Voting Reform Proposal

Reasoning

The /vtwbg/ project is well-suited to consensus-based decision-making.

The decisions taken as a thread do not have an element of urgency which requires speedy resolutions to most situations (with the exception of land assignments, discussed further later on). This means adequate time can be taken to come to optimal solutions.
The well-being of the thread would benefit from encouraging collaboration and compromises between the various participants. This system makes it so that all motions that pass must be acceptable compromises to the supermajority of participants. This will reduce possible resentment that could be created by motions considered unacceptable to some moving forward.
Due to the anonymous nature of the website, it is trivially easy for new voters to be created. The current system incentivizes this by granting increasing decisional power with increasing numbers of votes. A consensus-based system removes power from sheer number of votes, and instead places it in the hands of possible dissenters to a motion.
Due to the nature of the project, the status quo may be considered by and large acceptable. A system which preferentially maintains this status quo as a baseline is beneficial, as it ensure changes to said status quo are nearly universally agreed upon, and thus will hopefully have positive outcomes.

Revised Voting Thresholds for a "Consensus Decision-Making Approach"

Definitions:

A Vote ballot may be one of the following:

Yes
No
Abstain
One of multiple choices offerred in the voting topic
No vote

Yes

A Yes vote represents an agreement to put into action or otherwise move forward with the motion.

No

A No vote represents a disagreement with the motion, and a decision to not put it into action, or move forward with it.

Abstain

An Abstain vote represents a desire to re-work, re-word, or otherwise further discuss the motion before coming to a decision on it. If a motion does not pass due to Abstain votes, the vote should be held again at a later date. An Abstain vote does not represent indifference or neutrality regarding a motion.

One of Multiple Choices

Selecting One of Multiple Choices represents a decision to put into action, move forward with a specific choice from the options laid out.

No Vote

An Absence of a Vote represents indifference or neutrality with regards to the outcome of a decision, and is not counted in the total sum of the votes for a decision.

Requirements for a motion to pass

New Bylaws, or Amendments to existing Bylaws

Passes with 80% Yes, or unanimity minus three, whichever is harder to achieve.
If the question offers multiple choices, the winning choice must fulfill the criteria above. If it does not, the vote should be put forward again with fewer options, preferably a binary choice.

Transfer of Land to an existing nation

Passes with 80% Yes, or unanimity minus three, whichever is harder to achieve.

Transfer of Land to be considered "Empty"

Passes with 80% Yes, or unanimity minus three, whichever is harder to achieve.

Initial Land Assignment for a new nation

Passes with 66% Yes, or unanimity minus six, whichever is harder to achieve.
The threshold for initial land assignment is lower, to prevent a deadlock which would prevent the creation of lore, and because voters could plausibly have preferences for the location of a thread that they will not budge on due to in-universe implications.

Any other matters undefined in this document

Passes with 80% Yes, or unanimity minus three, whichever is harder to achieve.

Dissenters

Dissenters are voters who vote to oppose putting into action a motion. A dissenter should concisely explain why he opposes the motion, and this explanation should be registered in the voting records. If the motion passes despite the dissent, the opposition may be vindicated at a latter date, which would help the group come to better decisions in the future.

Appendix

Issues with current system

The most obvious flaw of the rep system is its complete and overwhelming reliance on an individual anonymous poster and the trust of that individual anonymous poster to be genuine in what they say and do. As it stands, anybody that appears and says that they'd like to write for a nation is considered to be that nation's rep and is given a large amount of control over what they want to do for that nation and how they'd like to develop and present it. Being a rep immediately comes with the expectation of writing lore soon after introduction and being "present", either available when someone has a question for you or your nation or consistently available online. This is a system that overwhelmingly advocates and actively encourages false flagging and from my experience of being honest and open about my intentions for writing lore for generals that I frequent, if I didn't have a personal sense of integrity I very well probably would just false flag as a new writer instead of dealing with the hassle of being honest.

