Annalee Newitz 🍜What kind of governance system would you like to see more often on Mastodon servers?
benevolent dictatorship
participatory democracy
libertarian anything goes zone
member-owned co-op
Poll ended at .
scott f@annaleen wasn’t sure between options 2 and 4… what do you see as the difference?
@scott I think of democracy as more of a system where people vote on governance, vs. a co-op where people are often financially tied to the organization -- so one is more "pure government" and the other is verging on an economic model.
that weird queer (they/them)
naught101
Elisa Coghlan
Strypey@annaleen
> you can have democracy without being a co-op
Yes.
> and vice versa
No. Democratic decision-making is one of the defining features of a co-op. Although the people with accounts on a server wouldn't necessarily get to take part in decisions if it was worker-owned co-op (eg Loomio) rather than a user-owned co-op.
BöotesVoid@annaleen
Across the board? I'd say in general a co-op or non-profit organisation with clear ways to seek redress while allowing proper regulatory oversight. Helps protect users and the admins/owners. Also means I don't need to be into deep participation.
Smaller instances with more defined goals, a member owned co-op
Across the board? I'd say in general a co-op or non-profit organisation with clear ways to seek redress while allowing proper regulatory oversight. Helps protect users and the admins/owners. Also means I don't need to be into deep participation.
Smaller instances with more defined goals, a member owned co-op
David Stanaway@annaleen a ranked list would be better. Member owned coop takes additional coordination and requires more business management skills. Pragmatic me says benevolent dictatorship is how all servers will start out until they form the community with enough depth to switch over to member owned coop. The other two don’t address distributing the financial responsibility in balance with the risk.
J. Nathan Matias 🦣@annaleen As someone who has studied thousands of online communities, I've seen many structures work well, from small teams to federations w/ thousands of volunteers. Some characteristics I think matter:
- trusted governance based on listening to community needs
- basic commitments to safety, inclusion, and learning over time
- clarity, transparency, & predictability
- maintaining a steady pipeline of leaders & moderators to reduce the chance of burnout
- reciprocity with other communities
@annaleen I sometimes wonder if Americans have inherited technological determinism from the deist founders of the country. Imagining God as a clock-winder who set the universe in motion then disappeared, they tried to create a civic system that would tick along, as planned.
Yet many of the best things about this country have arisen from people engaged in principled struggle to change systems in ways that would have surprised the clockmakers.
@natematias that is a fascinating idea about the blind watchmaker ... it really is the theological version of techno determinism. It's the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Techno-Determinism up in here.
@annaleen I think you may have just developed the beginnings of an excellent panto!
Siderea, Sibylla Bostoniensis> maintaining a steady pipeline of leaders & moderators to reduce the chance of burnout
This. And the thing I felt was missing from the available choices that is important to me is that "pipeline" is not enough: I want distributed moderation.
For whatever its faults, Slashdot's system of moderation + meta-moderation guaranteed that moderation was separated from power, anchored in the users' norms, and abundant.
AFAIK, Mastodon's software does not remotely support anything like this. And Slashdot's system was intimately tied to its "karma" system, which Mastodon has nothing like (and which is anathema to the Mastodon culture.) So doing anything like that in the fediverse is hard and would take some innovation.
tl;dr: I want a server where everyone is a moderator, and participation in moderation is mandatory, like voting is in Australia.
Also: I want to see decision-making authority to use a never-used form of democracy: opt in membership in voting bodies. Have various voting bodies on different parts of the enterprise and let any member in good standing (however define) put themselves into whichever they care about *but not more than N*, where N is a tiny number compared to the number of voting bodies (maybe 1).
The point of doing it this way is that democratic governance is hard work and time consuming. This system allows people to do their governance duty without everyone having to be involved in every issue. It keeps individuals with more free time from getting influence over every issue, thereby forcing others to try to keep up with them to keep them in check.
Crucially, I think Mastodon is a deeply terrible platform on which to actually *conduct* democracy - to hold a town meeting or a legislative session. Ironically, I think the business of running a Mastodon instance would probably need to be accomplished not on Mastodon.
Coprolite9000@annaleen
Hive-mind collective, with members surrendering their biological individuality to the giant fleshy mass - although failing that, 2 or 4 do sound sensible.
Hive-mind collective, with members surrendering their biological individuality to the giant fleshy mass - although failing that, 2 or 4 do sound sensible.
