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)

  • Auzy@beehaw.org
    8·
    1 year ago

    Exactly this… I’ve noticed the same on Facebook too these days. Plenty of fake profiles where people are clearly trolling, and some are plain bigots

    I’m not trans, or gay. But, even just watching some communities on Facebook and Reddit, you’re totally right. It has gotten to the point they are proud they are “anti-woke”, feel empowered and have made it part of their personality. Anti-Woke is just another way of describing someone who is controlling and abusive towards others, instead of accepting others. They’ll attack anyone they can to make themselves feel more in control.

    The community here doesn’t need to agree with EVERYTHING others say, but it should be an encouraging community. And I think I’m not the only one to say, I’d happily donate to keep the servers running if we are going to be unique, and not another reddit or facebook.