Board Thread:Community Voting/@comment-25995065-20150317063943/@comment-4845243-20150318061042

Loney 97 wrote: Mishkaiel wrote: Nehpets7000 wrote: Oppose, dang it. Admins are the most trusted users here and I hate just taking away all the influence they have. Gosh, I really do not like our community or the way it thinks anymore, which is why I think our admins have to have more "power" than the average user here. Well, in real life when one person or one group of people takes more power for themselves, it turns into a dictatorship and turns the people against the leadership. The "ideal" form of government, and the government America once had, is a government in which the people had the ultimate power. The people elected the leaders, and had the power to remove the leaders by electing different leaders when it came time to vote again. There should be a balance of power between the people and the leaders.

Now, in regards to the wiki, I agree that the admins shouldn't be able to just veto something they don't like if the community votes on something which gets a majority vote; however, what if the community votes on something rediculous or uneccesary? The admins should be able to vote against something like that. Therefore, what about having the policy of not removing the part where the admins vote something down, but adding in a policy of where the admins tell the community why they struck it down, and then giving the community a second chance to vote. If the mods explain why it would be rediculous or uncessesary, then the community might change their vote based on that explanation.

In short, the admins can vote it down, but then they explain why, and the community has another chance to pass it again.

Hope this all makes sense. =P

=l America has never had a government where the people had absolute power. That is referred to as a direct democracy, which many of America's founders were strongly against including John Witherspoon, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence. He said that ""Pure (direct) democracy cannot subsist long nor be carried far into the departments of state – it is very subject to caprice and the madness of popular rage." That statement is one of the reasons I am strongly against what Obi has been doing lately, taking this place away from being a representative democracy and turning it into a direct democracy. We cannot be a representative democracy, because we are not a nation with a government. See my above post for what I mean when I use the word democracy and apply it to a wiki. Most of the reasons that direct democracy doesn't work are related to political structure, and do not apply to a wiki. Also, direct democracy can be a viable form of government with a small group (compared to nations, our community is extremely small — a nation with around 50 active voters could easily have direct democracy and be much more efficient than the U.S representative democracy).