![[Home]](http://www.communitywiki.org/pics/comwiki7-150.png)
This is an effort to make a CommunityWikiGovernment.
This is a proposal constitution for CommunityWikiGovernment.
CommunityWiki has accumulated many treasures:
Reputation, however, is not something we own; Reputation is “other people’s story about you.” To keep our reputation active, we are obligated:
We are codifying our power structure into explicit rules, so that CommunityExpectations are clear, to protect our treasures, and to live up to our obligations.
In the process, we transform from a clique, into something more like a club.
The CommunityWiki will divide participants into the following roles:
Privileges are roughly divided into the following categories:
When someone first posts a comment, they are a visitor.
“How are guests made?”
Should conversation sustain for a month, and the community is on good terms with the person, then the person can roughly assume that they have become a guest, unless a CommunityMember should say otherwise.
After roughly a year of participation, the person should make a choice between being a CommunityMember, or an OccasionalContributor. This is not an automatic conversion, rather: Whoever notices first, the CommunityMembers?, or the GuestRole participant, should say something about it, and start the conversion process.
“How are CommunityMembers? made?”
CommunityMembers? can be made, when:
If a guest has been around for a year, the guest or CommunityMembers? should speak up. If there are the required number of CommunityMembers? present, then they should go through the routine.
The routine for making a CommunityMember is as follows:
If something really needs to go through quickly, then if 10 CommunityWiki members are present, and all the other conditions are met, (ie “No no votes,) then the 10 members can declare the vote finished.
Rules are amended by the sme process that new members are made.
Each of the following may opt to be a CommunityMember. The default is to be an OccasionalContributor.
A guest more or less automatically becomes an OccasionalContributor after a year.
Many people decide not to become a CommunityMember, or show no interest in becoming a CommunityMember.
OccasionalContributors? are basically assumed to understand how the wiki works, and the rules, and have met newcomers, and so on.
OccasionalContributor is an esteemed role; Guests and Visitors should defer to an OccasionalContributor.
It may seem that power is granted by the rules. However, this is not really the case.
The power is made by the network of relationships and interests. This government is really just present to communicate the agreements that have been made here, to clarify CommunityExpectations, and to explain why and how police acts work.
But the power really rests in the people here, and rules and locks really exist to the extent that they exist in our minds.
This constitution is not really set up to resolve differences between CommunityMembers?, who are more ore less expected to operate by consensus. But it does define the body of CommunityWiki.
I wrote this super-fast, and in my PlainTalk.
I would consider this “ratified,” if a process like the vote above was met.
But I suspect we need to have conversation and change it around a bit, before “signing.”
It may well take 2 months before we complete dialog.
Well done, Lion. Especially given time constraints. I’ll at least monitor this important issue.
Thank you.
General announcement: We talked a little about these things in Ting 82; the most relevant parts are circa “08:29:53 PM”. That said, it’s kind of hard to follow: It’s an IRC transcript, after all. We addressed some of the questions seen above; Search the text for: “Do we need a CommunityWikiGovernment?”
“I’ve never made a government before.” - uugh, I like that one. Brilliant.
When reading I lingered a long time in the beginning thinking about the roles, if there weren’t some metaphoric five characters or items probably with icons but nothing came to my mind. There is still a scent of hierarcy, privilies is too strong for the fact that an anonymous newcomer has 97.8 % of all possible rights here already. Neutral point of view is not required on community-wiki, we are not admins in the wikipedia-sense as we are no encyclopedia (Wales’ concept), we are a jam-session. That makes things different. One is a predefined thing and in itself already justifies hierarcy, the other is making the whole current concept editable to everyone. In a jam you’re in when making a sound. There are no admins in a jam,
When you’re in a band, if someone comes in, and starts playing a radically different song, the group has a choice: To harmonize with that radically different song, or to reject that radically different song.
I personally feel that there is hierarchy on CommunityWiki, and I’m okay with that. It is my personal philosophy, articulated in CliquesAndCommunities, that some minimal degree of hierarchy is automatically present wherever a clique forms.
Hierarchy can be harmful, hierarchy can be valuable. I write programs every day, that embody hierarchy. All programmers do.
What we want to do is not have the weak crushed by the strong, and so on.
If I am acting too strong, it is important for people to speak up, and I promise to be responsive to a CommunityMember. That said, I don’t feel a need to entertain the opinions or criticisms of outsiders.
If we were in charge of a large multi-national corporation or government that directly influenced the lives of billions of people, I would think that we had an obligation to find some way of resolving ForFewAndMany, and hearing and responding to popular sentiment.
But we are so far away and remote from that– we’re just people having conversations and occasionally making things. We may affect the lives of millions, or even billions, but the number of indirections is super-high. (Like the butterfly, flapping its wings.) We are not a formal institution, and I don’t think we are at the level of responsibility yet, such that we have to pick up the phone whenever a critic calls.
As it is: I say things, and people are interested. That is an intrinsically hierarchical relationship. Some people I want to have long term conversations and even personal relationships with, other people, I do not. This is an intrinsically hierarchical relationship, bounded by the realities of space & time and such.
The first and most important question is, “Do we need a CommunityWikiGovernment?”
I personally need it, because I’m tired of answering questions about whether I am authoritative or not, compared to, say, sigi, or a newcomer.
A situation we ran into recently was:
The net effect is that it looks like Sigi is basically right, and that Lion is just making up rules: that nobody cares about how many pages you make, and that what Sigi has to say about how things work here is okay, and that everyone is an equal with respect to CommunityWiki.
This is basically nonsense, and I can prove it’s nonsense, by going door-to-door, getting people to attest that, “Yes, this network of relationships exist, and, Yes, we would all be upset if Lion left, and no, sigi isn’t really a major contributor to this wiki, and yes, these things Lion is saying are more or less true, except that it does bring up interesting philosophical points P1, P2, P3, and I would disagree with X, Y, and Z, …”
Basically, this is too time consuming a venture, to do over and over, every time we get into a situation where authority needs to be established, and so on.
