Governance
The ledger
Every proposal there has ever been. The ones that passed, the ones that were voted down, the ones that closed without reaching quorum, and the ones nobody seconded. Nothing here is ever deleted.
What will be here. One entry per proposal, forever: what a member asked for and why, in their words; where it was proposed; how many members seconded it; if it reached a ballot, how many were eligible when it opened, how many voted, the turnout that gives, and the bar it had to clear; the editor’s wording and any revision to it; and what happened in the end. Entries are never edited and never removed, including the ones that failed.
Who can read it. Anybody, with no account. Every proposal from every city is readable from here by anybody: the record is filterable by place and never partitioned by it, because “you can only see your own city’s ledger” would be a hiding place.
Why it is empty. Not because nothing has been proposed and hidden — because nothing has been proposed. Voting opens once there are enough members in a place for a 3% quorum to mean something. Publishing a ballot before then would be publishing theatre.
What you can already check. The whole topic bank is published and readable with no account, every option included. The charter — the five rules a vote cannot override — is published in full. And the rule that the editor may not decline a topic members voted for is written down now, before there is any pressure to break it, which is the only time such a rule is worth writing down.
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.
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.
Why this is published at all
The obvious threat to a members’ bank is a coordinated group voting something in or out. The defences are ordinary — one member one vote, no weighting, eligibility rules, rate limits — but the strongest one is this page. A campaign that has to happen in public, against a turnout figure anyone can compare with every other ballot, mostly does not happen.
The corollary is a commitment made in advance: a topic is not removed because somebody objects to its existence. Not for a journalist, not for an advocacy group, not for a competitor. Members put it there and members can vote it out, in public. What can compel a change is the law, an app store, or a payment processor — and when one of those happens it is recorded here, with the reason, rather than quietly done.
The five rules a vote cannot override