Social.coop "Regeneration Team" Formation

I think what we need at this point is better understood as a "Social.Coop Regeneration Working Group" -- a specially selected group of people charged with reviewing the Governance, Finance, Community, and Tech operations of Social.Coop and proposing reforms up to and including a complete dissolution and re-founding of the Coop. The proposals they make -- like any others -- would have to go to the membership for discussion and approval. In the meantime, we continue operating the Mastodon instance through the existing Working Groups (as we did today with the upgrade to Mastodon 2.5).

NOT SO FAST, I want to make sure that these so-called "diverse" people JUNTA aren't going to be doing bad undemocratic things to OUR coop.

Let's make sure we REALLY slow improvements for even longer, and we REALLY do our best to keep their demands unheard for as long as we possibly can. Let's take back what's OURS alone, we don't really need to acknowledge that our total utter failure is what brought our organization to a halt.

(Are THEY really going to be messing up OUR coop for six whole months???? Now, that's something that should last for a significantly shorter period than our year-long feet dragging! Make that three months! Or better, no months!)

I was happier when we were really democratic (without these "diverse" people) and on the brink of ceasing to exist! 🙂

(j/k)

PS1: Have you noticed that these things, however strange they seem to you, are being set up for a vote?

PS2: WARNING: Some of THEM may speak languages other than American, that's the reason I'm using the Spanish epithet "Junta" as a loan word here. Also signalling that they may be very bad people with mustaches! hahahahah

Yes, if you're not in favor of our hastily thought out and poorly articulated proposal you must be against progress! And probably a racist! 😆

(Deleted comment.)

I may be misreading this -- but this humor seems unhelpful. Sarcasm and irony are open to misinterpretation, so can we stick to dialogue?

Do you think "undemocratic" and "Junta" were helpful? I'm sticking to humour because insults are actually the unhelpful thing.

Fair enough. So maybe it would be best to just tell @thomasbeckett you felt his word choice was not helpful? Or ignore it? Or acknowledge the concern behind it and address it? We all need to move each other towards positive communication, especially where we have real differences and strong feelings.

There's no ignoring that kind of behaviour going forward, it's been ignored for more than a year. The concern behind it has been effectively addressed by Matt Cropp.

Perhaps it would have been better that you ask our fellow cooperativists that they take back their insults?

I'm not sure you are reading correctly. Some people are using a certain loaded language directed at their fellow cooperativists. Words that, if they were to be taken seriously (which they aren't, because it's a joke), they would reveal an assumption of malfeasance and bad intent. You don't appear to feel too concerned about that, but you do appear to be concerned that my joke may be serious. (Trust me, it is a joke, nobody thinks the way you interpreted it, although I would have every reason to do so, starting with the reasons that lead us to this situation).

I am working on improving my practice in this area. I am finding andrienne maree brown's book Emergent Strategy very useful - especially her thoughts and observations on resilience.

I should definitely start a new reading list with your recommendations, Matt, I always seem to be swamped under the weight of my technical reading, but I'm glad you're making progress and I hope I'll be catching up with it at some point.

Massive thanks to everyone working hard on social.coop - unfortunately I am very much an ordinary member and can only participate through using the platform and paying my subs.

I'll start by saying as someone who using social.coop maybe once a week, I am completely mystified as to what as been happening lately - and where all the hurt and urgency is coming from. I would love a basic catch-up on what's happened and what the pinch points are (though I'm conscious our volunteers have enough going on than to update me).

Anyway...

As someone heavily involved in two co-ops i just want to say that the language around electing a committee / board as being 'undemocratic' or 'uncooperative' is OTT in my opinion.

There is a fair conversation to have about how we want social.coop to be structured - but a core team driving policy and operational decision-making is as co-operative as it gets. And unfortunately people claiming that delegating authority is 'undemocratic' is also as co-operative as it gets.

I am personally agnostic on the more/less hierarchy question - and think both can work, but both need a lot of work to do right. Given that things are clearly at there limit (continued respect to @matthewcropp and everyone else putting time in) , and that the laissez-faire approach to decision-making hasn't been working (at least in the eyes of a vocal number of members), I think delegating our direction to a committee (who of course need to refer back to the group) is an approach worth trying.

I'd broadly second @samtoland 's comments above. I'm a supporter and user, although not as frequently as I'd like, and I have no idea what's happened to spark off all of this perceived need to review/regenerate/rebuild. A quick explainer would be welcome. In the meatime I don't have the time or mental bandwidth to get into the historical weeds so my current strategy is to stand quietly to one side.

