Everyone I have something very important to say about The Agora.

The Problem

Let me be super clear here to something people don’t seem to understand about lemmy and the fediverse. Votes mean absolutely nothing. No less than nothing.

In the fediverse, anyone can open a instance, create as many users as they want and one person can easily vote 10,000 times. I’m serious. This is not hard to do.

Voting at best is a guide to what is entertaining.

As soon as you allow a incentive the vast majority of votes will be fake. They might already be mostly fake.

If you try to make any decision using votes as a guide someone WILL manipulate votes to control YOU.

one solution (think of others too!)

A counsel of trusted users.

The admin, top mods may set up a group to decide on who to ban and what instances to defederate from. You will not get it right 100% of the time but you also won’t be controlled by one guy in his basement, running 4 instances and 1,000 alts.

Now i’m gonna go back to shit posting.

    • @[email protected]MEnglish
      0•1 year ago

      There aren’t going to be thousands of votes though.

      I repeat, if you ever see any evidence of vote manipulation, simply report it and we can discuss it at that time. Until then, kindly refrain from needlessly sowing dissension.

        • @[email protected]MEnglish
          -1•1 year ago

          What makes you think there will be thousands of votes?

          I get you have a stressful day job, but there’s no need to take it out on me or anyone else on this server.

            • @[email protected]MEnglish
              -2•1 year ago

              I do have the time and I do care that much. I joined this server on June 7 when it had fewer than 100 users. I am more invested in the success of this server than anyone.

              I’m not writing bullshit, I’m being totally serious. I don’t want bots to influence the voting any more than you do. One problem is that many methods of keeping bots out also have the side effect of keeping some real users out. For instance we could keep out accounts newer than 7 days, and then you’d be upset about not being able to participate.

              I made the judgment that manually verifying votes would be the best temporary solution for now.

              How about you just spend a bit more time here and see how it goes? If you enjoy it, feel free to stay. If you don’t, you can leave. No need for the anger.

      • @[email protected]English
        -2•1 year ago

        They ain’t sowing dissension, dude.

        As for fraud voting, during the Mod Election, a few accounts were freshly created and voting for Seraph.

        • @[email protected]MEnglish
          1•1 year ago

          He’s hypothesizing about bots manipulating our votes and questioning my integrity by saying I’m not going to verify the accounts, all before we have even made a single vote that I was responsible for.

          Additionally, his profile clearly demonstrates that he’s the type who likes to pick fights. He calls it “directness”. Directly to confrontation. Brilliant strategy.

          Whether it’s merely a character defect or an intentional decision, this individual is most certainly sowing dissension.

          We can investigate those allegations, PM me whichever accounts you found suspicious.

            • @[email protected]MEnglish
              1•1 year ago

              Sure he can. Given that I was elected moderator less than a week ago, questioning my integrity is practically the definition of sowing dissension.

              It’s quite difficult for me to assess whether users are good people who are confused, trolls from the fediverse, or worse, infiltrators from reddit.

              Alternatively, there are some people who are just lame.