Thank you for your very interesting and thoughtful comment!
I just want to extend your thinking a little bit further into possible solutions. The blockchain space in particular has provided some interesting new ideas in terms of trust and how to organize communities around it. For example, Stellars Consensus Protocol works with “Quorum Slices” that are determined by people you trust to give you a “personal” view on the overall state. Similar you could nominate a “Member Slice” where some member votes are excluded/weighted down or weighted up in the calculation of your post weights. This would allow you to tailor what you see to your needs as your thinking evolves. So if a tyranny ensues you have the possibility of “navigating around”. And depending on how you implement it, people could subscribe to your view of the forum and thus, propagate this new algorithm for weighting posts. Hope this is not too complicated… (for those interested in more details, here is a link to a graphic novel explaining the Stellar CSP: https://www.stellar.org/stories/adventures-in-galactic-consensus-chapter-1)
my main point was just to agree with you that having a very hierarchical voting system may profit from some “countermeasures” that can be used in times of misuse or tyranny.
Thanks for the input, alexherwix! This proposal sounds very interesting. In general, I find this question really challenging: which model of quality control best mitigates the dangers of an in-group bias? On the one hand, the model you suggest (which seems quite close to what I had in mind above) seems really appealing. On the other hand, it would be interesting to see actual studies on the comparative impact of different solutions: e.g. the trust-based mechanism vs. top-down (“institutional”) injection of opposing views. For example, the controversial tab on reddit seems to do a nice job in keeping polarizing views around.
Thank you for your very interesting and thoughtful comment!
I just want to extend your thinking a little bit further into possible solutions. The blockchain space in particular has provided some interesting new ideas in terms of trust and how to organize communities around it. For example, Stellars Consensus Protocol works with “Quorum Slices” that are determined by people you trust to give you a “personal” view on the overall state. Similar you could nominate a “Member Slice” where some member votes are excluded/weighted down or weighted up in the calculation of your post weights. This would allow you to tailor what you see to your needs as your thinking evolves. So if a tyranny ensues you have the possibility of “navigating around”. And depending on how you implement it, people could subscribe to your view of the forum and thus, propagate this new algorithm for weighting posts. Hope this is not too complicated… (for those interested in more details, here is a link to a graphic novel explaining the Stellar CSP: https://www.stellar.org/stories/adventures-in-galactic-consensus-chapter-1)
my main point was just to agree with you that having a very hierarchical voting system may profit from some “countermeasures” that can be used in times of misuse or tyranny.
Thanks for the input, alexherwix! This proposal sounds very interesting. In general, I find this question really challenging: which model of quality control best mitigates the dangers of an in-group bias? On the one hand, the model you suggest (which seems quite close to what I had in mind above) seems really appealing. On the other hand, it would be interesting to see actual studies on the comparative impact of different solutions: e.g. the trust-based mechanism vs. top-down (“institutional”) injection of opposing views. For example, the controversial tab on reddit seems to do a nice job in keeping polarizing views around.