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These Seeds For Fairness And Justice On SaidIt Need Your Help

/u/TheAmeliaMay in a private message titled "How can I do better?" a single sentence said:

" I don't want to admin like Magnora anymore; I hate being the judge, jury, and executioner. "

This brought tears to my eyes, even now. I asked if I could copypasta that to start off my proposed solution here, for the community at large to openly and democratically develop these seed ideas further into a growing, evolving, improving system for more fairness.

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I will likely update this post tomorrow with a clear head and bright eyes.
For your listening pleasure, music that I wrote this to, on repeat: Just Us.

 

We Need Your Feedback And Ideas On How To Improve And Grow Fairness On SaidIt

This is just a starting point. Maybe others have completely different better ideas. Perhaps this one just needs adjustments. Share your thoughts.

Step One

Before we create a sub for this fairness and justice project, a simple seed of an idea, we need a good and solid name for it. Branding matters. I'm anti-authoritarian. I don't like the establishment, nor wish to directly or indirectly acknowledge them, etc. Yet it needs to be clear and representative too, so nothing too abstract.

While not particularly catchy I believe /s/SaidItSquare would suffice for this community panel, town square, or however we wish to describe it. It's better than /s/SaidItCourt, /s/SaidItTrials, /s/SaidItJudgements, /s/SaidItColosseum, /s/SaidItDeathMatch, /s/SaidItGloryHole, etc. Maybe "town square" is not the best term though. Besides hanging outlaws, town squares were also nice places for political discourse, farmers markets, band stands, art in the park, grass lunches, bake sales, lemonade stands, etc.

Express your sub name preferences in the comments. (Anyone who preemptively creates it may waste their weekly sub since admins may reclaim it. If you lust glory and power, know that 100% of all mod and power-mod activity is open and transparent.)

Unless a miraculous consensus is organically achieved, we may need to have votes to narrow in on the preferred sub title to create. (IMO, this all subs should be created, much like this. Similar, but different for reasons. More on this in future posts.)

Step Two

Sideboxes are too small and limited for all of this so I'd make # large title links there to the Purpose of this sub, the Guidelines, and Rules - all laid out in /s/SaidItSquare/wiki.

What is the purpose? What are the guidelines? What are the rules?

These will be developed and evolve over time, democratically, by our community. IMO, the wiki pages should be edited by top tier users.

Anyone may propose ideas for improvement. Good ideas will be elevated and promoted. Ultimately the monarch /u/magnora7 will have ultimate veto power, and hopefully his benevolence will explain why if he were to negate any good ideas promoted to the top.

Purpose

First, it should be known and promoted that /s/SaidItCleanup already exists to deal with spam and problematic bots. Thankfully, SaidIt heroes deal with that daily. (I admit that I've rarely used /s/SaidItCleanup, if ever, though I do report content often enough, yet I must also confess I don't even moderate my own subs. (It would be nice if report also had a /u/ReportBot that would repost a permalink to /s/ReportBotCleanup that was not in /s/All, but I digress.)) (For technical and other SaidIt Related Subs see the list at the bottom of this post.)

The purpose of /s/SaidItSquare is to openly present and resolve behavioral problems, unjust actions, mod abuses, and cases for banishment. (ie. not technical).

There are countless topical and specific SaidIt Related Subs (below) to focus everything into - except community drama - until now. This will not be a perfect containment field, but hopefully it could centralize the problems for better management and control. (As an anti-authoritarian and advocate for decentralizing all things, this delicious irony is not lost on me.)

Being the sole judge, jury, and executioner may be the heaviest weight lifted from our SaidIt admin(s) to be redistributed onto the community at large and/or a delegated team. Free of much of this mess, /u/magnora7 would be free to do other things, including help manage and foster community, security, coding, decentralization, research, and inspire folks with wisdom.

Take a load off M7.

Details

This post has grown long in details. Everyone is obviously free to continue reading, but I suspect many Saiditors won't be interested in much past here, perhaps few, maybe most. I hope for more than fewer eyes with opinions and feedback.

Delegated Team

Who decides? Who watches the watchers? We the community? Discuss among yourselves.

A single person is a monopoly, only a few would be a triumverate, a tribal handful is a gang, but if it were 25 rational, non-partisan, respected people with diverse origins and interests they could balance each other out. Further, with the top balanced minds openly keeping check on each other along with the community at large, I would hope that most controversies could be mostly clearly resolved fairly.

