Social.coop - User contributions [en]

Community Working Group Ops Team

2026-04-21T16:11:48Z

Matt noyes: removed Matt and Emi

The Community Working Group ops team consists of up to 5 operational members and 3 volunteer "at large" members. The current team is elected to a one year term, and has a mandate until May 9, 2021, at which point the mandate shall be renewed.

'''Operational Members:''' Operational members rotate in an [[/social.coop/community/docs/-/wikis/Guide-for-CWG-Ops-Team-"On-Call"|on-call]] moderator role for the social.coop Mastodon instance, and attend monthly meeting. The coordinator is responsible for scheduling, tracking tasks, and coordinating with other working groups.

Compensation is currently $10/month + $30/week on-call shift + $20/month for coordinators.

Current Members:

* Sam Whited
* [[User:Dphiffer|Dan Phiffer]]
* Django
* Hollie
* Melissa Santos
* [[User:3wordchant|3wordchant]]

'''At-Large Members:''' At large members are elected volunteers who are invited to the monthly meetings and have voting seats in the Ops Team Loomio group, but do not take on-call shifts or other responsibilities.

Current Members:

* Melissa Santos

'''Team Charter Full Text'''

The process for selecting new team members will follow the following steps:

# A Check Poll will be launched in the Community Working Group to collect expressions of interest from potential new team members.
# Prospective team members will be asked to submit a short written statement to the existing Operations Team, which will review them and vote via ranked choice.
# The Operations Team will confirm the interest of the chosen candidates, and then submit a proposal to the Community Working Group to ratify their appointment to the Operations Team.
# We will also put an open call in the full membership group for folks interested in sitting in one of the two “at large” seats, and elect those seats via a vote from the full membership via approval voting.

'''Roles:'''

'''Community Ops Team Members [5 roles]'''

Responsibilities:

* Attend a monthly ops team call
* Perform work delegated at ops team call by next Ops Team call.
* Participate in decision-making and problem-solving between calls on the Ops Team Loomio group.
* Participate in "On-Call" rotation: [1 week shifts]
* Check and process new membership applications daily. [30 seconds to 10 minutes, depending on volume].
* Receive and respond to reports from members and off-instance folks.[variable]
* Toot announcements and welcomes from the official account, and respond to inquiries. [at least 1 announcement per shift, minimum]
* Pass-on documentation for next On-Call Staff [~30 minutes]

Compensation: 7.20GBP/month for attending the monthly call + 21.60gbp/On-Call Shift

'''Ops Team Coordinator [2 roles]'''

Responsibilities:

Standard Ops Team Member Responsibilities, plus...

* Schedule Monthly Ops Team Call
* Attend inter-working groups call to share updates, make requests of other working groups, receive requests, etc. [1 hour prep, 1 hour meeting monthly]
* Track Assignments, etc.

Compensation: Ops Team Member Comp + 14.40GBP/mo Selection: Elected by the Ops Team from their membership.

'''At Large Members [2]'''

Purpose: To provide a non-operational member perspective in the ops team, and to be a way for folks interested in the work but not sure if they want to commit to the role to get a sense of it.

Responsibilities:

* Attend the monthly Ops Team call and participate in Ops team Loomio as a voting member of the team.
* Compensation: Volunteer

'''Group Liasons [1+]'''

Purpose: This is a seat for a representative of each of the other working groups Operations Teams to occupy to ensure clear communication between groups.

Responsibilities: Attend the monthly Ops Team meeting and convey key information from their "home" Working Group.

Compensation: Volunteer, but compensated from “home” operations team if an Ops Team member.

=== Tutorials ===
If you are new to the community working group ops team, or an existing team member looking for a refresher, the following tutorials can help you figure out how to sign up for the various tools we use and get stuff done! If you find errors while following their steps, please edit them!

* [[Onboarding New Community Working Group Ops Team Members|Onboarding New Members]]
* [[Adding New Users to Meet.coop]]

Adding New Users to Meet.coop

2026-03-22T17:38:55Z

Matt noyes:

[Currently on hold pending change in Meet.coop organizational structure.]

Members of the [[Community_Working_Group_Ops_Team|CWG ops]] team are tasked with responding to new signups for meet.coop accounts as part of their oncall responsibilities.

# Sign into [https://socialcoop.meet.coop/ socialcoop.meet.coop].
# Click on your username in the top-right part of the page.
# Click on Organization to visit the [https://socialcoop.meet.coop/admins Admins page].
# Click the green '''Invite User''' button.
# Enter the email address(es) of the social.coop member who needs an account.
# Check the [https://socialcoop.meet.coop/admins?tab=invited "Invited" tab] to confirm that they've been invited.

Sometimes the software responds with "XXX email is invalid." In those cases you might just want to try entering it again, it does work occasionally after retrying.

Main Page

2026-01-24T22:02:17Z

Matt noyes: /* TODOs for this wiki */

[https://social.coop Social.coop] is cooperatively-run, long-running, stable provider of social media. We primarily provide a member-moderated Mastodon server for microblogging on the Fediverse, but we a have a variety of additional services for members and tools for coordinating within the coop.

