Notices by ⚗️⚗️⚗️ pnathan ⚗️⚗️⚗️ (pnathan@mastodon.social), page 12

. @aral

This service will probably be faster, more reliable, and have admins who won't be stressed for money.

It will, in fact, be more effective in everything except the hard anti fascism that characterizes the Mastodonites. Because of the paid nature of the admins, they will show up to all the community meetings, giving them a substantial edge over the tired volunteers.

So let's have a better suggestion: big instances should pay admins and mods. Governance, not the kindness of 1 geek.

@nicolai interesting. My German is not up to C1/C2 levels, so I tend to not read academic sources.

Reason I post it is because a ton of American leftists insist that the NSDAP has no relation to socialism whatsoever. Which is.... annoying and ahistorical.

The American right polemicists insist that Communism=NSDAP, also ahistorical etc. Just trying to spread some knowledge here.

I'll dig through that keyword.

cirque du soleil is doing a show called "Volta" this fall in the King County region.

I think it's time to take my lady on a date. :)

@dredmorbius

it's all about the process and trust in that process. outcomes can vary, if most people trust the process, they can comfortably abide by the outcome. the essence of democratic consent.

@will

@aRandomCat what do you want?

that would determine your goodness of fit.

@dredmorbius

To a first order of approx., I don't have a strong opinion here, only that there *should* be a solution, along with a public & transparent process & procedure for defining it, then, down the road and changing it.

This is founded on my claim that we are in a different category from signing up to a forum to ask a question; social media like Mastodon is engaged in civic society and the Public Arena - and should hold that in governance.

@will

@will

I'm going to sack out shortly. Here's a challenge for you - and me - why do you think decentralization is good? How would you address abuse when the number of instance oiperators is too large to effectively communicate?

@dredmorbius

@will

I try to think about the decade view. What happens when we all move on to other things, does the social institution we built hold steady? What happens when some nasty sons of guns show up and try to do a hostile takeover. what happens when you try to fry an admins sanity through constant vileness? what happens when children sign up... and chomos?

occasionally I'm wrong or misread things. :) I try to get better.

@dredmorbius

@will

You make good points.

Zoomed out a bit, I see the fediverse as an evolving experiment.

when Gargron wants to move on, we'll see how it goes

I do think that there will always be a pareto clumping tendency - network effects produce that to an intense degree. Too, proper sysops is a pain in the butt, so it's a disincentive to run your own server, and account migration is a pain, so you want to have a server that will be stable, etc.

@dredmorbius

@dredmorbius

In any case, I am a big proponent of taking a very professional and diligent approach to this situation, understanding that when you have tens, hundreds of thousands of human beings on your server, depending on your system to talk to hundreds of others, you really are acting as a kind of de facto government, not as the owner of a local bar where you can toss people that smell funny out.

We're not in tech any more, we are in the humanities...

@dennis_reichel @Gargron @woozle

@dredmorbius

For actual instance moderation, I would absolutely be looking at "infraction/misdemeanor/felony" type classifications, with varying punishment and discretion levels. E.g., for judging a felony, a single admin can't just toss someone off the server unilaterally. That could be part of such an agreement.

Part of what we are dealing with is weaponized "me and my personal army" situations. The system has to tolerate that attack.

@dennis_reichel @Gargron @woozle

@dredmorbius

I'm not particularly keen on consensus systems, getting a bunch of independent cats to agree that much sounds like a nice footgun to effective work. Certainly they are popular in left activist spaces, but it requires some facilitation to work.

An effective group decision system needs to accept sharp disagreements, but allow for adequate compromise to move forward.

So much for inter-instance work.

@dennis_reichel @Gargron @woozle

@dredmorbius

So the time worn book of committee work in the USA is Roberts Rules of Order. This is sufficient to handle vicious politics with almost intractable differences of opinion, but is, in turn, abusable by rules munchkins, and is stupid complex.

There are consensus systems which are designed to replace RRO; last time I looked through them, the preferred approach was consensus with up to 2 dissenters. More than 2 dissenters stopped the proposal.

@dennis_reichel @Gargron @woozle

@dredmorbius

Another, more abstract example: I would strongly suggest the Fediverse - or the mastodon crew - or the crew interested in good governance - dig through the well worn rules for voluntary organizations and work from there rather than figure out "how to resolve disagreement and toss misbehaving people/entities" from first principles.

it's always messy, and there are always bugs in these systems. But... let's not judge by arbitrary daily hates.

@dennis_reichel @Gargron

@dredmorbius

If you want to have a fair hearing on issues, you join the USF. The USF agrees that "felonies" and appropriate remedies will be handled as a matter of public record. Felonies can vary, but inter-server relations get defined.

Mishbehavior gets your server tossed out of the treaty organization.

in an approximate sense, politics in the sense of individual actors coming to agreement in the face of conflict is a solved problem: it's done all the time.

@dennis_reichel @Gargron