The Shinx Platform

The Shinx Platform

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(Zorua ASCII art to make it less boring)

** Introduction, Summary:

The server's default state is, and should always remain *members' self-management* through a dedicated channel for setting and negotiating boundaries independent of staff - who are very much unlike traditional moderation.

It is complex, but it is made to promote a form of liquid representation of the community & popular scrutiny over moderation affairs - allowing it to scale as the server & wider federation of servers grow.

Anarchist social theory (i.e. opposition to hierarchy, voluntary association, federation) were formative in it's creation.

You can directly !delegate someone on your behalf for a short period of time to audit staff or address an issue - the body of member-to-staff delegacy are the Contributors. There are only 6-month election cycles for staff, and you can turn these staff into ad-hoc moderators using !call [staff mention].

You can suggest new features, and can do so anonymously with !anon.

The staff candidates you vote for are those the members. You can make a thread pre-establishing (contingent) boundaries that apply only in your presence & allows others negotiate them with you, further emphasizing the default of self-management.

The server has it's own multi-platform social RSS feed, which is intended to take control of visiblity from centralized social media feeds - big accounts are strongly advised to opt in for feed notifications in ⁠roles to encourage egalitarian visibility.

Staff can become moderators if you use !call on one, and they have ad-hoc discretion to enforce rules & mediate disputes within the community. Staff don't have the final say, as they are finally checked by me and the Arbitrators. Each to their own lane!

** Structure:

* Founder
Symbolic authority! I am redpawner, the owner & founder of the server. I am well versed in anarchist & queer social theory and seek to apply critiques on modern social to my server to prefigure a more freer experience in frandom; one that is direct, personalized and egalitarian. Restore the old internet, so to speak.

I may implement things admins can't implement, and I convene with my Arbitrators on critical issues outside of the server.
Oh, and i personally congratulate Staff candidates who get the most approves in our bi-annual staff votes to give them something to flex for as a first among equals. But, thats it really. For the time being, I am handling server infrastructure.

* Fundamental rules and charter
Rules & guidelines that are fundamental to the server and principles everyone should follow + a summarization of the server's charter.
There are guidelines on which any authority and member should act, and decisions outside of those fundamental rules are mostly non-binding,
enforced everywhere except in #alternate-general

* #logs
This channel exists as a log of admin and user actions. If there are suspicions of corruption or admin abuse, the Contributors who can view it will investigate and report it to an Arbitrator with evidence.
This is an outright check on admin/mod abuse if for some reason, the admins form a shady clique or if the people just so happened to choose a bad moderator

* #general
General chat! #rules apply and are enforced consistently and up to moderator discretion as this is the "flagship" channel for all discussion and casual shitpostery when a topic isnt being talked about. This channel sets the tone for the server's wider culture.

* #alternate-general

It should be accessible to moral agents who can discern between right and wrong themselves, so it is accessible to members 16 and over. The channel allows for minorities in the server to experiment with new ideas and new behaviors within only the "fundamental rules" to prevent stagnation and unlearn bigotry

So, this is the incubator for future server policy and a counter-balance to the sterile "majority culture" nature of #general. Reminds me of kind how weed's legalization started from the state level and then slowly became legal nationwide. In essence, it "decentralizes" the server from the rigid rules of #general.

This has the potential to set a good precedent in the making of rules with less risk, and more holistically. I also do not wish to inadvertently & completely impose the will of a majority onto a minority in a server where anyone can join and leave without learning something. Those are dynamics we see everywhere from communities to how society is organized; and hopefully such changes (with practice and iteration) will help in preventing them

Essentially, it's a pressure valve of "righteous edginess" to encourage a looser precedent in future rulemaking in the server so we wont end like servers that ban super innocuous "deez nuts" and "hawk tuah" jokes. However, this might be deprecated due to the Boundaries and Asssociates feature, meant to further encourage self-management among our members.

* Elections
All elections use the combined approval voting (CAV) system in a 3-point scale: Disapprove, Neutral, Approve; and each have a value of -1, 0 and +1 that is then counted towards a sum (approves minus disapproves)

Every member is expected to score every candidate and incumbent!
For a candidate to pass an election, the sum should be more than the (rounded down) third of the total votes for that candidate. CAV is to be used only in elections.

Our score voting system is used to determine broad consensus. So, disapprove with caution because it actually holds weight. As for candidates - broad appeal & co-operation is encouraged, unlike polarization.

* Boundaries
You can set your personal boundaries which moderators can help maintain by making thread... It is pretty much like an autonomous democracy. Personal boundaries are highly contingent - in that, it is situational and dependent on the presence and will of the individual who sets them. Accordingly, they apply **only** in the individuals presence in #general and #alternate-general. In the case of any boundary violation, mediation in individuals' threads always takes precedence over potentially atomizing & antagonistic enforcement. You may directly cooperate & compromise with people in their threads

* Associates
This is how the server federates with others! It is intended to distribute engagement and maximize networking and cross-pollination across our communities while maintaining a baseline standard of accessibility while offering alternatives of our own server to our members. The autonomy of associates' communities should be respected.

