Good on you!

Yeah, like I said, I understand that they are not the same and that online communities bring up challenges that irl ones don’t, but I think we should still try to apply as many of the same principals to online communities as we would to irl ones as possible.

That said, I absolutely recognise that not everyone has the funds or energy to be seen, which is why I want to provide other ways for recognition to happen.

Cool, that’s basically the point I was aiming at with far too many words lol and just to reiterate, none of it was criticism or doubt of your admining, just wanting to highlight potential pitfalls.

Re flairs and tags, thanks for clarifying! It’s completely understandable that it isn’t a top priority, it isn’t one for me as a user either, though I do like the idea of a personal strike system for milder offenders before resorting to blocking lol but also to highlight friendlies, since I’m terrible with names 😂I’ll have to keep an eye out for interesting extensions…

Well if someone cannot donate and cannot be seen contributing in any way, there’s very few ways to validate they’re a contributing member in the comm

Change online “comm” to real life “community” and that becomes pretty problematic (we should not be relating levels of contribution to levels of rights and power/say).

I’m genuinely not trying to give you a hard time, and I understand that the two are not the same, and that running an online community has its unique challenges (anonymity, trolls, sock accounts, vote manipulation, and on and on), but I also think it’s really important to keep the framing of things in mind because it can be so fucking easy to default, even without wanting or meaning to, to the hierarchal constructs we are familiar and surrounded with.

I’ve never run any community or organisation online or irl, not even modded a community (was only appointed as one on my previous shitjustworks account as a backup), so I don’t claim to fully understand the challenges you face in implementing this, or have a magic solution to offer, but I think these points are fundamental and worth highlighting, so I am.

As for the tagging, just to clarify, because I think I misunderstood what a tag or flair is, are they the same? I assumed a flair was the emoji looking things, and those it makes sense that only you can add, in my mind a tag would be like some of the apps have, where you can tag a user as say “troll” rather than blocking, but is that not a thing that is happening here? (sorry, I’m only just waking and baking lol)

Initial plan is that every subscriber should be allowed to vote, but only subscribers who fund a lot can open new votes for mandates.

I feel like this puts the poorest people in the community who may not be able to afford to donate as much or at all at a significant disadvantage and creates an unnecessary hierarchy (as well as, like you say, room for manipulation, someone who can afford to donate more having more power is icky), as do the different tiers for level of donation.

I can understand why you want to limit voting to people who are an active part of the community (though again, there becomes a hierarchy, like what about people who mostly lurk and only comment rarely? Do we start questioning why someone doesn’t participate as much as others? Neurodiversity and other health issues can play a huge part, as can poor education and access to information so someone might not feel confident enough to be very active, but are they then lesser members of the community? What about people who don’t have regular access to a device or reliable internet?), and I agree that there should be some way to tell who is a member in good faith and who isn’t, but I really don’t think that basing it on monetary value and stakeholders (which feels far too close in concept to shareholders), or ranking users in general is the way to go.

In any case, I think the fact that you want to make the instance’s running more communal is fantastic, and I think the idea itself is good, but parts of it might still need a little more cooking lol

As for the tags, can we as users tag other users? Will they see the tag, or that we tagged them? Will you, as a sysadmin?

The only way to stop them is to abolish the systems and institutions that enable their existence in the first place, and eating removing them from society (unless they agree to give up their ill gotten power and resources, of course. As if).

Anything else is a distraction created by those maintaining said systems and institutions (which includes the governing bodies of all nation states, as well as organisations like the EU*, as noble as the idea is in theory, and in practice in the minds of those who created it, but it is after all an economic treaty, which is upholding an economy system and the status quo) all to buy themselves more time to pillage, hoard, and manipulate society for their personal gain.

*As a brit I feel compelled to say that I’m pro EU under our current system, since our shitty government(s) must have someone to answer to (because it sure doesn’t answer to the people), but I’m fully aware that it is at the end of the day a neoliberal institution that is there to maintain the status quo, not change anything fundamental to better society.