Commons Transition Wiki and Published Proposals

Sorry everyone, this closed a bit earlier than I thought - I must have made a mistake on the date.

Hi dear all,

I also have some (similar) questions in mind :

• Do we see the proposals as continuous work in progress (which ofcourse can be used at any given moment for a certain purpose) and how is this then fascilitated?
  Proposals can be published with a date, but then updated form time to time if work has been done on them? (or indeed if updating shows automatically)

• Should proposals not be clearly run by the whole Assembly before any publishing moment, for any comment possibilities? Proposals are published in name of whole Assembly?

Dear all,
I propose to publish the proposals that are considered "publishable" by the authors and to include version 1.0 and the date to indicate it is the first version. Based on my own experience in writing texts in a collaborative way (the FLOK Society initiative in Ecuador and this one), at the end it is just an small group that writes it and then there is no more contributions till the next round of formal review.
The draft version we published in Ecuador in June 2014 (see here http://floksociety.org/docs/Ingles/2/2.1.pdf) was never modified.
To support my rationale, I can tell you that nobody has reviewed or added anything to the Food Commons text to date and just one lady provided minor (but appreciated) editorial reviews to the Territories of Commons.

So, I support to upload the documents in the Commons Transition Wiki now. At least those that are regarded as "draft completed by the authors".

In parallel, and in case we want to reach a wider audience with texts become "fixed" for a while, I would propose to write a book with edited and peer-reviewed versions of the proposals. The thematic proposals could be accompanied by introductory and conclusion chapters (perhaps to be drafted by Bauwens, Helfrich and other theorists and some MEPs. That would leave a hallmark of the event and it would remain for even in the bibliographic world.

Best regards
Jose Luis

Hi folks, here are some comments/clarifications regarding the Commons Transition Wiki. In hindsight these should have been shared prior to the vote but I was on the road for most of last week.

Why publish the proposals in a wiki? Why the Commons Transition Wiki?

A wiki is an excellent data repository which allows direct hyperlinking to relevant sections. It is also participatory by nature. People can join, comment and add suggestions. Among other things, the Commons Transition Wiki is dedicated to policy proposals and ideas for action. We're currently setting up a multi-category search which would -for example- allow users to cross-reference the ECA proposals with the other commons oriented policy proposals available in the wiki (including those originally written for FLOK). We hope to have this feature available for the beginning of next year. Incidentally, if anyone wants to lend a hand or knows people who are wiki-savvy, we could really do with some help: please ask to join our Loomio group

At what stage do the proposals go in? What about further modifications, new versions?

I think that the proposals should go in when those who were actively involved in the writing feel that they're solid as they are. These have been available in hackpad for a while. Transferring them to the Wiki, in my opinion, communicates that the first phase of writing is over and these are ready to be shared as a package. Anyone interested can make a user for the wiki and comment on the "talk" page, just like in Wikipedia and modifications can be edited in easily.

How will these be presented?

I would clearly title the proposals as "ECA". If enough changes, updates are suggested, we can always archive version 1, and present a second version (while keeping a link to the original). I also agree with @joseluisviveropol in that we should use their actual names. Once we have most, if not all of them in, after prior consent, I'd like to create a "landing page" much like the one we did for the Law for the Commons Wiki. Note that we will soon upgrade de CT Wiki to be mobile responsive. Regarding republishing them in the Commons Assembly website, it's technically possible, but I don't know how we'd display them and it'd take away the possibility of commenting, linking to sections, etc. Personally, I'd have them in the wiki, preceded by a prominent link in the website. Regarding website changes, we should also clarify who is helping here and not automatically assume that invisible helpers make it happen effortlessly. Currently@maiadereva has been taking on most of this work and she, like anyone working on backend, could use some help.

I hope that these answers (and opinions) clarify some of the comments which have been made. If I've missed anything, please @+ tag me, I'm happy to help.

Using a wiki for storing proposals, and the commons transition wiki, is the right way to go.

In Lille's Commons Assembly we make heavy use of a wiki for collaborative documentation of all our activities. It produces many data, and need constant grooming, but anybody can join the process at any moment

http://assemblee.encommuns.org/wiki/Lille

Hi all, I didn't follow closely the discussion but there are a few things that come to my mind, and I quickly write them here just in case they help.

• I think that "living" documents should reside in one place. I don't think it makes sense to keep things "alive" both in the hackpad and in the transition wiki. And if you are proposing to abandon the hackpads perhaps this should be a collective decision?

• It is important to keep things as "neutral" as possible. For this, we should either "centralize" everything in an agreed "neutral" space or distribute . For example say that policies will be stored at the transition wiki, events here, something else there.

