I picked 5 as I believed the power should be spread out a bit more given the current userbase, I think 3 would be too concentrated
If I'm understanding this correctly, that's what this would be for. Everyone is focusing on the "suggesting people for bans" portion, but I think that will be more for people like Tudd who technically don't break rules, but everyone knows they are trolling. I think the main duty of this council will be to monitor discussion and habits in polidicks and see if and how any adjustments to existing rules or new rules need to be created to help steer discussion and posting in the right direction.
The issue as such mainly rests on levelheadedness imo. I do agree that people with unpopular opinions need to also have their say, but there's a line in the sand that has to be drawn somewhere where that's concerned as well. The opinions themselves can't be about shit like killing the other people because that's what you want, or wanting all the refugees out because they're mexicans or some other dumb shit like that. And especially they cant be on the tier of the guy who once suggested the US-Mexico border be mined to hell and back because "a few blasted corpses would make effective deterrents against illegal border crossings." In a forum like polidicks you ought to be expected to be held to somewhat better standards when it comes to debating and discussion.
I personally know what it's like to have been on the wrong side of the mob a fair few times on the forums myself, so I agree with you on that front, but the thing is, it's not easy for people to accept opinions that run contrary to their beliefs without a fair bit of soul searching, unless they happen to be open to the idea to start with. Ideally you should take everything on its own merits at face value, no matter who posted something and what they posted in the past. Discuss the points the poster brings up, not the poster themselves.
Pretty interesting direction to take this.
I can only wonder though, why? Polidicks is fairly well moderated already, if not by mods but by users themselves and as much as things get heated, people are usually fairly courteous, when they step out of line and start insulting people they typically get banned already.
At the same time, it does sound like a good bit of fun. Do Russian shills get a seat?
User Resonant is a very obvious russian shill trying to push fal..
eh i like the idea, i get your point and i'm wary of how it could give the subforum even more of a circlejerk reputation than it already has. but i'd like to see how this turns out
Can you not just give us a Polidicks moderator who will enforce the rules closely?
Why not both?
I'm all for it. Potential pitfalls aside it seems like it will be an interesting to see how it works out.
I'm down for it, if anything it will add a little extra something to an unfortunately ever quieting section.
A shifting political council could cause a lot of drama. It'll just oscillate harder and harder until it all flies apart.
Someone purging toxic people before they become a massive blight on Polidicks will keep things running smoothly.
I think adding something 'extra' to the community is a plus side in general. Depending on how much power the council has to morph the culture of Polidicks in terms of rules and posting etiquette, it presents a good chance for the community to feel more involved in the development of this forum. We may or may not even get a little slice of Oldpunch from this system.
The practice of having a group of users more closely tied to mods, more closely tied to the community team in general, may help some prevent some user feedback from being ignored. Polidicks is a particularly contentious part of the forum, and one of the more popular, so user input is appreciated there more than anywhere else tbh.
Hezzy consider the Diamond I rated you a bribe if you make me Supreme Polidicks Chairman for life of the Facepunch people's democratic republic
Could be a laugh. Big question is whether the elections will use FPTP though
Also is this just for PD and no jurisdiction over SH? I still consider those two kind of linked and there is crossover there
the problem is though the drama will show up whether there's a council of users in charge or not, or if we have mods in charge there or not. There's always going to be some few people offering backseat criticisms about "how i could have done this better" even if the decisions themselves were necessary at the time. Even being given this position as a polidicks counsellor would make its own issues because everyone has an idea about who would be the best. But that's partly solved because everyone serves 2 month terms and no longer.
Purging people should be considered very carefully, you can't throw them out just because of bad opinions, they have to also cause trouble enough and their behavior has to be bad enough to justify that. The important thing here is weighing the difference between somebody with bad opinions who just believes in them and an actual troll who just wants to see the other side burn for whatever reason.
One of the reasons behind this idea is that I don't believe it should be up to Moderators to decide who is toxic, who isn't. I believe the community should self regulate and one of the main duties of the council will be to identify such people, discuss them using an evidence based approach, then refer it to the moderator to take action.
Even if it's a fucking disaster it'll have been a learning experience and probably a bit of fun at the same time.
I was thinking this myself, the line is blurred between the two forums pretty often, I don't see an issue with rolling them both together. Even if the primary focus is on PD.
Prob is peeps run out of patience and waste time discussing stuff people who have no intention of honest debate. The next best thing is to ignore the troll peeps but it's been demonstrated (by the epoch of tudd) to just erode people's faith in the rules and all round lower the standards of communication as people get more and more angry.
As you say tho it's an ideal and probs an ideal we should strive toward.
Just for PD at the moment but I could increase the scope if there's demand for it.
Trump is already campaigning for 2020 so I will too
Ah well that makes much more sense then.
How will the nomination system work, if we're hammering out basics? You mentioned in the other thread that there won't be term limits due to a small userbase, but will there be opportunities to re-elect members if needed? If so, I wonder how this election process will actually be carried out. Voting on discord? On the forums? Will it be ultimately up to mod discretion? And are there plans to prevent this from being a popularity contest?
If we're eventually going to nominate some users for the long term, this would have to be a very involved selection process.
So this is just to long term moderate stinkers that are shooting to get a rise out of people 90% of the time?
That's my biggest issue with it. What's to stop it from becoming a popularity contest?
afaik there's no way to prevent any kind of democratic election from becoming a popularity contest
It's certainly going to be a popularity contest, but with an edge that there will be 5 with mixed views so, it will be fun to see people nominating people they actually disagree with and have argued with already to the council in the name of diversity.
Vote for me.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/5/5b/JudgeDeathIrving.jpg/250px-JudgeDeathIrving.jpg
For there will be no flame wars, if everyone is banned...
I think internally it's referred to as the "We need to talk about Tudd" project. That way you can ban people who are toxic/trolling/trying to actively harm the community. If you outright ban someone alt-right like Tudd for a gradual buildup of posts which indicate a trend towards provocation without a single egregious post which violates the rules explicitly, then it looks like an arbitrary left-biased team of mods anointed by Garry the God punishing conservative voices.
With a semi-self-regulating community of democratically elected users who have the apolitical interests of the community at heart, then it isn't an issue of punishing conservative voices as much as it's punishing the dickhead using that voice by popular demand.
I would argue that the word of former members would count for something once the first terms are done, depending on how they agree among themselves with each user. Arguably, they would have to discuss possible pools of replacements with the mods and among themselves before they leave office, allowing enough time for the new people to be picked before the old ones leave.
Yeah, guess you're right on that one. It's just a shame, because I'd actually like to throw my hat into the ring with this. I like to think I could act as a pretty decent 'middle ground' member, plus it just sounds like a fun time.
But I'm more of a lurker in polidicks than anything else, and it's not like I'm super known on facepunch to begin with.
imo unlikely.
The potential loss from having a council which disagrees with you is far greater than the potential gain you'd get from having a diverse council - especially if it's close.
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