Calitabby Governance
Updated 2025-07-23Calitabby strives to be as democratized as possible given the constraints of an internet community and services. This document outlines the policies and procedures for governing the Calitabby Network.
Governing Board
The Governing Board is responsible for the operation, maintenance and moderation of the services. There are currently three positions: Server Operator, Janitor and Senior Janitor.
Server Operator
The Server Operator posesses the equipment and service provider accounts and is responsible for the operation of the Services and underlying infrastructure. They also hold the funds in the Calitabby Treasury. The current Server Operator is crispycat.
Janitor
Janitors are among other things responsible for:
- Enforcing the Code of Conduct
- Welcoming newcomers to the community
- Facilitating dispute resolution between members
- Preventing abuse of the services
- Participation in appeals of moderation decisions
- Coordinating moderation with other communities such as Matrix servers
- Occasional other tasks, such as facilitating/participating in tribunals or elections
Janitors are elected by Community Vote. Upon determination by the Governing Board of the need for additional Janitors an application will be presented to the community for Candidates to register. Candidates must be in good standing in the community and approved by the Governing Board for inclusion on the ballot. Candidates must have a Calitabby account or create one upon election.
Senior Janitor
Senior Janitors are elected by Governing Board vote. They have additional permissions and some service management capability. Their responsibilities include, in addition to those of regular Janitors:
- Facilitating dispute resolution between Janitors
- Coordinating the exercise of duties between Governing Board members
Governing Board Vote
A majority vote by the Governing Board is required for the following:
- Any moderation action that affects multiple users, such as adding an ACL ban for a given server
- To uphold an appealed moderation action
- To elect Senior Janitors
- Any other matter the Governing Board deems necessary to vote on
A Governing Board vote is started by creating an issue on the Voting Git Repository describing the action to be taken. Governing Board members cast their vote by commenting yes, no or abstain. A majority vote means floor(N / 2) + 1 yes votes where N is the number of current Governing Board members. The Server Operator can require a supermajority of floor(N * 2 / 3) + 1 yes votes; if they exercise this option their vote is not counted. In the case of voting on the removal of a Janitor, said Janitor's vote is not counted.
Community Vote
A majority vote by the Community is required for any matter that generally affects the availability, operation or moderation of the Services. This includes changes to this document or the Code of Conduct, and discontinuing a service. Generally, matters should be voted on by the Governing Board first, but this is not a strict requirement. Janitors are also elected through Community Vote using a Single transferrable vote system. Other matters require a majority vote, calculated by floor(N / 2) + 1 yes votes where N is the number of total ballots.
Any community member who has at least one Calitabby account may complete one ballot; using alts to vote is not permitted, voids any ballot completed by that user and may result in all associated accounts being suspended. Voting is conducted via the Calitabby Survey site. There is currently no system in place to allow anonymity while voting, however Ballots are made visible only to the Governing Board for verification and are not published. Counted Election results will be published on this site and announced in #announcements:calitabby.net.
Monthly Survey
The general direction of the services is determined by the results of the Monthly Survey. The content of the monthly survey is decided by the Governing Board. Please see the survey page for more details.