Journal/blog of social coop

@thomasbeckett

30 day rolling average of favs of toots with at least 1 fav, any toot over that gets a boost.

Ninja edit: open to other selection proposals of course.

Where are we with this?

No idea, @mayel and @victormatekole are the two people I know that are on the Tech side but they might be a bit busy with the bugs/issues of Mastodon 2.0. Maybe create a thread over the Tech / Infrastructure WG?

@leosammallahti glad to discover this thread (just discovering this Loomio group). I note the thread has been asleep for 8 months. But I'd say the topic is of ongoing importance. And that all three modes referred to in your context are helpful ways of forming and sustaining a community. Notably, interview and debate. But published also in blog (when it arrives) or wiki, not just live in Mastodon.

This may not be the place to comment this (fork it if you like) . . . as a person discovering social.coop I still can't see any place to get a picture of the whole venture . . . purposes, persons, projects, media spaces. The wiki certainly doesn't do this - it's a bland, unhelpful front-page. @mattnoyes Prezi map may be going to a more public location? But currently the link is buried deep inside the Loomio space. And the Prezi is far from self-explanatory. The portal at OpenCollective only identifies Mastodon as a way in - and I'm the kind of person who would much prefer a static page/site/map rather than a flow of chat, as an entry point/ongoing reference point, to an organisation/community/project.

. . all that slash slash stuff is an indicator that, after 10 days, I still wouldn't know how to describe social.Coop.

Have I somehow missed the front door, welcome message and master map? My browser (duckduckgo) doesn't come up with any hits in the first twenty that are more helpful..

@muninn @mikeh8 So one of the goals of getting a Community Ops Team up and going (besides handling on boarding and CoC issues) was to provide the educational framework for new users. It doesn't exist beyond what the early "founders"/members of SC were able to do. The official resolution to establish/provide scope of the Community Ops team hasn't happened yet but anyone interested should going the Community Working Group to contribute to that.

Thanks @robertbenjamin for your pointer to the Community Working Group. I do have a feeling to contribute to a clearer structuring of info regarding the coop, its working structure, current projects, architecture of component systems, governance, responsible individuals, mission, etc. @muninn and I both are having trouble seeing the wood for the trees.

However, Community Working Group seems to be about administrative and regulatory mechanics (including important things like inclusiveness). My sense is that the group called Editorial would be more appropriate for the work that I think needs doing. And that group has zero content, not even a description.Does anybody agree that the necessary work is 'editorial'?

Please anyone, where do I turn? A group with no convenor and no description? A group that I think is not the right one? If there was even a list somewhere, of 'officers' of social.coop, I could contact one or other of you. But there doesn't seem to be.Have I missed it?

Shall I join the Editorial group and open a thread on Describing the social.coop structure, processes and purposes? Does that make me a default group convenor? How do things get done around here - do I need to be approved or anything? Maybe there's a rulebook?

@robertbenjamin I don't see this as 'education of new members'. I think it's simply the clear presentation that any organisation should be making of itself to the world: what it does, how it works, what it's for. In that sense, it's basic 'editorial' work that I think needs doing. 'Education' sits a level down from that I feel, at the level of skills or more detailed procedural signposting?

I feel the same way, Mike, about there not being clarity around info and seeing the wood for the trees. I think some of this and the questions you have about whom to contact around working in the Editorial group space, may be related to the governance structure still being worked out. I don't think there is clarity on all that yet, though I may be wrong. I joined this instance relatively recently and am not sure! But that's my sense at the moment.

I think what you want to start doing around making more information available in a clearer fashion sounds excellent, and I'd be happy to help.

I wonder if starting a new thread here in the social.coop general space, asking about what the editorial group was meant to be and why it's empty, and whether this effort would fit, might work? Your comments are good ones but are currently in another thread that others might not be paying as much attention to as they might in a new thread with a title devoted specifically to the question about the editorial group.

Just a thought; honestly I don't know how else to address your really important questions!

