Psephos.cc - an experiment in self-moderation

> Psephos (Ancient Greek: ψῆφος, romanized: psêphos; plural: psephoi, ψῆφοι) was a ballot used by jurors (dikastai) in the law courts of ancient Athens to cast a secret ballot. ## Decentralized moderation Reddit and many clones have the issue that moderation is mainly handled by a couple of unpaid volunteers. This creates two problems: the mods have too much arbitrary power, but at the same time they have too much work. <figure class="img-half"><img src="/media/articles/images/image_i0lYFX9.webp" alt="image" class=""><figcaption>Bronze psephoi from the Ancient Agora of Athens. The hollow-pegged ballot (top) was for conviction, while the solid-pegged one (bottom) was for acquittal, ca. 300 BC. Ancient Agora Museum in Athens.</figcaption></figure> ## With small power comes low responsibility To address this issue we tried a decentralized, jury-based moderation system. The site has site-wide [rules](https://www.psephos.cc/rules/) and board (subs) specific ones. When reporting content the rule that was infringed has to be selected, if enough (n=1 currently) reports are made a jury of users is randomly selected to judge the case. To handle egregious cases rapidly board's admins can fast-track moderation, but the user can contest which will result in a jury being selected as in the "slow" path. In theory this system should scale better and avoid some of the issues with the "mod-king" model of reddit, but whether this actually works in practice remains to be seen. ## Media views Another issue with reddit is that e.g. images often take over text content, due to their mass appeal to our weak-willed human brains. For example the r/photography allows only text posts, as it would otherwise be overrun by images. But isn't it a bit ironic for a photography sub not to allow photographs? To solve this we introduced different views of a board: all / text / images / videos. That way different types of posts can coexist without cannibalizing each other. ## No BS? No ads, no tracking, no google, no AI, open-source (eventually), global-first ("news" is not about the USA), etc. ## Give it a try I've disabled email verification, so making an account should be easy. ## FAQ - Federated ? No, I'm not sure how that would work with moderation. - Mobile app ? No. - Economic model? Donation-based / non-profit (eventually) - Bots ? No magic solution besides standard practices, but I think it's a big problem that will need some institutional solution (some form of privacy-respecting ID system) * * * ### References [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psephoi](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psephoi)