We exist as a clique (or a community, or whatever you want to call this small group of people,) with a particular dynamic of interests. SamRose and Lion are interested in one set of things. AlexSchroeder is only interested in people P1, P2, P3, and doesn’t really care for the rest. BayleShanks loves to talk about N, M, and T, but he’s gone right now. For the most part, this all just works. Participation and trust is tied to the people, and to the content, and there is a trust that things will be preserved, that there won’t be radical changes, that it’ll be here when we come back, relatively unscathed. We may change our minds about things, but respecting a FairProcess with the people we trust and so on.
To keep these trusts, without resorting to HardSecurity, we basically need agreements. And hey, we have those agreements. What we need, then, is to articulate those agreements. Those agreements, written down, will show to visitors and guests: “See? These are the things that we agree to. These are the things we think. This is how we structured ourselves.” “See that over there? Right there, it says, line 22, that if sigi’s being a jerk, in the eyes of a CommunityMember, that it’s okay for a CommunityMember to say: Buzz off! For an month or so. It says it right there. That’s how you know.”
Basically, it’s the same thing that I do manually, when I go around and say, “Folk, I need you to attest to the newcomers that this is the way we do things.”
I put on my suit, pull out my vcards, and manually start making phone calls. “Bayle! Good to talk with you! But, I’m afraid I’ve got some bad news. Yes, yes.. I know; But I’m in a bit of a hurry. Yes, see: There’s trouble on CommunityWiki. Yes, yes, … I need you come and attest what, to us, is the blatantly obvious. No, it’s not much fun, …”
Multiply that by N times, and you can see why I’m calling for CommunityWikiGovernment.
It’s basically the same thing, but in an automated form: We write it all down on a document, and there it is, for all to see. No need to make phone calls and so on; It’s just all right there in the document.
I actually see our work here as producing a thing.
There is something it is to think in the CommunityWiki way. We are not OpenMinded; We are only SelectivelyOpenMinded. There are ideas that we do not entertain, for a number of reasons. Some things seem blindingly obvious to us, that others think are not settled. There are many things that we are open to, that most people find blindingly obvious. We have a set, a setting, we have ideas, we have questions, we have rules, we have paths, and so on.
We have build a PageDatabase and ArgumentPyramids. We don’t want that all wiped away, or diluted.
Imagine what would happen to MeatballWiki if all the present residents left, and some brand new crop of people suddenly appeared in it, who were not experienced with wiki: It would be a horrible thing. “Oh, what’s this page: UseRealNames? Oh, screw that, what moron thought up that idea? Delete.” It would be a wreck. It would arguably set back the progress of wiki and online communities in general by several years. Such a thing cannot be allowed to happen.
It is similar, but not quite as severe, here. There is value here. I don’t want to see it ruined. I do not want to see it die prematurely. I know that many communities, waaay outside of here, have been influenced by what is here. The Interra project, the PlaNetWork?, the EvolutionarySalon, TomAtlee?’s democracy projects, and so many others: They all have been positively influenced by us, and many of them reference us.
If CommunityWiki as a community refuses to take ownership of its relationships, then why I am I investing myself here? Then why am I placing eggs into this nest? Why would I do such a thing?
Perhaps it’s just that I take my thoughts more seriously than other people. Perhaps other people do not care what comes of what they think and say. But I know that I do.
If CommunityWiki does not value this enough, if the cost of valuing our relationships is just so enormously high, that it cannot bother itself to discriminate and to secure, then I clearly need to move elsewhere.
If I move elsewhere, it’s likely that SamRose and AlexSchroeder lose interest. And that BayleShanks and EvanProdromou and EmileKroeger will never return. If I and they leave, then the vast majority of people here will not return. The community will die.
So, the proper thing to do is articulate the relationships. Make this a stable, safe place, for our conversations, and for TrustedLinkLanguage.
We don’t have to call it a “government,” if we don’t want to. But I’ll argue that that’s basically what it would be, once you get to the, “Oh, and these trusted relationships and people and expectations take priority over new people coming in, and you’re expected to respect CommunityMembers?.”
In some ways, the government already exists, (it is unavoidable, from the very beginning, of a group of people gathering together,) it just needs to be written down, to some small degree.
This is where we are at, as a Community. This is our next growth step, as far as I can see it.
So, in summary:
Lion, I am working on a response to this right now, and promise that I’ll post it as soon as I am done with it. Just wanted to let you know that I am engaged with this.
Thank you, Sam; I’m eager to hear what you have to say.
In the meantime: Does anybody else have anything to say? Perhaps about the general idea of a CommunityWikiGovernment?
Maybe someone (you, dear reader,) think that this is a really, really, dumb idea? Because, it’s okay with me if that’s the first thought that hits your mind.
I just need some sense of where we’re at with this idea.
I don’t know whether this is a common thing in the US, but the German countries have a strong tradition of forming associations (see CorporateMembership). There, you have a mini-government. And their problems are common knowledge: Overworked board, long discussions, few accomplishments, a lot of frustration.
I generally dislike them.
Smaller groups have the benefit of running smoothly with an informal set of rules. Thus, before forming a little government in order have a framework within which I could defend my edits and my ideas of the site against people like Sigi or Ernst Gruber or any other person I dislike, I prefer we split up.
After all, we’re not limited to the real world. If Sigi and I lived in the same space, a government would be necessary because there’s little avoiding each other. But avoiding is easy online. Just split the site and split the community.
It’s not unethical. It’s not evil. It’s the right thing to do.
(But see below for a change of heart.)
I am pretty interested in both types of solution. By the way you can combine them as well - and this might be a good evolutionary schema for testing new wiki processes. What are the technical details of splitting? I am affraid that in practice we shall split with just one person.
I’m aware of the inherent injustice of splitting a community if there’s the risk that one of the parts is too small to be viable. Without an audience that is split alongside, it is more of an amputation: The smaller part withers away and dies.
Then again, perhaps in such a situation the smaller part merits to wither away. Consider Speaker’s Corner in Hyde Park, London: People have a right to speak, but they don’t have the right to an audience. If everybody walks away, you don’t have the right to follow them to their dinner tables.
Also remember that some people could pertain to both communities.