We are also a community. Our values include: honesty, openness, social responsibility, and caring for others. We celebrate diversity and do not tolerate bigotry or prejudice. Members contribute funds and volunteer labor to set our community policies, steward our data, and manage our shared technologies. As well as maintaining the current services, members can be part of experiments with new social media platforms and tools such as Bonfire.

While many of our members are co-ops or associated with co-ops, anyone who is interested in being part of this cooperatively run community and willing to adhere to our [[Code of conduct|Code of Conduct]] is welcome to join: [https://Join.social.coop join.social.coop].

[[Social.coop]] was founded in 2017 in the wake of the [https://buytwitter.org/ BuyTwitter] campaign. Since then, we have worked toward the goal of placing ever more of our online social lives under good cooperative governance. To get a sense of how we operate, or to start your own fediverse cooperative, see our guide on "[[How to Make the Fediverse Your Own]]."

New to the Fediverse? Check out the [[Social.coop guide to Mastodon]].

==Learn more==
*[[Governance]] - How power flows, including processes and documents
*[[Operations]] - How we organize our activities
*[[Platforms]] - The online spaces we use and manage
*[[Tutorials]] - Guides for how to do things on Social.coop
*[[Meta]] - Wiki pages about the wiki!

== Working groups ==

* [[Organizing Circle]] (OC)
** coordinates efforts between the working groups and catches anything that does not cleanly fall into work group domains.
* [[Community Working Group]] (CWG)
** moderates our Mastodon instance, coordinates with other instances, and looks for ways to build intra-social.coop community. This group generally maintains a budget for moderator stipends.
* [[Tech Working Group]] (TWG)
** maintains our instances and generally tends our tech stack. This group generally maintains a budget for tech services.
* [[Legal Working Group]] (LWG)
** mitigates legal risk to our volunteers and organization. This group will maintain a budget for legal and professional consultations.
* [[Finance Working Group]] (FWG)
** Finance Working Group issues reimbursements to cover expenses as well as develops annual spending and budgeting reports.

== Common questions ==
1. Are there any coop jobs available to me? How do I find out about those?

There are a number of working groups involved in the [[Operations]] of the coop - check them out at that link. We intend to rotate in members regularly to prevent burnout, so please reach out to any group you are interested in participating in.

2. How do I ask a meta-question about the server or propose a change to Social.coop policy?

Great question! [[When and how to use Threads, Polls, and Proposals]]

3. Where does all the money go?

Our [https://www.loomio.com/d/xqw7FtUT/toward-an-annual-budget budget] was outlined and discussed in [[Loomio]]. As of writing, less than a 1/3 of funds go to stipends for various [[Operations]] groups, a little less than that is contributed to allied cooperative and technology projects (determined by the [[Finance Working Group]] .) The rest is split between reserves and hosting the server, paying for [[Loomio]], [[Meet.coop]], and other [[Platforms]].

4. Is this instance based in the US or somewhere else?

Our [[Platforms]] page says our hosting is [[wikipedia:Hetzner|Hetzner]], which appears to be based in Germany.

5. What's the Matrix chat thing and should I be on that?

[[Matrix]] is an open chat network, where we have a few rooms that you might be interested in. In particular, the Open Chatroom hosts a small amount of meta talk about the coop, and the tech chat is probably where to go if the server is down and you want to see what is happening.[[File:Organizational map of social.coop.png|thumb|alt=An organizational map of social.coop|An organizational map of social.coop]]

==About this wiki==
This wiki is maintained by Social.coop's working groups and ops teams. Members are welcome to make an account and contribute. ''Please register with the same username you use on Social.coop''.

===TODOs for this wiki ===
* Migrate Tech Working Group content
* Enable multi-theme support so it renders in an accessible way on mobile
* Document setup steps in the wiki proper, currently these are at https://anagora.org/wiki-migration
* Test coop-cloud-based backups/restores
* Translate key documents into [languages]

When and how to use Threads, Polls, and Proposals

2024-11-28T00:42:07Z

Matt noyes: /* Threads */ I made a number of changes to clarify the process.

=== Introduction ===
Whether you're new to social.coop or have been here awhile, you may have questions about how proposals and decisions are made. If you have ideas for things you'd like to see happen on the instance, changes or modifications, how and whom do you ask about that? If you have a proposal you'd like to put forth to all the instance members, what's the best process for doing that? This document aims to answer these questions and provide a guide.

Throughout this document we'll be using the example of a user who wants to make the change of increasing the post character limit.

=== Threads ===
To start a discussion or find out what others think about a topic, you can create a [https://www.loomio.com/thread_templates/?group_id=56943 new thread]. (You may want to search for existing threads on the same topic, in case it has already been discussed. If it's been a bit (more than a month or so), you will want to start a new thread, but you will want to link to existing threads on the topic in the context field of yours. You may also take inspiration for tags from other threads!) You can use a thread to ask a question, too.