Posts of partners' bluesky accounts will be updated and show up in #partner-feed (the bluesky RSS feed channel), and partnered servers will simply be listed in #partner-servers, granted each follow the aforementioned standards (not be marked as NSFW, no invasive "age in bio" rules, 13+ only, no arbitrary age-gating). Big accounts are strongly advised to opt in for feed notifications in #roles to encourage equal visibility.

If you want to sign up to have your account (preferably BlueSky) show up in the RSS feed, just ask a staff member.

More centralized social media platforms control the visibility of our content through others likes and reposts and algorithms - in essence, acting like banks. We think that is unfair, so I've decided to give people here more control over the visibility of their content from big social media using an automatic feed, alongside the following measure protecting the feed from disparity of visibility:

It is encouraged to opt into the @Associate Ping as you apply to the feed, as it is our main measure to equalize visibility. While you can be in the feed without it, you may be removed if the sum of the followers of accounts who didn't opt into the ping pass the sum of those who did. We check on a regular basis to keep big accounts from free-riding. Share your clout!

Power Structure:

* Staff
They are elected by the community every 6 months, with candidates nominated by Contributors - a low barrier role in collective decision-making. They implement new features & help coordinate server-wide efforts. They cannot ban and kick by default, as Verifieds can use the Dyno command `!call` on a specific member of the Staff to give them temporary & ad-hoc moderator abilities for 4 hours.

The !call command directly messages the staff member to maximize urgency, and the Staff that is mentioned can use the `!mod` command to accept the modcall and do what is needed at the request of the parties involved in the modcall.

With moderator abilities, they can kick, ban & mute people. They may also use the Sapphire command `?mute` to contain & mediate a major dispute between members in the `#quarantine` channel. There are no temporary or permanent bans - bans are indefinite & appeals remain at the discretion of the community with the focus being on reforming the community & centering the harmed.

Staff elections prize broad appeal and discourage polarization through our score voting system. Ideally, the community should be able to manage itself autonomously through direct mediation with our 'Boundaries' feature - without excessive deference to the staff to enforce said boundaries. However, any usage of !call must not be stigmatized and can be done for any reason on the part of the Verified.

By default, they can mute and kick.

* Arbitrators

The Arbitrators watch the watchdogs. As their name suggests, Arbitrators arbitrate on serious disputes among admins or investigate reports of abuse - considering the evidence of the Contributors have collected. They are entrusted with the ability to demote staff and are selected based on their ability to critique the Staff in critical matters.

We have 4 arbitrators as of current: redpawner (server owner), slashed_out, moogletails97, fridgeguard

They can de-anonymize #petition-box but are expected to trust no one with their identities. They cannot be banned, being top of the role hierarchy - their only power is being able to remove roles as they "moderate the staff" and aren't "head moderators" in any sense.
Likewise, they should not 'monitor' the community - such mentality is firmly discouraged.

But, they do keep an eye on the Staff & you appeal to them directly if you have concerns about a Staff member.

Grassroots:
* Contributors
Contributors consist of 6-month term, broadly elected representatives; and short-term, directly, individually delegated members of the server.
They are mandated to be the representatives of the community in day-to-day moderation and implementation of policy, & read and share their opinion on suggestions to build consensus.
Elected Contributors have a 6-month term so contributors constantly represent the server dynamically.
Directly delegated Contributors serve a day term, and are accountable to their delegators. Verifieds (practically anyone) can attempt direct delegation once every 2 days.
Any loop of "mutual" direct delegation must be ad-hoc and is expected to be transparent. You cannot use the tools meant for the direct delegation of peers on yourself - to 'delegate yourself', you must apply for a 6 month term and be elected by the community.
They can see staff logs, and can deliberate on how a suggestion or admin-proposed policy will be implemented among each other. As viewers of the staff logs, they can use their abilities (temporary if directly delegated) to audit the moderators & look for proof of abuse themselves.
They can nominate new admins and moderators. Being a contributor isn't required to be a candidate for Moderator or Admin
They can collect evidence of abuse & report it to an Arbitrator, based on the principle of scrutiny being the limit of power.
Ultimately, they are still under the supervision of the moderators (also u can add emojis and stickers)

* Verified
Verified members! They are people who went thru the simple bot check in #verify-here. You can suggest (openly, or anonymously) in the #petition-box channel. You help co-author the server, instead of hierarchical admin structures seen everywhere on Discord. But, you are also expected to not cause drama.

You can elect candidates into the moderator/admin role every 6 months for Staff. You are under the supervision of the staff they elect & grant moderator abilities to. You can delegate ad-hoc moderator abilities to a staff member by using the !call command, which urgently DMs them of their required attention in the server.

You can also directly delegate someone on your behalf and make them a Contributor for half a week by using the !delegate command, which assigns anyone the recipient the "Direct Nominee" role for a day. But, you cannot delegate someone again for the whole week and the recipient has to accept your request.

Verifieds with plural identity can express their identity as such with the "Plural" role, but such identities can be non-traumagenic. Lkewise, Roleplaying, as it is - is ill-defined and a dedicated space to it is unnecessary & enforcing a ban on such risks marginalizing plural identities. You can roleplay anywhere in the server, but do not ask to roleplay in DMs