User interface patterns for "neighbourhoods" modules

The marketplace-listing-avatar thing is just to say, we'll probably have fairly context-specific UIs to begin with.

Thanks, this is helpful. I think from a marketing/strategy perspective there's stuff to think about here though. Ideally, we want to implement projects that rely on new ways of collaborating and information exchange to showcase the power of neighbourhoods. Or else, we run into the same problem of users being drawn to it and using it like an app in the same old way.
So it could be a social-networking/conversational tool, or a bazaar-style tool that can be offered to different neighbourhoods. Will share more tomorrow.

Neighbourhoods and network agency

How do neighborhoods map to economic agents?

are some neighborhoods looser than that, have some identity as a group but no economic agency as a group?

Could there be neighbourhoods which are not engaged in commerce?

I think it’s a mix, as we’ve discovered with CommonsPub. Some networks could be said to operate in a “Neighbourhood-like way”, maybe if they meet some of the requirements I’ve bolded above. But I don’t think that implies anything about agency of the group, at least at this stage. You can have a group of folks collaborating tightly without any formal governance or organising principles, sure.

What you didn’t ask was-

How do neighbourhoods map to networks?

to which I think the answer is, “loosely”. So “farmers in Wisconsin who grow organically” could be a Neighbourhood in of itself, but it could also be simply part of some neighbourhood of folks who fit into this and other usergroups. And the notion of its “neighbourhood-ness” could be an emergent property of the higher-order compositional structures of the networks around the organic farmer network! As in… maybe each network itself has no membrane control built in; but simply as an artifact of the visibility of information in different networks, different tiers of users might emerge.

are all non-person economic agents neighborhoods, by definition?

I want to say “no” here. I think being a Neighbourhood implies some technical constraints regarding the customisability of user interface and backend data sources (which at this stage are quite complex, I’ll admit. Hopefully we can automate away a lot of that.)

It’s interesting to end up at this conclusion… I think perhaps I’ve had a looser idea of this in the past. For those who disagree, I’m wondering what you see as the specifics of “Neighbourhood centric tech”?

I guess this is Sid’s view—

the minimum qualification (for the way I’m defining Neighbourhoods) is for reputation/monetary/governance layers to be articulated in agent-centric environments.

Whereas (perhaps in addition to this) I see some requirements around access to information and customisability of UI which lead to my idea of “true agent-centrism” as an individual with their own subjective view of a neighbourhood.

I also want to point out that I broadly agree with the need to articulate a reputational culture in a neighbourhood, I just didn’t want to rewrite a lot of this. I wonder whether there might be something to tease out RE “actual neighbourhoods” (with articulated culture) vs “virtual neighbourhoods” that individual users might assume the viewpoint of across networks. The latter has no culture articulated other than to the single person observing their view of the available datasets.

Maybe it’s sort of a paradox, where in order for Neighbourhoods to exist we must also build non-Neighbourhood liminal spaces that allow individuals to “hover” at the margins, and see across Neighbourhoods with different value sets.

>I think this social-fabric-interwoven-commerce is what NH is all about :)

Let's do a little ontology mapping, just for fun. How do neighborhoods map to economic agents? Do all neighborhoods have economic agency themselves (different from the individuals who make up the neighborhood)? Or are some neighborhoods looser than that, have some identity as a group but no economic agency as a group? Do some or all neighborhoods have some form of governance, formal or informal? And/or can a neighborhood be defined through some circumstance or activity but not be actually identified or organized in any way, like "farmers in Wisconsin who grow organically"? Inversely, are all non-person economic agents neighborhoods, by definition? (This would include Monsanto or Goldman Sachs too!) If not, which kinds of economic agents would be neighborhoods?

I'm also curious about the "commerce" part. Could there be neighborhoods that are not engaged in commerce? For example, purely social groups? For another example, can a project that is engaged in producing something but not engaged in any form of commerce or exchange be a neighborhood? Like say ValueFlows? ValueFlows is also an interesting example in that it has always had a slowly evolving core group; and also had a lot of people moving in and out, not really members, rather contributors. (Note that there is disagreement if VF itself is an economic agent or not - I think it is and Pavlik, another core member, thinks it is not. So there's that.)