As for the technicalities, I think I will copy the page database over to an Oddwiki, and then it will be the responsibility of others to set up NearLinks to this site, if they want, and optionally to mark their own copy of pages as deleted if they don’t want their own copies of particular pages.
The author understands Lion to save the goodies of CommunityWiki. On the other hand it appears almost certain, that new creative people will go to that wiki, where there is more freedom for expressing new ideas. – FridemarPache
Wow, one great thing about CommunityWiki is that it we really seem to, in one way or another, pull out many of the possible “sides” in a given debate.
I think that right now we do not have a government, as mentioned already by Lion. Looking around the wiki, it appears that conflicts and issues are either resolved among people involved, or resolved by Alex if people can’t settle it on their own.
I value this space, and I generally have no problem with anyone in it. Although I do wish that people apparently causing grief to others in this space (ie sigi causing grief to LionKimbro and AlexSchroeder) would cease being confrontational, and instead civilly discuss and resolve their issues like an adult. Don’t push people with confrontation to their limits of personal tolerance.
There can only be an actual government here in CommunityWiki if the majority of us, and Alex (the physical owner of this space) agrees that there should be one.
The thing, or SocialNorm? that can (potentially and theoretically) resolve this and all future community conflicts is for everyone to AssumeGoodFaith, and possibly AssumeStupidityNotMalice.
Thus, if, for instance, sigi does something that is undesireable, hopefully we have already applied AssumeGoodFaith and/or AssumeStupidityNotMalice. This would mean explaining to sigi why what he is doing is undesireable. Now, we can then judge by sigi, or whomever’s reaction whether they also AssumeGoodFaith for why people have reacted that way to him/her.
AssumeGoodFaith requires that all parties involved AssumeGoodFaith. If one party does not, then AssumeGoodFaith fails. So, I am guessing that what we are talking about here is what happens when AssumeGoodFaith fails (unless we are not generally defaulting to AssumeGoodFaith. If not it is my humble opinion that we should.)
I am guessing without investigating that people did AssumeGoodFaith, but that it failed. If so, and if we don’t or won’t explore creating a government, then it seems reasonable that Alex will take the actions he is talking about. I recommend that in the future, we make it explicit with people causing conflict that we will start out applying AssumeGoodFaith, and it is up to the conflict-causer to make AssumeGoodFaith succeed or fail.
Wow, I’ll bet this page will be get prime Google-ranking for “AssumeGoodFaith” in no time. 
RadomirDopieralski, Dan, and I, are having a conversation in IRC right now, which asks and answers a lot of the key questions here.
I think it sheds a lot of light; I’ll publish it when we’re done, and perhaps summarize it.
OK- done: It’s CommunityWikiGovernmentIrcConversation.
And I personally feel that it went a long way to explaining the various concerns, and reasonings, and so on.
“Government” seems like a bit of a strong term, but I can’t think of a better one.
It seems that the spirit is pretty much to extend the role of BenevolentDictator to all regulars, which should also work fine. The only downside is that it’s a bit more complicated to explain than “X’s word is law”, hence the constitution, etc. “Benevolent Oligarchy”? 
I’ve missed a lot of the recent discussion (I’m not that passionate about the SourceOfEthics, and am in France again with no computer outside of work), I’m glad to see that some new people are around 
Maybe the RightToFork should be stressed somewhere in the “rules” - if someone forks, we’ll link to him somewhere. That’d make the right more “real”, though maybe this isn’t the place to talk about that.
I think the example “A situation we ran into recently was” under “Do we need a government?” should be moved to the top of the page, because it answers the question of “what’s wrong that we are trying to fix”.
As in the past, I support the proposition that we should have a (small) written constitution and an explicit membership list. As Lion states, it is desirable to have an efficient way to convince newcomers that what one of us says is “the way we do things around here” actually is.
I would prefer to do this than to split the wiki. I think that it is possible for us to develop an efficient, online, “asynchronous” governance system that will allow our objectives to be achieved without burdening all of us with lengthly meetings. Yes, this means we will have to succeed in creating something more efficient than the rules of order which physical organizations use for their board meetings. However, those systems were not designed with asynchronous telecommunications media in mind, so it is plausible that better systems are possible.
Bias warning: the development of more efficient “rules of order” has been a long-term project of mine for awhile.
Now, details. I think the five roles above (CommunityMember,OccasionalContributor, GuestRole, VisitorRole, DifficultPerson) are more than we need to codify into law. I think we only really need three roles: CommunityMember (someone who has a vote; someone who has been approved by other community members to be on the membership list), DifficultPerson (sort of an anti-list; a list of people whom the community members have voted to censure); and everyone else.
I think the roles of OccasionalContributor, GuestRole, VisitorRole ARE real ROLES, but that stuff can be enforced by social convention in the usual fashion. In the principal of MinimalLaw, I would like to minimize the complexity of the legal system.
I would like to note that the minimum that you need for a constitution is a membership list and a legislative system for making rules and amending the constitution (see BootstrapConstitution).
Since the only problem we are trying to solve is to allow whoever is around (out of the Members) to speak authoritatively to other people, the membership list alone accomplishes most of this. As Emile said, Benevolent Oligarchy.
The rest of it can be accomplished by having a few Rules (laws passed by the legislative process) which are voted upon by the members and which can be referred to to convince people that yes, this really is the way we do things around here.
Just as I think the five-role system is more complex than we need, I think the Privileges which attach to these roles are more than we need. I don’t think things like “refactoring lots of pages” needs to be constrained legislatively in the constitution; I think social convention is enough for most of it. For the rest, we could pass a Rule saying “If you are relatively new, don’t make too many big changes too quickly, because we don’t have time to absorb it (see IntegrationAndIdentity). ‘Too many too quickly’ is to be interpreted in the judgement of any Member or anyone who has been here for more than a few months.”.
Then, if newcomers are making too many changes too quickly, a Member or an OccasionalContributor can point to that rule and tell them to stop. It will be clear to the newcomer that the Member has the authority to do so. However, this way we would avoid having to precisely codify very much social structure into the constitution.
I agree; I especially liked the simplifications.
Question: What about CommunityDoesNotAgree?