Example ideas of who gets on the "ultimate-decider delegated team":

1) I've invited a couple dozen folks to co-mod my former subs. I think they're top tier.

(Yesterday, I started unmodding myself from 20+ subs and during that process I interrupted myself to make an explanatory post which lead to this post you're reading.)

They've earned my respect and trust and many I consider good virtual friends, limited as circumstances may be. I would recommend them to be top tier - obviously still under M7.

2) M7 could pick his own top tier.

3) The SaidIt community could vote to select the top tier.

M7 would approve and/or adjust the selections as he sees fit on his site. For example, he may chose to always have equal left-right representation.

4) Maybe you have some good ideas to offer in the comments.

This top tier need not be 25 people. There's no reason there need be a single supreme court other than centralization of power. There's no reason there can't be more than 9 judges. Moreover, in my experience at Burning Man, you always ask for twice the number of volunteers you need because it's like herding cats. For important jobs you ask for 3 or more times. Not only can people be flaky, but often life gets in the way. This year tyranny has gotten in the way of many of us. We need our resistance to be flexible and resilient in good times and in bad.

At any time, M7 can be approached by the community at large and/or top tier team members to deal with problematic top tier individuals, openly (my preference for "public figures") or in private messages (not my preference), on the chance they aren't a good fit or cease being good representation for SaidIt fairness.

A conspiracy theorist could suggest that this hierarchy is the beginning of corruption and that M7 could be bought for top tier access, but I'd argue that this site could have done so eons ago. (Plus, in posts to come I'll explain the rest of my ideas on the hierarchy in regards to next-gen forums above and beyond SaidIt.) Some things are worth more than bribes and worth fighting for.

Top Tier Roles

I must express that I'm not a fan of "Top Tier" as a label. I can't think of another term right now for several reasons, including importantly, this "Top Tier" level is tied into some deeper ideas and projects that I'll soon share more on.

The purpose of the top tier is to lift the burden of admins being sole judge, jury, and executioner. Admins may seek more or less involvement with these decisions. IMO, the admin has already chosen wisely, and should expect to receive trustworthy "Judgement Reports" with the deliberation completed and verdict ready, either resolved and requiring no action or a report to look over for a simple banishment. Exceptions and/or vetoes may occur on occasion but ideally they'd be rare.

Top tier users gain no special access nor privileges (like admins). They have earned respect only. They do NOT have access to the banish buttons. Their only power in this sub is wielded via their words, testimony, and verdicts.

How this top tier chooses to organize and evolve itself and how it conducts business has yet to be determined. They could choose to act with a majority 51+%, or 66%, by a 100% consensus only, or by some other means of deciding. They could choose to have a critical number of votes become the deciding factor. They could have different measures for different issues. I leave the details up to the community and/or the team to determine.

I strongly recommend that they adopt the following:

1) As a policy, all significant discussions on /s/SaidItSquare matters must be held in the open. Not in private messages.

This includes developing policies, presentations, guides, rules, reports, records, wikis, etc - as well as on issues, disputes, trials, cases, judgements, bannings, injustices, censorships, abuses, suggestions, complaints, etc.

Good, bad, and ugly. Especially the ugly. Dirty laundry must be aired to get the stink out.

Zero coverups or worries about being sensitive should be tolerated. These top tier folks should be very capable of being diplomatic, neutral, and civilized while facing hard truths.

2) All disciplinary cases should be reasonably documented.

Always draft a summary report. A dedicated sub and/or wiki might be useful to file these in. Clarity and brevity are key.

A history of reference examples would be built up.

Should external forces chose to bring "trouble" to SaidIt it may serve us better to have our history and shit in order, well documented. This will make it more obvious if tyranny were to try to illegitimately claim SaidIt is to dangerous and unruly, or whatever.

Perhaps in the future, this history may reveal patterns and solutions to problematic external forces.

3) If there were 25 (or another number) of the top tier team, it would NOT make sense for ALL of them to be assessing (judging) each and every case.

It would be easy enough to randomize jury members and/or rotate them through an assignment list.

Obviously a jury of 12 is a thing, but IMO I'd settle for 7 or even 5 as a minimum. Perhaps the team would decide make "important" cases more important demanding the attention of more team members.