Here's a walk through of how to create a Thread:

# From the [https://www.loomio.com/g/ibncxoDR/polls Loomio social coop page] scroll down to the middle of the page, right past the wiki link, you should see a set of tabs including Threads and Decisions
# Click '''Threads''' - choose the Blank Template, unless we have put in some more interesting ones by then!
# Fill in the Title, Tags (optional), Context (the body of the thread - start a conversation!)
# Hit the "Start Thread" button! You will get email updates on your thread.
Note: it is often good to start with a discussion thread, even if you want to make a proposal. That way, questions and alternatives can be explored and the proposal can address people's concerns.

=== Polls ===
To find out how others feel, you can also use a poll. Loomio has various types of polls: Simple, Score, Dot, and Ranked Choice.

# From the [https://www.loomio.com/g/ibncxoDR/polls Loomio social coop page] scroll down to the middle of the page, right past the wiki link, you should see a set of tabs including Threads and Decisions
# Click '''Decisions'''. Click the '''Poll''' button type. (Above the list of proposal template types.)
# Choose the type of Poll from the options listed
## Simple Poll (find the most popular option)
## Score Poll (measure the degree of support for each option)
## Dot Poll (allocate a budget of points to reveal priorities)
## Ranked Choice (understand the ordered preference of options)
# This will give you a template you can fill in, that asks:
## What is this poll about? (Example: "The character limit on posts")
## Why is this important? (Example: "Some people want more space to write their entire thought and not need to break into threads as often")
## What are you asking people to do? (Example: "I would like people to indicate whether they want to raise the character limit or keep it the same")
## Click the "Add an Option" button to add as many options as you wish.
### each option has a "Option name" and a "Meaning" field
# You might want to increase the discussion time from the default of 3 days, many members check in once a week or less frequently.
# Leave it set to "Anyone in the Group" can vote, and "Notify everyone when proposal starts"

=== Proposals ===
As a member of Social.Coop you can shape our policies and practices. One way to do that is to make a proposal. But how? If you are new to Loomio, it may be confusing.

Here's the relevant section of the [[bylaws]]:<blockquote>"Members may operate on their own initiative based on pre-established policy (areas of activity, scope of working groups, terms of service, codes of conduct, moderation policies, etc.), but any new issue that affects other members should be brought before the appropriate working group, and any policy changes must be brought before the full group before implementation. Working groups are encouraged to make proposals among themselves to determine consensus and operate within their scope of responsibility, but only proposals passed by the full group may be considered binding for Social.coop. Any member may make a proposal to the full group, though it is encouraged to first discuss matters within the appropriate working group."</blockquote>Social.coop has several working groups: [[Tech Working Group|Tech]], [[Community Working Group|Community]], [[Finance Working Group|Finance]], [[Legal Working Group|Legal]], and an [[Organizing Circle]] that coordinates and supports their work. (The Community Working Group also has an [[Community Working Group Ops Team|Ops Team]] that handles registration and moderation.) If you have an idea about a tech issue, you may want to contact members of the Tech Working Group. If your idea is about moderation policy, you can reach out to the Community Working Groups Ops Team, etc. (How does one do this? Tech members can be easily found in a [[Matrix]] chat). You can contact members of working groups on Mastodon. (You might think that contacting @admin@social.coop would be a good first step, but it is seldom monitored, and more often used just for announcements, so please contact working group members instead!)

If you have something to propose, you can raise it directly with the members of Social.Coop. (It's not mandatory to go through the working groups, but it is encouraged.) Here's how:

Note: If you make a proposal, ideally, you will take responsibility for stewarding it to conclusion and reporting the result. If that's not possible, please try to find a person or working group to take over the communications about the proposal.

==== Bylaws Compatible proposal ====
Once you know how the community feels about your topic, you may want to put in a full proposal.
Here's a walk through of how to create a Social.coop bylaws compatible proposal:

# From the [https://www.loomio.com/g/ibncxoDR/polls Loomio social coop page] scroll down to the middle of the page, right past the wiki link, you should see a set of tabs including Threads and Decisions
# Click '''Decisions''', it will show you a list of template types, choose the '''"Social.coop bylaws compatible proposal"''' template.
# This will give you a template you can fill in, that asks:
## What are you proposing? (Example: "Increase the character limit on posts to 1,000")
## Why is this important? (Example: "It helps people write their entire thought and not need to break into threads as often. The number is the most popular option according to a poll.")
## What are you asking people to do? (Example: "I would like the Tech Working Group to do whatever is necessary to increase the character limit")
# You can also add tags to help people find your proposal.
# You might want to increase the discussion time from the default of 6 days, but as 6 days is the default that's fine too.
# Leave it set to "Anyone in the Group" can vote, and "Notify everyone when proposal starts"

==== Sense Check ====
If you want to get a sense of how people are feeling about your proposal, ''before bringing it to a formal vote'', you can use a Sense Check.

