Trust Level 4 Promotion by a Community Election Poll?

[twofoursixeight]

So, the Gimkit Forum has been discussing something about Trust Level 4 via elections, and also about if trust level 4 could be needed in the forum.

I had put:

Maybe a few active people can be elected, and there could be applications.

The problem with that forum was that nobody is currently TL4. The moderators in that forum are inactive. This could lead to unneeded problems and drama that nobody would want there. So this brings me a feature idea:

This would be to elect trust level 4 (leaders) through an election poll. In the official trust levels page, it says TL4 could be granted this way:

• (Possibly via a to-be-developed election system in the future)

The problem is that it has been many years and there has yet to be no election system.

So, what do you think? Would TL4 elections be a good idea?

This has been discussed a few times but nobody has really gotten an idea yet. I feel as though relying on the community to choose our leader(s) would be a good idea.

@Raj_Rathore

And from my imaginary solution to this, a review page should be visible to TL2 and above users and there should be a poll that will be closed after a specified time (the polling system is already part of discourse). If discourse itself suggests doing a poll when selecting moderator or TL4 users then what’s wrong with involving users at the acceptance in community as well. I’m assuming that the new user will be happy that he won an election to be part of this community and would value their right to choose other users. It’ll be a small community of users who trust each other and they can freely share their views and find acceptance of their views, and issues will be discussed in a good manner. They will more likely have a certain respect for each other (because they’re here because somebody has voted for their acceptance in here) and some similarity in their objective of joining the community at least since everybody will have similarity in objective and purpose and to achieve that they share their views and thus people will be more tolerant to each other’s views as well and they will respect the community as well. I hope it works that way at least.

Understanding Discourse Trust Levels

@anon77664303 You can always lose TL3, no matter if you got it for the 1st time or not. Unless an admin (or moderator) lock you in trust level 3, in this case you will never lose it (actually, an admin/moderator can lock you in a trust level even if you never fullfilled the requirements to have it, as well as lock you in a trust level worse than what you would normally have). See: Only admins/moderators can promote someone to TL4, in which case the user will be locked in that trust level (th…

Also, I feel as though some forums would not want this feature, so there could be a setting to turn this off as well. Do note I have shared this with the forum I am sharing this to. I am making these additional notes as these are crucial to this feature.

[Falco]

If that instance staff is up for it, I would love to see it happening and the outcomes for it in a few months.

Discourse should have all the tools you need to run this as an experiment.

• Groups that allow anyone to join, used as a list of runners for the TL4 promotion

• Polls to vote on who gets promoted.

[jericson (Jon Ericson)]

I ran an election on a forum I manage to fill out the moderator team. It was a fairly simple process that worked great! I don’t see why it couldn’t be used for TL4 instead. (Probably a good idea to test with the Leader status before jumping to moderators, but we don’t really use TL4 formally.) Here’s how it worked:

1. I called for nominations via private message. I wanted to screen nominees without embarrassing anyone publicly. But I think a public process would be workable too. A bit later I clarified the process based on feedback.
2. After I gathered nominees and vetted them, I announced the election with a poll that
   • limited voting to TL2 and above (groups=trust_level_2,trust_level_3,trust_level_4),
   • showed results only to staff (results=staff_only),
   • allowed people to vote up to the number of moderator slots available (type=multiple min=1 max=2 for two slots) and
   • set the poll close date to the end of the election (close=2022-09-23T23:59:00.000Z).
3. After the election closed, I appointed the top vote-getters to the open slots. (I had two slots, so the top two candidates became moderators.)

I’d have preferred some sort of ranked-choice voting system, but the simple poll worked well enough in this case. In the future I’d like to run elections that are a little more open (public nominations and results, for instance), but everyone felt more comfortable for the first election when I kept a few safety valves in reach.

Other than ranked-choice votes, I don’t think Discourse needs to add a whole lot to make an excellent democratic system. It was a manual process for us, but not particularly hard.

@Falco

Groups that allow anyone to join, used as a list of runners for the TL4 promotion

Oooh! That’s an interesting idea. It could also work to have a group that the requires staff to approve, if that sort of gatekeeping seems like a good idea.

[Heliosurge (Dan DeMontmorency)]

This old broken plugin could likely be retooled.