My 2 cents :-) (and apologies if I comment on things already discussed and agreed upon)

Hi again,

Understanding all the considerations made. I still standstill for a moment on the publishing process. I would like to see the policy writing part also as much as a commons as possible. Also as an educational process for all of us. Ideally, I would take the food as a commons proposals with me to my local assembly, and ideally perhaps especially food actors would have something to comment. I know.. , this might very well not happen, but I believe we should not a priori exclude this from happening and perhaps try to build enabling infrastructure to make this happen?

This ofcourse also brings to the questions of relation of ECA to other processes, like other local assemblies, or like solidarity economy processes. Do we just function seperately? Or do we develop mechanisms which promote processes to feed into eachother, synergy etc., even if this might no (straight away) happen much etc?

These were also questions I had in mind prior to ECA, and well, there was so much to talk about :) Not wanting to overcomplicate things either, but just wondering..

Hi everyone, the wiki is fine to put the proposals once people are happy about publishing them. But I think we should also aim to publish them together in a more visible accessible way, in the sense of design. Maybe the commons assembly website is the best place for this. I do understand we cannot just exert make and javier to take care of it though!
For this we would also need to have the proposals be more alike, follow a sort of template. They do a little bit already but could be much better. Also, right now the 'proposals' are not really proposals. They are more political statements with a few recommendations. Which is fine, but we should understand them in that way. Some have more specific recommendations then others and some have very little concrete to say about EU (or national )policy.

In response to formatting the proposals and making them visually appealing, I think @staccotroncoso was imagining something attractive and standardized on the wiki itself (i.e. it won't just be the typical wikipedia style black and white text). But I could be wrong, maybe he was just thinking about an attractive landing page...

Anyway, if the formatting on the wiki is attractive then I agree that there is no need to publish through the website. It would be better to just link directly through to the proposals. Double publishing just creates double the work and maintenance.

We, cecile and me, will take a stab at the Energy proposal and Digital Commons proposal (which also needs more contents work) in collaboration with the people who worked on it. With a bit of formatting and design, to have these positions in the various fields of policy where we feel the commons approach has something to offer, coming from the ECA should be really good. @staccotroncoso
@joseluisviveropol I also like the idea od some kind of book eventually :)

This is great... so it seems we have some commitments to get Energy, Digital, and also Food and Territorial commons into a state that is publishable within the next few weeks.

Which others do we think are publishable? How can we identify these and invite people to revise?

As Sophie has suggested, if we want to give the them the title "EU policy proposals" (which is not at all an obligation) and if we want them to be useful and/or pedagogical for policymakers we need to translate our general principles into proposals on concrete legislation being considered with possible parliamentary instruments, language or initiatives. What is on the EU agenda today and precisely how would we want to influence it? Other kinds of general proposals could be interesting and useful on a more theoretical and philosophical level.

thanks NicoleI’m painfully aware I started to contribute to the cultural commons work too and this will need some development. Probably not part of the first tranche unless others step in.
Cheers

Dear all,

This sounds all good. I would be willing to publish the proposal on welfare policies and social commons but I have to confirm with the other writers. As far as I remember we are very much happy with it as it is. I am sorry for jumping in a little late but I understand that it's still open, whether we publish through ECA or Wiki? So I suppose we can still join.

I quickly summarize the main open question as I got it now:
Sophie was suggesting to use the ECA website with more coherence in the layout and target in the text. For the wider visibility this makes sense, so does the idea of the book. Some others were suggesting Wiki to enable commenting and cross-reference to other policy proposals and this is good for the discussion.

I would like to enable the discussion in the wiki on the proposals but otherwise I have no preference for the main/first publishing platform. I agree with @panayotis that as long as there´s many people not commenting we should keep the re-edit possibility open via hackpad, at least for the non-published ones, and that the works-in-progess, published ones, events, etc. should have one clear place each

@rubyvanderwekken I don´t see how the publishing should prohibit the further commenting on the local level? The edit- and publishing processes can run parallel and eventually the first version can be republished if needed.

Hi everyone, hope you all had a good Christmas. Some of you might have seen the post in the Communications group by @cecileblanchet ... well the Zemos videos are ready and we are planning to release them all publicly next week. Then over the following month, we will highlight one of the videos every week with some related links, information... and we thought that we could also link to the relevant policy proposal. So this comms strategy is also an opportunity to start getting proposals published in a manageable way, one by one. I have taken on the responsibility of talking with authors etc. and moving this along.

@staccotroncoso and @ann marie , this means we need to make some decisions on formatting and hosting etc. so I know what to ask of the authors

Here is the schedule. The Food and Territorial Commons proposals are pretty developed already so it's more about framing and decided what to include and what not.

