Governance
What members are voting on
Members decide what this product asks. Not the company — members, by vote, in public, with the count on the page. This is everything that is open right now.
What will be here. One row per open proposal: what a member asked for, the place it was proposed for, how many members have seconded it or voted on it, how many were eligible when it opened, and the bar it has to clear. Failed and lapsed proposals do not disappear when they close — they move to the ledger with their numbers attached.
Why there is nothing yet. A ballot needs a membership before it means anything. Quorum is 3% of the active members at the ballot’s own scope, and 3% of a handful of people is not a vote — it is a number that could be moved by one group chat. Proposals open when there are enough members in a place for that arithmetic to be worth publishing, and until then this page says so rather than showing an empty list and implying the machinery is running.
What does not change in the meantime. The whole bank is already published and readable without an account, the charter is already published, and the company already cannot decline a topic members vote for. Those are the parts that can be checked before there is anybody to vote, so they are the parts that shipped first.
How a topic gets in, and out
- A member proposes it. Any verified member whose account is at least 30 days old, one proposal per member per 30 days.
- 50 members second it within 30 days, or it goes no further. That is what keeps the ballot from filling with things nobody but the proposer cares about.
- Members vote, for 30 days. A simple majority of the votes cast adds a topic; retiring one needs 60%, because removing a topic takes away a filter other people are relying on. Either way the ballot has to reach a quorum of 3% of the members eligible at its own scope.
- An editor words it. The editor may not decline a topic members voted for. They decide only how it is asked, and the wording goes back to members for review.
- It enters the bank, with its whole history attached.
A topic existing in the bank is not an endorsement of any answer to it. Answering anything outside the Core Ten is optional, so adding a topic coerces nobody — which is why the bar to add one is deliberately lower than the bar to take one away.
Who votes, and what a vote is worth
One member, one vote. No weighting, ever. Eligibility is photo verification, an active subscription and 30 days of account age — not seniority, not spend, not activity. A weighted vote is exactly the kind of invisible thumb on the scale this company exists to refuse, and there is no tier of membership that buys one.
Quorum is always of the scope. A city topic needs 3% of that city’s active members, a country topic 3% of that country’s, a global topic 3% of everybody. A real local argument clears a city quorum in days; the same proposal put to every member on earth would never reach quorum and would be noise to almost everyone who saw it.
You can read all of this without an account. Voting needs one, and this page will not pretend otherwise by showing you a control that sends you to a signup form.
What is published about people, and what is not
Vote totals, second counts and turnout are public. Individual votes are not, and no page here attributes a vote, a second or a proposal to a person. Members can choose to be named to other members; that choice is recorded, and this page still prints no name, because it is public and indexed and a proposal is a statement about abortion, faith, medicine or sex.
If a group of accounts is found to be inauthentic, their votes are voided publicly with the reason stated, rather than quietly discounted. A thumb on the scale nobody can see is the thing this whole record exists to rule out.