RIP Voting for important forum changes

[dkbit98]

Can you imagine a better way for  making important decisions in bitcointalk forum?

Voting is something that is missing in current centralized moderation system in forum and we can slowly try to add this and not always depend on others and complain about decisions.

For example if we have a case of controversial ban/unban why not ask the community to VOTE and have their say about it?

Voting can be done by poll option, or with more complex blockchain solution.

If we support decentralization then I don't see why we should not support some kind of voting in bitcointalk forum.

[Pmalek]

There are several reasons for and against relying on votes before making a decision.

Although Bitcoin is decentralized, this forum is centralized and is controlled by theymos and a group of admins and people he trusts. They interpret the rules how they see fit.
The thoughts of the majority doesn't mean that they are right. They can be very wrong, biased, unfair, etc..

Nevertheless, the opinions of the community should be respected and taken into consideration when making certain decisions. It is the community that makes the forum the way it is, not one person. Keep the people happy or they will just find their happiness elsewhere.

Because of that, I vote on voting for important forum changes.  

[Little Mouse]

A ban/unban poll can be easily manipulated as people have a lot of alts here and to win poll people may even create another business around it. And the forum is owned by theymos, he has all the right to govern it as he wants. So, I think current system is good enough.
Are you talking about any certain case? I haven't seen any such issue with ban/unban recently.

[Csmiami]

The idea itself is not bad, but there are a couple of issues with that.

The forum is a private space, with some rules that are applied to all users, with no exception. Everyone must follow forum rules, or else they get the boot. If we were to start voting on every ban/unban than happens, what criteria would voting users follow? Their own personal experience with said users? That doesn't seem imparcial at all.

Apart from that; how would you keep trolls or disposable accounts created by the person that got banned with the sole porpuse of voting to unban them away? You could have some kind of requirements, but would once again be something that excludes a certain sector of forum users.

And if those were not reason enough, the drama wars would get more bullets. I've been away from the forum for some months, and I still don't know how things are at the moment, but if we take the past as a precedent, we can get an idea of what will most likely happen. User A from a "gang" will vote something, so someone from a "rival gang" will vote against it, so then more users from As' gang will vote.... It's a neverending tale.

Summing up... The current system, altough improvable, is quite good. You either follow the rules or don't join, and theymos is our absolute ruler. If someone considers that a ban is not reasonable, they can always create a ban appeal thread, and the discussion coming from there will be the closest to a "voting" we have, altough the last word comes from a mod or admin. End of story

[LoyceV]

Voting has been tried, and was ignored by Admin.

[Pmalek]

Are you talking about any certain case? I haven't seen any such issue with ban/unban recently.

I am sure that OP is talking about ReguluHr. A member of our local forum who was banned at the beginning of 2019. His unban appeal is here > https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5097792.0
Despite the majority of forum members voting to unban him and showing support in the thread, he was never unbanned. All the Croatian community wanted was to get a reply from theymos or another mod, but that never happened. It's almost 2 years now.

[marlboroza]

With all those alt accounts around forum, what could possible go wrong 

Voting has been tried, and was ignored by Admin.

Yep, I believe theymos is more interested into opinions and ideas than voting itself.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

Voting can be done by poll option, or with more complex blockchain solution.

I'm not sure what kind of complex blockchain solution you had in mind, but it sounds like something that not a lot of people would participate in, especially if the issue being voted on (like a ban appeal) doesn't directly affect them.  And polls are useless on this forum; Anyone with 100 alt accounts can cast 100 votes.

If we support decentralization then I don't see why we should not support some kind of voting in bitcointalk forum.

I don't support decentralization across the board on all things, but that's just me.  Imagine having to vote on every idea that gets proposed for bitcointalk, or every controversial ban, or you name it.  People would get sick of that very quickly. 

The fact is that decentralization is what makes bitcoin great.  Bitcointalk, on the other hand, would end up being even more of a mess than it already is if a voting mechanism were implemented--and I think Theymos realizes this, which is why he hasn't made any changes headed in that direction.

