Autism Forge is run by the people who use it. Not by whoever arrived first, not by whoever holds a role — by whoever the members choose.
How it works
- Everyone with an account gets one vote. Ops and admins vote too, and their vote counts exactly the same as yours. There is no weighting, no veto, and no second ballot for staff.
- Anyone with an account can stand. You do not need to be an op, be nominated by anyone, or have been here for years. Put your name forward and say what you would do.
- The president serves a fixed term — one year — and then the members choose again. Nobody stays in office by default.
- It runs itself. Nominations open automatically as a term runs down, voting opens when nominations close, and the result is declared and the next term started without anyone having to remember. An election cannot be quietly skipped by the person it would remove.
- Running totals are hidden while voting is open, so nobody can see which way the wind is blowing and jump on the bandwagon. The full count is published the moment it closes.
When something goes wrong
A fixed term assumes the president is still there to serve it. When that stops being true, the site does not wait out the year — an emergency election starts, on a much shorter clock (a few days to stand, a few to vote).
- They resign. The post is vacated and an election opens immediately.
- Their account is banned or closed. Detected automatically; the post is vacated and an election opens.
- They go quiet. If the president has not logged in for about three months, an election is called — but they are not removed first. People get ill and life happens; they can stand again and say so.
- The members recall them. Any member can sign a motion of no confidence. If a quarter of the recently-active members sign it, an election is called. Signing does not remove anyone — it puts the job back to the members, and the sitting president is free to stand and win. A recall that simply handed the post to whoever organised it would be a worse problem than the one it solved.
- An admin calls one early. Recorded in the audit log and announced in chat, so it cannot be done quietly.
Who does what
| The members | Elect the president. Edit every page of this wiki. Run the forum. This is the top of the structure, not the bottom. |
| The president | Elected by the members and answerable to them. Sets the direction; the admins carry out their instructions. |
| Admins | Keep the servers running and do what the elected president asks. They are staff, not the government. |
| Ops | Look after the rooms hour to hour. Their only power over a person is to move a troublesome one to the banned room — a walled garden where that person can still read, still talk to the ops, and still appeal. Even that is not one op's decision: every op has to agree (see below). Ops cannot silence you, cannot disappear you, and cannot change the rules. |
Getting someone banned
No single op can ban anyone. A ban is a vote of the ops, and all of them have to agree — every op currently on the roll gets a ballot, and the ban only happens when every one of them has said yes. One op saying no is the end of it. (An op who has not been seen for a fortnight drops off the roll until they return, so one absent op cannot leave the site unable to act.)
If someone is making a room unliveable, you do not have to go looking for an op — request the summoner. That is the 🚨 Summon help button in the chat, and anyone may press it, guests included. The summoner has one job: to wake the majestic. Every op on duty is called at once, wherever they are, and your case is put in front of all of them together — which is exactly the shape a ban needs, because all of them have to agree to it.
What passes is a stay in the banned room, not an erasure: the person can still read, still talk to the ops, and still appeal — and the vote that put them there is on the public record with the rest.
The first term
The democracy started with the people who were already running the site. That was a starting point, not a claim on the place: their term ends on the same schedule as anyone else's, and when it does, the members choose. Nothing about having been here first carries forward.
The point
Plenty of communities say they belong to their members and are in practice owned by whoever holds the password. The difference here is that the handover is written into the software: the clock runs whether or not the people in charge want it to.