guthmund

Do really think that members are going to 'down-vote' those at the top simply because they aren't 'acting in the spirit of the community?' I imagine they'll act on everything but...

The reason moderation (at least in the context of online forums) works at all, in my opinion, is because there is a level of autonomy a moderator enjoys that separates him/her from the whimsy of the general public. A level of autonomy that just can't be expected if you're under constant evaluation from those that you 'rule.'

If populism is the preferred '-ism,' then measures should be taken to ensure that the means to elect our 'ruling' class favor the notions of true election rather than those employed at American Idol.

All that aside, I just don't see how Phase II would resemble anything other than 'TFP redux.' If the point of the experiment is to create a quasi-anachronistic forum, then it would seem that the fewer rules there are, the closer the forum would be to its ideal.

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Ch'i

The only thing that makes us civilized is the way we chose to use our tools. In class I could pick up a pen and stab someone with it, but I chose not to.

shakran

It won't. You're using the classic definition of anarchy - that being the assumption that people can and will govern themselves properly without help from a formal government. In practice, it simply doesn't work, and we get the more modern defintion of anarchy - that being "a bunch of idiots running around shooting each other." If you set up a forum where users are allowed to ban each other, it's going to degenerate into a situation where the only one (or few) left are the people that got to the ban button first.

Even the user reputation system listed above wouldn't work. Let's say you're in the top 10% and then you delete a post you feel is trolling. 40 of the board's trolls down-rep you in retaliation and suddenly you find yourself unable to delete posts anymore.

The trouble with anarchy, on the net or in real life, is that if you have 100 people in the experiment, and 99 of them are decent people who want it to work, that 1 jackass is all it takes to send the system into chaos without a "government" to keep the jackass from effecting the rest of the population.

sonofagun

These thoughts aren't part of a system - I'm just responding to different things individually, just because one part is instantiated in the final forum doesn't mean that every part must be, there are an almost infinite variety of ways this thing could be set up finally, some will work and some will fail, but the only way to know is to try.

Given a system of accountability, mirror it on real life, in that if enough people support a single person, they will become their 'ruler'. Given the nature of the experiment, I believe that the majority of the forum would NOT want that to happen. If anyone not banned is allowed to mod people up or down and post, only those modded 50%+ are allowed to post new threads, only those 80%+ are allowed to delete/edit posts (to a history, Wikipedia style), the top 10% are allowed to ban, and the first person (only one at a time, people may settle for a representative 'democracy', but it's doubtful they would settle for a monarchy) rated 100% is promoted to über-moderator (ban more than one person in a day, actually delete posts [as opposed to having edits go to a history], and anything else you all can come up with. Perhaps they would have every power that Hal has, except the ability to change Hal's password or modify his priviledges.). I think that people would want to prevent anyone from getting absolute power like that, and so would really put effort into modding people down, and so on. If someone did get that power (even if they didn't abuse it) I think most people would quickly come into action to pull them back down to their own level.

As far as bans go (and edits, deletions, and really any act of public moderation) not only should they be logged, but they should be prominently presented to the community, and a reason should be given for each act of moderation. Some reasons may be simple ("posted illegal material", "racist comments", etc...), but someone going around thrashing people's posts would have several entries, right on the main page, and if all the reasons were the same (or going between a couple things) it would be likely they were abusing their power, and others could mod them down. I think there should only be allowed one ban per day per user - why would any one person have the need to ban five people in a single day? If there happen to be five people causing a lot of trouble on a certain day, there should be several other people around to take care of the rest.

Bans shouldn't be permanent, or by IP address (it's useless - I'm on AOL dialup [I know, it's not my choice, and I can't get any broadband but prohibitively expensive satellite where I live], which uses dynamic IPs, so you ban my IP address and I can sign off and get back on and be right back in the action. Ban a higher-level IP group [172.129.22.*, for example] and you've just banned 128 possible users, which may have had nothing to do with me, since sometimes I sign on and have a different top-level IP [ie... 152.x.x.x] ). A single day ban, by username, should be fine for most cases, if someone is really really causing problems, I suppose Hal could do perma-bans, but at that point we're starting to wander further from the anarchistic principles.

Some things (adding new forums, deleting old forums and such) should start with a request-for-comment, having the entire board (including those modded below priviledge) discuss the change. At the end, have a final poll, and if it is approved (51%+, let's say) Hal would have to implement it, even if it is in his better judgement not to. I don't think he would be against that, considering the ideals of the proposed community. (Granted, I just joined a few days ago, so maybe I've got Hal read totally wrong )

I'm not sure about how to be (relatively) sure that 1-account=1-person, and that permabanned users don't just re-register. Maybe allow them to post a membership request in a special new-members forum (a forum I used to regularly post in did this), and after proving their worth to a member (any member with the 80%+ mod-ability, let's say - in the other forum, it was only those with actual moderator titles) their account could be fully instated. I think this would give some opportunity to the community to recognize writing styles of banned members, try to spot spammers, and even hear out the cases of people who were permabanned.

In my opinion (regardless of dictionary definition), an anarchy is a society which has no formal governing body, no enforced rules (in this case, prevention of the dissemination of illegal content would have to be enforced, it would be one thing if we were all on an uncharted island in the middle of the Pacific, but there are underlying laws in our case, which must be followed), and operates on the will of individuals, as opposed to committees or elected bodies. There may be some elements which would fall under a meritocracy, but what makes it neccessary that meritocracy wouldn't be a part of a true anarchy? There may be a 'governing body' of sorts, but even someone with an approval rating of 1% could have their voice heard, and moderate someone within that 'governing body' right out of it.

Ch'i

Some people will never want to make their own decisions; anarchy means freedom. Freedom to chose the way you want to live. Freedom of expression. Freedom to murder your friend and take his property. Complete freedom. Any type of government creates limitation, some of which are absolutely necissary.

The humanistic approach would defend that people are inherently good, and that it is the environment, and decision making that will change that person. I've seen violence out of spite, and jelousy; people who will not act to change from their ways of immorality. Not because it is truly impossible, but because these people are either oblivious, or too centered on themselves to observe their actions against those around them. People are born inherently good, yes; people are also invariably cruel and incapable of empathy. There are people in this world who strive out of greed, and will always take advantage in order to gain power. In this world anarchy would be chaos, and atrocity.

Griffith

Probably irrelevant at this point, but I once read something that made me stop believing in anarchy.

The only way anarchy works is in small groups with like-minded people. More or less you need a town with frequent town meeting, which everyone attends. If someone isn't doing their share, they're basically guilted into contributing like they're supposed to. It's easy to keep this going after the first generation, because you simply raise children to believe that it's their duty to do...well, their duty, for the good of the group. In the end, you end up with a morally governed socialism situation.

I didn't like the concept, but it made a lot of sense.

As for the relevance to an anarchic forum:

If you kept the forum small, you could do the same thing. Everyone knows eachother, so everyone knows whose responsible for anything that goes down. If someone abused the power to edit or even kick their fellow forum members, everyone else would punish them, perhaps by kicking them, or ignoring them. Eventually, you remove the threat of someone acting out, because they don't want to face the consequences. But if your forum grows to a large scale, you have the possibility of people "slipping between the cracks," so to speak. Someone functions as an unkown, and is therefore able to get away with deviant behavior without reprocussion. (Imagine a lone thief in a city of thousands.)

The only way to ensure the safety of the forum (or any group) is to ensure the quality of its members, make sure you all believe the same things (at least about matters of group functionality), and keep the entire thing exclusive.

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