Food commons - Feb. 08
City commons - Feb. 15 (I am thinking about what the relevant proposal here would be)
Energy commons - Feb. 22
Diem real talk - Mar. 01 (ditto)

Does this make sense? Should we have a call?

Thanks
Nicole

Makes sense and sounds good! Work on the Commons Transition Wiki was interrupted over Christmas because of technical upgrades, but it's ready to go now. So far @joseluisviveropol has been very kind in providing me "ready-to-go" versions of "Food Commons in Europe" and "Territories of the Commons". As soon as any of the others are approved, I can format them quite quickly.

@cecileblanchet Just for info - it seems jose luis has already been in touch on this! good news. Stacco, I'll be working Wednesdays and Fridays primarily so keep me posted on how this is going - as I said, we need these up before Feb 8

Ok, here's the first published policy proposal!

The food commons in Europe: Relevance, challenges and proposals to support them

Couple of comments:

• If you scroll down to the table of contents you'll see that you can jump directly to any section of the proposal. If you then copy the url in the navigation bar, you can hyperlink directly to specific sections. This may come in handy later.
• All the footnotes have jump-to/return links.
• There is a discussion tab (just like wikipedia) for sugggestions and aditions.
• We're still working on the semantic wiki structure with Yves Otis and Javier. Once this work is done, we will be able to create category pages for multi-category search. For example we can then generate results combining a) policy proposals, on Food and agriculture. I think this will enrich the ECA's proposals and content.
• Once we have a few more proposals in, I will make a nice "splash page" for the Policy proposals, probably using the same type of graphics I've used at the begging of this entry.
• This kind of formatting will make it easier to convert the texts to other formats for e-book publication etc.

I'll follow up with "Territories of the Commons".

Formatting wise, a couple of remarks to make this go easier:

• Try to use headings, whether it's in Hackpad or a word processor (heading 1, 2, etc). This is so we can quickly determine the hierarchy of the sub-sections (It's how the table of contents is generated)
• Jose sent the proposal as .doc with all the images and footnotes. That facilitated the process. If you want me to pick the text up from hackpad but there's additional images or footnotes, get in touch!
• I could do with some wiki-formatting help. I'll ask here first but, if there's no more wiki-savy people in the group (@fredericsultan is already helping), I may ask in the mailing list. :clap:

That's very good @staccotroncoso ! I will have a look later on more but already looks good. I am unfortunately unable to help with the wiki, sorry. Have all a very nice week-end!

@joseluisviveropol mentioned the possibility of PDF's for the proposals. This can be done and I've attached a mock-up here. I need to figure out how to link the footnotes properly, as well as the menu items. If someone is PDF-formatting savvy, please help.

The problem with PDFs is that is a "read-only" format, and it's very difficult to copy text from them. Not the most "commons" protocol, as this article by Nathan Schneider explains.

For now the best approach is to offer both formats, PDF for those who prefer it AND wiki, for those who want better navigation, the ability to comment etc. If the level of quality of the PDF mockup is acceptable, I think we can produce them for all the papers. Meanwhile we can also explore about E-Pub versions, to phase out PDFs.

Awesome! So now the question becomes: where do we link these? Can we start posting them on the website? I think it might be better to wait a bit until we have a few more proposals up so that we don't look like we only have one subject.... but then again it's a shame to leave the food proposal floating with no way to access it.

I guess we can also just wait to Feb. 8 and then it will start to circulate :)

Dear @StaccoP2P and Nicole,
Thanks for the formatting. The PDFs can be copy-pasted (although they loos some formatting). This one can be copied.
Considering that formatting the text in different lay-outs may facilitate its reading and outreach (i.e. for those who want to print to read it later), I would rather opt for a smaller letter size (reducing the number of pages). The current size seems very big. I would also justify the paragraphs, to avoid the feeling it is not formatted. I would have different sizes for the references (smaller than the text).
Finally, although I understand the opinions are like water drops (millions can be found in a glass), I would rather put something different in the cover.
I also support the idea of distributing the texts in different formats: Wiki, PDF and Open Word
I am working now in the summary to present the video and accompanying text plus the pictures.
Best
Jose Luis

Hi gang.

Awesome! So now the question becomes: where do we link these? Can we start posting them on the website? I think it might be better to wait a bit until we have a few more proposals up so that we don't look like we only have one subject.... but then again it's a shame to leave the food proposal floating with no way to access it.

Yeah, it’d be better to link to a menu page, which can only be constructed once we have, I dunno, at least six up. These will be linked to from the video campaign though, and we can also share them in Social media along with an announcement that the rest are coming along.

