"to give the "content producers" the power"

So you mean botted accounts get extra power. Okie dokie. grabs popcorn

My sub was stolen under the current system while I was on deployment for 4 months in the desert (v/silver). I was logging in and maintaining when I could, but, it still happened. The current system is fucked as well (which is, basically, just ask for the sub).

On long cons... Have a time requirement not for time on Voat but time subscribed. So if a small sub all of a sudden becomes popular or controversial, its Outcome Votes can't be influenced by a swarm of new subscribers who may be the redditors/shareblue etc already on Voat.

How many subscribers and posts per day? We could get brigaded with subscribers and then they start posting and we’re gone.

Lol, then those people could just all band together and keep posting spam or spam disguised as regular posts just to gain power and overthrow the mods

Do you realize how easy that is going to be to game? All I have to do is get subscriber numbers up high enough, post with one account, keep the others looking reasonably active, and I own any sub I want.

You're essentially penalizing growing a sizable community and making that effort subject to mob control once it has been done.

You can do that, it's your site and your code. I'm just a guest, but you appear to be asking opinions.

You're actually taking power away from the content creators. If they produce enough popular content, they lose the ability to control their sub. Controlling what is posted in a sub is a form of speech. If they have built a community, they can have their sub, and their speech, taken from them.

I urge you to reconsider.

It doesn't much matter for me, I can fit in on most any forum. My speech isn't the kind that people usually object to. For some, Voat is pretty much all they have and they take it, and the curation of their subs, very seriously.

Maybe, just maybe, this can be made okay if, say, the sub owner has been inactive for like 6 or 12 months (I'd urge the longer of the two). Maybe 6 months, if the vote is initiated by someone who is already a moderator of that community. Further refinement may be possible by allowing the owner to set that permission to a shorter duration.

Otherwise, you might just as well throw the 'owner' term right out the window and just straight up tell people to stop submitting content because building a community means risking losing their freedom to express themselves via sub curation.

Your plan only looks good on the surface.

I would like to see sub creators able to opt out of this. There are people right now building up comment points in subs they never used to participate in. This is just the clever ones that have gotten in early, mind. Some of these people are able to create multiple accounts on TOR and Vpn and are doing so. Bigger subs might be ok for a while but smaller subs will be immediately attacked.

@Xennios @DancingQueen read this submission.

I do not want malicious take over of a sub by people that don't contribute to it.

Could you please define ‘contribution’ as a term when weighted against the legality of paid advertising operations. Re: specifically, and only as a single example, the corporation ShareBlue, which is funded and exists as an entity solely to promote a specific narrative, known to be objectively false, for the purpose of propagandizing the public.

You glossed over (glided around, rather) this topic earlier, so (ONLY) if you have the time it’d be great to hear more on it. Obama making it legal to use the media (and other paid corporations) to propagandize US citizens does not imply that you, as a website owner, MUST allow said propaganda–paid lies posted here 10x as often as real people posting real things, or truth itself–to be posted here.

So I've designed most of the infrastructure to give the "content producers" the power and to strip it from those who don't contribute. So if it is done right, a group of people who do not contribute to a sub will not be able to take it over. If you don't have skin in the game you have no power.

This would put the moderators in competition with content creators in a dick measuring contest for most points/most activity depending on how you measure the metrics. My main example for this is /v/feminism, where for the greater part of a year, @Goat_watch was the main contributor, yet he wanted nothing to do with moderation... until he realized he could ban people he didn't agree with (aka any actual feminist that wandered in). then he was very eager to get a spot. My opinion is the shit needs to be seen so the votes can decide how much it stinks instead of kicking the shit out on sight. After a few weeks, he did relent and agree he can argue more when the feminists are not banned.

TL/DR: content creators don't always realize how a sub should be run, and could drive the audience away if the moderation is too heavy handed. It should be a high bar to transfer ownership, how high is a matter of debate.

It sounds nice but I don't see how this stops a malicious takeover of a sub.

Let's say a group coordinates an attack against /v/JustGrowIt. They conspire a long con to post and comment in that sub several times a day in order to eventually be the top contributors.

After they get a strong foothold in the sub they would then upvoat each others' posts and comments (which I think is the definition of brigading?) enough to twist the sub to fit their agenda and ruin the original spirit of the sub. That could and would indeed enable a mob to take over a sub.

When I see:

I do not want malicious take over of a sub by people that don't contribute to it.

It seems more like:

a malicious take over of a sub by people that (pretend to) contribute to it.

-

We're a small community. Setting up a majority rule just lays us vulnerable for hostile takeover from a group larger than we are.. whether that group is made of organized individuals with a common, malicious goal or a handful of people with several alt accounts and VPN access.

We already have a malicious group here. Their current strategy is to spam shitposts on a subverse until they get a reaction and then cry wolf that they're being censored. They're motivated and have nothing else better to do with their lives. A system like you are proposing lends them a way to create more discord than they're already capable of.. they just have to change their attack strategy.

-

I do value that you still have a passion for making Voat better.. but I don't like where I feel this is headed.

Why should existing content producers be given power over what future content should be allowed?

I've added a reply here could you take a look? Thanks.

Okay, that makes more sense. I do still have a bit of a concern dealing with subscriber numbers though. That being that I'm pretty certain, but can't prove this, that the number of subscribers in any given sub, especially those which are the most popular are highly inflated. My thought is that so many folks have come and gone from Voat over time, all the totals are way off. People come in, subscribe to a bunch of subs that interest them and then disappear. Maybe they come back, some may even occasionally lurk, but many more are just gone. So anything based on number of subscribers should be based on a good estimation of how many there really are ... not what the counter reflects. I'm not sure that's even doable though. My guess is it would be difficult, if not impossible, to ever know if a subscriber number is accurate. Otherwise, I have a wait and see attitude to the 'democracy' thing. Thanks for the input ... it does help ease a bit of my concern.