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good morning, Beehaw
this morning we have a survey for you, which will run for approximately three days. it contains three questions on site policy (plus an optional explanation field), and two questions about the site's current vibe (plus another optional explanation field).
you can find the survey here.
some caveats to this survey
you likely have some priors for how this "should" work, and i would like you to leave those at the door. to be up front:
- this is not a referendum—it is more like a Wikipedia vote if anything. we're looking for a consensus or a synthesis of the community's opinions with the practical limitations we're working with, not a first-past-the-post winner.
- this is not (currently) a democracy, and you should not expect public results from this. we talked this part over as an admin team and we don't see much value in publicly releasing the results of a survey like this. if we do release the results publicly, we'll be announcing that before it happens.
- the same caveats just mentioned will apply to any surveys like this into the foreseeable future. i'm sure everyone understands that in online spaces it is very easy to manipulate surveys like this; accordingly, it is not a great idea to take them at complete face value until you can audit votes. since we don't have a foolproof, private system for doing that yet, these caveats are necessary to make any kind of vote involving site policy work.
(we do eventually want to create a foolproof enough private system, but this is way on the backburner and i'm guessing most of you prefer having an imperfect way to chime in on the site's direction than none at all until this system is created)
This brings to mind an interesting parallel. One of the ideas behind American democracy was an informed electorate - not just a bunch of ignorant rubes casting impulsive, careless votes. (Ensuring the existence of an informed electorate is also one of the reasons the first amendment was adopted, but that’s another topic.)
Gaywallet, you are more informed than most of us, and you’ve demonstrated your qualifications. Even if this was a democracy, I’d trust you to vote on my behalf.
I would love if not only the government but also the voting population consisted mostly (or only?) of scientifically literate and capable people. But I guess that brings the problems of "At what point does someone count as scientifically literate?" and that the issues of the "scientifically illiterate" possibly are (or seem, in their eyes) ignored/downplayed.
As some dude-o, whose name I forgot, said:"Democracy is a horrible system. But it's the best we got." (probably botched that quote, too)
"Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others."
It's frequently attributed to Winston Churchill but it was a common phrase that was said plenty before he said it.
I think what you’re talking about is called a meritocracy.
Another good criticism about choosing a democratically elected president goes something like “anyone who wants that kind of power shouldn’t be allowed to have it.”