Keep in mind these are open-courts where anyone, even non-assigned top tier members can weigh in at any time.

4) Aim to be evidence based employing citations and quotes. If someone deletes their posts or comments, they may not necessarily be as guilty at it might at first appear. Keep an open mind and hear all sides.

5) The top tier team must be clear and firm regarding scheduling.

Let people build and prepare their cases.

If a deadline is necessary make that clear.

Negotiate, take time, be humane and flexible as necessary but don't be a sucker.

All of our time is valuable.

6) Always be deescalating.

Put out fires. Never provoke. Watch each other and each other's backs. Seek solutions not ultimatums.

7) I know there's likely more, but I'm getting tired. Maybe you have better ideas than so many policies, guides, rules, and paperwork.

Drama

This sub will undoubtedly feature a lot of drama.

This sub will undoubtedly feature a lot of calls of injustice, calls for justice, calls for censorship, and calls for banishment.

This sub will undoubtedly feature a lot of instigators and drama queens. Better to resolve it here in one place than have them making noise elsewhere. Make sure the shit disturbers know the guidelines and rules and don't be afraid to be firm. Some people are eternally childish. That doesn't mean they need to be offensive. See also: Rule #6

Guidelines

Guidelines are not hard rules, but should be followed to maintain a modicum of organization and order.

I'll start with my own examples of guidelines that I believe would be good, unless anyone has objections, improvements, better ideas, additions, etc. Please comment below to propose improvements and/or ideas for new guidelines.

Because there may be a lot of traffic, drama, confusion, and chaos, IMO it makes sense to minimize excessive noise and drill down to the core essence within the post titles at the very least.

1) Start all post titles with "SaidItSquare:" to clearly indicate the content, thus uninterested users may easily skip past.

2) All post titles must clearly and briefly indicate the purpose of that post. Example post titles:

• SaidItSquare: Issue: People are misbehaving in /s/StupidSub.
• SaidItSquare: Dispute: /u/Donald vs /u/Joe needs resolving.
• SaidItSquare: Trial: /u/PottyMouth could be banned for a list of reasons.
• SaidItSquare: Judgement: /u/PedoGuy was banned by consensus.
• SaidItSquare: Injustice: /u/diogenesjunior was banned without a fair trial.
• SaidItSquare: Censorship: /u/BlastFemur was unfairly censored.
• SaidItSquare: Censorship: /s/NAMBLA is rightfully censored.
• SaidItSquare: Censorship: /s/HolocaustSkepticism is censored to protect SaidIt from targeting.
• SaidItSquare: Mod Abuse: /u/PowerMod needs schooling.
• SaidItSquare: Suggestion: We need clear rules and guidelines with examples.
• SaidItSquare: Complaint: Too much drama.
• SaidItSquare: CSS: Please tweak the banner.

3) Unclear and ambiguous post titles and/or posts without purpose will need to be redone.

4) I'd prefer not to think of this sub as essentially a courtroom, yet that's what it is. All of this might seem excessive, however, ideally most of the extremist behaviour and big emotions should be directed into this critical sub to be resolved. IMO, it's more important here than anywhere else to maintain calm, clarity, decorum, decency, compassion, and respect. These guides and rules should help.

As many of these cases would be referencing and citing links and permalinks within SaidIt, I might expect some guides might be useful for folks to try to follow. For example, in this post I've tried to be clear and concise, and have employed headers and numbers for quick and easy reference. Think of these cases as being more formal than normal SaidIt, often with more at stake. A strong presentation makes a better impression.

More guidelines and tips could be developed by the SaidIt community along with the top tier team in a wiki to illustrate how people should plead their case, defense, problem, etc. and how they should aggregate and present their information.

More guidelines could be developed for sub, post, and comment etiquette and behavior in general to avoid needing a sub like this.

Rules

1) Rules must be followed.

2) Rules must have some consistency.

3) Rules must have consequences when broken.

4) Rules must be minimal.

5) Respect is only earned. Don't demand it.

6) The Pyramid Of Debate will be strictly enforced.

• Advocating Violence is never tolerated, and results in banishment.
• Name-Calling will get warnings before banishment. This includes all pejoratives and slurs.
• Ad Hominems and Tone Responses will be called out to discredit arguments.

7) Keep the posts to an absolute minimum.

