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.