@coprolite9000 oh good that was the option I was worried nobody would mention
Erin Kissane@annaleen Honestly just thinking it all through makes me feel very tired
@kissane we also need the option for a form of governance that amounts to "taking naps and hanging out"
adamrice@annaleen Three of these options are viable (I exclude libertarian anything goes zone), at least temporarily, but they each have characteristic failure modes. I suspect the devil's in the details.
@adamrice and it has to do with community size as well
EyeInHand@annaleen Wait, you made this test too hard.
Why don't you have "All of the above"?
Oh, right . . .
Matthew Martin@annaleen Tripartite (quick executive & slow legislative & something else) because all the good sort of gov't like co-ops can't make a decision without taking a few years to go back and forth about it.
richjensen@annaleen kinda satisfying to have outlived the 'libertarian anything goes' years
@richjensen I wish. It's alive and well here in the Silicon Valley region.
@annaleen feel that... just interesting indicator of *something* in the poll... maybe your follower cohort has been inoculated?
@annaleen If so.. CONGRATS! 🌈 💥 🦇
@richjensen Yeah I do think that in the wake of the cryptocurrency and Twitter debacles people are feeling a bit churlish about libertarians
@annaleen some moths got their wings singed 🔥
Dan Curtis Johnson@annaleen Which one does "absentee landlord" fall into...?
Mark 
@annaleen my server is a bit of 1,2 and 3. We’re fully funded by a pattern and I have them vote on any important decisions. I do all the boring stuff so others don’t have to. I serve at the pleasure of my users.
David Waltner-Toews@annaleen Having for decades designed questionnaires for epidemiological studies, I find that categorical/ ordered etc questions are created purely for ease of analysis and are more reflective of the prior biases of the questioner than they are of the subject being studied.
@dwaltnertoews Good thing this isn't an epidemiological study I guess
@annaleen Maybe it's just that my own opinions tend to be constantly shifting over a non normally distributed spectrum.
𝕂ℕ𝔽 𝕀𝕆𝕆 ☎️@annaleen member owned doesn’t appeal to me. I don’t like the term dictatorship but I chose that one bc people are free to leave.
Phil@neuralgraffiti @annaleen SFBA is owned by @seb and his cohort. I think they are alright and we give them enough to get by.
@annaleen One interesting outcome of the federated model, is we will likely have all of the above. But they will self sort according to what people actually want.
Realistically, because the real work of managing an instance will fall to a small group of dedicated people running it, they will effectively take the form of both benevolent dictator + member owned coop, with few members but lots of users who sometimes donate.
My guess is the most long lasting will be the most benevolent ones.
OpenAI CEO Adam Rakunas@annaleen HOA, but filled with indifferent slackers.
Cyberspice@annaleen member owned coop always results in tyranny of the masses. As Churchill said democracy is the worst of all governments except all the others we have tried. Benevolent dictatorships usually protect minorities better, but the trick is finding a benevolent dictator.
AnAffordableWizard@cyberspice @annaleen there are alternatives to voting democracies however. I'm a big fan of consensus based cooperatives. It's a little more work and occasionally leads to frayed tempers but the end tends to be highly democratic whilst protecting the interested of minorities as they can't be monstered out. Having a solid founding principles of unity is necessary to start with as well as having management for day to day stuff that has enough autonomy to get shit done
@shayneoneill @annaleen “Having a solid founding principles of unity” and that’s where it all falls over for some. If you don’t agree with some of the principles you are locked out from the start. Experience over my life has shown me I’m better off looking after myself (and others where I can) than being looked after in a group. I’ve had to be self sufficient so many times. Co-ops only work if you are all running the same software. Non neuro typicals often have a rough time!
@cyberspice @annaleen That is the beauty of the spokes and wheels model of free associating consensuss collectives and federations. If you cant find one that fits your brainspace, start your own. Even a collective of one, if its what sparks with your vibe.
Ellie@annaleen Super lightweight solo servers are kinda like all of these at once.
Simonoid@annaleen benevolent overlords are fine for smaller instances.
Texas Gender Reveal Massacre
Francesco Orsenigo (he/him)@annaleen We as a culture, as a society, need to re-learn to deal with each other as peers.
If Mastodon became one more learning ground for this, it would be awesome! =)
Zack Brown@annaleen I was sad Liquid Democracy was not an option!