Hi HN! I've been thinking about why developer communities are controlled by corporate boards instead of the developers who create the value.
This white paper explores a new governance model where:
- Every contribution (posts, code reviews, helpful answers) earns "Stars"
- Stars = voting power on platform decisions (features, policies, algorithms)
- Community votes on everything from tech stack to moderation rules
- Transparent, democratic process with public voting records
The core insight: developers deserve platforms where their voices actually matter in decision-making, not just engagement metrics.
I'd love your thoughts on the governance mechanisms, potential abuse vectors, and whether this could work at scale.
I suggest using agent code for development work, and we could focus on some interesting AI-human handshake patterns. This would accelerate project completion.
Love this perspective! Interactive fiction with LLMs sounds fascinating - there's something powerful about creating engaging experiences rather than just "saving the world."
Your point about making things more interactive really resonates. I think you're right that it could spark more curiosity and engagement, especially in younger people.
Do you have any demos or examples of what you're building? Would love to see how you're combining traditional interactive fiction with modern AI.
Thank you for the encouragement! Your point about abstention being a vote itself is really insightful - we're actually planning to track that as a signal for when topics need more discussion.
I'll definitely share lessons learned. Honestly, we don't know if this will work, but current alternatives aren't working either, so worth the experiment.
You're right about gamification risk. What if the formula is transparent though: Your contribution = Your Stars = Your Influence?
Traditional systems reward activity (posts, comments, time spent) which are easy to game. But measuring actual contribution outcomes - did your help work, did your advice get adopted - seems harder to fake.
Still gameable probably, but at least people would be gaming by actually helping others?
I owe you an apology - your brilliant analysis deserved much better than my brief response earlier. You provided the most thoughtful theoretical framework in this entire discussion, and I responded with just a throwaway line. That wasn't respectful of the depth you brought.
Your analysis of Habermas and "perfect deliberative process" is exactly what we're grappling with in GistFans. The tension you identify between early adopter quality and scalability, the corruption of sustainable organizations vs the power of "structureless" activism - these are the core contradictions we're trying to navigate.
We're experimenting with a "Stars" system where users earn influence through contributions, then spend these stars on governance decisions. The hypothesis: when participation has real cost (earned influence), people might act more thoughtfully - potentially addressing both the good faith problem AND the "believing others act in bad faith" issue you mention about Twitter.
But your point about "benign despotism with exit rights" is fascinating. Maybe the key isn't eliminating hierarchy but making it transparent and merit-based rather than arbitrary?
We're deliberately staying small and experimental rather than chasing sustainability/growth. Better to run genuine experiments that inform future builders than create another corrupted institution.
Have you seen any examples where contribution-based influence actually improved deliberative quality? Or do the fundamental human nature issues make this unsolvable through design?
You're absolutely right about these concerns, and I should be more honest - we don't have a magic solution to groupthink. Even our transparency isn't absolute - we only guarantee proposal transparency, not complete visibility.
But I think a community's real vitality might come from self-direction rather than top-down solutions. Democratic processes themselves promote community self-purification.
In our ideal community, everyone has the right to propose. Every proposal goes to public vote with open voting. When proposals pass and get executed, that execution itself improves the community. This might be closer to what an ideal community looks like.
Our ideal community has only one rule: community-driven. That's all.
I tend to describe it as a kind of utopia - where the community continuously evolves through its own collective decisions rather than having solutions imposed from outside. Maybe the answer to groupthink isn't preventing it, but creating systems where the community can organically correct itself over time.
It's admittedly idealistic, but I think there's value in experimenting with these utopian concepts, even if they don't solve every problem perfectly.
What do you think - can democratic self-governance actually lead to self-correction, or am I being too optimistic about human nature?
You're absolutely right about the definitional clarity - I appreciate that precision.
Actually, what we're experimenting with in GistFans tries to bridge this gap. We have a hybrid system: everyone gets basic voting rights (maintaining the democratic principle you describe), but we also have weighted "contribution votes" based on earned influence.
So it's not replacing democracy, but adding a parallel track. Basic decisions use equal votes, but for governance and quality decisions, contribution-based weight provides additional input. Think of it as "democracy plus meritocracy" rather than replacing one with the other.
But we believe: hybrid democracy is also democracy. Just as representative democracy and direct democracy are both legitimate forms of democratic governance, contribution-weighted democracy can preserve democratic legitimacy while addressing practical concerns about informed participation.
This way we preserve the fundamental democratic principle you're defending - everyone has a voice - while creating mechanisms for those most invested in outcomes to have proportional influence.
Do you think this hybrid approach maintains democratic legitimacy while addressing some of the practical concerns about informed decision-making?
That's actually why we're experimenting with no traditional moderation in our new community - just transparent community governance where the rules themselves are democratically controlled.
Aaron's vision shouldn't require compromising on either democracy or free speech.
Thanks for sharing that example! That's exactly the kind of failure mode I worry about with pure democratic systems.
The "retaliation equilibrium" working initially is fascinating - shows that peer accountability can work at small scale. But the faction coordination problem seems almost inevitable as communities grow.
Makes me think the key might be preventing large factions from forming in the first place, rather than trying to make democracy work despite them.
This is solid advice, but I'm wondering about a different approach entirely.
What if we don't have moderators at all? Just build a small, self-governing community - get the right initial group of people, then freeze registration once we hit critical mass.
The idea is more like an internet utopia - if the participants are engaged and high-quality enough, maybe traditional moderation becomes unnecessary? We're not trying to scale to millions of users anyway.Have you seen small, closed communities work without formal moderation? Or does human nature always require some kind of enforcement mechanism?
This is excellent practical advice. The invite-only approach especially resonates - we're actually planning something similar.
I'm curious about the cold start dilemma though: invite-only is great for quality, but creates a chicken-and-egg problem for early adoption. Do you think it's worth the slower growth from day one?
Also, for initial promotion - better to avoid platforms like Twitter (where average user quality is lower) and focus on higher-quality channels, even if reach is smaller?
Would love your thoughts on balancing growth vs quality in early stages.
This level of thinking is exactly what we need more of in community design.
We're actually launching a developer platform called GistFans that experiments with these governance questions - contribution-based voting, transparent processes, etc.
Would love your perspective on our approach - happy to share details if you're interested.
Great example! The Discourse trust levels are exactly what I've been thinking about.
We're experimenting with something similar - a "Star" system where users earn influence through contributions and can spend it on governance decisions. Early results suggest contribution-based voting leads to much more thoughtful decisions.
How well does Discourse handle controversial governance choices? I'm curious if trust levels work when communities face difficult decisions.
That's a really interesting distinction. You're right that tech communities operate under different social contracts than political ones.
I'm curious what you think those different "social rules and standards" should be? Like, in a political system, we accept inefficiency for legitimacy.
Do you think a proposal system where voting power is earned through contribution would create fundamentally different dynamics than traditional political voting? Would that change the types of decisions that get made?