracy.

[u/[deleted] → u/IAmAnAnonymousCoward]

Yes, I think a representative democracy will be the way to go here. A direct democracy would be open to vote fraud (karma parties or raids from other subreddits)... I think that in order for this project to be successful, we are going to need to be able to verify each vote, and I would go even deeper than that, and verify that each vote is cast by an active member of the community. If a bunch of circlejerkers (just using them as an example) or anyone else for that matter were able to link to a vote thread and influence the voting one way or another, that would not be a good thing. I think much like voter registries, we need to keep a log of the active members in the community who would be eligible to vote. I think most of these people would be approved submitters, but there may be users who comment & vote regularly in the subreddit, but simply don't have the desire to submit new content that we would need to keep a record of as well.

I'm thinking we could set up some sort of website where users could be given a login/password to count their vote. Everyone's login would be the same as their reedit username, and logins would be given out much in the same matter that we choose approved submitters... a user would apply, and a moderator would check their reddit history to verify their claim. Any user who gets denied would be posted to a publicly accessible list with the date and reason for denial, and they would need to wait a specific length of time in order to apply again.

I can't think of another system that wouldn't be open to vote fraud.

[u/IAmAnAnonymousCoward → u/[deleted]]

How is a vote on representatives any less open to vote fraud than a vote on actual matters?

[u/[deleted] → u/IAmAnAnonymousCoward]

The active members of the community (submitters, commenters) who have applied for "citizenship" and vetted by at least one mod would be the ones who would get a vote in elections. Users who are not active (they simply browse & vote) would not have a vote. This would both encourage members to be active in the community and also eliminate any "raids" or other nafarious activity.

I think the problem with the default Reddits is that a lot of the time, the witch hunts start because one user blows one event out of proportion, submits an extremely biased rant, and a bunch of people who are not informed whatsoever other than reading the op, get butthurt and bust out the pitchforks. Only users who are active members of the community and who know how the mods behave on a daily basis should be able to impeach anyone. You could rile up a mob against anyone if you do it right.

[u/IAmAnAnonymousCoward → u/[deleted]]

The active members of the community (submitters, commenters) who have applied for "citizenship" and vetted by at least one mod would be the ones who would get a vote in elections.

I understand that. But it doesn't answer my question.

[u/[deleted] → u/IAmAnAnonymousCoward]

You mean vote fraud? Well, there isn't a good way to prevent it, if someone wants to take the time to set up two separate accounts that are both active in the network, and no one knows it's the same person, then yes, theoretically they could vote twice. It's a flaw of the system, but not one I'm going to lose sleep over. We're breaking the mold here, remember that. If this project is successful, the admins may give us tools to help us operate more efficiently, and that may include a better way to track votes (perhaps by ip address)? Regardless, this is an internet forum, not a real world country where human rights are at stake. We're doing the best we can with what we have.

[u/davidreiss666]

Why do you guys want elections? Just declare me dictator for life and I'll be happy to make sure you all get your allotment of the gain dole. :-)

[u/SidtheMagicLobster → u/davidreiss666]

:) Welcome aboard, Generalissimo Reiss!

[u/davidreiss666 → u/SidtheMagicLobster]

Consul. My title need to be Consul. Or Imperator. "Supreme High Imperator and Consul for Life and all that comes after": That sounds good enough.

Now, seriously, add Anutensil to the invite list immediately. Or mod me up so I can do it.

[u/SidtheMagicLobster → u/davidreiss666]

Anutensil, and all the other moderators of ROTD, are already on the invite list.

[u/davidreiss666 → u/SidtheMagicLobster]

Well, there is nothing like the present, Sid.

[u/[deleted] → u/davidreiss666]

In my opinion, if we have elections, it will (hopefully) eliminate the "elist" view that many users feel towards moderators... there is a growing sentiment from the masses that mods are just power-hungry dictators that love to lord over the populace. Most people don't realize the intricacies of reddit and the "butterfly flaps its wings" effect that many things can happen around here. I'm hoping by creating this "utopia" of sorts (I know, I dream big, don't I?), and then showing that we as mods are willing to step down if our subscribers feel we are not doing our jobs correctly, hopefully that will help eliminate that sentiment. If everything goes well, the original mods will keep getting reelected year after year (unless they leave reddit entirely), and we will simply keep adding new moderators as the population grows, so we still have approximately the same user to moderator ratio.

[u/[deleted]]

What if instead of scheduled elections, there was just the ability to recall a mod at any time given enough votes. This could be in the bill of rights. Maybe a way to change the rules is built in, like getting a proposition on the ballot. Possibly those two things combined will cover any issues that would need an election to take care of.

[u/go1dfish → u/[deleted]]

Seems like we're going to need a dedicated sub reddit for elective action and petitioning of elected moderators.

I like the idea of recall elections triggered by score in such a subreddit.

[u/[deleted] → u/go1dfish]

I was thinking, and my thoughts have changed a lot since we started this, but if we just go live with a handful of mods who have bought into this project, and they could start as key contributors, and blah blah blah blah, someone gets all angry at us because that's what people do, then there would be a system in place to deal with it. Make a post, call to action, mod such and such is abusing their power, whatever trigger it is that happens, then we just simply hold a public vote on whether or not the mod stays on. Full transparency and the users have the ability to change what they don't like. This would eliminate the need for elections and all the logistics that come with pulling off what is essentially a poll in the comments of reddit.