Elections Plugin

Repo: GitHub - angusmcleod/discourse-elections This uses the Polls plugin as a base and adds controls and features specific to running elections. Enabling and Settings Elections are administered by “Election Admins”. By default, election admins are site admins. All moderators can be made election admins by toggling the elections_admin_moderator site setting. To do: allow any user to be designated an ‘Election Admin’. Elections can be enabled on a category basis in Category Settings > “Cate…

[EricGT]

Two thoughts at the moment.

1. Consider excluding users who have not posted to the site in the last 90 days or such.
2. If there are users that only use the site via email, can they vote? I have not tried to use voting from email and am not even sure if it is possible.

[idontexist]

When will this be added? As our forum needs it bad, we have low moderation and the moderators won’t promote people to TL4, so this would be wonderful

[Lilly]

Hi @idontexist, welcome to Discourse Meta
I moved your post over to a topic that already exists about this feature.

[idontexist]

Oh, my bad
Thanks for fixing it!
So, what’s the answer? I couldn’t find it.

[Firepup650 (Firepup Sixfifty)]

I think the general idea is “not yet”, though I suspect if it gets a lot of interest it’ll be looked at more closely.

[Heliosurge (Dan DeMontmorency)]

This plugin is broken. But maybe if your community/site is able to maybe find it. Someone may look into getting it working again with your needs in mind

Elections Plugin

Repo: GitHub - angusmcleod/discourse-elections This uses the Polls plugin as a base and adds controls and features specific to running elections. Enabling and Settings Elections are administered by “Election Admins”. By default, election admins are site admins. All moderators can be made election admins by toggling the elections_admin_moderator site setting. To do: allow any user to be designated an ‘Election Admin’. Elections can be enabled on a category basis in Category Settings > “Cate…

[riking (Kane York)]

Implementing elections in the software is blocked on a lack of a coherent design, and that’s mostly due to a lack of good experience reports from forums doing it by hand, especially in an iterated fashion.

The best thing to do is for your forum to run an election by hand and write a report about the process here on Meta.

[Unit_72 (Starlightier)]

I do have an idea of how the community could elect Trust Level Four users.

Why Would This Be A Good Idea?

Well, tl4s are the foundations of many discourse communities, and as such, should be found and elected by the users, who know that they do and why they should be promoted. As well, some forums do not elect tl4s at all, leaving the community without “user-moderation.” Implementing a system in which the community could elect trust level 4 users would solve multiple problems. As well, there has been a hint that a voting system for tl4 users may be implemented in the future.

A Hint From The Discourse Staff That This May Be Coming In The Future

Why Wouldn’t This Be A Good Idea?

Perhaps the forum admins/moderators do not want any tl4s, and the election ruins that. Then, in their admin controls, perhaps they would be able to turn elections on and off, saving their time and sanity when it comes to preventing their election. ^[1]

My Idea On The Process

My idea would be relatively simple but still allow the community to vote on their next tl4

1. Every so often ^[2], Discobot would send out a Personal Message (PM) To everyone who has been active recently. ^[3] The PM would contain a simple message and a poll. ^[4] Also, there must be preparation, as there must be reasoning in their bio (a special paragraph separated from the UI just for that purpose ^[5]
2. The poll would be active for a week ^[6], and in the allotted time, each user with access to the poll would be able to vote for one of the given candidates. If a regular/moderator (tl4, admin, etc.) recommended user is removed from the election, all the users who voted for them would get another notification.
3. After the 7 given days, each person who voted would get another PM displaying the winner of the election. ^[7] The new trust level four user would be given a special one congratulating them, but also giving them the option to reject the position. If they do, the position would be given to the 2nd-place winner, then if they reject, the third. If the third-place winner rejects the position, then no Leader will be elected in that poll. ^[8]

On The Topic Of Off-Topic And Unfriendly Competition

Users might compete for the status, which is not what the purpose of the election. This is why a few features would have to be added;

• If a tl4 is flagged for bad moderation too many times, it will alert the admins and they will decide to keep or get rid of the tl4 ^[9].
• If you flag players for no reason too many times, you are automatically disqualified from the next election, discouraging popularity contests.
• admins ^[10] and moderators can always reverse the promotion if they are not worthy, if they are online, which is also seen in point 1.