>the Neighbourhoods implementation of Marketplace means each community can spin up it's own micro-marketplace for circulation of goods within the collective

This makes sense to me, especially where there is some internal economic governance involved, like a timebank - but really for any community that wants to. Seems like there is also a range of options from that to completely open, like say etsy. Seems like Kamal was thinking of a marketplace for Seattle, geographically based and maybe a focus on circular economy? (Is Seattle a neighborhood?) But I'd like to dig into that a bit with him. Actually the question of what are the different scopes of marketplaces we want to address in this app is a big question I've had.

>Implications for UI: Does a user view the marketplace as a section within a community. For eg, when I'm hovering within Economikit do I see offers stream in within the EK-verse? Or do users view a consolidated marketplace of offerings and transactions across all the communities they are part of. Or is it both?

In the Mutual Aid Network for example, I'm pretty sure there is a requirement for both, but they have expressed the latter since they already have the first in their separate software that doesn't talk to each other.

>Because separate intents on multiple DNAs will be a nightmare for co-ordinating trades that match.

Could be challenging, although I'm not sure if you are thinking more of holochain's distribution mechanisms or the model. I think the VF model should help, because if you have a Proposal (an offer or request), you can post the same Proposal to multiple groups (Agents in this case) and I assume the identifier will stay the same in the different dht's (?). If you have say the same thing you are offering (same Intent), but you want to price it differently in different groups, that is different Proposals. (I don't know if that was clear at all.)

I wonder whether there might be something to tease out RE “actual neighbourhoods” (with articulated culture) vs “virtual neighbourhoods” that individual users might assume the viewpoint of across networks

Read this a couple of times, but I don't think I get it. Elaborate? Or maybe we discuss in the NH sync

Whereas (perhaps in addition to this) I see some requirements around access to information and customisability of UI which lead to my idea of “true agent-centrism” as an individual with their own subjective view of a neighbourhood.

Makes sense.

RE actual / virtual; think of our recent work with BASYN. You could consider them an "actual" neighbourhood (putting aside for the moment the specifics of their governance) since they are a real usergroup with a real client base and therefore some form of community (formal or informal) built around it. You could say the same of Shiro or Seedshare.

But the whitelabel marketplace app which I am building isn't for any specific usergroup or community. It is "virtual" because it can be connected to as many VF-compatible marketplaces as the agent has installed. And what that agent sees as context for others within that space is entirely up to the agent as an individual- not part of the formal articulation of any of the groups that they exist within.

Apologies if this is not the right thread, this whole question is broader than UI. The discussion around neighborhoods vs economic agents has sent my thinking on a different direction for how we model "groups" to try to use the loosest name I can. History:

• In VF we have had an insular view in that we care about groups with economic agency. We also know that there are networks that do not have agency themselves, that emerge out of the economic interactions. And a bunch of gray areas.

• When we looked at integrating VF and ActivityStreams (AS) for CommonsPub, we decided to call groups with agents Organizations (because that is in VF) and groups without agency Groups. (AS has Actors with types Person, Group, Organization. VF has Agents with types Person, Organization. There are other vocabularies in the semantic web scene that basically have Agent (defined pretty loosely) with types Person, Group, Organization.)

• As we now look at neighborhoods we understand they are sometimes economic agents and sometimes groups without economic agency.

Problems with all of this: For one thing a non-agent group could decide it wants economic agency, and then it gets a new type? Ouch. And also we have these overlapping definitions that will just get more complex.

I think that the initial model was faulty. We let roles creep into the core definitions of what something is. I think the core definition should be Person and X, where X is a collection of people which has some kind of identity. So not just a set of filters from the outside like "all the organic farmers in Wisconsin", but some sense of understanding of who is in the X and why it exists. (Perhaps people and other X's must agree to be in the X? Definition to be refined.) Then X has roles or behaviors they can decide to engage in, like reputation schemes or economic activity. Those things are not part of their definition as X, and also the software is structured this way. (Like delegation rather than inheritance, in the object oriented world.)