Here's how:

# From the [https://www.loomio.com/g/ibncxoDR/polls Loomio social coop page] scroll down to the middle of the page, right past the wiki link, you should see a set of tabs including Threads and Decisions
# Click '''Decisions''', it will show you a list of template types, choose the "'''Sense Check'''" proposal type.
# This will give you a template you can fill in, that asks:
## What are you proposing? (Example: "Increase the character limit on posts")
## Why is this important? (Example: "It helps people write their entire thought and not need to break into threads as often")
## What are you asking people to do? (Example: "I would like the Tech Working Group to do whatever is necessary to increase the character limit")
# You might want to increase the discussion time from the default of 3 days, but as 3 days is the default that's fine too.
# Leave it set to "Anyone in the Group" can vote, and "Notify everyone when proposal starts"

Code of conduct

2024-09-08T02:42:01Z

Matt noyes: linked to conflict resolution guidelines page

= Social.Coop Member Code of Conduct v3.1 =

== 1. Purpose and Values ==
As a cooperative, social.coop is based on the values of self-help, self-responsibility, democracy, equality, equity, and solidarity. Our members believe in the ethical values of honesty, openness, social responsibility, and caring for others. We also follow the rest of the [https://www.ica.coop/en/whats-co-op/co-operative-identity-values-principles ICA co-op principles].

We welcome anyone able to use our services and willing to accept the responsibilities of membership, regardless of qualities such as gender identity or expression, sexual orientation, disability, mental illness, neuro(a)typicality, physical appearance, body size, age, race, nationality, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, family structure, spirituality, religion (or lack thereof), education, or other personal traits. We particularly celebrate diversity and do not tolerate bigotry or prejudice. Diverse opinions on politics, religion, and other matters are welcome as long as they align with our core values. Let there be no confusion, Social.Coop is anti-racist, anti-fascist, and anti-transphobic.

== 2. Scope ==
We expect all social.coop community participants to abide by this Code of Conduct in all community venues and in any other context pertaining to community business, including in-person events.

This code of conduct and its related procedures also applies to unacceptable behaviour by Social.Coop members occurring outside the scope of community activities.

We expect users on other instances to respect our members and treat them according to our Code of Conduct. We will defend our users and protect them from abuse. See the [[Federation abuse policy|Federation Abuse Policy]].

== 3. Encouraged Behaviour ==
I will:

* Help maintain a culture of inclusivity and open participation
* Show care, consideration, and respect for others.
* Keep in mind the potential for misunderstandings, avoiding initial assumptions of bad faith.
* Keep criticism constructive.
* Attempt to de-escalate conflicts as they arise (see [[Conflict resolution guide|Conflict Resolution Guidelines]])
* Recognize and respect the legitimacy of resistance to abuse and oppression.
* Participate in an authentic way.

== 4. Unacceptable Behaviour ==
I will not:

* Use violence, threats of violence, or violent language directed against another person.
* Harass — defined as continuing to interact with or post about another person after having been asked to stop.
** This includes, but is not limited to, unwelcome sexual attention, deliberate intimidation, stalking, and dogpiling.
* Make offensive, harmful, or abusive comments or insults, particularly in relation to diverse traits (as referenced in our values above).
* Advocate or encourage any of the above behaviour.

== 5. Content ==
I am responsible for the content I share, and will:

* Always use content warnings (CWs) when sharing content that:
** is likely to be distressing or hurtful to others
** should require consent to view
** includes discussions or depictions of violence, sexually explicit material, and/or common PT triggers
** includes flashing or rapidly changing images
* Strive to make posts accessible with alt-text descriptions for visual media and transcriptions for audio.
* Give credit and recognize the contributions of others.
* Promote products or services provided by individuals, cooperatives, or aligned communities over those provided by non-co-op, for-profit companies.

I will not post, threaten to post, nor share from this instance or external sources:

* Personally Identifiable Information about others. (“doxing”)
* Sexual Material that is either:
** Without consent, or
** Depicting individuals appearing to be under age 18 — including Loli.
** Excessively frequent promotions of a product or service (i.e. spam)
* Material that promotes bigotry, including fascist, racist, misogynistic, homophobic, or transphobic content.

== 6. Reporting & Resolving ==
I accept the responsibility to report any Code of Conduct violations I see, whether or not they affect me personally. See [[Reporting guide|Reporting Guidelines v3.1]]

If I am comfortable and believe it will help, I will consider contacting the violator privately to respectfully ask that they remove the violation.

If the Community Working Group (CWG) contacts me about my role in any conduct complaint, I will cooperate with their process and guidance, communicating respectfully and working with them to make clear agreements for resolving the situation.

For conflicts or sensitive issues -- i.e, situations that do not involve abuse or other violations of the Code of Conflict -- options include:

# engaging publicly or privately with others (perhaps with help) to constructively resolve our differences
# blocking or muting a user
# reporting the incident to social.coop to seek help in resolving the conflict

See [[Conflict resolution guide|Conflict Resolution Guidelines]]

== 7. Resources ==
The Community Working Group will maintain a list of resources about codes of conduct and strategies for constructive and healthy discussion online.

