Lemmy Council

  • A group of lemmy developers and users that use a well-defined democratic process to steer the project in a positive direction, keep it aligned to community goals, and resolve conflicts.

1. What gets voted on

This section describes all the aspects of Lemmy where the council has decision making power, namely:

2. Feedback and Activity Reports

Every week, the council should make a thread on Lemmy that details its activity during the past week, be it development, moderation, or anything else mentioned in 1.

At the same time, users can give feedback and suggestions in this thread. This should be taken into account by the council. Council members can call for a vote on any controversial issues, if they can't be resolved by discussion.

3. Voting Process

Most of the time, we keep each other up to date through the Matrix chat, and take informal decisions on uncontroversial issues. For example, a user clearly violating the site rules could be banned by a single person, or ideally after discussing it with at least one other member.

If an issue can not be resolved in this way, then any council member can call for a vote, which works in the following way:

  • Any council member can call for a vote, on any topic mentioned in 1.
  • This should be used if there is any controversy in the community, or between council members.
  • Before taking any decision, there needs to be a discussion where every council member can explain their position.
  • Discussion should be taken with the goal of reaching a compromise that is acceptable for everyone.
  • After the discussion, voting is done through Matrix emojis (👍: yes, 👎: no, X: abstain) and must stay open for at least two days.
  • All members of the Lemmy council have equal voting power.
  • Decisions should be reached unanimously, or nearly so. If this is not possible, at least 2/3 of votes must be in favour for the motion to pass.
  • Once a decision is reached in this way, every member needs to abide by it.

4. Joining

  • We use the following process: anyone who is active around Lemmy can recommend any other active person to join the council. This has to be approved by a majority of the council.
  • Active users are defined as those who contribute to Lemmy in some way for at least an hour per week on average, doing things like reporting bugs, discussing rules and features, translating, promoting, developing, or doing other things that aim to improve Lemmy as a whole. -> people should have joined at least a month ago.
  • The member list is public.
  • Note: we would like to have a process where community members can elect candidates for the council, but this is not realistic because a single user could easily create multiple accounts and cheat the vote.
  • Limit growth to one new member per month at most.

5. Removing members

  • Inactive members should be removed from the council after a few months of inactivity, and after receiving a notification about this.
  • Members that dont follow binding council decisions should be removed.
  • Any member can be removed in a vote.

6. Goals

  • We encourage the membership of groups such as LGBT, religious or ethnic minorities, abuse victims, etc etc, and strive to create a safe space for them to express their opinions. We also support measures to increase participation by the previously mentioned groups.
  • The following are banned, and will always be harshly punished: fascism, abuse, racism, sexism, etc etc,

7. Communication

  • A private Matrix chat for all council members.
  • (Once private communities are done) A private community on lemmy.ml for issues.

8. Member List / Contact Info

General Contact @LemmyDev Mastodon