[dkbit98]

Voting has been tried, and was ignored by Admin.

Sure.
Admins tend to ignore a lot of things  

The forum is a private space

No it's not.
Forum is a Public open space.

Voting would be just that - Vote from community and not mandatory change. Moderators and big boss would still have a final say like always.
But maybe you prefer to have no voice, and I can respect that.

Are you talking about any certain case? I haven't seen any such issue with ban/unban recently.

I am sure that OP is talking about ReguluHr. A member of our local forum who was banned at the beginning of 2019. His unban appeal is here > https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5097792.0
Despite the majority of forum members voting to unban him and showing support in the thread, he was never unbanned. All the Croatian community wanted was to get a reply from theymos or another mod, but that never happened. It's almost 2 years now.

It is partially related to that case yes.

Imagine having to vote on every idea that gets proposed for bitcointalk, or every controversial ban, or you name it.  People would get sick of that very quickly.  

Title say Voting for  IMPORTANT forum changes.
I would not waste time voting on trivial things, and again - Voting would be just that - Vote from community and not mandatory change. Moderators and big boss would still have a final say like always.

[jackg]

You'd need to. Make a worthwhile voting system too as "standard democracy" doesn't work and never really has...

Voting on a controversial ban might already be a thing done by moderators so you'd just be expanding the vote to say legendafies and hero's? But what's stopping the person banned buying vote power either by buying votes or buying accounts?

[Csmiami]

No it's not.
Forum is a Public open place

This is a common misconception I recall even theymos clearing up, but I don't have the time to search for that post right now, so I'll try to make a simple explanation to it.

The forum can be seen publicly without an account, BUT the moment you register into the forum by creating an account, you agree to the terms of said forum. The forum is private, as it is OWNED by an individual, but anyone can create an account without any real requirement. To make a comparison with the real world... we are members of a swim club; anyone living in the city can join for free, but the facilities have some rules that if you don't follow, the team will kick you out. You are allowed to use everything, but it's not public

Voting would be just that - Vote from community and not mandatory change. Moderators and big boss would still have a final say like always.
But maybe you prefer to have no voice, and I can respect that.

You are contradicting yourself. You suggest we get a vote on the forum changes but then are OK with the management completely ignoring that voting. For that, we can use the current system in place; which is basically leaving feedback on an already created thread or creating one for a matter that has not been discussed, and once the management reads it, they can decide to ignore it or not. It's better than voting because you can discuss everything in a post; and as I said before, it's the system we already have in place

Title say Voting for  IMPORTANT forum changes.
I would not waste time voting on trivial things, and again - Voting would be just that - Vote from community and not mandatory change. Moderators and big boss would still have a final say like always.

And who (and how) would decide what is important and what it's not?

[dkbit98]

...

Very grim comparison.

You are contradicting yourself. You suggest we get a vote on the forum changes but then are OK with the management completely ignoring that voting.

I am not OK, but if they want to ignore people voice and votes, they can do it.
Now we have some secret like society system where someone can be unbanned if he knows a friend of a friend.
Others don't have that privilege.

And who (and how) would decide what is important and what it's not?

Members.
If enough people is asking for something and opening topics then this should not be ignored.

You'd need to. Make a worthwhile voting system too as "standard democracy" doesn't work and never really has...

Voting on a controversial ban might already be a thing done by moderators so you'd just be expanding the vote to say legendafies and hero's? But what's stopping the person banned buying vote power either by buying votes or buying accounts?

Nothing is stopping him.
But even if he buys everyone votes (let's take GameProtect for example) that would mean nothing.

[lovesmayfamilis]

Now, when creating a topic, it is also possible to create a poll. Polling is somewhat similar to voting. And as an attempt to use such voting, one can observe how interested people are in this or that issue. And also how they will vote and how many people will react to such practice.
In the future, this can play a role in helping the administration itself make decisions.
But I am not against this method. True, this would be more true if each person had only one account. But because some of them have more than one, the voting results will never show the real picture.