== 8. License and Attribution ==
This Code of Conduct is distributed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International license.

Portions of text derived from the Citizen Code of Conduct. Revision 2.2. Posted 6 March 2017.

Organizing Circle

2024-07-31T12:48:18Z

Matt noyes: /* Origin of the group */

{{Working Group
|Description=Coordinates the work of working groups and ops teams, providing a space for ongoing strategic conversation and facilitating greater member participation in both operations and governance.
}}

This page holds the general operations information for the Social.coop organizing circle including links to standing Loomio https://www.loomio.com/socialcoop/ threads, descriptions of circle operations, and links to decisions made by the group.

== Agreements and policy documents ==

Each of these agreements should provide a brief context that motivated the decision, links to relevant Loomio threads, the exact wording of the agreement, a term for when the agreement will be revisited, and metrics for evaluation.

[[Organizing Circle policy]]

== Meeting recaps ==

Recaps of regular meetings can be found here:

* '''2024''' https://www.loomio.com/d/QBtcgaOq/organizing-circle-recaps-2024-

== How we work ==

We strive to provide synchronous and asynchronous engagement as well as document decisions as they are being made. Meetings are held every other week for 90 minutes virtually. Agendas for each meeting are posted prior the call on the Loomino group as their own thread. Live notes are taken during the meeting and a recap synthesized afterwards and copies of both are posted to the meeting's loomio thread. Relevant sections of the recap are also copied over to topic-based loomio threads and to a general recap thread.

Agendas typically follow this pattern

# Opening (attendance, duration, past recap review, identify facilitator and notetaker, consent to agenda)
# Check ins (how are you doing? Relationship building)
# Updates
#* past ToDo items from members
#* working groups
#* Loomio discussions of general forum
# Strategic and operational decisions from backlog
# Current ToDo items (What are you doing before next call?)
# Backlog harvesting (What should we be talking about next?)
# Check outs (What could we improve? How are you leaving?)

We strive to have a clear path to membership in the group and a stable enough membership to effectively steward issues. Members for the Organizing circle are selected based on a sortition process from the Loomio community and appointed by the Working Groups. We strive to balance diverse view points with engaged discussions and have between 4-8 members on the circle. At large members selected by sortition have a 2 year term.

* '''Loomio group:''' https://www.loomio.com/socialcoop-organizing-circle/
* '''Recap thread''' (2024): https://www.loomio.com/d/QBtcgaOq/organizing-circle-recaps-2024-

== Origin of the group ==
DRAFT -- In February, 2023, in consultation with the Community Working Group Operations Team, @Matt_Noyes and @Mattcropp initiated a discussion of the idea of creating an Organizing Circle. (https://www.loomio.com/d/txYOWJ4q/organizing-a-growing-social-coop-an-idea-for-a-proposal/57) The motivation included the following elements:

* Rapid growth of Social.Coop leading to stress on the existing forms of organization, "particularly the Community Working Group Ops Team, which has been taking on onboarding, moderation, education, strategic planning and other tasks."
* Working groups -- Tech, Community, and Finance (a legal working group is in the works) -- that function differently and often with little coordination.
* Discussion and operations spread across multiple platforms – Mastodon, Loomio, Matrix.
* Lack of coordination and internal communication has resulted in, among other things, a tendency to do-ocracy and a deference to members who are perceived to be leaders, either because of longevity, activity on the instance, or other qualities. This raises the risk of “tyranny of structurelessness” type dynamics, and has troublesome implications for diversity and inclusion. It also undermines accountability.
* Lack the kind of organization needed to really operate as – and achieve, if we want it, the legal status of – a cooperative.

After discussion on Loomio and in an online gathering, in July, 2023-07, @Matt_Noyes proposed the creation of an Organizing Circle (OC) in SocialCoop (SC) to:

* increase coordination, accountability, and transparency of SC as a Fediverse actor;
* incorporate members into operations and decision-making;
* lay the groundwork for bylaws that meet legal requirements in case SC becomes an officially recognized cooperative.

In order to achieve this, the OC would be a group of members consistently committed to:

* coordinating among working groups and ops teams,
* providing a space for ongoing strategic conversation and coordination and
* facilitating greater member participation in both operations and governance.

The OC has limited powers, with most operational decisions made by the Working Groups (WG) and decisions related to Social.Coop as a whole subject to member approval.

This proposal passed, with 65 (18%) of the 356 social.coop members on Loomio votes, with 61 agree, 2 disagree, and 2 abstain (see Social.Coop Organizing Circle Proposal (2023-06) > <nowiki>https://www.loomio.com/p/OI8kEjVz/social-coop-organizing-circle-proposal</nowiki>).

