Mods are stupid, no one owns a topic, it should be moderated by "everyone" filtered by WoT.
I've done it here: https://pollerama.fun/feeds/topics
Discussion
Completely disagree. Mods are really the only non-algo way to keep a topic focused. Otherwise just use hashtags.
If someone hates the particular mods of a particular topic, just start a competing topic.
Games (large group discussions) need either need referees (mods) or a computer (algorithm) to define the boundaries of the game
You only say this because you've not seen what curation could be like on nostr, reddit sucks extremely and we can create a better version here. We don't have to copy the stupid stuff.
Try pollerama.fun/feeds/topics it's extremely early I'm fixing a lot of stuff still, but it'll give you an idea of what it can be.
Reddit has 110 million daily users
They had 54 million before the surfacing algorithm became central in 2021
Enough people hate algorithmic manipulation that a competitor stripped clean of it could do well
Following topics is an easier sell than following people
Nostr is only doing as well as it is because a subset of Bitcoin Twitter moved here when nostr:npub1sg6plzptd64u62a878hep2kev88swjh3tw00gjsfl8f237lmu63q0uf63m did. In some sense, the entire user base is the “Bitcoin” topic. It would be great if an entire existing community could move to Nostr rails without being turned off by Bitcoin talk. Think heavily censored groups like anti-vax moms. People who don’t like Zionism. 9/11 truthers.
Mods allow for white list posting, which these sorts of communities are already very familiar and comfortable with. They just need a platform that the whole community can’t be banned from.
Reddit imo was a solid improvement over the traditional forum, because it allowed the group to elevate the most interesting or helpful responses to the question/post. But it was still a defined space of likeminded people.
I think you’re missing the point. Nostr in its current form appeals to an existing group of users, bitcoiners, and no one else. The goal for Nostr development should not be to attract users, it should be to attract existing groups away from centralized platforms (which all groups are fatigued by). The first influx of users won’t be building new groups and relationships, they’ll be coming with those connections already formed from other platforms
I think you're missing the point, did you even see the feed I gave you? I'm trying to preserve the existing connection as much as possible, but you don't have to carry the legacy stupidity along with it.
So you think your solution is definitively better than n/ communities with a moderator in all cases? Why?
Yup!
That is 100% false. Topics are incoherent and subjective without that performative element that having a tyrannical moderator introduces. There can still be a dialogue or splinter factions regarding the necessary and sufficient conditions for something to be in a topic, but unless you can point to a specific person who created and owned them, you can't say that a topic exists in any meaningful way.
Nostr's greatest virtue is that nobody owns the users or their notes, but that's also its greatest flaw.
Tyranny only occurs when you can’t exit. All cyber communities are opt-in, opt-out.
No one owns a “topic” but, yes, people organize themselves into groups and submit to rules and enforcement by leaders every single day
They do this because it brings benefits that you seem totally unaware of, despite all the evidence
Most people don’t want to scream into an open, unbounded void, and until someone defines boundaries they don’t see the appeal, this is why Nostr is not seeing adoption
Right, nothing wrong with leaders and owners of communities.
Eh, I dunno. If a moderator refuses to announce, explain, or accept feedback on their judgements then I consider that pretty tyrannical, especially if they try to present an appearance of being more levelheaded and principled than they actually are.
When my account disappeared from funnyjunk.com nobody knew it happened. Even I didn't get any kind of message or notification indicating that I was being kicked out by an actual person and not just some cryptic bug. It was very clear that many users and moderators looked down on me, but even the administrator refused to publicly stand by what happened to my accout. Personally, I'd like to be able to call that tyrannical, even if us users technically had the ability to opt out of things that we were not allowed to know were happening
Since that event, my highest standard for a platform is that there be tangible guaruntees and transparency for its users.
Everything else you said is spot on though.
So my idea solves for this exact situation
Everything about the group - name, description, mods, members, ban list, rules for posting (really just preferred instructions for client filters), relays, everything - would all be contained in one canonical event. Then that event could be hosted as many places as possible. Then all the other event kinds, posts, comments, upvotes/downvotes, etc would be stored on at least the relays listed in the canonical event.
So in your case you would be able to publicly see when the members list and/or ban list was updated to change your status. (And theoretically you could also have a kind that is moderator endorsements before a canonical kind is considered official, so you could see which mods endorsed this update.)
You wouldn’t lose your identity or any of your previous posts, provided copies of them still exist somewhere, it’s just that default client behavior would now be to filter your content out and prevent you from signing new events from your npub. If you had a copy of your data you could archive it, display it, etc.
It wouldn’t keep the mods from kicking you out, but it would keep them from being able to pretend they didn’t know what happened and have you lose all history of your account like it never existed.