Preface
I’m writing this on the eve of Ontario’s 2025 election. I know that this is unfortunately another election that is not held under a proportional representation (PR) electoral system.
I am just an ordinary Canadian citizen – I don’t consider myself an activist, yet I can recognize an unfair and abusive system.
But now is not the time to let pessimism dissuade us from the democracy we deserve. With Duverger’s Law (i.e., in non-PR electoral systems, a trend towards a two-parties), we are running out of time to act. Canada’s 2021 effective number of parties is 2.76 - this number will decrease over time, and will eventually end Canadian democracy as we know it today.
I’m not writing this to get donation money (although here is the Fair Vote Canada donation site), but this is just the reality with live with and the future we are fighting for.
Proposed 2025 objective
to be in the top 100 most subscribed communities for lemmy.ca. Achieved on 2025-03-02.- As of writing this post (2025-02-26), [email protected] is currently 111th rank with 261 subscribers.
To be in the top 100, this would technically mean having >= 296 subscribers, but for simplicity, let’s set the goal to be >= 300 subscribers before 2026. That’s just ~40 new subscribers by the end of the year. Achieved on 2025-03-02.Where we currently are https://lemmy.ca/communities?listingType=Local&sort=TopAll&page=3, and where we want to be https://lemmy.ca/communities?listingType=Local&sort=TopAll&page=2 (or on page=1, of course). Achieved on 2025-03-02.
While I love a good, yeasty, loaf of bread 🍞, [email protected] has 638 subscribers, which is 144.4% more than our 261. I suppose you could say I’m jealous.
Next steps
Before the end of March 2025, please comment on whether:
- this is a good objective to have
- if it’s not a good objective, what other objectives should we pursue
- Ideas on how to achieve our objectives
Statistics
| Date | users/month | u/m % of c/Canada | mod/u/m | posts | comments | Subscribers | subscribers % of c/Canada |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025-02-26 | - | - | - | - | - | 261 | - |
| 2025-02-28 | 785 | - | - | - | - | - | - |
| 2025-03-03 | 866 | 11.994% | 23.09‱ | 205 | 629 | 323 | 3.968% |
| 2025-03-04 | 942 | 13.120% | 21.23‱ | 211 | 654 | 342 | 4.191% |
| 2025-03-05 | 894 | 12.556% | 22.37‱ | 213 | 665 | 354 | 4.317% |
| 2025-03-06 | 891 | 11.770% | 22.45‱ | 218 | 674 | 374 | 4.539% |
| 2025-03-07 | 904 | 10.984% | 22.12‱ | 219 | 683 | 377 | 4.531% |
| 2025-03-08 | 951 | 11.149% | 21.03‱ | 229 | 694 | 389 | 4.587% |
| 2025-03-09 | 971 | 11.174% | 20.60‱ | 232 | 706 | 406 | 4.749% |
| 2025-03-10 | 1.02k | 11.384% | 19.61‱ | 237 | 740 | 421 | 4.867% |
| 2025-03-11 | 1.04k | 11.441% | 19.608‱ | 238 | 750 | 437 | 5.017% |
| 2025-03-12 | 1.05k | 11.254% | 19.048‱ | 239 | 751 | 441 | 5.029% |
| 2025-03-13 | 1.12K | 11.655% | 17.857‱ | 247 | 804 | 442 | 5.017% |
| 2025-03-14 | 1.17k | 12.037% | 17.094‱ | 259 | 828 | 448 | 5.062% |
| 2025-03-15 | 1.19k | 12.143% | 16.807‱ | 270 | 853 | 452 | 5.079% |
| 2025-03-16 | 1.22k | 12.449% | 16.393‱ | 273 | 868 | 459 | 5.140% |
| 2025-03-17 | 1.3k | 13.333% | 15.385‱ | 280 | 907 | 465 | 5.196% |
| 2025-03-18 | 1.33K | 13.516% | 15.038‱ | 291 | 952 | 469 | 5.229% |
| 2025-03-19 | 1.36k | 13.977% | 14.706‱ | 296 | 989 | 471 | 5.233% |
| 2025-03-20 | 1.41k | 9.78k (u/m Canada) | 2 (mods) | 310 | 1.04k | 474 | 9.02k (subs Canada) |
| 2025-03-21 | 1.48k | 10k | 2 | 332 | 1.04k | 479 | 9.04k |
| 2025-03-22 | 1.51k | 10.3k | 2 | 348 | 1.1k | 481 | 9.06k |
| 2025-03-23 | 1.53k | 10.4k | 2 | 361 | 1.13k | 485 | 9.08k |
| 2025-03-24 | 1.55k | 10.4k | 2 | 370 | 1.18k | 490 | 9.1k |
| 2025-03-25 | 1.58k | 10.5k | 2 | 382 | 1.22k | 509 | 9.13k |
| 2025-03-26 | 1.64k | 10.6k | 2 | 417 | 1.27k | 533 | 9.15k |
| 2025-03-27 | 1.71k | 10.6k | 2 | 450 | 1.35k | 554 | 9.16k |
| 2025-03-28 | 1.75k | 10.8k | 2 | 476 | 1.4k | 558 | 9.22k |
| 2025-03-29 | 1.79k | 10.9k | 2 | 494 | 1.45k | 562 | 9.26k |
| 2025-03-30 | 1.83k | 11k | 2 | 516 | 1.47k | 562 | 9.27k |
| 2025-03-31 | 1.87k | 11.1k | 2 | 537 | 1.52k | 571 | 9.31k |
| 2025-04-01 | 1.92k | 11.2k | 2 | 570 | 1.55k | 572 | 9.33k |
| 2025-04-02 | 1.9k | 11.3k | 2 | 581 | 1.59k | 576 | 9.36k |
| 2025-04-03 | 1.81k | 11.3k | 2 | 609 | 1.6k | 580 | 9.39k |
I originally posted this in a separate post, but was redirected here. It’s more about the “how” rather than the “what”, original text below:
The community description explicitly states that this community is non-partisan. I think this is a very smart call because we’ll need people with all sorts of different political ideologies to get onboard if we’re ever going have a shot at implementing some form of PR.