LionKimbro says, “Too many pages from the newcomer,” MattisManzel says, “No; Give room to breath,” – what is the newcomer to make of it?
Hmm, I think the rule we pass should specify what happens in that case. I am fine either way (if the rule says that any single community member’s request is enough to halt the newcomer, or if the rule says that almost all community members present must agree).
BTW, I wrote a different constitution proposal at the bottom of CommunityWikiConstitution.
LiquidDemocracy! Of course! That solves our “they’re not present” problem. 
I like the Constitution (difficult) vs. Rule (easy) split; The LiquidDemocracy; the “Kernel” system.
Concerns:
Your proposal has my enthusiastic support. 
Given the special powers of members, i think there should be an easy way of identifying them as such, such as a label under their picture. In fact, the role you describe seems less like what i usually think of as “member” and more like moderators.
For membership, you propose:
That’s a lot. In fact, it is the most restrictive system of membersip tests that I have seen in 35+ years of working with organizations, including four organizations doing felony civil disobedience with a serious fear of agents and provocateurs.
The mechanism also seems like it could stifle interesting discussion by discouraging the admission to membership of folks with conflicting views. This is fine if you are trying to work together to develop a particular shared position. Are you? I would have guessed not. And it might not be true if the members share a clear and explicit value of recruiting diverse views. Do you?
Aren’t there only 2 tiers- voting member, and non-voting member?
And 1 test for membership- If you can get 90% of the vote, over 2 months?
I agree that it is hard to get consensus on membership.
The Emma Goldman Finishing School, a local activist housing thing, as I understand it, requires consensus amongst all members, for a new person to come in. Also, it takes roughly a month or two of dialog. 2 months may seem like a long time, but this is in the slow-time of the online world, with only N interactions per unit time.
Well, perhaps i am reading it wrong, but it looks to me like in order to move from outsider to member you have to be a visitor, then a guest, with an optional contributor stage. Counting outsider and member, that’s five levels of ascending trust, each with a transition rule and an associated level of privilege.
I can not find any reference to a 90 percent vote above. All i see is a consensus requirement.
The text doesn’t appear to say that people have two months to reach consensus. So far as i can see, there is no upper bound on the time to reach consensus. It says that, having reached it, it has to be maintained continuously for two additional months. It is not clear to me how consensus over two months is supposed to be established procedurally. By the silence of those who could retract their vote? By a second vote at the end of the period? Can someone not initially part of the consensus retract or veto? Is there any requirement to engage in a deliberative process before casting a vote, or to give reasons afterwards?
I suspect that the month or two of dialogue for the EGFS often starts with folks they do not know that well, rather than people who have been active community members for at least a year, as required here.
To me, the two-month thing seems like an unnecessary complication, taking the place of something you do not have and need, a rule for removing members who have become inactive, are having a psychotic break, can’t stop insulting member 2 who ran of with their true love, etc. I would recommend an automatic process for the inactive, suspendable at the discretion of the other members, and some supermajority for removal – 2/3 or 3/4 are common.
And i am still unclear about the extent to which the community values diversity of views and how that value, if it exists, is expressed proceedurally.
Oh; Lately, we’ve moved to talking about the proposal on CommunityWikiConstitution. There’s a second proposal– Bayle wrote it.
And i am still unclear about the extent to which the community values diversity of views and how that value, if it exists, is expressed proceedurally.
I like this quote a lot. The feeling is mutual.
“How are we SelectivelyOpenMinded?” Good question. This is one of those questions we answer by living and testing and experimenting, I think, rather than performing a focused inquiry. I know that I do not have a clear and lucid answer.
One thing about government is that more trust generally requires less layers of process. Plus, visible trust reinforces a collective, yet potentially diverse aggregation of the community definition of “trust’. Yet, I think that TrustMetrics? may be too complicated for us to employ here and now in CommunityWiki. Still, it’s worth thinking about. TrustMetrics?, and maybe some form of ValueMetrics? can help people express, individually, how they see other people living up to expressed SocialNorms?, like DontHateThePlayer, AssumeGoodwill?, etc.
It is harder, I think, to work with SoftSecurity, when it is hard for some invested people to see what the SoftSecurity problem is.
I think that potential concept of a CommunityWikiConstitution is good. I think that AndrewHoerner raises a great point, that we perhaps need a provision diversity of views (provisions which have ebeen expressed in CommunityWiki with social norms like SoftSecurity, and AvoidConflict, DontHateThePlayer etc etc etc). But, we lack a way to make these work well when someone pushes these SocialNorms? to their limits. We perhaps need a way to reinforce these SocialNorms?, and a way to collectively judge when these social norms are not working, and why how they are failing. If a one or a few trouble makers can make the SoftSecurity and other open-oriented SocialNorms? fail, then it is maybe worth re-thinking:
…that we perhaps need a provision diversity of views (provisions which have ebeen expressed in CommunityWiki with social norms like SoftSecurity, and AvoidConflict, DontHateThePlayer etc etc etc).
Hm; I don’t think I agree, on two accounts:
SoftSecurity: “How do we secure the environment, without having to use mandatory registration, user passwords & accounts, ..?”
AvoidConflict: “How do we handle unwanted conflict?”
DontHateThePlayer: “How should we think of others, who bring up conflict?”
None of these, as far as I can tell, answer: “How diverse should the views held within CommunityWiki be?”
I personally think the answer is: “Not much.” I’m actually in favor of sectarianism, amongst small groups (EcosystemOfNetworks, Creative Network.) In our own wiki, that spells: WikiSectarianism. The vast majority of cliques I have belonged to, in my life, have been sectarian. People don’t like to think of themselves that way, but it’s true.
Yes Diversity: Interesting new ideas, that come from the worldview and interests of the participants.
No Diversity: Diversity for the sake of diversity, DeepDisagreement, diversity where things seem uninteresting to “us,” or somehow “unfocuses” us from our jam.
I don’t think codification is required, but I’d prefer to be more explicit in saying: CommunityWiki is a clique. Unabashedly, unashamedly. If anyone thinks that’s a bad thing, it’s because they’re ignorant about cliques, and it’s further impetus to establish a LiteracyOfHumanNature.