Describing the wood and the trees

Thanks @christinahendricks for suggesting a more prominent post. I'll hang in here a little longer. I'd rather open a working thread in 'the right place' than raise an enquiry thread to clutter the main group space.

I appreciate that governance forms are still work in progress, and working groups are still shaking down. However there's a substantial and complex collective practice here, which ought to be described clearly and explicitly, in Loomio and in the wiki, to enable more effective participation and recruitment. So, some guidance is wanted please, on which group to start this 'describing' work in, from folks such as @robertbenjamin @michelekipiel @matthewcropp @samtoland @mattnoyes @leosammallahti. My opening comment on this is here.

As I believe there are no clear guidelines exist (neither in the Bylaws, polices emanating from a Working Group, or passed proposals) for creating what you are after (distillation/documentation of what Social.Coop is all about suitable for external communication) utilizing the Editorial Working Group for such activity seems like the right place.

A starting point would be to go through what already exists (most of it created in the early days) and bring it all together to see what needs to be added, edited, or refined. Here are all the places where I've seen some for of editorial content around social.coop.

Keeping in mind that some of this is a moving target as there are major policy and procedures "improvements" (CoC, Budgeting, Governance Working Group Structure, etc. that are activity being worked on.

https://social.coop/about
https://social.coop/bylaws
https://www.loomio.org/socialcoop/
https://opencollective.com/socialcoop
https://wiki.social.coop/Main_Page

Beyond that the best place to see and document any informal "complex collective practices" would be to engage in all the working groups and document from there.

Hope that helps.

Thanks robert. I'll pick this up as I get the opportunity.

Lot of good points, the slide show by @mattnoyes looks good and we should figure out how to use it.

Here's an idea: I am seeing lots of valid points against drafting a governance proposal for a hypotethical Mastodon Coop, but that doesn't mean we can't turn that draft into an article. Wouldn't it be cool if we kicked off our blog with an article about "what would happen if mastodon went full coop"?

I like that. Writing an article could be a good first step, hopefully it will get good feedback and new people involved, which will help it expand to something bigger. I don't see the two as mutually exclusive, but writing an article first, and then expanding it later to a more "action-plan" type of documents.

"as a person discovering social.coop I still can't see any place to get a picture of the whole venture . . . purposes, persons, projects, media spaces."

I'm not new any more and I still find this to be true for myself, it's scattered across a lot of loomio threads and the like. Of course it's yet more work for somebody to put together a blog and for people then to update it, but it'd be a nice point of contact and I definitely would have cruised through and read about s.c if a blog/etc existed. Also it'd be cool to put brief updates about software upgrades or whatever else there.

Nice one, @michelekipiel 👌

I like the idea of highlighting popular (or otherwise selected) toots from social.coop. This is a great way to show off the range and quality of content generated. (Equity and inclusion should be one criterion, of course.)
Articles and Interviews (great idea!) should be published in existing coop/FLOSS blogs, to help others grow and prosper and to build recognition of social.coop in the coop/tech world.
The "blueprint for a cooperative Mastodon" piece would be great to put on various blogs, for instance.

The "blueprint for a cooperative Mastodon" piece would be great to put on various blogs, for instance.

I will start working on this ASAP!

Let me know if you need any contributors.

Hi @mattnoyes I'm glad to have met yesterday in the Reading group. I referred to the project that I seem to be adopting here in this thread starting here. Not quite ready to pick this up yet, but when I do, would like to return to you for guidance & comment, drawing on some of what we and @emido @caitlinwaddick @michelekipiel talked about. Would be glad to have an email connection for some of this but you're not mailable thro your Loomio profile. Would you mail me via mine, if you're OK to drop into 1-to-1 email at some point? Thanks. I'll welcome any input from others yesterday too :)

@christinahendricks was thinking of joining the 'editorial' project, hi Christina. You might want to see the notes I left in the reading group thread - some questions in there, about the scope and nature of social.coop.

Mike, sent you a message via social.coop

Feel free to contact me privately! :)