This is a seriously problematic proposal. The main problem is the new idea that posts may be edited collectively by high reputation users, much as on Wikipedia articles are edited collectively.
This cannot be abided for the simple reason that the author's name appears on the bottom. When your name and reputation are attached to a post, you need to have final say on the content. The content must be controlled by you, down to the last comma.
Further, the proposal states that edits are to be restricted to those that don't change meaning. This is not necessary, and such a rule can cause problems. There is no restriction on edits when you have the author's permission. With permission, you can rewrite the whole thing from top to bottom! This sometimes happens, and the author is sometimes happy with the result.
The only case you need to consider in rulemaking is when there is a conflict: the author wants things one way, and the moderator and collective of high rep users want it another way. In this case, the individual whose name appears on the bottom must take precedence, as it is their reputation that is at stake.
For a specific stackexchange example of where this came up: on a question regarding Neitzche, I quoted an extremely racist passage of Nietzsche, the quote was saying that 'Negroes' feel very little pain compared to 'civilized people', and I called this passage "the stupidest thing I have read in a book". This 'stupidest thing' opinion was deleted (the reason cited was that it was rude), and the result of this omission made me look like I wanted to debate whether black people feel as much pain as white people! I was not willing to look like I am accepting of racism, I was horrified. Still, my name was permanently attached to this post, the post was locked, and there was nothing I could do about it. This is not an acceptable situation, and I hope this example explains why content with your name on it must always be controlled by you.
Change 1 is both unproblematic and pointless (it is simply inserted as a political trick, a way of making the other proposals look more reasonable, by starting things off with something uncontroversial).
Change 2 is not acceptable in any way shape or form, due to the right of an author to control content under their name (see above)
Change 3 is not acceptable either, but less so than change 2.
The main goal of the user rights is to avoid censoring topics politically. This is the main danger on sites such as this, the constant blocking of folks who have an opinion that is different from that which is the mainstream. This churning and testing of mainstream opinion is the sine-qua-non of internet sites, it is the main purpose, and it is the reason that things seem so rude--- internet comments are actually effective at changing opinions.
The only advantage of the internet over traditional media is the ability to correct a false consensus. This requires bending over backwards to not censor any opinion, to have full freedom of speech, and to allow unlimited conflict (within the confines of no-repetition and no off-topic content).
There is a culture issue here, perhaps, as those from Europe remember the Nazi era, and instituted restrictions on speech to prevent Nazis from doing politics. The USA never restricted Nazis, and dealt with their own neo-Nazis using free speech against these groups. In Europe, after a slow decline, the neo-Nazis use the laws against them as a persuasive argument that they are right, and this gives their arguments a legitimacy that they do not have in the US. In the US, holocaust denial does not exist, and neo-Nazis are totally powerless and would never win an election. This is precisely because they lost without their free-speech rights having been curtailed. The US is less accomodating of racism than anywhere else, precisely because it has no laws against racism. It is less accomodating of sexism than anywhere else, precisely because it has no laws against sexism. Once you experience freedom of speech, you never see the point of going back--- there is no speech that needs to be restricted because it is wrong. The only speech that needs to be restricted is that which is repetitive spam, or which is a direct threat to another person's well-being or safety. While arguably neo-Nazi stuff was a direct threat in 1950, it is not a direct threat today, and its suppression paradoxically makes it stronger than it would be under conditions of total freedom, as is shown by the example of the US. In case one thinks that the reason is the isolation of the US from Naziism, must I remind you that the Ku-Klux-Klan is homegrown to the US, predated European Naziism, and was politically dominant in the South throughout the 1950s and exerted influence well into the 1980s.
The omission of the line, while not altering the policy, alters the intent.
As for change 4, the word "fix" in this context means "rig". "Fixing an election" means inviting your friends to vote up your nomination and vote down others. If you wish to say "easy to rig online" instead of "easy to fix online", that's fine.
Elections on online fora are not usually a good statistical sample of opinion of the community. As the elections proceed, some people leave (those who disagree with the outcome of previous elections) and the group of involved folks shrinks to those who most agree with the current policy, much like the elections within one single political party. The result is analogous to one-party rule, where folks with different ideas are never allowed to moderate.
The statement that moderators are chosen for high level contributions is to make sure that the moderators understand physics, and are focused on science, not on politics. The election process on Wikipedia is extremely dirty, as there are 10 moderators who will vote on every election and guarantee that only those that they approve of will get a position of moderatorship. I don't think there is the idea that policy is to be decided by a neverending process of one-party rule, like ArbCom on Wikipedia.
I hope that you can go along with the current user rights, as they are mininal freedoms. The one example of moderation overstepping the bounds was only fixed here because we could use this document. I hope there is no change at all to the policy.
Q&A (4870)