Here are some options - maybe they will help us sort out some of the issues?
Option A -- Maintain the status quo in operations, no changes, and create a diverse Regeneration Team to create proposals for restructuring SC, up to and including dissolution and re-foundation.
Option B -- Maintain operations and continue making improvements (some of which, like creation of a Standing Jury and revision of CoC are brought to the membership, some, like upgrade to 2.5 are not). Create a diverse Regeneration Team to create proposals for restructuring SC, up to and including dissolution and re-foundation.
Option C -- Create a diverse Regeneration Team with power/responsibility to make operations decisions and implement changes to policy/procedures without membership approval up to but not including bylaws changes and dissolution and re-foundation.
Option D -- Dissolve SC as a cooperative, put the resources and admin controls in the hands of a diverse Regeneration Team charged with re-organizing the coop from the ground up.

At this point Option B with a slight change - "Create a DIVERSE Regeneration Team to create proposals/plan for restructuring SC, up to and including dissolution and re-foundation which will be brought in front of the full membership for adoption."

It may not come with the operational authority of this above proposal but it could achieve the same intent of better structured more inclusive organization.

(B) Would achieve the appearance of a more inclusive organisation, with the goal of throwing the dissenting people a bone under the pretense of proportional representation with a few token persons being allowed to "participate" as subordinates in a watered down version of an organisation that actually cares.

Which is precisely the reason it will be the most favoured option by people who don't really want a more inclusive organisation because they wouldn't be able to trust one, and also don't want to appear like they don't want a more inclusive organisation because that would seem improper at this present time, but through their actions more than with their words, are revealing that this is the actual ideological concern of all the very concerned people.

@horatiotrobinson I hear your criticism. What would you prefer? Do you have a suggestion for how to achieve both democratic control and inclusion?

Hi Horatio, one thing I learned in Emergent Strategy: don't say things like "people who don't really want..." If there is someone you disagree with, talk to them. Listen to them, maybe you are wrong about their motives? For example, of the options I listed, B and D strike me as the most sound. Is that because I don't want a more inclusive organization? My purpose in listing some options was to help us clarify our views and values and come up with other options -- by listening to each other and finding points of consensus.

Your contribution is well taken and already understood. I'm showing how (B) as a tool is typically used in practice.

Given that part of the problem is that the stream of misogyny in the current membership is driving people away, it's hard to imagine being able to pass any significant reorganization through any kind of proposal process. As of now, (B) is a recipe for wasting six months and significant labor just to watch a bunch of dudes shut down and/or endlessly argue the resulting proposals until the people who wrote them just finally give up on trying. I don't have an answer, but like, privilege has a majority vote in this coop and no amount of process work can fix that.

Hi Melody, if it is true that "the stream of misogyny in the current membership is driving people away" and "privilege has a majority vote in this coop and no amount of process work can fix that" then some form of Option D makes sense. Or simply abandoning the project. But is it true? I don't think so.

It's true, the question is whether enough people will accept or care that it's true to actually do something about it. I would bet good money the answer to that question is "no" and this coop's diversity problem gets worse and worse until it finishes tanking its reputation, but I'd happily accept being wrong about that as an outcome of this mess.

I'm surprised that you appear to believe that delegation and representative democracy isn't democratic.

Most of the cases I've studied show that representative democracy leads to increasing inequality and representatives acting out of self-interest rather than the interests of the group. Cooperatives that are successful in the long run typically to have some form of universal participation. I joined social.coop because I'm specifically interested in participatory democracy.

Edit: Just want to make it clear that I support the idea of a regeneration team to fix problems that should have been sorted out before we went live. I see that as a group that can model the type of cooperative we want to be, resolve conflicting principles, and set a standard for the rest of us to follow.

@meltheadorable
while I agree this is quite possible -

"As of now, (B) is a recipe for wasting six months and significant labor just to watch a bunch of dudes shut down and/or endlessly argue the resulting proposals until the people who wrote them just finally give up on trying."

I was thinking that it could be agreed that the regen teams proposal would not be up for discussion/modification (and possible bike shedding &/or nit picking) but for a vote. Having said that I guess the outcome of it not passing, or only just passing may end up being similar to if the team were empowered to make any modifications that they wish to the co-op and brought forth a plan that large numbers felt great dislike for (lots of people leaving the co-op). Following this logic - I would support either path and my optimistic self imagines we would end up with a good result. I get that giving the group the power shows in advance that the co-op trusts them/the process and may, for this reason, be the better path. Its weighing that up against the chance that members will be more informed about the reasons for changes if they have to vote on them and may lead them to feel they haven't lost their agency.

