Co-ops joining social.coop

Vica Public Seen by 186

Hi all, I'm new to the community so I would like some guidance on a question I have. I might be wrong, but looking through social.coop members, it looks like it is mostly formed by accounts of individuals, rather than organisations. With the recent takeover of Twitter, there will be co-ops looking for an alternative. Should we be encouraging them to join social.coop? Or would that change the culture of the organisation? Would social.coop have the capacity to absorb a large influx if a lot would join? And would we allow coops to cross-post from twitter (I think large co-op would likely go for that) - and therefore not really engage in the community? Or should we encourage larger co-ops to set up their own instances instead?

Ed Summers @edsu Fri 11 Nov 2022 4:19PM

This is a great question, thanks for asking it here. Just speaking for myself I think it would be super to see more cooperatives joining social.coop, both organizational accounts for the specific coop in question, as well as members. As you can see over in the proposal to become May First members I think we might want to think about organizational alignments that can be made, and that could be another option?

As for the capacity question, I think this is something that many other Mastodon instances are currently dealing with. I personally think we want to be careful about growing the membership too quickly, but this is something that we can plan for as best we can. If you're curious here's what the growth has looked like for the past year and a half.

Nathan Schneider Sat 12 Nov 2022 8:05PM

I'm fully in support of co-ops joining Social.coop. I thought some had. But maybe not. If not, we should absolutely support that. @Vica can you say more about what you think this would mean? Would it mean the co-op having a single account, or all its members having accounts?

Vica Sun 13 Nov 2022 10:58PM

I'm thinking co-ops, large and small, having single accounts on Mastodon. As co-ops set up as businesses often use their social media accounts for marketing purposes - I'm struggling to understand how that fits into the Mastodon model. It's not paid advertising...but it's still marketing. I guess it's up to people to follow/unfollow who they want, so my concern is more in relation to the impact on the culture of Social.coop. Including other co-ops in their membership is a thing co-ops need to often consider when scaling....but not sure what the impact can be if it happens rapidly. I'm coming at this as someone who could potentially start encouraging co-ops to join, but I'm hesitant on doing so before hearing from this community.

Nathan Schneider Mon 14 Nov 2022 5:47PM

I can see that. But some co-ops might really see value in connecting more deeply with co-op advocates, in which case having an account here could be really valuable.

Doug Belshaw Mon 14 Nov 2022 8:23AM

So our co-op has an account on mastodon.social which pre-dates the great migration. We're talking about setting up our own instance, and have a test one at https://wao.wtf (Misskey, not Mastodon)

I think it would be great to welcome co-ops to social.coop, with the proviso that ultimately we should be encouraging them to set up their own instance! 🙂

Poll Created Mon 14 Nov 2022 5:44PM

Make explicit that cooperatives and other organizations are welcome to join Closed Mon 21 Nov 2022 5:01PM

Outcome

by Nathan Schneider Wed 30 Nov 2022 11:48PM

This proposal has passed with overwhelming support. Even if the Disagree votes are interpreted as Blocks, it has enough support to proceed. (I am sorry I did not include the Block option by mistake.)

I will proceed with implementing the proposal.

Currently it is not clear that cooperatives and organizational members are welcome. This is a proposal that organizations are welcome to join Social.coop—on a similar basis to individual membership, one membership = one account, on Loomio, Mastodon, and other services.

If this passes, we will add to the registration page the bold language:

If you would like to join Social.coop, please fill out this form with your details, and someone will get back to you shortly via email. Individuals, cooperatives, and other organizations that identify with the cooperative movement are welcome to join. If you receive no contact within seven days of registration, please send an email to [email protected].

After that, change the "Personal Info" header to "Basic Info."