No, I agree that there must be a rule(s) to prevent just this sort of thing. I’m only objecting in an attempt to help moderation craft the best version of the rule for the desired effect. And even with that said, an imperfect solution is better than no solution, so my objection should be disregarded if there’s no way around it.

Possibly there should be new systems in place, such as registering membership with communities beyond simply subscribing, and then it would be very clear who should vote on community issues.

I’m always wary of how such systems can be gamed and how they’ll influence user behavior, but the only downside to trying is your own efforts. Even if you fail miserably, I imagine the exercise itself would improve our understanding of what works, what doesn’t, and how to form better approaches in the future. To succeed in making a system which improves user interactions would be a truly wonderful thing, and may even translate to IRL applications. I would urge you to follow through with this for as long as you feel it’s something you’d like to do.

But it would still be possible for me and a number of trolls/bots to make accounts here and participate in voting, right?

I completely agree with the sentiment of involving the community, I just remember having problems with direct democracy on Reddit and question what the best implementation is.

People on other instances can be community members as well, which is an extra complication on top of Reddit’s problems in the “Who’s allowed to vote?” question.

“All decisions affecting the community and its members as a whole must be backed by a public vote.”

Is there a way on Lemmy to distinguish who is or isn’t a community member? Is there a way to prevent me from rigging votes with a bot army or a group of bad actors?

I think going forward it would be wise to have a rule that communities need to be actively moderated at some minimum interval by an account on the community’s home instance, or else face closure or the institution of new moderation. Sitting on an unused community is like owning unused private property. “I don’t want this, but I don’t want you to have it either.”