Suppose instead of election a man were qualified for office by petition signed by four thousand citizens. He would then represent those four thousand affirmatively, with no disgruntled minority, for what would have been a minority in a territorial constituency would all be free to start other petitions or join in them. All would then be represented by men of their choice. Or a man with eight thousand supporters might have two votes in this body. Difficulties, objections, practical points to be worked out — many of them! But you could work them out. . . and thereby avoid the chronic sickness of representative government, the disgruntled minority which feels — correctly! — that it has been disenfranchised.

I've been thinking about The Moon is a Harsh Mistress and Heinlein's stance on governance (or lack there of). It mixed in with Hubski thoughts and I started wondering.

I'll be the first to say that this is a solution for a problem that doesn't exist yet and it's more a thought experiment than anything else but - what would happen if we could follow the moderation options of other users.

This would, of course, make de facto moderators to the site. It would, of course, congeal power in the power users and create a system where getting on the bad side of a few could blacklist you from most. But it still interests me.

It creates a curated experience for new users or users who don't have the time or inclination to fight trolls, and gives the users the power to abandon moderators and still get to participate in the site.

This may have been discussed before, but a few quick searches didn't turn up anything.