[Natalim]

A ban/unban poll can be easily manipulated as people have a lot of alts here and to win poll people may even create another business around it.

There will be a lot of politics if we do this by voting, in a country there are regulators like the police, and mods here has that job, they can ban members whom they believe have violated the forum rules. Maybe voting in other matters, not on this particular thing.

[erikoy]

For me voting would be better but we know that votes could be influence by some users here so it still will not get the ideal result and it will also depend on the poll or choices.

However, the best thing about voting is that we can voice out our opinions too and make decision through casting votes. I am more than willing to participate if it will going to happen. In that case the forum will be run by the members and the admin of the forum will be the facilitator.

[hilariousetc]

For example if we have a case of controversial ban/unban why not ask the community to VOTE and have their say about it?

Things like this can already be done and I would urge users to create threads for things like this and all the community can discuss and chime in on the specific situation. Voting wouldn't really work here though as that can be easily be manipulated with alts etc. The only way it might work is if you only allowed certain, high-ranked users/forum regulars  to vote and made some sort of council but that isn't really democracy and it could still lead to issues if people started trying to sway voting behinds the scenes and amongst their friends etc. I think theymos should listen to the community more though as there are probably a lot of things the majority of users want and don't involve giving people power or power awat, but they're either just ignored or he probably doesn't have time for them. I created a thread below where users could make suggestions with the idea that eventually people would vote on them and the most popular could be implemented or considered for it:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4893744.0

Theymos did respond to some of the suggestions there and gave his opinion on them. A couple of them have already been implemented though like:

Signature bans. Bans that remove the signature for x amount of time or even permanently (actually proposed by theymos but never followed up on). Being able to blacklist an entire campaign's signature would also be helpful for those campaigns that refuse to do anything about spam.

Posts from lower ranked accounts don't bump ICO threads to the top (which would then render paid bump spam useless).

[Jet Cash]

I vote that redundant images are deleted, and nested quotes are disabled.

[Upgrade00]

Now we have some secret like society system where someone can be unbanned if he knows a friend of a friend.
Others don't have that privilege.

Wouldn't a voting system lead to just that? One would need to be friends with other members to get their positive votes. A member with a strong community would have a much higher chance of getting unbanned in a situation as they'll get more votes. In the current system, the admins/staffs and moderators effectively regulate the forum, the DT members also regulate the trust system to an extent, these systems are somewhat influenced by members of the forum, as we can suggest mods, vote on Default Trust members etc, so while the system is controlled from the top (admins) the general community can still chime in and drop their support or opposition in certain cases.

Voting can be done by poll option, or with more complex blockchain solution.

This would be practically difficult to implement and also easy to abuse, it would need a certain rank threshold for votes to count, similar to the voting for DTs, but even in that case, the admins still make the final decision.

[stompix]

No it's not.
Forum is a Public open space.

More like a privately-owned space open to the public, quite a big difference.
A shop is also opened to the public, you can enter freely but you get no voting on what type of Redbull should they sell and you can also get banned from it and issued a trespassing order and the owner can shut down when he wants.

Voting would be just that - Vote from community and not mandatory change. Moderators and big boss would still have a final say like always.

And what would the point of voting be if The Big Thermos doesn't agree with the little coffee cups? No coffee for you!
Voting or polling would be the same, just a way of giving ourselves some importance as a facade.

If we support decentralization then I don't see why we should not support some kind of voting in bitcointalk forum.

Not everything that is decentralized is also better.

[Findingnemo]

Well, multiple accounts are not prohibited in this forum so polls will never work when such rule exist.

If someone wants to get something in their favour they can create hundreds of accounts to vote for their favour, yes ranking restrictions can solve this but not completely so democratic forum is not really possible.