can you be just a bit more specific? 10th December being tomorrow, who will do what, tomorrow?
There will be a discussion on the categoryâs moderation team and moderation practices followed by a public poll. This poll will likely be set up by the category moderators. (Because itâs a public poll, this should not be an opportunity for tampering with the results.)
For the LATAM category, the discussion appears to have been started here: LatAm moderators re-validation - December 2022
Assuming that you have suggestions for a different composition of that categoryâs moderator team, I would encourage you to participate in that discussion.
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I take advantage of @mariotomo question to call to attention around the Call to propose moderators for General support category in Spanish. Instead of directly proposing moderators, this call seeks to have a more transparent decision making process around moderators, in line with the Moderator selection criteria above stated.
Iâm here to ask to NOT allow the #communities:br forum moderation election occur tomorrow like is being to be pushed. It was already asked to have an electoral commission to make things independent and for a date with change of more engagement.
Just minutes ago (so hours before the election) the HOTUSI employee admitted in the description being an employee of HOTUSI. He even admits, different from other moderators, have no experience at all with moderation (so by this aspect alone, by the moderation select criteria, today he might even not be acceptable at all there).
The reason to explicitly ask here in English is if this thing goes ahead without broader discussion (actually even older moderations are not available, not strange considering the time of the year), is 100% granded #communities:brazil election will be contested, regardless of the voting. The date call for feedback is very near the election, the fact no independent commission (the same candidates able to decide how the election will be) and obviously the fact that the non-experienced candidate is related to an organization with recent issues on #communities:latam will jeopardize trust.
The proposal
Wait until better agreement is done on the thread asking about the election for #communities:br. Only 7 days will not be sufficient in our case.
That is great news! I personally think moderators should disclose their affiliations, but AFAIK it is not currently required at all. So, I would think one should applaud them for disclosing it, instead of crying âfoul!â
He even admits, different from other moderators, have no experience at all with moderation
Why do you think that is a problem? If every moderator position required previous moderating experience, nobody would ever be eligible to become moderator due to chichen-and-egg problem.
(so by this aspect alone, by the moderation select criteria, today he might even not be acceptable at all there).
By which âmoderation select criteriaâ exactly? The version 1.0 at the top of this thread mentions this requirements for moderators:
I see no requirement that one mustâve been moderator previously. Where did you see that?
As an outsider only having seen a glimpse of some inter-personal problems between various members, I personally doubt if extra 7 months (or 7 years) would make any difference at all. Unless you are privy to some information strongly suggesting that one side or the other is about to significantly change their views to accommodate other side, Iâd suggest that it is probably the best that the process continues as outlined.
So, if you disagree with proposed moderators, vote against them; or if you agree, vote for them.
Note that the point of democracy is not to have your personal wishes fulfilled, but the wishes of majority (in this case, 80% of them - see the top of the thread). Except in rare cases, it practically always means someone will be unhappy.
Also note that moderators are not set in stone - if they are later found to be a bad choice, the three methods of âHealth-checksâ mentioned at the top of this thread show how to remedy that situation.
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@Matija_Nalis no.
ânoâ what? Would you care to elaborate @fititnt ?
Do you disagree with my interpretations of âmoderator selection criteria 1.0â that they do not require either of the two things you claim they require? Or you just disagree with my estimate that putting voting on hold would not accomplish anything positive but instead see there is progress towards consensus in that discussion? Or you disagree with my interpretation of meaning of democracy? Or you find false my claim that moderators are not set in stone? Or something else?
Just saying âno.â without explanation is not constructive. In fact, it is likely to be downright rude.
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The voting is not individual? WHY?
An neutral electoral commission of Brazilians would fix that. Everyone of the candidates, both existing and a new one (but another person there was ignored, but that was random) was put in the same vote of yes/no.
Makes no sense to put candidates in the same vote. Sorry to say, but here Iâm not even complaining about the candidates there, but the very, very poor organization here.
About why is not clear if the âhealth checksâ works, one recent case (which still not clear if is blocked or not here) of money used to influence opinion (including near elections for moderators):
Context for the link: in Latin America, the idea of using money over meritocracy to be kept in power is considered immoral to even crime (as defined by laws). For example, NGOs registered here cannot even put exceptions to it on board elections for what is defined in law. And also, there is no such thing as lobbying as socially acceptable, to a point is often explicitly a crime (which is why âlobbyingâ is a strong word when translated). Even the concept lobbying in Portuguese Wikipedia is described as negative, diverging from the more neutral etymology, than itâs version in in English Wikipedia.