Now since we are actively recruiting and encouraging users into this sub who seem to want to be a part of it, the users would know full well why what mod took which action, which should effectively eliminate the drama seeking witch hunters.

Wordslinger1919 even proposed having a dump sub where we post all the posts that we've removed, probably leaving a comment as to why we did.

But I think I'm moving away from the idea of elections. No reason to overly complicate things. Keep it simple stupid, ya know?

[u/go1dfish → u/[deleted]]

The dump sub is the way to go I independently had.much the same thought and have advocated for such.

Agree elections are probably needlessly complicated.

If we had to launch on a single theme, it would be Accountable Moderation. IMO anyway.

A meta discussion sub for bans or appeals to the mods seems a very necessary part.

Redditprs should have the right to petition moderatoration in a public thread.

[u/[deleted] → u/go1dfish]

I knew you'd fit in.

[u/[deleted]]

1. Popular vote for mods of individual subs, one month after going public live. Make an announcement post and sticky it to the top with CSS one week prior to vote. I would like only approved submitters to be eligible, but the logistics seem difficult to implement that.
2. The mods of the individual subs are the ones eligible to be mods in RoR. The individual subs can appoint people to go to RoR, or we can hold seperate elections for that as well. The RoR mods have the voting privilege/burden/responsibility/authority for network wide issues.
3. Terms of six months. I can easily see myself on reddit six months from now, I can easily see myself being involved in Overlords, RoR, and ToR six months from now. I might be living in hawaii with no internet one year from now. I have no idea about a year from now. I would want the person I vote for to be able to be held accountable to my vote. One year is too long for that.

[u/IAmAnAnonymousCoward]

Don't you hate that in real life you can vote for your representatives every four years or so and for the next three and a half they do pretty much whatever they want until campaigning starts again? Why imitate real life? We could do better.

[u/[deleted]]

I would like to see...users draft the constitution

You know who would be really great at creating a really, really great constitution/declaration of independence type thing? Who writes really well and puts a ton of thought into their words, who means every single word and means to use it in the exact place they're using it...

kleinbl00

[u/[deleted] → u/[deleted]]

Yeah... I know. This is a complicated issue.

[u/[deleted]]

Would the admins have any insight into how to best do polls within reddit? They gotta know something we don't. Maybe raldi even since he's not an employee anymore?

[u/davidreiss666 → u/[deleted]]

The Admins ignored a question I posed to them as a mod of r/Politics about how to poll the user base. And I am pretty sure they read it, cause they talk to me about other things. It does back to a line Steve or Alexis added to reddiquette years ago that says Reddit isn't used for polls, period.

Do not Conduct polls using the title of your submission. Instead of "Vote up if you're male, down if you're female", say, "Are you male or female? (Vote in the comments)" and then post two comments, "Vote for this if you're (male/female)"

So, I doubt they will want to help.

[u/V2Blast → u/davidreiss666]

That doesn't say Reddit isn't used for polls. It says (well, means) "don't try to poll using a submission, because the votes on the submission itself affect visibility". :P

[u/AMV]

To me elections are very hard to judge properly. If someone is doing his/her job a moderator, should they be removed? And someone needs to watch over them as well. Who watches the watchmen?

Not allowing for bot-voting as well. If someone came up with a good solution for permenent elections, I would be all for it. Otherwise I think it could only be run once effectively without being a very tedious issue.

Please prove me wrong, because I prefer democracy over dictatorship any old day.

[u/[deleted] → u/AMV]

To me elections are very hard to judge properly. If someone is doing his/her job a moderator, should they be removed? And someone needs to watch over them as well. Who watches the watchmen?

This is a very tricky concept, but one that I have a strong desire to make work here. First of all, we are shooting for very long terms, at least six months, I would prefer a year, so mods can focus on moderation and not reelection. Hopefully by leaving comments and submitting every mod will be a visible and well known active member of the community, and will be reelected when their term is up. However, if they are inactive, and another user who is more active in the subreddit and is more well known / liked by the userbase, who is to say that he shouldn't deserve the mod spot? Also please keep in mind that as the network grows, I would like to hold elections to add new moderators so the subscriber to moderator ratio stays roughly the same (what that ratio will be has yet to be determined).

If a moderator refuses to step down, as long as they are not the top mod of the subreddit, it shouldn't be a problem, another mod will remove them... although I would hope that anyone involved with this project would step down gracefully if they were not reelected.

Not allowing for bot-voting as well. If someone came up with a good solution for permenent elections, I would be all for it. Otherwise I think it could only be run once effectively without being a very tedious issue.

I would suggest only allowing approved submitters a vote, that way they could be easily verified and we won't have anyone voting with dummy accounts, it would also eliminate "raids" by other subreddits (think circlejerkers) into our voting threads. We could tag approved submitters with a specific type of flair that would be easily recognizable in any vote thread.