However lately the sub seems to be filled with anti Poilievre articles that don’t seem to have anything to so with electoral reform. I’m no fan of Poilievre, but in my experience electoral reform is already unfairly labeled as a “leftist” policy.
My opinion is that the most important thing we can do is help conservatives understand that PR is in their best interest just as much as it is for people on the left. It means the conservative movement no longer needs to live under one giant tent. It will be able to split into multiple parties that can then form coalitions on the issues that matter to them. Conservatives on the fringe benefit because at least they’ll have some representation in parliament.
Anyway, any conservatives who are interested in electoral reform and come peek at this community will be immediately turned off by the content that’s here. So please, let’s try to keep posts as non-partisan as possibly, and focused on things relevant to electoral reform!
Seconded.
The both of you are talking about separate topics.
Ahal is talking about the “anti-conservative” posts, while you are talking about the general Canadian politics.
The purpose of this thread is to discuss exactly that, what kinds of content we should be ok with having in this forum. Please make the case for it, as it’s not been brought up explicitly by anybody except yourself.
They kind of go hand in hand though. Given Lemmy’s demographics, the “general Canadian politics” posts which get the most traction are going to be anti-conservative ones.
My main concern with general politics posts is that they will dilute the core message of PR. Too much “clutter” in people’s feeds might also cause the people who are most interested in PR to unsubscribe.
Not really. You can have one without the other.
We also need general politics posts to grow the movement to new people who have never heard of proportional representation before. I’ve generally tried to keep topics to democracy, or from PR supporting parties, or PR itself. It’s not like there are no rules.
This isn’t what I’ve found to be the case based on the community statistics I’ve been tracking every day. The data suggests more activity consisent with what I’ve mentioned earlier (topics to democracy, or from PR supporting parties, or PR itself).
I’m sorry that you believe this is not what the PR community needs, but if you can come up with more PR content, by all means post them to the community. I’m just a volunteer, so you really shouldn’t be expecting anything from me for a free service.
That’s an interesting idea, though I don’t think it is the only way to achieve that goal. I think mentioning PR in and crossposting to general Canadian politics communities could work too.
I’m not sure that raw engagement is necessarily the best metric to track. Outrage is great for engagement, but often does not lead to constructive action. For example, I’ve increases in “haha, PP bad” comments, which, while they might be true, exacerbate political division and do directly advance awareness of PR.
Is your strategy to use engagement-optimized posts as a sort of advertisement for the community? That would be an interesting idea, though I am unsure of its effectiveness.
Of course. I hope I didn’t come across as ungrateful. I’d love to see this community succeed at its goals of getting PR implemented across Canada. Thank you for all the work that you do. :)
I completely agree with your points about keeping our focus on electoral reform and maintaining a non-partisan approach. Our community is quite new, and still trying to figure out what it is (hence this thread).
You’ve hit on something fundamental - proportional representation isn’t a left/right issue, it’s a democratic fairness issue that benefits voters across the political spectrum.
You’re absolutely right that conservatives have just as much to gain from PR as progressives do. Under our current FPTP system, conservative voters in liberal-dominated ridings essentially have no voice in Parliament, and vice versa. PR would allow for a more natural evolution of our political landscape, potentially enabling:
The mathematical case for PR is clear regardless of one’s ideology - when roughly 50% of ballots cast make absolutely no difference to the outcome of an election, we have a serious democratic deficit.
I’ve noticed the same trend you mentioned regarding content that doesn’t directly relate to electoral reform (relating to the newness of the forum). While there’s certainly room to discuss how various politicians approach democratic issues, we should be cautious about letting the community become an echo chamber or a place that feels unwelcoming to potential PR advocates from across the political spectrum.
Perhaps we could encourage more content that specifically demonstrates how PR would benefit conservative voters? I’d love to see analysis showing how many conservative votes were effectively “wasted” in the last election, or how PR would change representation patterns for conservatives in traditionally non-conservative regions.
See this draft content moderation policy, that I created specifically in response to your feedback!
Right on! That draft looks great, no notes. Just wanted to say thanks for putting it together and for the quick response. Also for taking the time to get this community off the ground, all much appreciated!