I would rather opt for a smaller letter size (reducing the number of pages). The current size seems very big. I would also justify the paragraphs, to avoid the feeling it is not formatted. I would have different sizes for the references (smaller than the text).

Yeah, this is easily done. Unless anyone objects, I’ll make the changes.

I would rather put something different in the cover.
I also support the idea of distributing the texts in different formats: Wiki, PDF and Open Word

Dear @joseluisviveropol would you prefer photography, similar to what we use in the P2P Foundation blog and CT? That’s easy to source from Creative Commons but, if we go that way, we’d should keep that theme for the rest of the papers so they have a coherent look when they’re put together on a menu page.

Dear Stacco,

Thanks for your agreement on the design suggestions. One of those nice and inspirational pictures you select for the P2P Foundation blog will make it perfectly.

I have just written an email with two texts:
1.- The introductory paragraph to present the video. See below.

Food, a life enabler and a cultural cornerstone with multiple meanings, is governed as a mere commodity by the neoliberal food policies that prevail in Europe. These meanings so relevant to human are reduced to the one of tradeable good (see fig 1) and the value of food is mixed with reduced its price in the market. This video denounces that reductionist approach and presents an alternative narrative to revalue food as a commons (nothing but a social construct) and to recognise the benefits of existing commons-based food systems in Europe (rural-customary and urban-contemporary). This paradigm shift will open up a new set of food policies that will help Europe to transit to a fairer, healthier and more sustainable food system. For a detailed explanation of this approach, see here the policy document presented at the European Assembly of Commons (Brussels, 15-17 November 2016).

NOTE: to incorporate here the link to the full document on Food Commons (either in P2P Wikipedia or in the EAC website).

2.- The second one is the text that could be included as entry blog. We could better discuss abouth length and formatting by direct email. That could be split into two parts or the texts as it is for the Commons Transition website.

Best regards
Jose Luis

Grand, thanks @joseluisviveropol What's the timeframe for the blog post? I'm exceedingly overwhelmed/busy this week with various committments and deadlines and would rather work on it next week if possible. Thanks

Hello Stacco,
I don't know bcs I am not in the communication committee but I presumed the food commons text should be ready for the 1st February launch.
Please, Cecile, confirm this.
Best
Jose Luis

Hi @joseluisviveropol , hi @staccotroncoso : on Feb. 8th, we should have a short introduction ready for the website (10-15 lines, WHY-WHAT-HOW style). Just to give some context and incite people to know more. We will then use what is ready in terms of policy proposals and such. We can always update in a few weeks when we have more material. Is this clearer?

If by the text you mean the Policy Proposal, we can use the one in the wiki, after changing the featured image. If you mean the blog post, that will be more difficult, unless someone else helps with the formatting.

Dear @cecileblanchet
Regarding the Food Commons we have already:
(a) a short introductory text for the video (see below),
(b) an abridged version of the Food Commons policy paper to be posted in P2P Foundation Blog and
(c) the complete Policy Proposal (already formatted in Wiki Commons).

Please, @staccotroncoso correct me if I am wrong.
Additionally, I have provided pictures to illustrate those texts.

Cecile, all those materials have been submitted to you by email.

From my side, everything is ready...
Best regards
Jose Luis

Text for Website to present the Video

Food, a life enabler and a cultural cornerstone with multiple meanings, is governed as a mere commodity by the neoliberal food policies that prevail in Europe. These meanings so relevant to human are reduced to the one of tradeable good (see fig 1) and the value of food is mixed with reduced its price in the market. This video denounces that reductionist approach and presents an alternative narrative to revalue food as a commons (nothing but a social construct) and to recognise the benefits of existing commons-based food systems in Europe (rural-customary and urban-contemporary). This paradigm shift will open up a new set of food policies that will help Europe to transit to a fairer, healthier and more sustainable food system. For a detailed explanation of this approach, see here the policy document presented at the European Assembly of Commons (Brussels, 15-17 November 2016).

NOTE: to incorporate here the link to the full document on Food Commons (either in P2P Wikipedia or in the EAC website).

Plus the Figure of six dimensions.

Thansk a lot @joseluisviveropol ! I'll have a look shortly but it's a bit hectic here now :) All the best

I guess so @cecileblanchet
Today we'll make our greatest efforts to disseminate the outputs of EAC in social media.
Have a nice day!
Jose Luis

Hello all,
Did this report on the ECA ever get published alongside the others?
http://www.finncult.be/commoning-perpetuum-mobile/?lang=en

@staccotroncoso

Thanks for getting it out there!

I and M

Dear @ivorstodolsky yes, it was published some weeks ago.

Dear @staccotroncoso ,

Thank you!

Ivor