Governance
Social.coop is a self-governing cooperative. Our decision-making processes take place in our space on Loomio, a platform developed by a worker-owned cooperative. All Social.coop members should also have accounts there.
Membership aspects
We identified the following types of involvement with social.coop (all engagement is voluntary and at choice):
- Microblogging - via Mastodon server account. Members may be inactive (account abandoned), invisible (no content generation but reading and possibly sharing via other avenues), and visible (content generation)
- Entry: Required OpenCollective account, no mandate on monetary contributing (https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Bylaws)
- Financial contribution via OpenCollective account. Members may be non-contributing and contributing.
- Strategic contribution via Loomio account. Members may be inactive, invisible, and visible.
- Entry: Required OpenCollective account, no mandate on contributing. Required social.coop Mastodon account, no mandate on activity status.
- Operational contribution via working group involvement and key role holders
- Entry: social invitation, and sortition process
- Social groups are non-working groups: e.g., reading groups, Matrix discussion board, regional meet-ups.
- Entry: social invitation
Context and term
In order to move forward with an engagement plan for the community we need to identify and define where we are right now. This will be used to develop introduction material and orientations as well as look to build out our governance model by defining the aspects of membership or ways we connect as members.
Proposed by Organizing Circle March 2024, revisit September 2024.
Decision-making
Decisions in Social.coop break into strategic and operational.
- Strategic decisions guide operational decisions and are currently made via a staged proposal process and modified consensus (https://wiki.social.coop/wiki/Bylaws).
- Operational decisions are taken on via working groups and key role holders, loosely by domain but often modified by capacity.
Context and term
To build a better more deliberate governance model we need to know where we are starting from. This is looking to capture how we currently make decisions and operate as a collective.
Proposed by Organizing Circle March 2024, revisit September 2024.
Core documents
- Bylaws
- Code of conduct
- Defederation of instances
- Federation abuse policy
- Partnership with Platform 6
- Privacy policy (on Mastodon)