I’d like to ask for @TheDude to make a server-wide announcement, visible to all members of this instance, that a binding vote about defederation is currently taking place.
Without knowing what the Lemmy UI allows, I was hoping for a text similar to the one informing new users that email verification is currently enabled. Here is what I would like the announcement to entail:
“A binding vote to defederate from another instance is currently taking place in /c/TheAgora. Should the vote be accepted, no users of sh.itjust.works will be able to access the defederated instance or interact with users of that defederated instance anywhere on Lemmy. Should the vote fail, the instance to be defederated remains federated, its content may still be shown on the home feed of sh.itjust.works and the users of that instance may still participate in discussion on this instance.”
I am of the very strong opinion, that no vote should be binding, unless it was announced early enough to all members of this instance! This vote will have instance-wide consequences, the fact that it is taking place needs to be broadcasted beyond this community!
Edit: fix typos (again)
Look if we are really going to do the direct democracy thing this problem will always exist. More engaged users will rule the forum, and less engaged users will feel marginalized and make excuses or demand concessions when votes don’t go their way. The only way around this is to enforce some kind of quorum threshold but that will almost certainly never work. Pinned announcements will just flood the forum unless you restrict the number of possible votes per week, which might be an interesting thing to try.
I personally kind of think it’s a bad idea (this brand of forum democracy), but I’m also curious to see the experiment play out.