Organizing Circle Meeting: 2025 July 31 (1500 UTC)
Present: Ammar, Caitlin (notetaker), Dan, Melissa (facilitator, notetaker)
Check-Ins
Reportback from the Working Groups:
Tech Working Group (TWG) - Dan
- Mastodon upgrade
- Sense check results on Loomio: deciding
(1) new option for Terms of Service (TOS), which we can add to the Mastodon software and Masto would point to it. ... the new online Safety Act is in the UK... and it might guide us to write a new TOS, specific to SC
Our Code of Conduct does not cover drugs and unlawful integration. Someone named Luis posted; has legal experience, and could be willing to discuss it.
(2) Should we include hints with clicks to the outside target links from our posts? These hints would say to the target link website that the point of origin (for the click) is from Social.Coop server. The rest of the world would start knowing that their traffic is coming from Social.Coop. Pros: free advertising for Social.Coop Cons: anonoymity of our users and our site ... The issue went to Loomio Community.
'Fetch all replies' enabled as of today - it tries to go get replies from more servers so that when you see a most you are more likely to get more of the replies (comes from a social.coop member!), more here: https://wiki.neuromatch.social/Fetch_All_Replies
- UK Safety Act
Dan to dm Luis and Andrew about whether they can help with this and/or spearhead the legal working group
We had our first meeting of the year on July 22nd. It was attended by Josh, Andrew, Caitlin, Melissa, Kathe. Kathe reported with data displays and analysis fromm our data on Open Collective.
current plan is for Kathe to move from OC to FWG at end of year
We pay a LOT more for contribution fees for monthly donations than annual
Quirks with Open Collective --> Can Open Collective evolve to help Social.Coop? ... two organizations that don't have the same fiscal host can't make contributions to one another. Issuing a credit card could be one of the things that might help through Open Collective ... Open Collective's own goals for improvement ... We might ask them to build the feature. Ammar will send them a message.
Legal Working Group - can we try to get this group back together/in place? - Dan, Melissa
Step 1: try to get a couple of interested people to spearhead
Step 2: which we can faciliate is doing something public to drum up members: announcement/loomio etc
Note that this effort has been tried before (by Nathan Schneider, Caitlin Waddick, and Kathe TB... can circle back to them to discuss, one on one)
- not a lot of capacity
- not clear what the need is
- might try getting people without legal expertise and who are interested in the issues to become LWG members, and the LWG can hire a lawyer as needed
Equity planning (belonging, including, diversity, care, justice, etc.); as part of that, we could have some 'breakout groups' (subgroups of the OC) that run for a limited number of months and report back with suggestions.
We want to make sure we have reflective practices about power.
We want to include people in the coop that have experience in these practices.
Shared governance of OC - horizontal leadership: we rotate roles: facilitating meetings, announcing the meeting, notestaker, writing recaps.
Proposal: quarterly we reassign roles, thus building capacity within groups and reducing over-reliance on individual members.
Tracking projects of the Organizing Circle (and possibly extending this to collaborations with other working groups) specifically in relationship to managing to-do items
Caitlin Waddick, FWG/OC
Public
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Caitlin Waddick, FWG/OC · Thu 31 Jul 2025 5:25PM
Organizing Circle Meeting: 2025 July 31 (1500 UTC)
Present: Ammar, Caitlin (notetaker), Dan, Melissa (facilitator, notetaker)
Check-Ins
Reportback from the Working Groups:
Tech Working Group (TWG) - Dan
- Mastodon upgrade
- Sense check results on Loomio: deciding
(1) new option for Terms of Service (TOS), which we can add to the Mastodon software and Masto would point to it. ... the new online Safety Act is in the UK... and it might guide us to write a new TOS, specific to SC
Our Code of Conduct does not cover drugs and unlawful integration. Someone named Luis posted; has legal experience, and could be willing to discuss it.