I'm still thinking this all through, and not sure what to do about it atm.

(To note to those reading along: the more Holochain-specific technical conversation regarding these particulars has forked to https://www.loomio.org/d/S1lBFPa7/technical-requirements-for-neighbourhoods-compatible-software.)

Nice questions. So the minimum qualification (for the way I'm defining Neighbourhoods) is for reputation/monetary/governance layers to be articulated in agent-centric environments. Here are some answers to your questions:

> Do all neighborhoods have economic agency themselves
Yes, as defined by their governance.

> And/or can a neighborhood be defined through some circumstance or activity but not be actually identified or organized in any way, like "farmers in Wisconsin who grow organically"?

Yes. For eg, Sid's group that shares entertaining content everyday.

In general, a Neighbourhood is specifically identified by its culture. If Sid's group rewards its members on the basis of who generates the most 'claps' everyday, it forms its own unique Neighbourhood. If Bob thinks this isn't good design, he may 'fork' this Neighbourhood to form a new Neighbourhood with the same members, but with upvotes/downvotes instead of claps. Bob's neighbourhood stands distinctly different from Sid's, even though the content might be somewhat similar.
At this point I should also say geo-location maps on to Neighbourhoods as a reputational data point. For eg, only people within 50 miles of me can join my Neighbourhood. If they hold this data point on their source chain, they gain access.

> Inversely, are all non-person economic agents neighborhoods, by definition? (This would include Monsanto or Goldman Sachs too!)

No, because they leverage reputation systems that aren't agent-centric (i.e. legal system articulated by the nation-state). On that note, some neighbourhoods will also have a footprint in the legal system to function in the real world.

> I'm also curious about the "commerce" part. Could there be neighborhoods that are not engaged in commerce? 

Absolutely. I reckon somewhere in the region of 90% of Neighbourhoods won't have commercial activity for multiple reasons: either they're purely social i.e. groups of people sharing conversations, or ideas, or volunteering; or they haven't gotten to the stage where social fabric can support commercial activity. In fact I'm excited about building with Neighbourhoods without commercial aspirations initially - let's us play and evolve systems together.

> But I'd like to dig into that a bit with him. Actually the question of what are the different scopes of marketplaces we want to address in this app is a big question I've had.

Yeah, I'd be keen to do that too. I think they're still thinking of it as an 'app' instead of a Neighbourhood.

>  If you have say the same thing you are offering (same Intent), but you want to price it differently in different groups, that is different Proposals. (I don't know if that was clear at all.)

That was very clear, thanks. So it seems like we would have multiple proposals generated from a single intent. And once a proposal is accepted, updates the intent, which then propagates to the other proposals that are open?

I think I got all your questions. Happy to keep this going.

@Sid Sthalekar this is very helpful, but I'm still struggling a bit to understand Neighborhood in the context of concepts I'm used to thinking about. I'm pretty sure that Economic Agent and Neighborhood will be overlapping concepts, but neither will be contained within the other, if you are thinking about a Venn diagram.

Here's a try at what I start to understand of what a neighborhood is/has/behaves. Please correct me, this is more like a question than a statement....

A neighborhood must have:

* a reputational culture with rules explicitly defined

* defined membership, a membrane around person agents who have to join explicitly

* some elements of governance, explicitly defined

* all of the above is decided by the members, and voluntarily agreed to by new members, and can be re-negotiated by current members (is this close to what you mean by agent-centric environment? some definition of little-d democracy?)

A neighborhood can have:

* economic activity within it, or with others

* social activity within it

I do want to make sure I understand what you mean by "agent-centric". Holo-REA and holochain have different definitions, but they are fairly clearly understood by now. Here is Art's definition for holochain: https://forum.holochain.org/t/how-will-holochain-handle-group-agents/1095/4

I'm struggling a bit also with technology vs real world. For example in any kind of grouping in the real world, there is probably always a "culture", usually informal and often unspoken, but there. And probably always some level of social activity. But in our holochain world, it matters if something is captured as data or not.