I've tested how well people can distinguish me from other posters and even before several people pretended to be me, its not consistent whatsoever. People believed me and Artic were the same person essentially up until we made any effort to distinguish ourselves and there are many times where I've realized that people thought I was a brand new poster even as I told them that I had been writing in the thread since the beginning. The idea that anyone of us can distinguish from another poster based on writing style alone is obscene and borders on arrogant delusion as to how close we are to someone we do not know, outside of glaring circumstances such as PG where the effort required to mimic him would be tedious and not worth the result or World Exploring Sanalite where his general posting tendencies are too erratic to mimic in any conceivable way, including the constant trip.

I also greatly conflict with the idea that Reps are the sole decider of their lore and their thread because an anonymous poster can very easily just do a little research and say they're from such and such thread to convince people that only have a surface level on that thread, I can recall a moment where OG was frustrated that he couldn't properly convey how he viewed his version of risuners and I gave a brief description of what I thought they were like and his response was something along the lines of, "I can't believe a non risuner could put it into words better than I could" and this is something that isn't meant to take the piss out of OG but is more to illustrate the fact that a writer can have practically 0 experience with a thread and still be able to write things that can pass as an authentic representation of that thread.

Even writers that have clearly displayed that they understand and have the capacity to write for a nation can and often do write things that don't particularly fit both their thread and its behavior because of the desire for collaboration with other writers and for a sense of forward movement for your nation to stay relevant as a member of /vtwbg/, this isn't a bad thing and is something that most writers including myself have done but it adds to the point that trying to determine authenticity via observation is too nuanced for anyone to be able to do unless an absurd amount of effort invested.

You could say that it's the effort put into lore that really defines how consistent and interested in building their nation any writer is and to that I'd point out that you're expecting a lot from someone that just entered this thread because it's premise was interesting, not everyone has a consistent schedule that allows them the time they need to write something that fleshes out the aspects of their thread, a thread that has enough history and culture to be elaborated on, and the writing ability to do something like that in first place let alone an interest in the thread. There are many writers who popped in for a short time before coming back to put their lore down(ppt, moona), lots of writers who had lore scraps and eventually came back to finish or refresh them(towa, wtm), and writers who still do technically have lore scraps written in the very beginning(sakuran, rbc, pyon).

Ultimately, the people most likely to falseflag aren't even necessarily malicious individuals that want to manipulate and obfuscate but people that are interested in writing for /vtwbg/ more than they are just writing their home general. I'm fairly certain I've already said this before but the first thing I wrote in this thread was not a luna piece, it was a greentext about /meat/. The greentext was inaccurate and an actual /meat/head pointed it out but I checked /meat/ out and there were people who thought I was one of them just because I had taken interest in the concepts that were being talked about with /meat/. This has happened and continues to happen where the interest that somebody expresses for another nation is restricted by an arbitrary rule that restricts the creativity that someone whose familiar with a thread can actually do. Was the rep system really meant to make it so that you could only write for your nation because that's what its started to become.

If you decided to vocally say that you're going to write for another nation, you'll generally get a negative response, if not a negative than an apprehensive one where others are cautious of what you're doing and how you're doing it, if you have an ulterior motive, if you ever actually bothered visiting the thread at all. This alone would be enough for a decent individual to just say "fuck it" and go full in on false flagging as a new person but on the positive end, new reps are given overwhelming support and opinions on how their nation might operate with threads that they're related to but also how they might operate internally. Any baggage that a poster might have as the rep of another nation won't carry over as long as they watch their step and they can explore fully ideas that they were dissuaded from doing as another rep, not only that but they can also influence the vote if they believe intensely that they're positions are in the right.

Hell, most votes are not that decisive and don't have much division already, you could just have a convenient parrot to vocalize why your point is correct that could persuade others to see you out. If I want to see this world fleshed out and filled with life, why wouldn't I just pull out my phone or switch to another browser when I post about a new thread if its genuinely beneficial to /vtwbg/ and I know that I'm capable of representing it properly? I push this question bluntly because the only answer I can think of is that it takes a smidge more effort but in this thread, everyone puts some effort in, either through researching or writing or discussion. A little more really wouldn't hurt.