Something I noticed, which may help people to understanding why there appears to be a lot of resistance & questioning of the proposal (and hopefully help reduce the tension?). It was posted by @matthewcropp shortly after he decided to run a straw poll about moving socialcoop away from its current governance structure and to be governed by a board (which I think got most members with horizontalist tendencies heckles up). The initial (now modified) proposal described the regen group as a board, and suggested they would have unlimited powers.

There is a fair chance some havent noticed its changed - and for those that have the initial approach, and previous actions, have doubtlessly influenced reactions.

Although I value all Matt Cropps work and efforts for the coop during and prior to the recent crisis, I wonder if things would move along more smoothly if he left it for others to bring us through this process

Thank you Melody for weighing in. I guess I don't see wasted effort in the (B) approach or a watering down of the intent. I share all your concerns with the main proposal especially on its limited chances for success given the current makeup and climate of the group. With (modified) B I see an opportunity for a majority Diverse led team insulated from the operational and governance dysfunction who are given access to resources (both in some capital and in mind share) to do the difficult work of envisioning a different approach to this whole thing while at the same time given the main membership the opportunity use direct democratic governance to improve things.

It is possible that at the end of 6 months things will not have improved and you will have a "bunch of dudes shut down and/or endlessly argue the resulting proposals" but it will be the platforms loss not the teams.

What would most likely happen if the membership doesn't adopt much or all of the recommendations is that the "Regeneration Team" would leave to found their own instance with what is most valuable, a cohesive diverse team, thoughtful org structure plan, and a good bit of talent not born out of silo-ed privilege think tank.

Which is a bad thing at all it's actually what the whole user ownership (platform-coop) model is supposed to be about.

Just catching up. Trying to distinguish the essential differences in the list of options made my head spin somewhat, even at a second reading.

Is this a fair summary?

A B C D
Halt operations changes y n n n
Create RT y y y y
RT with executive powers y ~ n n
Dissolve social.coop n n n y


A quick interjection, from the point of view of an engineer.

We have a mastodon service, it's been upgraded and nominally works.

If we plan to continue to use that server, #1 concern is enable us to move that service to new servers in < 4 weeks.

Which means being able to pay for the new servers, and mobilise those with the skills to rebuild everything that needs to be moved there.

So we need some named people to step up:
1. sponsor(s): who can pay for some tens or hundreds of dollars of expenses up front, claim back later
2. worker(s): who have sufficient time and skills collectively to do the move (and document it for future reference!)

If we pay a 3rd party consultancy (like Web Architects) several hundred dollars, we might dispense with the workers. Although probably then we'd be reliant on said consultancy thereafter.

Unless we choose to interrupt the service, everything else, such as policies, diversity, and teams etc. depends on that. But we don't need any constitutional changes to do this if we have 1. and 2.

However, even interrupting the service does not avoid the need to pay for new services and having people do work rescuing what we have in a way we can resurrect.

Thank you Nick. I think we can make some progress with this as soon as the small tech budget allocation is in place as it will give a sponsor more trust that there is an approved budget to work against.

While I support the spirit behind this proposal, and think that it's likely some kind of smaller group that is empowered to make pretty drastic decisions about the future of social.coop would be necessary to fix this organization's issues, I have some concerns about the logistics of this process here.

1. I suspect that many people who would need to be on a team like this in order for it to be successful have already been forced out of the coop, refused to join in the first place, or dropped out early because it was unwilling and unable to listen to their needs
2. I'm not sure that any kind of changes to policy or process would be enough to solve the fundamental problem that, if not an actual majority, a significant percentage number of the current members still do not believe there's a problem at all. They will block or add significant roadblocks to any democratic process that could actually make the needed impact, and they will block any move to empower a group who could do so without moving through the currently broken system.
3. This is an extraordinary amount of work and responsibility to put into the hands of a small number of people on a relatively tight deadline. It's one thing to make these kinds of decisions on behalf of yourselves, as a small group, and potential future members when you're starting a new organization. It's quite a different thing to make these kinds of decisions on behalf of a large existing membership, many of whom would be actively hostile to your goals and making additional demands
4. I would really want to see something about how this team will be selected, to ensure that it's capable of fulfilling its mission. Putting the coop on sound and sustainable footing is a task that's going to require a diverse assortment of specialized skill sets and experience. I suspect that social.coop no longer has everything needed internally. There should be some plan for this.
5. As of now, people who have not been following along are getting mixed-to-no messages about what the actual problems are, why they need fixing so drastically, and why proposals like this are being made at all. I think it would be worth finding a few people willing to try to collect and compile information about the precipitating incidents (without laying blame or naming specific individuals) and circulating a members-only report about what brought us to this point, so that more people who might otherwise be aligned with the goals of a proposal like this can be made to understand why it has come to this, if we're going to make a best-effort attempt to get the membership on board with needing to go this far.

