Why the Adjudication Panel’s Authority Was Greatly Expanded: From the Platform Decides to Shared Governance

Recently we have devoted a great deal of energy to building the Adjudication Panel.

From the earliest days, when members were invited to adjudicate mutual-aid disputes, to later additions of deliberation and amendment of the covenant, and now to handing more disputes between members and the platform over to the Panel, it has become increasingly clear to us that we are doing this not merely to add one more channel for handling complaints and disputes.

After so many years of running KangAi Commune, one feeling runs deep: if the platform always decides everything by itself, many things become genuinely difficult.

When the platform sticks to the rules, some say it lacks humanity; when the platform bends them, it may be unfair to other members; when the platform revises the rules, some say the platform simply does as it pleases; when it does not revise them, unreasonable provisions may persist indefinitely.

So we want to try a different approach: for some matters, the platform is no longer the sole judge — members take part as well.

Of course, we also know that putting matters to a vote does not mean the problem is solved. The view of the majority is not necessarily fairness, and the adjudication procedure itself may be imperfect. So we will continue to improve the Panel: how cases are accepted, how both sides’ arguments and evidence are presented, how conflicts of interest are avoided, and how similar cases can receive similar treatment.

We are particularly eager to link adjudication, deliberation and amendment into a genuine whole.

When a dispute arises, we should not simply finish with this one person’s case and leave it at that. We should also ask: why did this dispute occur? Is the rule unclear? Is something in it unreasonable to begin with?

If the problem really lies in the rule, then it should be discussed openly and, where necessary, the covenant should be amended.

Find the problem, solve the problem, and then fix the rules that tend to produce the problem.

That is what makes us value the Adjudication Panel more and more.

We are not doing this to shift the platform’s responsibilities onto members. On the contrary, we hope KangAi Commune will gradually develop a capacity: many things no longer depend on one person at the platform making the call, and when something goes wrong, there is a way to discover and correct it ourselves.

The Adjudication Panel is still very young, and many things about it are certainly imperfect. We do not intend to design it to be complicated all at once; rather, we hope to find problems bit by bit in actual operation and fix them bit by bit.

If one day, even without the judgment of any single individual, KangAi Commune can still operate according to rules that everyone has recognized together — with disputes being adjudicated, flawed rules being amended, and mistakes by the platform being corrected —

then I think that is the KangAi Commune we truly hope to see, and the one capable of realizing the goal of a Century Commune.