Lion, you’re right. None of those SocialNorms? directly address “How diverse should the views held within CommunityWiki be?”
But, what I think they can accomplish, and what I was getting at in a round about way, I suppose, is that I observe these types of SocialNorms? seem to me to enable an environment where diverse points of view tend to co-exist better, and without the need for lots of procedure, if there is an EngagedCommunity?.
Why should you and I even attempt to build something about LiteracyOfHumanNature, or EcosystemOfNetworks, if there’s an Anarcho-Primitivist, (who we personally like,) sitting right next to us, constantly drawing us into irrelevant conversations that aren’t going anywhere?
Shouldn’t we be able to say, “Shoo; You’re bothering us, we’re working here?”
Are there not a diversity of perspectives that we are okay with, and a diversity of perspectives that we are not willing to humor, in this environment?
In fact, IMO, you should say “Shoo; You’re bothering us, we’re working here”.
The question I am asking is:
When can you just say “Shoo; You’re bothering us, we’re working here”, and when do you need a formal process/procedure to say it?
In my life, I tend to try “just saying” first, and only resort to formal process and procedure when the former does not work.
There are consequences, even among a clique of people, in changing the social dynamics of a group from more informal to more formal processes. This is one of the unsees secrets of a LiteracyOfHumanNature. People can only change their ways of solving problems into another way of solving problems when they are ready to. If they are not ready, then the outcome of an intiative to make a change will have undesired consequences (one of the bigger problems we face on a global scale, IMO).
In LiteracyOfHumanNature thinking, we want to ask:
And, when we try and set up the conditions for change, we want to ask:
These questions are not quick and easy to answer, for sure. But, we have already somewhat laid this out here, and in CommunityWikiConstitution.
For instance, there is the observation that we are SelectivelyOpenMinded, and that we are a “clique”. But, we are apparently a “clique” that doesn’t enforce it’s exclusivity unless we deem it to be necassary. We are also apparently a “clique” who doesn’t usually employ fromal process and procedure in decision making. Previosuly, we talked about decisions among ourselves, or in drastic cases, had Alex step in as a GodKing to make decision.
We also previously were a “clique” that did not have a formal ranking system. It didn’t even really have a tacit or explicit hierarchy for the most part, save when AlexSchroeder played the role of GodKing. This is actually uncharacteristic of “cliques”, which usually see a pecking order/hierachy/rank of some type emerge natually (and I guess we did to an extent).
You, Lion, proposed changing into a clique that does have formal process for decision making, and that is based around a hierarchical rank. The basis of who is what rank has already been discussed above.
I am asking, in my questions above: Is this formal process needed in this “clique”? Do we need a formal process to say “Shoo; You’re bothering us, we’re working here”? Or, can we just say “Shoo; You’re bothering us, we’re working here”, without the need for creating a type of change that creates formalized hierarchies?
Will some people who we consider CommunityMember here even be ready for a change to a formalized hierarchy? I predict that some people would embrace it, some would work to ignore it, and some would clash with it in ways that might drive them away. The reason why can be found in the way that people solve problems that I attemtped to outline in LiteracyOfHumanNature.
Not trying to be difficult. This is just my point of view regarding changes such as those that we are talking about here.
Yes, excellent questions.
First: The CommunityRoles. They are based in observed behavior of participants who did not consciously know that they had a process. But they had one. It’s like dating: People go through stages, though you don’t need to consciously think of it as stages, when you do it. Yet, there they are.
One thing I don’t like is our collective language. The word “clique” is held up with disgust, like it’s a nasty dirty rat, squiggling around, being held by the pink tail. I’m fighting that. “Hieararchy” is another one. “Hierarchy” is always bad, right?
Read VisitorRole, and tell me if it’s not real: Polite guests come in, and test the waters with a comment or two. This is ancient; Confucious said, “When I first visit a new land, the first thing I do is inquire about their ways.” He is in the visitor role, is he not? Or are we participating in some very obscure unfounded philosophy of things?
Regardless: I’ve discarded institutionalizing that idea already, long ago. I already said that I like BayleShanks proposal better. Yet the facts of dating and visitors and guests remain.
Next: In my life, I tend to try “just saying” first, and only resort to formal process and procedure when the former does not work.
Mm-hm! And that’s exactly what we’re finding. “Sigi, go away. Friedemar, we have a process here.” And it’s not working, because CommunityDoesNotAgree, and sigi starts appealing to newcomers to arbitrate and decide what the outcome will be. You probably missed it, but it happened. And these kinds of things have happened before, and they will continue to happen, (I strongly believe,) until Community-Does-Agree, and we write it down, with a bold statement saying, “Visitors, people-who-are-not-regulars-here, people-who-are-not-members here, what have you: This is how it works.”
Finally: Finally: I believe that what I’m doing is transitioning us away from the clique structure, to a structure that is more like a club. Because we are formalizing the agreements, and so on. This makes is conceivable that we will grow to be large enough, that there will be far more interests than exist at present. Personally speaking, this is not my goal: I prefer the clique. I fully recognize that formalizing our rules changes what this is. Yet, I perceive that it is “where we are,” so to speak. I am in the mood to make long term investments into CommunityWiki, and I want there to be a more solid social structure beneath it, so that it will withstand the people who think: “Whoever is at the wiki, decides the wiki.” And they definitely exist. Please read the CommunityWikiGovernmentIrcConversation, if you haven’t.
All this said: If you can answer “What do we do, or how do we handle AbsentCommunity?” and these other questions without resorting to government, I’d love to do that, and I’m eager to hear your ideas. And there’s always: “Alex is King of the wiki.” (Though the problem is: Sometimes the King isn’t holding court.)
Question: This is getting big.
I am somewhat of two minds about diversity in the setting of this group. I acknowledge that i don’t really understand the community well enough to be entitled to an opinion. But i observe that i often do not really understand what I believe myself until my views have been challenged by others. The process of defending them (or of trying to rebut the views of someone else) causes me to think my own views through more effectively. For example, it has felt like a great privilege to ferociously attack the really very interesting views of LionKimbro on the SourceOfNaturalisticEthics?, and my own views are vastly clearer as a result; I hope he feels the same. So disagreement has some intrinsic value in the quest for truth through reasoned dialogue.
