I've been intrigued by the apparent dichotomy between a very hierarchical internet from a technology POV, and the democratic ideals of both socialists and liberals. I'm sure we've all experience or been aware of mod/admin abuse on forums, groups, subreddits and all that, even maybe in thematically socialist groups. We've also seen sane-washing (see /r/antiwork, created by literal 'abolish work' anarchists, become a lib-to-soc pipeline at best).

So, I'd like to know more about communities which have tried to allow users, or a subset of users, to democratically hold power over staff. I'm interested on how they went, which have been a success, and what caused others to fail.

  • temptest [any]
    ·
    2 years ago

    I guess the question is what does democracy even mean

    Absolutely, and I'm fine with that being broad and up to interpretation. There are many flavours of things calling themselves 'democracy', each with their benefits and drawbacks, especially in a public international online situation.

    TOTSE

    I never used it. Definitely seems to have been anarchic in terms of lack of restriction, I see the FAQ says:

    TOTSE is run as a absentee dictatorship. Mostly I ignore what's going on and let things run themselves, and I automate as many things as I can. I have a co-administrator named J.C. Stanton who helps resolve problems when I'm not around or not paying attention. [...]

    Which I think is valid as a democracy in terms of content. You could probably post anything and as long as Jeff doesn't get a fed knocking at the door, it would stay up.

    That said, it should be acknowledged a drawback of the model is that it may or may not be democratic in terms of site changes. If Jeff added an abusive staff member, or liked an ugly and unusable site theme, they could add it and ignore all complaints.