On Visibility and Access for Social.Coop

I appreciate you raising these topics. Good to meet you! One potential next step (which I’d be willing to help with, but not lead) would be to review our current values and propose updates that we believe would increase visibility and access, and also imagine how we would apply those values as our community grows such that it stays accessible and holds fast to those values.

What do you think would be a good next step? How can people here support?

One thing I’ve been thinking about in the back of my head that your post relates to is just the notion of scaling social.coop so more people benefit from decentralized social media. I feel personally like social.coop is a nice archipelago that I washed up on from the shipwreck that was Twitter. It’s met my fairly low-key needs for online engagement on the topics I like to think about, but it could unquestionably be a whole lot more. How to get there probably looks very different than big tech scaling: an attention to onboarding, early level-setting connections and engagements, etc. But at some point I’d like to see media articles about this specific corner of Mastodon… it’s really amazing that it exists.

Love the concept of more intentionally designed scaling. One way to encourage more people to join social.coop would be to improve Mastodon’s design for better user experience. I wonder how many designers and UX researchers are on social.coop.

@Tom Resing, I wonder, too, how many UX designers are on there. I am by no means an UX/UI expert, just passionate about access and design. And I'm a metadata nerd. Though, on the UX point you raised, I think there’s value in considering accessibility beyond just interface design. Technical literacy itself can be a class and access issue. Some of my peers in feminist and academic spaces share the values here, but feel intimidated by the interface or by assumptions about prior knowledge. I know a lot of professors that feel intimated by technological spaces.

Improving UX doesn’t have to mean redesigning everything at once, even small, intentional structures; like clearer onboarding paths, internal documentation, or examples of how people use features, can create a more welcoming environment for people who want to be here but don’t know where to start. Do you think that's achievable, actionable, or meaningful? I think it's good to defer to people who have been in social.coop spaces longer, too.

@Benji Mauer Thanks, Benji, I appreciate your response!

I’d be happy to create a document that gathers critical questions, examples, and reflections we can use to look at our values with fresh eyes. I’ll aim to have a draft by at least the end of the week, so others can comment or build on it. Let me know how to share or any regulations regarding that!

In my experience working with organizations, including the bell hooks Digital Archive project, values clarification is strongest when it slows things down. One advantage of being a cooperative and not a for-profit platform/non-institutional is that there isn't a necessity to grow rapidly or adopt startup logics. That gives room for intentionality instead of urgency.

I'm not sure if this is fully implemented here, but I think a what a rotating, trained moderation group might look like as a way to distribute labor and prevent burnout. I know that's usually a concern as well.

I imagine scale here probably looks nothing like commercial platforms. And that's a good thing, it means people can think outside the out, and leave the “old ways” behind, haha. Happy to contribute a draft and keep the conversation going!

@laya that’s awesome I look forward to it. I’m not super involved in the governance of social.coop so others would know better if there’s a protocol, but I really like your idea of a next step, and will happily review your draft whenever you’re able to share it. I like what you said that there’s no real urgency beyond just wanting to clarify our shared values as a community to better support others joining in with intention. Thank you for offering to your energy to this.

Glad to see this thread. A few of us recently organized a mini hackathon to improve user onboarding in social.coop and cosocial.ca . (Keep an eye on the admin announcements for events like this.) Visibility was a big theme for our efforts as way foregrounding our values and mission and making that info consistent across the Mastodon instance, the wiki, and our registration materials. We have another hackathon planned, please feel free to join!

Generally, I like @Jamie Gaehring 's take on scale . There is also piece on our wiki How to Make the Fediverse Your Own about encouraging others to replicate cooperative and commons spaces.

Recent efforts by @wouter@freeknowledge.eu and @mike_hales are also aimed at supporting commoning in online spaces.

@Matt Noyes — thanks for sharing that resource; it highlights exactly what I was thinking! I’ve thought about how cooperatives can grow without adopting the assumptions of big tech. I think that's important here, difficult, but important.

I also appreciate hearing about the onboarding hackathon. Even small improvements in how information is surfaced across Mastodon, the wiki, and registration materials can make a meaningful difference; especially for people who come from non-technical backgrounds or who rely on clarity for accessibility reasons.

I’ll keep an eye out for the next hackathon (doing one this Friday for ethical hacking!).

Kia ora @laya , great conversation starter! A few random thoughts, in no particular order;

• Scaling: in decentralised networks, as in ecosystems, growth happens from the edges, not from the centre. Rather than figuring out how to make the social.coop Mastodon instance bigger, I would focus on how to help more communities set up their own cooperatively-run instances. Not necessarily using Mastodon either, there are many other options.

• Onboarding: same principle as above. The people most expert in bringing new people into the fediverse are those who got here most recently. They're the ones most likely to know people who aren't already using the fediverse, but could benefit from it. They're the ones most able to identify the obstacles that stop people getting in successfully, or stop them sticking around. Be a squeaky wheel, and encourage others to do the same.

• UX: Same principle as above. Recent arrivals are the people who can bring fresh eyes to the limitations and pain points of using the software. They are in the best position to point out the missing stairs that rest of us have got used to stepping over, and no longer see. Good UX practice is about co-design processes that facilitate conversations between newbies and developers.

• Imposter syndrome: IMHO this is a big barrier. When people arrive in the fediverse they often seem to assume they're the only person in the network that isn't an all-knowing IT geek. This is not the case! Most people have more relevant knowledge than they consciously recognise or given themselves credit for. Even those of us who've been involved in community IT for a decade or 2 are still learning, and no amount of technical knowledge enables us to magically solve the social problems that come with social software.

@Danyl Strype thank you for sharing these resources, they’re incredibly helpful!!

fediverse.party in particular feels like something that could play a vital role in onboarding and helping people understand the wider Fediverse. Tools like that, and the resources you listed, make the ecosystem far less overwhelming for newcomers. Keep up the good work!!

Your point about growth happening at the edges of decentralized networks resonated with me. A lot of people I know have interest in values-aligned digital spaces, but don’t have the time, technical background, or confidence to figure out where to begin. Having curated entry points or resource lists could make a big difference.

I’m thinking of something simple: a place where newcomers can quickly see:

• What the Fediverse is

• How social.coop fits into it

• The resources people here already share

• Links like fediverse.party, fedi.tips, and others

Whether that lives on the wiki, or a dedicated resource page, or even a secondary account that just boosts links, I’m wondering what would be best. I don’t know the best technical setup, so suggestions are welcome; I'll keep researching, this is all so fascinating!

I’m going to draft a Markdown document gathering the themes from this discussion: visibility, accessibility, onboarding, multimodality, and values clarification, along with questions about social.coop and its values. Does anyone have recommendations for a privacy-respecting, open-source tool where I can share the document, so people can comment or add to it? (Something like an open-source/privacy-aware equivalent of Google Docs.)