Instance is running - still work in progress

Ok, I removed the signup form from the home page, so for now go here in order to create your account: https://social.coop/members-only

Fantastic! So exciting! Amazing work. I just created my account! Some notes:

Just one thing: The "request membership" and "coop member governance group" links are colored too much like the background, making them hard to see.

Obviously with time it'd be great to get our own landing page there. Is anyone already working on the public-facing info pages, or is that something we need to get others active on? For one thing, it'd be great to develop our own logo and other elements to set us apart from the other MD sites.

I tweaked the buttons. This is already a custom landed page (based on Mastodon's default), so please do suggest improvements to the design and contents.

Another crazy thought... should we be planning ahead for making this a more multi-platform domain? For instance:

toot.social.coop > Mastodon
chat.social.coop > Mattermost or XMPP
vid.social.coop > Jitsi video

Or should we just focus on Mastodon? I just think the domain is so rich, we might consider its fuller potential.

etc etc.

I was thinking along the same lines! (also Matrix.org chat) but thought we should first figure out how to best run this one service, and then we can add others with the same model.

Agreed. Thank you so much for all this. I'm having a blast.

Logo idea: The three Mastodon speech bubbles turned green and made into pine trees.

Hopped on and am loving it so far. The experience of having an intimate shared affinity local timeline is very different that the noise of the mastodon.social one, where the shared affinity is early adoption. It adds an extra dimension which is really nice.

One landing page issue; even if there is not a registration link, can there be a login link?

In terms of promotion, how widely do we want to cast the net at this point? Kept as a sandbox for people on Loomio? 1-on-1 invites to trusted cooperators? Outreach to select organizations or broader lists? My feeling is 1-on-1 invites, but am fine with any of those options. Perhaps a proposal would be appropriate?

Also, @mayel as I said in the meeting, I'm happy to kick you $25 via PP or bitcoin to help shoulder a bit of the short-term incidental costs until we have the initial biz model in place. Can you post payment vectors to get the funds your way?

Agreed on the login link!

And @matthewcropp, shall we first pitch $ into OpenCollective and then transfer to @mayel to test that out?

And attached is the world's most obvious logo idea.

Okay, OpenCollective is a go: https://opencollective.com/socialcoop

Awesome @ntnsndr, here's my account if you can add me: https://opencollective.com/mayel

How about we do 1 on 1 invites for now, while discussing how to handle membership on-boarding after the May date. We're getting a few sign ups on the form since yesterday...

I removed the login link from landing page, because the login page contains a link to the signup page. So to avoid random people being able to sign up, I think we're gonna need to disable registrations in Mastodon's settings and set up a way to create accounts directly on the server via our members database.

Rad, thanks for thinking through that, @mayel. Maybe we could post a link to the login page in some members-only space like Loomio for now. But since membership is so crucial for this project, having a robust member log-in system makes a lot of sense—and ideally a federated system, so we can add other services later on.

I don't think I "add" you to OC, or at least I don't know how. I think you'd just submit the expense while logged in. Anyway, I approved the one you submitted. Were you logged in when you submitted that?

Love the logo!

Awesome! Created an account, and it says "This collective is currently under review by the host (OpenCollective Inc.)" - once that review is complete, I presume I can contribute?

Yeah, I believe so.

I just registrered my username :D
What a time to be alive!

Just to say, I created two accounts....the one where I pretend to be cool, and the one where I'm just myself ;)

Currently upgrading to latest release: https://github.com/tootsuite/mastodon/releases

Instance will be unavailable for a few min.

Edit: up!

@mayel—happy to revise the proposal if you'll pull back the block. Is there specific language you'd suggest? Perhaps those for whom $1 doesn't make sense can write in to request an exception? (Down the line we can figure out how best to automate this.)

One idea that occurred to me tonight is that we could have the instance open to anyone who affirms commitment/connection to the movement, but only people who subscribe have governance power? That could initially look like access to the Loomio, but other "members only" spaces could be developed over time to increase the appeal of membership. In this way people could join and kick the tires, and if they like what they find and want to get more involved, they are welcome to, but the barrier to initial engagement is kept low.

On the other hand, free-riding could be a challenge?

I really like this idea, Matt. Do you want to formulate it as a new proposal?

I like this idea as well, in the form that we discussed it during the #tootup (pasting below for anyone who missed)

@mayel
On this topic, I think it's important for all members to be involved in goverance (we don't want to create a class system). But if we decide to only allow members to be users of the service, we can still have free memberships for those who can't participate financially.

@matthewcropp
One think I've been thinking about is that, in the #workercoop model, there's usually a probationary period for membership of anywhere between a few months and 5 years. New folks works as an employee of the co-op, then are invited to buy in once the existing member group feels comfortable to co-owning the #coop with them. We could do something akin where folks get a free account for 3 months, and if they turn out to not be a troll, they are either offered or required to join. #socialcoop

@mayel
Interesting...
So basically, come and participate in our Mastodon community for a while, and if you turn out to be an OK person (based on our code of conduct) you can then become and official #SocialCoop member

@kaniini@mastodon.dereferenced.org
do you then get a ✅ next to your name ?

