First, on behalf of @imaqtpie, @Seraph089 and myself, thank you all for choosing us to help run the community. We're all really excited about the possibilities of both this instance and of The Agora community. We're look forward to working with everyone to make this a great community. Feel free to reach out with any concerns or comments!
Ok, on to the announcement:
Today, I'm excited to share with you some pivotal updates set to streamline our interaction and decision-making processes within The Agora.
The first of these updates is about enhancing transparency. We have established a new and convenient way to track the outcomes of our community decisions. Simply visit this link: https://rentry.co/the_agora. This site will serve as the hub for all voting results, updated at the conclusion of each vote.
Next, let's discuss the changes regarding the use of our existing [Discussion] and [Vote] tags. To foster clarity and improved interaction, all new posts should now carry the [Discussion] tag.
Regarding the [Vote] tags, we're introducing a more structured approach here. Going forward, the [Vote]s will be initiated by the moderation team based on the week's [Discussion] posts and will be posted each Friday and run to the following Friday. This gives ample time for each of us to participate in the decision-making process. Once a vote concludes, the corresponding thread will be locked and the results promptly updated on our new voting results webpage.
For [Vote] posts, your vote should only be cast as a top-level comment. To streamline the process, we ask that you refrain from responding to other votes in the same thread or making non-voting comments. Each [Vote] post will contain details on how to format your comments, and our moderation team will be available to ensure all comments are formatted correctly before the final vote count is tallied.
This is by no means the final process and we're depending on your feedback and discussion to keep improving things going forward.
We understand the concerns about vote manipulation and the discussions around alternate voting methods (like ranked choice). Use this thread to discuss the changes and any concerns or suggestions that you have.
As of now, the tentative plan is to run with this for the first week, see how many issues exist that require voting, generate the vote threads, complete a round of votes and then iterate on the process once we can all see what works and what doesn't work so well.
One issue i have that may seem irrelevant for some but for me as a non-Angloamerican it isn't: The language used (aye/nay) alienates me very much. It gives me the feeling that "I am not at home here" but rather some USA citizens want to impose their antiquated understanding (bc. antiquated language) of democracy on all. Makes me wish i could be part of a more sophisticated community. ... So why not "yes/no"? -- still not my first language but at least it wouldn't make me feel like being in the US senate or the British parliament (whatever language they use idk, it just feels that way). ;-)
Apart from that, i'm still in favour of ranked choice. (Edit to clarify: even in yes/no polar choice there always needs to be a third option, "I want neither of these", or "I abstain", so that all voters are counted, not only those who have a polar opinion.)
Don't just dismiss it because some evaluation methods don't work well. The issue there is not with RCV itself, but it's in the (antiquated!) idea that a winning candidate must have absolute majority and therefore the votes need to be reduced until only two candidates are left. -- Of course such a method will produce a skewed output because it discounts parts of the votes as "irrelevant". --
What i was already suggesting elsewhere is as i learned, called "Borda-Count". In that, no candidates or votes are eliminated by the evaluation but the rankings are simply added up. This allows for minority winners and inconclusive polls. So, if opinions are divided in a community, the poll would reflect that -- which is the way to go, imo.
In the UK it's aye/no, because sticking to a theme is to simple. /s
In reality the real reason is that the whole aye/nay thing is made up. It's always been aye or no.
And for our part, we only chose aye/nay because that's what people were doing anyway. It seemed easier for everybody to keep it consistent.
Yes/No, Aye/Nay, it shouldn't matter too much as long as your position is clear. Using a specific word makes it easier for the preliminary count (using a script) but it's just as easy to count Yes AND Aye as a yes vote.