Finalities

That is my ideas and reasoning on why and how I think the election should go. If there are any conflicting arguments, please let me know.

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1. All existing forums would not have this enabled. However, all forums to be created would have this enabled by default, and a pop-up would appear to the admins of that forum that would ask if they would like to disable the feature. A similar pop-up would appear for admins on existing forums asking if they would like to enable the feature. ↩︎

2. The default would be 2 months, but this could be changed to a minimum of 2 weeks and a maximum of 2 years. As well, admins and moderators could run a one-time election, in case they were unsure who to choose and wanted the community’s voice. ↩︎

3. It would not be sent to new or basic users (tl0 or tl1) because they do not have enough experience in the community yet. It would be sent to all members (tl2 users) who have visited the forum in the past 30 days, regulars (tl3 users) who have visited in the past 60 days (though this wouldn’t be an issue unless locked in place), and leaders (tl4 users) who have visited in the past 100 days. ↩︎

4. Only regulars would be included in the poll, the only exception being if another tl4 or admin recommends them. If someone becomes a regular during the poll, they would not be included, but if someone is demoted from regular status, they would be removed from the poll. ↩︎

5. The reasoning bio UI is only available when the tl4 election setting is turned on, but the data will be saved if switched off then back on again. ↩︎

6. 7 Days ↩︎

7. In the case of a tie, Discobot will choose a random user and they will get the position, the same process if they reject (more on that soon). ↩︎

8. Unless the admins want to hand-pick a user who they think should have won the election either because they do not deem the winner worthy or it was rejected too many times, which is already possible. ↩︎

9. Their Status, I Mean ↩︎

10. They can turn of the setting completely ↩︎

[Jagster (Jakke Lehtonen)]

Well, forums aren’t a democracy. Ever. And such an election would be a popularity contest quite fast, and moderation doesn’t need popularity. That’s why admin(s) choose moderators and moderators choose those lite-moderators, aka. TL4s.

But if there is a community out there that wants to use a polling system, nothing stops them. The tools are there and if there is a need to get something else, it is just a matter of coding a plugin or component

[Unit_72 (Starlightier)]

Yes, which is why I included this option in my idea ^[1]:

@Unit_72

…in their admin controls, perhaps they would be able to turn elections on and off…

@idontexist has an issue with a moderator problem which could be solved by this:

@idontexist

When will this be added? As our forum needs it bad, we have low moderation and the moderators won’t promote people to TL4, so this would be wonderful

As well, several admin customization options have been presented:

@Unit_72

The default would be 2 months, but this could be changed to a minimum of 2 weeks and a maximum of 2 years

@Unit_72

Only regulars would be included in the poll, the only exception being if another tl4 or admin recommends them.

@Unit_72

Unless the admins want to hand-pick a user who they think should have won the election either because they do not deem the winner worthy or it was rejected too many times, which is already possible.

But you do present a good argument.

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1. Which just is an idea ↩︎

[Moin]

@Unit_72

issue with a moderator problem which could be solved by this

Not really. When you need an admin to enable elections, they could instead also promote users.

[Unit_72 (Starlightier)]

It would be automatically enabled from the start, but if the admin so wished, the admins could disable the feature. This would also help with @idontexist’s problem with bad moderation.

[Moin]

So you want to enable it on all existing forums without prior consent of the admins

[twofoursixeight]

Hello
My suggestion provides a view about trust level 4 elections. I initially made this topic due to a lack of moderation in the gimkit forums. The admin of the forum, josh, added in blackhole as a moderator of the forum and it has been going great ever since.

However, this should be an optional feature. I think it should bring a popup asking the admin if they want to enable this feature in this pending update, because not everybody wants this feature in their forum.

[Unit_72 (Starlightier)]

Oh, no. All existing forums would not have this enabled. All forums to be created would have a pop-up that would ask if they would like to disable the feature. A similar pop-up would appear for admins on existing forums asking if they would like to enable the feature.

[twofoursixeight]

A counter argument to this topic is that automation sometimes gets things wrong. But to be fair, polls are driven by the community. Also people can spam alts to get a user a TL4 rank with a bias. The solution is by allowing only TL2+ to vote.