The Cunctator wrote:
You cut off the section of my proposal that after some
number of people
commit the ostracism the username has to be changed. I.e. this is a voting
mechanism, ala Erik. Please don't attack my proposal for faults it doesn't
have.
I honestly don't think this is convoluted at all. Perhaps I did not explain
it clearly.
O.k., it makes more sense now. I thought that the voting part was a
concession you were making, rather than a central part of the
proposal.
Stepping back from this particular issue, I'm a bit surprised here
that you seem to favor some kind of voting or formalization. I would
have intuitively guessed that you'd be opposed. I am guessing that
you _do_ think that there are dangers to voting mechanisms,
particularly if they can be abused to carry out agendas for which they
were not originally designed.
In this case, any formal process would have to be somehow insulated
from being a mechanism for a determined group to hassle people of a
different political viewpoint, with an eye toward politicizing some
entry or set of entries. At least some simple rules are dangerous in
that regard.
For example "If three people say your name is offensive, then you have
to change it". Will libertarians use this to harass a socialist?
Will Greens use this to harass a free market environmentalist?
I'm not saying that all formalization leads to bad outcomes! I'm just
saying that one benefit of an informal approach is that it can be
flexible and is harder to abuse.