[Organization] Weekly coop-wide updates

@michelekipiel Assuming it goes forward, I propose a protocol for this updates thread. To begin, each WG update-reporter launches a comment for the WG (with a ## header, for clarity). Then, weekly updates are posted as responses to that comment. That way, viewing 'Nested', a reader can zoom in on the trajectory in a given WG. Viewing the thread chronologically and ‘Latest’ gives current status.

This is a very, very good idea! And it ties in nicely with the "Loomio netiquette" I proposed in the community WG, too!

Nice idea

[WG] Community reporting thread.
Please post updates using the REPLY button

Update 1 - 31/07/2018

1. Work on the CoC are proceeding at full steam, with calls being held regularly and documents being finalized as you read.
2. A call for volunteers is currently under way for the standing jury. The call will be soon followed by an election.
3. We agreed to give @mattnoyes onboarding privileges to smooth the experience for new users.

Update 2 - 20/08/2018
1. The standing jury was elected and is now in the process of organizing itself
2. Talks are taking place to create a Community WG ops team to better handle the influx of new members

Update 3 - 27/08/2018
1. Work is in progress to constitute and organize the Community WG ops team, with a call scheduling vote under way
2. The standing jury is now operational and already taking action on reported issues

[WG] Editorial reporting thread.
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Editorial subgroup - Update 31jul18

• I just acquired coord rights in this subgroup (alongside Michele) and can now begin to develop some work. Expect an update of the subgroup description in the next week, for comment.
• I aim to make this a place for developing 'self-descriptions' of social.coop, and deciding where they should best be posted, to help both would-be and present members.Wiki is a likely location. More soon.

Editorial subgroup - Update 12aug18

• Have posted a description/work scheme in the group header: mapping social.coop structures, processes, intentions.
• Intend to start mapping with social-coop structures
• Received offers of participation from a couple of folks, thank you :slight_smile:
• Will be lurking for a couple of weeks myself - have a deadline to meet elsewhere.

Editorial subgroup - Update 20aug18

• I moved the "official social.coop account" discussion to the editorial group to better focus on its development in the wake of the influx of new users

[WG] Finance reporting thread.
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[WG] Governance / Legal reporting thread.
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[WG] Reading reporting thread.
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Update 1 - 31/07/2018
1. We picked "Values at Work Employee Participation Meets Market Pressure at Mondragon" by G. Cheney as our fourth reading group book

1. A time poll to decide when to meet to comment the book is under way

Update 2 - 27/08/2018
1. The reading group will hold a call tomorrow at 9pm CEST to discuss the latest book.

[WG] Tech reporting thread.
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Sooo. I'm concerned that this effort to organize the SC governance activity may increase the deluge of content and further reduce engagement. Some questions are;

1: Are the updates going to allow for comments? If so what is to stop the update thread from becoming the conversation its self and just duplicating the content already out there?

2: What exactly is the volunteer members going to be posting as updates: Loomio already has organization system for active and completed votes, polls, etc.

3: Shouldn't this effort be part of the service the Community Working Group Admin Ops Team performs? (Which still needs to be formalized.)

4:: Is Loomio the right place to have updates on Loomio activity? Wouldn't the SC instance (if and when there is an official SC handle that is manned but he CWG be a better place to post updates as a lot of members are active on the instance but are not on Loomio?

5: If it is, might it better be its own Sub Group so that it is optional to subscribe to?

6: We still aren't addressing an overriding issue of low engagement and information overload which seems to be compounded by the erratic and open structure of posts on the main SC Loomio page (Outside a Working Group) which gets blasted out to every member in the form of separate emails. My sense is that a lot of the frustrations with navigating SC governance stems from this.

Hi,
thanks for the feedback, allow me to address the points one by one.
1. This is meant to be a plain journal, a list of updates for all members to read in order to stay updated with the lowest possible effort

1. A great deal of what happens in the WGs is only visible to those who are part of the groups themselves, which makes them appear as black boxes from the outside. The goal of this thread is to enable those who are not engaged in any of the groups (for whatever reason) to get a glimpse of what's going on.

2. I believe delegating the whole thing to just one WG would be unfair (we all have fingers and keyboards...) and produce an unreliable journal (as not all community WG members have the skills to understand all the details of each group's efforts). I believe that, in the spirit of co-operation, it makes much more sense to be doing this all together.

3. This is a valid point, it might be worth to consider using Loomio's RSS feed options to publish whatever gets published here on the instance as well.

4. That would go against the whole point of giving visibility to what's happening in other WGs.

5. This thread is actually meant as a direct action to fight lack of engagement: by giving people a quick, recurring overview of what's going on in each WG, it might improve member's understanding of what each WG does and, hopefully, foster inclusion.

Just wondering if there is any particular reason why WG subgroups are private? Might it be easier if they're visible to social.coop members to allow them to spectate when they feel they need to - without getting notifications on every new post? Assuming that's possible! This might allow people an intermediate level of engagement, which isn't all or nothing.

Also, is there any way of making the different subgroups more distinctive visually? It's easy to forget which group you're viewing, or recalling, and who therefore is a party to the conversation. In fact, even when I know which group I'm a bit unsure who is party to the conversation and who needs to be contacted explicitly (say, with regard to financial discussions about tech, or vice versa).

Do mentions within private subgroups of someone not in that private subgroup work normally?

That first point is especially pertinent to the "issues" thread in the tech WG. You have to join the subgroup to discover it, yet alone post anything...

