One more poll for good measure, probably more coming, Forum Structure?

[Cyan]

Ive been pondering about our forum structure and the fact we have admins, would it be preferrential for us to have a democractic forum where we vote together on forum policy instead of actively using administrators, do administrators not seem a bit on the forming of the elite category and such. Would it be possible or even beneficial to switch over to a democratic vote on proceedings?

[speedforce131]

To even ask is a manipulation of others for your own gain. So that you can gain more power as a regular user. It is not your forum and you are not moderator or Admin. You are using STS concepts presenting as STO.

[Seeking One]

Trolls are a real thing online. A bright light casts a big shadow. There must be rules in place to protect the light. If someone wants to change the rules of THIS forum they should prove to the current "light holders" that they are in similar sevice (to others).

[ada]

The mods are a part of the family that is L/L Research. They're not just people in power, lol. It's their home and we are guests.  
You will actually be surprised how tolerating/compassionate they are considering the forum rules.

[Jade]

The problem with this potential structure, which I'm not necessarily opposed to and have thought about, is that 95% of my active job as an admin is deleting spam accounts and double posts. If the forums will be fully democratic, then everyone gets the same "privileges" I have. Which means anyone can delete a thread, anyone can ban another member, anyone could basically wreak havoc on the forums and delete everything that was ever posted. I wish I could say this space, or any space, was evolved enough to handle that kind of power, but let's face it, there will always be people who seek power to abuse it. I'm afraid at the moment the best compromise is to give the power of deletion to a small group.

Anything more nuanced would require a whole new forum code, and as far as I know, I've yet to see anyone code a consensus moderated social media platform. If something like this becomes available and viable, I will be all for supporting it.

We try to be democratic and we always accept feedback. We aren't trying to be overlords who curate this forum for our personal elite agenda, hardly. I think the whole time I've been a moderator we've banned one person from posting? (This number is extremely lenient, IMO) And the amount of posts removed overall is quite minuscule. If you have a problem with moderation in general, you can PM one of us moderators, send an email to Gary, or even just post here publicly. Constructive feedback is always welcome.

We're not monsters. We're not here to control anyone. It's not like Austin, plenum, or I get off on this tiny little modicum of power we have over an internet forum that gets like 40 posts a day. It's not like there's a lot of glamour or gratitude in what we do. We're here to try to keep the community functioning as a service, obviously. The post that was removed of EvolvingPhoenix's was the first post in quite a while that has even been brought up for discussion. If you prefer forums with even less moderation, there are spiritual communities on websites like 4chan and reddit.

To me, I try to keep in mind that these forums were originally Carla's idea, many years ago when this discussion format was still fresh. She wanted to have a spiritual community where wanderers could go to support each other. The first iteration of the forums was scoured from the internet because trolls took it over and Carla got extremely discouraged. It's my opinion that there are still things being posted today that would discourage her from wanting to continue to hold this space. However, she isn't here to make that decision, so the best thing I can do is try to do my best to keep my understanding of her vision alive.  

[David_1]

I’m thankful for the service of the moderators!

[Cyan]

Anything more nuanced would require a whole new forum code, and as far as I know, I've yet to see anyone code a consensus moderated social media platform. If something like this becomes available and viable, I will be all for supporting it.

We could try to build one ourselves but the work would probably be great, its good to hear the admins would be in favor of one should it be proven to work.

[AnthroHeart]

Anything more nuanced would require a whole new forum code, and as far as I know, I've yet to see anyone code a consensus moderated social media platform. If something like this becomes available and viable, I will be all for supporting it.

We could try to build one ourselves but the work would probably be great, its good to hear the admins would be in favor of one should it be proven to work.

Protecting against SQL injection attacks and URL manipulation and other hacker things is difficult. The forum software has to account for all of that.

[Cyan]

There would be an immense amount of work and just taking into account DDOS would be a massive undertaking.

[Jade]

Anything more nuanced would require a whole new forum code, and as far as I know, I've yet to see anyone code a consensus moderated social media platform. If something like this becomes available and viable, I will be all for supporting it.

We could try to build one ourselves but the work would probably be great, its good to hear the admins would be in favor of one should it be proven to work.

Let me clarify something here. When I make a post, I am rarely speaking "for the admins". I'm speaking for myself. You should wait to hear from Austin and plenum's mouths themselves if they would support something. I am just a poster on this forum, which I have been now for 6 years, and when someone overtly breaks our very simple rules, we discuss it as a group in an email and come to a consensus if we need to take action. We aren't an elite group with an agenda. I'm speaking as a singular participant of these forums, not as the group mind for the overseers.

[Diana]

We could try to build one ourselves but the work would probably be great, its good to hear the admins would be in favor of one should it be proven to work.

Why not just accept B4 as it is? If you want to build a forum, you can build your own—others have done it (like Pickle alias Browneye).

[Minyatur]

We could try to build one ourselves but the work would probably be great, its good to hear the admins would be in favor of one should it be proven to work.

Why not just accept B4 as it is? If you want to build a forum, you can build your own—others have done it (like Pickle alias Browneye).

GeminiWolf also made one.

[AnthroHeart]

We could try to build one ourselves but the work would probably be great, its good to hear the admins would be in favor of one should it be proven to work.

Why not just accept B4 as it is? If you want to build a forum, you can build your own—others have done it (like Pickle alias Browneye).

GeminiWolf also made one.

I had to take it down because spammers took over the email server on it. Plus I had no other members.