The challenge is that even the most open platforms eventually hit practical problems - spam, harassment, off-topic flooding. The question becomes: who decides what stays and what goes?

What you're describing sounds like the difference between censorship (authority-driven) and curation (community-driven). Maybe the goal isn't eliminating all filtering, but making the process transparent and democratic?

You're right that any system where votes have different weights gets into dangerous territory fast. I wasn't thinking "expert votes count more" but more like "earned influence through contribution" - though I admit that's a fine line.

What do you think - are online communities fundamentally different from political systems, or subject to the same constraints?

ironic to say that here, where supposedly smart people say the dumbest, cringiest shit imaginable about a wide variety of topics.

Given that definition, "mob rule" is not something to be prevented, but encouraged.

You may prefer some other system, and in many cases another system will likely lead to better outcomes, but that system is not Democracy.

To the original poster I say, you've spotted the root flaw in democracy. It does indeed allow everyone to vote, and many remain ignorant of the implications of what they are voting for, or are susceptible to manipulation.

You may attempt to fix these attributes in individual people (good luck with that) or you may thought-consider a system that is not democracy. What you can't do is change the system and call it democracy.

We're actually launching a developer platform called GistFans that experiments with these governance questions - contribution-based voting, transparent processes, etc.

Would love your perspective on our approach - happy to share details if you're interested.

Your analysis of Habermas and "perfect deliberative process" is exactly what we're grappling with in GistFans. The tension you identify between early adopter quality and scalability, the corruption of sustainable organizations vs the power of "structureless" activism - these are the core contradictions we're trying to navigate.

We're experimenting with a "Stars" system where users earn influence through contributions, then spend these stars on governance decisions. The hypothesis: when participation has real cost (earned influence), people might act more thoughtfully - potentially addressing both the good faith problem AND the "believing others act in bad faith" issue you mention about Twitter.

But your point about "benign despotism with exit rights" is fascinating. Maybe the key isn't eliminating hierarchy but making it transparent and merit-based rather than arbitrary?

We're deliberately staying small and experimental rather than chasing sustainability/growth. Better to run genuine experiments that inform future builders than create another corrupted institution.

Have you seen any examples where contribution-based influence actually improved deliberative quality? Or do the fundamental human nature issues make this unsolvable through design?

We're experimenting with something similar - a "Star" system where users earn influence through contributions and can spend it on governance decisions. Early results suggest contribution-based voting leads to much more thoughtful decisions.

How well does Discourse handle controversial governance choices? I'm curious if trust levels work when communities face difficult decisions.

I'm curious about the cold start dilemma though: invite-only is great for quality, but creates a chicken-and-egg problem for early adoption. Do you think it's worth the slower growth from day one?

Also, for initial promotion - better to avoid platforms like Twitter (where average user quality is lower) and focus on higher-quality channels, even if reach is smaller?

Would love your thoughts on balancing growth vs quality in early stages.

The idea is more like an internet utopia - if the participants are engaged and high-quality enough, maybe traditional moderation becomes unnecessary? We're not trying to scale to millions of users anyway.Have you seen small, closed communities work without formal moderation? Or does human nature always require some kind of enforcement mechanism?

But I think a community's real vitality might come from self-direction rather than top-down solutions. Democratic processes themselves promote community self-purification.

In our ideal community, everyone has the right to propose. Every proposal goes to public vote with open voting. When proposals pass and get executed, that execution itself improves the community. This might be closer to what an ideal community looks like.

Our ideal community has only one rule: community-driven. That's all.

I tend to describe it as a kind of utopia - where the community continuously evolves through its own collective decisions rather than having solutions imposed from outside. Maybe the answer to groupthink isn't preventing it, but creating systems where the community can organically correct itself over time.

It's admittedly idealistic, but I think there's value in experimenting with these utopian concepts, even if they don't solve every problem perfectly.

What do you think - can democratic self-governance actually lead to self-correction, or am I being too optimistic about human nature?

The "retaliation equilibrium" working initially is fascinating - shows that peer accountability can work at small scale. But the faction coordination problem seems almost inevitable as communities grow.

Makes me think the key might be preventing large factions from forming in the first place, rather than trying to make democracy work despite them.