On the other hand, if i am engaged in a complex body of interrelated thoughts with a lot of presuppositions, I frequently want people who are engaged in the same mental enterprise, especially when my own thoughts are a little inchoate. So for example, i convened a group of people to talk about polyamory from a radical feminist perspective. Some people wanted in on the discussion who thought feminism was horseshit. The problem was, the dialogue about the validity of feminism and the one about how to structure the polyamory community to prevent poly relations from contributing to patriarchy were pretty much mutually exclusive – you could not do both at once. And there are lots of forums and opportunities for arguing about feminism, but as best i know only this one for discussing polyamory from a feminist viewpoint.
So this takes me back to the question i asked earlier, sharpened a little: Is community Wiki a group of people engaged in a common mental project with a large number of shared presuppositions? Or is it more like a group of folks exploring the conceptual space around a shared topic?
Or to put it another way, when your Anarcho-Primitivist buddy shows up, do you say “Shoo,” (like i did to the anti-feminists, creating, i might add, a bit of a furor in the community as a result)? Or do you say “What you are suggesting is an interesting idea, but it is not this idea. Build your own page, and then perhaps we can build a meta-page relating the two somewhere down the road.”
Ah; Right. IntegrationAndIdentity, DeepDisagreement, MappingArguments.
This is a bit different than a purely conversational setting, because conversations builds into an ArgumentPyramid, via the PageDatabase, in a way that they do not in the material world, barring someone actually writing down books, in which case you form an organization or institution.
“Is CommunityWiki a group of people engaged in a common mental project with a large number of shared presuppositions? Or is it more like a group of folks exploring the conceptual space around a shared topic?”
It depends on: “What is under discussion?”
A following question might be: “What things are assumed to be shared presuppositions, and in what things is there interest in sharing the conceptual space around a shared topic?”
The ideas in SelectivelyOpenMinded, ArgumentPyramid, are core.
The ideas in AreGroupsReal are experimental.
Flat out contradiction of HiveMind pages would end one’s time here; We’ve seen that before, actually. I am the executioner. Disinterest does not: For example, there’s AlexSchroeder.
DavidCary is a Christian who goes to church on Sundays, he does not agree with EvolutionarySpirituality and the NaturalisticSourceOfEthics, at all. He holds his piece here, on those subjects, and contributes vigorously where our interests overlap. We make no attempts a mapping this territory; DavidCary is an esteemed member of our community.
It would take so much time to even begin to make the boundaries ExplicitInformation, that instead, what we do, is we keep them as CommunityLore, and make use of a courting process.
I need a round table and a sword so I can knight you all! Then I’ll go back to sleep under my Swiss hill until you’re all in dire need…
(Me imagines “King Alex and the Fights at the Round Table” – a soap in 14 episodes.)
Anyway.
I’m more or less convinced that having a page describing what we do here, and how we would like it to work is a good thing, or at least worth trying. I understand that the resulting page will again be contested in case of conflict, and that therefore adhering to some sort of protocol is a good thing. Since I haven’t invested much thought in the prerequisites for such a process, I’m ready to go with Bayle’s proposal.
As for the concerns raised by Andrew (too byzantine) and Sam (potentially changing our interactions): The way I read the proposals is that we only invoke them in times of need, in other words, hopefully rarely if at all. Most of the things will continue as before: There will be roles people fit into even if they don’t know it. We’ll recognize the patterns, and use these patterns when talking about such interesting concepts as initiation rituals, but that doesn’t mean that “visitor” or “guest” is something that needs to part of the government. The “government” only handles emergencies. It does so by making decisions. Decisions are made by members. So all we need to know is who is a voting member and who is not.
Thus, I think it will be invoked rarely (not stiffling), and it only cares about big decisions, in which case only the member list is important (not byzantine). Everything else is just details.
I think I can live with it.
Are there any objections to considering this conversation complete, and turning our focus, then, on to the final fixes, questions, and ratification of the CommunityWikiConstitution?
I believe we have a rough consensus on the existence of the Constitution.
How do we make it real?
Here’s my thought:
I was thinking: Even those people who decide not to become voters: It would be ideal if they still signed the document, attesting: “I recognize the authority of this Constitution, governing the CommunityWiki website.”
This way, when newcomers come, they can clearly see that this isn’t some band of ruffians who decided to put together this Constitution. Of course, if you don’t want to, you don’t have to. But I think it’s something that we should solicit.
Just a nitpick - do we really need to call it constitution and not just a charter? Do we need government and not just board? I mean we don’t constitute a new country - but just a civil organisation (a society?). Also I am sure there are multiple examples of good charters and people who have some experience in writing one - and we can use that instead of inventing our own weels. There is just one difference with the standard off-line organisations - it is the asynchronous mode of taking decisions, I have the feeling that there will be many suprises here - and that we really need to focuse on this for some time.
Andrew, I think there is an ongoing cultural development in wiki communities like cw.
Years ago, there was this search to find this “one true wiki way” of how to interact. And we were really happy when different ways were found and we started to understand basic situation topologies like on the CommunityRoles chart.
I think that nowadays we are a step further, firmly on this basis, not seeking for general modes or states of community or interaction, but looking for the sensitivity to understand situations better, to react on people in their individual situation, growing the ability to display our state of mind and emotion and to sense or inquire those of our partners, and select or invent a mode of interaction and a structure of pages that is understandable and satisfying.
The same is true about “wiki government”. Years ago there would have been a fierce fight, because various people would have reacted on their violated principles or interests. Nowadays there is a basic understanding that there is a problem - even if only for a single member - that has to be discussed and there is no need for heat, because everyone knows that his interests and the interests of the public will be respected at the end of the day, the same way. And that there is nothing that can’t be reversed or modifyed when a clear reason can be shown. So this is much more relaxed.
I think the development is towards transparency of processes and towards a general increase in participation. This happens by being able to be more responsive and tolerant towards people and their needs and by reflecting this in flexible page structures and modes.