Could the updates please be cross-posted to the @SocialCoop account on Mastodon? With links back to the threads/proposals on Loomio

@robertbenjamin @michelekipiel
1. Nothing’s to prevent responses to weekly updates. But folks posting updates can refrain from indulging in chat, and fork discussion to a better place?Anyway, a discussion out in the open is different from a discussion in a subgroup - see 2 below
2. Interested as I am, I’m still not going to become a member of every subgroup in order to participate in every vote. Life is too short, and this would defeat the purpose of subgroups, which is to get down into the engine-room? So, an open-access synopsis of what’s on the move is helpful. Also, here’s a channel for one subgroup to send messages to another?
3. I agree with Michele - this is not a subgroup function (community, editorial, whatever), it’s an open channel available to all members, not subject to filtering thro the concerns of any group.
4. Agree with Michele - posting in s.c Mastodon is a good principle. Links and keynotes, not full text (weekly updates in general will be > 500 characters?). Regular appearance of toots may alert non-active members of s.c to the fact that it’s way more than just a chat stream. Risabee’s suggestion - “tiny summaries that are tooted on social.coop” - is a good keynote, but tiny informative summaries will be hard to come by?
5. AN Other subgroup, burying a stream of content that in principle needs to be visible? Aw c'mon!
6. The “erratic and open structure” Robert commented on applies to all info about s.c, across all channels (Loomio, Mastodon, wiki, open.collective). This is a problem any newcomer or would-be member experiences, and it doesn’t get any easier once you're a member. This is a complex environment, and a moving feast. There’s no simple fix but this is an issue that I mean to try to facilitate in the about-to-be-activated “Editorial” subgroup - with weekly updates in the open channel, for sure! Watch that space, contribute. Yes, AN Other subgroup! But @robertbenjamin is correct, we can’t have all traffic blasted out to every member.

Walking a fine line here. How s.c represents itself and directs messages to folks, inside and outside, across all channels, as a multi-stakeholder multi-platform community, is an issue that calls for attention. And this gets ‘technical’ just like any other subgroup discussion, so only some folks will want to get involved in that traffic. Thus, an exercise in being self-conscious, regarding how many different ways there are of seeing what s.c is, and is trying to be, and is doing. All views may be correct - it’s a pluriverse! Thus it takes quite a lot of labour to get your head round it?

@michelekipiel @mikeh8 so on #5 the reason I mention having this as a Sub Group function is due to Loomio's subscription structure and ultimately what amounts to a forced information subscription whenever the main group space is used. (correct me if I'm wrong) but the default is the Main Group email subscription is turned on and each Sub Group you have to purposely turn on by joining.

I don't see having an UPDATES Sub Group as burying information but rather making it a choice to subscribe to or not. Right now the Main group is used for a host of threads which can flood the feed of a member at any given time and may be leading some to unsubscribe or disengage from Loomio (aka SC Governance) all together.

I'm not against the concept of updates at all (its a great idea) as a lean weekly organized update post/email/SC blast which would probably not be an issue living on the main space if that and full member Votes were the only thing re-occurring going on there.

I get you @robertbenjamin I admit I'm not sure how subscribing works, so will need to check this out. Thanks

At 69 going on 70, I have to be wide awake to keep up with any of this, and there's not enough coffee in the house. I might be the worst case, but I suspect some others outside the black boxes may also feel like they must swim a little too hard to actually come to Loomio and dive into the current.

For me that's okay. I'm a trusting sort, and I can get by on occasionally dipping into those emails (Dark Shadows ran five days a week; those who couldn't stay with it understood they could follow along if they only watched on Fridays). But there are a lot of them and they are long, and some lack sufficient context to be useful to the less committed. Maybe if the constant stream of discussion could be posted to files linked from tiny summaries that are tooted on social.coop?

I much appreciate the feedback and the comments, but please allow me to point out what strikes me as quite the contradiction: I see complaints about information overload (and rightly so) but the suggested solution seems to be "let's create yet another WG and hide the updates in there because people might not want to read the news", which seems to me as the exact opposite of what should be done: this thread should be pinned at the very top of the "common" space and act as a bulletin, the one-stop-shop for all the updates one might want, all distilled into tiny, concise, easy to scan 5-lines long posts, categorized by WG. The result would be, in my intentions, to decrease the information load on members, by giving them the opportunity to:

1. Stay up to date with what's happening in each WG (if they want to) by accessing a single thread, as opposed to having to read through tons of comments
2. Skip all the updates they are not interested in by simply scrolling down/up, as opposed to becoming members of a specific WG just to read a bulletin

I might be missing some finer details, but I really can't see how adding a new WG and forcing people to join it just to read updates could solve the quite serious information problem we are facing.

@michelekipiel @robertbenjamin a genuine dilemma/contradiction I think. I still want to check out the auto-subscribe issues identified by robert. This issue/dilemma - too much traffic/too little open information - is something the Editorial group needs to pitch in with too. I admit it's not obvious to me how to walk this fine line. Needs some experimenting?

I guess my issue isn't with what you're describing. Pending some potential execution issues. It's really with the Main Space being used for any discussion threads. Would really like to see a proposal to limit the activities on the main page to non discussion Updates (if this moves forward) and Group Wide Proposals that have passed through a Working Group as posts here really take away the subscription choice from the members.

At the same time I don't see putting content inside subgroups as hiding anything but rather a needed way to organize the many activities that happen on this Platform. Better organization means better access and hopefully better engagement when and where members choose.