After this initial step, we started to organize the next steps for this OC to work and fulfill it's mission:

* each working group choose one person to be on the Organizing Circle,
* we welcomed other members interested in helping organize the OC, + these people organized the juried sortition process for choosing the At Large members. (See Organizing the Social.Coop Organizing Circle (2023-07) > <nowiki>https://www.loomio.com/d/GhC8oEcK/organizing-the-social-coop-organizing-circle</nowiki>)

These steps were carried out and the OC started to operate in 2024-01, documenting it's meetings at the OC group in Loomio (see <nowiki>https://www.loomio.com/socialcoop-organizing-circle/</nowiki>) and putting more durable information on the wiki in [[Organizing Circle|https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Organizing_Circle]].
[[Category:Working Group]]

Organizing Circle

2024-07-31T12:47:44Z

Matt noyes: /* Origin of the group */ added first step

{{Working Group
|Description=Coordinates the work of working groups and ops teams, providing a space for ongoing strategic conversation and facilitating greater member participation in both operations and governance.
}}

This page holds the general operations information for the Social.coop organizing circle including links to standing Loomio https://www.loomio.com/socialcoop/ threads, descriptions of circle operations, and links to decisions made by the group.

== Agreements and policy documents ==

Each of these agreements should provide a brief context that motivated the decision, links to relevant Loomio threads, the exact wording of the agreement, a term for when the agreement will be revisited, and metrics for evaluation.

[[Organizing Circle policy]]

== Meeting recaps ==

Recaps of regular meetings can be found here:

* '''2024''' https://www.loomio.com/d/QBtcgaOq/organizing-circle-recaps-2024-

== How we work ==

We strive to provide synchronous and asynchronous engagement as well as document decisions as they are being made. Meetings are held every other week for 90 minutes virtually. Agendas for each meeting are posted prior the call on the Loomino group as their own thread. Live notes are taken during the meeting and a recap synthesized afterwards and copies of both are posted to the meeting's loomio thread. Relevant sections of the recap are also copied over to topic-based loomio threads and to a general recap thread.

Agendas typically follow this pattern

# Opening (attendance, duration, past recap review, identify facilitator and notetaker, consent to agenda)
# Check ins (how are you doing? Relationship building)
# Updates
#* past ToDo items from members
#* working groups
#* Loomio discussions of general forum
# Strategic and operational decisions from backlog
# Current ToDo items (What are you doing before next call?)
# Backlog harvesting (What should we be talking about next?)
# Check outs (What could we improve? How are you leaving?)

We strive to have a clear path to membership in the group and a stable enough membership to effectively steward issues. Members for the Organizing circle are selected based on a sortition process from the Loomio community and appointed by the Working Groups. We strive to balance diverse view points with engaged discussions and have between 4-8 members on the circle. At large members selected by sortition have a 2 year term.

* '''Loomio group:''' https://www.loomio.com/socialcoop-organizing-circle/
* '''Recap thread''' (2024): https://www.loomio.com/d/QBtcgaOq/organizing-circle-recaps-2024-

== Origin of the group ==
DRAFT -- In February, 2023, in consultation with the Community Working Group Operations Team, @Matt_Noyes and @Mattcropp initiated a discussion of the idea of creating an Organizing Circle. The motivation included the following elements:

* Rapid growth of Social.Coop leading to stress on the existing forms of organization, "particularly the Community Working Group Ops Team, which has been taking on onboarding, moderation, education, strategic planning and other tasks."
* Working groups -- Tech, Community, and Finance (a legal working group is in the works) -- that function differently and often with little coordination.
* Discussion and operations spread across multiple platforms – Mastodon, Loomio, Matrix.
* Lack of coordination and internal communication has resulted in, among other things, a tendency to do-ocracy and a deference to members who are perceived to be leaders, either because of longevity, activity on the instance, or other qualities. This raises the risk of “tyranny of structurelessness” type dynamics, and has troublesome implications for diversity and inclusion. It also undermines accountability.
* Lack the kind of organization needed to really operate as – and achieve, if we want it, the legal status of – a cooperative.

After discussion on Loomio and in an online gathering, in July, 2023-07, @Matt_Noyes proposed the creation of an Organizing Circle (OC) in SocialCoop (SC) to:

* increase coordination, accountability, and transparency of SC as a Fediverse actor;
* incorporate members into operations and decision-making;
* lay the groundwork for bylaws that meet legal requirements in case SC becomes an officially recognized cooperative.

In order to achieve this, the OC would be a group of members consistently committed to:

* coordinating among working groups and ops teams,
* providing a space for ongoing strategic conversation and coordination and
* facilitating greater member participation in both operations and governance.

The OC has limited powers, with most operational decisions made by the Working Groups (WG) and decisions related to Social.Coop as a whole subject to member approval.

This proposal passed, with 65 (18%) of the 356 social.coop members on Loomio votes, with 61 agree, 2 disagree, and 2 abstain (see Social.Coop Organizing Circle Proposal (2023-06) > <nowiki>https://www.loomio.com/p/OI8kEjVz/social-coop-organizing-circle-proposal</nowiki>).