(I created edit conflict with somone, I think helmut, and I believe that he was trying to add the following to his repsonse above-SamRose)
This happens in wiki because there is common space and no specific workflow of discussions. In forums the technical structure was fixed and resulted in only a few types of interactions which then stayed unchanged since then. StrategicDialogSupportSoftware would be very much in danger to go the same way, formalize the interactions and nullify the need to really listen to or sense each other.
Alex, sorry for referring to you as “GodKing”. In hindsight, I can see how that could be pretty annoying.
Zby, I agree with you that there will be some surprises. I am interested to see how it works out. I think that Bayle’s ideas are pretty ingeneous, and I look forward to experimenting with everyone on this.
Helmut, I see what you mean in your response to Andrew. I think that generally, a complex adaptive nautre has emerged from the people in these circles. I think that having CollectiveIntelligence experience and access to KnowledgeCommons?, plus pervasive feedback, and a tendancy to DevolvePower.
Lion, I agree, we can close this discussion and work on CommunityWikiConstitution.
1st
Lion posted a quick proposal. Hans that it was pretty good, for written quickly. Lion mentions that we talked about it in Ting 82. Mattis questions hierarchy, Lion justifies. Sam Rose is preparing a statement. Lion wonders where others are at, with respect to this. Alex prefers to split into two informal groups instead of forming a government. Some more thought on the fairness and the technicalities of a split.The author understands Lion to save the goodies of CommunityWiki. On the other hand it appears almost certain, that new creative people will go to that wiki, where there is more freedom for expressing new ideas. Emile: Benevolent Oligarchy ? / Bayle: yes to a constitution and membership list. But I think it could be even simpler. (Yes!) Andrew: Easy member identification would help non-members. Membership procedures are unusually restrictive; could stifle diversity of opinion. How do we apply previously stated SocialNorms? (some of which already make provision for diversity/openness)? CommunityWiki is a clique, really. Alex changed his mind and approves of a CW govmt. Where do we map arguments? What is assumed? Where do we hold our piece? Shall we discuss & ratify constitution then?
2nd
Lion started with a proposed constitution. There was a lot of back and forth about whether we want this or not, and what it would be like, and other possibilities. Bayle wrote a better and simpler constitution. Alex changed his mind and approves of a CW govmt. Shall we discuss & ratify constitution then? Big words? / meta @ Andrew @alex, Zby, Helumt,Lion, yes agree, we can close this discussion
What do we think about the idea of using ConsensusPolling for general “voting” in CommunityWikiConstitution, to try and keep decision making quick and easy when possible?
re: “quick and easy”; I think that in the current proposal, voting IS quick and easy. It takes up a few paragraphs to DEFINE it, but that doesn’t mean it would be hard to DO.
Here are the sorts of things that would happen:
You see a proposal on InformalLegislativeProposals?. You discuss it and improve informally (this “discuss and improve” stage is much like ConsensusPolling; except it is totally informal). Most everyone present agrees on it (if it were controversial, no one would bother to propose it formally because it would never pass). It gets copied to FormalLegislativeProposals?. You vote Yes on it. Maybe someone else votes No, and you try to convince them to change their vote. The timer runs out. We see if it passed.
Or: you aren’t present for the initial discussion on InformalLegislativeProposals?. You come back from a WikiVacation to find a new proposal on the page FormalLegislativeProposals?. You think you like it but you aren’t sure. You vote Not Decided Yet. Others talk to you and try to convince you to vote for it. You change your vote to Yes. The timer runs out. We see if it passed.
Or: You come back from a WikiVacation to find a new proposal on the page FormalLegislativeProposals?. You think you like it but you aren’t sure. You vote Not Decided Yet. Others talk to you and try to convince you to vote for it. The timer runs out, but the Proposal stays open because it needs your vote to pass. Eventually you decide you don’t like it. You change your vote to No. The Proposal fails.
Or: You are going on a WikiVacation. You give your vote to someone else as a proxy.
Or: Someone else gives you their vote as a proxy. The next time you vote, you also vote for them, noting that you did so as their proxy.
The calculation of vote success or failure is also quick and easy. All you have to do is add three numbers (the total number of Yes, No, and Not Decided Yet votes), and then divide Yes by that number to see if it passed. Otherwise, divide No by that number to see if it failed or if it is still open (due to Not Decided Yet votes).
Oh, and you have to compare the # of Yes votes to sqrt(members) to see if there are enough people around to be allowed to do anything.
Sorry for the long reply but I’m not sure exactly what you mean. So I thought of what I would mean if I were you and then answered that 
Summary: My answer to the question “Is there are place for ConsensusPolling in CommunityWikiConstitution?” is: if you mean that you want to make voting simpler by having only two kinds of votes and not having proxies, yeah, that’s possible, although I particularly like proxies. If you want to have a continuously amended proposal, then I don’t think that works in this context. If you want to get rid of the “minutia”, I don’t think that’s a good idea, and I don’t think ConsensusPolling really does that either, when it is actually implemented.
Details: As far as I can tell, here are the differences between the proposal on the page MeatballWiki:ConsensusPolling and the current proposal here:
I’ll address each of those in turn.
1. Delay votes. If people think Delay votes are too complex, I’m fine with taking them out. If we took out Delay, people could just vote “No” when they would have voted “Delay”; then if they decide they do like the proposal later after it has failed, they could re-propose it. However, there are two costs.
First, this will lump together two kinds of people, though; people who mean, “No, I’ve thought about this and I’ve made up my mind, I’m against this so much that I veto it”, and people who mean, “This proposal sounds good but I’m not 100% convinced yet, talk to me more.”. With the current proposal, the first person would vote No and the second Delay. If Delay votes are taken out, the second person would vote “No”; this might be confusing. But that person could explain themselves informally if we took out Delay.
Second, this would sometimes cause an annoying technical problem with the time limits; if a proposal has been standing for two months and someone votes No because they weren’t 100% convinced, but then they are convinced the next day, and they re-propose the proposal, it must stand for another two months.