• Each case should ideally have a single post with many comments, followed by a summary resolution post.
• Each case's companion summary resolution post will include a clear link to the original case, and vice versa.
• If action is required the summary will contain that order for an admin to carry out.

8) Replace this stand-in "rule" with a policy (to be developed) regarding never letting more than one user edit the wiki at any moment (data will be lost).

Please comment below to propose improvements and/or ideas for new rules - or reasons why to remove any.

Hierarchy / Info Filtration / Five Hive

"Top tier" connotes hierarchy and/or filtration systems, yet to be proposed and developed further. More on this in future posts.

I don't want to leave you hanging too much. So I'll briefly summarize part of my hierarchy system that could cover our entire community of peers.

IMO, as much as I despise classism, the current system with the almost minimal hierarchy need a little more structure. I salute /u/magnora7 for keeping it completely horizontal, aside from himself.

Because I've also been imagining what a next-gen forum would entail (for democratic, GUI, and functionality purposes) I've come to firmly believe there's a practical minimal structure that could be embraced.

To be clear, all tiers have the same free speech, equal rights, and privileges (except admins). The only difference is the minor distinction of a label. In a next-gen forum these labels may be earned and colour coded as indicators and qualifiers of the variety of users. How people are advanced or regressed depends upon how our community wishes to judge and implement the rankings.

Not only do I firmly believe that 5 is the best and maximum number of tiers to keep the organization more horizontal, it works out for many other aspects (yet to be shared).

• Tier 1 = Dear Site Leader & Admins (benevolent ultimate power)
• Tier 2 = Trusted Advisors (non-partisan neutral "top tier")
• Tier 3 = Active Citizens (communities of tribalists)
• Tier 4 = The Fray (unproven and anonymous)
• Tier 5 = The Unruly (banished because they do not play well with others)

Revised:

Level	Privilege	Title	Description
Tier 1	extra	Site Admins	benevolent power to execute the will of the people
Tier 2	user	Peace Rangers	non-partisan neutral trusted advisors who decide together
Tier 3	user	The Citizenry	active contributors, limited and/or tribalists
Tier 4	user	The Fray	new and rare contributors, unproven, unknown, anons, and/or asstrolls
Tier 5	none	The Unruly	banished as they do not play well with others

These 5 tiers could be slightly different by making the Dear Site Leader Tier 0, making admins with special access privileges Tier 1, and keeping the Advisors and others equal in all other respects besides regard and respect.

Keep in mind that next-gen forums should be decentralized and each hosted instance would have their own "Dear Site Leader", just as /u/magnora7 is king of the SaidIt castle.

History & Feedback

I've presented these democratic ideas before, in this very sub at least a few times if not many more, though not in this much detail because there was never interest from M7. That said, I'm glad that M7 has at least finally reached out for assistance from /u/TheAmeliaMay who in turn has reached out to me, so I'm also eager and happy to help. As wonderful as this may potentially be, two important questions need to be raised. 1) Will /u/magnora7 adopt these ideas too? And more importantly, 2) Is /u/magnora7 and others safe and secure now, during this frozen-Texas crisis.

 

The resistance evolution starts now on SaidIt.net.

 

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SaidIt Related Subs

/s/AdminCensorship
/s/AskSaidIt
/s/Banned
/s/DiscoverSaidit
/s/IdeasForSaidIt
/s/ISaidIt
/s/NewSaidits
/s/newSubreddit
/s/SaidIt
/s/SaiditAlternatives
/s/SaidItBots
/s/SaiditCanary
/s/saiditcensorship
/s/saiditCleanup
/s/SaiditCSSthemes
/s/SaidItFundraising
/s/SaiditLanguagePacks
/s/saiditrequest
/s/SaidItSurveys
/s/slideforsaidit

SaidIt Referenced

FAQ & Wikis : https://SaidIt.net/wiki
https://AlternativeTo.net/software/saidit-net
https://Reddit.com/r/saiditnet
https://InfoGalactic.com/info/SaidIt

SaidIt Admin

Source code: https://GitHub.com/libertysoft3/saidit
Donate crypto: https://SaidIt.net/s/SaidIt/comments/jf/cryptocurrency_support_for_saiditnet
Donate Patreon: https://Patreon.com/SaidIt

SaidIt Projects

Many projects coming soon
Much feedback wanted
Many positions available
Prepare to do something
Watch this space

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