These maintainers clearly have a lot of power. In a coop space it might make sense that maintainers are elected. In open source that power is largely held back by the 'one click revolution' of forking that lets anyone copy a project & take it in a new direction (WordPress is a fork of b2/cafelog, for e.g.). But that's another topic.
The main point is a problem – like disinfo, or 'we need to pay the moderators more' – doesn't go away because there's no consensus on the solution. It stays online…
Here the issue gets discussed. New problems, views & complexities emerge – and all of this feeds into eventual solutions.
Just as anyone in a coop can make a proposal for voting on, anyone can make a 'pull' or 'merge' request (PR/MR) with a solution (the terminology differs depending on the tool you use, frustratingly, but the concept is identical).
The Loomio proposal on disinfo was a mix of discussions on the problem & the suggested fix, with a single vote on both. Trackers separate the two…
With an open source tracker, anyone could offer their solution to "issue no. 23: Code of Conduct doesn't mention Disinfo" with some proposed new language for the CoC to cover that.
It's a bit like Track Changes in a Word processing doc where it's clear what you are suggesting to delete or add. Just the same the PR/MR can be approved or rejected – but this is by the Maintainers. This is why, unless it's fixing a typo, they often don't merge until there's been some discussion & consensus formed…
And this is where the minutiae of language changes and all the implications of it can be debated, emoji-voted & rewritten.
This methodology was designed for discussing changes to code - but it works really well for anything written (like a Code of Conduct or About Us page or documentation/help guide etc). For e.g. look at this #CiviCRM thread, running for near 4 months over a small language improvement: https://github.com/civicrm/civicrm-core/pull/24735 (finally tagged 'merge ready' yesterday! by Eileen, a maintainer)…
The key thing – the reason for this thread – is when consensus isn't found, such as with a Code of Conduct change – even if the PR is rejected, the issue stays open. The problem hasn't been fixed. The sword remains in the stone for further attempts to try & pull it out.
End of long thread… If you got this far & want to read more(!), I wrote of this relationship between Coops & Open Source governance systems in more depth: https://geo.coop/articles/more-ownership as part of the New School's #PlatformCoop course.
