Pondering how democratic tools & rules are only as good as they can reflect a group's consensus.
The #benevolentdictator model in open systems, ie FOSS & now fedi instances, despite problems (centralisation, burnout), remains compelling. It could also be a Team with control (as with post-BDFL projects like CiviCRM) – the key is decision-makers have to reflect consensus. Because it's all open, they know the community can depart/fork with relatively low cost (unlike the Zuskian/techbro dictator).
None of this meant as an attack on [#sociocracy, which I think was designed as a consensus system when everyone is in a literal room together… & def not #mutualism which feels to me the closest political theory to reflect the fediverse. Things here are both common & owned in overlapping groups with some shared principles. I'm personally v interested in & grateful to learn from this exploration of digital democracy beyond Git's Issues+PRs (aka corp governance motions) & Merges/Forks (aka votes).]
@dajb ah, ok - sorry. I did a workshop at Mozfest once and it felt the goal was to discuss things in ever bigger groups until everyone was on the same page. Anyone could block the whole process so there was a need for consensus. But I might have forgotten some key details! It felt that this ability for one person to block the democratic expression of 120 people's votes had more in common with sociocracy than one-member one-vote coops?
Yes the constant meta (and Meta) discussion here is tedious, and often much worse, but what you have to realize is that this isn’t just a social network, it’s a left/progressive political project. I don’t know how many left/progressive political orgs you’ve been involved in, but let me tell you, they are kind of known for endless, agonizing talk about process, factions, outside threats, inside threats, strategy, grievances, etc. And if you have a solution for that, you just might save the world.
@Emilyy@misc@ryanrandall I’d like to mention the dual power app, open sociocracy, and the wobbly app. A few stabs at the problem of digital organizational democracy being developed in parallel.
Overview: The article discusses the interplay between decentralized and centralized aspects of governance in the context of decentralized self- governance and shares learnings from Sociocracy For All’s (SoFA) experience, including that decentralization is an active process that requires preparation, budget, strategy, and...
A great article delving into the power of fractal software to empower organizations in post-capitalist worlds and imagining how Bonfire can benefit from adopting the fractal knowledge model itself.
Free and Open Source Content Circle is hosting an event next week and I'd like to invite you!
Exploring Self Governance in the Fediverse: A discussion about decision making among a federated ensemble
--> May 29th 15:00 - 16:30 UTC
We're a circle within @SociocracyForAll , so I'll be interested to find out how sociocracy can support you. There will also be time to chat about common governance models and tensions that arise.
For #FEP (Fediverse Enhancement Proposals) we think of specifying behavior as human-readable, tech-independent #Gherkin scripts. That can be a good approach. Same org has the #FediverseIdea repo.
Hi! Here is our introductory post! We are a small team working on open source tools to make sociocracy easier for others to adopt.
We started this project because we were interested in using sociocracy for our worker co-op but ran into hurdles figuring out how to manage our structure and meetings. So we thought "let's build what we need to make it easy for others too!"
[PDF] Decentralization and Centralization in Sociocratic Organizations—Dynamics,Combinations, and Hybrid Solutions | Journal of Nonprofit Innovation (scholarsarchive.byu.edu)
Overview: The article discusses the interplay between decentralized and centralized aspects of governance in the context of decentralized self- governance and shares learnings from Sociocracy For All’s (SoFA) experience, including that decentralization is an active process that requires preparation, budget, strategy, and...