What about a membership system? Like a union or guild? People pay their dues and agree to support the collective actions, and the union uses the funds to hire people to investigate cases and plan strategy etc. Like with insurance, someone too likely to cause trouble might not be allowed in. (This way we prevent the group from quickly being dominated by real witches.)
Yeah, I suspect it would have to be roughly in that direction. Both free-riders and witches are a problem.
Just to make sure we refer to the same thing by “witches”: people who are pro-Enlightenment, but they also (1) are pro-something-else, and they actually mostly get attacked for the other thing, or (2) have a disagreeable personality that gets them into disproportionate amounts of conflicts, so again they kinda get attacked more for their personality than for their beliefs. I mean, both of these are a problem.
This is a potential meta-problem, where the free-rider would excuse their restraint by arguing that the person under attack is a witch. But if there is a formal membership, this kind of accusation would have to be made in advance.
On the other hand, formal membership also has its problems. People will hesitate to join for all kinds of reasons. The enemies could use the member list as a convenient target list—if you have enough firepower, you can take out the entire organization in one go.
So, maybe you could have a group that only includes the people who care most strongly about the issue. They would also defend non-members, which has a free-rider problem, but they could also ask for voluntary financial support from the non-members (which would allow some of them to contribute to the cause without exposing themselves), and perhaps would be partially rewarded by high status in the community.
Shortly, a pro-Enlightenment “think tank” that would plan strategy, write press releases, etc. If the members are employed by the think tank, they cannot be fired by a Twitter mob. (Now they just need a rich sponsor, or a large donor base.) They could also coordinate volunteers: people who are willing to help a specific cause but do not want to make this a full-time job. Perhaps you could have 3-5 employees and dozens of volunteers. They couldn’t prevent someone from getting fired, but could make sure this does not happen without the displeasure of the other side being heard, and ideally without some cost for the perpetrators. (Like, imagine that every time someone gets fired by a Twitter mob, someone from the Twitter mob, and someone who caved to the mob, would face a lawsuit and have their name mentioned in the media.)
What about a membership system? Like a union or guild? People pay their dues and agree to support the collective actions, and the union uses the funds to hire people to investigate cases and plan strategy etc. Like with insurance, someone too likely to cause trouble might not be allowed in. (This way we prevent the group from quickly being dominated by real witches.)
Yeah, I suspect it would have to be roughly in that direction. Both free-riders and witches are a problem.
Just to make sure we refer to the same thing by “witches”: people who are pro-Enlightenment, but they also (1) are pro-something-else, and they actually mostly get attacked for the other thing, or (2) have a disagreeable personality that gets them into disproportionate amounts of conflicts, so again they kinda get attacked more for their personality than for their beliefs. I mean, both of these are a problem.
This is a potential meta-problem, where the free-rider would excuse their restraint by arguing that the person under attack is a witch. But if there is a formal membership, this kind of accusation would have to be made in advance.
On the other hand, formal membership also has its problems. People will hesitate to join for all kinds of reasons. The enemies could use the member list as a convenient target list—if you have enough firepower, you can take out the entire organization in one go.
So, maybe you could have a group that only includes the people who care most strongly about the issue. They would also defend non-members, which has a free-rider problem, but they could also ask for voluntary financial support from the non-members (which would allow some of them to contribute to the cause without exposing themselves), and perhaps would be partially rewarded by high status in the community.
Shortly, a pro-Enlightenment “think tank” that would plan strategy, write press releases, etc. If the members are employed by the think tank, they cannot be fired by a Twitter mob. (Now they just need a rich sponsor, or a large donor base.) They could also coordinate volunteers: people who are willing to help a specific cause but do not want to make this a full-time job. Perhaps you could have 3-5 employees and dozens of volunteers. They couldn’t prevent someone from getting fired, but could make sure this does not happen without the displeasure of the other side being heard, and ideally without some cost for the perpetrators. (Like, imagine that every time someone gets fired by a Twitter mob, someone from the Twitter mob, and someone who caved to the mob, would face a lawsuit and have their name mentioned in the media.)