I don't want to further stall progress on this stuff, because it is urgently needed, but in many ways the damage is already done and we will get at most one chance to fix this, I want us to take enough time so that we aren't just assembling a group of marginalized people to throw off a glass cliff when they weren't set up to succeed. As of now, I'm not confident a group set up to do this work under these constraints could be successful, and as the proposal becomes increasingly watered down, the chances they'll be empowered to do so drop dramatically.

I would really like to see number 5. The only people I've talked to so far who believe there are problems have refused to say what they are in terms specific enough to do anything about them. If there is a problem I'm here to listen and help, but getting very frustrated trying to figure out what needs to change.

Hey @meltheadorable thanks for another interesting post. I've found your contributions here and in our matrix room insightful and note they are valued by many.

Maybe I'm too much of a naive optimist, but I do wonder if there is as much hostility to progress on these issues within the membership as you appear to suggest. I've been a member for about a year and get the impression that most members would gladly declare that they strongly support the sentiments that are outlined in our diversity statement.

I think the idea of getting together a 'regeneration team', with a membership that has a strong bias towards people that come from groups that commonly suffer oppression and abuse, to bring a proposal in front of social coop of what needs to change would be most valuable.

I would hope that, especially following an explanation of how & why the events of the last week unfolded, there would be strong support for such a proposal.

I also feel a big part of the reason that lots of work (of all kinds) thats needed to happen has taken time is that we have been relying on volunteer efforts. With this in mind I wonder if we should try to find the funds to pay this group, with the hope that this could enable people to participate who otherwise may not be able to find the time and also attract people with the necessary skills.

I would hope we could find money from within the membership and/or by seeking funding elsewhere - social coop attracts a fair bit of attention and if we can illustrate the kind of issues that we encountered, find a pathway towards adequately address them and share what we learn it could provide value for many other organisations.

I don't want my pessimism to be warranted, but I find that the people who will nominally sign onto a diversity statement and the people who are capable of recognizing their personal failings enough to really, genuinely dig into the work that building a welcoming and supportive environment requires are very different groups, and what I've seen so far from this coop hasn't left me confident.

@meltheadorable, your pessimism is absolutely warranted. Your critiques have been on point.

@darren4, I believe(hope) that anyone actively hostile or ambivalent to progress on these issues has already left.
That doesn't mean that the people who strongly support the sentiments of a diversity statement aren't still psychologically resistant to the intense effort and personal discomforts that come from a process of owning their privilege and working to create a healthy environment that actually nurtures diversity. It's hard. It hurts. It by default wants to put you on the defensive. You can mean well and still fail. Even the veterans f*ck up sometimes. And we're all working off of ___ist biases, like it or not.

Re: funding the roles, I believe that some manner of nominal compensation is also being discussed.

What people say is important and their intentions are well taken. What people actually do with their actions and deeds is what has lasting and verifiable effects by everyone. The most obvious effect of this way of behaving is the crisis we're all witnessing. More of the same very good intentions with a lack of matching action leads to more of the same results. You know what they say about doing the same thing and expecting different results.

On the topic of remuneration. I did a rough guesstimate on how much work the technical tasks I listed in the tech group wiki (and nominally confirmed by Victor/Mayel) amount to, by multiplying their frequency by my estimate of the hours per task.

My conclusion is that it is approximately a full time job for one IT professional. If I underestimate, or we run more services, or have a lot of issues to tackle, two.

[Edit: revisiting, maybe ~half a full-time employee, in terms of hours - but I was looking at the cost, and getting a reasonable salary]

I can post my workings somewhere for a second opinion, if anyone is interested. Maybe someone could try this for the tasks in the other groups?