Having a system like this that relies so overwhelmingly on trusting anonymous strangers has caused an inverse effect where trusting other people gets legitimately harder to do the more writers we have because the likelihood that those writers are just other anons that wanted to explore new ideas with chuubas they watch is just as if not more likely to occur. It's generally either ignored or greatly discouraged that you be suspicious of odd things that occur here because the rep system relies entirely on trusting strangers whom cannot be verified in anyway, we've already seen examples where writers have been ganged up on for voicing these things and in general where several people lambast posters that feel as though others are disingenuous and anons with genuine concerns are called schizos, many times even without them being overtly negative.

I'm fairly certain that there's more I could list out but I'm also certain that even the most delusional schizo or the most die hard rep supporter can understand and logically see that this system encourages falseflagging more than it does new writers, especially considering what happened when I vocally say that I intend to and am writing for /lig/, /ag/, and /luna/.

Problems addressed by the current system

My biggest issue however is that with no system of control in place that this will quickly devolve into timelooping about all kinds of things.

one issue would be that if there are no restrictions of any kind in npalce anymore that this project will quickly turnn into whoever can write things faster is essentially in the drivers seat of lore for nations and anyone slower will constantly be on the backburner of things because they might work out something for a thread they like but then someoe else jumps in and quickly sets soemthing up for that nationn and then the first personn has doe it all for nothing because his now contradicts that first bit.

even worse is when people start writing lore not foor the intent of creating lore but to block lore of other people because they don't like it or worse, that person.

similar when people create lore involving several nations, so that the threads they like will come out looking better or some personal feelings in regard to some threads. an example of that would have been if under this system i had writte a conflict with /yah/ and /vrt/ based on my own misconceptions of things, which would have been not correct in portraying the reality of thigs and only something i learned due to a /yah/ rep being a thing now.

deciding big issues for the whole of the thread that we currently are voting for also will become far more of an issue if there is nothing in place to at least try and make it a fair process.

but overall i do agree that this can use some more discussion and maybe some reworking of things to maybe make the system overall better and maybe fix some of the current issues of the system.

Rep, Mediator, Writer System

The way it is supposed to be is 3 tier system of:

Mediator, a person of absolute authority for the canon of a thread for solvign conflicts. this is meant to be someone that really annd truly knnows a thread and considers it their home. they can judge if something written is faithful to a thread or not. I would be this for /vrt/ because i have been with the thread from its beginnings and actually was pretty much the only baker for the thread, i also do the horsemen/sin polls for it, created the OP and its chuubalist and even am involved in its divegrass team, so i would consider myself knnowledgeable of /vrt/
Representative of a thread, people that are knowledgeable of a thread but not necessarily see it as their homethread or accept that a different writer for their thread simply is better suited for the role of Mediator. Warsuner would be an example of this for /risu/, as he is knowledgeable of the thread and cann judge lore for it well but he also accepts that OG is better as mediator for /risu/. Representatives may cast a vote ballot for their threads. Mediators may be representatives.
Writer for a thread, this one is meant to be way more lax, you don't need to consider a thread your homethread or be a regular for it but simply feel confident enough to write for a thread that you think it will be faithful for that thread. But you are also willing to admit that you are not the go to for making any decisions for a thread and that others with knowledge of that thread potentially say that your written work is not quite fitting as they see it and that it could be considered non-canon for that reason or need some rework. Example for this would be if i were to write a piece for /asmr/ since yeah i do lsiten to some but i neither frequent the thread regularly nor do i watch msot of these chuubas outside of their asmr streams.
You could potentially consider baseline assumption made of threads to be a fourth level below, where people don't know anything or very little of a thread but are able to make some very basic assumption of a nation for the purpose of creating lore related to them, like assuming /ahoy/ has to do with pirates as we did in the past.