After this initial step, we started to organize the next steps for this OC to work and fulfill it's mission:

* each working group choose one person to be on the Organizing Circle,
* we welcomed other members interested in helping organize the OC, + these people organized the juried sortition process for choosing the At Large members. (See Organizing the Social.Coop Organizing Circle (2023-07) > <nowiki>https://www.loomio.com/d/GhC8oEcK/organizing-the-social-coop-organizing-circle</nowiki>)

These steps were carried out and the OC started to operate in 2024-01, documenting it's meetings at the OC group in Loomio (see <nowiki>https://www.loomio.com/socialcoop-organizing-circle/</nowiki>) and putting more durable information on the wiki in [[Organizing Circle|https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Organizing_Circle]].
[[Category:Working Group]]

Organizing Circle

2024-07-31T12:10:02Z

Matt noyes: /* Origin of the group */ Added and edited text created by @edumerco

{{Working Group
|Description=Coordinates the work of working groups and ops teams, providing a space for ongoing strategic conversation and facilitating greater member participation in both operations and governance.
}}

This page holds the general operations information for the Social.coop organizing circle including links to standing Loomio https://www.loomio.com/socialcoop/ threads, descriptions of circle operations, and links to decisions made by the group.

== Agreements and policy documents ==

Each of these agreements should provide a brief context that motivated the decision, links to relevant Loomio threads, the exact wording of the agreement, a term for when the agreement will be revisited, and metrics for evaluation.

[[Organizing Circle policy]]

== Meeting recaps ==

Recaps of regular meetings can be found here:

* '''2024''' https://www.loomio.com/d/QBtcgaOq/organizing-circle-recaps-2024-

== How we work ==

We strive to provide synchronous and asynchronous engagement as well as document decisions as they are being made. Meetings are held every other week for 90 minutes virtually. Agendas for each meeting are posted prior the call on the Loomino group as their own thread. Live notes are taken during the meeting and a recap synthesized afterwards and copies of both are posted to the meeting's loomio thread. Relevant sections of the recap are also copied over to topic-based loomio threads and to a general recap thread.

Agendas typically follow this pattern

# Opening (attendance, duration, past recap review, identify facilitator and notetaker, consent to agenda)
# Check ins (how are you doing? Relationship building)
# Updates
#* past ToDo items from members
#* working groups
#* Loomio discussions of general forum
# Strategic and operational decisions from backlog
# Current ToDo items (What are you doing before next call?)
# Backlog harvesting (What should we be talking about next?)
# Check outs (What could we improve? How are you leaving?)

We strive to have a clear path to membership in the group and a stable enough membership to effectively steward issues. Members for the Organizing circle are selected based on a sortition process from the Loomio community and appointed by the Working Groups. We strive to balance diverse view points with engaged discussions and have between 4-8 members on the circle. At large members selected by sortition have a 2 year term.

* '''Loomio group:''' https://www.loomio.com/socialcoop-organizing-circle/
* '''Recap thread''' (2024): https://www.loomio.com/d/QBtcgaOq/organizing-circle-recaps-2024-

== Origin of the group ==
DRAFT -- On [date] @Matt_Noyes and @Mattcropp initiated a discussion of the idea of creating an Organizing Circle and, on 2023-07, proposed the creation of an Organizing Circle (OC) in SocialCoop (SC) to:

+ increase coordination, accountability, and transparency of SC as a Fediverse actor;

+ incorporate members into operations and decision-making;

+ lay the groundwork for bylaws that meet legal requirements in case SC becomes an officially recognized cooperative.

In order to achieve this, the OC would be a group of members consistently committed to:

+ coordinating among working groups and ops teams,

+ providing a space for ongoing strategic conversation and coordination and

+ facilitating greater member participation in both operations and governance.

The OC has limited powers, with most operational decisions made by the Working Groups (WG) and decisions related to Social.Coop as a whole subject to member approval.

This proposal passed, with 65 (18%) of the 356 social.coop members on Loomio votes, with 61 agree, 2 disagree, and 2 abstain (see Social.Coop Organizing Circle Proposal (2023-06) > <nowiki>https://www.loomio.com/p/OI8kEjVz/social-coop-organizing-circle-proposal</nowiki>).

After this initial step, we started to organize the next steps for this OC to work and fulfill it's mission:

+ each working group choose one person to be on the Organizing Circle,

+ we welcomed other members interested in helping organize the OC, + these people organized the juried sortition process for choosing the At Large members.

(see Organizing the Social.Coop Organizing Circle (2023-07) > <nowiki>https://www.loomio.com/d/GhC8oEcK/organizing-the-social-coop-organizing-circle</nowiki>)

These steps were carried out and the OC started to operate in 2024-01, and documenting it's meetings at the OC group in Loomio (see <nowiki>https://www.loomio.com/socialcoop-organizing-circle/</nowiki>) and it's more durable information on the wiki in [[Organizing Circle|https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Organizing_Circle]].
[[Category:Working Group]]

Guide-for-CWG-Ops-Team-"On-Call"

2024-07-31T11:53:31Z

Matt noyes: /* Key Responsibilities */

The social.coop instance is moderated by a rotating member of the [[Community Working Group Ops Team]] "On Call" shifts run from Sunday at 12pm GMT to 11:59am GMT the following Sunday.