Now, what about the idea of taking out “No” votes altogether and only having Yes and Delay (like Yes and Not Yet in ConsensusPolling)? I think this is a bad idea. ConsensusPolling seems to be targeted to situations where there is prior agreement that an issue is even worth considering; it allows people to say “Not yet”, but not, “No”. It seems like in ConsensusPolling there is no acceptable way to say, “No, I don’t this proposal, and I will not explain how this proposal could be made acceptable to me because I don’t think this issue should even be considered within the formal process”. But here on CommunityWiki, there will be times when 50% of the community wants to make a formal Endorsement or Rule to handle some issue, and 20% of people want to say, “No, let’s just handle that informally”. The process here is designed so that if that happens, they vote No, the proposal fails in the formal process, and it disappears (formally; but the underlying issue can still be resolved informally, outside the procedure). In ConsensusPolling, though, it seems to me like a proposal doesn’t just “disappear” if people vote Not Yet; it just hangs around until consensus is reached (if it ever is).
I think that we want people here to have the option to banish some issue from the formal process with No votes. So, I prefer having Yes, No, and Delay, but I’m also cool with just Yes and No. I don’t think we should have only Yes and Not Yet (Not Yet being like Delay).
(by the way, I think we should rename Delay to Not Decided Yet)
2. LiquidDemocracy. I’m a fan of LiquidDemocracy and I think we should try it. It seems like it is just the thing to address the AbsentCommunity problem. But we could live without it if others don’t agree with me. So, I strongly prefer it but I would be okay with taking it out if that’s what others want.
3. Amendments. I think there’s no easy way to handle amendments when people are drifting in and out of the discussion. The problem is that you might have a proposal that stands for a month and a half, and then someone who votes “Yes” and then leaves for a few weeks, and then in the final week the proposal is amended in a way that that person doesn’t like. It wouldn’t be fair to that person to count their Yes vote for the original proposal as a Yes for the amended proposal. It wouldn’t even be fair to remove their vote, because they didn’t get enough time to come back and look at the amended proposal and vote No (b/c the amended proposal was only up for one week). We could say that amendments are allowed, but every time one is made, we start fresh with no votes and we reset the timer. But that’s the same as raising a new proposal, so why add the extra language to define a process for amendments?
So, I don’t think we should allow amendments. That’s why the constitution encourages people to hash stuff out on the InformalLegislativeProposals? page before even invoking the formal process.
4. Minutia ConsensusPolling seems to be simpler because it doesn’t spell out details like the minimum number of people who need to vote yes for a vote to pass (here, sqrt(members)) or the time limits or which pages votes go on. But it says that in any particular case, this stuff is spelled out in a static OnlyIf contract before discussion starts. In our case, instead of making up an OnlyIf contract for each issue, this is spelled out in the constitution; so of course the constitution is a little longer. The top few paragraphs on the page MeatballWiki:ConsensusPolling correspond to Constitution up to “The mechanics of voting” (plus the sentence about proxy voting), which is just as short; but in either case, the mechanics and the legislative minutia must ultimately be spelled out (if they are not spelled out, time will just be spent later arguing over the details that weren’t spelled out, and nobody likes that).
So, in summary, I am amenable to dropping Delay votes and/or dropping LiquidDemocracy, although I’d prefer to keep both and feel stronger about LiquidDemocracy than about Delay. I don’t think we should remove No votes, because I think that makes it hard to take an issue out of the formal process, and I don’t think we should allow amendments, because I can’t think of a fair way to do so that is less complicated than simply telling people to re-propose the amended proposal as new. I don’t think we should drop the minutia.
Sorry that I have not responded until now. Makes sense. Thanks very much for laying it out. Actually, it seems like LiquidDemocracy is a better fit for what you/we are trying to create in CommunityWikiConstitution, than ConsensusPolling. ConsensusPolling actually seems to require an engaged community to work well, from what I can tell (otherwise who will vote except those who propose?). So, we could run into trouble with AbsentCommunity.
I like the InformalLegislativeProposal? idea, too.
I’ll be reading this all on my way home, I don’t have the time right now, but very quickly:
I was wondering if there’s a role for non voting members, (such as RadomirDopieralski,) in this process.
For example, soliciting something to the effect of, “I recognize the CommunityWikiGovernment, even though I’m not a part of it.”
Further: I strongly support LiquidDemocracy. Thinking about the delisting process in the back of my mind; no clear opinion yet.
I think that ‘non-voting members’ should be informally consulted and feel free to initiate and participate in discussions like this one, but I don’t think we should solicit their explicit “signature”. Here’s my reasoning.
Do you feel that the consent of non-voting members is required to go forward with a constitution, even if we have the consent of the proposed voting members?
If so, then it seems to me that those same people should get a vote. If they currently have the authority to “veto” the constitution against the combined will of those currently proposed as voting members, then why are we taking that authority away from them in future decisions?
If not, then I think that contacting them and asking them to read and sign the constitution is not necessary. First, if their signature is not needed, why should we demand their time? Second, asking for their signature implies that we are willing to drop the idea of a constitution if a few non-voting members ask for that; this will create problems if in fact we don’t feel that their consent is required.
@Bayle, I like your proposal, and am definitely willing to try and experiment with it.
Also, I think I can see why Lion wants as many people in the community to endorse the constitution as possible. It is because it gives it more authority, more weight. I think that we could basically say that, if people don’t want to be part of the ongoing community governing processes, that they may still sign their support to a document that says they support CommunityWikiGovernment. They don’t have to sign the document itself. But, it can be helpful to have some kind of declaration of alignment with it, and let people voluntarily sign their names to that. This declaration of alignment doesn’t have anything to do with the actual constitution, it just delcares that these people support it.
[this comment originally contained a secon part of this comment that has been moved elsewhere (Minor Issues) – ed.]
[the following is part of a comment by LionKimbro. this comment was split into two parts and the other part moved to Minor Issues – ed.]
Bayle: I agree. Their “signature” on the document itself, is not necessary. But I think that SamRose sees the same thing I see: a declaration of alignment is valuable. We may even, in the future, want to politely ask people transitioning from VisitorRole to GuestRole (roughly – I’m not talking about actual rules or formal roles here, or anything like that,) to sign the declaration of alignment.
OK fine with me. I encourage the next re-organizer to close/remove this subthread of comments (“role for non-voting members