@LemmySuxNow@reddthat.com People don't like change. Most people will disagree with you. Outside of coops the instances are dictatorships people are fine with putting up with because they can easily make accounts on a different instance.

I would encourage you to check out any P2P forums and or look into Reddit styled apps built on Nostr, those would be closer to what you're getting at.

Each community on Reddit is a dictatorship. Whoever is arbitrarily in charge of a community has full unrestricted power to do whatever they want.

Lemmy's answer is to allow people to create their own instances. Don't like the mods at World? Go make your own Lemmy, with blackjack and hookers. But that's not sufficient.

I don't think it's insufficient. site admins can replace mods if they see the need for it. and if your site admins don't take action when they should, you look for a new site with new site admins. or you become your own.

Therefore mods are elected by the users who generate the highest upvoted content in a community.

this is simple but simply flawed. how do you filter dishonest accounts? automated accounts, multiaccounts, trolls, brigading accounts of users coming from an instance with largely different values, ...

IRL we have solved these, but we don't want such an identity system on the internet.

Or else we'll just end up with another Reddit.

on reddit you couldn't choose your site admins. here you can. even today it is a very meaningful choice if you compare just lemmygrad, lemmy.world and dbzero

You've been here for two months...

far too easy to game a system like that and just because someone makes good posts doesn't mean they want to be saddled with the burden modding. You said yourself its a difficult and thankless job. How about the community just votes on mods who volunteer and allow an option for a recall vote?

I'm sympathetic to this post and surprised by the massive downvotes... But it sounds like a great deal of work for a questionably better result.

Thank god you're not the one running it because holy shit, these are some awful takes.

"Whoever is arbitrarily in charge of a community has full unrestricted power to do whatever they want"

So you want to kick out whoever build the community and be in charge with others likeminded people?

All popular community's would be taken over by groups, bots, data centers, big tech ... And used will be brainwashed. Your vote wouldn't matter at all.

You vote with leaving a community and / or the platform.

Literally nothing is stopping you from creating communities or even an entire instance that follows that principle...

If you want to do it, then do it.

And if people want it, they'll participate.

But even if they do, I don't think you'll get the result you expect and want

So your probelm with the platforms is not the platforms themselves, but people? Because the mods running communities here aren't too different from the refit communities.

As for your second point, you want karma farmers to run the communities?

IMHO, most Lemmy mods are fine. And it doesn't take years to advertise your community. The end.

Therefore mods are elected by the users who generate the highest upvoted content in a community.

wow, that may be the worst idea for the direction of lemmy since the Tesseract guy. bravo

mods are elected by the users who generate the highest upvoted content in a community.

I don’t think this is a good idea. I’d encourage you to look at my comment history in this community specifically. Every comment I’ve left in my official capacity is a direct result of at least one user report. I prefer a very light touch moderation style, where I address rule breaking content when reported but otherwise let the community manage itself.

Those comments I left are not terribly popular, and I think that’s the heart of the problem. Running a community effectively and maintaining some sense of order is not generally a very popular activity. Do we really want to make moderation a popularity contest? Beyond that, I don’t post much in fediverse, does that mean I’m ill suited to being a mod here? I don’t think so.

I agree in general that poor moderation can be a problem, but letting the most popular posters run the community doesn’t seem like the fix.

mods are elected by the users who generate the highest upvoted content in a community.

So, your solution is... cronyism? Because this just sounds like creating a special class of power-player users and a smoke screen for them.

upvotes are way too easy to manipulate on fedi so if you really want democratic elections you would need a better system. but lets just keep it simple

upvotes are not representative of quality, or ethics.

You clearly don't understand what a thankless job being a mod is. You're subjected to relentless harassment from anyone you try to moderate. Its not really a job that anyone wants. Mods are volunteers who just want to improve their communities. You may disagree with their policies and enforcement, and you have the right to move to or create a new community. Having elections would just ensure that there's no one at all to moderate them.

But that's not sufficient. It takes years to build up a community to have enough people for meaningful discussion to happen

It literally takes as few as 2 people to have a meaningful discussion, so the idea it needs to be some kind of massively large site is already a false premise.

So if I create a community and spend my time curating it, it should be taken from me if someone posts a meme and gets up votes?