== Key Responsibilities ==

* Review reports made through the Mastodon platform ASAP, and decide on a course of action guided by our [[Code of conduct]], [[Federation abuse policy]], and [[Reporting guide]]. Contact the person who made the report to let them know the action taken or ask follow-up questions.

* Decisions to silence or suspend instances should be posted to [[Defederation of instances]]

* If a case feels ambiguous enough that you don't feel comfortable acting alone on it, DM your fellow Ops Team members to discuss.

* Toot announcements and welcomes from the official account, and respond to inquiries. The account should be checked for messages, and at least one announcement/post should be made from it, at least once per week.

* Check for new applications and on-board new members regularly to the Mastodon instance, Loomio, and Meet.Coop.

* At the end of your week, if there are any outstanding issues, message the next on-call person to provide context.

== Compensation ==

Compensation numbers can be found on the [[Community Working Group Ops Team]] page. Submit your shift info to the spreadsheet linked in the CWG Ops Team Loomio group's description prior to the monthly call, and compensation for the previous month will be reviewed and approved during the monthly call. Once it is approved, you may submit an invoice to our [https://opencollective.com/socialcoop Open Collective].

Community Working Group Ops Team

2023-08-21T03:05:02Z

Matt noyes: Removed Mica Fischer from ops team members

The Community Working Group ops team consists of up to 5 operational members and 3 volunteer "at large" members. The current team is elected to a one year term, and has a mandate until May 9, 2021, at which point the mandate shall be renewed.

'''Operational Members:''' Operational members rotate in an [[/social.coop/community/docs/-/wikis/Guide-for-CWG-Ops-Team-"On-Call"|on-call]] moderator role for the social.coop Mastodon instance, and attend monthly meeting. The coordinator is responsible for scheduling, tracking tasks, and coordinating with other working groups.

Compensation is currently $10/month + $30/week on-call shift + $20/month for coordinators.

Current Members:

* Emi Do (Communications Coordinator)
* Matt Noyes (Team Coordinator)
* Sam Whited
* Eduardo

'''At-Large Members:''' At large members are elected volunteers who are invited to the monthly meetings and have voting seats in the Ops Team Loomio group, but do not take on-call shifts or other responsibilities.

Current Members: None

'''Team Charter Full Text'''

The process for selecting new team members will follow the following steps:

# A Check Poll will be launched in the Community Working Group to collect expressions of interest from potential new team members.
# Prospective team members will be asked to submit a short written statement to the existing Operations Team, which will review them and vote via ranked choice.
# The Operations Team will confirm the interest of the chosen candidates, and then submit a proposal to the Community Working Group to ratify their appointment to the Operations Team.
# We will also put an open call in the full membership group for folks interested in sitting in one of the two “at large” seats, and elect those seats via a vote from the full membership via approval voting.

'''Roles:'''

'''Community Ops Team Members [5 roles]'''

Responsibilities:

* Attend a monthly ops team call
* Perform work delegated at ops team call by next Ops Team call.
* Participate in decision-making and problem-solving between calls on the Ops Team Loomio group.
* Participate in "On-Call" rotation: [1 week shifts]
* Check and process new membership applications daily. [30 seconds to 10 minutes, depending on volume].
* Receive and respond to reports from members and off-instance folks.[variable]
* Toot announcements and welcomes from the official account, and respond to inquiries. [at least 1 announcement per shift, minimum]
* Pass-on documentation for next On-Call Staff [~30 minutes]

Compensation: 7.20GBP/month for attending the monthly call + 21.60gbp/On-Call Shift

'''Ops Team Coordinator [2 roles]'''

Responsibilities:

Standard Ops Team Member Responsibilities, plus...

* Schedule Monthly Ops Team Call
* Attend inter-working groups call to share updates, make requests of other working groups, receive requests, etc. [1 hour prep, 1 hour meeting monthly]
* Track Assignments, etc.

Compensation: Ops Team Member Comp + 14.40GBP/mo Selection: Elected by the Ops Team from their membership.

'''At Large Members [2]'''

Purpose: To provide a non-operational member perspective in the ops team, and to be a way for folks interested in the work but not sure if they want to commit to the role to get a sense of it.

Responsibilities:

* Attend the monthly Ops Team call and participate in Ops team Loomio as a voting member of the team.
* Compensation: Volunteer

'''Group Liasons [1+]'''

Purpose: This is a seat for a representative of each of the other working groups Operations Teams to occupy to ensure clear communication between groups.

Responsibilities: Attend the monthly Ops Team meeting and convey key information from their "home" Working Group.

Compensation: Volunteer, but compensated from “home” operations team if an Ops Team member.