@matthewcropp
that would actually be kind of an interesting thing - you're only allowed to add a check or twin pineapples to your name if you are a full member of #SocialCoop - provisional members get booted if they do that, so people in the broader #fediverse could know if a person posting from social.coop is a full member or not. Almost like a club jacket in emoji form... ;)

I like the emoji use, though it could inhibit some people's preference to use or not use emojis. I'm personally not a huge fan. Maybe it could be in the bio, not the name.

I just proposed elsewhere, the following:

• Brief application required for membership making co-op commitment clear
• After a month of activation, contributions expected

@mayel when are sign-ups expected to be confirmed? Signed up last wk I believe and paid dues via Opencollective.

@victormatekole you can currently sign up via https://social.coop/members-only

Ok so like, here I am - sortof!

I haven't been able to participate in the toot ups (hate to confess I have a job in a corporation), and - I haven't figured out how to navigate to the Mastodon space from my phone so have not participated there at all since joining. Wah. Are you going to kick me out soon?

Sigh. I need a level of instruction that's pretty much hand-holding. Which might disqualify me from membership already -- am I just digging the hole deeper and deeper with each confession? 😃

Where do I go to pay and, since I still haven't joined Bitcoin (let alone any of the other crypto-currencies) ... should I suck it up and finally DO THAT first or is there a mechanism to pay with my handy-dandy debit card?

@stephaniejokent I believe membership dues are paid here, for now — https://opencollective.com/socialcoop. Certainly, that is how I made contribution. I wouldn't worry about other forms of payment just yet. The thread in ref. (https://www.loomio.org/d/XmveSFWK/support-for-cryptocurrency-payments) to other forms of payment — in my opinion, isn't critical for the short term but something that I kicked off discussion now as Seedbloom (https://seedbloom.it) is re-engineering its current payment system in June for which social.coop could leverage to compliment or replace current form of payment.

@stephaniejokent I made this presentation for a Mastodon crash course at my hackerspace, you might find it a good jumping off point.

The key piece is you need to sign up from browser (either on your phone or desktop) via this link. Once you have an account, install an app (I'm using Tusky, though I've heard there are others than might be better) and authorize it to activate your social.coop profile, then you should be able to use from mobile.

Right now, memberships are not integrated with payments, so we're going by the honor system - the payments are currently done through the Opencollective project that Victor linked to in the previous post. Select recurring payment, and enter your sliding scale point between $1-10 per month. As we scale up, we will eventually need to integrate those two functions, but right now our group's shared purpose is hopefully generating sufficient social capital.

@victormatekole and @matthewcropp - I have successfully paid :) thank you!

I'll come back to the presentation soon (hope hope).

Where should the power to suspend & ban users on our instance, and block users on other instances, as well as whole instances? Should we create a new Subgroup, or should that live in the Membership subgroup as "Membership & Moderation"?

I wonder if this is an opportunity in the medium term for Sortition? Have a randomly-selected jury either serve for a set period of time, or form a randomly selected jury for each case (with jurors compensated for their labor in dues credit).

Looks like a policy question....@michelekipiel posted some suggestions....somewhere (!)

FYI I'm upgrading Mastodon v1.4rc3 and it's taking a bit longer than expected. The server will be back up soon!

Up, up, and away... ;)

Struggling with it :( Mastodon being such a young software, with little documentation, and many moving parts, makes maintaining this pretty complex...

The docs didn't say something about the database volume not being persistent by default (it's since been added) which resulted in the upgrade process creating a new, empty database. No big deal, the data wasn't deleted, but I'm having trouble transferring it back to the new (now persistent) db volume.

Hope we have more technical members soon to help with this stuff!

@clayton is this something you can help @mayel with?

I'm thinking if we aren't able to get it up in the next hour, perhaps a note should be put on the landing page and sent out to members - we've got a lot of new folks just getting their feet wet, and it not functioning w/o a stated reason could dampen momentum considerably.

Also, any way of reverting to the previous version while the kinks are worked out?

Definitely. Been at it for hours now trying bunch of different things... I added the following message, let me know if you want something different:

The app is currently down for maintenance, and should be back up soon. Please check the Loomio for updates.

...aaaannnd we're back! 😅

Yay @mayel!

The instance had stopped federating, with a database query timeout, and lots of queued tasks not being run. We'll be down for a bit while I upgrade to a larger server, and to the latest version of Mastodon.

Okay. thanks for the update and your hard work!

The instance is back up. It was much more painful that these things should be / usually are...

Working out some last details, but you're OK to start tooting again!

https://status.social.coop/

Thank you very much!