Have you had a chance to review the two posts in the sidebar? I'd love to hear your thoughts on where you think there's room for an echo chamber to grow with the current system of governance and how you'd like to combat it.

I believe in the long term we'll need to formalize some kind of governance structure with regards to how moderators are chosen by the communities they moderate and a structure to provide feedback and/or potentially remove problematic individuals, but that seems a long time out and may never actually be necessary (I truly believe that in-person communities can self police much better than existing online communities because of the way they are structured). However, there are limitations of the platform that don't exist for in-person communities (can't exactly mutiny here) and thus we may need to explore appropriate safeguards.

[–] metaltoilet@beehaw.org 4 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I read through both of them a couple months ago. No, I don't see any issue currently but as beehaw grows I fear that issues could arise. It's better to fix those issues before they arise in my opinion (such as the issue of beehaw becoming an echo chamber). My main fear is still that years down the line some mods might get cocky with their power in the way that reddit has. That's why I proposed something like sortition in the discord server. Overall though, this is a beautiful community that is going to sail to far horizons on smooth seas.

[–] Lohrun@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I think that having more than a handful of mods and the users having a way to remove a troublesome mod would be a couple potential solutions. Reddit has that issue with their mods, if you have a mod causing trouble pretty much the only thing you can do is make a new subreddit. (I suppose that is true here too, you can just move to a new instance but that seems like a drastic solution)

[–] metaltoilet@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Exactly. At some point (soon) the whole community may need to have a discussion on how to govern this site.

[–] Lohrun@beehaw.org 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I’ve seen some discussion already starting about that. The general answer I’ve seen is, “if you don’t like the rules or how it is being run, join or create a new instance.” Which like… I understand that is a “benefit” of federated content but that answer to governance leaves a lot to be desired.

[–] metaltoilet@beehaw.org 2 points 1 year ago

Yep. I'd rather stay on a community than improve than jump ship. I'm not saying that beehaw is run poorly currently but I do think as it grows (especially around July 1) we're going to need to start talking about it. I'm sure the admins don't want to make their full time job beehaw so a community moderated way about it is a good idea.

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