With this context said: like complained on the recent thread about Conflict of Interests by moderators in this forum, my request for full recall of first wave of LATAM was because they (in LATAM, to not be confused in Brazil; not even same persons) been insistently trying everywhere offer money of HOTUSI and even used this forum to this (which was the complain).
Did the forums governances took action against use of money influence to buy votes, even after continuous request about? Still without anwser.
What happened is 3/4 of LATAM moderators decided to not run again (without giving much details) after massive complaining. However, the fact that moderators are allowed to use their own forum to make money influence (aka make themselves announcements to money) for organizations theyâre in still not resolved. So, to answer the question about âhealth checksâ, no, they seem to not work, even with evidence, and the fact moderators didnât run again does not fix the trust above then. Thatâs it.
Like I said previously: it makes sense to leave time to the local Brazilian community to get an electoral commission to allow neutrality. This time of the year here is even complicated to give time to moderators from the old forum. This would avoid first-wave moderators themselves regulating the voting by lack of alternatives, which even ask readers to justify why no, even if the results in the end could be the same. And the reason to my strong ânoâ is that the translation of your suggestions in my region would means tolerate corruption and, by the words you use, also lobby against, become corrupt. To give an idea of how bad is this process, both Spanish and Portuguese have special terms for elections of this type
This was only a suggestion, I do not read anywhere that this type of election would be mandatory. You can organize it as you see fit. The main thing is that no one complains at the end.
The linked pages are very interesting, but somehow also out of place. We should all be aware here that we are not electing a state government but a small group of people who are voluntarily looking out for a small subgroup here in the forum.
Is everyone here afraid of a March 5, 1933 happening again?
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@fititnt I have tried reaching out to you privately, but that didnât work.
Please stop spreading lies and conspiracy theories. Your imagined evil HOT takeover conspiracy has gone on too long and is damaging to our trust based online community. Repeating a mistruth does not make it true.
Take a break and reconsider how you can best help our volunteer based mapping community.
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4 posts were split to a new topic: Complaint by fititnt about communities:br moderator
I would propose it to change it to âat least 5 daysâ. There could be good reasons, especially for communities with lower activity to have longer vote.
Note that âThe topic will be open for community discussion for at least 5 daysâ has it already.
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I also want to address a larger concern. The requirement for votes to be public. This means that everybody can see who voted for what. I and at least some other Dutch community members object this.
The main argument for a public vote is that it prevents fraud because you lower the risk that people create one or multiple additional accounts to vote. While I acknowledge this risk, I donât think that it has more weight than the anonymity during a vote. Just like with government elections, people can vote anonymously to prevent interference in the voting process and so that people feel safe to vote of the candidate they see best fit.
I am curious what other think about this.
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I think what is needed is a secret ballot, information on which people/accounts have voted may be public but the vote they cast must remain secret.
This is following numerous treaties and international agreements.
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While votes for government positions are indeed secret, democratic societies also put a lot of effort into preventing voting fraud. It is essential that the process is trustworthy â and an anonymous internet poll is not.
Public votes are one way of detecting fraud, and the OSM community has used that approach for votes on the OSM wiki for a long time. The solution has clear downsides, but if we want to have a secret ballot, we need another, similarly effective way of detecting fraud. Ideally, it would only be possible to see who has voted, not what they have voted for, but I do not know if this can be implemented.
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Those are indeed valid points. Is it then an idea that we submit this as feature request to discourse? That we want an additional option to only list all people who voted but not each individual choice? That would basically solve this problem right?
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I started a discussion of the discourse forum: Allow a poll to be public but don't show who votes for what - feature - Discourse Meta
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The necessary approval rate for the election of the moderators is set very high at 80%. So just a few votes against are enough to reject the choice of moderators.
I think it is important to be able to recognize these people. Not to expose them, but to ask them for their reasons. With a five times higher âvote weightingâ for no votes, I donât want a rejection without reasons.
If the required approval rating were lower, I would also be in favor of anonymous voting.
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Thanks for these insights. I didnât think of it this way. Hopefully, discourse can implement the voting option I proposed. I think that would be a good solution for both sides.