(2) Should we include hints with clicks to the outside target links from our posts? These hints would say to the target link website that the point of origin (for the click) is from Social.Coop server. The rest of the world would start knowing that their traffic is coming from Social.Coop. Pros: free advertising for Social.Coop Cons: anonoymity of our users and our site ... The issue went to Loomio Community.
'Fetch all replies' enabled as of today - it tries to go get replies from more servers so that when you see a most you are more likely to get more of the replies (comes from a social.coop member!), more here: https://wiki.neuromatch.social/Fetch_All_Replies
- UK Safety Act
Dan to dm Luis and Andrew about whether they can help with this and/or spearhead the legal working group
Community Working Group (CWG)
- onboarding process meeting
https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Community_Working_Group_Onboarding_Notes_2025-07-23
Finance Working Group (FWG) - Caitlin
We had our first meeting of the year on July 22nd. It was attended by Josh, Andrew, Caitlin, Melissa, Kathe. Kathe reported with data displays and analysis fromm our data on Open Collective.
current plan is for Kathe to move from OC to FWG at end of year
We pay a LOT more for contribution fees for monthly donations than annual
https://www.loomio.com/d/PLKdG5TJ/budget-2024-budget-vs-actual/5
Organizing Circle policy decision for Finance, from 2024:
source: https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Organizing_Circle_policy#Annual_base_operations_budget_report
Quirks with Open Collective --> Can Open Collective evolve to help Social.Coop? ... two organizations that don't have the same fiscal host can't make contributions to one another. Issuing a credit card could be one of the things that might help through Open Collective ... Open Collective's own goals for improvement ... We might ask them to build the feature. Ammar will send them a message.
Legal Working Group - can we try to get this group back together/in place? - Dan, Melissa
Step 1: try to get a couple of interested people to spearhead
Step 2: which we can faciliate is doing something public to drum up members: announcement/loomio etc
Note that this effort has been tried before (by Nathan Schneider, Caitlin Waddick, and Kathe TB... can circle back to them to discuss, one on one)
- not a lot of capacity
- not clear what the need is
- might try getting people without legal expertise and who are interested in the issues to become LWG members, and the LWG can hire a lawyer as needed
Big Ideas: https://www.loomio.com/d/go0k1Nwv/organizing-circle-meeting-2025-30-january-thursday-1500-utc
-- We have 478 active users in Social.Coop currently.
[Meeting ended at 1600 UTC]
To-Dos from this meeting:
- UK Safety Act - - Dan to dm Luis about whether they can help with LWG
- Open Collective ideas - Ammar to reach out with our new feature requests
**** BELOW: ADDENDUM FOR BIG IDEAS' CONVERSATIONS * ********************
Priorities more specifically related to the OC, COPY AND PASTED BELOW
(Source link: https://share.mayfirst.org/s/WyKxiJ8C4gLbFxf?openfile=true )
Big Ideas: https://www.loomio.com/d/go0k1Nwv/organizing-circle-meeting-2025-30-january-thursday-1500-utc
Equity planning (belonging, including, diversity, care, justice, etc.); as part of that, we could have some 'breakout groups' (subgroups of the OC) that run for a limited number of months and report back with suggestions.
We want to make sure we have reflective practices about power.
We want to include people in the coop that have experience in these practices.
Shared governance of OC - horizontal leadership: we rotate roles: facilitating meetings, announcing the meeting, notestaker, writing recaps.
Proposal: quarterly we reassign roles, thus building capacity within groups and reducing over-reliance on individual members.
Tracking projects of the Organizing Circle (and possibly extending this to collaborations with other working groups) specifically in relationship to managing to-do items
Meeting notes archiving and organizing https://www.loomio.com/d/PIeVbXCH/determine-a-meeting-notes-location-for-oc-and-wgs-
Revisit onboarding process and documentation
Stipends
Review and update wiki
New services (e.g. messaging): OC can work with WGs and drive cost/benefit analysis and make decisions
Working group updates to end
Source: https://www.loomio.com/d/go0k1Nwv/organizing-circle-meeting-2025-30-january-thursday-1500-utc