Usually people who complain about mods are a problem. In face lemmy has lazy mods. We need stronger enforcement in some of these communities so they can thrive

Its not that big of a deal. Mods do have power to influence and control a community but I don't think average users care enough to engage in this discussion required to do community governance.

Its hard enough trying to get people to give a fuck about voting for the leader of their country theres no chance they will care about electing a mod for a Lemmy community.

You've got instance Admins who can remove mods if there is to much of an issue. You can easily start a community with the same name. We have reasons why this won't be as much of a problem as on reddit.

Don’t like the mods at World?

That's admins not moderators. Admins are for instances, moderators are for communities.

Go make your own Lemmy, with blackjack and hookers. But that’s not sufficient. It takes years to build up a community to have enough people for meaningful discussion to happen, and nearly all communities or instances fail.

Define "fail"? Niche communities will have a limited audience of course, but if the moderators of a big community suck then people will move. It doesn't take years to saturate the Threadiverse audience, the people are either here or they aren't, but the people that are here and interested will join your community pretty quickly.

Elections should happen on a schedule and, if a community is particularly upset with a mod, a vote of no confidence can be taken.

Voting is really not much different from moving to a different community. Vote with your feet.

Obviously being a corporation means they're terrible no matter what. [...] Even if Reddit was 100% community owned

It would still be a corporation. Do you realise unions, non-profit NGOs, churches, and every legal entity that isn't a literal human, is a corporation?

toxic mods ruined Reddit

No they didn't. At most they ruined their community. But anyone can make another community on Reddit. Doubly so here on Lemmy.

Discussing the solution would be to accept the premise. And the premise I think is flawed, pun intended, so let's adress it first.

Majority of instances are extremely small, so if you are correct on the surface analysis that most fail, it may simply be people giving up on their venture for going to a place more stable and that they don't have to manage themselves.

Also surface analysis is another problem by itself because the premises for it can be faulty, and saying as if it's a certainty can help spread misconceptions. And there's also the problem of the sensationalistic tone.

And on communities failing, define failing, please. Some may indeed, but what if they simply represent a topic so niche it rarely warrants discussions?

And on migrating, if the very top is problematic, voting out can be hard too. Even more so if it's the guy paying the bills or managing the infraestructure. And also example comes from the above, as the saying goes, so users cather to the culture they want to see fostered by the administration.

Furthermore, still on voting, who's to say, if voting is implemented, bot and paid actor accounts aren't made discretely over time to rig them?

Also, what works to one group may not work to another, or even to the same group in different periods.

And still on migrating overall, since here's a network, not simply just a bunch of social medias aware of one another, if you make an account on a new platform, there's a kickstart of potential users since they're still in the network.

And regarding the network aspect, using a software with microblogging integration such as Mbin, Piefed, Catodon or Friendica can give an even further push, since then you can use hashtags, boosts, following besides subscribing, community packs, etc.

Also on being a network, you can use relays, such as Threadirator and the other project with a same purpose I always forget the name. That helps making it appear on the connected instances.

And with the problems I could notice out of the way, no onto the proposed ~~solution~~ alternative:

The fediverse is a network, so you are free to make an instance to try that yourself. Or also to approach instance administrators to see if they'd be willing to experiment, since people can be rather approachable if you ask them directly.

And if the idea works out, similar to how historically it goes, people will copy the model. But a beautiful idea on paper means nothing without concrete examples. And as it's presented, it sounds more like a liability than a proper model.

There is no need for elections, cause you can just choose whichever admin or mods you want. It's not a democracy, you just choose what you like best and everyone has the same choice. That's better than democracy cause nobody has to compromise.

If you think mods or admins are doing a bad job, choose different mods or admins or become your own admin.

We tried this in !simdemocracy@lemmy.world and the community's completely dead so...

I think the federated nature of things will shake this out, if admins/mods (there seems to be some confusion about which term to use) get too nuts. Reddit has a legendary shithead Mod on the main Grateful Dead sub, but there's an alternate GD sub where a group that is smaller, but sufficient to form a community, gathers.

In the case of here, someone can start a community with the same name on a different Instance, and just like those two Dead subs, it's not a one or the other proposition for users, they can sub both or either. People will gravitate to the community with the best moderation that creates the best discourse.

Bottom line, this place is in a lot less danger from the problem you describe than Reddit. There are built-in pressure valves, seems to me.